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 · TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 · VOL. CXXXIV, NO. 126 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
SUNNY SUNNY
67 70
CROSS CAMPUS
DENTAL X-RAYS LINK TO BRAIN TUMORS POSSIBLE
ELM CITY HISTORY
ORGAN DONATIONS
HEAVYWEIGHT CREW
Yale archivist Judith Schiff to become city’s official historian
YALE-NEW HAVEN HOPES TO BREAK GUINNESS RECORD
Yale earns third straight sweep with victory over Columbia, Penn in N.J.
PAGES 6-7 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
PAGE 3 CITY
PAGE 5 CITY
PAGE 12 SPORTS
Building a ‘new’ New Haven
We have a winner. History
professor John Lewis Gaddis was named the winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Biography on Monday. Gaddis was honored for “George F. Kennan: An American Life,” which the Pulitzer jury described as an “engaging portrait of a globetrotting diplomat whose complicated life was interwoven with the Cold War and America’s emergence as the world’s dominant power.” Gaddis wasn’t the only Yalie honored Monday afternoon — Wesley Morris ’97, Quiara Alegría Hudes ’99 and Stephen Greenblatt ’64 GRD ’69 all took home Pulitzers as well.
Really? A Yale senior was charged with larceny Monday evening after he and two inebriated friends allegedly ran through the Occupy encampment on the Upper Green, shouting, “We’re the 1 percent. F*** Occupy!” and prompting Occupy protesters to chase the students to a fraternity house on Goffe Street, the New Haven Independent reported. During the chase, one pursuer reported, the students stole a trophy cup from a Yale freshman, spat at him, then ran toward Popeye’s on Dixwell Avenue. One protester said the students identified themselves as seniors on the football team. A calmer sport. Two dozen
Ivy Leaguers faced off this weekend in the first Ivy League Chess Championship, sponsored by the Chess Club of Fairfield County. Teams from Columbia, Princeton and Dartmouth competed against one another in a two-day chess tournament in Norwalk, Conn. After four rounds of play, Columbia took home top honors. Yale tied for last.
Easier parties. A new website launched Monday by Christopher Kieran FES ’11, Brad Baer ARC ’11 and Andrew Hapke SOM ’11 aims to ease the planning of parties and dinners. Zokos uses what Kieran calls “friend-sourcing” to help coordinate dinner parties online, avoiding the awkwardness and inefficiency of collecting money at the door. Another leak? DJ Jus Ske, who
made headlines in 2010 for a rumored affair with Lindsay Lohan, will be “hitting Yale for the Toad’s Place ‘Spring Fling’” on April 24, according to a release from Splash.FM.
What about Rick? Dartmouth
College President Jim Yong Kim was named the 12th President of the World Bank Monday afternoon.
Your voice matters! The
runoff election for Yale College Council president and UOFC chair concludes tonight at 11:59 p.m.
THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1918 Over 10 percent of students have purchased $64,150 in Liberty Bonds.
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YCC pushes for grade transparency BY CLINTON WANG AND ANTONIA WOODFORD STAFF REPORTERS
Yale University Properties has transformed downtown, but as development pushes further outward, what direction will Yale set for New Haven retail, and at what cost? EMILIE FOYER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The Broadway shopping district has been at the heart of Yale’s retail development efforts during the past 16 years. BY BEN PRAWDZIK STAFF REPORTER When Joshua Adler ’96 first stepped onto Yale’s campus as a freshman in 1992, New Haven was “a very different place.”
UPCLOSE Adler began his Yale career during what many alumni, administrators, city officials and local residents consider to be the “ultimate
low point” for Yale’s relationship with New Haven. The years from approximately 1970 to the early 1990s marked over two decades of disconnect between the University and its host city. Yale had “totally neglected” the city, Adler said, and the areas of New Haven immediately surrounding Yale had, “in many ways, fallen into disrepair.” “When I was an undergrad, the parts of New Haven that seemed safe included the length of Chapel Street between York and College [streets] and the portion of
S H A K E S P E A R E A T YA L E
The bard in the classroom
T
hough Shakespeare at Yale will draw to a close this weekend, celebration of the bard through a variety of methods will continue within Yale’s classrooms. JULIA ZORTHIAN reports.
Works by William Shakespeare have been on Yale’s campus since at least 1743 — when the College library’s catalog, now on display in the “Remembering Shakespeare” exhibit at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, first documented a set of Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare’s texts, according to the catalog, were found among “plays and other books of diversion” in the library. Nearly 270 years later, Shakespeare’s plays have become much more than a “diversion” at Yale. For over a century, Yale has offered courses solely devoted to Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. The first to focus on Shakespeare took place in 1860, while the subsequent century included survey courses taught by prominent professors such as William Lyon Phelps, whose 1928 course featured a popular visit from the heavyweight-boxing champion and Shakespeare fan Gene Tunney, and Maynard Mack, who taught at Yale from 1936 to 1978. While Shakespeare at Yale — a semester-long celebration of the Bard that has included plays, lectures and museum exhibits — will come to a close this
weekend, students will continue discussing the playwright in Shakespeare courses, a variety of which are now taught across seven departments. As Shakespeare analysis has expanded in academia and literary criticism to include more than strictly literary methods, Yale’s Shakespeare curriculum has grown to include specialized courses that look at specific aspects of Shakespeare’s work in greater detail than in the past — opening doors for a variety of teaching styles as well.
SHAKESPEARE IN CONTEXT
Searching the Yale College Programs of Study for the term “Shakespeare” yields 11 undergraduate courses offered this year with Shakespeare in their title, and nine additional courses with Shakespeare listed in the course description. These course offerings vary not only in course material but also in the professors’ teaching methods. The scholarly approaches to analysis of Shakespeare’s texts range from that based on character and historical context to explication based on philosophy, ecoSEE SHAKESPEARE PAGE 4
Broadway up to the Morse-Stiles walkway — that was the extent of the safe evening area,” Adler said. “It was really the bottom for New Haven and Yale.” Fast forward to 2012, and the situation, Adler said, has turned on its head. Today, Yale and New Haven have rebuilt their relationship through initiatives including the Yale Homebuyer Program, which offers University employees an income SEE DEVELOPMENT PAGE 8
The Yale College Council’s science and engineering subcommittee is advocating for science professors to make information about grading more consistently available to students during the term. The subcommittee released a report last Thursday based on a February poll of nearly 600 students, many of whom said that science and engineering classes do not provide adequate grading feedback after midterms and final exams. The report recommends requiring professors to use the Classesv2 gradebook, publish grading information after each exam and return final exams. Students and professors had mixed responses to the report’s findings, and administrators said they have yet to consider the proposal. More than 40 percent of students surveyed said that “none” or “few” — defined as less than 30 percent — of their science courses have published grading information after midterms, such as mean and median raw scores, or percentile groups of raw scores. Forty-four percent of respondents said their courses did not publish final exam grading information at all, and another 30 percent said that “few” of their science courses released this information. More than threequarters of students surveyed reported that their science professors did not post a grade distribution at the end of the semester. “A lot of students complained that they didn’t receive a lot of feedback about their raw score grades on their midterms, and they didn’t know where they stood in the class,” said Rohit Thummalapalli ’13, a member of the YCC subcommittee and the author of the report. “We want to eliminate the element of SEE SUBCOMMITTEE PAGE 4
Despite decline, students concerned about city crime 500
400
GRAPH RESPONSES TO THE QUESTION “HOW CONCERNED ARE YOU ABOUT VIOLENT CRIME IN NEW HAVEN 432
300
200
182 100
62 0
71
16 Very unconcerned
Somewhat unconcerned
Neutral
Somewhat concerned
Very concerned
SOURCE: YALE DAILY NEWS SURVEY
BY JAMES LU STAFF REPORTER Despite a dramatic decline in crime over the past several years, a News survey revealed that many students continue to be concerned about crime in the city and around campus. While students said recent years have seen an improvement in student-police relations, and most welcomed the New Haven Police Department’s embrace of community policing, they still have concerns about crime, according to a survey of 763 undergraduates conducted by the News last Monday and Tuesday. The perception of criminal activity around Yale’s campus lingers despite significant progress in crime reduction around the city and campus over the past decade. “The perception has been there for 20 years, and we’re making steady progress,”
University President Richard Levin said. “But the perception isn’t inappropriate. We’re in a city — like Boston, New York City or Philadelphia — and students do need to take precautions against muggings on the street. It really is important to avail oneself of security services we offer.” When asked about whether they are concerned about crime on campus, 23 percent of the students surveyed responded that they are “very concerned,” while 47 percent said they were “somewhat concerned.” Similarly, when asked about their perception of violent crime in the Elm City, 24 percent of respondents said they were “very concerned” and 57 percent of students said they were “concerned.” After the News forwarded the results of the survey to Yale Police Department leadSEE CRIME SURVEY PAGE 4
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
OPINION
.COMMENT “I’m a junior and I want to know where you guys go roof-hopyaledailynews.com/opinion
Poetry, not politics I
can’t read German, but it’s hard to imagine that Günter Grass’ “What Must Be Said” constitutes striking lyricism in any language. The poem, which criticizes Israel’s nuclear program and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hawkishness, sparked an international outcry that culminated in Israel’s Minister for the Interior banning the 84-year-old Grass from entering the country. Yet there’s precious little trace of the poetic muse in lines like “I hope too that many may be freed / from their silence … / may insist that the governments of / both Iran and Israel allow an international authority / free and open inspection of / the nuclear potential and capability of both,” as Breon Mitchell’s translation in The Guardian goes. Rilke this is not. For that matter, it’s not really Grass either — “Whoever drinks from the sea / henceforth feels / a thirst only for oceans,” the Nobel laureate wrote in his younger years. (That was Michael Hamburger’s translation, but I don’t think that’s the key difference.) “What Must Be Said” is an op-ed with line breaks. Nor is it a particularly controversial op-ed, purely in terms of content. Shibley Telhami and Steven Kull made essentially the same points in The New York Times in January: It’s dangerous to have nuclear weapons anywhere in the Middle East; Israel is likely the only Middle Eastern nation with a nuclear arsenal; at the very least, Israel should allow international inspectors access to its facilities. Telhami and Kull backed up their points with some encouraging surveys of the Israeli public, the majority of whom oppose a strike on Iran, favor nuclear disarmament and would welcome inspectors. If the point isn’t offensive enough to provoke a travel ban from Israel — neither Telhami (who is Palestinian) nor Kull have been declared persona non grata by the Jewish state — then why take such extraordinary measures against Grass, an otherwise respected artist? Grass’s teenage conscription into the Waffen SS, which came to light in 2006, was Israel’s legal basis for the ban, based on a 1952 law that forbids former members of Nazi organizations from entering Israel. But Grass was not banned in 2006 — he was banned in 2012, following the publication of an unimaginative bit of political verse. And while Israeli ministers treated the poem as something of a Trojan Horse bearing fascist anti-Semitism under the guise of European intellectualism, Grass alludes fairly openly to his Nazi past in the sixth verse: He calls Israel “a land / to which I am, and always will be,
a t t a c h e d .” This attachment, the deep scar of historical sin and current responsibility, is central to the poem’s SAM message. LASMAN As a participant in Beartrap the unconscionable evil that necessitated Israel’s creation, Grass is uniquely responsible for ensuring that nation survives by listening to the better angels of its nature. Most commentators missed this point, focusing instead on Grass’s inelegant lines about submarine deliveries and Israel’s shrill fatwa against the writer. Both poem and proscription were ill-advised — the latter because it was an unnecessary populist gesture that undermined Israel’s crucial commitment to democracy and free speech; the former because it was a poem. Poetry and song are gloriously powerful as expressions of humanity; they are dangerously reductive as political statements. We celebrate poets and novelists — and painters, directors, dancers and singers — because they enlarge our souls; they enrich our human experience by linking lonely existences in a chain of communion. Yet artists who use their media of choice to advocate specific political agendas should always warrant our suspicion, regardless of our feelings on the agenda in question. Artists have won their public pulpit by mastering a chosen form of expression and using that form to profoundly affect others, not through their well-reasoned and insightful approaches to the crises of the modern era. Regardless of your stance on its policy, “What Must Be Said” is bad poetry, and it is bad poetry on two levels. It is heavy-handed and bland, and it irresponsibly relies on its poetic form and its author’s fame to skirt the insight, reasoning and moral seriousness demanded of any writer who addresses the modern Middle East. And we, in turn, are bad readers on two levels. We miss the key point of responsibility under Grass’s rhetoric, preferring to focus on a senseless diplomatic fracas, and we abdicate our democratic responsibilities by granting undue weight to the political platforms of the famous, the charismatic and the under-informed.
ping.”
‘BULLDOGBOULDERER’ ON ‘WELCOME HOME, PREFROSH’
G U E ST C O LU M N I ST K AT E H O P K I N S
A note to my replacement T
his semester, I’ve been suffering from a case of earlyonset nostalgia. How you can miss a place you have not yet left, I’m not sure, but I’ve been coping by trolling bulletin boards for good master’s teas, actually doing the reading for seminar and taking every opportunity to sing Yale songs to mourn just how fast my bright college years are flying by. It’s the Eli Yale song that’s actually my favorite, the one that ends with a suitably melancholy line about bidding farewell and begins with “As freshman first we came to Yale.” But that’s not technically true, is it? In fact, the throng of admitted students pouring through Phelps Gate is evidence that it’s not. The truth is that as prefrosh first we came to Yale. Maybe this year’s batch isn’t composed of students quite as wide-eyed as I was, but they should be. I remember standing in the middle of Old Campus, thinking
that the buildings were so tall and imposing and that the students walking around were so impressive and purposeful. Someone on the first floor of Durfee was practicing a violin, and he was the best violinist ever, probably. It took a while for me to realize that the students weren’t walking with grand purpose but were just late for section, the kid playing the violin was really just annoying his roommates and, living on the fifth floor, I learned that tall buildings aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Staring down graduation, I wish I hadn’t grown out of it. I miss the awe. I miss the mail my mom would send freshman year with an arrow to the address: “P.O. Box 202473, Yale University” and the words “You go here.” I’m not worried about publishing that address because it won’t be mine much longer. In all likelihood, it will belong to a newly minted Yalie of the class of 2016. And that’s the problem;
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All letters submitted for publication must include the author’s name, phone number and description of Yale University affiliation. Please limit letters to 250 words and guest columns to 750. The Yale Daily News reserves the right to edit letters and columns before publication. E-mail is the preferred method of submission. Direct all letters, columns, artwork and inquiries to: Julia Fisher, Opinion Editor, Yale Daily News http://www.yaledailynews.com/contact opinion@yaledailynews.com
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KATE HOPKINS is a senior in Branford College. Contact her at katherine.hopkins@yale.edu .
Painter’s block
Incoherence on the death penalty T
EDITOR IN CHIEF Max de La Bruyère
game show.” That one came from Rumpus, but it’s close. Here’s my answer, not so much to the prefrosh (if you don’t come it’s your loss), but to the Yalies who still have time left on the clock. Yale is improbable, and I don’t just mean in terms of admissions statistics. Yale is an exception, an irreproducible collection of people and, I have no doubt, the group with the greatest concentration of impossibly diverse talents that I will ever have the privilege of knowing. I know it sounds corny, but I mean every word. There are connections to be made, resources to be tapped and bucket lists to be started. It’s not hard to love this place in the springtime, but if you need to jumpstart your sense of wonder, I recommend walking through archways.
S TA F F I L L U S T R AT O R I L A NA S T R AU S S
SAM LASMAN is a senior in Berkeley College. His column runs on alternate Tuesdays. Contact him at samuel.lasman@yale.edu .
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all of these kids who have just descended on campus can look forward to four years here, one of them is my replacement and none of them appreciate that fully. Now that it’s about to be gone, I’m just beginning to know what I have, and I have been trying to pin down what it is about Yale that we ought to be appreciating. A quote featured in the top corner of the News sometime during my junior year stuck with me: “Yale is staggering on in the best fashion possible.” That’s certainly true during midterms, and maybe that’s what Yale should be teaching us to do for the rest of our lives, but that’s not all of it. F. Scott Fitzgerald was onto something when he said “Yale is November, crisp and energetic.” This campus is somehow very alive, and if I could have only one snapshot of Yale, it would probably be a gothic courtyard in fall, but there’s more. “Yale is crazier than a Japanese
he Connecticut House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to repeal the state’s death penalty. Governor Dannel Malloy, who pledged to support the repeal, is expected to sign the bill soon. Opposition to the death penalty is certainly a legitimate — perhaps even laudable — political position, but this repeal bill represents political incoherence at its worst. Assuming the bill becomes law, the death penalty will be replaced by life without the possibility of parole. There is, however, something fishy about the repeal. It exempts the 11 inmates currently sitting on Connecticut’s death row. Assuming their plethora of projected appeals fails, these 11 will die by lethal injection. This exemption has provided fodder for criticism from death penalty advocates. “If it is the will of this chamber that this state is no longer in the business of executing people, then let’s say it and do it,” Connecticut House minority leader Lawrence Cafero Jr. has demanded. “You cannot have it both ways.” Of course, advocates of repeal need to have it both ways. The alternative would be politically untenable. After all, in 2009, Governor Jodi Rell vetoed a similar bill. The public, incensed by the rape and murder of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two young daughters, Michaela and Hayley, overwhelmingly supported
YISHAI SCHWARTZ The Gadfly
that veto. Since then, the Hawke-Petits’ m u rd e r ers have been sentenced to death. Most death penalty opponents understand that the public will not stand for clemency for these mur-
derers. But the fact that the exemptions are politically expedient does not make the impending repeal any more philosophically coherent. If our moral intuition indicates that those who rape and burn alive an innocent 11-year-old girl ought to die at the hands of the state — and for the majority of people, that seems to be the case — why deny justice to future victims of similar brutality? What makes future Michaelas different from the girl killed five years ago? Alternatively, if we reject our intuitions as clouded by an irrational lust for vengeance, why sustain the sentences of those currently awaiting execution? The incoherence only deepens when we examine the language of the repeal’s supporters. Malloy defended the repeal by pointing to the inefficiency of the death penalty’s administration: “For decades, we have not had a workable death penalty,” he said. “Only
one person’s been executed in Connecticut in the last 52 years, and he volunteered for it.” To any reasonable person, this would be an argument in favor of reforming the death penalty’s application and appeals process. Why give up rather than trying to fix what is broken? Inevitably, death penalty opponents respond that the process cannot be reformed. After all, the ultimate penalty demands an astronomically heightened — and costly — degree of care by courts. Furthermore, death penalty cases naturally attract flashy and talented death-penalty lawyers from all over the country. The efforts of these crusaders can drag out the appeals process for decades. But none of these costs will go away after repeal. The cost of housing these inmates will remain constant: The repeal bill dictates that murderers who would have been executed be held in conditions identical to those of current death row inmates. There is also no reason to believe the headache and cost associated with appeals and endless court procedures will disappear. As death penalty cases dwindle, we can expect the costly lawsuits and hotshot lawyering to shift from death row inmates to those paying the new ultimate price. Without a scholarly consensus in favor of its deterrent value, the justice and decency of the death
penalty is a question of personal morality. Where any of us stand on the issue is the product of our values, beliefs and upbringing. But as students at a university, we should be able to unify around philosophical coherence — and this repeal positively stinks of incoherence. Of course, politics is full of compromise, inconsistency and half measures, and those of us who oppose the death penalty should probably hold our noses and be grateful. But for those who see politicians fooling the public to dial down opposition to an unpopular agenda item, Malloy’s inevitably approaching signature is the tragic conclusion of a slick trick. I am agnostic on the death penalty. What I do fear is that the energy spent on saving murderers from lethal injection is an unconscionable waste of resources that could be better spent demanding substantive justice and prison reforms. The death penalty is a sexy target, but attacking it is a phenomenal waste of time. And to do so in a matter rife with philosophical inconsistency is an embarrassment to our collective intelligence. YISHAI SCHWARTZ is a junior in Branford College. His column runs on Tuesdays. Contact him at yishai.schwartz@yale.edu .
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 3
PAGE THREE TODAY’S EVENTS
PEOPLE IN THE NEWS JUDITH SCHIFF Schiff earned a bachelor’s degree at Barnard College, a master’s degree at Columbia University, and a library science degree at Southern Connecticut State University. In 2011 she was the first recipient of the Edward Bouchet Legacy Award for her work on the life of Edward Bouchet 1876.
New whiteboards to appear in classrooms
TUESDAY, APRIL 17 9:00AM New Haven By Bus Tour. Downtown New Haven has been home ot Yale University for over three centuries. New Haven is a city of innovation, culture and prosperity: Come join us for a bus tour led by current Yale students. Phelps Gate (344 College St.). 11:30PM Freshman Experience Forum. Wondering what your life will be like a year from now? Wondering about the people who will be there to help you figure out how to make the most of your experience? Come hear current freshmen talk about their experiences and current upperclassmen mentors talk about the resources you’ll have available as a freshman. Battell Chapel (400 College St.). 7:00PM Yale College Democrats 2012 Elections Kickoff with Governor Malloy. Come hear from Dannel Malloy, the Governor of Connecticut, about all things to do with the upcoming election. Linsly-Chittenden Hall (63 High St.), Room 102. 8:00 PM Kony 2012: A Discussion of Issues and Activism. Hosted by the Yale Genocide-Action Project, this talk will discuss the current situation in Northern Uganda and whether or not general consciousness by the public of the situation is productive. Dwight Hall, (67 High St.), Library. 9:00 PM Athletes in Action: Open Large Group Meeting. Athletes in Action are Christian athletes who learn to live as ambassadors for Christ in their communities. Join their weekly meeting, in which there will be worship, hanging out and a “senior talk.” Berkeley College (205 Elm St.), Mendenhall Room. 11:00PM Yale International Relations Association: Yorkside Pizza and Milkshakes. Join the Yale International Relations Association to chat while enjoying Yorkside’s famous milkshakes, pizza and chicken tenders. Learn about the Model UN conferences that YIRA hosts, writing and publishing articles on international affairs and participating in international trips. Yorkside Pizza (288 York St.).
RAHUL KINI
The new Wiimote Whiteboard, operated by Wii remotes, was installed in the Morse-Stiles Crescent Theater last week. BY LIZ RODRIGUEZ-FLORIDO STAFF REPORTER
CORRECTION MONDAY, APRIL 16
The article “Contested election heads to runoff” conflated the terms “percent” and “percentage points.” It also misinterpreted the precise wording of the YCC Constitution.
Minority aldermen address city problems BY CASEY SUMNER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Ward 28 Alderwoman Claudette Robinson-Thorpe delivered the Black and Hispanic Caucus’s annual State of the City Address before the Board of Aldermen and about thirty community members Monday evening. Robinson-Thorpe focused on jobs and unemployment in her address, which was accompanied by speeches from two city residents. In the address, Robinson-Thorpe reiterated the major features of the legislative agenda that the Board unanimously signed in January, including a commitment to a “jobs pipeline” program, community policing at the New Haven Police Department, and services for the city’s youth.
I stand before you today saying that more people should have the opportunities that I had. CLAUDETTE ROBINSON-THORPE Ward 28 Alderwoman “Our vision is ambitious, but it’s necessary,” Robinson-Thorpe said. “The vast majority of unemployed are black and Hispanic. It’s hit our community the hardest.” She put particular emphasis on the so-called “jobs pipeline” — a municipal program aimed at job creation in the city — citing her personal success with a similar program. Twenty years ago, she said, she enrolled in the New Haven Residents Training Program, a partnership between Yale, Connecticut and local unions. The program allowed her to get an associate’s degree, as well as a part-time job with the University. With the program’s help, she also completed a bachelor’s and a master’s
degree. “I stand before you today saying that more people should have the opportunities that I had,” she said. She also praised the diversity of this year’s Board of Aldermen. The Black and Hispanic Caucus currently claims 21 members, she said — the largest membership in the Board’s history. Two New Haven residents also shared their experiences before the chamber, which marks the first time community involvement has been a part of the address. “There are stories people need to hear,” said Robinson-Thorpe of her decision to include them in the ceremony. Jazmine Vega, a high school student in New Haven, spoke about the struggles her family is facing. “My mother has a master’s degree, but she still struggles,” Vega said. She told the assembly about a recent time when her mother needed “to choose between buying toilet paper and milk.” Shelton Tucker, a community activist and co-founder of My Brother’s Keeper, a community advocacy organization, also spoke about the economic problems facing New Haven neighborhoods. “My story started out like a lot of kids in my neighborhood. When drugs emerged in our community, it was seen more as a way out of our impoverished situation,” he said. “Within a few years, I had lost over a dozen friends to violence.” Tucker also praised the jobs pipeline program as a potential solution to violence in the community. “Destitution will eventually lead to desperation, and a community of desperate and hopeless people is an unsafe community,” he said. City Hall’s latest surveys show that 12.9 percent of New Haveners are unemployed. Contact CASEY SUMNER at casey.sumner@yale.edu .
A student-led initiative is using standard Wii remotes and free computer software to give classroom projectors the capabilities of a SMART Board at a fraction of the cost. The new technology — known as a Wiimote Whiteboard — was installed in the Morse-Ezra Stiles theater last Sunday as part of the Yale College Council 10K initiative, said Pedro Monroy, Information and Technology manager of classroom technology and event services. The project received $500 to install four Wiimote Whiteboards at approximately $100 apiece, not including taxes and other installation costs — about onetwentieth of the average price of a SMART Board. While ITS aims to install the remaining three units in William L. Harkness Hall by the end of the term, ITS administrators are still deciding how best to place and secure the whiteboards in classrooms.
Each Wiimote Whiteboard requires free software called “Smoothboard,” an infrared pen and a Wii remote — like those commonly used in video games — to transform a standard projector into the equivalent of a SMART Board. An older form of interactive whiteboard, SMART Boards came to Yale in the mid2000s and let users edit documents projected onto a large screen with stylus-like pens. Once the Wiimote Whiteboard setup is configured by installing the Smoothboard software on the necessary computer, attaching the remote to a stand and pointing it at the projector screen, the user can touch the red pen to the projector screen to make changes that also appear on the screen of the connected computer. The Wiimote Whiteboard uses Bluetooth to connect computers one at a time to the rest of the device. Rahul Kini ’14, a Stilesian who proposed and is leading the initiative, said the new technology is geared toward students
and will give artists and engineers a larger screen to work on, freeing them from the constraints of small mousepads. “Someone could be given a presentation and on the spot make edits with their hands,” he said. “There are so many limitations that come with a computer and sometimes you just need to pick up a pencil.” Kini said members of Morse and Stiles will have access to the device in the shared theater, which has been installed permanently. ITS has yet to determine whether the Wiimote Whiteboards in WLH will be fixed permanently in classrooms or designed as portable units that can be checked out from Bass Library and used in any room that has a projector, Monroy said. ITS’s first priority is ensuring that the devices are safe and secure from theft, he said, adding that ITS administrators will meet with Kini on Friday to continue discussing student access to the devices in WLH.
Kini said the uses of Wiimote Whiteboards are endless, noting that engineers can employ the technology to modify designs, set designers to project background scenery in plays and section instructors to email class notes directly from the board to students. Kini said he was inspired to propose implementing these devices at Yale after watching a TedTalk video last summer with Johnny Lee, the inventor of Wiimote Whiteboards. “There is no better place to put this technology than in the hands of creative students,” Kini said. “This technology, it’s endless, it’s cheap and it’s now in the hands of kids who I know will be able to use it to extraordinary measures.” Linsly-Chittenden Hall currently has six SMART Boards installed in rooms on the third floor. Contact LIZ RODRIGUEZFLORIDO at liz.rodriguez-florido@yale.edu .
Yale archivist to serve as city historian BY SHARON YIN STAFF REPORTER Mayor John DeStefano Jr. appointed Yale’s Judith Schiff as the Elm City’s official historian on Monday. Schiff, who is currently the chief research archivist at the Yale University Library’s Manuscripts and Archives Department, will serve in the position until Dec. 31, 2013, according to a City Hall press release. At the Library, where she has worked for 52 years, Schiff specializes in Yale, New Haven and American history. Since the role of city historian is an unpaid post and has no “officially assigned” duties, according to City Hall spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton, Schiff will continue to work at Yale while serving the city. “Judith Schiff is knowledgeable in all matters regarding New Haven history, and has consistently demonstrated a passion for New Haven’s past as well as a commitment to the betterment of its future,” DeStefano said in the press release. After Richard Hegel, New Haven’s first city historian, died in February, a several people recommended Schiff for the position, Benton said. “The selection of Judith Schiff came about very naturally,” Benton said, adding that they took into account Schiff’s involvement in numerous historical organizations like the New Haven Museum, where she serves on the governing board. Though the city historian does not have specific responsibilities, Schiff will serve as a point person on New Haven history, Benton said. In the press release, Schiff said she enjoys “researching and advising researchers on history
projects that enrich New Haven culturally and economically.” University President Richard Levin added that Schiff is “extraordinarily knowledgeable about the University” and a “tremendous asset to Yale.” At the Yale University Library, Schiff’s role will remain unchanged, University Librarian Susan Gibbons said. “It is a fantastic acknowledgment of Judy’s knowledge of the city and her commitment to history and our community,” Gibbons said. William Massa, head of collection development at the Library’s Manuscripts and Archives Department, said in a November interview that Schiff’s ability to speak about Yale “at the paninstitutional level regarding the last 310 years” is unmatched. In addition to her co-workers, professors and Yale administrators alike often look to Schiff for help about Yale’s history. Gaddis Smith ’54 GRD ’61, Yale’s Larned professor emeritus of history said in November that he consults Schiff when he has questions about Yale’s history. Schiff also previously worked with the Yale administration to celebrate anniversaries like Elihu Yale’s 250th birthday and Noah Webster’s 250th birthday. She played a “big role” in the University’s tercentennial, preparing background information and various publications, Levin said, adding that this is only a small fraction of the Schiff’s work as University archivist. Schiff will expand on these experiences in helping to plan the 375th anniversary of New Haven’s founding in 2013, the press release said. Though City Hall has not yet decided how it will commemorate the anniversary, Benton said, it would be “very
SHARON YIN/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Judith Schiff, Yale’s chief research archivist, will serve as city historian. natural” for Schiff to be “very involved.” Levin said he thinks Schiff will bring the “same thoroughness and diligence and passionate interest in history that animated her years as universary archivist” to her new appointment. Schiff also serves on the governing boards for the Grove Street Cemetery and the Lindbergh Foundation and was previously the president of the New
Haven League of Women Voters and the Yale University Women’s Organization. She currently writes the Yale Alumni Magazine’s “Old Yale” column about the University’s history. James Lu and Tapley Stephenson contributed reporting. Contact SHARON YIN at sharon.yin@yale.edu .
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
FROM THE FRONT
“[New Haven] is large enough to be interesting, yet small enough to be friendly.” RICHARD LEVIN PRESIDENT, YALE UNIVERSITY
Shakespeare to continue long after festival’s end SHAKESPEARE FROM PAGE 1 criticism or “presentism,” which English professor Lawrence Manley, who teaches the spring survey course on Shakespeare, described as the “integration of the present world with Shakespeare’s world.” “These methods change, these fashions come and go,” Manley said. While his approach to teaching the introductory survey course “Comedies and Romances” includes detailed language analysis and attention to plot structure, Manley said he also requires that students analyze the texts’ significance within a historical context. Work on Shakespeare in relation to its historical setting has been “fashionable,” Manley added, for the last 20 to 30 years. He explained that the comedies are about “sex, love, marriage, family and state,” so he tries to frame each play in the context of those ideas, as well as within the context of the dramatic careers of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. David Kastan, an English professor who teaches the fall Shakespeare survey course “Histories and Tragedies,” said his primary concern while teaching Shakespeare is the “social, intellectual, literary environment in which [the plays] are encountered.” Kastan said he tries to model a way to read the text by showing what questions students can ask about Shakespeare and how to find what is interesting about the answers. For his own analysis of Shakespeare’s texts, Kastan said he starts with the belief that the plays are a part of history. “To the degree that Shakespeare is our contemporary,
we’ve dragged him into the present; it’s one-way traffic,” Kastan said, explaining that he finds importance in understanding the significance of the texts at the time they were penned. “I want to look at the pressure of the moment in which [Shakespeare] was writing, and how that moment enables and in some ways inhibits in what [the plays] do for that audience.” Next year, Manley will teach “Versions of the Tempest,” a course which he described as “a slice through one play longitudinally.” The class will focus on “The Tempest,” and then analyze the text in the context of science, economics and exploration at the time the play was written, later versions of the play, and subsequent operas, novels and films.
BEYOND LC
Shakespeare courses do not fall under just the English department. In 1976, renowned Shakespeare scholar Harold Bloom left Yale’s English department to become Yale’s first Humanities professor — a job through which he continues to teach seminars on Shakespeare each year. “I resigned from the once splendid English department, which I had joined in 1955, to protest the decline in aesthetic and cognitive standards in the profession,” he told the Browser, a website that profiles writers, in an interview last year. Bloom declined to comment for this article. There is, however, no official distinction between Bloom’s Shakespeare courses and the English Department courses, said Norma Thompson, Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Humanities department. While English Department Director of Undergraduate Stud-
ies John Rogers said he sees “no overwhelming methodological divide” between Bloom and the English department, he said Bloom focuses on the literary context in which the text was written rather than consider the social context of the time. “He always is attentive to history, but it’s the literary historical context: Shakespeare in the context of literary history, rather than Shakespeare in the context of stage history or social history,” Rogers said. Marina Keegan ’12, who has taken two Shakespeare courses as well as completed an Independent Study with Bloom and works as his research assistant, said there is “no context at all” in his classes with regard to political or social history. “He’s all about the aesthetic,” Keegan said. “He is against social contextualization.” Shakespeare has also recently found his way into the Film Studies Department. Brian Walsh, an assistant professor in English, teaches the cross-departmental course “Shakespeare on Film” and said he always starts by thinking about Shakespeare’s plays as sixteenth-century theater. “I try to bring things back to that regularly. If we’re in the middle of a discussion about a particular passage, I’ll say ‘let’s imagine how the theatrical aspect of that would work,’” Walsh said. While Kastan avoids use of any technology in class and Manley shows clips of film to analyze the language of the text, Walsh said he asks students to pay attention to the technicalities of a film such as its editing, camerawork and soundtrack. Ultimately, Walsh’s class analyzes how the filmmakers
JENNIFER CHEUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
English professor Lawrence Manley is just one of several faculty members teaching courses on the works of William Shakespeare. approach the challenge of adapting Shakespeare’s 400-year-old texts for the modern-day screen, he said. “We ask: what version of ‘Macbeth’ or ‘Hamlet’ does this film give us? What possibilities do the filmmakers open up and what possibilities do they close down?” Walsh said. Kastan said the sustained student interest in Shakespeare has been gratifying, and several students interviewed said they feel study of Shakespeare will impact
their professional lives. Kalyan Ray-Mazumder ’12 said that after taking three Shakespeare classes and performing in “Othello” for his senior project, he has “dream roles” in Shakespeare’s plays that he hopes one day to perform. Keegan said she will apply what she has learned about Shakespeare’s plots to her own playwriting after graduation. As a freshman, David Gore ’15 said he wants to write his senior thesis about Shakespeare and expects analysis skills
he learned in “Comedies and Romances” to help him in whichever profession he pursues. “I think the interest in Shakespeare has always been incredibly strong and it remains strong. [Shakespeare can be] taught in different ways at different times by different professors, but his popularity among students selecting their courses has always been steady,” Rogers said. Contact JULIA ZORTHIAN at julia.zorthian@yale.edu .
Survey shows mixed feelings on crime Some professors CRIME SURVEY FROM PAGE 1 ership over the weekend, Chief Higgins addressed both the positive and negative issues indicated by the poll. “Students’ main focus should be to concentrate on their studies so the fact that students’ concern for violent crime in and around campus persists is of interest to us as the campus police,” Higgins said. “Although crime is on a downward trend in recent months, there is a perception that because we are in an urban environment certain levels of crime continues to exist.” Higgins said “sporadic incidents that draw public attention” can contribute to the level of fear of crime, which can impact the perception of safety and security more than the actual crime itself. Concerns about crime, Levin added, may have also been amplified by the record homicide count in New Haven last year: 34, a 20-year high. “I think the recent tick in homicides is being taken very seriously … [but] the overall crime rate is still declining — it’s only the homicide rate that went up,” he said. Indeed, there has been a consistent drop in the number of crimes registered on campus and in the city at large. Reported crimes on Yale’s campus dropped 11 percent during the 2009-’10 school year, according to the University’s most recent filing with the U.S. Department of Education. Meanwhile, violent crime around New Haven
fell 11 percent last year compared to the previous year, and is down around 20 percent so far this year. Despite their concerns about crime, the majority of students surveyed said they had positive impressions of both the YPD’s and the NHPD’s operations. Forty-three percent of respondents said they had a “favorable” impression of the YPD and another 9 percent said they had a “very favorable” impression of the department.
The overall crime rate is still declining — it’s only the homicide rate that went up. RONNELL HIGGINS Chief, Yale Police Department
Higgins attributed these results to the “culture of comm u n i t y - o r i e n te d policing” within his department. Increased visibility, as well as the YPD’s use of social media such as Twitter, have contributed to this favorable impression, he said. “Officers are on the beat interacting with students, officers are on foot patrols, bike patrols and vehicle patrols, and we’re doing more traffic stops,” he said. “We’re doing whatever it takes to make our presence more visible in the area.” Thirty-seven percent of respondents said they felt the
NHPD’s relationship with students has improved since NHPD officers raided Elevate Lounge in October 2010, Tasering a student five times and arresting five students, all of whom were later cleared of all charges against them. A majority of students expressed support for the NHPD’s recent efforts to shift toward community policing strategies, which aim to build relationships between the police and the public. Fourteen percent of students surveyed said they “strongly support” the new moves — which include the return of walking beats citywide and an expansion of patrol personnel — while 37 percent said they “support” the strategies. While NHPD Chief Dean Esserman has attempted to reach out to the Yale community by meeting with several student groups, many students were unable to identify him as the current NHPD chief. Thirty-five percent of respondents correctly identified Esserman as the current NHPD chief, while 29 percent selected Higgins and the remaining 37 percent split their responses between former NHPD chiefs Frank Limon and James Lewis. Asked about these results, L ev i n ca u t i o n e d a ga i n s t “trust[ing] multiple choice tests,” adding that the results “probably meant that 80 percent had no idea” and just guessed in their response. “I actually don’t think it’s imperative that Yale students know the name of the New
Haven police chief,” he said. “I would hope they would know Ronnell Higgins is their own police chief, since they hear from him regularly and he is the person directly in charge of our campus area.” Higgins said it was “not surprising” that students would not be able to name the current NHPD chief because of turnover in recent years — the NHPD has had four different chiefs since 2007. But, he said, he expects that students will become more familiar with Esserman as he becomes more visible in the Yale community. Esserman currently teaches a Yale Law School clinic on “Innovations in Policing” with professor James Forman Jr. LAW ’92 and is a fellow in Jonathan Edwards college. Contact JAMES LU at james.q.lu@yale.edu .
SU RV EY METHO D OL OGY The News conducted a survey to gage student opinion about crime, the Yale Police Department, and the New Haven Police Department. On April 9, 2,650 randomly selected students were sent email invitations to take the online survey. 763 students who received the survey completed it.
skeptical of report
SUBCOMMITTEE FROM PAGE 1 surprise when a student checks their final grade.” The proposal suggests that professors publish at least the mean and standard deviation of exam scores after midterms and finals, and publish more detailed curve information on Classesv2 in a standardized manner. The report does not recommend that professors provide grade and curve breakdowns at the beginning of a course, but says they should release final exams, final grade distributions and raw score conversions at the end of the semester. William Segraves, associate dean of science education for Yale College, said he was “very interested to read” the YCC report and has shared it with several directors of undergraduate studies. “While the specific mechanisms that are appropriate will not be the same for every class, I think it’s very important for instructors to provide feedback to students,” Segraves said. “Most of the instructors whose practices are familiar to me are actually providing pretty extensive feedback.” Six science professors interviewed said they already share grading information of the type the report recommends with their students. Electrical engineering and applied physics professor Mark Reed said in a Saturday email that he has not noticed a lack of grading transparency in the sciences, adding that the report might reach misleading conclusions “in the absence of solid data.” Yale College Dean Mary Miller said she has not yet considered the report, but she said it could be “constructive” for professors to discuss grading policies within their departments. Ecology and evolutionary biology professor Stephen Stearns ’67 also said professors could benefit from “an open discussion of how and why we grade as we do, and what incentives that creates.” He added that he thinks professors should receive more information about grading practices across Yale College. Seven of 11 science and engineering students interviewed
supported the subcommittee’s suggestions, while the other four expressed ambivalence or skepticism toward the report’s recommendations. Temidayo Aderibigbe ’15 said he never knows how he performs in science classes relative to his peers, adding that implementing the YCC’s recommendations would “definitely be helpful.” But Mehdi Lazrak ’14 said grade transparency is a secondary concern to other issues in science classes, such as grade deflation and workload imbalances.
The main problem in the sciences and engineering is the big attrition rate in those majors coming from bigger problems in grading. MEHDI LAZRAK ’14 “The main problem in the sciences and engineering is the big attrition rate in those majors coming from bigger problems in grading,” he said. Professors and students interviewed also noted that grading transparency is not a problem confined to the sciences. Ilya Uts ’13 and Leah Campbell ’15 said issues of grade transparency may even be more severe in non-science departments, where assignments rarely receive numerical grades. Thummalapalli said the YCC focused on the sciences because that is the domain of the subcommittee that prepared the report. In the future, he said efforts should be made to address the issue in the humanities as well. The science and engineering subcommittee was created last October, and this is its first report. Contact CLINTON WANG at clinton.wang@yale.edu and ANTONIA WOODFORD at antonia.woodford@yale.edu .
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
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NEWS
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Reporter talks foreign affairs BY JIMMITTI TEYSIR STAFF REPORTER David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, spoke Monday afternoon about differences in the foreign policy agendas of the Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations. In front of roughly 50 attendees in Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Sanger discussed the “fearsome list of global problems” that President Obama faced upon taking office, including the threat posed by al-Qaeda and the toll of the war in Iraq. The United States has reduced both its cultural and military presence worldwide under Obama’s leadership, Sanger said, calling the trend a “downside” of foreign policy over the past few years. “We need an assessment about how President Obama has handled this remarkably challenging time,” Sanger said. “It has been, I think, one of the most consequential three or four years.” Sanger said the United States has lost “some degree of control over the world” since the 1950s and ’60s, when the nation exerted “softpower” influences such as constructing public buildings in other countries and generally exposing societies to American culture. Over the past few decades, Sanger said the United States may have been “pulling back too much, in a softpower way.” As U.S. initiatives have decreased, Sanger said China has exerted more soft-power influences and increased its presence on the global stage. He noted that when he travelled to a remote village in Indonesia two years ago, he observed a large public library that had been built there by the Chinese government. Sanger suggested the Obama administration has followed a twopronged “Obama doctrine” in making foreign policy decisions. When direct threats face the United States, Sanger said the Obama administration has taken unilateral actions and favored “get in and get out” mis-
Average number of people who die each day from the lack of organs available for transplant.
According to the website of Donate Life America, a person is added to the United States’ organ transplant waiting list every 10 minutes.
Hospital seeks donor record BY MARIANA LOPEZ-ROSAS STAFF REPORTER
BLAIR SEIDEMAN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, spoke Monday afternoon on the foreign policies of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. sions to lengthy operations that drain U.S. finances. But when issues do not directly concern the United States or are “for the global good,” Sanger argued that the nation has preferred to work in coalitions, citing last October’s joint U.S.-NATO military effort to remove Muammar Gaddafi from power in Libya last October. Sanger also said the Obama administration has confronted foreign policy decision in which the country’s values have conflicted with its interests. He cited U.S. negotiations in 2011 with the Bahrain government on human rights violations in the country, which Sanger said were somewhat compromised because Bahrain is the home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Three students and one prospective student interviewed said they enjoyed Sanger’s talk and were impressed by his knowledge of foreign affairs. Emefa Agawa ’15 said she had con-
cerns about the influence of the national media on American perceptions of foreign policy, but was reassured about the media’s role after hearing Sanger’s informed discussion. Phil Wilkinson, a prospective freshman visiting from New Mexico for Bulldogs Days, said he attended the talk to sample Yale’s international affairs scene. “I was really impressed with Mr. Sanger’s real-world knowledge,” Wilkinson said. “It tied up a lot of loose ends regarding the Obama administration and international policy.” David Sanger’s upcoming book, “Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power,” will be published this June. Contact JIMMITTI TEYSIR at jimmitti.teysir@yale.edu .
If Yale-New Haven Hospital officials have it their way, the hospital will break the Guinness World Record for organ donors registered in eight hours. The hospital announced yesterday that it is taking on the challenge of breaking the current one-day donor world record next Monday to raise awareness about organ donation during the Barack Obama administration’s National Donate Life month. This is the first time the hospital has challenged the community to participate in a Guinness World Record, said Yale-New Haven spokesman Mark Dantonio at a Monday press conference in the Park Street Auditorium. “Organ transplant is a life-saving procedure, but the supply of organs is too scarce,” said Sukru Emre, director of the Yale-New Haven Transplantation Center. “We hope this event will spotlight the critical need for more registered organ donors and be part of the Guinness World Records.” The organ donor registration event, “Don’t Wait! Donate,” will take place on Monday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and will be supervised by a Guinness World Record judge. The current world record is a held by Utah-based The Quest for the Gift of Life Foundation — more than 765 people registered to become organ donors during an event held by the organization at the Springville City Arts Park in Springville, Utah on August 28, 2010. To advocate for organ donation, YaleNew Haven Hospital will set up registration sites in the hospital’s Atrium lobby at 20 York St. and the Hunter Courtyard at the corner of York and Cedar Streets on Monday. To register, prospective donors must be at least 18 years old, Dantonio said. At Monday’s press conference, Trumbull, Conn., resident Alice Coletti, a 22-year-old nursing student, shared her experience of obtaining a liver trans-
plant. She said that at age 10 she was diagnosed with a rare disease, primary sclerosing cholangitis, which damaged her liver. As she finished her sophomore year of college, she said, she was suffering from liver failure. Her family members were not compatible as donors, she said, and she did not qualify for the priority donation list. Her “desperate parents,” she said, emailed students in her college, and an anonymous donor quickly appeared. She later met him, she added, to thank him and ask why he gave her part of his liver — to which he answered, “It was the right thing to do.” Emre said one of the challenges of soliciting organ donors is a misconception that a doctor may let his patients die more willingly if they are organ donors. He said that this is not at all the case, as it is not the doctors who have the ability to decide what happens to the dying patient, but rather the family working together with end-of-life specialists. “Currently we estimate that 50 percent of patients at Yale-New Haven Hospital do not consent to donate their organs,” Emre said. “Yet cases like Alice’s show that people are really altruistic. We need to raise awareness and break misconceptions.” New Haven resident David Clark said at the press conference that after his wife was involved in an accident that left her unconscious, he followed her wife’s requests to have her organs donated, though he said it was hard for him, and his wife’s mother raised religious objections. After this experience, he registered as a donor as well, he said. Dantonio said that while the hospital aims to break the record, it would still be pleased if only 500 people signed up. According to Donate Life America — a national non-profit alliance of organ and tissue donation associations — 113,115 patients nationwide are waiting to receive a transplant. Contact MARIANA LOPEZ-ROSAS at mariana.lopez-rosas@yale.edu .
Times critic discusses social role in arch. BY DANIELLE TRUBOW STAFF REPORTER In his lecture “Public Space, Social Responsibility and the Role of the Critic,” New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman ’80 spoke Monday about his role in drawing attention to architecture as a public good. Reflecting on the different types of architectural models and their uses, Kimmelman spoke to a crowd of about 100 on a variety of topics including differing opinions on the public and private uses of architecture in the United States and Europe, what constitutes public space in the Occupy Wall Street movement and how a critic can guide the conversation on urbanism and architecture. Kimmelman, who became a journalist in order to participate in public discourse and debate, said he aims to draw attention to questions of urban infrastructure and planning that give insight into how people live today. “I focus on cities and use a reporter’s basic skills to talk to people and to play an advocate’s role,” Kimmelman said of his position as a critic. “[I] stimulate conversation and nudge people towards a humane civil ideal.” The Occupy movement, for instance, has unintentionally raised the debate on what constitutes public versus private space and who governs its use, he said. The “delicious irony of the Occupy story,” Kimmelman added, is that Zuccotti Park — the site of Occupy Wall Street until its eviction on Nov. 15 — is a privately owned park that is open to the public 24 hours a day, while all publicly owned city parks maintain curfews.
Particularly at this time, I think many students and faculty and other people as well are a little tired of some of the emphasis on star architects. ROBERT A.M. STERN Dean, School of Architecture The Occupy camp came to operate as a miniature polis, with designated legal spaces, medical stations, media centers and a general store — just as a real city would, Kimmelman said. Occupy revealed how a city functions, how societies work, and how people define and live in public spaces, he added. “In the end, the question of architectural conversation returns to public good, where it should always begin and end,” Kimmelman said. In dangerous, poor areas, a notable piece of architecture — such as a sports stadium — can be a source of neighborhood pride and become a locus for the community, he said, adding that he feels a social responsibility to make a difference by calling attention to cases like the slums outside Bogotá and
VIVIENNE JIAO ZHANG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Architecture critic Michael Kimmelman ’80 spoke about journalism and architecture as ways to work for the public good. Cazuca, Colombia. Rather than focus on specific architects and the formal relationships of buildings, Kimmelman said he likes to question the social policy problems surrounding architecture. “Isn’t it a normal thing to inquire into the use of the building and see how buildings, like everything else, have lives and evolve in unexpected ways?” he asked. Robert A.M. Stern, the dean of the School of Architecture, said Kimmelman’s New York Times column contrasts with that written by Kimmelman’s predecessor, as the conversation has shifted from an emphasis on “star architects” to urban issues. “It’s great to have someone represent this point of view,” Stern said. “Particularly at this time, I think many students and faculty and other people as well are a little tired of some of the emphasis on star architects.” Alan Sage ’14 said he thinks urbanism is becoming mainstream and Kimmelman’s shift in the focus of his beat represents a trend in media focusing more on urban planning as a whole. People, he added, seem to be growing more conscientious of urban settings. In response to Sage’s comments, David Kemper ’13 said he questioned who Kimmelman’s target audience is and whether the writer aims to influence architects or how people view buildings. Kimmelman was appointed The Times’ architecture critic in late summer 2011, before which time he worked as a foreign correspondent for the paper. Contact DANIELLE TRUBOW at danielle.trubow@yale.edu .
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
“I see myself being like, 30, like, married, like, probably … But I want to be a young dad. I don’t want to be old and not be able to kick around the soccer ball, you know?” JUSTIN BEIBER POP STAR
Dental x-rays linked to tumors?
Team develops social robots
BY ROBERT PECK STAFF REPORTER A recent School of Medicine study on dental x-rays is drawing fierce debate among the medical community. The study, led by Yale School of Public Health Director of Medical Research Elizabeth Claus, found a correlation between non-cancerous brain tumors and exposure to dental x-rays. The study found that patients diagnosed with such tumors were likely to have been exposed to an above average amount of dental x-rays, said Margaret Wrensch, professor in residence of neurological surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. Since the study was published April 10 in the medical journal Cancer, it has drawn criticism from the American Academy of Maxillofacial and Oral Radiology for its methods of data collection and potential incon-
sistencies in its findings. “The study highlights the need for increasing awareness regarding the optimal use of dental x-rays, which unlike many risk factors, is modifiable,” Claus was quoted as saying in a press release from the University. Claus could not be reached for comment. The study relied on interviewing patients with meningioma, a non-cancerous form of brain tumor that can have debilitating effects on vision and motor function, Wrensch said. She added that meningioma patients were twice as likely as those without meningioma to report having undergone regular bitewing exams, a form of dental x-ray that examines one portion of the mouth in detail rather than the whole. Wrensch said the implications of the study don’t mean that people should abandon dental x-rays. She said the study suggests instead
that patients be cautions when considering x-rays, and try to limit their exposure to one x-ray every few years instead of a yearly exam. In addition, she said, the study shows the effects of older forms of x-ray exams, since the mean age of patients was 57, but the amount of radiation in modern x-rays is much less than it was in the past. However, the study has draw criticism from some experts. Alan Lurie, president of the American Academy of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, said the study was rife with “severe internal inconsistencies.” He said such inconsistencies resulted from two problems: the study’s reliance on participants’ memory and reported discrepancies between smaller and larger doses of radiation. Lurie emphasized the second internal inconsistency as the most important flaw in the study. Although the report found that
bitewing dental exams were associated with high incidents of tumor growth, he noted that full-mouth x-rays, which deliver a higher dosage of radiation than bitewing exams, were not strongly correlated with tumors. A full mouth exam is the equivalent of 20 bitewing exams, Lurie said, adding that this discrepancy is enough to debunk the study’s results. “To me, as a radiation biologist, this pretty much invalidates the entire study,” Lurie said. Wrensch said the study had no clear answer to the problem Lurie raised about the discrepancy between low and high-dose x-rays. She suggested that the higher incidence of correlation might be due to the fact that bitewing exams are more common than full mouth exams, but said she couldn’t give a “hard and true” answer to Lurie’s concern. With regard to memory, Lurie
said the study could be biased both by forgetfulness of its subjects over age 50 and interviewers’ implication that dental x-rays could play a role in tumor development. For example, the researchers might have primed the meningioma patients to expect that their condition could be associated with x-rays.
The study highlights the need for increasing awareness regarding the optimal use of dental X-rays. ELIZABETH CLAUS Director of Medical Research, Yale School of Public Health In response to this, Wrensch said the risk of relying on memory is
LEAKS
F R O M T H E
one that researchers are well aware of, and one that was discussed in the study itself. She added that the study compared reports of various kinds of x-rays using a control group along with the actual group of patients, and that the bitewing exam was the only one for which a much higher incidence of exams was reporter for the meningioma patients than in the control group. This suggests that, for the bitewing exam specifically, reports of memory were accurate. Modern bitewing x-rays deliver a relatively small dose of radiation: .04 MilliGrays. For comparison, the average person is exposed to 3.1 MilliGrays of cosmic background radiation simply by living in the United States for one year. Contact ROBERT PECK at robert.peck@yale.edu .
Within five years, Yaledesigned robots may be helping teach children. A Yale-led team of researchers from across the country received a $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation on April 3 to pursue the creation of “socially assistive robots” to help young children learn basic skills and in some cases overcome cognitive disabilities. Brian Scassellati, associate professor of computer science and director of the project, titled the Expedition, has worked with robots that aid autistic children for nearly 10 years. “I build robots as a way to understand people,” he said. “Using social psychology techniques we study how people respond to the robot as a stimulus.” Over five years, the Expedition aims to create a fleet of robots that can be used to teach young children through social interaction. The robots, which more resemble toys for young children than the typical moviestyle robot, will engage children in activities that promote behaviors ranging from increased
has collaborated with Scassellati on the robot project, said that in addition to allowing expanded testing of the robots, the funding allows the team to develop robots that sustain long-term engagement. She added that the Expedition would focus on developing new robots that are “accessible across a broader age range.” Scassellati said another challenge is keeping the robots interesting and relevant. The robots need to function on computational systems that are able to adapt to each individual child as well as adapt as children grow and learn. “Kids aren’t static,” he said. “The robot that tells a joke once is fine, but the robot that tells the same joke every day for a year … it doesn’t last a year.” One of the initial robot prototypes resembles a mediumsized toy dinosaur and costs more than $20,000 to build. Children interact with the robot through a series of games that test their social interaction skills. The children must, for example, encourage the frightened dinosaur to cross a river by speaking encouragingly, and the robot can respond to positive or negative tones. Children with autism often
speak without intonation, but both Paul and Scassellati said their studies have found that the children were more socially engaged when interacting with the robot, and with others afterward, than they would be normally. Paul said that, especially in autistic children, the most important behaviors she attempts to encourage through interaction with the robots are eye contact, tonality of voice while speaking and reciprocal interaction. She said children with autism often “don’t pick up the conversational ball when it’s their turn,” and so she tries to help them engage more in conversation. Though both Paul and Scassellati said their personal interest is in working with children with social and cognitive deficits, the Expedition focuses on broadly on engaging all children with the same underlying technology. Scassellati said the group aims to build robots “who act like a good coach or personal developer or trainer.”
Biking impairs female sexual health, study finds It’s been long established that the pressure of a bike seat on a man’s genitals can be bad for his sexual performance. A new study from the Yale School of Medicine has found that frequent female bike riders, those who biked at least 10 miles per week, experienced reduced sexual sensation. This effect was due to the pressure that biking places on the female genitalia, restricting blood flow. The researchers also found that bikes with lower handlebars had a larger effect, especially when the women cycled in a racing position.
Contact ANISHA SUTERWALA at anisha.suterwala@yale.edu .
CREATIVE COMMONS
A recent Yale study found correlation between dental x-rays and non-cancerous tumors, but medical experts contend that the study contains numerous errors.
Biological clocks ticking
Malaria’s burden preventable BY ROBERT PECK STAFF REPORTER Bernard Nahlen, Deputy U.S. Global Malaria Coordinator, said the future of the fight against malaria is looking bright due to international aid. Nahlen spoke to a group of around 40 Yale students and faculty members Monday night at the last lecture of the Global Health Seminar, a class at the School of Public Health. His talk dealt with the toll malaria takes on the world today, the problems with current treatment methods and the long-term impact of the disease. Nahlen said initiatives such as the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, an umbrella organization that coordinates global anti-malaria activities, have contributed substantially to reduced malaria mortality rates, and that continuing aid could produce a vaccine for the disease as early as 2014. Nahlen said that many malaria deaths could be avoided if more money were
spent on aid. For example, one child dies ever 45 second due to malaria, often because of a lack of infrastructure and facilities. “This should be unacceptable,” Nahlen said. “A lot of these kids end up dying in hospitals because they don’t have the resources.” Nahlen said most people do not die from their first exposure to malaria, but instead from the combined effects of multiple infections. At peak biting season, the summer months, a single child could receive five to six infective bites per night. Even if the disease is eradicated from the child’s system, it weakens the body’s ability to produce healthy red blood cells and fight off future infections, he said. In addition to causing numerous deaths, the disease can stunt economic growth, Nahlen said. He said that malaria costs most African nations an estimated 1.3 percentage points of annual GDP by decreasing productivity, adding up to one-fifth of their GDP over 15 years.
CREATIVE COMMONS
According to Deputy U.S. Global Malaria Coordinator Bernard Nahlen, international aid can hep prevent many malaria deaths.
Nahlen added that because African mosquitoes are more likely to target humans than mosquitoes in other geographic areas, where they might target livestock or wild animals instead, the disease spreads more easily in Africa. He said the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, jointly launched in 1998 by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme, has been making significant strides to combat the disease’s spread. The main effort of the organization is distributing bed nets treated with mild insecticides, which can kill disease-bearing mosquitoes before they have a chance to bite the sleeping victim, Nahlen said. Since Roll Back’s inception in 1998, it has prevented 736,000 malaria deaths, mostly through the increase in insecticide-treated bed nets, he estimated. “It does look very promising. It’s probably not good enough yet … but it’s a great first step,” Nahlen said. Bethy Mekommen SPH ’15, a student from Ethiopia, said Nahlen’s talk made her more likely to work with malaria aid when she returns home to work after graduation. “I was trying to get an impression of what global organizations were doing with malaria, and I think I got it,” she said. Global Health Leadership Institute Executive Director Mike Skonieczny, one of the faculty advisors for the Global Health Seminar, said Nahlen’s lecture was held this week to coincide with National Malaria Day, which is April 25. The Institute was founded in 2009 as an offshoot of the Jackson Institute of Global Affairs, and focuses on studying and promoting worldwide public health issues. Along with Skonieczny, professor of medicine and epidemiology Gerald Friedland also serves as a faculty advisor to the Global Health Seminar. Contact ROBERT PECK at robert.peck@yale.edu .
A Yale study has found that about 15 percent of autism cases are associated with mutations that occur in the sex cells of the parents. This is the first study that found a genetic basis for autism in families with only a single autistic child; previous studies have focused on autistic twins. The study also found that the mutations associated with autism were more likely to occur for older fathers, making this one of the first studies to liken male age with childrens’ health problems. Researchers were optimistic that this study could help lock down which genes are responsible for autism.
A Yale study by professor Fred Volkmar, published in the April issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, tried to quantify the effects of the new DSM-5 definition of autism, to go into effect in 2013. He looked at 933 individuals with an autism spectrum disorder, and calculated that 25 percent of those diagnosed with autism would not have received the diagnosis under the new definition. In addition, 75 percent of theose with Asperger’s syndrome would not qualify as autistic under the new definition. Volkmar said the effects of the new definition could significantly change eligibility for social services, which often depend on diagnoses.
Computer science professor Brian Scassellati is working on creating robots that can help children with cognitive disabilities learn basic skills. social interaction to physical fitness and nutrition. The robots do not replace teachers — rather, Scassellati said, the robot “supports therapy or efforts of parents and families.” He said that he has been conducting research on social robots for the past 10 years, but on a limited scale due to a lack of funding and the constraints of working in a lab. The influx of federal funding has allowed the research team, which consists of 17 members from Yale, Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Southern California, to greatly expand the scope of the project. “When we’ve been able to do this [research] in the past, we’ve done it under very controlled conditions — in the lab, in the clinic,” he said. “The goal is to be able to have [robots] we can hand over to a family.” Scassellati said the expanded Expedition will place robots into homes in New Haven and schools in Los Angeles and Boston. He said that moving into unstructured environments such as homes and schools will require defeating new engineering problems. Professor Rhea Paul, of the Yale Child Study Center, who
Genetic mutations linked to autism
New autism definitions likely to exclude many
YALE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND COMMUNICATIONS
BY ANISHA SUTERWALA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
LAB
BY JACQUELINE SAHLBERG STAFF REPORTER Pasquale Patrizio, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and director of the Yale Fertility Clinic, was a co-author of a paper published March 5 on the journal Fertility and Sterility’s website that discusses the misconceptions women hold about the health and fertility consequences of delaying motherhood. The article is based on the increasing number of women over the age of 43 who come to the Yale Fertility Clinic uninformed about the limits of assisted reproductive technologies (ART), such as in vitro fertilization. The News spoke with him about his observations and his proposals for addressing women’s overly-optimistic misconceptions. led you to study women’s QWhat understanding of the consequences faced in delaying motherhood?
A
There are more and more women coming to fertility clinics across the nation. I have seen a profound and alarming misconception about fertility in women coming to our practice. [Women] in their late 30s and early 40s sound very surprised when they learn about their poor prognosis for pregnancy. They say ‘I wish I knew this would be a problem. Nobody told me.’ The great majority of women believe that ART can overcome their aging related decrease in eggs.
is the source of this misQWhat conception?
A
Over the past three to four years, we have noticed an increased number of women coming to clinics who are extremely unprepared with the information
that their biological clock is ticking fast. They are under the wrong impression and think ‘maybe if I go to an IVF (in vitro fertilization) clinic, they can fix me.’ We cannot unwind the clock. This misconception is only compounded by the media. The women see celebrities having babies without problems in their late 40s. Celebrities do have pregnancies in their late 40s, but they are not always using their own eggs. That is not reported in the media. All of this creates an alarming misconception. are more women turning to QWhy in vitro fertilization clinics and assisted reproductive technologies?
A
There are many factors. One is that more and more women are pursuing education and career goals so they are postponing fertility until they reach the goals they set forth. A second is the discomfort with the notion of becoming parents before they have reached the right point in their lives. It is important to them to reach financial security and stability in their relationship.
Q
What are the health concerns associated with delaying pregnancy?
A
This is definitely an important parameter that has to be an object of information presented to women. If you are under 35, the chance that you can have a baby is about 50 percent. If you are 42, the chance is about 9 percent but if you are 45 the chance is about 1 percent. Not only is it more difficult to get pregnant, but the risk of having a miscarriage is over three times higher if you are over the age of 42 than when you are under 35. There are also problems with the pregnancy itself. When a woman gets
The king of the chickens I
pregnant after the age of 40, the risk of having a child with chromosomal abnormalities increases. By being pregnant over 42, you are going to increase the risk for gestational diabetes, have a higher risk for cesarean section, and you may have babies who are smaller for their gestational age.
have a confession to make: I’ve been writing regular science columns for the News for two years now and while I’ve written on many things that interest me, I have yet to write about my first scientific love: dinosaurs! I not-so-secretly look for opportunities to write about them, but have always opted not to do so for two reasons: I don’t want to sound like a five year old and I’ve never had the good fortune to be writing immediately after a major dino discovery. Thankfully, this situation can finally be rectified. As all dinosaur enthusiasts and little kids know, a giant feathered dinosaur, a relative of the T. Rex, was discovered recently. A study published earlier this month found that the dinosaur, the largest feathered animal ever, lived over one hundred million years ago in modern day China.
do you propose addressing QHow the misconceptions surrounding delayed motherhood?
A
First, I am hoping that this [study] can open the discussion of fertility between patients and OBGYNs and family practitioners. When they do their annual check-up on women, they should also bring up the issue that reproduction is tightly linked to age. The second route I want to use is social media to remind women about the links between reproductive age and the risks of pregnancy. I also want to add to this information the options women have. Today we have a fantastic opportunity to help by offering egg freezing. If you are 30 and are not ready to have a baby, you can use the technique of egg freezing. Then when you are 40 or 42, you can use the eggs that were frozen and the rate of fertility is the same as at your peak fertility age. [Egg freezing] allows women to have their own biological baby.
Q
Is the delayed motherhood trend unique to America?
A
No. My colleges in Canada have noticed the same thing. I have also heard from colleagues in Italy and Israel who have seen similar trends. In Israel, they view age-related infertility as a medical problem and the fertility treatments are all paid for [by the public health system].
PASQUALE PATRIZIO
In a paper published last month, Yale Fertility Clinic director Pasquale Patrizio discussed women’s misconceptions about delaying childbearing. you advocate for someQWould thing similar to the Israeli system in the United States?
A
Yes. What is important is to realize that it is not only the health professionals that get involved, it is the responsibility of the society at large. In the United States, there is still a stigma if you are a woman pursuing your dreams. People question why she is not having a baby. We need to abolish this stigma. There is plenty of opportunity now to decide when you want to have a baby. Women
are not being told or properly informed about these options. Let’s give these women the chance to be mothers later on by treating age related fertility as a medical condition. We should make sure that social services are available for providing these options to women. We should simplify the process and make it less expensive. Contact JACQUELINE SAHLBERG at jacqueline.sahlberg@yale.edu .
IMAGINE THE SCARIEST DINOSAUR OF ALL. NOW ADD FEATHERS. Despite going against the traditional depiction of dinosaurs as scaly lizard monsters (Tyrannosaurus Rex means tyrant lizard king), feathered dinosaurs are not a new discovery. Archeaopteryx, a weird looking flying feathered dinosaur that may be the “first” bird was discovered over a century ago. At first, many scientists dismissed the idea that birds
were descendants of dinosaurs. However, there are now over thirty known feathe re d d i n o saurs, most of which were SAHELI to SADANAND determined have feathers based on fossil Science i m p re ss i o n s, and the evolubabble tionary link is becoming clearer. But in spite of this — and even as a fan of all things dinosaur — I admit it’s been difficult to envision the existence of large feathered dinosaurs. And actual paleontologists tend to agree; before this discovery, fossil evidence of feathers had only been found on smaller dinosaurs or baby dinosaurs. This recent paper changes all that. Yutyrannus huali was smaller, more flamboyant, and covered in feathers but definitely a cousin of the famous T. Rex. The feathers were long and bristly, but would not have enabled Yutyrannus to fly (a flying Tyrannosaur is pretty mind-boggling to think about). The study speculated that the feathers might have helped keep Yutyrannus warm or may have been used for display, functions that feathers serve for many modern day birds. Excitingly, the research team is now attempting to figure out what colors the feathers were to see if the latter hypothesis might make sense. So aside from being awesome, how does this feathery Tyrannosaur fit into the big picture? It is yet another piece of evidence in an already
strong argument for the link between birds and dinosaurs, but Yutyrannus may also teach us about the evolution of feathers. Primitive dinosaurs had fuzzier feathers, like those of modern baby birds. It seems that as dinosaurs evolved, so did feathers. In learning more about feathered dinosaurs, we will also learn more about our feathered contemporaries. Finally, there is a longstanding debate over whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or cold-blooded. The latter view fits nicely into the lizard-like picture of dinosaurs, but there is an increasing amount of evidence to suggest that dinosaurs were in fact warm-blooded, like us. Yutyrannus seems to have lived in a cold climate and if its feathers were insulation, it could be an example of a warm-blooded dinosaur. The authors of the study suggested that other Tyrannosaur family members that lived in warmer climates would have been scaly and not “cold-adapted” like Yutyrannus. It will be interesting to see if there is significant variability between the physiology of Yutyrannus and that of its closest relatives. So now that I’ve finally revealed both my pro-dinosaur agenda and my inner child on paper, I will go watch Jurassic Park (again) and try not to laugh as I imagine the T. Rex prowling around replete with feathers. Saheli Sadanand is a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Immunobiology. Contact her at saheli.sadanand@yale.edu .
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 7
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
“I see myself being like, 30, like, married, like, probably … But I want to be a young dad. I don’t want to be old and not be able to kick around the soccer ball, you know?” JUSTIN BEIBER POP STAR
Dental x-rays linked to tumors?
Team develops social robots
BY ROBERT PECK STAFF REPORTER A recent School of Medicine study on dental x-rays is drawing fierce debate among the medical community. The study, led by Yale School of Public Health Director of Medical Research Elizabeth Claus, found a correlation between non-cancerous brain tumors and exposure to dental x-rays. The study found that patients diagnosed with such tumors were likely to have been exposed to an above average amount of dental x-rays, said Margaret Wrensch, professor in residence of neurological surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. Since the study was published April 10 in the medical journal Cancer, it has drawn criticism from the American Academy of Maxillofacial and Oral Radiology for its methods of data collection and potential incon-
sistencies in its findings. “The study highlights the need for increasing awareness regarding the optimal use of dental x-rays, which unlike many risk factors, is modifiable,” Claus was quoted as saying in a press release from the University. Claus could not be reached for comment. The study relied on interviewing patients with meningioma, a non-cancerous form of brain tumor that can have debilitating effects on vision and motor function, Wrensch said. She added that meningioma patients were twice as likely as those without meningioma to report having undergone regular bitewing exams, a form of dental x-ray that examines one portion of the mouth in detail rather than the whole. Wrensch said the implications of the study don’t mean that people should abandon dental x-rays. She said the study suggests instead
that patients be cautions when considering x-rays, and try to limit their exposure to one x-ray every few years instead of a yearly exam. In addition, she said, the study shows the effects of older forms of x-ray exams, since the mean age of patients was 57, but the amount of radiation in modern x-rays is much less than it was in the past. However, the study has draw criticism from some experts. Alan Lurie, president of the American Academy of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, said the study was rife with “severe internal inconsistencies.” He said such inconsistencies resulted from two problems: the study’s reliance on participants’ memory and reported discrepancies between smaller and larger doses of radiation. Lurie emphasized the second internal inconsistency as the most important flaw in the study. Although the report found that
bitewing dental exams were associated with high incidents of tumor growth, he noted that full-mouth x-rays, which deliver a higher dosage of radiation than bitewing exams, were not strongly correlated with tumors. A full mouth exam is the equivalent of 20 bitewing exams, Lurie said, adding that this discrepancy is enough to debunk the study’s results. “To me, as a radiation biologist, this pretty much invalidates the entire study,” Lurie said. Wrensch said the study had no clear answer to the problem Lurie raised about the discrepancy between low and high-dose x-rays. She suggested that the higher incidence of correlation might be due to the fact that bitewing exams are more common than full mouth exams, but said she couldn’t give a “hard and true” answer to Lurie’s concern. With regard to memory, Lurie
said the study could be biased both by forgetfulness of its subjects over age 50 and interviewers’ implication that dental x-rays could play a role in tumor development. For example, the researchers might have primed the meningioma patients to expect that their condition could be associated with x-rays.
The study highlights the need for increasing awareness regarding the optimal use of dental X-rays. ELIZABETH CLAUS Director of Medical Research, Yale School of Public Health In response to this, Wrensch said the risk of relying on memory is
LEAKS
F R O M T H E
one that researchers are well aware of, and one that was discussed in the study itself. She added that the study compared reports of various kinds of x-rays using a control group along with the actual group of patients, and that the bitewing exam was the only one for which a much higher incidence of exams was reporter for the meningioma patients than in the control group. This suggests that, for the bitewing exam specifically, reports of memory were accurate. Modern bitewing x-rays deliver a relatively small dose of radiation: .04 MilliGrays. For comparison, the average person is exposed to 3.1 MilliGrays of cosmic background radiation simply by living in the United States for one year. Contact ROBERT PECK at robert.peck@yale.edu .
Within five years, Yaledesigned robots may be helping teach children. A Yale-led team of researchers from across the country received a $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation on April 3 to pursue the creation of “socially assistive robots” to help young children learn basic skills and in some cases overcome cognitive disabilities. Brian Scassellati, associate professor of computer science and director of the project, titled the Expedition, has worked with robots that aid autistic children for nearly 10 years. “I build robots as a way to understand people,” he said. “Using social psychology techniques we study how people respond to the robot as a stimulus.” Over five years, the Expedition aims to create a fleet of robots that can be used to teach young children through social interaction. The robots, which more resemble toys for young children than the typical moviestyle robot, will engage children in activities that promote behaviors ranging from increased
has collaborated with Scassellati on the robot project, said that in addition to allowing expanded testing of the robots, the funding allows the team to develop robots that sustain long-term engagement. She added that the Expedition would focus on developing new robots that are “accessible across a broader age range.” Scassellati said another challenge is keeping the robots interesting and relevant. The robots need to function on computational systems that are able to adapt to each individual child as well as adapt as children grow and learn. “Kids aren’t static,” he said. “The robot that tells a joke once is fine, but the robot that tells the same joke every day for a year … it doesn’t last a year.” One of the initial robot prototypes resembles a mediumsized toy dinosaur and costs more than $20,000 to build. Children interact with the robot through a series of games that test their social interaction skills. The children must, for example, encourage the frightened dinosaur to cross a river by speaking encouragingly, and the robot can respond to positive or negative tones. Children with autism often
speak without intonation, but both Paul and Scassellati said their studies have found that the children were more socially engaged when interacting with the robot, and with others afterward, than they would be normally. Paul said that, especially in autistic children, the most important behaviors she attempts to encourage through interaction with the robots are eye contact, tonality of voice while speaking and reciprocal interaction. She said children with autism often “don’t pick up the conversational ball when it’s their turn,” and so she tries to help them engage more in conversation. Though both Paul and Scassellati said their personal interest is in working with children with social and cognitive deficits, the Expedition focuses on broadly on engaging all children with the same underlying technology. Scassellati said the group aims to build robots “who act like a good coach or personal developer or trainer.”
Biking impairs female sexual health, study finds It’s been long established that the pressure of a bike seat on a man’s genitals can be bad for his sexual performance. A new study from the Yale School of Medicine has found that frequent female bike riders, those who biked at least 10 miles per week, experienced reduced sexual sensation. This effect was due to the pressure that biking places on the female genitalia, restricting blood flow. The researchers also found that bikes with lower handlebars had a larger effect, especially when the women cycled in a racing position.
Contact ANISHA SUTERWALA at anisha.suterwala@yale.edu .
CREATIVE COMMONS
A recent Yale study found correlation between dental x-rays and non-cancerous tumors, but medical experts contend that the study contains numerous errors.
Biological clocks ticking
Malaria’s burden preventable BY ROBERT PECK STAFF REPORTER Bernard Nahlen, Deputy U.S. Global Malaria Coordinator, said the future of the fight against malaria is looking bright due to international aid. Nahlen spoke to a group of around 40 Yale students and faculty members Monday night at the last lecture of the Global Health Seminar, a class at the School of Public Health. His talk dealt with the toll malaria takes on the world today, the problems with current treatment methods and the long-term impact of the disease. Nahlen said initiatives such as the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, an umbrella organization that coordinates global anti-malaria activities, have contributed substantially to reduced malaria mortality rates, and that continuing aid could produce a vaccine for the disease as early as 2014. Nahlen said that many malaria deaths could be avoided if more money were
spent on aid. For example, one child dies ever 45 second due to malaria, often because of a lack of infrastructure and facilities. “This should be unacceptable,” Nahlen said. “A lot of these kids end up dying in hospitals because they don’t have the resources.” Nahlen said most people do not die from their first exposure to malaria, but instead from the combined effects of multiple infections. At peak biting season, the summer months, a single child could receive five to six infective bites per night. Even if the disease is eradicated from the child’s system, it weakens the body’s ability to produce healthy red blood cells and fight off future infections, he said. In addition to causing numerous deaths, the disease can stunt economic growth, Nahlen said. He said that malaria costs most African nations an estimated 1.3 percentage points of annual GDP by decreasing productivity, adding up to one-fifth of their GDP over 15 years.
CREATIVE COMMONS
According to Deputy U.S. Global Malaria Coordinator Bernard Nahlen, international aid can hep prevent many malaria deaths.
Nahlen added that because African mosquitoes are more likely to target humans than mosquitoes in other geographic areas, where they might target livestock or wild animals instead, the disease spreads more easily in Africa. He said the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, jointly launched in 1998 by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme, has been making significant strides to combat the disease’s spread. The main effort of the organization is distributing bed nets treated with mild insecticides, which can kill disease-bearing mosquitoes before they have a chance to bite the sleeping victim, Nahlen said. Since Roll Back’s inception in 1998, it has prevented 736,000 malaria deaths, mostly through the increase in insecticide-treated bed nets, he estimated. “It does look very promising. It’s probably not good enough yet … but it’s a great first step,” Nahlen said. Bethy Mekommen SPH ’15, a student from Ethiopia, said Nahlen’s talk made her more likely to work with malaria aid when she returns home to work after graduation. “I was trying to get an impression of what global organizations were doing with malaria, and I think I got it,” she said. Global Health Leadership Institute Executive Director Mike Skonieczny, one of the faculty advisors for the Global Health Seminar, said Nahlen’s lecture was held this week to coincide with National Malaria Day, which is April 25. The Institute was founded in 2009 as an offshoot of the Jackson Institute of Global Affairs, and focuses on studying and promoting worldwide public health issues. Along with Skonieczny, professor of medicine and epidemiology Gerald Friedland also serves as a faculty advisor to the Global Health Seminar. Contact ROBERT PECK at robert.peck@yale.edu .
A Yale study has found that about 15 percent of autism cases are associated with mutations that occur in the sex cells of the parents. This is the first study that found a genetic basis for autism in families with only a single autistic child; previous studies have focused on autistic twins. The study also found that the mutations associated with autism were more likely to occur for older fathers, making this one of the first studies to liken male age with childrens’ health problems. Researchers were optimistic that this study could help lock down which genes are responsible for autism.
A Yale study by professor Fred Volkmar, published in the April issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, tried to quantify the effects of the new DSM-5 definition of autism, to go into effect in 2013. He looked at 933 individuals with an autism spectrum disorder, and calculated that 25 percent of those diagnosed with autism would not have received the diagnosis under the new definition. In addition, 75 percent of theose with Asperger’s syndrome would not qualify as autistic under the new definition. Volkmar said the effects of the new definition could significantly change eligibility for social services, which often depend on diagnoses.
Computer science professor Brian Scassellati is working on creating robots that can help children with cognitive disabilities learn basic skills. social interaction to physical fitness and nutrition. The robots do not replace teachers — rather, Scassellati said, the robot “supports therapy or efforts of parents and families.” He said that he has been conducting research on social robots for the past 10 years, but on a limited scale due to a lack of funding and the constraints of working in a lab. The influx of federal funding has allowed the research team, which consists of 17 members from Yale, Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Southern California, to greatly expand the scope of the project. “When we’ve been able to do this [research] in the past, we’ve done it under very controlled conditions — in the lab, in the clinic,” he said. “The goal is to be able to have [robots] we can hand over to a family.” Scassellati said the expanded Expedition will place robots into homes in New Haven and schools in Los Angeles and Boston. He said that moving into unstructured environments such as homes and schools will require defeating new engineering problems. Professor Rhea Paul, of the Yale Child Study Center, who
Genetic mutations linked to autism
New autism definitions likely to exclude many
YALE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND COMMUNICATIONS
BY ANISHA SUTERWALA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
LAB
BY JACQUELINE SAHLBERG STAFF REPORTER Pasquale Patrizio, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and director of the Yale Fertility Clinic, was a co-author of a paper published March 5 on the journal Fertility and Sterility’s website that discusses the misconceptions women hold about the health and fertility consequences of delaying motherhood. The article is based on the increasing number of women over the age of 43 who come to the Yale Fertility Clinic uninformed about the limits of assisted reproductive technologies (ART), such as in vitro fertilization. The News spoke with him about his observations and his proposals for addressing women’s overly-optimistic misconceptions. led you to study women’s QWhat understanding of the consequences faced in delaying motherhood?
A
There are more and more women coming to fertility clinics across the nation. I have seen a profound and alarming misconception about fertility in women coming to our practice. [Women] in their late 30s and early 40s sound very surprised when they learn about their poor prognosis for pregnancy. They say ‘I wish I knew this would be a problem. Nobody told me.’ The great majority of women believe that ART can overcome their aging related decrease in eggs.
is the source of this misQWhat conception?
A
Over the past three to four years, we have noticed an increased number of women coming to clinics who are extremely unprepared with the information
that their biological clock is ticking fast. They are under the wrong impression and think ‘maybe if I go to an IVF (in vitro fertilization) clinic, they can fix me.’ We cannot unwind the clock. This misconception is only compounded by the media. The women see celebrities having babies without problems in their late 40s. Celebrities do have pregnancies in their late 40s, but they are not always using their own eggs. That is not reported in the media. All of this creates an alarming misconception. are more women turning to QWhy in vitro fertilization clinics and assisted reproductive technologies?
A
There are many factors. One is that more and more women are pursuing education and career goals so they are postponing fertility until they reach the goals they set forth. A second is the discomfort with the notion of becoming parents before they have reached the right point in their lives. It is important to them to reach financial security and stability in their relationship.
Q
What are the health concerns associated with delaying pregnancy?
A
This is definitely an important parameter that has to be an object of information presented to women. If you are under 35, the chance that you can have a baby is about 50 percent. If you are 42, the chance is about 9 percent but if you are 45 the chance is about 1 percent. Not only is it more difficult to get pregnant, but the risk of having a miscarriage is over three times higher if you are over the age of 42 than when you are under 35. There are also problems with the pregnancy itself. When a woman gets
The king of the chickens I
pregnant after the age of 40, the risk of having a child with chromosomal abnormalities increases. By being pregnant over 42, you are going to increase the risk for gestational diabetes, have a higher risk for cesarean section, and you may have babies who are smaller for their gestational age.
have a confession to make: I’ve been writing regular science columns for the News for two years now and while I’ve written on many things that interest me, I have yet to write about my first scientific love: dinosaurs! I not-so-secretly look for opportunities to write about them, but have always opted not to do so for two reasons: I don’t want to sound like a five year old and I’ve never had the good fortune to be writing immediately after a major dino discovery. Thankfully, this situation can finally be rectified. As all dinosaur enthusiasts and little kids know, a giant feathered dinosaur, a relative of the T. Rex, was discovered recently. A study published earlier this month found that the dinosaur, the largest feathered animal ever, lived over one hundred million years ago in modern day China.
do you propose addressing QHow the misconceptions surrounding delayed motherhood?
A
First, I am hoping that this [study] can open the discussion of fertility between patients and OBGYNs and family practitioners. When they do their annual check-up on women, they should also bring up the issue that reproduction is tightly linked to age. The second route I want to use is social media to remind women about the links between reproductive age and the risks of pregnancy. I also want to add to this information the options women have. Today we have a fantastic opportunity to help by offering egg freezing. If you are 30 and are not ready to have a baby, you can use the technique of egg freezing. Then when you are 40 or 42, you can use the eggs that were frozen and the rate of fertility is the same as at your peak fertility age. [Egg freezing] allows women to have their own biological baby.
Q
Is the delayed motherhood trend unique to America?
A
No. My colleges in Canada have noticed the same thing. I have also heard from colleagues in Italy and Israel who have seen similar trends. In Israel, they view age-related infertility as a medical problem and the fertility treatments are all paid for [by the public health system].
PASQUALE PATRIZIO
In a paper published last month, Yale Fertility Clinic director Pasquale Patrizio discussed women’s misconceptions about delaying childbearing. you advocate for someQWould thing similar to the Israeli system in the United States?
A
Yes. What is important is to realize that it is not only the health professionals that get involved, it is the responsibility of the society at large. In the United States, there is still a stigma if you are a woman pursuing your dreams. People question why she is not having a baby. We need to abolish this stigma. There is plenty of opportunity now to decide when you want to have a baby. Women
are not being told or properly informed about these options. Let’s give these women the chance to be mothers later on by treating age related fertility as a medical condition. We should make sure that social services are available for providing these options to women. We should simplify the process and make it less expensive. Contact JACQUELINE SAHLBERG at jacqueline.sahlberg@yale.edu .
IMAGINE THE SCARIEST DINOSAUR OF ALL. NOW ADD FEATHERS. Despite going against the traditional depiction of dinosaurs as scaly lizard monsters (Tyrannosaurus Rex means tyrant lizard king), feathered dinosaurs are not a new discovery. Archeaopteryx, a weird looking flying feathered dinosaur that may be the “first” bird was discovered over a century ago. At first, many scientists dismissed the idea that birds
were descendants of dinosaurs. However, there are now over thirty known feathe re d d i n o saurs, most of which were SAHELI to SADANAND determined have feathers based on fossil Science i m p re ss i o n s, and the evolubabble tionary link is becoming clearer. But in spite of this — and even as a fan of all things dinosaur — I admit it’s been difficult to envision the existence of large feathered dinosaurs. And actual paleontologists tend to agree; before this discovery, fossil evidence of feathers had only been found on smaller dinosaurs or baby dinosaurs. This recent paper changes all that. Yutyrannus huali was smaller, more flamboyant, and covered in feathers but definitely a cousin of the famous T. Rex. The feathers were long and bristly, but would not have enabled Yutyrannus to fly (a flying Tyrannosaur is pretty mind-boggling to think about). The study speculated that the feathers might have helped keep Yutyrannus warm or may have been used for display, functions that feathers serve for many modern day birds. Excitingly, the research team is now attempting to figure out what colors the feathers were to see if the latter hypothesis might make sense. So aside from being awesome, how does this feathery Tyrannosaur fit into the big picture? It is yet another piece of evidence in an already
strong argument for the link between birds and dinosaurs, but Yutyrannus may also teach us about the evolution of feathers. Primitive dinosaurs had fuzzier feathers, like those of modern baby birds. It seems that as dinosaurs evolved, so did feathers. In learning more about feathered dinosaurs, we will also learn more about our feathered contemporaries. Finally, there is a longstanding debate over whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or cold-blooded. The latter view fits nicely into the lizard-like picture of dinosaurs, but there is an increasing amount of evidence to suggest that dinosaurs were in fact warm-blooded, like us. Yutyrannus seems to have lived in a cold climate and if its feathers were insulation, it could be an example of a warm-blooded dinosaur. The authors of the study suggested that other Tyrannosaur family members that lived in warmer climates would have been scaly and not “cold-adapted” like Yutyrannus. It will be interesting to see if there is significant variability between the physiology of Yutyrannus and that of its closest relatives. So now that I’ve finally revealed both my pro-dinosaur agenda and my inner child on paper, I will go watch Jurassic Park (again) and try not to laugh as I imagine the T. Rex prowling around replete with feathers. Saheli Sadanand is a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Immunobiology. Contact her at saheli.sadanand@yale.edu .
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
FROM THE FRONT
“Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.” MALVOLIO “TWELFTH NIGHT” BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
As developer, Yale leaves mark on New Haven DEVELOPMENT FROM PAGE 1 benefit if they purchase a home in the Elm City, and the New Haven Promise, which awards in-state college tuition scholarships to New Haven public high school graduates. The most visible changes, however, have occurred because of Yale’s efforts to spur commercial retail development around campus, particularly along areas of Broadway, Chapel, York and Howe streets. Through Yale University Properties (UP) — the office that manages Yale’s portfolio of residential and commercial properties — Yale has amassed a network of over 100 retail tenants and 500 residential holdings, including nearly the entire Broadway shopping district as well as parts of Chapel Street. Paying more than $4 million in property taxes annually, Yale is one of the largest commercial property holders in New Haven. And by pursuing its strategy of attracting “high-quality retail,” UP, founded in 1996 as part of the University’s Office of New Haven and State Affairs, has helped “fuel a vibrant downtown community,” said Douglas Hausladen ’04, a former chair of the Downtown Community Management Team now representing downtown as Ward 7 alderman. After 14 years in business, UP has achieved a “critical mass” of commercial development on Broadway and Chapel that can be leveraged to attract prominent national and local tenants, according to city officials and University administrators. But the road to this downtown “renaissance” has not always been smooth. In a city that has historically been wary of its expansive Ivy neighbor, many see UP’s upscale retail developments as catering exclusively to those within the Yale sphere. And because the University controls vast swaths of property — approximately 270,000 square feet of office and retail space in total — and has significant financial resources to leverage, UP can afford to hold its properties
TIMELINE YALE’S FOOTPRINT ON NEW HAVEN RETAIL 1996 Yale University Properties is established as a part of Yale’s Office of New Haven and State Affairs, a department created by President Levin to institutionalize the University’s commitment to New Haven. 1997 Levin creates a new officer position within the Yale administration: vice president for New Haven and state affairs. “Retail guru” Bruce Alexander, who had spent years developing shopping areas in Baltimore, was brought in to fill the position. 2001 At the request of the city, Yale acquires the majority of its properties on Chapel Street from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The land had previously been redeveloped as a single bloc before it was foreclosed by the lender. The lending bank itself then failed and was closed by the FDIC. OCTOBER 2010 After 26 years of serving cheap comfort food on Chapel Street, Copper Kitchen closes its doors. Then-owner Bill Kalogeridis was unable to agree on a lease with UP a week after a maintenance issue within the restaurant led to a carbon monoxide leak in the building. SEPTEMBER 2011 Following several years of conversation, lease negotiation and renovation, Apple unveiled a sleek steel and glass storefront in a lot formerly occupied by the Yale Bookstore. The California-based company began selling new version of the iPhone just weeks later, drawing huge crowds that queued up out the door of the store. NOVEMBER 2011 Yale acquired the property at 9-11 Dixwell Ave. , the former home of the popular Broadway Liquor store. UP forced Broadway Liquor by refusing to renew their lease on the space.
vacant until it finds its ideal tenant, at times frustrating neighbors. As UP expands its retail presence to new areas such as the southern end of Dixwell Avenue and Science Park, its investments will continue to shape neighborhoods, building “the ‘new’ New Haven” that Adler, now a commercial retail developer himself in Washington, D.C., said has emerged around the University in the past 15 years.
CREATING AN ‘AUTHENTIC’ DOWNTOWN BRAND
As a top-tier university competing with with only a handful of other colleges for prestige worldwide, Yale has a vested interest in raising the quality of the New Haven areas surrounding its wrought iron gates. For Adler and four other alumni who graduated between the late 1970s and the early ’90s, Yale’s location in New Haven was the University’s greatest liability during their time as students. But all five said that University President Richard Levin’s and UP’s efforts to spur commercial development around campus have turned New Haven into a selling point for the Yale brand. “There is no doubt in my mind that the parts of New Haven immediately surrounding Yale were by far the biggest negative about the University from a marketing perspective during the time I was applying. The sentiment was, ‘Oh, you don’t want to be in New Haven,’” Adler said. “But today, New Haven is a plus, not a minus — I absolutely believe that.” In order to create such sustained commercial growth, a landlord must create “the right tenant mix” — an optimal balance of large, small, local and national retailers that can draw a revenue-generating customer base, said real estate lawyer Edward West ’79, president of the Yale Club of Washington, D.C. West and Adler, who have both continued to visit Yale as alumni, said the tenant mix UP has struck with its leases is now a “tremendous asset” for student shoppers and Yale’s marketability as a university. The tenant mix of a commercial area can take years to improve and fine-tune, West and Adler said, and Yale spokesman Michael Morand said UP’s tenant mix has created a retail brand for the University and New Haven that feels “authentic” because of its “eclectic” array of restaurants, retail stores, theaters and museums. He added that it is unusual for a midsized city like New Haven to host retailers such as J. Crew and Apple, chains that are most often found in shopping malls. These and other streetfront retailers coupled with free-entry museums including the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art, Morand said, give the downtown area a “lively and walkable” character. “The brand experience is that this isn’t just ‘any place’ — we aren’t a carbon copy of somewhere else, and we are original in that way,” Morand said. “When I’ve wandered around other downtowns, you don’t find the same thickness of retail and residential offerings in cities of this size.” UP Director Abigail Rider cited Alex & Ani on York Street, a Rhode Island-based business that sells eco-friendly jewelry, and Oaxaca Kitchen on College Street, New Haven chef Prasad Chirnomula’s contemporary Mexican restaurant, as new downtown offerings that distinguish New Haven as a shopping destination. She added that by creating a “unique and attractive” retail mix, UP has been able to lure customers from outside the New Haven area who used to shop elsewhere. But many of the customers visiting the city’s retail outlets downtown now come to shop at the district’s international brands, such as Apple or J. Crew, or the area’s upscale specialty stores like Thom Brown and Gant.
PRESSURES ON LOCAL BUSINESSES
In the process of bringing in high-paying tenants, UP has increased the business pressures facing downtown New Haven’s small, independent businesses. Enson’s Inc., a men’s clothing retailer on Chapel Street, has operated in New Haven since 1924. The company’s president,
Jim Civitello, has experienced firsthand the challenges brought on by the past 15 years of commercial development orchestrated by UP. “There is still room for small independents like myself, but it is getting harder and harder to do business,” Civitello said. “The national chains come in and they pay what I consider to be exorbitant rents, therefore they bump up the rents for all of us. It makes it difficult for the little momand-pop shops.” Civitello said that in the past 10 years, he estimates rental rates in the downtown area have doubled. In commercial retail environments undergoing rapid gentrification, the rising costs of doing business can, for some, become prohibitively expensive, said Kevin Wiersman, a realtor with New Haven-based commercial developer Colonial Properties. Wiersman said most landlords look to attract the highestincome tenants possible, and the tenant profile of an area as a whole can change when highpowered brands like Apple enter into the mix. But aside from rising rents, some local store owners said the greatest business pressure comes not from the surrounding retail environment but from the power UP enjoys as a landlord. Due to the size of its holdings and institutional backing, UP is able to exert total control over the commercial properties it owns, Hausladen said, adding that UP is known to carefully vet the tenants it selects for its storefronts. Commercial developers and store owners in New Haven said that UP’s lease terms are “extremely landlord-friendly” and often include operational guidelines for businesses that maintain Yale’s high aesthetic standards for its retail holdings. For example, UP tenants are prohibited from using Scotch tape on storefront windows, and Gourmet Heaven is required to stock flowers on the pedestrian sidewalk on Broadway. Rider said these policies make for a more aesthetically pleasing and shopper-friendly retail environment. But taken together, Yale’s strict lease agreements, exclusive tenant selection and vast property holdings give the University near-unilateral ability to determine the character of downtown retail. “It’s no secret that Yale owns a lot of property and controls a lot of decisions downtown,” said Ward 3 Alderwoman Jacqueline James-Evans. “Yale’s dominant influence in shaping downtown retail is definitely a concern, especially because there is no counteracting effort to voice the opinions of locals.” In 2004, Rita Catel and her husband, the owners of Old Bins Bottle Shop on Whitney Avenue, tried to expand their business by buying a lease at UP’s property at 1092 Chapel St., where Chapel Wine, the tenant at the time, was closing up shop. Despite having obtained a permit to open a liquor store at the location, UP denied them the lease because it did not want a liquor store as a tenant. It would not be the only liquor venture to be blocked by Yale. In November 2011, UP declined to renew the lease of Broadway Liquor, forcing it to move from its 9-11 Dixwell Ave. location, which UP had purchased that month. While within its legal rights as a landlord, UP’s decision infensfied Catel’s fear for the future of her business. “In our [neighborhood], the majority of the properties are owned by Yale. If my building ever got bought by them, where will I go? I’ll have to close my door and I’ll be out of my business,” Catel said. “We will always live with that fear.”
YALE AS A LANDLORD
Other retailers have complained of UP’s willingness to let properties sit vacant until it finds an ideal tenant, arguing that empty storefronts can hurt businesses currently in the area by decreasing foot traffic. One of the most drawn-out conflicts between Yale and its tenants began in 2002 with the former owners of the restaurant Bespoke — since replaced by Gilt — on 266 College St. Both UP and the owners, Suzette Franco-Camacho and her husband, Arturo, claimed ownership over a sliver of land behind the restaurant. After a seven-year legal battle,
EMILIE FOYER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Atticus Bookstore Cafe occupies one of the many properties along Chapel Street owned by Yale. UP issued the Franco-Camachos an ultimatum: If they did not concede, UP would not renew the lease for the couple’s other New Haven restaurant, Roomba on Chapel Street. Facing rising legal costs, Suzette FrancoCamacho said she and her husband decided to sell off their New Haven restaurants and leave the city. “There was no sense of ‘reason’ that came out of any conversation or action regarding this dispute. We were given just 30 days to vacate after approximately seven and a half years, never once with a late rent,” she said. “UP resorted to [punishing] us in the one way they could, by ending Roomba — that hole or void is echoed in our lives as it was a first restaurant, the one we will always love the most.” But despite this and other disputes, other tenants maintain that UP is a good landlord, often going beyond what is required in its efforts to create a strong commercial environment. “UP is always the first landlord in New Haven to do things like shovel snowfall or remove tripping hazards — they make an effort to create a place-making environment,” Hausladen said. Many tenants also praise UP for the customer traffic it has been able to attract through the retail mix on Broadway and Chapel. Managers at the clothing store Denali on Elm Street, Enson’s on Chapel Street and Tyco Printing on Elm Street said UP has achieved a tenant portfolio that brings paying customers to the neighborhood, which is very positive for their businesses. Claire Criscuolo, who opened Claire’s Corner Copia on Chapel Street in September 1975, said that despite the oft-cited cases of disagreement between Yale and some of its tenants, Yale and UP have built a “wonderful partnership with the city.” She added that in every case of eviction she has heard of, the tenant involved was either late on their rent or violated some portion of their lease. Previous landlords, Criscuolo added, have not shown the same trustworthiness that she said UP affords its tenants. Before UP acquired Claire’s, Criscuolo said she discovered that her previous landlord was tapping into her water bill and using it to provide water for the entire building — a “tremendous breach of faith” in the landlord-tenant relationship. “Conversely, UP came to me over three years ago and found out we were overpaying a portion of our lease and returned to us a very large amount of money which we would have never found,” she said. “Honestly, integrity means everything to me, and with Yale we’ve been very grateful.”
PRICING AVERAGE RESIDENTS OUT?
In a city where, according to the 2011 U.S. Census, one in four residents lives below the national poverty line, UP has been able to leverage the financial strength afforded by the world’s second-largest university endowment and commercial demand by Yale students to create an upscale retail district. And although these offerings and the jobs they bring are “definitely an asset for the city,” Hausladen said, the changes it took to bring them to New Haven have not
always been well-received. Eleven out of 16 New Haven residents interviewed said there is a widespread perception that the retail along Broadway and Chapel Street primarily serve the Yale community, not New Haven residents as a whole. “Yale definitely is not here to cater to the average resident, by no stretch of the imagination,” Alderwoman James-Evans said. “The average New Havener cannot and will not shop with the downtown’s high prices, and some people say it was planned that way.” Morand contested the concern that the Broadway and Chapel retail districts are too pricey for local residents. He said these areas offer “more mixing and accessibility” than most downtown urban environments, which, coupled with publicly accessible Yale theaters and museums, make for a shopping area that offers something for everyone. Others, including Hausladen and Lance Freeman, an associate professor at Columbia University who specializes in gentrification issues, said that urban environments always contain pockets of wealth disparities, and, over many years of development, it is not surprising that such contrast can become controversial. Still, Morand said UP’s investments are in fact creating the environment that locals want. For instance, he said, while some residents may criticize Broadway as having too many national brands and too few local retailers, big-name brands are necessary to attract the sustained foot traffic that can then support the further growth of small businesses. Regardless of the resentment that Yale’s retail property developments have caused among some in the local community, most city officials, store owners and commercial developers interviewed said UP’s efforts have improved town-gown relations from a long-term perspective. “I think the University having control of what businesses go in around its campus is smart,” said Criscuolo. “Yale has been working to make New Haven a better place that’s healthier for students and residents.”
‘PIONEERING RETAIL’
Beyond attracting new shoppers, Rider said that a thriving downtown is also critical for the University to draw prospective students. The well-being of the University and that of New Haven are “inextricably linked,” she said. In order to attract world-class applicants, Yale needs a “world-class city.” Five prospective students interviewed who are currently
deciding whether to matriculate at Yale echoed Rider’s sentiment, saying that the quality of a university’s surrounding environment is an important factor in the decision of where to go to college. For Apsara Iyer, a high school senior choosing between Yale and Harvard, that decision is playing out right now. She said the commercial vibrancy and safety of downtown areas are weighed by both parents and students during college admissions, and she believes a “holistic approach to deciding where to attend” is best. “The atmosphere of not just what’s on campus but also nearby will factor into the decision,” said Iyer, who is currently in New Haven for Bulldog Days. Iyer is not alone in considering the character of Yale’s surrounding neighborhood as part of her college decision. According to Mike Gordon, director and lead consultant at IvySelect College Counseling, a private education consultancy group, deciding where to attend college is “to some extent, similar to buying a house.” The environment around campus, he said, can be a “compelling piece of the puzzle.” Going forward in its mission to “grow the tax base of New Haven,” Rider said UP is seeking to expand the blend of tenants it has been able to achieve over the years through a strategy of “pioneering retail.” This method, she said, entails introducing retail development to the street level of buildings such as parking garages and institutional facilities. She said one example of pioneering retail is the commercial space in Science Park, where Winstanley Enterprises, a New England developer, and UP are partnering in the redevelopment of several long-abandoned buildings, including the old Winchester Repeating Arms factory. “This sort of pioneering is not an easy task, as in many cases the areas we are trying to populate with retail have not traditionally been retail or viewed as potential retail areas,” Rider said. “In the not-too-distant future that will be thriving, fully occupied retail.” While downtown New Haven’s renaissance is well underway, Adler said improvement in its reputation continues to lag behind reality. “I do still hear people say things like, ‘New Haven is pretty rough,’” Adler said. And as UP continues to expand its footprint in New Haven, it is unclear where the University will decide its interests as a developer end. Contact BENJAMIN PRAWDZIK at benjamin.prawdzik@yale.edu .
BY THE NUMBERS YALE UNIVERSITY PROPERTIES 270,000 100+ 500 $4.3M
square feet of University Propertiesowned office and retail space retail tenants
residential properties
Yale’s property tax bill for 2010
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 9
BULLETIN BOARD
TODAY’S FORECAST
TOMORROW
Mostly sunny, with a high near 76. North wind between 8 and 15 mph.
THURSDAY
High of 62, low of 42.
High of 67, low of 47.
WATSON BY JIM HORWITZ
ON CAMPUS WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18 12:00 PM “Building Sustainable Food Systems: The Role of Cities and Institutions.” Mark Bomford, director of the Yale Sustainable Food Project, will discuss how Yale could make a significant contribution to the sustainability of the nation’s food system and will review the strengths and shortcomings of global and local food systems. Kroon Hall (195 Prospect St.). 5:15 PM Brass presents: “From Russia with Love: Music from Eastern Europe.” This concert will feature Slavic music performed by harpist Colleen Potter Thorburn, as well as Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (121 Wall St.). 6:00 PM “Patterned Poems: Hand-Decorate a Shakespeare Sonnet.” Hand-decorate a Shakespearean sonnet with the Yale Student Guide Art Club. Open to students only. Yale Center for British Art (1080 Chapel St.).
THAT MONKEY TUNE BY MICHAEL KANDALAFT
THURSDAY, APRIL 19 7:30 PM “Tribute to Rumi: An Evening of Sufi Whirling & Meditation.” The evening will feature a performance of the “Whirling” meditation by Sh. Bapak Waleed, in honor of the mystical poet Rumi, who lived 800 years ago in Central Asia. The program will include poetry readings, a video presentation, and a selection of spiritual, meditative songs and chants accompanied by traditional music of Central Asia. Saint Thomas More Center (268 Park St.).
ZERO LIKE ME BY REUXBEN BARRIENTES
FRIDAY, APRIL 20 4:00 PM “Bloom on Shakespeare.” Professor Harold Bloom, author of “Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human,” will read passages from plays crucial to his view of the Bard’s achievement. Part of Shakespeare at Yale. Battell Chapel (400 College St.). 8:30 PM Yale Unity Spring Show. Traditional Korean drumming will be performed. Pierson College (231 Park St.), dining hall.
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Monday’s Puzzle Solved
SUDOKU MEDIUM
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4/17/12
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
SPORTS
Chara leads Boston to 2–1 series lead
Defending Stanley Cup champions Boston beat Washington 4–3 in an ugly game Monday night to pull within two wins of a spot in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals. Defenseman Zdeno Chara broke the 3–3 tie in Boston’s favor with aslap shot that beat rookie Capitals goalie Braden Holtby.
W. crew denied Eisenberg Cup BY MARIA GUARDADO STAFF REPORTER For the third consecutive week, No. 17 women’s crew tested itself against two nationally ranked teams. On Saturday, the Bulldogs took on No. 5 Princeton and No. 7 Souther California on Lake Carnegie in Princeton, N.J.
W. CREW Though the Elis fell in four out of five races, head coach Will Porter said he saw overall improvement in the team this weekend. “I thought we took a step forward as a group,” Porter said. “Our schedule has to be one of the toughest in the country, which means winning races is difficult, but we do seem to be gaining speed at the right time.” USC’s No. 1 ranked varsity eight won the marquee event by cruising past both Princeton and Yale. The Trojans gained an advantage off the start and did not relinquish it for the remainder of the race. USC crossed the line at 6:24.6, while Princeton took second with a time of 6:27.0. The Bulldogs clocked in at 6:30.2 for a third place finish. By placing ahead of the Elis, Princeton captured the Eisenberg Cup for the third consecutive year. “There were times when we were matching their speed or even closing in on [USC and Princeton],” Porter said. “Ultimately, they ended up pushing out at the end.” The Trojans also secured a victory in the second varsity eight
race, though by a significantly smaller margin. USC narrowly beat Princeton by 0.3 seconds to clinch first-place with a time of 6:40.3. The Elis clocked in at 6:44.7 to take third. Captain Kathleen O’Keefe ’12, who rowed with the second varsity eight, said that the race was interrupted due to a breakage in the Princeton boat and had to be restarted after a long wait on the water. “I think we handled the challenge well, and put together a solid piece,” O’Keefe said. In the third varsity eight race, the Tigers bested the Elis by more than 19 seconds to earn the win. Yale’s strongest showings from the weekend came from its fours. The Bulldogs’ second varsity four gave the team its lone win by crushing Princeton by nearly 20 seconds. The Elis crossed the line at 7:38.2, while the Tigers finished in 7:59.5. The Bulldogs’ varsity four also performed well and secured a second-place finish. Princeton captured the race by crossing the line at 7:26.5. Yale took second by clocking in at 7:28.8, finishing two seconds ahead of USC. “I thought our [varsity] four raced a very composed race,” Porter said. “The second varsity was very gutsy. [They] rowed very hard.” The Bulldogs return to action when they race archival Radcliffe for the Case Cup this Saturday at home. Contact MARIA GUARDADO at maria.guardado@yale.edu .
CAROL HSIN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Princeton claimed the Eisenberg Cup last weekend when the Bulldogs took on the Tigers in Princeton.
Lwt. crew dominates doubleheader
Elis take first at Princeton
LINDSEY UNIAT/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The lightweight crew team raced twice in one day last Saturday, which captain David Walker ’12 is good preparation for the Eastern Sprints in May. BY LINDSEY UNIAT STAFF REPORTER The lightweight crew team faced a challenging doubleheader on Saturday, racing against Columbia and Penn in the morning and against Cornell in the afternoon. But the Bulldogs reigned victorious, winning the F 8+, JV 8+ and the V 8+ in each regatta.
LWT. CREW “Beating three [Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges] opponents in one weekend is an achievement, and we faced some fast ones in both the morning and the afternoon,” head coach Andy Card said. The Bulldogs first raced at Overpeck County State Park, N.J., winning the Dodge Cup, before traveling to Princeton, N.J., to race Cornell in a neutral location. Team captain David Walker ’12 said that the conditions were great at both locations, with a slight tailwind for each race. In the first race of the day, Yale’s F 8+ finished the 2000m course at 6:15.9 — 6.8 seconds
ahead of Penn and 16.1 seconds ahead of Columbia. The JV 8+ followed suit, finishing 6.5 seconds ahead of second-place Columbia with a time of 6:09.6. The Bulldogs retained the Dodge Cup for the ninth straight year in the V 8+ race, when they managed to pull ahead of the field and counter attacks by the Lions to beat Columbia by 2.1 seconds. Yale finished in 5:57.3, compared to Columbia in 5:59.4 and Penn in 6:12.2. However, the one disappointment of the weekend came in the 3V 8+ category. In the last race of the morning, a two-boat contest between Yale and Penn, the Quakers won 6:41.1 compared to the Elis’ 6:45.6. Later in the day in Princeton, Yale’s 3V 8+ fell once again to Cornell 6:28.9 to 6:00.8. “We wanted to win all eight races, of course, and we had the speed to win seven, but the 3V had a crab (a bad stroke where the oar blade slices into the water at an angle and gets caught under the surface) in the last 500 that diminished our lead over Penn and we were unable to recover,” Card said. He added that it was impor-
tant for the team to win the two varsity events of the day as that event is the first priority, but then the team wants to win subvarsity events as well. Yale’s F 8+ and JV 8+ won against Cornell by 2.3 and 3.2 seconds with times of 5:57.0 and 5:59.3 respectively.
We’ve been playing our best lacrosse of the season the last couple of games, and we don’t want that to slip away. MATT GIBSON ’12 Attackman, men’s lacrosse In the last race of the day, the Bulldogs’ V 8+ got an early lead on Cornell and pulled away to win the varsity race 5:48.1 to 5:53.5. Walker said that racing twice in one weekend is good practice for the Eastern Sprints and the Intercollegiate Rowing Association National Championship, in
which heat races take place in the morning and finals in the afternoon. Fellow oarsman Tom Swartz ’13 agreed, adding that the team put together two complete races and showed improvement between the morning and afternoon competitions. No. 2 Yale V 8+ is currently undefeated in the spring season, as are the JV 8+ and the F 8+. “We have had a great season thus far,” Walker said. “The ultimate goal of the season, however, is to win a championship. We are continuing to improve and gain speed as we push for that goal.” Next weekend, Yale will travel to Dartmouth to race against the Big Green for the Durand Cup. On April 28, the Bulldogs will race at home for the first and only time this season against Harvard and Princeton for the highly contested Goldthwait Cup. The Eastern Sprints will take place from May 11-13 in Worcester, Mass., and the IRA National Championship will follow from May 31 to June 2 in Camden, N.J. Contact LINDSEY UNIAT at lindsey.uniat@yale.edu .
MARIA ZEPEDA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Sam Bernstein ’14 finished at +7 in the Princeton Invitational. M. GOLF FROM PAGE B1 said they came to the conclusion that they had lost by one. The team was upset and even told Georgetown congratulations, he added. But at the awards ceremony, the Bulldogs were in for a pleasant surprise. When team members learned they had one-upped Georgetown and defended their tournament title, Davenport said the atmosphere completely changed. The tournament win was well timed. Since all Ivy League teams compete in this tournament, it is considered a precursor to Ivies. The two times this academic year that all the Ivy League teams have been in one competition, Yale has won, Sam Bernstein ’14 said, which is a good sign heading into Ivy League Championships. Hatten agreed that the win is a good sign, but cautioned that this is only one tournament, and the team has to maintain its focus.
“This increases our confidence and tells us we’re going to be very competitive at Ivies but still need to … do our best if we want to win,” Hatten said. Individually, Hatten was outstanding. His overall score for the three rounds of play was 209, and his last round of the weekend, in which he scored 67, was the best of his Yale career. He ended the weekend four under par and placed second in the individual standings. Davenport scored second best for the Bulldogs. He came back from a disappointing first round, in which he scored 77, to post two rounds of 71 and 70. His total for the weekend was 218, which placed him in a tie for 14th in the individual rankings. The team’s next challenge is the Century Intercollegiate tournament, which will be held on April 21-22 at Century Country Club in Purchase, N.Y. Contact MONICA DISARE at monica.disare@yale.edu .
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 11
SPORTS
PEOPLE IN THE NEWS WESLEY KORIR After taking the lead on Heartbreak Hill at the Boston Marathon Monday, Korir was forced to give up the top spot when leg cramps his soon after. But Korir retook the lead once more in the final mile to win with a time of two hours, 12 minutes, 40 seconds.
Sailing battles tricky conditions on the Charles SAILING FROM PAGE B1 Championships consisted of 18 fleet races each in the A and B divisions, where one boat from each school raced against boats in that division from each of the other schools. The eight schools with the lowest score, tabulated by adding the places of all its races in both divisions, will continue on to the National Semifinal Championships at the Naval Academy on May 12 to 13. Skipper Joe Morris ’12 and crews Isabel Elliman ’12 and Heather May ’13 finished eighth in the A division, 31 points behind Harvard in first, while coed sailing team captain and skipper Cam Cullman ’13 and crew Genoa Warner ’12 finished third in B division, four points behind Boston University in the lead. “I think I didn’t start as well as I normally do and … took too much risk,” Morris said. “But we’ve done well in these conditions before. I think this just wasn’t our weekend.” Morris said that although a conservative approach might have provided greater consistency, the shifty sailing conditions demanded different strategies than the conditions that the team faces at other venues. At Nationals, he said the strategies he used this weekend may be more effective. Cullman said he was happy that the team fulfilled its primary goal of qualifying for the
semifinals, adding that the team was “always within striking distance of first place.” He said that the team came out knowing what it needed to work on. The top eight teams at the New England Dinghy Championships qualified for the National Semifinal Championships. Roger Williams University finished second, with Dartmouth, Boston College, Boston University, Tufts and Brown rounding out the top eight. The Bulldogs also tackled the Charles’ unpredictable winds at the Oberg Trophy. Crew Sarah Smith ’15, who finished seventh in the B division with skipper Robert Struckett ’12, said the Charles tested the pair’s ability to adapt their boat handling technique with the shifting winds, which ranged between two and ten knots. Skipper Max Nickbarg ’14, who finished eighth in the A division with crew Anna Han ’14, said the result was disappointing, though it has taught him the importance of making “quick, decisive decisions” when handling the rapidly changing winds. “I was sailing against some of my friends and rivals whom I am generally right next to in races, but this weekend I couldn’t consistently stay in the top of the fleet with them,” Nickbarg added. Falling from its first place finish last week, the women’s team finished tenth at the Emily Wick Trophy — its only finish out of
the top five in any regatta this season. Healy said that when the teams meet for their afternoon practice today, they will evaluate how to improve the women’s team’s performance for the Women’s New England Championship next week, which will serve as the qualifiers for the women’s Nationals.
But we’ve done well in these conditions before. I think this just wasn’t our weekend. JOSEPH MORRIS ’12 Skipper, coed sailing Next weekend, the coed team will compete at the Admiral’s Cup at Kings Point, the Priddy Trophy at the University of New Hampshire and the Thompson Trophy at the Coast Guard Academy. Once exams finish, Healy said the team will intensify its training, with conditioning in the morning in addition to regular afternoon practices on the water and meetings to discuss strategy. In its 19 regattas so far this season, the Bulldogs have a finish percentile of 76.5. Contact CLINTON WANG at clinton.wang@yale.edu .
ZEENAT MANSOOR/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The women’s sailing team will compete in the New England Championship next weekend, a qualifier for Nationals.
Hwt. crew takes Blackwell Cup HWT CREW FROM PAGE B1
HARRY SIMPERINGHAM/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Heavyweight crew will race against Cornell and Princeton next weekend in Ithaca, N.Y., for the Carnegie Cup.
day, and Yale’s newest team members managed to pull ahead of their Columbia and Penn counterparts about halfway through the 2000m course. The freshmen won with a time of 6:03.3 — beating second-place Columbia by 4.3 seconds — to be undefeated thus far in their Bulldog careers. The JV 8+ race was a contest between Yale and Penn, as Columbia’s roster is too small to race a second varsity boat this year. The Bulldogs took an early lead and managed to hold off attacks by the Penn crew throughout the course to win the race by 3.1 seconds with a time of 6:01.3. However, in the all-important V 8+ race, which determines the winner of the Blackwell Cup, Yale fell behind Penn and Columbia early on due to a slow start. “[At the start,] Columbia jumped us out of the blocks by a good half boat length, and clearly putting ourselves at that kind of disadvantage early on in the race is not what we want to be doing,” varsity coxswain Oliver Fletcher ’14 said. But the Blue and White fought for the race and by the 1000m mark had the bow of its boat ahead of both its competitors. Yale ultimately crossed the finish line at 5:48.2 — 6.4 seconds ahead of next-best Columbia. Gladstone said he was pleased with the race and that the team will work on improving its starts before next weekend’s race and the Eastern Sprints in mid-May.
Dethlefs noted that Yale is one of only a few varsity rowing programs in the country to be undefeated at all levels at this point in the season. “The varsity eight is starting to mesh together well, and we’ve been able to take a forward step every week … so we are excited to push this momentum onwards,” he said. Varsity oarsman Zach Johnson ’14 said that he expects next weekend’s race against Cornell and Princeton — the last race of the season before the championship part of the season — to be the toughest thus far. The winner of the upcoming race in Ithaca, N.Y., will take home the Carnegie Cup. It will serve as the last opportunity for Yale to face its regional rivals before the Eastern Sprints, the Yale-Harvard Boat Race and the Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) National Championships. “Having these wins under our belt does give us a measure of confidence going into Sprints, however, I don’t like to make predictions about results,” Johnson said. “You can only impact the speed of your own boat, the time we spend thinking about what the other crews are doing and how fast they are going is wasted. It could have been spent thinking about what our own crew needs to do to get faster.” Last year the team finished 10th in the IRA National Championships. Contact LINDSEY UNIAT at lindsey.uniat@yale.edu .
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BARBARA REINALDA SOFTBALL COACH HONORED Reinalda made a trip to California last Thursday to be inducted into the Cerritos College hall of fame. She was on the softball team there for its first two years of existance. After college, Reinalda pitched for the Raybestos Brakettes of Stratford, Conn for 19 years.
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MEN’S LACROSSE DEFEATS STONYBROOK 9-8 IN OT The men’s lacrosse team (7-4, 3-2 Ivy) clinched its fifth straight win last night with a 9-8 overtime victory against Stony Brook University (4-8) in New York. The Elis will return home for their final two games of the regular season against Bryant and Harvard.
“The varsity eight is starting to mesh together well, and we’ve been able to take a forward step every week.” TOM DETHLEFS ’12 CAPTAIN, HWT. CREW YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
M. golf wins by one stroke
Bulldogs sweep third straight
CAROL HSIN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Heavyweight crew has yet to lose a regatta this season. BY LINDSEY UNIAT STAFF REPORTER The heavyweight crew team managed to come back from a slow start in the varsity race on Saturday to beat Columbia and Penn and retain the annuallycontested Blackwell Cup for the third straight year.
HEAVYWEIGHT CREW MARIA ZEPEDA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The men’s golf team took its third-straight first-place finish in the Princeton Invitational last weekend. Georgetown took second place. BY MONICA DISARE STAFF REPORTER The men’s golf team triumphed in a nerve-racking one stroke victory last weekend at the Princeton Invitational.
M. GOLF After two days of competition, April 14-15, the Bulldogs
posted a combined total of 858, which topped Georgetown’s 859 by the slimmest of margins. This is the third year in a row Yale has claimed the Princeton Invitational title. Team captain Jeff Hatten ’12, had a career low final round of 67. His finish was good for second place in the individual competition, only one stroke away from the individual winner, Dartmouth’s Peter William-
son. “Our goal was to win, and with Ivy League Championships approaching it’s really nice to have this confidence boost,” Hatten said. Yale was tied with Georgetown heading into the final day of competition. Team members knew they could not afford to make any mistakes or mental errors if they were going to win
the tournament, Hatten said. Under these circumstances, he added that “You play every shot like it is the deciding one.” After finishing Sunday with a score of 283, or one under par, the Elis attempted to decipher their place in the standings. As they started to do the math, William Davenport ’15 SEE M. GOLF PAGE B2
The Bulldogs — undefeated this season in the F 8+, JV 8+ and V8+ categories — continued their Ivy League winning streak in their third regatta of the season. Yale defeated Brown and Dartmouth at home earlier in the spring, and this weekend’s victory at Overpeck County State Park in New Jersey was the first of two consecutive away regattas. “We’re improving and getting faster and more cohesive as a team,” head coach Stephen Gladstone said, adding that he was happy with the team’s performance in Satur-
day’s race. Team captain Tom Dethlefs ’12 said that the water and weather were calm, relative to the rougher and winder conditions experienced this season at home on the Housatonic River.
We’re improving and getting faster and more cohesive as a team. STEPHEN GLADSTONE Head coach, heavyweight crew Dethlefs added that racing on an unfamiliar course — like Overpeck County State Park this weekend — helps oarsmen improve their focus and gives the coxswains a chance to adapt to a new environment. As usual, the F 8+ boats were the first to race on SaturSEE HWT CREW PAGE B2
Bulldogs sail on to semifinals BY CLINTON WANG STAFF REPORTER Though the Bulldogs faced disappointing results in several fleet race regattas this weekend, the No. 1 Yale coed sailing team qualified for the National Semifinal Championships with a third-place finish at the New England Dinghy Championships at Harvard.
SAILING The coed team competed in a total of three regattas last weekend. It captured third place out of the 18 teams participating in the qualifiers hosted by the Crimson on the Charles River. Harvard took first place with a score of 231. Also on the Charles, the Elis placed seventh out of 18 teams at the Oberg Trophy, won by Boston College and hosted by Northeastern University. The Elis placed fifth out of nine teams at the Southern Series Short Beach Invitational on home waters in Branford, won by Brown University. The No. 3 women’s team faced a disappointing tenth place fin-
ish out of 17 teams at the Emily Wick Trophy hosted by the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., lagging at 312 points to Boston College’s 190.
The [New England Dinghy Championships] was a battle the whole way through. We were just a little off pace. WILLIAM HEALY Assistant coach, sailing “The [New England Dinghy Championships] was a battle the whole way through,” assistant sailing coach William Healy said. “We were just a little off the pace. Since it was getting close to finals, people were probably not as focused as they should have been, but we were still in it to win.” The New England Dinghy SEE SAILING PAGE B2
ZEENAT MANSOOR/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Next weekend, the coed sailing team will compete for the Admiral’s Cup, the Priddy Trophy and the Thompson Trophy.
STAT OF THE DAY 1
THE MARGIN BY WHICH THE MEN’S GOLF TEAM WON THE PRINCETON INVITATIONAL THIS WEEKEND. Though Yale finished with a final total of 858 to Georgetown’s 859, the team thought it had lost by a single stroke until the trophy presentation and even congratulated the Hoyas for winning.