Yale Daily News — Week of April 22, 2022

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

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · VOL. CXLIV, NO. 21 · yaledailynews.com

Survey reveals exclusion in math dept.

DKE is back

BY LUCY HODGMAN STAFF REPORTER

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

A soon-to-be-released report shows that many in the math department are dissatisfied with departmental diversity.

BY ANIKA SETH, TIGERLILY HOPSON AND ISAAC YU STAFF REPORTERS Diversity concerns within Yale’s math department run deep, according to a departmental survey conducted last spring. According to the soon-to-be-released report, just 18 percent of the almost 200 respondents — which included both students and employees — indi-

cated at least some level of satisfaction with departmental diversity.

Members of marginalized communities were more than twice as likely to report feeling ostracized and five times more likely to have considered leaving the department altogether due to such concerns.

About a year ago, the Department of Mathematics’ climate committee conducted an anonymized survey of staff, faculty,

postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, undergraduate majors and undergraduate non-majors.

According to a draft version of the report that the News obtained from an anonymous source, onethird, or 33 percent, of the 196 respondents — 137 of which were undergraduates — reported having at least one experience within SEE MATH PAGE 4

Delta Kappa Epsilon is staging a return to public life on campus.

In 2018, widespread complaints of sexual misconduct were the “last straw” for the landlords of the Lake Place house that DKE had occupied since the early 1990s. The group lost their lease and for years their name disappeared from campus life — although the DKE national website has never classified the Yale chapter as an inactive one.

Now, under the leadership of president Ryan McCann ’24, DKE is returning to the public eye. A post to a new, public Instagram account on April 11 featured pictures from a DKE crawfish boil, “the first annual event being introduced by President Ryan McCann and his new executive board.” The post also announced the return of Tang — an annual drinking competition and party — on May 1. Although the group has held parties or private events under a different moniker in the last years, the Instagram post marks the group’s first public reclamation of the DKE name since its most recent scandal.

McCann, on behalf of Yale’s DKE chapter, declined multiple requests for comment on this article.

Although the University’s Title IX office released a review in response to allegations of a sexually hostile climate within DKE in 2019,

the group has never been formally censured by the University.

“Although unregistered organizations operate independently of Yale College, all Yale College students are subject to the Undergraduate Regulations, which are enforced by the Executive Committee and the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct,” Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun told the News.

Chun told the News that while Yale College has no regulatory power over Greek life organizations, he advises that all Yale College students who participate in Greek life take advantage of the “training and resources” which are available to the entire student body.

DKE’s Yale chapter — which boasts alumni like former United States presidents George H.W. Bush ’48 and George W. Bush ’68 and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh ’87 LAW ’90 — has long been a lightning rod for controversy surrounding fraternity culture on Yale’s campus.

In 2006, the News reported on emotional and physical abuse pledges experienced at the hands of senior DKE members during the group’s “inspiration week.” DKE’s pledging requirements made national headlines in 2010, when a video went viral of first year pledges on Old Campus chanting misogynistic and threatenSEE DKE PAGE 4

Russian studies reassessed

BY WILLIAM PORAYOUW STAFF REPORTER As universities scramble to suspend their relationships with Russia and its schools in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, Yale has been closely reassessing its ties with Russian academic and institutional partners.

Faculty and administrators walk a precarious line trying to maintain interpersonal relationships with Russian students and scholars while severing all ties to the government. According to Vice President for Global Strategy Pericles Lewis, the University’s institutional relationships with Russian schools will remain on hold as the war in Ukraine continues — with these part-

nerships eligible for re-evaluation in about a year’s time. One program within the University that is affected is the Fox International Fellowship, a graduate student exchange program at Yale that partners with 21 academic institutions across the world. The Fellowship recently announced a suspension of its partnership with Moscow State University — which was its first partner after its establishment in 1988. The program was set up to “provide a peaceful international exchange” in the midst of Cold War tensions.

“It’s upsetting, you know,” said Emily Erikson, who serves as director of the Fox International Fellowship. “[But] I think it’s the right thing to do.”

Erikson clarified that the Fellowship does not blame scholars for the decisions of the Russian government, but noted that given the context of “complicated” Russian relations with the United States, there was no guarantee that students could travel safely back and forth between the two nations. The decision to suspend ties with Moscow State University — which operates with state funding — was made on the level of the fellowship, not the senior administration.

In addition to the suspension of the Moscow State University partnership, Yale has pulled its money from Russia, committed to rejecting donations from sanctioned individuals and further diminished the SEE RUSSIA PAGE 5

YALE DAILY NEWS

A new Instagram account marks the fraternity’s first public reclamation of the DKE name since its 2018 sexual assault scandal.

Fight for Pennington degree stalls Locals speak on ARP

BY DANTE MOTLEY STAFF REPORTER

BY NATHANIEL ROSENBERG STAFF REPORTER

Almost 200 years since Reverend James Pennington, a former slave, became the first Black student to attend the Yale Divinity School and the University at large, students are pushing for Yale to award him a posthumous degree — and running into bureaucratic barriers along the way.

Pennington was prohibited from officially enrolling due to an 1832 Connecticut law; However, he was able to sit in on lectures as long as he did not speak in class. Noah Humphrey DIV ’23 recently wrote an opinion piece arguing for the University to award Pennington a posthumous honorary degree. The University has previously rejected requests to award Pennington a regular degree, and Associate Vice President for Institutional Affairs Martha Schall outlined that Yale has a policy against awarding posthumous degrees. Still, Hum-

Many New Haven residents want more affordable housing, better childcare, and a stronger effort to combat climate change in the Elm City. Many see $53 million of incoming federal aid as the chance to begin those investments.

The American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion federal stimulus package passed in March 2021, allocated approximately $115.8 million to New Haven. The current $53 million is from the Mayor’s Phase 3 disbursement of the money, and is allocated to seven priorities: $10 million for youth engagement, $10 million for affordable housing, $10 million for wealth creation, $8 million for vocational and technical education, $5 million for the climate emergency, $6 million for public health and infrastructure and $4 million of seed money for the establishment of a New Haven Land Bank.

SEE PENNINGTON PAGE 5

CECILIA LEE/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

Rev. James Pennington attended Yale nearly 200 years ago, and now some students want to give him a degree.

CROSS CAMPUS

INSIDE THE NEWS

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1927.

Six freshman members of Yale's heavyweight crew team are injured on their way to practice on the Housatonic River when their bus crashes into a telephone pole.

FAIR TRIAL OR FOUL PLAY? PAGE 12 INVESTIGATIONS

A hearing held by the Board of Alders Finance Committee last Monday to discuss the funds drew over two dozen people testifying, in front of an audience of more than 100, including at least 17 alders. The room frequently broke into applause after moving testimony, and various protestors stood in the back of the room, imploring the committee to invest money into fighting climate change and assisting immigrant communities.

The proceedings opened with a presentation by representatives from the mayor’s office, including Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli, who touted the City’s community engagement process for their Phase 3 funding plan, particularly focusing on the Civic Space community meetings that were held during the summer of 2021.

“There are many challenges involved, not least related to income SEE HEARING PAGE 5

BURNOUT

GUN VIOLENCE A new partnership between city, state and federal officials, will engage formerly incarcerated citizens who are at amplified risk of gun violence.

Yale filed multiple motions to dismiss an antitrust lawsuit filed against over a dozen universities.

PAGE 6 SCITECH

PAGE 11 CITY

PAGE 3 UNIVERSITY

With much of the healthcare workforce exposed to excessive death during the pandemic, concern over physician burnout has spurred a movement.

LAWSUIT

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 2

OPINION More than theory E

very morning, standing behind our desks, our heads held high and our small hands placed over our hearts, my elementary school peers and I chanted “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” In rooms with pictures of presidents hanging on the walls, we learned the great stories of American history and praised the pioneers, like Washington, Lincoln, Parks and King, that pushed our country forward. We talked about the great pilgrims that settled on Plymouth Rock, the virtuous people that helped the Underground railroad function, the determined women who won the right to vote and the tough leaders who advocated for civil rights.

Our classroom was situated at the end of history –– the battle between good and evil had concluded, and we stood on the shoulders of the great people who fought in it. Good had won, democracy had prevailed, fairness had triumphed, and there was nothing left to do except to enjoy the wonderful society our forefathers helped build.

But the picture of history I received from elementary school was shattered when I entered high school, as Donald Trump

MANY ORGANIZATIONS ON CAMPUS PLACE A SHARP FOCUS ON CRITIQUING EXISTING SYSTEMS OF POWER AND OPPRESSION. was elected and Black Lives Matter garnered national attention.

My original narrative of linear progress in the United States was disrupted by stories of police violence, intense economic inequality and governmental failure. In its place, I learned about the extreme backlash that accompanied those great stories of American success –– Jim Crow following Reconstruction, business deregulation following the redistributive activism of the civil rights era, Trump following Obama. It became clear how deeply flawed America was, and it was no longer apparent that we would continue to move forward –– the former president himself seemed to represent several steps backward.

Knowing this, I began to wish for massive change in America.

But, amidst a horrendous presidential term, that desire for change turned into frustration with American institutions and pessimism about the ability of those institutions to improve.

And in left-leaning political circles, I saw that pessimism turn

into a rejection of American ideals –– liberalism, democratic-republican governance and capitalism –– rooted CALEB in a belief that DUNSON t h ose i d ea l s are incompatiWhat We ble with equity and justice.

Owe While I agree with many left-leaning critiques of America, I also realize that those critiques have become fodder for the right’s campaign to frame the left as destructive and out of touch.

The success of that framing, to me, has illuminated an acute failing of left-leaning politics in elite spaces –– the inability to clearly articulate a practical positive vision of American society. The elite left has placed entirely too much emphasis on abstract critiques of American institutions and theoretical formations of new societies, often to the detriment of efforts to concretely build a better country.

Yale, with its elite left-leaning student body, isn’t immune to the problem. Many organizations on campus place a sharp focus on critiquing existing systems of power and oppression.

But when the topic of creating new institutions is brought up, the conversation gets noticeably vaguer. When a vision is articulated, it tends to include ideas that either cannot be realized in our lifetime or ideas that reek of positional privilege. They’re dreams of socialist utopias or pa te r n a l i s t i c, co n d e sce n d ing proposals that don’t deeply consider the needs of the communities they purport to help.

These ideas, while important in the larger discourse about what our country should look like in the future, do little to address the realities of those struggling right now.

In the absence of a meaningful, community-informed and hopeful vision, it’s easy to understand how the left can be seen as a group of disaffected, anti-patriotic elites.

It’s time for the elite left to create a new vision for America –– one that’s cohesive, coherent and informed by the desires of those in the communities it wishes to help, one that acknowledges the country’s flaws while also emphasizing its potential for growth and redemption, one that celebrates our country’s ideals of liberty, equality and justice, while supplementing them with ideas of positive freedom, equity and care.

The elite left needs a plan for America that’s more than theory.

CALEB DUNSON is a former Opinion Editor and current opinion columnist for the News.

Contact him at caleb.dunson@yale.edu .

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GUE ST COLUMNIST OLEKSII ANTONIUK

How the Yale Russian Chorus — perhaps unwittingly — aids Russia’s war in Ukraine I

t is utter sacrilege for the Yale Russian Chorus to sing Ukrainian songs during Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. This falsely indicates that Ukrainian culture can well be put under the Russian boot, that Ukrainians are just “small” Russians and that they deserve to be conquered by “their” Mother Russia. Has the Yale Russian Chorus not viewed the genocide that Russia has inflicted upon innocent Ukrainians in Bucha and Mariupol? By not acting, the Yale Russian Chorus is on the wrong side of this war.

AS IT IS UNWILLING TO EMBRACE AN INCLUSIVE NAME, THE YALE RUSSIAN CHORUS SHOULD STOP PERFORMING THE MUSIC OF THE COUNTRIES RUSSIA HAD PREVIOUSLY COLONIZED. The parallels between Russia’s propaganda and the messages the YRC spreads are striking. In mainstream Russian thought, Ukrainians are just malorossy — which means small Russians — an insignificant branch of the Russian nation. Ukrainians do not recognize these labels and call themselves Ukrainians — a recognition they are fighting for right now.

Cultural legacy, such as music, lies at the heart of this contention. By including the Ukrainian cultural legacy in the wider Russian heritage, Russians fuse the Ukrainian nation into Russia, casting the ongo-

ing genocide of Ukrainians as a civil war between Russians and “lost” Russians.

A similar extreme appropriation of Ukrainian culture plays out in the Yale Russian Chorus. Despite performing at least five Ukrainian songs, the Yale Russian Chorus does not deem Ukrainian music different enough from Russian music to refrain from including it under their exclusively Russian name.

The Yale Russian Chorus’s disclaimers about the origin of a song do not help. Upon hearing a disclaimer, their audience would naturally ponder, “Why does the Russian Chorus perform Ukrainian and Georgian songs? It must be that these cultures are connected to Russia somehow.” This is precisely the effect Russia’s war propaganda is trying to achieve.

In a recent interview with the News, the Yale Russian Chorus hid behind the claim of “cultural understanding” to justify their extreme appropriation.

The Yale Russian Chorus ignores the effects of their appropriation because the Russian society has been appropriating Ukrainian culture for 300 years. Any activity that even tangentially advances the fusion of Ukrainian and Russian cultures is an act of Russian imperialism, not “cultural understanding.”

There are legitimate examples of cultural appreciation, like the Yale Slavic Chorus or the Lithuanian Bel Canto Choir Vilnius, which perform the Ukrainian traditional song Shchedryk, also known as “Carol of The Bells.”

American, Lithuanian and other non-Russian choirs may sing Ukrainian music. Unlike the Russian people, Americans and Lithuanians do not call for the colonization of Ukraine due to their alleged cultural connection with Ukrainians.

The Yale Russian Chorus refused to change its name even after I and other Ukrainian students outlined to them all the above grievances in a group meeting. Instead of renouncing their appropriation of Ukrainian

culture, the Yale Russian Chorus will “include more Ukrainian songs,” now making the bulk of their setlist Ukrainian while still calling themselves Russian.

At our meeting, the Yale Russian Chorus told us they fear bad press in Russia because Russian channels like Russia Today would immediately pick up the news about their name change.

The Yale Russian Chorus’ trips to Russia would end because no Russian organization would want to work with them.

They also worry about how their alumni would react, as they receive large financial and career benefits from them. Yet, their alumni highlight how crucial it is for the chorus to sing “music from Russia, Central and Eastern Europe (including Ukraine)” while still being called the Russian Chorus.

As it is unwilling to embrace an inclusive name, the Yale Russian Chorus should stop performing the music of the countries Russia had previously colonized. I see no problem with singing Russian music, but the chorus should live up to its name of being exclusively Russian.

On our part, we should consider whether an organization tacitly supports wars and imperialism before interacting with them. We should also ensure no taxpayer’s money goes to such organizations. According to a recent Yale Russian Chorus’ interview with the News, the State Department planned to provide a grant to the chorus even though it advances Russian imperialist narratives during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As the Yale community, we should ensure Connecticut representatives, such as Sen. Blumenthal and Rep. DeLauro, press the State Department to cut its ties with the Yale Russian Chorus and other organizations that ideologically align with Russia’s war in Ukraine.

OLEKSII ANTONIUK is a sophomore in Grace Hopper College.

Contact him at oleksii.antoniuk@yale.edu .

The Biggest Lesson of All “L

ove you!”

When I came to the U.S. for the first time, this sentence probably confused me the most. People I knew for only a few weeks so easily said this to me, to each other at the end of every phone call, at the end of every meal we grabbed together.

“You can’t love me just yet,” I thought to myself before saying it back with a forced smile on my face. I felt awkward and insincere, not because I didn’t enjoy their company, but because the word “love” itself bore so much weight.

Of course, I had to get used to saying it — just like I had to learn Fahrenheit as a part of my adaptation to America. It was a big cultural difference. Even though Turkish people often come across as warm and genuine, it is very rare that we leave a friend saying “love you!” Because of its strong connotations, “love” is often reserved for more special occasions, not necessarily shouted on the streets. That is why, perhaps, the most liberally I have ever said “I love you” was to my parents. It wasn’t necessarily a choice, but instead it was a need born out of the fear of losing them at an unexpected time.

In English, however, “love” seems to gain more gravity when we add the pronoun “I” in front of it. I don’t hear many people shouting “I love you” to each other loudly and cheerfully. That “I,” for some reason, changes the whole meaning, turning the sen-

tence from a cliché goodbye to perhaps the biggest symbol of vulnerability. We feel exposed while admitting that we truly SUDE for the YENILMEZ care other person, whether they Piecing are a friend, a romanTogether tic partner or even a family member. In the arbitrary line between like and love, the prospect of opening up to someone completely and letting them hold power over us becomes the most dangerous game, the biggest risk of all.

In a world of controllables, love remains the most uncertain. And as we struggle to navigate school, growing up and securing a future, choosing the uncertain becomes almost unthinkable. Confessing to someone how we truly feel while knowing that they might not feel the same seems doomed from the start. That is why, hiding between exclamations of “love u” or “miss u” is often the closest we get to acknowledging our feelings. The fewer syllables we use, the more secure we feel.

On a more toxic level perhaps, I even remember making a list of bad things in my mind about people so that I would stop feel-

ing strongly about them. And it worked most of the time. But in hindsight, I wish it did not.

“Loving people is what makes me human,” said one of my friends very recently. “In every other aspect of my life, I am no different from a robot.” My immediate reaction was of course to dismiss her claim, secretly accusing her of being overly sentimental. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. We put so much effort into our work to have the career, the financial stability, the bright future we want. But personally what scares me the most in that bright future is not having the people I truly love beside me.

Is this to say that we should all start declaring our love for each other? Certainly not. In fact, acknowledging my love for people made me stingier with my “love you’s.” But there is significant value in accepting and welcoming that feeling when it finally comes.

It might be the most unexpected, perhaps the most inappropriate.

It might feel wrong, strange, confusing in the beginning. But dismissing it as nothing is never the answer. As cliché as it sounds, life is too short to fake love but never to feel and appreciate it fully. And coming to terms with this is perhaps the biggest lesson of all.

SUDE YENILMEZ is a sophomore in Berkeley College. Her column, ‘Piecing Together,’ runs every other Thursday. Contact her at sude.yenilmez@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 3

“Some of my finest hours have been spent on my back veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see.” THOMAS JEFFERSON THIRD AMERICAN PRESIDENT

Grad students condemn new Corporation election policy

BY EVAN GOERLICK AND SARAH COOK STAFF REPORTERS The Yale Graduate & Professional Student Senate, or GPSS, recently passed a resolution condemning the Yale Corporation’s elimination of the petition process for the Yale Alumni Fellow Election, and now seeks additional avenues for change.

Last fall, over a thousand alumni signed a statement calling on the University to reinstate the alumni fellow petition process to secure a spot on the ballot for the Yale Corporation, the University’s highest governing body. The alumni fellow petition process, which was revoked in May 2021, allowed eligible alumni to petition for a place on the ballot by obtaining signatures from three percent of eligible voters in the months preceding the election. The GPSS resolution condemned the policy change, called for the reinstatement of the petition process and requested that the Yale Corporation Board submit to questioning about the decision. The GPSS plans to involve the Yale Alumni Association in its future advocacy efforts.

“We were both awed and dismayed when — it felt like under the cover of the night — they announced that they would stop allowing petition candidates,” J. Nicholas Fisk GRD ’23, who serves as a GPSS Senator, said. “It’s hard to read this as anything other … than that they were afraid of the kinds of candidates who were petitioning.”

After learning of the new policy in spring 2021, Fisk and fellow senator Evan Cudone GRD ’23 began researching the legal underpinnings of the change.

According to the GPSS resolution, the University justified its decision by noting the increase in petition candidacies in recent years and the possibility that “politicization of the petition process would hinder petition candidates’ ability to perform their fiduciary duty” since they could be beholden to constituents that supported their candidacy, rather than the University as a whole.

Fisk and the GPSS argue that these justifications are not sufficient.

“It seems like they had made the decision about what they wanted to do and then gave the minimum justification for it,” Fisk said.

The University could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

Fisk noted that the Yale Corporation already has policies in place to protect Board members’ ability to perform fiduciary duties despite potential conflicts of interest.

For instance, Fisk said, meeting minutes — including member voting records — remain confidential for 50 years. Moreover, Fisk said many board members likely have conflicts of interest far more compelling than a pre-election petition constituency, given

many of their high positions held in large corporations.

“There was a lot of speculative fear mongering in their original rationale,” Fisk said. “They said it’s possible that all six alumni fellows could be petitioned candidates, but … it’s never happened even with two people, much less an entire board. I feel like they have insulted my intelligence by putting out this rationale and expecting it to be satisfying … There may be principled reasons to do this, but [the Board] sure didn’t give them to us.”

Last year, two petition candidates made it onto the ballot. One was a candidate representing Yale Forward — a coalition of students and alumni that seeks to address the climate crisis by supporting Corporation candidates who endorse University divestment from fossil fuels and other climate initiatives. Founded

by Scott Gigante ’16 GRD ’19 ’21, the organization also advocates for making the Corporation more democratic and representative.

Gigante said he is proud of the Senate for its statement.

“I [would] really like to applaud the Senate for making this statement in favor of democracy,” Gigante said.

“We know that democratic involvement in these elections has been relatively limited over the course of the history of Yale Corporation, even in terms of the democratic involvement that is still allowed.”

According to Gigante, the petition process had previously acted as a “democratic circuit breaker” for alumni to express discontent with the slate of nominated candidates. “​​Having a nominating committee makes a lot of sense, so long as there’s a way around it, in case the nominating committee fails to understand what the voters want,” Gigante said.

Gigante said that the petition process for nominating candidates for the Yale Corporation began over 100 years ago — and only 250 signatures were needed at that time.

In subsequent years, Gigante said, the signature requirement was raised. When the first female candidate petitioned to be on the ballot in 1984, the Corporation increased the barrier to entry to one percent of eligible Yale alumni. Later, the requirement was raised to three percent, where it stayed until the May 2021 elimination of the petition process. In 2021, three percent of eligible alumni voters equated to 4,394 signatures.

Of the 16 members of the Yale Corporation, 10 are chosen directly by the Corporation itself and are known as “successor trustees.” Gigante said these members tend to “over index for older white men who work in finance and business.” The other six members, known as “alumni fellows,” are voted in by Yale alumni who graduated more than five years prior to the election.

DAVID ZHENG/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Students raise call of “speculative fear mongering” with change prohibiting candidates to petition for election to Board.

Currently, the Alumni Fellow Nominating Committee chooses who goes on the ballot to determine the alumni fellows. Before the May 2021 switch, the petition process allowed other candidates to join the ballot if they met the signature requirement.

Gigante took issue with some of the election practices, calling both the fact that the Alumni Fellow Nominating Committee includes a member of the Yale Corporation and the existence of the fiveyear rule preventing recent alumni from voting “undemocratic.”

The “double dip” of exerting power with a member of the Yale Corporation on the Alumni Fellow Nominating Committee, Gigante said, can lead to unfair results that do not reflect the wishes of alumni.

For example, Maurie McInnis GRD ’90 ’96, the president of Stony Brook University, lost the 2020 alumni fellow election — yet was appointed to the Yale Corporation as a successor trustee at the beginning of this year.

“This is such a brazen disregard of [the alumni’s] will not to place Maurie McInnis on the board,” Gigante said. “It is quite demonstrative of the fact that the Corporation chooses the candidates they wish to place on the board, not the candidates that Yale alumni would like to see on the board.”

The Corporation eliminated the petition process after the 2021 election, in which Maggie Thomas ENV ’15 had been petitioning to be on the ballot — and had been endorsed by

Yale Forward — before dropping out to accept an appointment as Chief of Staff of the Office of Domestic Climate Policy in the White House.

Gigante and Fisk viewed the change as a direct response to the potential of Thomas’ election to the Board of Trustees.

“It was only when Maggie — the pro climate candidate who was not a candidate of this conservative free speech on campus argument, made it onto the ballot — that the Yale Corporation then went and changed the rules,” Gigante said.

Victor Ashe ’67, a conservative candidate who received support from the William F. Buckley Jr. Program, also petitioned to be on the ballot in 2021, but lost the election.

Ashe and other alumni later sued the University for discontinuing the petition process.

Ashe and Thomas both advocated for the Corporation’s election process to be more democratic in their respective campaigns, which Gigante said also may have contributed to the decision to end the petition process.

However, he said the minutes for Corporation meetings are sealed for 50 years, so he cannot be certain of what drove the removal of the petition process until 2071.

“We can only speculate, but the fact that our alumni had the choice to vote for this conservative candidate who made it onto the ballot, and they did not, makes you ask the question, what is the Corporation afraid of in terms of allowing democratic participation in this election?” Gigante said.

However, Fisk expressed his hope that with enough student and alumni coordination and with leverage from the Yale Alumni Association, the petition process could possibly be reinstated.

“The Yale Alumni Association should be likewise perturbed,” Fisk said. “I think the next phase of this is trying to get them on board with that because once [we] do, [we will] have more stakeholders involved, and it might be easier to apply some leverage.”

Fisk and Gigante also said that reforming the five-year rule to let recent graduates vote for the Yale Alumni Fellows could make the process more democratic.

According to Gigante, that rule mirrors an earlier policy at Harvard University, which attempted to balance alumni involvement in elections, which were held in-person during commencement and thus had greater proportions of recent alumni.

Harvard removed its rule over 50 years ago, but Yale’s version still remains in place.

“Yale College students are ineligible to vote until five years after [graduation] … which I think is trying to temper some of the more activist urges of the Yale base,” Fisk said.

The Yale Corporation has its next meeting on June 11.

Contact EVAN GOERLICK at evan.goerlick@yale.edu and SARAH COOK at sarah.cook@yale.edu .

Yale files motions to dismiss antitrust case

BY JORDAN FITZGERALD STAFF REPORTER Yale lawyers filed two motions Friday to dismiss the antitrust case against the 568 Presidents Group, a group of elite universities who were accused of colluding to keep financial aid awards down.

The 568 Presidents Group consists of 17 selective universities that share financial aid formulas. In January, several alumni of the universities sued members of the group, alleging that nine of the schools practice need-aware admissions and thus have violated section 568 of 1994’s Improv-

ing America’s Schools Act, which allows financial aid collaboration only if universities do not consider monetary need in admissions. An amended complaint filed in February accused all of the defendants — including Yale — of examining need and added Johns Hopkins University as the 17th defendant.

Yale signed onto a joint motion to dismiss the suit that argues on behalf of all 17 defendants in the case. The University also submitted an individual motion to dismiss, which said that because Yale has not used the 568 Presidents Group’s method of calculating financial aid in the last 14 years,

any lawsuit against Yale should be dismissed. Both documents were filed on April 15.

“Plaintiffs do not — and cannot consistent with Rule 11 — allege that Yale follows the Consensus Methodology in determining a student’s need for financial aid,” Yale’s motion reads.

When asked for a statement, University spokesperson Karen Peart told the News to refer to the filing, which “speaks for itself.”

Previously, Peart said that Yale’s financial aid practices are “100% compliant” with U.S. law.

Yale joined the 568 Presidents Group in 2003 before leaving

TIM TAI/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale and other members of the 568 Presidents Group filed a joint motion to dismiss the antitrust case brought against them in January.

in 2007 and signing on again in 2018. The motion claims Yale did not begin employing the consensus approach at this point, despite its renewed membership in the consortium.

Yale’s motion said that the University stopped following the group’s consensus methodology in “2008 or 2009.” Because the Clayton Act — a statute of antitrust law used in the case — has a four-year statute of limitations, Yale argued, the University cannot be sued for any antitrust violation.

Though Yale insisted that it does not employ the consensus methodology, Yale’s joint motion with the other 16 universities vouches for the method’s legality. The defendants disputed the plaintiffs’ claims that they broke Section 568 by accepting donor gifts and considering wealth in waitlist and transfer admissions.

“That interpretation ignores the common understanding of the term ‘need-blind’ and disregards the statute’s structure, history, and purpose,” the motion reads. “These factors make clear that considering financial circumstances in admissions decisions implicates Section 568 only if it disfavors particular applicants because they need financial aid.”

The defendants hold that their collaboration increases the accessibility of higher education, while the plaintiffs allege that the group’s practices create disproportionately rich student bodies among their member institutions.

“The defendants easily had, and continue to have, the financial means to provide more generous financial aid awards to their students — in particular, for low- and middle-income families struggling to afford the cost of a university education and to achieve success for their children — if the defendants were not colluding,” a February news release from the plaintiffs’ legal team said.

Howard Shelanski, professor at Georgetown Law School, told the News in February that the 568 Presidents Group suit would be “a challenging case for the plaintiffs to win, especially because they’re dealing with universities who are giving a lot of financial aid and trying to make it easier for a lot of students to attend.”

Along with Yale, the suit accused Brown University, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Notre Dame University, the University of Pennsylvania, Rice University and Vanderbilt University of factoring need in admissions, and therefore violating Section 568.

Section 568 is set to expire in September.

Contact JORDAN FITZGERALD at jordan.fitzgerald@yale.edu.

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, and the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, and the green hill laughs with the noise of it.” WILLIAM BLAKE ENGLISH POET

Survey provides insights into math dept.

MATH FROM PAGE 1 the department that they “found uncomfortable, discouraging, or alienating.” 14 percent of all respondents reported facing prejudice in the department because of their identity and an additional 13 percent said they had observed such encounters, with 21 percent having considered leaving the department altogether due to those experiences.

Within this data there was some variation by role. 55 percent of all respondents, not including undergraduates, reported they had experiences that made them feel uncomfortable, discouraged or alienated, while only 26 percent of undergraduates reported they had these experiences.

Ian Adelstein — a lecturer in the department and co-chair of the committee that designed the survey — told the News that a summary report and departmental statement should be published within the next two weeks.

In conversations with the News, students and staff on the climate committee discussed both recent and ongoing efforts to promote diversity and inclusion, as well as continued disparities within the department as a whole and the committee itself.

“Regarding the report, there was a diverse set of responses: it was not all positive,” committee co-chair Richard Kenyon wrote in an email to the News. “We (the whole department) are working on finding ways to improve the climate in these respects.”

Kenyon further described various supplementary departmental initiatives, such as organizing social events, various DEIB-related talks and conferences and a reading club. Students also praised the department’s revamp of its undergraduate curriculum in the spring of 2021, and expressed optimism about upcoming changes to graduate and undergraduate advising processes.

Both these initiatives are intended to increase academic accessibility.

Additionally, the co-chairs noted that the department intends to issue these surveys every two years moving forward, with the next survey scheduled for spring 2023.

The survey In creating this survey, the climate committee sought to assess inclusivity and belonging within the department, which has been historically dominated by white men.

It also asked respondents to comment on existing professional and personal engagement and sought specific recommendations for the department’s future.

For many of the questions, participants were asked to select from a five-point sliding scale whether the department exhibited a certain trait “not at all,” “a little,” “moderately,” “mostly” or “completely.” The survey methodology explained that when a scale-based question was left

blank, the response was interpreted as an answer of “moderately” — which is a potential source of error.

Presently, according to committee member Supriya Weiss ’23, the committee is working with the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning to remove any identifying details and ensure that anonymity is preserved prior to widely sharing the document. The report and accompanying statement will be published after anonymity is secured.

As an undergraduate majoring in math, Weiss described how some of these trends have played out over her own time at Yale.

“I can probably count on one hand the number of women that are in the room in some of my classes.

In that sense, it can be really tough when you look around the room, and you're like, ‘I don't look like everyone else here. It doesn't look like I belong in this space,’” Weiss said. “So I think that it takes a large amount of confidence to even stay in that environment because I really have to be confident in myself that, ‘No, I love math, I'm capable of doing math and I want to do math,’ because just looking at the room itself doesn't tell me that.”

Weiss also said she thinks that there are “large racial issues” in Yale’s math department, as well as within the broader cultures of math and academia. She noted, though, that she does not feel that Asians are underrepresented in the math department and thus has found her own experiences to be “much more affected” by gender than by race.

But the data showed that some had more positive experiences in the department. According to the report draft, 62 percent of participants feel the math department is mostly to completely welcoming, 70 percent feel it is mostly to completely respectful and 55 percent feel it is mostly to completely supportive. A little less than half, 47 percent, responded that they feel comfortable speaking up and asking questions.

However, Jonas Katona, a second-year graduate student on the committee, described the survey results as “abysmal” compared to his undergraduate alma mater, the University of California, Berkeley. He further noted the disparity between the responses from marginalized and non-marginalized groups as significant — for example, the report cites that nearly 50 percent of those who self-identified as part of a marginalized group reported negative experiences in the department, compared to less than 20 percent of those who did not identify as marginalized. Additionally, about 35 percent of those who identified as marginalized said they considered leaving the department, while about 7 percent of those who did not identify as marginalized did the same.

The survey’s executive summary states that respondents who self-identified as part of a “mar-

ginalized population” generally described “feeling less included and supported” across various categories surveyed.

Katona continued that although the survey results are indicators of the change that must be made in the department, he thinks the survey alone is not enough to understand or to address the reasons why students feel like they do not belong.

“We need an actual space for conversation,” Katona said.

“Because if you look at the survey results, and you see things are negative, you don't know necessarily how to fix it because you don't know exactly what are the issues that people are facing.”

Weiss expressed similar thoughts about the need for more widespread DEIB-related discourse within the department, and said she hopes the survey will be used to open these dialogues.

Committee formation and existing efforts In the summer of 2020, FAS Dean of Science and Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science Jeffrey Brock called upon all STEM departments to develop a diversity, equity and inclusion action plan.

Professor Yair Minsky served as the department chair when these efforts began. In an email to the News, Minsky explained that the department formed a “DEI committee” — a precursor to the existing climate committee — that conducted a self-evaluation of the department.

The report’s suggestions included undergraduate curriculum changes, structural changes to the graduate program, improvements in hiring practices and overall changes to department culture.

This initial DEI report also urged the creation of three new, separate committees in the fall of 2020: departmental climate, graduate student advisory and outreach. The climate committee’s primary role was to evaluate the culture of the department and strive to make it a more welcoming place, Adelstein told the News.

“I'm pretty optimistic about all this,” Minsky wrote in an email.

“I think it's helping to make the department a more welcoming place, and to enable more people to do good mathematics together. It's easy for changes like this to peak and then fade away, so one of the purposes of this committee is to keep us focused. The plan to repeat the climate survey every couple of years, for example, is part of that.”

While many climate committee members expressed optimism at the prospect of the department’s initiatives, several also described feelings of being disregarded or disrespected within the committee itself.

A few members recounted instances of their ideas being shut down or facing marginalization.

"I realized it wasn't sustainable for me to continue channeling my

energy in this direction because certain power dynamics described in the report were replicating themselves within the committee," said Mirilla Zhu ’23, who left the committee.

Katona told the News he felt “invalidat[ed]” when he tried to present his own experiences to the climate committee in a meeting last September. Katona said he came to the meeting frustrated and feeling disconnected from his peers.

When he expressed his grievances and ideas for increasing inclusivity – such as hosting more events along with holding spaces for “actual” conversation where students can express their concerns more directly – he said his ideas were shut down, and the rest of the committee appeared to grow “defensive” and “uncomfortable.”

“To be told immediately ‘I don't think that's going to work,’ and like we should continue doing what we're doing because ‘I think this is fine,’ felt a bit invalidating,” Katona said.

Katona specifically noted his appreciation for Adelstein, who approached him afterward and encouraged him to continue to come to committee meetings and express his thoughts, ideas and concerns.

Next steps to address the problems The math department’s next steps will be laid out in a statement which Adelstein said will be made publicly available in the next two weeks. These steps will likely include actions related to faculty hiring, the undergraduate program and the graduate program, according to Adelstein.

The survey asked respondents to suggest areas for improvement.

Popular suggestions included improvements to the advising process, particularly for first years, and increased mentorship for career support. Several respondents also advocated for administrative changes such as increasing peer tutoring, improving onboarding processes and hiring more faculty.

According to Adelstein, “significant” curricular revisions to the introductory math major sequence were implemented in spring 2021, with the main goal of increasing access to the math major for all students – no matter their previous mathematical background or preparation. He told the News they plan to adjust the curriculum based on student, instructor and tutor feedback.

To further bolster inclusion initiatives within the department, Weiss discussed a need for greater representation in both the student body and faculty.

“Something as simple as seeing more women on the undergraduate level, on the faculty level, at the graduate level,” Weiss said. “So many women who come into Yale feel like STEM is not for them or that they can't do that. The simple visi-

bility of it makes it seem like something so much more attainable.”

For graduate students, in line with Weiss’s comments on the importance of representation and visibility, Adelstein said a department focus has been on outreach to prospective graduate school applicants. As a part of this outreach, he cited sending posters to over a hundred U.S. institutions, including HBCUs and other “minority-serving universities,” and holding a webinar for prospective applicants in November.

Minsky told the News that in recent years, the department has experienced “a lot of success” in diversifying faculty and in diversifying the graduate program. In February, the University announced a major wave of investments across SEAS and the FAS, especially in STEM, with a stated focus on further diversifying Yale’s faculty.

Weiss also detailed the benefits of peer-to-peer support groups for people of marginalized backgrounds.

“A lot of the strength and support that I have found in the department has been in my fellow female math majors,” Weiss said. “I'm also on the board of Dimensions, which is the group for women and gender minorities in math at Yale. And I think that organizations like that are so important because we understand each other's experience.”

In his email to the News, Adelstein wrote that the department supports student groups with the goal of promoting inclusivity, such as Dimensions, and that the department is committing to providing a faculty advisor for each of these groups. Summer Undergraduate Math Research at Yale has also been changed into a national program to engage a diverse array of undergraduate students in math research.

The department has taken several steps to improve the experiences of graduate students already enrolled in the program. These measures included developing new advising guidelines to help students navigate the program, creating the student-run Graduate Student Advisory Committee, organizing lunches for students and faculty and instituting temporary advisors for students who do not yet have a thesis advisor.

Several respondents also noted potential access barriers for those with disabilities, with some respondents noting that the elevator in Leet Oliver Memorial Hall — where many math courses are held — is often broken. Most, however, did not express views on the department’s accommodation of disabilities.

Yale’s Department of Mathematics is located at 10 Hillhouse Ave. Contact ANIKA SETH at anika.seth@yale.edu, TIGERLILY HOPSON at tigerlily.hopson@yale.edu and ISAAC YU at isaac.yu@yale.edu .

New Haven residents critique ARP funding allocation HEARING FROM PAGE 1 inequity, the unfair and disproportionate impact that some of our neighbors have felt through the pandemic relative to other parts of the state or the nation,” Piscitelli said.

“What we've tried to do with this Phase 3 program is be responsive to what we heard in the Civic Space process, look at the data and be evidence-based in our approach.”

Ward 25 Alder Adam Marchand, chair of the Finance Committee, bypassed the customary time for alders to question the presenters, and instead opened the meeting to public comment, citing the large number of people signed up to testify.

“Far more than $10 million” for housing Throughout the city’s unveiling of ARP distribution proposals, New Haveners have continued to call on officials to allocate more funds to affordable housing. Camila Guiza-Chavez ’19, the co-director of Havenly and a member of the Sisters in Diaspora Collective — a group of migrant and refugee women who advocate for better access to housing in New Haven — urged the committee to invest more in housing at Monday’s meeting. “[Housing] is such a fundamental part of a good and healthy life and

well-being,” Guiza-Chavez testified. “It is the top priority and the top preoccupation of every single family we work with.”

The Collective had previously sent a proposal to the Finance Committee, urging them to spend $62 million dollars of the total ARP funding on access to affordable housing. The group arrived at that number by taking 54 percent of the total $115.8 million dollars New Haven is receiving in federal funding, as the Collective claims that 54 percent of New Haven residents are housing insecure.

The proposal, which was read as testimony at the hearing, calls for New Haven to spend $50.5 million on buying buildings owned by “corporate, absentee landlord companies,” naming in particular mega landlords Mandy Management and Pike International, in order to convert those units into publicly owned housing. The group requested to spend the other $12 million in their proposed budget on subsidies for families currently on the waiting list for Section 8 and public housing in New Haven.

Alyson Heimer, a real-estate agent who grew up in New Haven before being priced out of living in the city by rising rents, echoed Guiza-Chavez’s budget priorities.

“We have to take back this city from big landlords and give

it back to the community members,” Heimer testified.

Specifically, Heimer identified 144 for-sale properties containing 395 units across 23 of New Haven’s 30 wards that could be bought by the City of New Haven for $52 million and sold back to housing nonprofits — such as the Livable City Initiative and Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven — in order to fund other city priorities.

“I don’t have $50 million. But I hear you guys do,” Heimer testified to laughs and applause.

Varied funding priorities In her testimony, Allyx Schiavone, the executive director for the Friends Center for Children, said that the workforce has a disproportionate number of white head teachers and women of color assistant support teachers. Shiavone also testified that in New Haven, the average annual salary for an early childhood educator is just $26,000.

“Women in New Haven who care for our youngest children are being paid to live in poverty,” Shiavone told the committee.

Shiavone said that the lack of funding in early childhood education also hurts local children.

“For every $1 New Haven spends and invests in high quality early care and education, there's a 13 percent

annual return,” Shiavone told the committee. “New Haven invests zero percent of its education budget in early care and education. So it's yes, a zero percent return.”

Ultimately, Shiavone claimed that the $2 million of Phase 3 funding allocated for early childhood care and education was the minimum of what was necessary to fix what she saw as New Haven’s systemic underinvestment and inequities on the issue.

Several organizers with the New Haven Climate Movement Youth Action Team also testified on the importance of using the ARP to address climate change. Patricia Joseph, a senior at Engineering and Science University Magnet School, and member of NHCM, invoked New Haven’s 2019 declaration of a climate emergency.

“When you're declaring a climate emergency it doesn't mean just sounding the alarm bells without responding to the needs of New Haven,” Joseph said.

“Declaring an emergency means responding and instituting change in our communities now.”

Joseph encouraged the committee to invest in electrification, hire climate staff and integrate climate work into city departments.

Jayla Anderson, a sophomore at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School and member of

NHCM, echoed Joseph's testimony, and advocated for the city to use 10% of its federal funding, a total of $15 million, on “climate related issues.” The Mayor’s current funding plans allocate $5 million to address climate change.

Rebecca Moore, the program director for the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, also expressed support for the pandemic-relief funding that was allocated to the arts. The Phase 3 funding earmarks $368,267 for “Arts and Culture” in New Haven.

“As we all know, the arts is one of the reasons we have been able to survive during these times, especially during the pandemic,” Moore testified. “The arts bring a sense of togetherness, unity and strength.

The arts is the epitome of culture and diversity. Let's dismantle the term starving artists.”

Ultimately, after hearing over two hours and fifteen minutes of public testimony on the funding, Marchand chose not to bring the proposed funding to a vote, instead deciding that the committee would conduct additional meetings before taking any further action.

New Haven has already spent $38.3 million of the $115.8 million allocated to the city by the ARP. Contact NATHANIEL ROSENBERG at nathaniel.rosenberg@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

FROM THE FRONT

“Absolute green is the most restful color, lacking any undertone of grief, joy or passion.” WASSILY KANDINSKY RUSSIAN PAINTER

What does the future hold for Russian studies?

RUSSIA FROM PAGE 1 School of Management’s ties with Moscow’s Skolkovo school. Faculty members have generally followed suit with these administrative-level decisions by removing their own partnerships with Russian institutions and their associated faculty. Lewis told the News that the University will not prevent its faculty from conducting work with Russia-based colleagues “as long as it is legal and meets ethical guidelines” and so long as they “declare their outside funding.”

Reactions following the invasion Molly Brunson, who serves as director of the Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies Program at the MacMillan Center, said that her perspective on Russian institutional ties at Yale is complicated.

“There’s a kind of real important moral and ethical reason to sever ties with these institutional connections … that might be encouraging [Putin] in ways direct or indirect,” Brunson said.

But Brunson also explained that Putin’s war in Ukraine sparked a now “emerging” conversation between faculty over how interpersonal connections between scholars and students in the Russian and Eastern European region can be maintained.

She mentioned that the issues faculty currently have to address mir-

ror the “kind of difficulties and challenges of working across borders during the Cold War.” She said that, following news of the invasion, faculty at Yale had “dedicated a lot of [their] initial energies toward supporting colleagues, friends, families in Ukraine and fleeing Ukraine.” In addition to this, the University worked to figure out which scholars were at risk, and how to help them efficiently and quickly. This not only included Ukrainian individuals, but also those fleeing Russia who were in danger due to various dissident activities.

From an administrative standpoint, Lewis also noted that the University was working to assist Russian students and scholars “who are here now and don’t want to go back to Russia.”

The Office of International Students & Scholars, or OISS, has been working with both Ukrainian and Russian students on disrupted summer and travel plans. In an email to the News, OISS Executive Director Ann Kuhlman acknowledged that the tense situation surrounding Ukraine and Russia has prevented students from getting funds and helping family at home.

“OISS has been in touch with both our Ukrainian and Russian students and have been working with them based on their individual needs and advising them on immigra-

tion, travel, and financial concerns,” Kuhlman wrote.

Facing challenges in academia For Yale faculty, professors are struggling to figure out how to conduct field research, write books or support colleagues in Russia. Visas are hard to come by due to the current conflict, Brunson said, and other logistic challenges will make research difficult.

One such obstacle, Brunson said, is the lack of open lines of communication for colleagues in Russia.

Crackdowns on social media platforms by the Russian government, including Facebook and Twitter, have meant that many feeds utilized by professional spheres have largely gone silent. Although many scholars have migrated to the instant messaging service Telegram, she said, it may take time for the platform to securely establish robust lines of communication that were once available.

“There is a very, very significant need to keep those [academic] civil, social communities intact, if there’s going to be any hope of moving into a different moment,” Brunson said.

Brunson — who is also a professor in Slavic languages and literature — told her graduate students to plan to write a dissertation that does not require them to go to Russia, because

she is not sure they will be able to in the next few years.

With regard to Russian studies at Yale, Brunson admitted that there was no current “plan” for how to proceed — but that faculty and officials at the University were working on asking questions and figuring out what the best step forward would be. In the meantime, she does not think that relations with Russia will resolve anytime soon, and believes that the University needs to plan for all contingencies, including Russia becoming completely cut off from research and from potential on-the-ground collaborations in the coming years.

But Brunson does not believe that such a complete shutdown of research in Russia would be productive to the academic community and to the world. She said that the threats of a continued ground war in Europe, nuclear entanglement and extreme crises such as world hunger make the research conducted surrounding Russia — especially in relation to Eastern Europe and local regions — fundamental.

“It is absolutely not a time to stop work on Russia and Eastern Europe and Eurasia,” Brunson said. “If anything, it is a time to increase it manyfold … it’s very clear now that our ignorance [has been] quite damaging.”

Reflecting on Yale’s future with Russia Brunson urged caution in University administrative and faculty decisions surrounding whether to hold off on or continue ties with Russian institutions.

“I think that what is important to remember is that … beyond these institutions are actual people with actual lives and careers and families that have been completely upended,” she said. “[There are] big institutional decisions, and that’s often what we focus on, but they actually have extraordinary impacts on individuals. And I think for this reason, it is imperative that we be very thoughtful in what we choose to support but also what we choose to cut off.”

Erikson added her own thoughts on understanding how the University will proceed in examining its global partnerships, especially with Russia.

“The mission of the University is a global mission,” Erikson said. “It is not truth and knowledge and a better society for one nation. It is for all nations. And [the] University tries to accomplish that mission, but it can be very hard to make those kinds of decisions.”

The Fox International Fellowship was established in 1938 by Joseph Carrère Fox ’38.

Contact WILLIAM PORAYOUW at william.porayouw@yale.edu .

DKE fraternity publicly returns to campus DKE FROM PAGE 1 ing phrases including “no means yes, yes means anal.” In response, former Dean of Yale College Mary Miller issued a five-year ban on DKE’s presence on campus.

“What matters most here is that the larger community has addressed the particular fraternity, DKE, and held them responsible and accountable for their actions,” Miller wrote to the student body in the wake of the incident. “What is important to recognize is that DKE has accepted responsibility, opening a new level of discourse on the issue of sexual harassment. This is an opportunity to seize.”

But although the ban theoretically prevented DKE from hosting events on campus or advertising events using University email addresses, it did little to curb the group’s campus presence — DKE’s pledge sizes increased.

In October 2016, during the group’s first year officially back on campus, former President Luke Perischetti ’18 told the News that the ban had played “an important part in the cultural shift that has taken place since then.” But just months later, Perischetti was suspended from Yale for “penetration without consent.”

DKE faced further scrutiny in 2018, as sexual assault allegations were brought against Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings and a new wave of women came forward to accuse current DKE members of sexual assault.

In February 2018, days after the News published allegations

from eight women against members of the organization, Chun announced a review into “recent concerns brought forward alleging a hostile sexual environment” within DKE. The review was conducted by Yale Senior Deputy Title IX Coordinator Jason Killheffer.

The same month, DKE announced that it would undertake a series of reforms, largely aimed towards facilitating a safer party environment. These included the addition of women bouncers and bartenders at parties, caps on maximum house occupancy and improved access to drinking water at parties.

DKE’s on-campus presence was subdued when the fraternity lost the lease on its Lake Place house in May 2018. Real estate manager John Maturo ’76 told the News in 2018 that the allegations of sexual assault against the group were the “last straw” after years of “unreasonable behavior.”

The University review, which came out in January 2019 — almost a year after it was originally announced — did not include specific recommendations or consequences for DKE, but offered general community suggestions, like the addition of mandatory misconduct training for fraternity members and additional all-gender social spaces on campus.

“I condemn the culture described in these accounts; it runs counter to our community’s values of making everyone feel welcome, respected and safe,” Chun wrote in the email to students in which he announced the

report. “I also offer some plain advice about events like these: don’t go to them.”

The University’s inability to formally sanction DKE, Sasha Carney ’22 told the News, meant that it was difficult to prevent the group from returning to the center of campus life even after major sexual misconduct scandals. Carney likened the fraternity to a “little cockroach.”

Carney was on campus when DKE lost its Lake Place lease, but noted that the institutional turnover of Yale’s student body every four years means that many younger students are unfamiliar with the fraternity’s fraught history.

“Campus outrage cycles, even though they’re very valuable and a lot can come from them, can only last for so long,” Carney said. “I think they’re relying on the fact that by the time they come back, people might have a vague memory of DKE doing something bad, but they don’t actually know what that something bad entails. They’re not engaged with specifics. There might be a vague aura around it, which first-years looking for parties are happy to shrug off.”

Mayah Monthrope ’25 told the News that she had heard about sexual assault allegations against DKE members and therefore does not plan to attend any event held by the fraternity.

Rhayna Poulin ’25 told the News that her only exposure to DKE had been in a sociology class she took last semester, where, in a lecture on predatory sexual cultures

YALE DAILY NEWS

DKE faced further scrutiny in 2018, as sexual assault allegations were brought against Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings. on college campuses, students watched the viral video of DKE pledges chanting on Old Campus.

“I think if a campus organization is so predatory that it is actually talked about in lectures about sexual assault then there is clearly a problem with that organization,” Poulin said. “There are already incidents of sexual assault connected to Greek life organizations in general and I think the particularly egregious history of this organization means that it is definitley not safe to have them on campus.”

Poulin doubted the sincerity of DKE’s revamp, noting that members who want to distance

themselves from the organization’s problematic past could do so more effectively by disaffiliating with DKE entirely.

“I do not believe that anyone who associates with DKE (not partygoers, but friends and members of DKE) does so in ‘good faith,’” Joanna Ruiz ’25 wrote in an email to the News. “Being comfortable with being associated with sexual assault is a huge red flag. You cannot ‘rebrand’ to escape consequence.”

The Yale chapter of DKE was founded in 1844.

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

Push for honorary degree sees setbacks PENNINGTON FROM PAGE 1 phrey has continued his advocacy to get Pennington a degree. Now, Dean of the Divinity School Gregory Sterling is sympathetic to the effort, which has gotten bogged down in the upper administration.

“Are we going to allow the law to stand in the way of Pennington getting a degree?” Humphrey said in an interview with the News. “Are we going to continue to be the barrier that separates Pennington and his life work away from being awarded a simple degree, done by the institution that has first housed James Pennington, essentially locking him out of our own doors?”

Pennington had a long, prestigious career, including the publication of the first African American history textbook in 1841, and later the receipt of an honorary

doctorate by Heidelberg University in 1849.

There have been prior pushes to award Pennington a degree, including a 2016 petition with over 500 signatures, but all attempts were either rejected or went unacknowledged by the University due to its policy against awarding posthumous degrees. This policy was reinforced by the fact that the Divinity School is unsure which courses Pennigton took — including if he completed any degree requirements.

“Yale has a policy to not award posthumous degrees,” Sterling wrote in an email to the News. “I have not tried to change the policy, but to find a way within Yale’s policies to get him a degree.”

Sterling said that he tried on two occasions — unsuccessfully — to get Pennington a degree: first, a Master of Divinity degree, and then a Bachelor of Divinity. He added that he has

a “different strategy at present” and has not given up hope that Pennington will one day receive a Yale degree.

Apart from the degree, the Divinity School has honored Pennington by renaming S100, one of the school’s largest classrooms, after him and also by hanging a commissioned portrait of him in the school’s common room.

“The Honorary Degrees Committee has a longstanding practice that honorary degrees are not granted posthumously,” Schall wrote in an Oct. 11, 2021 email to the News. “The only exceptions, including Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, are in the sad circumstances in which the recipient accepted the invitation to receive the degree, agreed to the requirement that he or she attend Commencement to receive the degree in person, but died between the acceptance of the invitation and the Com-

mencement date. Therefore, the committee would not be open to considering a nomination for Reverend Pennington.”

Humphrey says his efforts are both independent and collaborative, saying the student organizations he is a part of are supportive of his efforts. He wants to use his unique position as a member of both the Black Men's Union, an undergraduate student organization, and the Black Seminarians, a graduate student organization, to reach more students who might be interested in the advocacy work.

H u m p h rey wo rke d w i t h another student, Meredith Barges DIV ’23, to advocate for a degree for Humphrey. Barges said she was trying to “right the injustice” of Pennington having been treated poorly during his time at Yale.

Humphrey said that he trusts that Sterling and the broader Divinity School understand the importance of awarding Pennington a degree, and proposed the upcoming Afro-American House’s 50th-anniversary celebration from April 29 to May 1 as an opportunity for the issue to be further discussed.

“It is just a matter of rules, which are really ridiculous,” Barges said. “But there's always going to be a first, right? There's always going to be a first person who's going to receive a posthumous degree as a form of reparation. And so I think there is a real, really compelling argument that it should be Pennington.”

The Yale Corporation has awarded honorary degrees since the commencement of 1702.

Contact DANTE MOTLEY at dante.motley@yale.edu .

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY How burnout has struck the nation’s healthcare system

SOPHIA ZHAO/STAFF ILLUSTRATOR

A third of the healthcare workforce has been exposed to excessive death or threat of death during the COVID-19 pandemic.

BY KAYLA YUP STAFF REPORTER In 1985, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry Mark Rego was fresh out of medical school. Thrust into training as an intern resident, he trudged through his first night “on-call.” This meant a 36-hour shift that usually culminated in around three to four hours of sleep before the next workday. Rego was ready to go to bed at around 4 a.m. But there was no place left to sleep — neither a couch nor a cot available. Rego looked around the on-call room and discovered that there were simply not enough places for the entire team to sleep.

The following day at lunch, he told the training director.

“He was defensive and referred back to when he was a resident and how hard they had it,” Rego said. “No one at the lunch table supported me.

This illustrated the attitude of overwork and its consequences in medicine from the mid-century to when I trained in the 1980’s. There was a machismo, for men and the few women, about being able to take the punishing hours.”

The COVID-19 pandemic unearthed physician burnout as a public health crisis, drawing attention to the longstanding legacy of toughness and overwork in healthcare described by Rego. During the pandemic, people have become acutely aware of

just how reliant they are on physicians and the healthcare system as a whole. The past years also saw several studies on how burnout can physically affect physicians’ brains and worsen the level of care they can provide. This years-long pandemic underscores the need for community intervention, beyond the individual, to fight burnout and redefine how healthcare workers themselves are trained and treated.

The culture Rego described started changing slowly in 1984, when Libby Zion, an 18-year-old college student, tragically died from a fatal interaction between medicines at New York Hospital. She had been taken care of by an unsupervised intern, spurring an investigation into resident physicians’ hours.

The Libby Zion law in New York outlawed the 36-hour shifts Rego once completed, limiting shifts to 24 hours. The most important outcome, according to Rego, was that “over-work” became an acceptable topic to broach.

The “machismo and silence” that defined physicians’ training evolved into an “approach of care” for residents, Rego said. Though he could not vouch for the effectiveness of any particular program, he found that attitudes had changed since his training. The physician wellness movement pushes to continue opening up conversation about burnout. Most recently, at the core of research on physician burn-

out is the need to restore work-life balance through structural change.

“The practice environment as currently constructed is creating conditions that alter brain function and contribute to many of the consequences of burnout with respect to quality of care, patient experience and professionalism,” said Tait Shanafelt, Stanford Medicine chief wellness officer. “The primary focus [of recent research on physician burnout] is on trying to address the problems in the work environment, not teaching clinicians to be able to tolerate a broken system.”

Shanafelt and Yale professor of neuroscience and psychology Amy Arnsten collaborated on a study looking at the neurobiology of physician burnout. They focused on the prefrontal cortex, which is the most recently evolved area of the brain, responsible for regulating thoughts, actions and emotions.

Their study found that uncontrollable stress impaired the functioning of the prefrontal cortex.

According to Arnsten, the prefrontal cortex is important for metacognition, which is “thinking about thinking.” This includes abilities such as “remembering to remember” and one’s moral values.

When uncontrollable stress causes dysWfunction of the prefrontal cortex, the result can be impaired concentration and working memory, potentially inviting medical errors.

Physicians can also become cynical and less empathetic “as a way of trying to survive,” Arnsten said.

“When [prefrontal cortex] dysfunction occurs, it impairs judgment, compassion, moral conscience, self-regulation and inhibition,” Shanafelt said. “This can lead to people being triggered by and reacting to challenges and problems in ways that are unprofessional — anger, shouting at people, rude remarks and lack of compassion.”

Physician burnout is linked to physicians losing a sense of control over their own practice, weakened connections with patients and colleagues, a work-life imbalance and uncontrolled stress. The pandemic has exacerbated concern over physician burnout, as COVID-19 surges overwhelmed medical systems.

Additionally, women in medicine consistently register higher stress and burnout scores, according to Kristine Olson, Chief Wellness Officer at the Yale New Haven Health System. She said that during the pandemic, female physicians were more “withdrawn from professional activities” such as academic research and grants, which mark the milestones of career advancement. Pre-pandemic,

childcare and domestic responsibilities disproportionately fell on women compared to their male counterparts. However, with schools and other social support networks shutting down during the pandemic, households were required to provide childcare on their own, exacerbating stresses put on women in medicine.

When the pandemic hit, Yale Internal Medicine resident Nathan Wood was pulled out of normal rotations to work in the COVID-19 intensive care units.

The year 2020 marked his “winter of discontent.” There were no vaccines, patients were dying “left and right” and life was still far from normal. By only being able to see respiratory illness in “patient after patient,” Wood also felt like he was unable to use his clinical training period to learn about other important diseases that he would need to treat as a physician.

“A common feeling of burnout is this depersonalization, where you feel like a cog in the wheel,” Wood said. “Many of us felt like we were warm bodies who could write prescriptions and hook up oxygen and and as soon as we did that and one patient got better, there was another patient who presented in the exact same way … it just became like this never ending revolving door of sickness that we didn’t really have good treatments for.”

Wood encountered difficulty disconnecting his mind from the trauma of the day. According to Olson, a third of health care workers have faced excessive exposure to death or threat of death as a result of the pandemic. As Wood found, the emotional exhaustion and fatigue experienced by healthcare workers was “an unspoken truth.” There was a “fear” that acknowledging these complex emotions felt by the community would only exacerbate the feelings.

Wood stated that this coping mechanism pervaded the medical community. It was not just individuals that were burnt out, but largely “the entire medical profession,” Wood said.

“There’s only so much that’s within [medical professionals’] power when it comes to positive behavioral change and mental reframing and self care, etc. that can positively impact burnout,” Wood said. “There are some systematic changes, like more time off, decluttering the electronic medical record and providing more support staff and giving more time with patients that really will need to change in order to positively impact physician burnout on a community level.”

According to Wood, the Yale New Haven Health System allocated a few days of break every week to Internal Medicine intern residents during the early months of the pandemic. Yale was one of the first healthcare systems to establish a chief wellness officer position, which is a role dedicated to the wellness of physicians.

Olson began this position in March 2020, right before the pandemic hit the United States.

Olson stated that in the past, healthcare executives and the public might have seen physicians’ complaints about the healthcare system as “ungrateful” or “disruptive.”

But, once the nationwide wellness assessments validated physicians’ concerns and showed that half of physicians were experiencing burnout, it galvanized a movement.

“When one is ‘called’ to duty for the social or moral good and has great responsibility, not being able to perform your best sometimes feels like a ‘moral injury’ and can develop into ‘compassion fatigue’ or ‘burnout’ when facing obstacles in accomplishing goals or living up to one’s expectation for mastery,” Olson said. “We want to create an environment that facilitates, not frustrates, people trying to be their best. What we know about physician burnout applies to other industries too, and informs us on the country’s ‘great resignation.’”

According to Olson, the pandemic could serve as a catalyst for personal growth, helping some people find meaning beyond themselves. In a JAMA article, Olson and Shanafelt proposed a post-traumatic growth model for organizations to incorporate in reflections on surviving a “traumatic disaster.” She hopes to use this model to discover healthcare systems’ lessons learned during recovery from the pandemic, through events that promote open discussion of physician wellness and trauma.

“In the struggle to find stability after a traumatic event, some people may discover post-traumatic growth,” Olson said. “[They are] stronger than they thought, open to new possibilities, [have a] greater appreciation, deeper relationships, and a greater sense of spirituality — meaning, something beyond oneself.”

Sixty percent of emergency medicine physicians reported feeling burnout in 2021, the highest of all specialties Contact KAYLA YUP at kayla.yup@yale.edu .

Study reveals disparate environmental protection

BY BRIAN ZHANG STAFF REPORTER Underlying the strict air pollution regulations in California is a failure to provide proportionate protection to people from minority and low-income neighborhoods, a team of Yale and University of California, San Diego researchers found.

When Luke Sanford, assistant professor of environmental policy and governance, and his colleagues at the Yale School of the Environment were walking down the streets of San Diego at the height of the pandemic, they saw almost no cars. A feeling of austerity and quiet permeated the cityscape that was once vibrant with beach life and traffic. Multiple pieces of published literature already detail how the pandemic as a whole helped curb air pollution, but the group was specifically interested in how changes in air quality varied across different neighborhoods in California. After checking the air quality sensors in a number of cities, they found significant disparities among communities in exactly how much air quality improved.

The team’s work was published in the journal Nature Sustainability.

“In places where primarily white people live in — people with higher income — there wasn’t actually that much of a change in air quality,” Sanford said. “And then in places where Hispanic, Latinx and Asian people lived in — people with lower incomes, there were much larger reductions in air pollution.”

According to Sanford, there are two ways to approach this

data. While one can see the improvements in air quality in communities of color and lower socioeconomic status as a sign of progress, the team of researchers preferred to go backwards in time — to use the pandemic data to envision the historical inequalities that existed in pre-pandemic times, as well as explore what charted such inequalities in the first place.

According to Richard Bluhm, an assistant professor of macroeconomics at Leibniz University Hannover, before the COVID19 pandemic broke out, the task to determine the most important factor leading to disparities in air quality across communities was challenging, given the U.S.’ longstanding history of environmental injustice and confounding variables in power plant generation, climate and road density.

However, with the shutdown of the transportation sector, the pandemic presented the perfect opportunity to study a California that has strayed away from its pre-pandemic in-person economy. After finding that power plant generation levels did not change much during the pandemic, Sanford’s team pointed to transportation as the main culprit for these disparities across communities: a 97 percent reduction in overall transportation emissions during COVID-19 led to major improvements in air quality for communities that had poor air quality before the pandemic.

By t ra c k i n g a n o ny m o u s GPS ping data from mobile phones across communities, the researchers learned that during

the pandemic, people whose home locations were registered as part of primarily minority and low-income neighborhoods commuted for longer than their white counterparts.

According to Sanford and Bluhm, one possible explanation for this is that people of color made up an overwhelming proportion of the essential workforce. Initially, this finding did not align with the fact that air quality improved much more in communities of color than in white communities — should more frequent driving not correlate with greater emissions levels and thus poorer air quality?

“Is it you driving around or is it everybody else driving through your neighborhood that’s causing [these] pollution disparities?” said Bluhm, suggesting that more people were driving through communities of color during pre-pandemic times.

This aligns with the fact that historically, freeways in California have been built through communities of color, said Pascal Polonik, a doctoral candidate at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

Bluhm added that there were further disparities within communities of color. For Asian and Hispanic-dominated neighborhoods, the once-steep pollution curves now resembled horizontal lines, supporting that air quality was improving drastically. For Black communities, however, there was very minimal change to the curves — an issue that Bluhm said requires further

JESSAI FLORES/STAFF ILLUSTRATOR

Though the pandemic curbed air pollution across California, researchers found incredible disparities among communities. investigation and more data, given the underrepresentation of Black populations in California.

Moving forward, the group hopes that their work will bring to light which factors state officials choose to consider and prioritize when creating and implementing environment-related policies. Sanford noted that there is currently no equality standard for air pollution in California.

Such a standard would be a critical measure to account for the disparities in air pollution and extent of environmental justice across communities.

“This is systemic,” Polonik said.

“There is probably no single way to address the issue … but policies that [engage] transit and non-car usage would … be beneficial.”

Based on a 2018 analysis of 112 Californian cities, the state averaged a fine particulate matter concentration of 12.1 μg/m3, which exceeds the World Health Organization recommendation at an annual exposure of 10 μg/m3.

Contact BRIAN ZHANG at brian.zhang@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

Yale student receives prestigious astronomy fellowship

COURTESY OF GIRI VISHWANATHAN

BY GIRI VISWANATHAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Malena Rice GRD ’22 has spent her academic career as an astronomer gazing into the farthest expanses of the solar system. Now, her research on the distant solar system has earned her a prestigious postgraduate fellowship, counting her among eight of the nation’s most promising early-career astronomy researchers.

This year, Rice was named a 51 Pegasi b Fellow by the Heising-Simons Foundation, which awarded her a three-year grant of up to $385,000 to pursue postgraduate research in planetary astronomy. Eight recent doctorates from across the country were awarded the prestigious fellowship. Rice plans on using the fellowship’s funds to research the distant solar system as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT. “This really is my dream job,” Rice said. “I’d be working with a really incredible group of people. It’s just an amazing team that is so multifaceted and so talented. And [the fellowship] allows me the flexibility to basically just do whatever research I want to do.

It’s with a really fantastic group doing

the research that I’m most excited about, so I really could not be happier about it.”

Rice, who defended her dissertation in February, will be starting her fellowship in June working with the team of George Ricker, a senior research scientist at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. The research that she aspires to do expands on part of her dissertation work, investigating the distant solar system and unexplored objects within it.

Rice notes that the farthest parts of the solar system she hopes to research are the “least well understood.” Many objects in the outer solar system are relatively unexplored: Since they don’t emit light, those bodies are only detected with reflected light from the sun, which can be difficult given the distance that sunlight must travel to reach those objects and reflect back to Earth.

“The goal of this research is to better understand those populations to understand what they can tell us about planetary system formation more broadly, how our solar system fits into a broader context of all planetary systems and what our place is in the universe,” Rice said.

According to Greg Laughlin, a professor of astronomy at Yale and Rice’s dissertation advisor, Rice’s work connects detailed observations of “small bodies” in our own Solar System to larger conclusions regarding the “formation and evolution of planetary systems orbiting other stars.”

“With Malena’s work, we’re gaining profound improvements in our understanding of how the familiar objects in our Solar System are placed within the entire galactic census of planetary systems,” Laughlin wrote to the News. “This in turn gives us a sense of Earth’s uniqueness that cannot be obtained in any other way.”

According to Sarbani Basu, a professor of astronomy and chair of the astronomy department, Rice’s work has spanned other research in planetary sciences as well. She’s been involved in ways to discover the purported Planet IX — a hypothetical ninth planet in the outer solar system — among other undiscovered solar system objects.

Rice has also conducted research about the formation of exoplanets, or planets that orbit stars outside of the solar system. She’s investigated how hot Jupiters, or Jupiter-sized planets that orbit close to a host star, are formed and has explored methods of applying machine learning techniques to characterize exoplanet hosts.

During her fellowship, Rice plans to analyze data collected from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, a space mission designed to collect information about exoplanets. While Rice will be utilizing the dataset to research solar systems, she notes that others around her will be exploring other topics using the same data.

“I think it’ll be really great to be working with people who are looking at the same data for completely different purposes,” Rice said. “Because that is a really wonderful playground

for creativity, to just have lots of people thinking about the same thing in very different ways.”

Rice is also eager to take advantage of the flexible nature of the fellowship. She noted that while many postdoctoral positions hire researchers for specific tasks, limiting the ability of researchers to pursue creative interests, the 51 Pegasi b Fellowship allows fellows to “follow [their] instincts and [their] interest in science to [their] heart’s content.”

Rice says that she looks forward to using that flexibility to approach her own research on solar systems and exoplanets in a multifaceted way.

According to Basu, Yale has hosted two postdoctoral researchers through the 51 Pegasi b Fellowship before: Songhu Wang, a member of the inaugural 51 Pegasi b cohort who is now a faculty member at Indiana University, and Rachael Roettenbacher, who chose to remain at Yale after her fellowship. This year, another graduating student, Joel Ong GRD ’22, received the Sagan Fellowship, a different postdoctoral astronomy fellowship.

Laughlin noted that the 51 Pegasi b Fellowship is considered to be the most prestigious opportunity for scientists setting out on a career in the astronomy of extrasolar planets.

Basu agreed, noting that “it means a lot to get either of these fellowships.”

“This is the first time that one of our graduating students has received [the 51 Pegasi b Fellowship], so it means a lot to our exoplanet effort,” Basu wrote to the News. “It means a great deal for our program, which is smaller than that of our peer institutions, to have two of our graduating students get prestigious postdoc offers.”

The 51 Pegasi b Fellowship was established in 2017 and is named for the first exoplanet discovered orbiting a Sun-like star.

Contact GIRI VISWANATHAN at giri.viswanathan@yale.edu .

Yale-led study finds racial and ethnic disparities in sleep duration

BY SOPHIE WANG STAFF REPORTER Disparities in sleep duration between Black people and white people have existed without improvement over a period of 15 years, and sleep disparities between Latino or Hispanic people and white people have increased during that period, researchers found.

A paper published in early April illustrating these findings is part of a series of studies that the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, or CORE, has been conducting in collaboration with other institutions around racial and ethnic disparities in different health indicators. This specific research study utilized data from the National Health Interview Survey, which has been conducted annually across the nation since 1957. The team specifically looked at data from 2004 through 2018, since in those years, the survey consistently asked respondents how much they slept each day on average.

“What motivated us to study this is to see if there has been any improvement in eliminating sleep disparities by race and ethnicity over a 15-year period of time,” said César Caraballo-Cordovez, a postdoctoral associate in CORE and the first author of the paper. “It’s very complex because sleep is obviously … a basic need, but it’s influenced by several factors, and we interpret these as an indicator of overall health … We cannot say what is driving these disparities. However, there has been a lot of research using different sources in which they have tried to determine why there is this disparity.”

Caraballo-Cordovez explained that the recommended duration of sleep is between seven to nine hours each night. The team looked at the prevalence of both short and long sleep

duration among four major groups: Black people, Latino or Hispanic people, Asian people and white people. Upon comparing the differences between the groups, they found that Black people reported the highest prevalence of both short and long sleep duration –– conditions which can be harmful to health. Furthermore, upon investigating whether there were changes over the years, they found that the prevalence of short sleep duration and disparity in short sleep duration did not change significantly for Black people. In addition to the fact that there have not been any improvements in eliminating the sleep disparities between Black people and white people, the disparity between Latino or Hispanic people and white people was nonexistent in 2004 but present in 2018.

Jeph Herrin, assistant professor of medicine and co-author of the paper, noted that there are differences in the effects of short and long sleep durations. From a health perspective, those who do not get an adequate amount of sleep are likely to face different health concerns than those who sleep for long durations. According to him, this creates “two different sides of the coin,” where experts need to address the different causes for each kind of sleep habit.

Caraballo-Cordovez noted that Chandra Jackson, a co-author and member of the National Institutes of Health, has tried to understand the driving factors behind the disparities. According to him, some factors they found are that Black people in the U.S. have more “barriers to achieve healthy sleep,” including stress from finances, racial discrimination or housing struggles. In addition, noise, light and air pollution may also be factors. Furthermore, job conditions such as lon-

CECILIA LEE/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

ger working hours, having multiple jobs and taking on many shifts can prevent them from being able to get more rest.

Since this is a very complex issue, as Caraballo-Cordovez described, there aren’t any “simple solutions.”

He mentioned that one method would be to improve campaigns to better inform people of the importance of healthy sleep. However, unless the underlying causes of the disparities are addressed, the campaigns’ impacts may be “limited.”

“Differences in income, differences in working conditions, in stress … those are the structural things that are disproportionately preventing Black people in the U.S. from having good sleep, but also overall health,” Caraballo-Cordovez said. “Equity, in this case, will be

achieved when everyone in the U.S. could have the tools necessary to maintain and achieve a healthy life and a healthy sleep.”

In terms of future research, Yuan Lu, assistant professor at the School of Management and co-author, said that the team has “a full body of work to look at racial-ethnic disparities.” The researchers want to use the data from the survey to determine whether the U.S. has made any progress in reducing racial and ethnic differences over different health indicators other than sleep, which include overall health, access to care and hypertension.

The CORE office is located at 195 Church St. Contact SOPHIE WANG at sophie.wang@yale.edu .

PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

THROUGH THE LENS

W

illiam Tisdale arrived at Gateway Community College early on a Tuesday morning to plant trees. The job was strenuous and the weather was rainy, but the excitement in Tisdale’s voice was palpable.

“I love this job, wouldn’t change it,” he said. “Trees are a new beginning. You plant a tree, it’s like new life.”

Tisdale is the field crew representative for the Urban Resources Initiative, or URI, a community forestry nonprofit affiliated with the Yale School of the Environment. Throughout the spring and fall, URI’s GreenSkills program plants hundreds of free trees throughout New Haven, focusing on low-income and BIPOC neighborhoods that have unequal access to greenspaces. URI also partners with the nonprofit EMERGE to provide employment to the recently incarcerated. Since 2007, the group has planted nearly 10,000 trees across the city.

In New Haven, as in most American cities, wealthier and whiter neighborhoods tend to have higher tree cover, according to GreenSkills intern Eliza Lord ’24.

URI’s outreach efforts center on lower-income, majority Black and Brown areas. Lord emphasized that trees must be planted by request: URI only puts trees where residents want them.

URI’s services are completely free — the nonprofit covers the cost of the trees themselves, in addition to site visits and planting. They accept requests from any New Haven resident with available street space and a willingness to water the tree for its first three years.

“Maybe sometime, I might be walking around here with my family or some friends or something, and I can say, ‘I helped plant these trees right here,’” crew member Jimmy Robinson said. “I would have something to do with the beautification of the city.”

Words by SADIE BOGRAD. Photos by TIM TAI.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

BULLETIN BOARD

CECILIA LEE is a sophomore in Saybrook College.

Contact her at cecilia.lee@yale.edu .

EMILY CAI is a first-year in Pauli Murray College.

Contact her at emily.cai@yale.edu.

GIOVANNA TRUONG is a sophomore in Saybrook College.

Contact her at giovanna.truong@yale.edu.

KAIA MLADENOVA is a sophomore in Saybrook College.

Contact her at giovanna.truong@yale.edu.

JESSAI FLORES is a sophomore in Pierson College.

Contact him at jessai.flores@yale.edu.

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

“We wouldn’t be spending $2 million a month if we weren’t serious about staying in Oakland” DAVE KAVAL OAKLAND ATHLETICS PRESIDENT

No. 25 Elis lacrosse trounces Big Red Being ranked second-to-last in the Ivy preseason poll, the young Eli team has surpassed all expectations. However, the season is not over yet, and the team must remain composed for the final games leading into the postseason.

“We were preseason seventh in the Ivy League, so regardless of if we are now top 25 or not, we will continue to play with that chip on our shoulder,” captain Kelsey Dunn ’22 said.

After hosting the UConn MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM The Bulldogs will continue their conference schedule with a home game Huskies on Wednesday, April 20 against Columbia (2–10, 0–4). at 4 p.m., the Elis will return to fought to winning scores of Reese Stadium to play Columbia 15–9 and 16–14, respectively. on Saturday, April 23 at noon.

W LACROSSE FROM PAGE 14 Over the weekend, the Bull- As the final weekend home game dogs will continue their conference of the season, the seniors will be squads able to pull off vic- schedule with a home game against honored ahead of the opening tories against Cornell and Columbia (2–10, 0–4). Bringing up draw with the Lions.

Albany. While UConn took the rear in the Ivy League, the Lions down the Big Red 20–14 and are currently on a 10-game losing Contact MELANIE HELLER at the Great Danes 16–11, Yale streak. melanie.heller@yale.edu.

Sotheby's auctions 1852 regatta oar CREW FROM PAGE 14 ing the most important sports artifacts, and we’re thrilled to once again present for sale a landmark piece of American sports history.”

In 1843, Yale University founded the first collegiate crew team in the United States. Harvard University followed a year later by founding their boat club. Although both organizations primarily served social purposes, in 1852 Yale oarsman James Whiton suggested a race between Yale and Harvard to test the “might” of the two universities’ rowers. Whiton met the superintendent of the Boston, Concord and Montreal Railroad James Whiton, who also encouraged the proposal for a race.

This May, Sotheby’s will auction the 1852 Trophy Oars from the inaugural Yale-Harvard Regatta.

Established in 1744, Sotheby's is a British-founded American multinational corporation, one of the world’s largest brokers of fine and decorative art and luxury. Sothe-

The Bulldogs nearly got shutout on Saturday, a 9–1 loss in only five innings. In NCAA Division I softball, if a team leads by eight or more runs after five innings, the game is called.

The Elis met this fate twice this past weekend.

Conway got the start in the weekend’s first contest, but exited after a rough three innings. Pitcher Miranda Papes ’22 allowed just one hit in her two innings of relief. On the offensive side, Yale did not record a hit until the fourth inning when centerfielder Alex Perren ’25 singled to start the inning. A few batters later, third baseman Willa Ferrer ’24 singled to score Perren and get the Bulldogs on the board.

Game two proved to be an even tougher challenge for Yale, as the Bulldogs were no-hit in a 12–0 five inning loss. Maddie Latta ’25 took the mound for head coach Jen Goodwin’s squad, but only pitched two innings. Papes and Conway combined to finish off the remaining three.

“In terms of pitching preparation, I strive to go into each game mentally and physically ready,” Latta said. “I have a game day routine that I like to follow when warming up … Ivy League play has been both a fun ride and a learning process for me. I have come away with many valuable lessons and have made some unforgettable memories with my teammates and coaches.”

Princeton’s junior pitcher Alexis Laudenslager struck out ten batters in her five innings of work.

Laudenslager leads the Tigers with a 2.50 earned run average and a 1.29 WHIP, or walks and hits for innings

TENNIS FROM PAGE 14 Akanksha Bhan and Cheng posted a 7–5, 6–1 win over Shivani Amineni.

Yale’s women’s team still stands at No. 59 in the national rankings. Princeton continues to lead the Ivy League at No. 50, followed by No. 63 Columbia and No. 72 Harvard.

The men’s team had a rocky weekend at home, suffering a tight 3–4 loss to Cornell on Saturday and a wider 1–6 loss against Columbia on Sunday.

Michael Sun ’23 led the team in singles, followed by Theo Dean ’24, Cody Lin ’22, Aidan Reilly ’25, Walker Oberg ’25 and Luke Neal ’25.

Lin and Renaud Lefevre ’24 headed the team in doubles, ahead of Dean with Reilly and Sun with Neal.

Dean and Reilly dominated their No. 2 doubles match with scores of 6–2 on both days. In singles, Dean defeated Cornell’s Vladislav Melnic, currently ranked No. 105 nationally, 6–3, 7–5 and obliterated Columbia’s Hugo Hashimoto 6–0, 6–0.

“Theo is an extremely hard worker whose approach to his development is very professional,” men’s head coach Chris Drake said.

Yale’s men’s team has still struggled to crack the top 75

nationwide rankings. No. 13 Harvard continues to lead the Ivy League, followed by No. 25 Columbia, No. 39 Princeton, No. 42 Penn and No. 59 Cornell.

This weekend, the women will trek to Hanover to take on Dartmouth (7–11, 1–4) on Friday and will honor their seniors as they welcome Harvard (12–9, 3–2) to Cullman-Heyman on Sunday.

Wang expressed her excitement for Senior Day on Sunday and for the opportunity to challenge Harvard one last time.

The men will host the Big Green (8–11, 0–5) for the men’s Senior Day on Friday and travel to Cambridge to take on the Crimson (15–4, 5–0) on Sunday.

“Our team will focus on doubles a lot in the coming week.

We lost both doubles points this weekend and doubles is very important to the team matches,” Neal said. “I am most looking forward to having our final matches: senior day against Dartmouth and then ending the season playing Harvard.”

The Yale-Harvard matches will be the Bulldogs’ last regular-season matches.

Contact GRAYSON LAMBERT at grayson.lambert@yale.edu.

YALE DAILY NEWS

The lot auction is worth an estimate of three to five million. The oars were discovered 30 years ago in the basement of a house in Medford. by’s operates through auctions and buy-now channels including private sales, e-commerce and retail in order to preserve fine art and rare objects, promote access and connoisseurship.

The lot auction is worth an estimate of three to five million. The oars were discovered 30 years ago in the basement of a house in Medford, Massachusetts. Since that time, they have remained in the family’s private collection.

Softball falls to Princeton SOFTBALL FROM PAGE 14

Men's tennis falls to Columbia, Cornell

pitched. Sunday marked her second no-hitter of the season, with the first coming in a full seven inning contest against Brown. According to Princeton Athletics, the junior is the second Tiger in program history to record two no-hitters in the same year and the first to do so against two Ivy opponents.

Yale put up a much stronger fight in game three and narrowly lost the contest 5–4. Conway pitched a complete game, only allowing two earned runs, with three additional unearned runs scoring in the first inning.

The Bulldogs recorded their first run of the day in the bottom of the first, when catcher Sam Goodcase ’24 doubled to score shortstop Carolyn Skotz ’24. Ferrer singled later in the inning, scoring two runs and tying the game at three.

In the sixth, with Yale facing a two run deficit following Tiger runs in the third and fourth innings, Latta homered to bring the Elis within one. In the bottom of the seventh, Yale was able to get two base runners aboard, but Princeton relief pitcher Molly Chambers shut the door and struck out Goodcase, the Ivy League’s leader in batting average at an eye-popping .397.

“This year playing in the Ivy League has been different for me personally because the only other year I played I was a freshman so now I am the one who is supposed to be experienced and know what I’m doing,” Conway told the News. “In terms of ability I think we have a very talented team this year. We have had more obstacles than we ever could have imagined so far, but have managed to fight through.”

Yale will host Cornell this weekend in its final home series of the year.

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

The online sale will be open for the bidding period between May 17 and 24. There will be an exhibition at Sotheby’s York Avenue galleries open to the public from May 19 to 23.

After a three-year hiatus, the next Yale-Harvard Regatta will take place on June 11 in New London, CT. Contact NICOLE RODRIGUEZ at nicole.rodriguez.nr444@yale.edu and GAMZE KAZAKOGLU at gamze.kazakoglu@yale.edu

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS,COM

Dean and Reilly dominated their No. 2 doubles match with scores of 6–2 on both days.

Men's golf sweeps spring inviational

COURETSY OF YALE ATHLETICS

The Bulldogs began the competition by finishing the first round in seventh place with a score of 294.

GOLF FROM PAGE 14 after not the best start in the morning which was great to see. I know everyone's really looking forward to this weekend, and last weekend was a great way to go into it.”

The Bulldogs began the competition by finishing the first round in seventh place with a score of 294, or 14 over par. Rookie Blake Brantley ’25 earned the Blue and White’s best result in this round by tying for sixth with a score of 71 — or one over par — followed by Gabriel Ruiz ’24, who tied for 13th with a score of 72.

Jumping up the leaderboard, the Bulldogs finished the second round in first place, with Brantley placing third overall with a score of 140, or on par.

Ruiz tied for fifth with a score of 142 while Darren Lin ’22 tied for 12th by earning 145. Playing for Yale’s B-team, Ben Carpenter ’25 rounded out the Bulldogs’ top-20 finishers with a score of 146 to tie for 18th. “[It’s] always awesome to play a tournament at the Yale course,” Gabriel Ruiz ’24 said. “I really appreciate that my friends can come out to

watch and the home course advantage is always nice.”

On Saturday, friends, family and women’s team members traveled to the course to watch the competition. The Bulldogs typically play invitationals rather than home or away matches. This year, the team was able to host a home invitational in both the fall and spring for the first time since the 201819 season. When the Bulldogs won the MacDonald Cup in the fall, three Bulldogs finished in the top ten.

At the spring invitational, the Bulldogs led the field in terms of par-four averages with a statistic of 4.10. Individually, Brantley had the most pars, with 28 throughout the 36-hole competition. Lin sunk eight birdies to tie for the most earned.

“Last weekend was a really great team win,” Brantley said. “To have a lot of people come out and support and then go get it done at our home course was a huge confidence boost for us. We’ve been working really hard so to get that little extra bit of momentum going into Ivy’s this weekend is exactly what we needed.”

The Bulldogs’ most recent victory comes just one weekend before the Ivy Championships.

Both the men’s and women’s squads will travel south this coming weekend but will play at different courses from Friday through Sunday. The women will travel to Ringoes, New Jersey to play at the Ridge at Back Brook while the men will play at the Century Country Club in Purchase, New York.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, neither team has played in an Ivy Championship since the spring of 2019. According to an April 19th Golfstat report, the men’s team is ranked 167 nationally — the highest in the Ivy League — and its closest Ancient Eight competitor is traditional nemesis Harvard, ranked 180.

“The team has been grinding hard all week,” Carpenter said after the invitational. “Hopefully we can build off last week’s home win and string together three good days.”

The Bulldogs last won an Ivy title in 2018.

Contact HAMERA SHABBIR at hamera.shabbir@yale.edu

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 11

“In every wood in every spring there is a different green.”

J. R. R. TOLKIEN WRITER

City unveils gun violence prevention initiative

BY SYLVAN LEBRUN AND HANNAH QU STAFF REPORTERS New Haven has launched a new gun violence prevention program aimed at helping formerly incarcerated adults who are at risk of becoming victims or perpetrators of gun violence.

On April 14, Mayor Justin Elicker, joined by Community Services Administrator Mehul Dalal and Department of Community Resilience Acting Director Carlos Sosa-Lombardo, along with a coalition of community, city, state and federal partners, announced the first phase of a new gun violence prevention initiative by the New Haven Office of Violence Prevention. The initiative, titled “PRESS: Program for Reintegration, Engagement, Safety, and Support,” aims to provide supportive case management for individuals returning from incarceration with a current or prior conviction of a firearm-related offense, as well as for gang or group members who are identified to be at higher risk of involvement with firearms. But several local activists argued that the initiative was merely a bandage to a problem that stemmed from a lack of social support.

“The theme of the day is collaborating together to solve the challenges that our community faces.” Elicker said at the press conference. “This program is very connected with what we see, oftentimes every week and today, the challenges that we see are a smaller group of people are involved in significant problematic behaviors.”

In recent years, the city has seen a rise in gun violence cases.

Twenty-five homicides took place in 2021 — the highest record in 10 years. 347 confirmed shots were fired that year, almost one a day on average and a 27 percent increase from the 2020 tally. The 274 confirmed shots fired in 2020 was 81 percent higher than the 151 in 2019.

Seventy shots have been fired this year, with 20 non-fatal shootings and two homicides, according to Connecticut Against Gun Violence Executive Director Jeremy Stein.

“This is a public health crisis.”

Stein said. “Despite these numbers, we applaud the city of New Haven for recognizing that something else must be done in addition to traditional policing.”

The PRESS initiative is headed by the Department of Community Resilience and partners with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Connecticut (Project Safe Neighborhoods), Connecticut State Department of Correction (DOC), Connecticut Court Support Services Division (Adult Probation Services), New Haven Police Department, New Haven Health Department, Yale New Haven Hospital, Project M.O.R.E, Connecticut Violence Intervention Program (CT VIP) and Project Longevity.

The city has held nine public listening sessions, with the most recent one having taken place last Thursday night, to hear from the communities that have been most affected by gun violence.

The initiative’s goals are twofold: to reduce shooting incidents by fostering collaboration between violence prevention partners and initiatives, and to ​“coordinate service delivery for those at high risk of being perpetrators or victims of shootings,” according to Elicker.

According to Sosa-Lombardo, the first phase of the program commenced three weeks ago.

In the first phase, staff from probation, parole, the New Haven Police Department and the Department of Corrections work together to create a list of recently incarcerated people who have the potential to be involved in gun violence. The list will then be distributed to Project M.O.R.E., Project Longevity or CT VIP. Those groups will collaborate with other service agencies across the city to offer mental health treatment, substance disorder treatment, housing support, job opportunities and other resources.

Meanwhile, a database will be used to track operations and better understand their effectiveness.

The New Haven Health Department will take the lead on tracking and analyzing data to create reports for the program.

“PRESS closes the gap in the post-incarceration safety net,” Sosa-Lombardo said.

According to a Thursday press release by Director of Communications Len Speiller, in phase II of the initiative, the state Department of Correction will conduct case management with individuals sentenced in relation to crimes involving guns prior to their release from prison.

In phase III, he said, a coordinator of the Office of Violence Prevention will be hired by the city and law enforcement training on social network analysis will take place. Speiller wrote in the release that this training aims to “improve data-driven services and operations.”

The PRESS program will also serve gun offenders on probation and parolees by improving their social services support and increasing access to pro-social activities.

“Through this whole system approach, we are putting people at the center, we’re stepping up in social services, while law enforcement can focus on targeted deterrence and enforcing the law.”

Sosa-Lombardo said.

NHPD Assistant Chief Karl Jacobson noted that years ago they tried to pair people who were recently released at the police station with officers, which is not the right approach as “when you get out of jail, the last thing you want to do is go to the police station and meet police.”

HANNAH QU/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The program will engage formerly incarcerated citizens at higher risk of being the victims or perpetrators of gun violence.

Jacobson said that having non-police involvement in this program is the “right approach.”

New Haven currently has a series of programs that aim to help people at risk of gun violence. Youth Connect focuses on youth that are at high risk of getting involved in violence, Project Longevity works with curbing gang violence by supporting members and Project M.O.R.E. provides reentry services such as housing, mental health services, substance use disorder services, employment, clothing and other basic needs.

When asked about the difference between PRESS and existing programs like Project Longevity and Project Safe Neighborhoods, Sosa-Lombardo said that while Project Longevity helps gang members in the form of call-ins and conferences, PRESS enables state law enforcement to “tap into​ the existing networks” at Project M.O.R.E. and CT VIP with case managers, street outreach and peer support specialists.

A number of local activists characterized the new initiative as disappointing in its reliance on law enforcement and its failure to engage with community-run gun violence prevention efforts in the city.

Manuel Camacho, youth president of anti-violence group Ice the Beef and a junior at James Hillhouse High School, noted that his organization had not been contacted for input even once during the initiative’s planning process, despite being a strong activist presence in the city for over a decade on this issue.

Although Camacho applauded the initiative’s intentions to support the reintegration of formerly

incarcerated individuals into the community, he questioned whether the priority of “collaboration” would truly be fulfilled. He warned of a scenario in which the program would simply become a monopoly between City Hall and statewide organizations like [CT Against Gun Violence] and CT VIP, urging the city to engage a wide variety of groups with experience doing ground-level work in the community.

Like Camacho, Barbara Fair, a social worker and activist with Stop Solitary CT, had not been consulted in the initiative’s planning process and did not know of anyone else who had. She emphasized that the program was the “same old suspects, same old programs” — working with the Department of Corrections, Project Longevity, and the police department instead of community groups.

“I was disappointed, as I usually am when these so-called programs come together, because [PRESS] didn’t focus on addressing the root causes of crime and violence, which primarily is poverty or lack of opportunity, mental illness, drug addiction, homelessness,” Fair said. “It’s just always disheartening that we continue to do the same old thing and expect a different result.”

Fair told the News that instead of focusing solely on post-incarceration reentry, the city should also invest in preventing youth from going through the prison system in the first place, as well as address injustices and racial bias in the criminal justice system. Furthermore, Fair said, existing probation and parole programs do not help residents feel supported, but “instead, they feel policed.”

At the press conference, Jacobson provided a brief update on the shooting incident that took place outside of Reggie Mayo preschool on Goffe Street on Tuesday afternoon.

According to Jacobson, 23 shots were fired in total. The three individuals that are suspects and were apprehended are all known to the NHPD, and two of them are juveniles.

“This is exactly the type of individual that can be supported and held by this type of program,” Jacobson said. “Someone that’s known to us as someone that has a history of engagement in problematic behavior, that we want to work to help support to prevent future incidents of violence.”

Referencing the same incident, Camacho argued for the importance of initiatives, like those similar to Ice the Beef, that focus on preventative programming and support for youth.

Like Fair, Camacho said that PRESS does not seem to address the root causes of the issue at hand.

He argued instead for an approach that cuts off the cycle of violence before incarceration.

“Imagine if it could have been different, if those three teenagers were not on the streets but instead were in a program that helped foster their passions, their dreams, and their aspirations in life,” said Camacho. “If we have these things, we can truly get work done. A lot of times, these entities just overlook that, that simple factor.”

The City of New Haven is using federal American Rescue Plan (ARP) dollars to fund the initiative.

Contact SYLVAN LEBRUN at sylvan.lebrun@yale.edu and HANNAH QU at hannah.qu@yale.edu .

Prof. chairs committee for artificial intelligence institute

COURTESY OF DRAGOMIR RADEV

Dragomir Radev traveled to Bulgaria to speak at the launch event for INSAIT, the first artificial intelligence and computer science institute in Eastern Europe.

BY ANIKA SETH STAFF REPORTER Located halfway across the world, Eastern Europe’s first artificial intelligence and computer science institute launched last week with the support of Yale computer science professor Dragomir Radev.

On April 11, Bulgaria’s Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology (INSAIT) launched, marking

a particularly significant moment in the development of global computer science scholarship. INSAIT is the first institute of its kind in all of Eastern Europe, and Radev is taking a major role in the institute’s kickoff as he is chairing the institute’s advisory committee.

“This is the largest investment in AI and CS in a Eastern European University ever,” Radev wrote in an email to the News. “It will be a life changer for the country and for the

region. I am very excited to be the chair of its advisory committee.”

For Radev, this is particularly meaningful because INSAIT’s location in Sofia, Bulgaria is his “native city,” as per Yale’s computer science department website.

INSAIT was developed in collaboration with ETH Zurich, a public research institute in Switzerland, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne. INSAIT’s stated goal is “scientific excellence” in a multitude of categories: engaging in research, promoting international outreach and collaboration and educating youth in the field.

INSAIT’s advisory board, which Radev chairs, is composed of computer scientists from top-ranked universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University and Cornell University, as well as members of other universities and prominent technology companies. INSAIT’s website also specifically acknowledges advisory support from academics in “some of the most elite” American, European and Israeli schools and research teams.

INSAIT offers positions to faculty to engage in research, as well as a doctoral program for graduate studies. Currently, the institute is working to develop a masters program that is set to launch in 2023.

In addition to Radev, notable speakers at the April 11 launch event included Bulgarian Prime Minister

Kiril Petkov, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, Head of Google’s artificial intelligence division Jeff Dean, and the presidents of the two Swiss universities heavily involved in INSAIT’s creation.

Slav Petrov, a senior research director at Google, discussed some of the implications that INSAIT’s development will have on Bulgaria during his speech at the launch event.

“Bulgaria has become part of the growing digital and tech economy in the region [of Eastern Europe], and at Google, we believe strongly that Bulgaria has a significant further potential for economic growth arising from digital transformation,” Petrov said at the launch event. “There is a vibrant startup ecosystem, skilled labor force and companies that are using the potential of these opportunities … and I’m sure that a worldclass research center like INSAIT will jumpstart new collaborations with the local ecosystem and help it thrive.”

Petrov is also on the advisory board for INSAIT. He noted that throughout his career as a computer scientist in Germany and the United States, he has observed a disproportionately high number of Eastern European computer scientists — which, he said, is partly why INSAIT’s placement within Bulgaria excites him.

In addition to Google, companies like DeepMind and Amazon are also providing financial support to INSAIT.

Chairing the INSAIT supervisory committee is Martin Vechev, a professor at the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich.

Vechev spoke about the “brain drain” that Bulgaria is experiencing in computer science and discussed INSAIT as potentially helping remedy this trend.

“Eastern Europe is full of bright scientific minds – but too often, people’s aspirations are limited due to lack of facilities, funding and support,” Vechev said. “This has resulted in a ‘brain drain’ away from Eastern Europe, a systemic problem that is discouraging innovation. INSAIT is perfectly placed to reverse this trend and compete on a worldwide scale.

AWS, Google and DeepMind understand the importance of bridging science and technological divides between East and West to promote inclusive economic growth and recovery, democratize science and attract top talent focused on solving some of AI’s hardest challenges.”

Vechev added that Amazon Web Services, Google and DeepMind are helping INSAIT promote diversity and inclusion in science by encouraging applications from women and other underrepresented groups.

INSAIT’s launch event was livestreamed on YouTube and is available to watch here.

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

PAGE 12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

INVESTIGATIONS Fair Trial or Foul Play?: Sixteen years later, a man maintains his innocence

TEIGIST TAYE/CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

BY TEIGIST TAYE CONTRIBUTING REPORTER It is a sad event when a little girl has to postpone her 10th birthday party and an even sadder one if it is because she is recovering from a motorbike accident. So when your little sister, fresh out of the intensive care unit, calls you up and asks if you would stay home from work to attend her belated tenth birthday party, you oblige. At least, that is what 19-year-old J’veil Outing did. On June 23, 2005, Outing left his Stop & Shop uniform in his closet. He would be performing different work duties that day — those of an older brother setting up for his little sister’s birthday party later that evening. None of his family, friends and neighbors who attended the event were prepared for the tragedy that lay ahead. Later that evening, 21-year-old Kevin Wright — a brother, son and resident of the nearby Dixwell neighborhood — would be shot dead, and the police would accuse J’veil Outing of the murder.

The sharp bang of the judge’s gavel at the New Haven County Courthouse almost a year later, on the afternoon of March 29, 2006, signified two things: that the jury at the murder trial, after a seven-day deliberation and two-day deadlock, had unanimously come to a verdict and that 19-year-old J’veil Outing would be sentenced to 50 years in prison for the murder of Kevin Wright. Outing maintained his innocence throughout the trial. He had a 6-month-old son at home and no prior criminal record nor any forensic evidence tying him to the murder, but Outing was determined a killer — even though the case had hinged solely on eyewitness testimony, and both witnesses had recanted their testimony on the stand.

Sixteen years later, J’veil Outing remains in prison and still maintains his innocence.

The legal machinery of the State of Connecticut, however, rests unconvinced. After his conviction in 2006, he filed an appeal to the Connecticut supreme court in 2008 — which was denied — and a habeas corpus petition claiming wrongful imprisonment in 2016 — also denied. When Outing filed an appeal to the habeas corpus decision, it was denied again. The case has garnered attention on the internet; he has set up a handful of social media pages and change. org petitions calling for justice.

His case was picked up by the New England Innocence Project — a regional organization that puts its resources towards combating wrongful convictions — and the court’s handling of the eyewitness testimonies incited debate and backlash in the legal world.

Outing is on his fourth lawyer now. He is still fighting his conviction, whatever it takes.

In order to unearth more of Outing’s story, I consulted all of

the public reports and case files available, and I talked to Outing’s family and legal representatives. I was able to reconstruct the scenes below by combing through the entirety of the court transcripts for Outing’s proceedings, which, when read against each other, help answer the question of how Outing got from a ten-year-old’s birthday party to sixteen years behind bars.

The New Haven Police Department did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

After eating cake, ice-cream and fried chicken in the warm summer sunshine, Outing and his friends at the party heard that a fight was taking place a block away from their house on Harding Place. Not ones to miss out on the excitement, Outing and a number of other party attendees ran down to the corner to check it out. The group included Natasha Outing, Outing’s older sister; Nakia BlackGeter, Natasha’s friend; and Antjuan Martin and Erick Williams, both cousins of the Outings. As others swarmed on foot, Williams saw Outing grab his baja mountain bike and bob along.

The events that followed were chronicled by the New Haven Police Department during the trial and summarized in the court’s statement of the facts. The fight broke out between two groups of girls from different parts of the Ville neighborhood in New Haven.

According to trial transcripts, police recorded the fight at 7:10 p.m. The conflict stalled as police cars made an initial round, and then picked back up when more girls arrived with reinforcements — this time in a truck, with bats, chains and sticks. Police received a second call about the fight at 7:23 p.m. According to Antjuan Martin, the girls were yelling and some were tussling. The crowd swelled and contracted as more onlookers from the neighborhood drifted in and out. A little after the fight died down for good and Outing and some friends had retreated to their porches, Evrett Alexander, another cousin of Outing’s, ripped through the street on a scooter with a chocolate-brown police car in swift pursuit. Police record the scooter chase at 7:57 p.m. Cousin Erick Williams saw the police car almost hit Outing’s mother, Angelina Outing, as it sped down the block, and so Outing and the others began chasing the police car for a couple of feet. Somewhere in the chaos, Erick Williams received a disturbing call from his mother: Kevin Wright, a relative from his other side, had been shot dead about a mile away on Canal Street. Police recorded the murder at 6:55 p.m.

In the hours after the shooting on June 23, 2005, Kevin Wright, found on Canal Street with a gunshot wound to his chest, was pronounced dead at Yale New Haven Hospital.

Back at Canal Street, the New Haven Police began investigating.

New Haven Police Officer David Falcigno carefully cordoned off the area in reflective yellow tape and dotted the scene in forest-green cones, each with a bold black number, to mark the evidence. A cone by the abandoned chrome bike in the middle of the street, keeled over on its side. A cone by the four golden shell casings next to it, strewn like cigarette butts over the tarmac. A cone by a red mountain bike at the intersection of Canal and Gregory, with a sliver of denim caught in its spokes. A cone by the crimson puddle of blood.

The 9-1-1 call had come from 21-year-old Nadine Crimley.

NHPD Detective Stephen Coppola brought her down to the station later that evening for an interview.

She was nervous, and like Outing, a new parent to a baby boy. In the interview room, Coppola began the recording. The recording, which was obtained by the News, crackled briefly as Coppola noted the time, “10:12 p.m.,” and Crimley began. She was ambling down Canal Street with her 11-monthold son in a stroller, a few feet away from where she lived. As she was approaching the house, she saw two Black men riding past her on bicycles. The first guy was maybe about 5’5” or 5’6”, slightly taller than her and was wearing a white “wife-beater,” blue jeans and a black Yankee hat. He was on a chromish bike. She had never seen him before in her life. The second man was darker skinned and had on a white T-shirt and loose shorts. The first man “just stops, turns around and starts shooting,” she told the detective.

“He’s shooting at who?” Coppola inquired. “Kevin,” Crimley confirmed. She said that the shooter looked at her when he was shooting. She saw Kevin get shot and fall to the ground. The second man on the bike kept going. Crimley, just 10 feet away from the shooting, “picked up [her] baby and ran him into the house.”

Four days later, Coppola and his partner, detective Al Vasquez, paid a visit to Crimley’s home, along with two other NHPD officers. They had also identified her brother, 19-year-old Ray Caple, as a potential witness and wanted to get both siblings’ statements of what they saw. Crimley was to be interviewed for the second time, but on that afternoon, Caple was first. According to Vasquez’s later testimony, Caple was “reluctant” to leave his house to talk to the police and had to be persuaded by his mom. Despite numerous attempts to contact them through social media and mutual connections, I was unable to get a hold of the two eyewitnesses on the case.

However, even as they eluded my outreach efforts, their words in these police recordings, as well as court transcripts and original eyewitness testimonies, endure and provide captivating context to the story.

In between the shooting and the following interviews, the police had created a photo array that included the picture of their prime suspect, J’veil Outing, along with seven other photographs of similar looking boys. The photo array was a yearbook of sorts, pictures of eight Black boys, all in a suit and tie and sporting a low-cut trim, all from the Hillhouse Highschool catalog. It would be later revealed in Outing’s murder trial that, before making their statements on this day, both Caple and Crimley had unrecorded “pre-conversations” with Coppola and Vasquez.

These “pre-conversations’’ are a common practice in the NHPD, Vasquez would later say in the trial, and he would describe them as a harmless way to “just hear what they have to say,”— Outing’s attorney would describe them as a “dress rehearsal.” After the pre-conversations, each was shown the photo array, and each picked Outing. The second set of recorded interviews, which were eventually played by the prosecution at Outing’s trial, document what happened next.

When Caple’s voice carries through the static, he is on edge.

He begins. He saw the shooter biking up the street from his porch and immediately identifies him as “Outing” for the police. He is asked to repeat, and emphasizes “Outing, number seven.” He picks up where he left off. Kevin Wright — “Kev” — was hanging out at his house, and he did not know that Kev had gone outside. When Caple heard the first gunshot he was looking for his daughter. He did not go out onto the street, but instead, went to the corner of his porch to protect himself.

“Could you see up Canal Street?” Coppola interrupts.

“Slightly,” Caple responds. He saw his sister Crimley, and the baby in the carriage, and heard the bike drop. He heard his sister yelling “he hit, he hit, he hit.” Three more shots went off, and he saw the sparks. He went back to the corner, then he heard “like six more shots.” He estimated that between eight to ten shots were fired in total. After the shots went off, he rushed to Kev and “[the shooter] ran away.” Caple scooped up his dying friend in his arms, and told him, “Kev, please don’t die on me.”

He spells it out for his interviewers: “I was begging him.”

Nadine Crimley is brought in after her brother, but her second interview is brief. She is asked about the photo-identification she just made, and points to “number 4,” — Outing, in this new array — as “the shooter.”

Coppola notes the beginning time as “1:30 p.m.” and wraps up by saying “1:26 p.m., statement now complete.” It was over before it even began.

The statements given by the siblings were not entirely consistent. Crimley recalled that the shooter wore a black Yankees hat, but when asked about the appearance in his inter-

view, Caple said that the shooter was wearing no hat and had a “low hair-cut.” Crimley said the shooter was wearing a sleeveless “wife-beater”; Caple said the shooter was wearing jeans and a sleeved t-shirt. Crimley recalled another person accompanying the shooter on the bike, whereas Caple remembered the shooter being alone. Caple confirmed that Outing is the shooter and that he has known him for “about three and a half years” because they went to school together; his sister first denied any knowledge of the shooter, yet admitted to recognizing him in the second interview, after the photo identification, “just from being in the neighborhood.” She was never questioned on the identity of the second man. Detective Coppola, who interviewed both Caple and Crimley, fudged the victim’s name repeatedly in Caple’s interview, misidentifying him as “Kevin Williams” instead of “Kevin Wright” twice. Despite knowing the victim well, Caple does not point out the mistake.

In February 2005, a month before J’veil Outing was slated to go on trial for murder, both witnesses recanted their testimony to the police. Crimley and Caple both held that they were coerced by the police to give their statements. In light of this, Outing’s attorney, Auden Grogins, filed a motion to suppress the statements before they went to trial, and both siblings were called to the suppression hearing to testify to their experience.

Caple testified at the suppression hearing that he did not actually witness the shooting at all and was threatened and coerced to make a statement by the police. Even from just the text in the hearing transcript, his agitation is clear. “I was forced,” he said. “They told my mother it wasn’t going to be done. I was forced. When they came, they told my mother one thing. We got there, they was yelling at me.

They tried to give me cigarettes and stuff so I would say stuff. I told them I didn’t know nothing.

They forced me.”

Caple said that Coppola was the main aggressor. “He said he was going to put me in jail. He said he got some boys downstairs, he’s going to bring them upstairs … He told me I got to do something or I aint going home … they threaten me in a whole bunch of different ways … He just got in my face … yelling at me, like spit, little spit balls coming out of his mouth …

He was saying mad stuff … what he told me was that he went eleven for eleven, he is going to go twelve for twelve.” According to Caple, the Detectives were focusing on a few pictures from the line up — “Number 2, Number 4, Number 7 and Number 5 — and mentioned a couple of their names to him including J’veil Outing’s.

“That was one name, because they was telling me he got shot … that

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

is how I know he been shot in the foot before.”

On her part, Nadine Crimley testified that during the police interview, she was receiving pressure from the police officers to make an identification, despite the fact that she did not actually get a good look at the shooter. When she was making the photo-identification, “it [was] like they just kept focusing on that one picture,” she said.

They did not point at it explicitly, “[but] they were like is that the one? That’s the one, huh?”

Vasquez would later testify that “she was very nervous … hesitant to sign the photo board” and even “started crying.” Crimley also testified that she recognized a lot of the people in the photo array from her brother’s yearbook, but not Outing.

Both siblings deny that J’veil Outing, who was sitting across from them as they took the stand, was the shooter. While they both felt generally fearful to be involved in the identification of a shooter who potentially had gang affiliations, they said, both confirmed that they hadn’t received any threats from Outing. Caple was especially insistent that he did not know much, and did not want to have anything to do with the trial. “[State’s Attorney Baran] kept telling me I have to do it,” he pleaded. “I told her I don’t want to do it. I want to go home … it wasn’t right. It wasn’t nothing right. I told them. I told her that.”

With no physical evidence tying Outing to the crime, the state had been relying heavily on witness testimony to get their conviction. But with these sudden recantations, what had felt like an open and shut case was becoming far more complicated and quickly falling apart.

However, in the State of Connecticut, a special case allows prosecutors to use their witnesses’ original testimony, even if the witnesses recant.

Shortly after midnight on Feb. 24, 1980, a man named John Matulionis was fatally stabbed in the bathroom of a Bridgeport bar following a physical fight. By the time of the murder trial in 1986, the state was sure that it had nailed its prime suspect, defendant Joseph Whelan.

After presenting other evidence that tied Whelan to the place and time, the state’s attorneys called Louis Garassino, a bar patron who had signed a witness statement, to the stand, to prove that Whelan was indeed the aggressor. But, when Garassino took the stand, he claimed that he suddenly could not remember anything. He was drunk at the time of the fight, and a recent car accident had deteriorated his memory. Although he acknowledged that he had made and signed the previous statement, he “did not know” whether the statement refreshed his memory. The prosecution was running out of time— their eight-ball witness was drawing a blank, even though the details Garassino provided in his first statement were crucial to securing a conviction.

Usually, courts do not permit hearsay. That is, you cannot say during a trial that “so-and-so said this out of court and I swear it’s true.” The basic idea is that it would be impossible for the other side to cross-examine this testimony. What happened next at the Whelan trial changed the trajectory of criminal trials in Connecticut forever. The prosecution introduced Garassino’s out-of-court statement — the signed one alleging Whelan was the aggressor — into the trial, and the judge allowed it.

Whelan was convicted of murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison. When Whelan pushed back on the move in an appeal, the courts affirmed that “a prior inconsistent statement may be used at trial” if the statement was signed by a witness that has personal knowledge of the facts, and the witness can be present at trial to be cross examined, even if their testimony in court is different. The Whelan ruling provided an exception to the hearsay rule. From then on, lawyers had an explicit avenue to introduce a witness’ previous testimony into the trial, even if the witness recanted on the stand.

In J’veil Outing’s case, the Whelan precedent allowed the prosecution to use Crimley and Caple’s original testimony in trial, given that these statements were not viewed as resulting from

coercion. Coppola and Vasquez followed the siblings’ recitations at the suppression hearing and denied unequivocally that any coercion took place in the interview room. Both detectives acknowledged that the witnesses were nervous but maintained that each made the positive photo identifications without any outside influence, and, according to Coppola, in a matter of “seconds” and “without hesitation.”

The detectives were not threatening anyone, they alleged, and they didn’t single Outing’s picture out. At the conclusion of the suppression hearing, Judge Licari, in outlining the court’s capacity as the “fact finder” and arbiter of the credibility of evidence, decided that no part of that tape suggested coercion, even though the hearing had also included testimony about the unrecorded “pre-conversations,” which would have taken place outside of the tape. Following this, Judge Licari maintained that the tape-recorded statements met the requirements for admissibility under the Whelan precedent and denied Outing’s motion to suppress.

So, mere weeks before the trial, it was decided. The state would plow forwards with or without the current corroboration of the witnesses. The jury would hear two versions of the story from each eye-witness’ voice and would have to decide for themselves which story would stick.

I first met Outing some 16 years later in a small, suffocating concrete box of a room at the MacDougall Correctional Institution in Suffield, Connecticut. He, his lawyer Alex Taubes and I crowd around a wooden table, below the hot, white glow of an overhead lamp.

Before this meeting, I knew him only from a single phone call and the cover of his Change.org petition, “Justice for J’veil Outing.” which has so far collected 1,500 signatures of people that demand justice on behalf of Outing. He looks far more hardened on the cover of the petition than he does in this interview room.

In the petition’s picture, he holds his fingers to the chin as he looks directly at the camera, unsmiling: he is pensive and fighting his conviction. In the interview room, he is softer somehow, worn out perhaps. He is in the same prison khakis — a greenybeige against the deep brown of his skin. His head is shaved bald, close to his scalp, but his beard is a little more grown out and the tips of his mustache graze the corners of his mouth every time he grins. Black, thick-rimmed glasses frame his large eyes that flit between me and Taubes as he tells me what has happened to him. He begins with a deep breath. “I played no part in this crime at all,” he says, shaking his head. “They just straight up set me up, I don’t even know why.”

Outing is less interested in walking me step-by-step through the events of the fateful summer evening in 2005 as he is in pointing out what he sees as unbelievable injustices in the handling of his case — and Outing can list many. A thick manilla folder sits on the table in between us, bursting at the seams with the papers — briefs, transcripts, letters, decisions, statements — that Outing has been pouring over for over a decade, consulting them like a devout Catholic would a Bible, or like a starving wanderer might a map, searching for all-seeing answers, or perhaps just a drop of something, anything, that would signal relief.

In a later conversation with Outing’s mother, Ms. Angelina Outing, I would learn that Outing was the second of four siblings and the only son. He and his three sisters grew up on Harding Place, in Newhallville, a neighborhood in New Haven where almost everyone is either relatives or playmates or church-kin — where everybody is somebody’s cousin. When he was seven years old, his grandfather enrolled him in karate. Ms. Outing smiled at the memory, and told me, “Oh, he loved it. He thought he was the man when he was in there.”

When he was nine, he was in Linda Thorpe’s fourth grade class at the Martin Luther King School.

Thorpe describes him as a “sweet and lovable student,” who was part of her “little family of kids” in that class. Around Christmas-time that year, Thorpe’s

PAGE 13

class performed the poem ‘Twas the night Before Christmas, and Outing was one of the characters on stage. “I still have that photo,” says Thorpe, “You will [sic.] see a small smiling pajama wearing angel in it. That’s my fondest memory of him.”

But Outing’s childhood was not easy. During the same year of his debut as a pajama’d angel, Outing’s father was murdered.

He quickly had to become the protector of his sisters, in the real world, and outside of karate.

From my conversation with Ms. Outing, I got the sense that her son’s settling into his teenage years as a Black boy in the Ville during those times inevitably meant hardening to violence on the streets, which included interactions with street-gangs, but also rough-ups with the police.

Through our conversation, J’veil Outing tells me how survival in those days meant “know[ing] how to handle yourself in the streets” and how even his clean arrest record did not spare him from the violence. In the year before his arrest, he was shot twice, mere months apart.

He brings me back to the small park by the Lincoln-Bassett Community School in Newhallville, on July 4, 2004 — a year before the Kevin Wright murder. Then, an 18-year-old Outing witnessed an argument between two kids he did not recognize.

Suddenly, one of the boys pulled out a gun and began to fire at the other. “So when he pulls out the gun,” Outing continues, “he starts running away … and he’s not paying attention to what he’s shooting at.” Unknown to the boy with a gun, a four-year-old kid was nearby, within the range of the bullets. “I rushed to try and grab him, and someone beat me to it, but the minute I got right in front of him — I got hit on the back of my leg.” Outing grabs the side of his thigh, slack in prison khakis: “Boom.”

Six weeks after the first shooting, Outing was shot again. This time it was in the foot, and it was as he was leaving the corner store, by “a kid [he] had problems with,” he said. The NHPD presented Outing with two suspects for identification, but none ended up being the perpetrator.

At this point, Taubes chimes in with a theory of what that might have looked like to the police at the time. “They knew you, you’re getting shot at, you’re not giving up names, you’re a bad guy,” Taubes said. In fact, Sgt. Andrew Muro told the New Haven Register after arresting Outing on June 27, 2006 that “Outing is wellknown to the police from his activities in Newhallville”.

Outing agrees with his lawyer’s estimation, “Yeah definitely, they built up this image of me.”

The four detectives working the Wright murder did not even have to leave the station to arrest Outing. Outing explains that all they had to do was take an elevator. Coppola and Vasquez, as well as detectives David Falcigno and Clarence Willoughby, found the 19-yearold was conveniently already on site — anxiously drumming his fingers on a table in a holding room on the second floor, after having been brought in on a drug possession charge.

Life after the two consecutive shootings had not been easy for the teenager. He had wanted to follow in the steps of his late maternal grandfather, the one who paid for his karate lessons, and join the Air Force, but the injuries derailed him. When the Detectives charged him with murder, he was shocked. “I ain’t even know the dude,” Outing said. “I didn’t know what they was talking about … I didn’t have no reason to kill him.” After making the arrest, Willoughby allowed Outing one phone call.

Outing gave the detective his mother’s number to dial, got on the phone and managed to get out a quick “Ma, they tryna charge me with a murder,” then click, Willoughby had already hung up for him.

Just after Outing was arrested, the state offered him a deal: plead guilty and serve eight years in prison, or go to trial and face up to fifty years. Even after sixteen years behind bars, he stands by his initial commitment to proving his innocence. “My innocence was more important than anything,” he told me. “I’m not taking no time for something I didn’t do.” This was not only for

his sake, but for his family’s. He had to go to trial.

There was no forensic evidence that tied Outing to the crime, so the majority of the trial hinged on scrutinizing the eyewitness testimony of Caple and Crimley. The trial began on March 13, 2006 and lasted seven days. And, just like they did at the suppression hearing, both siblings took the stand and stated — more adamantly than they did in the suppression hearing, the court noted — that they were coerced into making an identification and that the defendant sitting in front of them was not the shooter. The police detectives denied any coercive practices outright, and the state prosecutors doubled down behind them.

At MacDougall, Outing runs me through the other facts of his case. The lack of forensic evidence was proven in court.

Not only did the bike used by the murderer not have Outing’s fingerprints, it also contained someone else’s fingerprints altogether — those of a local resident who claimed the bike was stolen from him prior to the murder. According to Outing, even the descriptions of the bicycle did not match up either. Caple and Crimpley reported that the shooter was on a trick bike, but Outing owned a mountain, or “baja” bicycle, a fact which would later be confirmed by the testimonies of his alibi witnesses in his habeas corpus trial, 11 years later. Furthermore, all that the ballistic reports could prove at his trial was that the bullets were fired by a 9mm gun, but Outing finds fault in this description too. The witnesses saw a silver gun, and “everyone knew [he] carried a Black 9mm.”

His first attorney, now-Judge Auden C. Grogins, represented him at his murder trial. Outing told me that she failed to investigate and call to the stand any of the six alibi witnesses Outing provided to her, all of whom were at the birthday party with Outing, and most of whom were with him at the time of the fight and scooter chase. Grogins did not mention the party, the fight or the scooter chase, at all, Outing said, nor did she attempt to construct some sort of timeline in order to show that Outing could not have done it. Grogins later said in the habeas trial that those choices was part of her “trial strategy,” and that she did not want to place Outing too close to the murder. Outing seems unconvinced — the murder was close to his house anyway.

However, Grogins did try to push back at the credibility of the eyewitness testimonies by calling an eyewitness expert, Jennifer Dysart, to give a testimony. Dysart, a professor of psychology at John Jay College, was an unusual kind of expert to call during this time, according to Taubes. The attorney explained that, due to this unfamiliarity, the judge had her introduce her testimony in a pretrial hearing, to determine if it was relevant for the case. “The courts then didn’t even allow experts to weigh in on witness testimony because they thought it was common knowledge,” he continued.

In her pre-trial testimony, Dysart ran through a number of factors that could affect a witness’s credibility. For a case where even the initial testimonies deemed credible by the courts still had significant inconsistencies, an expert like Dys-

art could provide some insight as to why. Dysart’s prepared testimony identified eight situational factors present in Crimley and Caple’s experiences that could have impaired the accuracy of their testimony. She talked about, for example, the weak correlation between confidence and accuracy in eyewitness identification: the “disguise effect” where “the use of hats or wigs makes it more difficult for the witness to be accurate at a later time” and “unconscious transference” where if a “person looks familiar to you, it’s not always the case that you are able to accurately say where you encountered that person on previous occasions.” Dysart also highlighted the need for photo-arrays to be administered double blind— if the administrator knows that the suspect is in the array, and more than that, knows who the suspect is — as was the case here — they can act in ways during the photo-identification process that subconsciously signal that to the identifier. Dysart’s testimony also covered the “weapons effect” — the idea that it is difficult to get a good look at a shooter when you are fearing for your life. Outing has studied the details of his case, and breaks it down. “It’s this simple,” he told me. “You see it in the movies all the time. If someone pulls a gun on you, you’re looking at the gun! You’re running the other way! You’re not looking at the details of their face.”

The judge ruled after the hearing that Dysart could only present half of her testimony at the trial, but when it came time to do it, Grogins decided not to call on Dysart at all. The jury heard none of her testimony, despite expert consensus that points to the fallibility of eyewitness testimony and the ways it can be susceptible to outside influence.

The single bulb in the MacDougall interview room illuminates Outing’s face from above as he and the attorney laugh at the absurdity of it all. Here we are, in a box, with a man who could have taken an eight-year plea deal but now has 50 years because he decided to stick with his claim of innocence instead of saying he was guilty. He has seen people who brag about all the harm that they have done or the people they have killed get out of prison after much less time than he will have to serve. Taubes quips that they teach “the Outing case” at workshops and reference it in papers, as an example of what not to do as a public defender. Outing even remembers Grogins said something in an ensuing hearing that seemed as though she thought he was guilty.

Grogins declined to comment.

While telling this story, Outing smirks while shaking his head.

“Isn’t that crazy? And that’s why she threw me under the bus.”

When the tops of Outing’s cheeks crinkle into a smile, his whole demeanor relaxes. It is not there for long, but just in the moments after he laughs, in the seconds before we have to steer our conversation to yet another horrible thing, something brief and unguarded flashes in his eyes. Perhaps it is youth or perhaps it is its memory, fleeting and unreachable, thrown unceremoniously from atop a baja bike to behind prison bars — the young boy who never got to grow up.

Continue reading on yaledailynews. com.

Contact TEIGIST TAYE at teigist.taye@yale.edu .

M LACROSSE Penn 11 Harvard 8

W GOLF Princeton 5.5 Columbia 2.5

SPORTS

W LACROSSE

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

A 15–9 win in Ithaca helped Yale clinch a spot in the Ivy tournament for the first time in program history.

I am extremely pleased with the way our team competed and put together a complete game. We had contributions from so many women, which was special,” head coach Erica Bamford said. “Winning on the road in our league is never easy and to do it at a place we haven't had success since 2004 is particularly rewarding.”

The Blue and White got off to a slow start this weekend in Ithaca. After the first 15 minutes of play, the Big Red were up 5–4, with Cornell midfielder Genevieve Dewinter already recording a hat trick. She would score two more goals throughout the game to register a season-high five-goal game.

The Bulldogs picked up the pace through the second period, scor-

W tennis topples Cornell, falls to Columbia

ing five unanswered goals to claim the lead — one they would not lose for the rest of the game. In the stretch of four and a half minutes, attacker Taylor Everson ’25 started and completed a hat trick of her own.

Leading 9–6 at the half, Yale took its foot off the gas, but only slightly, still beating Cornell 3–1 and 3–2 in the third and fourth quarters, respectively.

Cruising to a 15–9 victory, midfielder Taylor Lane ’25 was part of the glue that kept the team running. In Ithaca, she recorded personal bests as she led the team in draw controls and caused turnovers with nine and three, respectively. On the offensive end, she was able to rattle the cage three times and register four points.

Because of her all-around effort, she was named the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Week.

Yale’s only losses this season have come from ranked opponents against then No. 1 Boston College and No. 16 Notre Dame. Wednesday’s matchup with No. 15 UConn (11–2, 2–1 Big East) will prove to be another challenge for the Elis. “[We are focusing on] handling the game with composure no matter the time and score,” attacker Chloe Conaghan ’24 said.

The midweek Connecticut rivalry should see two evenly-matched teams face off. The Bulldogs and the Huskies have played against some of the same opponents this season, with both SEE W LACROSSE PAGE 10

“With only two weeks guaranteed in the season, every day matters a ton for us.”

MATT BRANDAU '23 YALE MEN'S LACROSSE ATTACKER

Sotheby's auctions 1852 Harvard-Yale oar

BY GAMZE KAZAKOGLU AND NICOLE RODRIGUEZ STAFF REPORTERS In May, Sotheby’s, one of the world’s largest brokers of fine arts and luxury goods, will host an online auction for the Yale-Harvard Regatta 1852 trophy oars — estimated to be worth three to five million dollars.

CREW The Yale-Harvard Regatta, commonly known as The Race, is America’s oldest collegiate athletic competition. Since its inception in 1852, the race has annually hosted men’s heavyweight crews of Yale and Harvard with exceptions such as major world wars and the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 1878, The Race has been held in New London, CT, where both Yale and Harvard own permanent compounds. Yale’s Gales

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

The women’s tennis team defeated Cornell and the men’s tennis team was bested by the Big Red. Both teams fell to Columbia.

This weekend, Yale’s tennis teams continued conference play with Saturday matches against Cornell and Sunday matches against Columbia.

TENNIS The men’s tennis team (9–11, 1–4 Ivy) hosted Cornell (16–6, 3–1) on Saturday and Columbia (12–6, 2–1) on Sunday in Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center.

Meanwhile, the women (12–9, 3–2) hit the road for New York, where they took on the Big Red (8–10, 3–2) in Ithaca on Saturday and the Lions (12–10, 2–3) on Sunday.

The women’s team bested Cornell in a huge 4–1 victory Saturday.

Though the squad sought a weekend sweep, it fell to the Lions in a 2–4 loss.

Chelsea Kung ’23 led the team in singles, followed by Caroline Dunleavy ’22, Mirabelle Brettkelly ’25, Jessie Gong ’22, Rhea Shrivastava ’23 and Vivian Cheng ’23.

Kung and Gong headed the women’s doubles line-up, ahead of Kathy Wang ’22 with Dunleavy and Cheng with Shrivastava.

“It is always tough to play on the road, so it was nice to get a win against Cornell away,” women’s head coach Rachel Kahan said.

Kung, Gong and Shrivastava had straight set wins of (6–2, 6–4), (7–5, 6–2) and (6–4, 6–3), respectively. Brettkelly eked out a three-set victory of 6–2, 4–6, 6–3 at No. 3 singles against the Big Red. Kung and Cheng earned the Bulldogs’ two points against Columbia. Kung claimed a 6–2, 7–6 victory over Columbia’s SEE TENNIS PAGE 10

STAT OF THE WEEK 25

Ferry Boathouse is located 54 miles from New Haven and Harvard’s Red Top Boathouse is 108 miles from Cambridge. The 1852 oars were presented to the winning Harvard crew by General Franklin Pierce, who became the 14th president of the United States a year later. After being lost to history and rediscovered about 30 years ago, the oars will appear at auction for the first time this May. “These trophy oars mark the beginning of American intercollegiate sports, and stand as a significant relic of American history,” Richard Austin, Sotheby’s Head of Books & Manuscripts, wrote in a press release.

“These icons of sport predate the Civil War, and their incredible chance rediscovery four decades ago saved them from being lost forever. Sotheby’s holds a long standing track record of offerSEE CREW PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS

The oars were presented to the winning Harvard crew by General Franklin Pierce in 1852 and were rediscovered approximately 30 years ago.

Softball outmatched by Princeton

BY NADER GRANMAYEH STAFF REPORTER The Yale softball team played a tough series last weekend against Princeton. The Bulldogs were outmatched and swept at home by the Ivy League’s second placed Tigers.

SOFTBALL

BY GRAYSON LAMBERT CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

BASEBALL Dartmouth 16 Princeton 7

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

CREW TROPHY SEASON The No. 3 women’s team secured the Black and Brown Cup over No. 4 Princeton. The men’s crews faced Penn and Columbia, with heavyweights securing the Blackwell and Colgan Cups and lightweights taking home the Dodge Cup.

Lacrosse secures maiden Ivy qual.

For the first time in program history, the Yale women’s lacrosse team is heading to the Ivy League tournament.

The No. 25 Bulldogs (9–2, 5–0 Ivy) downed Cornell with ease (7–6, 3–2) 15–9 in Ithaca last Saturday to improve to 5–0 in Ivy play — also marking a program first.

With only two conference games remaining in the schedule, Yale will be sure to finish in the top half of the league and continue to the postseason.

Last weekend’s win broke an 11-game losing streak to Cornell. The Bulldogs had not won against the Big Red since the 2007 season and last claimed a road victory in 2004.

W SAILING Penn 98 Cornell 88

FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE goydn.com/YDNsports Twitter: @YDNSports

W TENNIS BIG WIN OVER BIG RED Women take down Cornell on the road before falling to Columbia. The men’s team stumbled at home against the two New York Ivies. In the final weekend of the regular season, each team will play Dartmouth and Harvard.

BY MELANIE HELLER SPORTS EDITOR

M TENNIS Cornell 4 Brown 0

With the losses, the Bulldogs (8–20, 6–9 Ivy) fell back under .500 despite winning a road series against Columbia last weekend. Princeton (19–13–1, 11–4) maintained its good standing at the top of the Ivy League and finished the weekend in second place, just behind Harvard. Game one of Sunday’s double header between the Ancient Eight foes was nationally

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

The Bulldogs were swept at home in a pivotal series against Princeton, dropping them to 6–9 in conference play. televised on ESPNU, the first time in program history that the Elis were featured on the national stage.

“It is very exciting for us to get the opportunity to play on national television,” pitcher Nicole Conway ’23 said entering

the weekend. “We want to do our very best as always but now we know that a lot more people are watching which will fire everyone up even more!”

SEE SOFTBALL PAGE 10

Men’s golf clinches historic home win

BY HAMERA SHABBIR STAFF REPORTER For the second time ever, the men’s varsity golf team swept both its fall and spring invitationals.

The Yale men’s golf team hosted 13 other schools at the Yale Golf Course on Saturday for the Bulldog’s first home spring invitational since 2019. The Blue and White won the tournament with a score of

574, or 14 over par, and two players finished in the top 10. Ancient Eight competitors Dartmouth, Pennsylvania and Brown finished sixth, 10th and 13th, respectively. Ahead of the upcoming Ivy Championships, the tournament marked the first time since the 2009-10 season that the Bulldogs have swept both their fall and spring invitationals.

GOLF

COUERTSY OF YALE ATHLETICS

The Yale men’s golf team won its second home tournament of the year as both golf teams head into the Ivy Championships.

“Obviously [it] was nice to get a win leading up to Ivies and build some momentum,” captain Teddy Zinsner ’22 said.

“The team had a really good afternoon round in some tough SEE GOLF PAGE 10

THE YALE WOMEN’S LACROSSE TEAM’S NATIONAL RANKING ACCORDING TO THE LATEST INSIDE LACROSSE POLL. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THE TEAM HAS BEEN RANKED THIS SEASON.

FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022

WEEKEND THE EYES OF THE WORLD

// JESSAI FLORES

// BY JESSAI FLORES

In my experience, being a first-generation low-income student at Yale is a lot like having a target on your back. You go through your everyday life under the gaze of a million hidden eyes all aimed at you. These eyes lie in waiting, hoping to catch the moment when you inevitably slip up and make a mistake.

And you are afraid that your mistake will reinforce their belief that you do not belong.

This is the paranoia that comes with being a FGLI student at Yale, and this is the fear that is the most difficult to dismantle.

It is unreasonable to believe that making a mistake, such as getting a bad grade, is evidence that one does not belong at Yale. Yet for me, the thought still nags at the corner of my mind every time I get a less than stellar essay review or when I say the wrong thing in an English seminar. Am I not good enough?

Am I not talented enough? Am I not enough?

Everyone else seems to know what they are doing. This feeling is an unfair burden that I, an FGLI student who did not go to a private school before Yale, have the unique misfortune of carrying. I have spent many sleepless nights sick with the worry that not only have I disappointed my family, but I have also been found out to be a fraud. It is a precarious position to be in, and it does not help that being FGLI makes you stand out glaringly from the rest of the student body.

At Yale, there are constant reminders of how different FGLI students are compared to everyone else. For example, I eat more salmon in one week in the dining halls than I do at home in one year. My dorm room is the

size of my parents’ bedroom, complete with its own fireplace. Just the fact that I share the same residential college as President Bush is enough to tell me that I am attending a school where its students come from wealthy and powerful backgrounds. Even without all that evidence, just the sheer number of Canada Goose I see on campus is proof enough that I have stepped into a different world. Before Yale, I did not know what lobster tasted like.

Now here I am, intruding in a socioeconomic circle that is so far beyond my reach that I can only ever dream of it.

Being FGLI at Yale is a lonely and difficult affair. It is hard to find one’s place here when one exists in such a small demographic minority on this campus. Finding another FGLI student is like finding a ladybug with no spots. We exist, sure, but in such a small number that it makes you wonder if this is truly it. Could this truly be everyone? If we were ladybugs, you could fit us all in one hand. If we were ladybugs with no spots in a jar of thousands of regular ladybugs, it is no surprise that we are easy to miss. Perhaps that is why I dread being spotted. Maybe I am afraid that those watchful eyes will catch me making a mistake and suddenly my strangeness will be in full view, scrutinized and criticized. I will be the oddity, the curio, the mystery. People will ask their questions.

How did he get here? Why does he look like that? Where did he come from? And for God’s sake, what is he wearing? To be FGLI at Yale is to constantly fend off these sorts of questions.

At first, I did it without thinking. Freshman year, I would dress in white shirts and black ties, slacks, and oxford shoes. I would go to class everyday looking like I was going to a wedding, because I believed that if I dressed any differently, people would not take me seriously. Even today, I continue to wear collared shirts and slacks because of a desire to appear like I mean business.

Because how else will people know that you are a Yalie if you do not wear some elaborately designed cardigan? This is just one of many ways FGLI students stake their place here. Some will pretend to be affluent and cosplay as upper-class characters. Others will lie about their backgrounds. And some, like me, will project an image of themselves that has been carefully curated to stamp out any doubt that they do not belong. It does not always work, and part of being FGLI is accepting that people will inevitably see you for who you really are.

It takes time to stand up to the fear of being caught as the odd one out. For me, it took a pandemic to get my priorities straight.

I realized that being FGLI will come with difficulties that other students will never face, but I also understood that being FGLI is more than just an obstacle or a paranoia. We are our families’ hopes and dreams. We are the first to be in a place like Yale. We are opening doors and breaking glass ceilings. It is so easy to get caught in the trap of believing that the eyes of the world are scrutinizing you. And even if they are, it is because you are challenging the status quo. You are breaking

barriers. You are existing in a place that was once designed to keep people like you out. I say let them look upon us. Let them see that we are more than meets the eye.

Contact JESSAI FLORES at jessai.flores@yale.edu .

Appendix: What is your FGLI Epiphany?

By Jamie Yi

In the spring semester of 2021, I was one of the few first years allowed to live on Yale campus based on “exceptional need” for an on-campus learning experience. Aside from the ROTC and international students, the majority of us were FGLI, like me. A large community of first years, however, existed beyond Old Campus, living in apartments and sublets in New Haven. The parents of these students decided a New Haven rent check was worth it so that their kids wouldn’t miss out on the Yale social scene for a semester. Spending time with this crowd, I was told on multiple accounts how cool it was that I got to go to public school, and how crazy it was that all their friends came from private. I’ve been known to be oblivious, so apparently it took social stratification manifested into a housing divide for me to notice classism at Yale. It was a rude awakening. And once you start noticing class dynamics from an FGLI perspective, Yale truly never looks the same.

Contact JAMIE YI at jamie.yi@yale.edu .

PAGE B2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND YCC

Leleda Beraki ’24

YCC Presidential Candidate

COURTESY OF LELEDA BERAKI

When asked about her plans for the Yale College Council next year, Leleda Beraki ’24 did not hesitate to say “taking accountability” for herself and for the YCC as a whole.

Born in Eritrea and now living in Virginia, Beraki is running unopposed for President of the YCC, alongside vice president Iris Li ’24. Once elected, Beraki will be Yale’s first female Black president of the YCC. “I know that I will be the first Black woman in this position and I don’t want it to be by chance,” Beraki said. “I want it to be because the student body genuinely believes I need to be in this role and this identity was meant to be in this space.”

Beraki served as president of the First-year Class Council upon arriving at Yale, and currently is the president of the Sophomore Class Council. This academic year, she also sat on the YCC’s Executive Board as the deputy academic life policy director alongside Li. Outside of the Council, Beraki is the Leading Ladies director at the Women’s Leadership Initiative and serves as a student assistant and is on the new student outreach and programming team for the African American Cultural House. She also has amassed a large TikTok and YouTube following, creating videos about life at Yale.

Drawing from her two-year involvement in the YCC, Beraki said that the Council needs to work on accountability and being “transparent and very comprehensible.”

She framed the recent conversation about disengagement within the YCC Senate as stemming from a lack of accountability for senators and the “weird hierarchical process in which work is passed along.”

“The work of the YCC is not a joke,” Beraki said. “If you tell your colleagues that you will be there for them, make their voices heard and then you turn around and

don’t actually do those things, it’s extremely frustrating.”

As president, Beraki aims to enforce the strict rules that the YCC Constitution has in place for attendance and voting within the Senate.

Beraki also intends to give student organizations more of a voice within the YCC, focusing on being more “student-work facing,” she said.

“The YCC has often served as this savior and stepped in front of student organizations and spoken for them and I think that a huge thing we want to see this coming year is including organizations in the decision-making process, especially if it involves them,” Beraki said.

Beraki hopes that the student body can be more aware of the process of the YCC’s advocacy, rather than just the result. “In the past the YCC’s public announcements have been ‘here’s what we’ve gotten done,’ and I want it to be, ‘here’s what we’re working on,’” she said.

Beraki first met Li, who is running uncontested for the position of vice president, through online First-year College Council meetings in 2020. She described Li as a very “forward” person who was her “instant best friend.”

Beraki and Li had a two-week conversation discussing all the moving parts that would be their campaign: “Redefining Yale” and their platform, “A2A: Approaches to Accountability.” During the lead-up to their campaign launch, the pair discussed the contexts in which they would be best friends and conversely, when they would be president and vice president, she said.

The five-part platform, as seen in Beraki and Li’s campaign website, includes accountability in distinct sectors: Academic, Financial, Health, Campus and the YCC.

According to Beraki, if YCC accountability is first secured through intra-organization communication, and they are able to shift the perception of the YCC “off the bat,” then the rest of the five parts will follow through.

As president, Beraki aims to foster increased collaboration within the YCC because of the “intersectionality” that exists between different policy areas and their respective teams. She also hopes to remove divides within the focal points of the YCC’s policy approach.

“We don’t want academic policy to be the only thing that changes while financial policy is 10 years behind, or vice versa,” she said.

Beraki and Li only found out they would be running unopposed the day before public campaigning began. Upon learning the news, Beraki said she did not feel a sense of relief but rather a sense of “urgency.”

Even without an opponent, Beraki believes the campaign is important, as she feels that effective communication during one’s campaign is a clear indicator of the way one will communicate during the actual running of the organization.

“The YCC was never about running against someone else, it was about running for what you believe in,” Beraki said. “I think that is why we have been taking all this campaigning so seriously.”

Overall, Beraki said that she “would like the humanity to be reattached to the projects we’re working on,” which is why she decided to run for president.

Campus-wide voting will take place 9 a.m. on April 21 on YaleConnect.

Contact PALOMA VIGIL at paloma.vigil@yale.edu .

Iris Li ’24

YCC Vice Presidential Candidate Iris Li ’24, the candidate running unopposed for Vice President of the Yale College Council, is placing a spotlight on the YCC Senate this campaign season, calling the body the “lifeline of the YCC.” Li is also emphasizing what her running-mate, unopposed YCC presidential candidate Leleda Beraki ’24, has centered her campaign around: accountability. A Pennsylvania native and self-proclaimed March Madness fan, Li has served as a Firstyear Class Council representative for Pierson College, a finance manager on the Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee and an associate senator on the Career Resources and Civic Engagement team. She currently serves as the deputy academic life policy director alongside Beraki.

“I’m most comfortable working in the policy branch of the YCC because it will lead to institutional change that will stay here long after Leleda and I are gone,” Li said. “A lot of my gratitude goes out to the past members of YCC because they have led to the current systems that we have in place today. I want to do that as well.”

Outside of her experience in the YCC, Li is involved in the Women’s Leadership Initiative Conferences and the Urban Philanthropic Fund at Yale. She also serves as a writing partner at the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning and is a Pierson College aide.

Li sees policy as “a change to institutional life and institutional memory forever,” she said, and expressed her hope for future Yale College classes to have access to the changes she aims to make during her tenure.

According to Li, not everyone has

the “bandwidth” to be advocating for themselves all the time and sees it as the YCC’s role to do so.

“That is why I care very deeply about policy work and projects,” Li said. “It’s our job to take care of everyone even if they can’t give their full time to advocating for it 24/7 like we can.”

Li and Beraki’s platform is based on “Redefining Yale” because, Li said, people should be able to define the University however they want to.

Their campaign website emphasizes a plan in accountability focusing on five areas: Academic, Financial, Health, Campus and the YCC. “We want to be the tools and resources by which students can advocate for themselves and we can represent their needs towards the faces that make their decisions,” Li said.

According to Li, accountability makes “everything else possible.”

Li said that “key” parts of their platform — such as making dining hall dollars more “transparent and usable” in different spaces or expanding the current Yale College Community Care (YC3) model — all hinge on the fact that her and Leleda have “a model for the YCC that’s fundamentally different for making the YCC accountable and that’s not isolating [themselves from the student body],” she said.

Li said she and Beraki feel especially equipped for their new roles leading the YCC because they have worked together in the organization in the past. This experience, she said, has given them the knowledge of what “roadblocks” to avoid and how to effectively enact change by working with the administration.

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Li and Beraki first met in online FCC meetings in 2020. Li said she has always admired Beraki’s ability to “communicate her vision to people” and make the YCC an accessible and inclusive space.

“There is no one else I would have run with,” Li said. “I will not do this alone. We work a lot better in a pair.”

Their prior friendship, according to Li, helps keep them both accountable for each other and for their fundamental vision — one that promotes passion, care and empathy for all campus happenings, rather than one that promotes “burnout.”

Li said she wants the student body to vote for her and Beraki not because they are running on an unopposed ticket, but because they are who the student body wants running the YCC. In talking about how “expansive” and “collaborative” policy within the YCC should be, Li mentioned some rough ideas they have, such as having therapists available specifically for first-years to prevent first-year counselors, or FroCos, from becoming “mental health dumping grounds.”

Li said she finds it “disheartening” how many YCC senators are not seeking reelection, and she hopes that this changes in the next election cycle — during which, she added, she hopes candidates feel “inspired or empowered” by her and Beraki’s term.

Campus-wide voting will take place 9 a.m. on April 21 on YaleConnect.

Contact PALOMA VIGIL at paloma.vigil@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF IRIS LI

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B3

WEEKEND YCC

Liz Carter ’24 Events Director Candidate

COURTESY OF LIZ CARTER

Making Yale more “fun and memorable” is at the core of Liz Carter’s ’24 campaign for Yale College Council events director.

A Pierson College resident hailing from Texas City, Texas, Carter is an environmental studies and archaeological stud-

ies major, as well as part of several on-campus organizations such as The Environmentalist publication, Chi Alpha and sus-

Agastya Rana ’24 Events Director Candidate

COURTESY OF AGASTYA RANA

Agastya Rana ’24 said he feels nothing less than “excitement” when thinking about the possibility of being events director

and helping to improve the campus community next year.

A current sophomore in Davenport College, Rana was born

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and raised in Bangalore, India and has served on the Yale College Council Events Committee for two years. In his first year,

tainability projects like “GREENatYale,” an action-based sustainability group on campus.

“I want to be involved in the making and planning of the events that students will look back on in 20 years when they think of their time at college,” she said.

Carter is currently a member of the Sophomore Class Council, where she works to plan events for the class of 2024. She said this experience has prepared her to plan events, and that she wants to take on broader responsibilities.

Carter plans to achieve her goals as events director next year through four “crucial” markers: improved attendance at on campus events, increased student input for events and Spring Fling decisions, a more open line of communication between the YCC and campus organizations and a greater number of meaningful student activities.

“My main focus will be to listen to student voices,” Carter said.

“I am there as an elected official to ensure that student voices are being heard and events are happening on campus as they are promised. I am not there to micromanage the events of each individual committee which has its own leadership structure and teams.”

She believes that her job would be to encourage and “push” each team to achieve excellence and overall to focus on the “bigger picture” of various YCC events.

She added that the most important skills for an Events Director are task management and an ability to delegate.

According to the YCC’s descriptions for the roles and responsibilities of the events director, the person in that role is in charge of the YCC’s Events Branch, which includes the Events Committee, the First Year Class Council, the Junior Class Council,

the Sophomore Class Council and the Spring Fling Committee.

When asked about her plans for the next year, Carter mentioned that she wanted to utilize outdoor spaces for more studybreaks and “mindful-wellness focus” during warmer months, but she also acknowledged that the loosening COVID-19 regulations could permit more “indoor social events.”

The winter months at Yale can feel “particularly isolating,” Carter said. She hopes to encourage continued social activity during the winter as campus returns to a “semi-preCOVID-normal.”

In the hope that campus returns to a less COVID-restricted state next year, Carter believes that the YCC should take advantage of this and plan larger-scale, in-person events to encourage socialization among Yalies. Even so, she said that the often changing COVID-19 protocols have taught her how to be “flexible and accommodating,” so she will be sure to continue planning hybrid or online events in addition to in-person events.

While campaigning, Carter said she has focused on revealing as much information about her plans as she can and has primarily been using social media to do so.

“I am really just trying to make sure that as many people as possible know that I am a student who is running for YCC Events Coordinator because I want to ensure that everyone’s ideas are heard and that campus is a fun place for all Yale students,” Carter said.

Voting for the YCC elections begins today, Thursday, April 21 at 9:00 a.m. on YaleConnect.

Rana was the campus life director. He currently serves as the deputy events director and is now running to continue his tenure in the YCC events branch as the next events director.

“I’ve loved working with other diligent, passionate and kind people to bring campus events to life: the enthusiasm has been palpable, and the conversations (often while transporting more Garden Catering chicken nuggets than I could count) have been unforgettable,” Rana said.

Outside of the YCC events branch, Rana is a physics and mathematics and philosophy double major. He enjoys researching quantitative biology in the Emonet Lab as well as swimming with the club swimming team. Rana will also be leading programming for the Orientation for International Students as the head counselor this coming August.

Rana’s platform is centered around two core goals: rejuvenating “iconic but lost” Yale traditions and introducing year-round events to “improve student wellness,” he said. Rana said he will aim to populate the events calendar with a “solid” array of events to reinvigorate student interest that may have been lost during the pandemic.

Some of the Yale traditions Rana said he hopes to bring back are the Fall Comedy Show, ice skating at Ingalls Rink, Night at the Museum, Last Comic Standing and Hoedown. He said he is excited to “prioritize” their return and set a “strong precedent” for years to come.

Rana said that improving student wellness should be a “central concern” of the events branch, which caters to “a population of Yalies too often plagued by stress and burnout.” To combat stress, Rana’s plan for year-round programming ranges from coordinating visits from Handsome Dan and Heidi to offering art therapy and cooking classes. He said he hopes that Yalies will be able to “find some respite” in the “uplifting activities” every week.

According to Rana, his two main goals should facilitate three outcomes: building institutional memory, increasing public awareness of events and supporting local businesses.

Changes will also be made to the mechanics of the event-planning process itself, Rana said.

Namely, he hopes to encourage the YCC to obtain more student input, facilitate a greater exchange of ideas among its five separately-run committees and ensure the compilation of documents summarizing actions taken for each event.

“My platform is founded on both inaugurating new events and bringing back old events,” Rana said. “I hope to use the majority of our budget to fund the classic old events that have not been seen on campus in years.”

The remainder of the budget will be distributed between smaller, year-round events that he wants to host in collaboration with the Good Life Center and Yale College Community Care.

Rana said he has learned “first-hand” how to be events director during his time in the events branch of the YCC. He added that he is particularly familiar with the administrative, logistical and financial elements that are “imperative” in putting together a successful event.

Throughout his campaign process, he has been focusing on catering to what he called the two “most pressing desires” of the Yale student body: being able to experience “normal” Yale campus life and having access to stress-relief programs.

“I am confident that however Yalies come across my platform, whether it be through the YDN, my voting booth statement, word of mouth or social media, they will see their needs and interests represented and will be compelled to vote for me,” Rana said.

Voting for the YCC elections began today, Thursday, April 21 at 9:00 a.m. on YaleConnect.

Contact PALOMA VIGIL at paloma.vigil@yale.edu .

Contact PALOMA VIGIL at paloma.vigil@yale.edu .

PAGE B4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND MONEY

MONEY MONEY

SWEET TOOTH: A Guide to “Sugar” Relationships Welcome back to Sex on the WKND! We’re an anonymous YDN column dedicated to answering your burning questions about sex, love and anything in between. Last year, we had one writer, but now we are a collective of students, each with our own unique sexual and romantic experiences. We’ve had straight sex, queer sex and long, long periods without sex. We’ve been in long-term relationships, we’ve walked twenty minutes to avoid former hookups on Cross Campus and we’ve done the whole FroCo-groupcest thing. We may be different this year, but we’re still sex-positive, we’re still anti-capitalist, and we sure as hell still support the Green New Deal.

Obsessing over sex is a Yale tradition as old as the Oldest College Daily itself.

Whether you’re fucking your roommate, still yearning for your first kiss, or dealing with an unsettling skin rash, Sex on the WKND is here for you. Nothing is too personal or silly.

Ask us anything ;) Submit your anonymous question here: https://bit.ly/sexonthewknd Yale men. Need I say more? I’m tired of feeling let down; I’m looking for someone with personality, substance, thunder down under, and a thick salary. So far, I’ve always been forced to settle. How can I find my perfect match?

-SugarMeUp Ah, the sugar baby inquiry. It always begins as a funny and inconsequential thought, but for some of us, it spirals into something greater. I’ll admit, I’ve had the idea more than once. In fact, the other day I ordered a smoothie bowl and it totaled $15, prompting an extended period of introspection. I decided that if I had someone by my side, ready to grab all the bills, I’d undoubtedly oblige. I mean, who wouldn’t?

However, it’s not something I purposefully seek out. In the case that I ever get financially and emotionally desperate, I do have a game plan, tried and trued by many who

have come to me with this same question.

It’s never failed. Here is the step-by-step guide to pursuing your sugar baby fantasies: 1. Ready?... Are you sure?

Before blindly following your impulses, ask yourself a few questions. What are you looking for in a relationship? Is it purely financial, or do you crave something more organic? Do you tend to get needy? The sugar relationship is nontraditional in all its forms. Typically, it only lasts a few months.

There’s an abundance of risks. It’s a business at its core; you’ll need to work long and hard to break even. Are you ready and willing to put in that long-term effort? If not an unequivocal “yes,” take a step back and reevaluate your motivations and priorities; this could be as simple as checking your bank account.

2. Know What You’re Looking For So you’re set on sugaring. Don’t begin your search just yet; decide what kind of sugar daddy/mommy you’re looking for.

Maybe you’re not picky outside of the paycheck. Set a minimum fee to get started.

Maybe you have a few more requirements.

Under or over fifty? Close to the deathbed, perhaps? Divorced or married? Open or closed relationship? How much time do you expect to give? The question of intimacy is a whole other ballpark. I won’t sugarcoat it: as much as some of us might hope for the cash-for-companionship exchange— getting paid for mere conversations—this trade-off is highly unlikely. Don’t do anything you’re uncomfortable with. However, if you are willing to open up physically, be prepared to make frequent Viagra trips.

3. Finding Your Daddy Enough thinking, it’s time to take action.

The vast majority of sugar relationships have online beginnings; let’s face it, sugar babies are looked down upon publicly.

Luckily, there are websites that facilitate these partnerships, judgment-free. Seek-

ing.com, formerly called SeekingArrangements, is fantastic for newcomers. Though it’s now labeled as a typical dating site, it hasn’t quite shaken its roots. Another popular website is Ashley Madison, which is highly controversial for facilitating affairs.

But anything for a check, right? If you’re a man, you may have more luck on RichMeetBeautiful. And, if you’re having an especially difficult time navigating old-fashioned websites, you can always turn to dating apps. The age meter is a lifesaver!

During this process, make sure to keep your eye out for scammers. When well-executed, a sugar relationship is beneficial to both parties. However, some individuals leverage these expectations for exploitation. To avoid this, follow a few rules. First, never trust an Instagram DM. I get at least a couple of these every week. (I actually received one just now. While writing this.

They asked for feet photos. I wish I was kidding.). While it never goes too far, it’s always a waste of time. Second, always meet in person before giving any sensitive information. This is common sense, applicable to every aspect of life. If you didn’t know this already, I’ll assume you’ve either been living under a rock or didn’t experience the same feverish frenzy for MTV’s Catfish as I did. Finally: Do. Not. Pay. You’re the sugar baby. Unless we’ve entered a new abhorrent stage of capitalism, babies don’t make bank.

4. First Date You have a target, and it’s time to strike.

First, decide on meeting in a public place.

Please. There is an inherent risk when meeting someone for the first time, especially if you have only talked online. It’s completely possible that the person you’re meeting is entirely wealthy and entirely a creep. It might even be likely. Locations I recommend are a nice restaurant, a nice yacht, or a nice Chanel storefront.

Next, be attentive to your looks. No, not in the “drop dead gorgeous bombshell” way. As weird as it sounds, you need to look

like the college-student you are. When Yale students meet older individuals, they have the tendency to dress up in business casual, as if interviewing for a consulting firm. That’s not what you want here. Ditch the pearls for a dainty necklace. Leave your button-up in the closet and opt for a playful blouse. Youth sells.

Once you arrive, be yourself. Remember, they’re chasing you. As a college student, you’re already one step ahead; many sugar daddies/mommies love to feel that their finances are contributing to your success.

It’s all in the name. Like any parent, their core desire to take care of you. The only difference is the expectancy of reciprocation.

And maybe some sex. So play the tuition card. Show them the exorbitant Bow Wow prices. Share your dream of doing summer research in Geneva. You hold the power.

5. Keeping Them Around (Or Not) After meeting and agreeing on the terms of the relationship, you want things to continue. Congratulations! You’ve become a success story in the world of sugaring. The key to maintaining longevity of the relationship is to stay flirty, mysterious and detached. While you may be in it for the money, make sure your partners know that you recognize their other redeeming qualities. Let them lean on you, if they so choose.

However, don’t give away all your secrets; leave some things to be figured out. It provides an extra push of motivation on the other end. Even if times seem swell, remain unattached. Playing hard to get is sexy.

There’s always a chance that things won’t work out. Like any relationship—even a transactional one—this can suck. Give yourself some time. Eat a few pints of ice cream. Collect yourself and, when you’re ready, bounce back. You might decide to steer away from this lifestyle entirely.

That’s fine. But if you decide to commit to your sugary state, it won’t be hard to find a new partner-in-paycheck. Once you’ve had one, you can have them all.

How Yalies Waste Money: A Note for Prefrosh // BY MAHESH AGARWAL Dear Class of 2026, Being a carefree college student is expensive. In a world that asks students to read romantic poetry and forget materialism, budgeting seems banal, and if you come from a small town, slipping into cafes and noodle bars feels thrillingly urbane. Unless you’re actually the heir to an earldom, however, cosplaying aristocracy can be dangerous. I learned this lesson last week when I attempted to buy a guide to Chinese architecture from Grey Matter Books and the cash register rejected my debit card — funds that were supposed to last me an entire year had disappeared one month early. Here are some of the habits that led to my bankruptcy and ways you can avoid the same fate.

1. Coffee Breaks At Yale, frequenting a select group of overpriced cafes is an unquestioned ritual. First dates, group study sessions and adviser meetings all converge at “Koffee with a K.” Students adopt coffee houses as personality traits and ask, “are you an Atticus or a Book Trader person?” It’s easy to see Blue State as an extension of campus and, last fall, I dropped 20 dollars there every week. This was foolish; while they might be the best spot for people watching, there’s no reason to visit an off-campus cafe for your daily caffeine fix.

If you care more about an energy boost than vanilla undertones, the dining hall “Sumatra Blend,” will just about suffice. During the hours Yale Dining is closed, the lobby of the Graduate Hotel has similar cafeteria coffee and is open to the public 24/7. When you want to actually taste your caffeine fix, Steep, the Silliman Acorn, the Underground and Benjamin Franklin’s “Beanjamin” all offer decent drip coffee for less than two dollars. If you’re further up Science Hill and remember to bring a mug, you can fill it up at Kroon Hall’s “BYO Cafe” for a single buck. And, if you really are a joe aficionado looking for notes of smoke and raspberry, pack an AeroPress for your dorm. Blue State was never known for its flavor.

2. Books As a first-year in Directed Studies, I spent over 500 dollars on fraying paperbacks from abebooks.com. This sum could have bought me an iPad or, in other words, two economics textbooks. Although it’s rumored that some STEM courses pass precious folders of PDFs down the generations, the material required for most humanities courses can’t be found for free online. Even if they’re dog-eared and rented, the price of eight semester’s worth of books is extravagant.

Instead of making the Yale Bookstore your first stop after move-in, remember to check the library.

My courses assigned roughly a dozen books this semester but I only purchased one of them. I can find most of what I need on the shelves of Bass or Sterling and, when I don’t

want to rummage through the stacks, I ask for books to be delivered to the main floor. If the university doesn’t have a physical copy of a book, they almost always have a virtual one through Overdrive, Orbis or Internet Archive. Some popular books can’t be taken out of the library so I read them while sitting in the library and look on with a friend during class. When a biography I needed didn’t appear in Yale’s catalog earlier this year, I despaired for a moment; then, I realized I could request an interlibrary loan. The library is neither a hidden gem nor a panacea; everyone knows about its resources and there’s always the risk that someone else has checked out the title you need. But many students hesitate to borrow school books for a more sentimental reason: “I’ll look back on them when I’m older.” I’m no longer so naive. If you fall in love with a novel, you can buy it afterward. A book can only be reread, however, if it’s been read a first time.

3. Clothes You’re probably excited to rebrand before school starts, but too much sartorial planning can backfire. After emerging from Zoom school, I assumed it would be uncouth to wear jeans and hiking boots to class. I bought an army of new sweaters and chinos, and I put a pair of boatshoes into my suitcase. Without any arch support or water resistance, however, my Sperrys were ill equipped for walks up Hillhouse in the rain. The pants I thought would blend in at parties ended up as tequila-stained casualties, and I had nothing casual to wear for late night lounging in my suite. For most of the fall semester, I was wet and overdressed.

Posts about “dressing for college on a budget” belong in a different corner of the internet, but a few things are common sense. Don’t be that first-year who buys a collection of “Y” sweatshirts; everyone knows where we go to school. In order to avoid blowing your budget early, buy clothes gradually so you can adapt to the corners of Yale you settle into. Maybe you’ll join a club that requires you to wear a suit every week or maybe you develop an itch for shawl collar cardigans after seeing one on a friend. When you do decide to add something to your closet, Amazon is almost always the best place to find what you’re looking for. But don’t be afraid to Uber to the North Haven Target; where else can you simultaneously restock your Tide PODS and bond with your friends? And finally, forget everything your mother told you about separating darks from whites and delicates from indelicates. In college, there is a simpler rule: fill the laundry machines as much as you can without breaking them.

GHeav were emergencies reserved for all-nighters. But making friends means that every weekend people invite you to House of Naan for their birthday dinner or ask to catch up over ice cream. Writing papers on Thursday nights becomes a habit, and, so too, does a 3 a.m. panini break. You don’t have to be part of the Harvest supper club to spend a concerning amount of money eating out.

The first step to curbing Junzi-dependency is taking advantage of the dining halls. Instead of automatically heading to dinner when I get out of class at five-fifteen, I’ll wait so that I don’t eat too early and get hungry before bed. And, now that Yale has relaxed restrictions on to-go boxes, I prepare for late nights by taking a burger or slice of pizza from the Branford dining hall after dinner. It would be sad to skip a friend’s birthday meal, sure, but there’s no shame in eating ahead of time and only ordering an appetizer.

Outside of dining hours, the easiest path to a free meal is through your email. Clubs offering Mamouns in desperation is a meme, but most students don’t realize just how many events feature food on a daily basis. Companies like Bain host events at the Omni with canapes. The cultural centers and colloquia place appetizers outside their entrance. Graduate affiliates and heads of colleges host dinners and study breaks.

It doesn’t matter if you’re actually interested in someone’s event; smile at them, and enjoy free food and new friends.

Contact MAHESH AGARWAL at mahesh.agarwal@yale.edu .

4. Food When I first came to Yale, my only sources of sustenance were Yale Hospitality and a stash of Kashi bars I brought from home. Restaurants with more than two dollar signs on Yelp were for “special occasions,” and sandwiches from // SOPHIE HENRY

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