T H E O L D E ST C O L L E G E DA I LY · FO U N D E D 1 8 7 8
NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 · VOL. CXXXV, NO. 20 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
SUNNY SUNNY
59 69
CROSS CAMPUS
OBESITY EFFECTIVE ADS DON’T MENTION IT
SECRET SOCIETIES
VIDEO GAMES
SAILING
New Haven Preservation Trust leads dozens of locals on a tour of tombs
ELI DEVELOPER HINTS AT FUTURE OF INDUSTRY
Defending champion Cullman ’13 qualifies for single-handed nationals
PAGES 6-7 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
PAGE 3 CITY
PAGE 5 NEWS
PAGE 12 SPORTS
Looking beyond the DeStefano era
America’s Next Top Diva?
John DeStefano Jr. will surpass the record for longestserving mayor of New Haven next week. But with an ever-changing political climate and decreasing margins of victory, how much longer can he serve?
Dez Duron ’14, a onetime quarterback for the Yale football team, appeared on the NBC singing competition “The Voice” Monday night, showing his vocal prowess with a rendition of Hall & Oates’ “Sara Smile.” Duron got invites to join three of four teams, and ultimately chose to join Christina Aguilera’s team. Duron auditioned last season with a cover of “I Want it That Way,” but he did not advance.
Rest in peace. Flora “Flo”
Consiglio, the matriarch of the family behind Sally’s Apizza and one of the New Haven pizza scene’s most prominent faces, died Monday afternoon at St. Raphael’s Hospital. Her husband, Sal “Sally” Consiglio, founded Sally’s in 1938, and Flo has worked in the restaurant, in a booth opposite the cash register, for years. “I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t know the Consiglios and their family,” Mayor John DeStefano Jr. told the New Haven Register. “She was utterly authentic.”
Evidence of bias. A study published by a group of Yale faculty in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this month found that science professors, male and female alike, “rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant,” according to the study’s abstract. The study also found that professors offered higher starting salaries to male applicants. Her night to shine. “Girls” may not have won any of its five nominations at Sunday night’s Emmy Awards, but the show’s co-star, Allison Williams ’10, earned wide praise for her selection of an emerald green Oscar de la Renta gown for the red carpet. Women’s Wear Daily suggested Williams could become an “it” girl, pointing out her wellplanned entry into the fashion world. “It was always about getting to this moment where she would wear Oscar de la Renta,” Williams’ stylist says in the piece. From Trivia To PowerPoint.
Capital One held trivia night at Anna Liffey’s Monday night, giving out iPads to members of the winning team. Meanwhile, at The Study, Altman Vilandrie & Company held an information session. The recruiting continues. Heads up, gentiles. Yom
Kippur starts today at sundown, so Jewish friends across campus will begin fasting at 6:33 p.m., a lot of classes will be cancelled on Wednesday, and atoning will be rampant. Expect apologies.
THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1980 Five computer science majors get in trouble for tampering with faculty and student computer files by creating dummy directories. Submit tips to Cross Campus
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The New Haven and Yale of 20 years ago are a far cry from the city and University of today.
UPCLOSE Twenty years ago, a committee was searching for a replacement
for then-interim University President Howard Lamar. Across the New Haven Green in City Hall, John Daniels, the Elm City’s first black mayor, struggled with seemingly insurmountable budget problems and New Haven’s ranking as the seventh-poorest city in the country. Unemployment rates soared in the face of a gutted manufacturing sector, and with tough economic times came other ways of making
New Haven state rep’s treasurer arrested BY MICHELLE HACKMAN STAFF REPORTER Four years after State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, a New Haven Democrat, won his first term in the state legislature, his campaign treasurer was arrested for allegedly stealing thousands of dollars in campaign funds. Sandra McKinnie, a resident of New Haven, was first suspected of embezzlement when an audit conducted by the State Election Enforcement Commission (SEEC) found 43 cash transactions totaling $4,270 unaccounted fo r i n Ho l d e r-Wi n field’s campaign account. According to a statement from the Chief State Attorney’s Office, McKinnie was the only signatory on the account. Mark Dupuis, spokesman for the Chief State Attorney’s office, said his office arranged for McKinnie to turn herself in to the North Haven Police Department headquarters on Friday afternoon. According to Friday’s arrest warrant affidavit, investigators on the case questioned her on two separate occasions, and on each McKinnie admitted to having some knowledge of why she was being questioned but did not acknowledge any wrong-
doing. She told investigators only that “[she] wasn’t diligent” in her work as the campaign’s treasurer, and referred to herself during questioning as the campaign’s “piss girl.” McKinnie was released from custody Friday afternoon after agreeing to appear in court on Oct. 2. McKinnie, who could not be reached for comment on Monday, was arrested again Saturday morning by the New Haven Police Department for allegedly stealing from former Ward 24 Alderwoman Elizabeth McCormack’s 2009 aldermanic campaign as its treasurer, the New Haven Independent reported. McKinnie spent the weekend in police custody because she was not able to meet a $10,000 bond. On Monday, Judge Joseph Licari released her on a promise to appear again on Oct. 2. McCormack told the Independent that after the election, campaign staffers told her they had not been paid. When McCormack asked McKinnie about the staffers’ compensation, McKinnie told her that there had not been enough money, and that she had used that money to pay other bills. So McCormack raised another $2,000. SEE MCKINNIE PAGE 8
BY BEN PRAWDZIK STAFF REPORTER
a living. In New Haven, that meant a growing drug trade and higher crime. H igh unemployment may have contributed to a record high of 34 homicides in 1991, a rate unmatched until 2011. Among those 34 homicides was Yale student Christian Prince ’93, who was shot to death on the steps of
New federal job data reveals dim prospects for Connecticut as it struggles to lift itself out of recession. After 14 months of steady job gains, the state economy battled a rough summer — Connecticut’s August labor statistics, released Thursday, reported the biggest one-month unemployment increase in 36 years on top of job losses in June and July. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which compiles economic data at the national, state and municipal levels, Connecticut lost 6,800 non-farming jobs between July and August, pushing unemployment up from 8.5 to 9 percent. The 0.5 percent jump is the largest monthly unemployment rate increase since 1976, when the current BLS methodology was first established, and puts Connecticut well above the national average of 8.1 percent unemployment for August. The data also indicated that the state’s civilian labor force included 1.9 million people in August, down 9,400 from July. The state’s leisure and hospitality sectors experienced the largest losses, as over 3,100 jobs disappeared in August. Education and health services posted the largest gains, with 500 jobs added. But while the new BLS employment figures point to large job losses, Connecticut officials have questioned the accuracy of the data given other state employment indicators. “Both [the BLS and Connecticut Department of Labor] labor statistics programs point toward employment losses in Connecticut … However, to date we can find no corroborating evidence that the record losses in employment are occurring at this magnitude,” said Andy Condon, director of the Office of Research at the Connecticut Department of Labor. “We continue to monitor the situation carefully and are working
SEE DESTEFANO PAGE 4
SEE JOBS PAGE 8
JACOB GEIGER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
BY NICK DEFIESTA STAFF REPORTER
Summer job losses darken state economy
Society displaced from SSS
PHILLIPP ARNDT/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The Aurelian Honor Society has historically been based in Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall’s room 405. BY CAROLINE TAN AND JULIA ZORTHIAN STAFF REPORTERS On the night of April 12, the Aurelian Honor Society — like many other senior societies — initiated its incoming class with traditional Tap Night antics and activities. But soon after, Aurelian was cited by University administrators for serving alcohol to its underage members, and it has since been banned by the Executive Committee from hold-
ing regular meetings in its traditional location inside SheffieldSterling-Strathcona Hall. News of Aurelian’s displacement from SSS spread last week after society president Tim Hillas ’13 sent a Sept. 17 email to Aurelian alumni explaining the situation and soliciting advice and donations. He wrote that the society could not hold its senior graduation reception in SSS 405 during the spring, has not had regular access to its room this
semester, and must wait until December to petition ExComm for renewed access. “We are homeless for the first time since 1932 and it’s our collective belief that we now face forces, increasingly irreconcilable, that pull at the very fabric of our history and threaten its future,” Hillas said in his email. “It has never been more important that we come together now.” SEE AURELIAN PAGE 8
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
OPINION
“This whole enterprise has less to do with concern for the well-being .COMMENT of students than it does with the legal liability of the Yale corporayaledailynews.com/opinion tion.” ‘OBSERVER’ ON ‘TAILGATE VILLAGE’S DARK SIDE’
The neutral internet T
he Internet surprises me everyday, and this time, Facebook’s the culprit. When she used Facebook to invite friends to her 16th birthday party, Dutch teenager Merthe Weusthuis opened a Pandora’s box of virtual catastrophes. Weusthuis forgot to mark her party — a small affair at her home in Haren, Groningen — as private. Her friends invited friends. Their friends invited friends. The party went viral. Strangers across the country made websites and YouTube trailers advertising the event; they sold shirts with Merthe’s face emblazoned on the front. They found inspiration in Project X, a film chronicling the misadventures of an ill-fated teenager who advertises his own party on Craigslist. The day of the party, Weusthuis fled. Meanwhile, over 5,000 revelers traveled to the city, looking for a good time. Though the party, according to an Australian news website, began in good spirits, things went south when those other spirits — as such spirits are wont to do — settled in. Five thousand opportunistic revelers quickly became 5,000 belligerent drunks destroying property, inciting confrontation with police and incurring over a million euros of damage. The situation in Haren could not have occurred in a world without the Internet. Technology permeates and drives the story from beginning to end. Facebook facilitated Merthe’s initial mistake. YouTube and Twitter made it viral. In the days following the disaster, community members took to Facebook to organize public efforts to clean the wreckage. I read about the aftermath of the ordeal on Gawker and could keep myself updated via Google Alert, too, were I so inclined. This kind of wild, unprecedented connectivity is the miracle — and the curse — of the Internet. After situations like these — and after learning about the proliferation of websites designed to shame women, blogs made to belittle classmates, websites made to end careers — it’s easy to think the Internet is to blame. We’ve heard this argument before. Anonymity cultivates the worst in us. Without accountability, we flounder. At best, we troll. At worst, we riot. But the Internet didn’t make us jerks. It did, however, make us more efficient, better-connected jerks — and then it put jerks across the world on display. Young hooligans crashed birthday parties before the era of AIM and Gchat. Readers criticized newspaper columns before there were online newspapers — they just did it around dinner tables, on soapboxes and in public squares. The creation of the
Internet was not the meaningful tipping point. The Internet has allowed great things to hapMARISSA pen. We can with MEDANSKY Skype our friends in China and Sidewinder read blogs from the Middle East! That’s really cool; there’s no better word for it. And that simply couldn’t happen in the age of newsboys and “extra, extra, read all about it.”
IT’S EASY TO THINK THE INTERNET IS TO BLAME … WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY, WE FLOUNDER. Furthermore, even so-called Internet trolls (y’all know who y’all are) can and do align themselves with the side of justice. Take, for instance, the tens of thousands of anonymous donors who supported Karen Klein, the bus monitor who made headlines this past June when a video of middle school kids tormenting her surfaced on the Internet. Or look to the following behind campaigns like “It Gets Better,” which has inspired thousands of troubled LGBT youths to look past bullying. Barack Obama used reddit.com to connect with millions of voters, temporarily crashing the website. Combined, these events deliver a single message clearly: Good people use the Internet, too. Yes, the Internet has made the world smaller, and this coziness has its costs. The Internet has made the nastiness of others — whether the hooligans in Haren or the bullies on Karen Klein’s school bus — national news. It has made these things important to me in a way they never could have been before. We can now take a tragedy and make it viral. But though the Internet has done much to expose the cruelties of the world, the Internet itself is not cruel, nor is it kind. The Internet is a morally neutral body. And the miracle of the Internet is that we can use it however we like. MARISSA MEDANSKY is a sophomore in Morse College. Contact her at marissa.medansky@yale.edu .
GUE ST COLUMNIST DIANA ROSEN
The conservative side of Yale I
didn’t know much about New York Governor George Pataki before I decided to run with the don’t-evermiss-an-opportunitythrown-at-you-by-Yale philosophy and hear him talk. I knew he was a moderate Republican — a foreign species for me coming from a leftist, urban background — but I figured, why not? So last Tuesday I walked through the rain, completely underdressed for the event in shorts and boots, to meet the governor. I had never been to a Master’s Tea before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. With all the descriptions of Yale’s “super liberal” political climate, I figured there was a good chance that people would show up to hassle the governor about his support for Mitt Romney or slashing welfare spending. Instead, Pataki met an audience just as conservative as him, if not slightly more. People snapped and nodded in response to his statements about the excessive entitlements Americans feel they deserve, eerily reminiscent of Romney’s catastrophic 47 percent remark. Pataki explained that the average American’s political alliances are somewhere between center and right
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who comes from a high school where not supporting Occupy was frowned upon, this comes as a bit of culture shock. I’m glad I went to see Pataki. The talk opened my eyes to a fact about the place where I’m about to spend four years that I hadn’t been ready to accept. Yale isn’t the liberal haven I’m accustomed to, even if some people say it is. But that might be a good thing. I appreciate being surrounded by diverse views, even if I think some of them are despicable. And I’m glad to share what I have to say with those who think the same way about my views. In a few years, we’ll find ourselves on opposite sides of the lines out there in the real world, but at least we’ll know how the other side thinks. Maybe that kid you sat next to in section freshman year will be sitting inside the highrise outside of which you’re protesting. Maybe you will find yourselves representing opposing political parties on a ballot. As much as our paths might differ, we will have spent four years together. That’s a valuable education. DIANA ROSEN is a freshman in Pierson College. Contact her at diana.rosen@yale.edu .
Ditch your H.S. sweetheart O
kay, freshmen, listen up to the croaky old voice of reason: You need to break free of your long-distance relationship. It’s been four weeks. You’re not using your map to get around campus anymore. By now, you know your way to every building except TD, which with luck you’ll discover sometime during your sophomore year. You’ve seen what this campus has to offer. I’m not saying it’s fantastic, but admit it — you dig a guy in a cable sweater. Also, those ROTC guys! Holy cow! But this isn’t about comparing options, or the crew cuts and biceps of boys who look deceptively old but are — please remind me — barely 19. I have no doubt as to the depth and authenticity of your high school relationship. I’m not trying to tell you you aren’t in love with her. I’m not even arguing that, if someone doesn’t put some sense into you, you won’t make this relationship last until your sophomore year. I’ve seen plenty drag on even longer. This isn’t about you and Whatshername. It’s about
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more conservative than most. But, from the interactions I’ve had with students since arriving to campus, it seems that the typical Yale student isn’t nearly as liberal as many make them out to be. Given a social issue like gay marriage, Yale students speak in complete support or know not to open their mouths in opposition. But when it comes to issues of the economy, working-class struggles, social programs, dare I say class warfare, students’ views are remarkably shifted to the right. I have had fellow students explain to me that there is nothing wrong with CEOs profiting at the expense of paying their workers minimum wage with no benefits. I have been told that wealth disparity is just a part of life. Many Yale students figure that, as unfair as the system is, they are on the winning side and therefore don’t want it to change. As much as people like to espouse the notion that Yale is a liberal institution, it acts as a stepping-stone to the world of big business. It’s a corporation that makes money wherever it can, and much of the student body will, a few years from now, be working for groups that do the same. To someone
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and that the country is falling apart thanks to our wildly leftist president. He didn’t explain how a right wing population managed to elect such a dangerous radical. Sitting through the discussion, rolling my eyes, I found myself looking at the rest of the audience. Unlike me, they were mostly immersed in Pataki’s words, looking up to a man who represented much of what I’ve always viewed as just plain wrong. The audience was a perfect representation of the center-right America Pataki had described. And at Yale — the Yale I was constantly told was too left to handle. Conservatives complain about it, liberals revel in it and I, evidently, was misled by it. The students at the tea seemed to mainly be social liberals with moderate to conservative economic beliefs. They agreed that we should boost our already gargantuan military spending. Some questioned the validity of global warming. Others sung the praises of strict voter ID laws. Never in my life had I found myself in such a conservative environment. Obviously the students who would elect to see Pataki speak would, on average, be
you and Yale. This is about how you’re spending your evenings, your nights, your spare thoughts and moments — how, slowly and subtly and without your noticing it, your significant other is dulling your social impulse, making you complacent. You should come to Yale starving — for friendship, for experience, for (ahem) stimulation. You should spend this semester glutting yourself on overcommitment — joining three bands, doing four shows, writing columns about topics you know nothing about. Your free time should be stretched between lunch dates and dinner dates and coffee dates, with late night roommate bonding and park bench conversations that defy convention and New Haven’s disgusting weather, with ill-advised public make outs, but not outside my entryway, please God, not there. Your free time should not involve constant texting, twohour Skype calls, or weekend trips to some inferior campus. I’m not saying you should go for the 12-college challenge. I’m just saying that freshman year is your one and only shot
Education is not just capitalism The world is too much with Chuck Stetson (“Preparing Yalies for business,” Sept. 21), whose vision of an education grounded in the “western tradition of the humanities” as inculcation in capitalist values and American civics would lay waste our powers more than poor Wordsworth ever could have foreseen. Set aside what all alumni of Directed Studies know: If our study of the western tradition is just pro-business prolegomena to future financial success, then thinkers like Marx or Jesus (who begs us reject Mammon to find salvation) should be thrown off its syllabus. What a shame that would be, since Stetson also thinks we should be reading more of C. S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer, who loved Jesus lots! Set aside, also, Stetson’s strange insinuation that European and American economic clout stems from some innate virtue in the West’s supposed values, above and beyond those of Asia and Africa. Friends I have talked to who study Asian and African languages, culture and history here have plenty of bones to pick with this pretty terrifying atavism of European imperialist ideology. By definition, part of what a “humanistic” education teaches us is that there are human forms of value totally separate from and perhaps totally superior to dollars and cents. An education in the humanities should, if anything, convince us that careers in businesses
to be a complete idiot and not regret it for the rest of your college career. There is nothing you can do, no commitment you can make (and break) and nowhere you can wake up for which you will be faulted a year from now. Trust me: freshman year means no shame. To the contrary — you will cherish your poor choices. You will delight to see that hook-up — whom you will not acknowledge — eating in your dining hall. You will laugh to remember his horrendous misuse of tongue. Savor your misfortunes — the awful screw dates, the hapless hook-ups, the gay guys you’ll continue, hopelessly, to fall for. Learn from them. Grow from them. Because (in all paltry seriousness) this is the time when you should be discovering yourself. There are sides of you that you didn’t know existed. There are things you love — people you could love — that you haven’t yet seen or heard or done. You need the freedom to grow out of the person you were when you entered this relationship. Most of my friends regret staying with their high school
such as hedge funds — which, like Mammon in Milton’s Hell, mine grimy lodes to build dubious palaces — are hardly a natural next step for us. One wonders if Stetson’s tendentious elision of embracing the humanities and embracing capitalist values doesn’t help, in another form, make it easier for some to apologize for Yale’s decision to set up a campus in politically repressive (but hyper-capitalist!) Singapore. Let us hope that Yale’s next president will actually commit him or herself to the humanities and instead always ask us to consider the pitfalls of treating our education as mere career training. RYAN POLLOCK Sept. 24 The writer is a senior in Calhoun College.
Ayn Rand loves love As Marissa Medansky points out (“Don’t begrudge happiness,” Sept. 11) being happy for others is something the world needs more of. So it was sad to me, as someone who studies Ayn Rand’s works, that Medansky chose to illustrate her points
sweethearts. They wasted time. Things grew sour. They lost potential friends. They lost a best friend. You might be the exception. You might be the one person I know who is still with his high school girlfriend. You might have already met your soulmate. There’s a chance, even, that I am totally wrong, that this relationship is a good thing. Maybe you’re balancing this the right way. Maybe that person is just what you need right now. Maybe he’s not tying you down but pushing you forward. Maybe, but probably not. Consider, finally, serendipity — that amor omnia vinct, that love will guide you to the right person in the end, even if it’s back to where you started. Consider letting yourself go; consider giving yourself to Yale; consider making the very most of this place and the four fleeting years you have here. Consider that you, and that cute girl from your econ section, will thank me later. MICHELLE TAYLOR is a senior in Davenport College. Contact her at michelle.taylor@yale.edu .
with a dubious story about Ayn Rand that fails to mention her actual views on the subject. In fact, Rand repeatedly observed that hating, denigrating and being envious of others’ accomplishments was one of the greatest evils that the world faced. That’s why Rand’s alleged snub toward a budding architect struck me as completely out of character for a woman who wrote stacks of letters to fans, friends, fellow stamp collectors, astronauts, soldiers and many others with her typical joyful response to their achievements — being genuinely happy for their happiness and success in the world. So how can we get rid of the pernicious attitude of envy and start down the road to happiness? It might surprise you to know what Rand considered the best weapon in the fight: “For once it is I who will say that love is the answer … ” she said. For Rand, this meant the love of effort, achievement and “man at his highest potential.” AMANDA MAXHAM Sept. 21 The writer is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute.
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 3
NEWS
“What do you know about the society system here?” OWEN JOHNSON AUTHOR OF ‘STOVER AT YALE’
CORRECTIONS MONDAY, SEPT. 24
Tour brings locals to tombs
The “On Campus” section of Bulletin Board misstated the time of the Yale Center for British Art’s program, “‘The Greuze of Freengrocers’ Shops’: Eliot Hodgkin and his ‘Bundle of Asparagus.’” It will take place today at 12:30 p.m., not 7:00 p.m. The article “SOM adds new career services for alumni” conflated the percent of School of Management alumni from the class of 2011 who took jobs in the public and private sectors. While 90 percent took jobs in the private sector, 1 percent took jobs in the public sector.
New FAS meetings to begin Monday BY GAVAN GIDEON STAFF REPORTER Starting next Monday, professors will have a new venue to discuss and adopt formal opinions on behalf of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The recently introduced FAS meetings will convene twice a semester and allow professors to adopt formal resolutions “as the views of the FAS faculty,” following rules released in an email by Provost Peter Salovey last Thursday. The FAS meetings are intended to encourage broader and more open discussion of issues facing the University than currently allowed by the monthly meetings of faculty in Yale College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, which are “carefully choreographed and ritualized,” according to the report that proposed rules for the new meetings. While the FAS meetings aim to allow greater faculty input, they will not hand any formal decision-making authority to professors. History professor Frank Snowden, a member of the three-person committee that wrote the rules, said resolutions passed at the FAS meetings will have “influence rather than power.” Salovey said in a Sunday email that formal resolutions that come out of the meetings, which can only be passed if a quorum of 40 people are in attendance, will constitute “very significant statements of views held by the faculty” and will be “regarded with deserved seriousness.” He said faculty are already offered decision-making power on issues concerning curriculum and faculty appointment and promotions in other venues. Snowden said the FAS meetings will allow faculty members to discuss issues such as Yale’s partnership with the National University of Singapore in the creation of a new liberal arts college and general concerns about staffing in academic departments. The agenda for the Oct. 1 meeting has two items planned: the search process for a successor to University President Richard Levin and the ongoing academic review of the FAS. Political science professor
Seyla Benhabib GRD ’77 said in a Monday email that the introduction of the FAS meetings suggests that the administration recognizes the concerns raised by her and some other faculty members in the spring that “major policy decisions and other matters affecting the life of the University were not being discussed adequately in public fora.” Benhabib said she remains concerned about some details of the meetings, such as which faculty members and administrators are invited to attend, and how agenda items will be handled. The proposed rules state that only full-time ladder faculty members of the FAS will be able to attend the meetings, making 682 people eligible for the first one. This includes administrators who are tenured members of the faculty — such as Salovey, Levin, Yale College Dean Mary Miller and Graduate School Dean Thomas Pollard — but excludes lecturers, lectors and other instructors. In his email to faculty last week, Salovey said the rules proposed by the three-person committee were accepted by the Expanded Executive Committee of the FAS — consisting of himself, Levin, Miller, Pollard, School of Engineering and Applied Science Dean Kyle Vanderlick, and the four faculty divisional directors in the physical sciences and engineering, biological sciences, social sciences and humanities. The rules may be changed by faculty after the first meeting, scheduled for 4 p.m. in Luce Hall. Yair Minsky, chair of the Mathematics Department, said he will not have a clear stance on the meetings until he sees how they operate, but added that he thinks they are “being organized in good faith.” The rules committee recommended the meetings be chaired by the FAS divisional directors on a rotating basis. Salovey said in his email to faculty that Donald Engelman GRD ’67, professor of molecular biophysics and chemistry and director of the biological sciences division, will chair the Oct. 1 meeting. Contact GAVAN GIDEON at gavan.gideon@yale.edu .
ANNELISA LEINBACH/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Book and Snake (above) and Skull and Bones (below) were two of the six tombs represented on a tour of Yale’s secret societies organized by the New Haven Preservation Trust Monday evening. BY MATTHEW LLOYD-THOMAS CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Fifty residents of New Haven and neighboring towns spent Monday evening criss-crossing campus as part of a walking tour of Yale’s senior societies. The tour, organized by the New Haven Preservation Trust, cost participants $75 each and took them to the steps of the “tombs” of six societies: Manuscript, Wolf’s Head, Skull and Bones, Elihu, Scroll and Key, and Book and Snake. Attendees also had the opportunity to go inside Elihu, where they were given a tour by Harold Roth ’57, an alumnus of the society. The program concluded with dinner at Mory’s, where the Whiffenpoofs performed. Most of those on the tour, generally in their 50s or 60s and not affiliated with Yale, said they had heard about it through the New Haven Preservation Trust, of which many were members.
including “running into” Jodie Foster ’85 and Anderson Cooper ’89 during parties at Manuscript. At Elihu, participants in the tour were allowed inside, where Roth guided the group through the building’s library, meeting room and “tap room.” Throughout the tour of the society, Roth emphasized Elihu’s unusually open nature. “This is a place with virtually no mysticism or ritual,” he said. Dispelling notions of mysticism was a motivation for at least one tour guide, Barry McMurtrey ’88. “People always wonder what are those buildings, how secret are they,” said McMurtrey. A former Whiffenpoof who
also serves as one of the a cappella group’s chief historians, McMurtrey said it was important to separate myth from reality when it comes to senior societies. “People let their imaginations run wild,” he said. “They’re not an evil cabal.” Tour-goers said they were excited to gain insight into organizations typically considered exclusive and mysterious, even among locals. Many added that they were motivated to sign up in part because they were interested in the architecture and history of New Haven. “I always like learning about the New Haven community,” tour-goer and Yale Center for British Art docent Berclee Cam-
eron said. The idea for the tour began with Bruce Graham, who serves as an advisor to the New Haven Preservation Trust. John Herzan, a staff member at the Trust, said the tour had been “years in the making.” The New Haven Preservation Trust was founded in 1961 and seeks “to honor and preserve New Haven’s architectural heritage — historic buildings and neighborhoods — through advocacy, education and collaboration,” according to its website. Contact MATTHEW LLOYDTHOMAS at matthew.lloyd-thomas@yale.edu .
People let their imaginations run wild. [Societies are] not an evil cabal. BARRY MCMURTREY ’88 Tour guide The two-hour tour split into two groups of 25, with each group visiting the societies in a different order. Tour groups stopped at each tomb for a brief explanation of the society’s history as well as its current activities. The tour guides also offered personal anecdotes about friends in the various societies,
Dems host Blumenthal LAW ’73, Lembo
HENRY EHRENBERG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Senator Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73 came to campus Monday night to discuss the upcoming elections. BY LORYN HELFMANN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER On Monday evening, the Yale College Democrats gathered in the Davenport common room to hear
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73 and State Comptroller Kevin Lembo discuss the upcoming Connecticut and national elections. Blumenthal spoke about the
obstacles U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy faces in his bid for Connecticut’s open Senate seat and how the race will impact Democrats’ chances of retaining a majority in the Senate. Lembo discussed the presidential
race, accusing Republican nominee Mitt Romney of dividing the electorate by adopting extreme right-wing positions. “Chris Murphy is absolutely essential to the Democratic majority [in the Senate],” Blumenthal said. “Losing would be catastrophic,” he said, especially because of the Senate’s power to veto nominations for the Supreme Court. Blumenthal explained his decision to endorse Murphy, citing the candidate’s commitment to “individual people” and his ability to work with legislators across partisan lines. Blumenthal said that both he and Murphy are “on the side of anyone who wants to work hard,” while McMahon has made a living “by running over people.” Even with the Democratic majority hanging in the balance, Blumenthal spoke extensively about the importance of bipartisanship and cultivating personal relationships with other senators, regardless of their party affiliation. The election is far from
decided. Recent polls are showing that McMahon has bounced back from her 2010 defeat in her run for the Senate and is currently neck and neck with Murphy. Blumenthal pointed out that, even in a traditionally blue state like Connecticut, Murphy has a tough job competing with the “$50 million” McMahon has poured into her campaign from her personal fortune, adding that running against a candidate with so much funding can be disheartening. He would know — he defeated McMahon in a bitterly contested race in 2010 for the Senate seat vacated by Chris Dodd. Lembo began his half of the discussion by waving his arm to divide the room and instructing “47 percent of you” to “sit on this side so I could just talk to the rest of you,” referring to comments that Romney made last week in which he characterized that proportion of the American population as “dependent” on government-funded social services. He drew a parallel between the ease
with which Romney and McMahon are influenced by extremism within the Republican party. “Mitt Romney is being emptied and filled with other people’s ideas [and] he needs to find his moral compass,” he said, adding that McMahon has also adopted polarizing views. Though he recognized that politicians tend to exaggerate the importance of individual elections, Lembo said that this year’s presidential race is actually “the most important election of our lifetime.” Zak Newman ’13, president of the Dems, said he chose these two speakers because Blumenthal has the authority to talk about the importance of electing Murphy to the Senate in advancing President Barack Obama’s agenda. Lembo, Newman said, is a knowledgeable and skilled speaker, and is particulary adept at speaking to students. Contact LORYN HELFMANN at loryn.helfmann@yale.edu .
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
FROM THE FRONT
Yale New Haven Homebuyer Program
Under University President Richard Levin’s Homebuyer Program, instituted in 1994, permanent Yale employees who work at least 20 hours a week receive a yearly income benefit if they buy and live in a home in certain parts of the city, including Wooster Square, eastern East Rock, Beaver Hills, Newhallville, Dixwell, Dwight, Fair Haven, the Hill and West Hills
As DeStefano exceeds record, city evaluates 20-year record DESTEFANO FROM PAGE 1 St. Mary’s Church on Hillhouse Avenue in February of that year. When Mayor John DeStefano Jr. and University President Richard Levin took office within a few months of each other two years later, neither had an easy job. Levin faced old, deteriorating buildings, persistent labor union strikes, an $18 million deficit and fresh fears about the safety of Yale’s campus in the wake of Prince’s death. DeStefano, meanwhile, had to fight the typical urban problems of deeply entrenched crime, poverty, unemployment and school dropout rates from a mayor’s office that had built a reputation for inertia. “Intangibly, the spirit in New Haven was a downbeat civic spirit. It was one of ‘How do you manage decline?’” said University spokesman Michael Morand ’87 DIV ’93, a former Ward 1 alderman. In the past decade, a revitalized downtown, a jobs-heavy science park, a newly created “jobs pipeline” and a plan to redevelop Route 34 to focus on New Haven’s emerging biotechnology industry have lifted the city’s economic prospects. Today’s town-gown relations, too, would be nearly unrecognizable to anyone 20 years ago — in place of the antipathy that defined the past, Yale and New Haven now cooperate on initiatives like the New Haven Promise scholarship program and the Yale Homebuyer Program, which saw its 1000th participant last year. While Levin announced his retirement in August, describing his 20th anniversary in office as “a natural time for a transition,” DeStefano, who will pass the record for longest time served by a New Haven mayor on Oct. 4, has shown no such inclination to leave. An invitation to DeStefano’s birthday party in May asked attendees to support the mayor’s reelection — complete with a campaign email address — and the mayor recently visited a senior housing complex carrying “DeStefano for Mayor 2013” bags. Despite widespread acknowledgement among city residents that the mayor has played a significant role in the city’s recent upswing, DeStefano won his election last fall by the narrowest margin of his tenure — 55 to 45 percent — despite higher name recognition and a vast cash advantage. At the same time, a slew of labor unionbacked aldermanic candidates defeated many DeStefano allies on the Board of Aldermen during last September’s primary election, giving Yale’s unions a majority on a board that has traditionally been perceived as a rubber stamp for the mayor. “After 20 years, people are a little tired of one-party rule, and maybe even one-person rule in this case,” said Charlie Pillsbury, a former Democratic Party activist who ran twice for the Board of Aldermen as a Green Party candidate. With his hold on office growing increasingly tenuous each election cycle, DeStefano’s next race may be his last — forcing a city whose politics have become synonymous with a single person to consider a future without him. DeStefano’s success next fall will depend on how his legacy is judged, a subject on which local citizens, political observers, city officials and DeStefano himself disagree.
ruling ordering the city to pay the Board of Education millions of dollars in a settlement. But being new to the role, DeStefano said, meant people went easy on him. “I was new. It’s good being new,” DeStefano said. “I think an advantage I had was I had been around in the bureaucracy for 10 years and sort of knew my way around.” He saw a few successes during his first term — including two budget surpluses, $2 billion in savings during labor negotiations, an end to tax hikes and an overall expansion of city services — so his reelection seemed guaranteed. Having delivered on many of his campaign promises, DeStefano defeated Republican challenger Ann Piscottano with 72 percent of the vote. But one of his most noticeable successes, the drastic drop in the homicide rate, was not the result of any of his own efforts. It was thanks mostly to the Danielsera arrival of New Haven Police Department Chief Nick Pastore, who implemented a community policing strategy that encouraged officers to form connections with the communities they patrolled. Neither does DeStefano deserve full credit for the dramatic turnaround of New Haven’s relationship with Yale, the mayor admits. In a break from their predecessors, DeStefano and Levin had made a point of working with, and not against, each other, and both leaders took the mayor’s overwhelming margin of victory as a clear mandate to continue their partnership. “I’ve developed an excellent working relationship with Mayor DeStefano. I find him a person with tremendous energy and with a real vision of improvement for the city,” Levin told the News at DeStefano’s 1995 victory party. “I look forward to another two years.” By the 1997 election, New Haven had seen such dramatic improvement under DeStefano that he ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, winning the general election with 79 percent of the vote against four independent challengers. “We haven’t won the total battle yet, but the mayor’s done a good job,” Morand told the News at DeStefano’s victory party that year, but his opponents complained about DeStefano’s reliance on the “old machine” of the Democratic Party. During his 1999 reelection campaign against James Newton, DeStefano argued that New Haven had completed an “about-face” under his stewardship. During his 1997-’99 term, DeStefano spearheaded the renovation of nearly all of the city’s schools. Will Ginsberg, who worked with DeStefano in DiLieto’s administration before heading the Science Park Development Corporation, called that initiative “nothing short of extraordinary.” These successes were enough to win DeStefano reelection against Newton, though he did so by his tightest margin yet, and lingering memories of the 1998 disappearance of $2.3 million of federal funds for DeStefano’s anti-blight Livable City Initiative (LCI) tarnished his image in that race. The scandal threatened to overwhelm City Hall — a U.S. Attorney’s Office investigation of the initiative was underway — but DeStefano saved face by dismissing top LCI officials and placing Henry Fernandez LAW ’94 at the agency’s helm. That
POLITICAL BEGINNINGS
New Haven’s decline began decades before DeStefano entered politics. Former Mayor Richard Lee, who began his 16-year stint at City Hall in 1954, focused his efforts on lifting New Haven out of poverty by enacting federally funded urban renewal projects, razing lower-class neighborhoods and replacing them with new infrastructure, most notably highways. At the time, New Haven — which received far more urban renewal funds per capita than any other American city — was hailed nationwide as a “model city.” Lee, admirers claimed, had created the first slumless, modern city, and many expected other cities to follow the Elm City’s example. But the feeling of success was short-lived, as employment declined and urban renewal was revealed to be less successful than initially expected. Poverty soared, and many city residents fled the city for the surrounding suburbs. When Lee left office in 1970, his attempts at urban renewal were largely regarded as failures. His early optimism was destroyed by the city’s accelerating descent into poverty and crime: “If New Haven is a ‘model city,’ God help America’s cities,” he said, according to a book by School of Management professor and former New Haven Chief Administrative Officer Douglas Rae.
After 20 years, people are a little tired of one-party rule, and maybe even oneperson rule in this case. CHARLIE PILLSBURY Former Green Party candidate, Board of Aldermen DeStefano began his political career in Lee’s shadow. He worked for nine years as one of Mayor Ben DiLieto’s chief budget aides, before running against John Daniels in the 1989 Democratic primary following DiLieto’s retirement. DeStefano lost by a wide margin in an election that drew about 70 percent of the city’s voters. Jim Farnam, who worked for the DiLieto administration for 10 years until 1989, said DeStefano’s defeat was caused by an unusual coalition of DiLieto’s detractors and black voters. DeStefano, he said, was perceived as “DiLieto’s guy,” a costly association. But Daniels had been “dealt a tough agenda,” Farnam said, and DeStefano decided to run again in 1993 after Daniels announced his retirement. “[DeStefano] was perceived as a technocrat with his accounting background,” Farnam said. “The perception was that he was some kind of a manager who would come in and fix things. There were a lot of issues that people had with some of the things Daniels did.” With the backing of the Democratic machine, DeStefano defeated John Yopp with an overwhelming 80 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary.
THE EARLY YEARS
DeStefano faced a series of political challenges immediately after he took over the mayor’s office on the second floor of City Hall, including a court
GRAPH MAYOR DESTEFANO’S ELECTION VICTORIES SINCE 1993
70
20 11
0 9
20
07
20
0 5
20
03
20
0 1
20
19 99
19 97
50
19 95
60
19 93
Percentage of Vote
80
YDN
Mayor John DeStefano Jr. celebrates his victory in the 1993 mayoral election. DeStefano will soon become New Haven’s longest-serving mayor, prompting many to consider what City Hall might look like without him. move allowed DeStefano to stave off Newton’s charges of corruption, winning his fourth term by a wide margin, with 62 percent of the vote to Newton’s 38 percent. In 2001, DeStefano faced State Senator Martin Looney in the city’s Democratic primary in the most expensive campaign in New Haven history, with over $450,000 raised for the mayor’s reelection fund. Looney, who had then served 21 years in the state legislature, insisted that New Haven residents wanted a change after eight years under DeStefano, and criticized the mayor for his corruption scandals, poorly-performing schools and a failed proposal for a Long Wharf galleria. But DeStefano asked voters to remember how far the city had come under his stewardship, emphasizing his point in a speech at Bella Vista the night before the election. “Look at where we started eight years ago,” DeStefano said, the News reported. “I think I’ve done a pretty good job.” Voters agreed, and the DeStefano won reelection with 62 percent of the vote in the primary. Looney, though, argued that his loss was in part to blame on the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center that had occurred the same day, which he said suppressed turnout. In the shadow of those attacks, which took place just 90 miles south of New Haven, DeStefano told attendees at his post-election party that his victory was a “clear and strong message” from voters on his record.
FACING CHALLENGES
After winning his 2003 election against an independent challenger with 88 percent of the vote — an all-time high — DeStefano decided to try his hand at higher office, launching a campaign for governor against Republican incumbent Jodi Rell. He said he saw the campaign as a “natural extension” of the changes he had enacted in New Haven. But after spending most of his campaign funds in a bitter primary battle with thenStamford Mayor Dannel Malloy, DeStefano’s cash-strapped campaign was overwhelmed by Rell’s attack advertisements and he only received 35 percent of the vote. It was DeStefano’s first and only run for state office. His gubernatorial campaign was perhaps the high-water mark of DeStefano’s time in office — in its aftermath, critics called him an absentee mayor and some of his previous successes began to unravel. Pastore, the driving force behind community policing, resigned in 1997 after admitting to fathering a child with a prostitute. With his absence came a shift in department priorities away from community policing. This was not a conscious choice, DeStefano said, but rather the result of revolving police leadership.
But an increase in the city crime rate lagged a few years behind the change in police strategy, and it took nearly a decade after Pastore’s exit for the city to recognize it had a crime problem. “It’s the old story that if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water it’ll jump out, but if you put it in a pot of cold water and turn up the heat it’ll boil to death,” DeStefano said. “I think that sometimes in your life or in a community’s life, change is imperceptible and so incremental so as to not be detectable … I think, with community policing, my antenna didn’t pick that up.” The city’s schools, too, lost their upward trajectory. While educational facilities were new, scores remained below state and national standards. Another area of mixed success was election reform. After the expensive race against Looney and his administration’s corruption scandals, DeStefano pushed for the creation of the New Haven Democracy Fund, which provides public matching funds and grants to mayoral candidates who agree to certain restrictions on fundraising. DeStefano, who trumpeted the Fund as a victory for clean and transparent elections, used money from the Fund in his two following reelection campaigns. But in 2011, facing an antiincumbent mood and a tough challenge from budget watchdog Jeffrey Kerekes, the first challenger to qualify for Democracy Fund money, DeStefano abandoned the Fund. He claimed it “[didn’t make sense]” any more, an explanation New Haven Independent editor Paul Bass called “phony.” “[DeStefano] completely sold out on public financing,” Bass told the News. “He abided by it until he had a serious challenge, but he immediately gave it up when he thought his job might be threatened.” Without the limits imposed by the Democracy Fund, DeStefano outspent Kerekes by a factor of about 20, ultimately winning the race by less than 10 percent for the first time since he was elected.
THE POLITICIAN
With almost 20 years in office behind him, DeStefano has seen his share of difficult days. But his success at remaining in office may have stemmed just as much from skilled political gamesmanship as it has from tangible achievements. A large part of that prowess is evident in his ability to build coalitions, a skill that he used to win his first election in 1993 and which he has continued to refine. The mayor, Morand said, has been remarkably good at governing a city without a racial or ethnic majority, adding that DeStefano can be friends with — or enemies with — someone regardless of their class, neighborhood or ethnicity. “[DeStefano’s] very astute in the way he’s kept his coali-
tion together,” Farnam said. “He’s managed to keep the black community largely supporting him over any other challenger because of his relationships he’s built up over years in the community, his relationship with [African-American superintendent of New Haven Public Schools] Reggie Mayo, who helps deliver the sort of older, old-line black community.” This penchant for coalition-building has earned him a robust fundraising operation that kicks back into gear every two years. But much of this fundraising, according to Bass, is “hypocrisy.” A large portion of the money DeStefano receives in every campaign is donated by city employees and contractors doing business with the city, a practice that Bass said goes against the spirit of the clean election laws DeStefano has advocated. “I think the way he raises money is legally corrupt, the way he shakes down people who depend on him for their livelihood,” Bass said. “It’s morally bankrupt because of the way he positions himself as a reformer who pushes for clean elections.” But DeStefano disputed those charges, pointing out that neither his campaigns nor his office has ever been found guilty of corruption. As for fundraising, he argued that his campaign has never knowingly broken the law. “We follow the rules as they’re set out, we follow them to the letter,” DeStefano said. “When we make a mistake, we try to correct it.” More recently, DeStefano heeded the political winds following last year’s Democratic primary, where he won a plurality but failed to secure a majority. With a slate of labor-backed candidates calling for a return to community policing after a year of high crime, DeStefano brought back community-policing champion Dean Esserman, one of Pastore’s former assistant chiefs, to head the NHPD. Then, with a new Board of Aldermen focused on the creation of a “jobs pipeline” to prepare and connect New Haven residents with local jobs, DeStefano adopted the idea in his February State of the City speech. With his weight behind the initiative, it was enacted by a unanimous vote of the Board of Aldermen earlier this month. While many new aldermen were elected last fall on a wave of anti-DeStefano sentiment, DeStefano and the Board have seen eye to eye on almost every policy question. “DeStefano’s very good at seeing how politics change, how the issues change and understanding what kind of policies and coalitions keep him in power,” Bass said. “He’s good at reinventing himself, paying attention to issues and responding to what people want.” For all his political skills, DeStefano considers policy SEE DESTEFANO PAGE 8
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 5
NEWS Brazilian artist’s art imitates everyday life BY ERIC XIAO CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Sometimes, the simplest things in life are the most beautiful — particularly when it comes to the art on display at the Yale School of Art. On Monday night, a crowd of about 65 graduate students and community members gathered at the Art School’s 36 Edgewood Ave. building to hear Brazilian artist Jac Leirner speak about how her artistic career has reflected her love of everyday objects. Leirner, whose “Hardware Seda — Hardware Silk” exhibition is currently on display in the gallery, took her audience through a slideshow of her installations, highlighting the beauty of the simplistic materials she incorporates into her work. In her talk, Leirner emphasized the importance of respecting all art forms and materials. “Respect is the key to all of our questions here,” she said, pointing to a winding, snake-like piece she created out of obsolete banknotes. Leirner said that early in her career, she began to create art out of large quantities of simple materials, focusing particularly on “polluted” materials: objects that had lost their practical value after being used. Gradually, her banknote works became representative of more than just art. She showed a piece that featured banknotes of varying worth, which she said symbolically reflected the unstable nature of the Brazilian economy. “I knew they would become something special,” she said. Leirner displayed photos of her “Lung” series, in which each piece consisted of a different component of a Marlboro cigarette package. One piece comprised over one thousand cigarette packages. Leirner said that this piece took over three years to complete because she needed to smoke all of the cigarettes in order to use
the packages. As she progressed through the slideshow, she noted the respect she has for the materials used in each one. The works included a collage of car window stickers, a long strand of turnbuckles and a succession of airplane sickness bags. “All are great, all are beautiful,” Leirner said of the everyday materials she uses. Since her childhood years, Leirner has been deeply involved in the art world: Both of her parents were art curators, and she recounted stories of accompanying her parents to countless cities to acquire works for their collection. Leirner noted that her parents had “a small budget but a lot of passion,” adding that her current focus on the arrangement of everyday objects as opposed to elegant paintings could be attributed to her experiences with her parents. She said that when many of her contemporaries in Brazil were creating large paintings, she was creating art out of cigarette packages and plastic bags. Decades after Leirner created her first piece, she said is still exploring various representations of simple objects. She recounted how she recently turned one piece that consisted of silverware laid out on a flat surface into a free-standing assembly of the same forks, knives and spoons. Three audience members interviewed said they appreciated Leirner’s practice of using and reusing everyday items. Ghazaal Vojdani ART ’13 said she particularly enjoyed Leirner’s variations of one type of object across multiple works. “The way she keeps collecting daily, ready-made materials … in this way she truly is an artist,” Shih-hsiung Chou ART ’14 said. Leirner’s exhibition will remain on display through Sept. 30.
Bigpoint Games Bigpoint GmbH has its headquarters in Hamburg, Germany, where it develops stand-alone and social-network video games. Bigpoint has developed SpaceInvasion, DarkOrbit, Deepolis and ZooMumba, among many other online games. The games are dveloped using PHP, Adobe Flash, Java and the Unity engine.
Economist Fair predicts close race BY MAREK RAMILO CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Yale economics professor Ray Fair, who designed a statistical model to predict the vote share in U.S. presidential elections, says the race is in a statistical dead heat. Drawing on economic figures including growth in real GDP, inflation rate and number of “good news” quarters — those when growth rate of real GDP exceeds 3.2 percent — Fair’s model operates on the premise that the American economy will drive voters’ choices in November. The model predicts that President Barack Obama will receive 49.48 percent of
FA I R V O T E VS . “ B R E A D AND PEACE” FACTORS CONSIDERED Unlike
Fair’s equation, which only employs economic variables, Hibbs’ model also considers the effect of military casualties on the presidential election, in addition to that of economic vitality.
MEASURE OF ECONOMIC VITALITY
Fair and Hibbs disagree on the best measure of economic strength, as seen in Fair’s use of real GDP growth rate and Hibbs’ use of real disposable income IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID
The professors agree that the state of the economy appears to be the most influential factor of the election.
the presidential vote compared to 50.52 percent for Republican nominee Mitt Romney, making a narrow victory for either candidate within the margin of error. “The hypothesis this model tests is that the economy affects the way people vote,” Fair said. “The economy is growing, but not fast enough to be confident in predicting a winner. The main thing we can take away is that the election will be close — too close to call right now.” While there is no precise way to quantify voters’ perception of the U.S. economy at the time of the election, Fair maintains that the inputs for his formulae at least do so indirectly, stating that “people’s idea of the economy correlates with these variables.” With the economy currently performing neither particularly well nor especially poorly, Fair expected his equations to yield largely ambiguous results. Given the study’s margin of error, Fair said the resulting output is somewhat inconclusive beyond indicating that the election should be a tight race. From November 2010 through April 2012, Fair’s equation predicted that Obama would receive a vote share over 50 percent. Fair said he is hesitant to predict that Romney will win even though his most recent numbers indicate as such, given that the standard error is around three percent. He emphasized that its inability to predict a winner definitively does not speak to a flaw in the model; rather, the absence of a definite winner based on these numbers reflects the lukewarm nature of the economy. But if one of the candidates ultimately wins by a wide margin, then the model’s validity would be called into question, Fair said. Historically, the model’s predictions have been fairly accurate, averaging a mean absolute error value of only 3.60 percentage points in the last eight elections, though error reached a full 10.5 percentage points in 1992.
YALE
Yale economist Ray Fair’s election-predicting model says that President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are in a statistical dead heat. Nonetheless, some experts “do not think highly of Fair’s sequence of models,” said economics professor Douglas Hibbs, who is on the faculty of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. “Fair’s model has a lot of statistical ‘junk,’” Hibbs said. “None of the variables in this very peculiar set of economic terms are significant.” Hibbs said that Fair’s model is too cluttered with variables that do not reflect presidential performance, such as incumbency. In contrast with Fair’s model, Hibbs’ own equation, known as the “Bread and Peace Model,” factors in the effect of US military fatalities in unprovoked overseas deployments such as those to Iraq, Korea and Vietnam. Furthermore, Hibbs employs the growth rate of per capita real disposable income, a figure that he contends is more telling than the economic variables used in Fair’s work. As a result, Hibbs estimates that Obama will win only 47.5
percent of the vote, compared to Fair’s estimate of 49.5 percent. In the former case a Romney victory is likely, while the latter is a statistical tie. Bruce Hansen, professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said he admires Fair’s work. “[Fair] zeroes in on some key variables and he’s been rigorous about using the same equation over many years.” Hansen said. He also pointed out that, as one of the pioneers for political econometrics, Fair has done a good job of quantifying the impact of the economy on voting patterns. While Hansen said he has not run his own calculations in anticipation of this year’s election, he agrees that it will be close. Fair’s model also predicts that Democratic Party candidates will win 46.25 percent of the net vote for Congressional seats. Contact MAREK RAMILO at marek.ramilo@yale.edu .
Video game developer discusses industry
Contact ERIC XIAO at eric.xiao@yale.edu .
DESIGN We’re the best-looking desk at the YDN.
HARRY SIMPERINGHAM/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Video game developer Casey Kuczik ’03 spoke at a Pierson College Master’s Tea Monday about changes in his industry. BY AMY WANG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
We see you. design@yaledailynews.com
Casey Kuczik ’03 spoke to students Monday about his experiences in the video game industry and discussed how modern video games are rapidly shifting to involve social aspects and appeal to a universal audience. Kuczik, who majored in film and American studies at Yale and initially hoped to enter the film industry, told around a dozen students at a Pierson College Master’s Tea about his unexpected entrance into the video game industry and about recent trends in the industry. Only a few years ago, he said, video games occupied a niche market, but now they are mass marketed to all types of people. “I don’t remember anybody, when I was at Yale, viewing video games as a worthwhile activity beyond having a couple of beers and killing a few people,” Kuczik joked. Kuczik, who has served as a producer, designer, writer and
tester at several companies over his career, is currently the head of mobile development at video game developer Bigpoint GmbH and lives in Hamburg, Germany. Kuczik stressed the importance of social elements of modern video games, explaining that games now focus more on psychology, rewards and social interaction. A diversity of business models and marketing strategies are facilitating the growth of a “new frontier for culture” in which video games no longer target only a specific demographic. Kuczik played two game television commercials from 1986 and 2010 to prove his point, demonstrating how depictions of gaming culture have dramatically changed. Because we live in a “connected world” now, he said, video games must have social hooks — collaboration, for example, or the ability to share scores with friends online — in order to become successful. “Virality is really important for free-play games,” he said. “And is it competitive? Is there
a social aspect? Is it easy to start and easy to use?” Kuczik acknowledged that there has been backlash from members of the traditional gaming community who view the modern video games on browsers and iPhones as overly mindless and superficial. They also see the new games as inferior to the original console games, which tend to have more complex designs. Kuczik said the traditional console will always have a special meaning to people who have a “personal relationship” with it, but the industry as a whole is moving away from that design. Through his career in the video game industry, Kuczik said he quickly learned the importance of foresight, critical thinking and attention to detail. He said video games must be tested for dozens of different logistical issues in order to succeed in a mass market, adding that he once worked as a tester and spent 55 hours a week for eight weeks playing test versions of games
to catch their bugs. In addition, launching a game requires collaboration between professionals in a variety of fields. “[To design a game] you need programmers, artists, game designers, producers to coordinate things at the management level [and] support departments such as marketing and finance,” Kuczik said, Two students interviewed said they enjoyed hearing about Kuczik’s experiences and learning from his insights into the industry. Sara Miller ’16 said she was particularly interested in hearing about new developments in the field since she grew up playing video games on consoles. “It was interesting to think about how video games are becoming more a part of our culture,” Sara Miller ’16 said. Bigpoint GmbH develops massive online multiplayer games and social games with free-to-play models. Contact AMY WANG at xiaotian.wang@yale.edu .
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 7
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
“Playing a robot is possibly the most difficult role you can have … because you have to take all your innate emotional responses and completely suppress them.” KRISTANNA LOKEN ACTRESS
Harsh anti-obesity ads ineffective
Self-aware robots created
How to succeed in business I
YALE
Justin Hart GRD ’13 has developed a robot that may pass the test of self-awareness, the ability to recognize itself as distinct from its surroundings. BY ANISHA SUTERWALA STAFF REPORTER
LET’S MOVE!
A recent study by Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity cited First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” fitness initiative as benefitting from its strategy of positive reinforcement of general fitness and healthy living principles. BY PAYAL MARATHE CONTRIBUTING REPORTER A recent study by Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity shows that many anti-obesity campaigns might be stigmatizing obese people instead of encouraging healthier behaviors. The study, published in this month’s issue of the International Journal of Obesity, found that people are more likely to change their habits in response to advertisements promoting specific behaviors than to those that blame obese individuals for their weight. Rebecca Puhl, director of research at the Rudd Center and lead author of the study, said she hopes it will highlight the need for more research to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-obesity initiatives. The research team took a random sample of 30 visible anti-obesity campaigns and surveyed over 1,000 subjects on their attitudes towards the campaigns. Participants were shown 10 of the ads at ran-
dom and then asked to rate how accurately characteristics such as “motivating, stigmatizing or vague” applied to the ads. They were also asked to what extent they would change their health behavior based on the advertisement. According to the study, campaigns that did not mention obesity at all were the most effective. Those that were rated as more stigmatizing were also the least effective at changing behaviors. “Messages that emphasized specific health actions that people could take like daily physical activity or eating more fruits and vegetables — messages like Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign and the Five-a-Day campaign — were rated the most motivating and least stigmatizing,” Puhl said. Bryn Austin, professor of health communications at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the study was excellent in its methodology and analysis. She cited the range of different types of campaigns and the national sampling design as
strong elements of the study’s approach. “There’s a belief that we need messages that ‘wake people up’ or that shock people, but what this study shows and what we know from health communication literature is that convincing people that obesity is real is not the problem,” Austin said. Instead, she said campaigns should offer something concrete, like reducing sugar consumption, and to encourage strength. Puhl said she would like to see antiobesity marketing focus on health instead of weight. “We don’t even need to mention the words ‘body weight,’ ” she said. Austin said that one of the most offputting ads used in the study was the controversial campaign launched by Children’s Health Care of Atlanta, which features billboards with overweight youth and captions like “Being fat takes the fun out of being a kid.” Timothy Edgar, graduate director in
CHILDREN’S HEALTHCARE OF ATLANTA MOVEMENT
Ads like this one from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta are less effective at preventing obesity than ads that promote specific healthful behaviors. health communication at Emerson College, said the study’s conclusion that people are best motivated by messages that instill them with a sense of confidence should discourage such stigmatizing advertisements. “I hope that groups such as Children’s Health Care of Atlanta stop wasting valuable resources on initiatives that defy research on how to most effectively change behavior,” Edgar said. According to Puhl, this study came at a crucial time, because the number of antiobesity campaigns is rapidly increasing without anyone measuring their effectiveness.
Puhl added that, without research into these campaigns’ effects, they could accidentally stigmatize obese populations without supporting changes in behavior. “To our knowledge this is the first research to systematically access public obesity campaigns,” Puhl said. “It’s seen with other health conditions like AIDS, but never with the obesity issue.” The Rudd Center was founded in 2005 by psychology professor Kelly Brownell, who still serves as its director today. Contact PAYAL MARATHE at payal.marathe@yale.edu .
Study touts school choice BY ASHTON WACKYM CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Seth Zimmerman is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics who has conducted research on the effect of school choice on test score performance and attendance in low-income urban schools. Zimmerman coauthored a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research titled “The Effect of School Choice on Intrinsic Motivation and Academic Outcomes,” which found a 21-percent decline in truancy rates for males entering high school after they found out they would be attending their first choice school. He spoke to the News about the implications of his current research.
who wanted to attend a new school or attended a school of choice to students who didn’t, that would be a problem. What we do in the paper to deal with that is we use these lotteries. We say, anyone who wants to attend a school, signs up for the lottery. Then, within the lottery, some students are randomly selected to have that opportunity. If you compare the students who wanted to go versus the students that wanted to go but weren’t selected, that is a pretty clean comparison because they would both in theory have the same level of motivation.
accepted to the lottery program also affect truancy rate if, let’s say, they lost motivation due to the rejection?
School choice is when students have the option to attend schools other than those in their local school zones. In the district we studied, there is a pretty comprehensive district-wide choice program where students can choose from a variety of public magnet schools or charter schools. Each year there is a lottery in the spring where students will submit a ranked list of the schools they want to attend. After the district conducts the lottery the students find out where they are going to go the next year.
Q
Do you think that the motivation to go to a choice school would in itself have an effect on lowered truancy rates and improved test scores?
A
I think that in general if you were comparing students
B
Q
In the paper you focused on truancy rate change after students were admitted to their choice school, but before they actually enrolled. What was the reasoning behind that?
dents who win the lottery to the students who lose the lottery, and we then compare both groups to students who don’t enter at all. The idea is the students who don’t enter at all don’t receive a positive or negative shock, and what you see is the students who lose the lottery and the students who don’t enter at all basically continue along the same trend, whereas the students who win the lottery tend to have lower truancy rates. That’s sort of the way we deal with that.
do you think your study QHow would fare in terms of repeatability and scalability?
A
There have been other studies of these high-performing charter schools, especially in Boston and neighboring cities that have come up with results that are qualitatively similar to ours in terms of finding these large
sen school benefit in at least two ways. On the one hand, they may benefit if their new school is better than the school they might have attended, or if the school is a better match for them. That could be true for how they score on tests, or for how they behave in the classroom if the pedagogical style is better suited to them. At the same time, students may benefit if they are more motivated and bring more to the table themselves when they have the opportunity to attend a school that they want to attend. Now, the problem is that generally those two things take place at the same time, so you are becoming more motivated, but you are also attending a school that may be a better match for you. The insight that we had is that there is a brief period of time when students haven’t been directly exposed to this new teaching that happens at their chosen school, but may already have accrued some of the motivational benefits just by knowing they have the opportunity to go in the future.
artificial intelligence is a fairly new one, this kind of development is still far away. He added that the robotics community would still benefit from the technology required to create self-aware robots. “In current engineering practice, there’s a lack of updating,” Hart said. “We should be able to change models if a robot damages or degrades.” With a self-aware robot, keeping robot models updated will be significantly easier. Hart has used the robot Nico for purposes beyond self-awareness models. In early 2010, Hart ran a study in which Nico played rockpaper-scissors with participants, occasionally cheating. When Nico cheated, participants grew angry and blamed Nico. “They [participants] would attribute agency to the robot,” he said. “It implied that the robot was thinking in the mind of the subjects.” A self-aware robot, Hart said, is not a thinking or feeling robot — instead, it is a robot programmed to know itself. Goswami gave the example of a robot programmed to come to a screeching halt once it reaches a staircase, or a similar drop in height. The robot stops moving, but because sensory input relayed to the program commands it to, not because the robot has a fear of falling. The humanoid robots of film are beyond the realm of current robotics, but Hart said that if Nico passes the test, he thinks the robotics community “can still get a lot of mileage out of the low-hanging fruits of robots which ponder about their bodies.” Hart said he plans to conduct the test within the next few months. Contact ANISHA SUTERWALA at anisha.suterwala@yale.edu .
Soda bans worth a shot
couldn’t the students The idea is that students QBut who applied for but were not Athat get to attend their cho-
the essence of school we do to think about QWhat’s that is we compare the stuchoice? AWhat
A
test score effects. I would say that the result is beginning to appear more frequently. There have also been other large-scale studies on the effect of school choice, like in New York City … , that have found modest but positive effects. I would say, in general, our test score findings are broadly consistent with current research.
A robot developed by Computer Science Ph.D. candidate Justin Hart GRD ’13 at the Social Robotics Lab may pass a landmark test by recognizing itself changing in a mirror. Self-awareness, the ability to recognize oneself as distinct from one’s surroundings, is a mark of higherlevel cognitive skills. This test was first developed to test the presence of self-awareness in animals, and requires the subject to recognize a change in its appearance by looking at its reflection. In the mirror test, developed by Gordon Gallup in 1970, a mirror is placed in an animal’s enclosure, allowing the animal to acclimatize to it. At first, the animal will behave socially with the mirror, assuming its reflection to be another animal, but eventually most animals recognize the image to be their own reflections. After this, researchers remove the mirror, sedate the animal and place an ink dot on its frontal region, and then replace the mirror. If the animal inspects the ink dot on itself, it is said to have self-awareness, because it recognized the change in its physical appearance. Only a few species of animals, including chimpanzees, bottlenose dolphins, magpies and elephants, have passed the test. Ambarish Goswami, a principal scientist at Honda Research Institute in California, said that a robot could never be self-aware in the same way an animal can be. Instead, the kind of limited self-awareness for which the researchers plan to test is “purely an image-processing program.” To adapt the traditional mirror test to a robot subject, computer science Ph.D. candidate Justin Hart said
he would run a program that would have Nico, a robot that looks less like R2D2 and more like a jumble of wires with eyes and a smile, learn a threedimensional model of its body and coloring. He would then change an aspect of the robot’s physical appearance and have Nico, by looking at a reflective surface, “identify where [his body] is different.” Brian Scassellati, associate professor in the Computer Science Department and Hart’s Ph.D. advisor, said that Hart’s research postulates that robots can demonstrate some of the characteristics that qualify as selfawareness — in this case, recognizing the spatial relationship between mirrors and real life. If Nico passes the self-awareness test, the technology could have important implications for the field of robotics, Scassellati said. For example, a robot that has a working model of itself can self-calibrate. “In terms of building more robust, more stable systems, every robot, even from an assembly line, is slightly different,” he said. “So as they wear and tear they will change differently. If you can adapt to that you can build systems that last longer and are more complex in initial construction.” A self-aware robot could also repair itself if damaged, or at least compensate for damage sustained. “You could picture a car that has a popped tire, notices it has a popped tire, and self-adjusts steering to adjust for a popped tire,” Hart said. Goswami said that this kind of technology exists to a certain degree in the form of sensors, like when the flat tire light turns on in a car, but that for a robot with a working model of itself, this type of self-adjusting technology is feasible in the near future. Hart said that because the field of
SETH ZIMMERMAN
Seth Zimmerman GRD ’14, a doctoral candidate in economics, studies school choice — the option to attend a public school outside of a student’s assigned zone. kind of reminds me of colQThat lege admissions.
A
Yeah, right? College admissions might be the opposite though because once you find out you got in, it’s over [laughs].
you QAre research?
A
continuing this
One project I’m currently involved with is a project I am doing with one of the coauthors of this paper, Chris Neilson, about school construction. New Haven has one of the biggest per capita school construction projects in the country and it’s been sort of a high priority of the mayor and the school administration for about 20 years now. They’ve rebuilt nearly every school in the city. If you walk around New Haven you’ll notice that a lot of these elementary schools are really beautiful. [Cooperative Arts and
Humanities High School] downtown was rebuilt under this project. [Worthington] Hooker School at East Rock was rebuilt as well. It’s about a $1.5 billion project. Chris and I worked with the New Haven district to evaluate that project and tried to understand what impact rebuilding the schools had on the students in terms of scores and also what the impact was on neighborhoods and home prices around the schools. [We found] that these schools had relatively large and sustained effects on student performance and the neighborhoods that surround the schools had increases in home prices. If they build a new school in your school zone, the value of the surrounding homes will tend to go up by a modest to large amount, I would say. This suggests that people value these projects because people are willing to pay more for a house that has default access to the newly constructed schools.
about your upcoming QWhat projects?
A
We’re doing a big project in Chile right now where we’re trying to run a large informational experiment with the goal of seeing how having better information about the costs and benefits of different college degree programs affect students’ choices about where to attend college. Chile is facing many of the similar issues that we are facing here in the sense that they have a partially privatized higher education system together with public loans. [This means that] choices that students make about where to go to college have consequences as far as student loan default, [which can pose] big costs to the government. In some ways it is a more extreme situation than we have here. Contact ASHTON WACKYM at ashton.wackym@yale.edu .
i pa r t i sa n ship in Congress may be a pipe dream, but it is alive and well in the Big Apple thanks to an impending soda SAHELI which has SADANAND ban united people of all political perScience suasions in anger. Babble On Sept. 13, the New York City Board of Health almost unanimously approved Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s controversial proposal to ban sales of large (greater than 16 ounces) sodas and similarly sugary drinks in restaurants and movie theaters. The ban was approved in spite of widespread disapproval amongst New Yorkers — one New York Times poll showed that 60 percent of those asked thought it was a bad idea. My feelings on this issue are mixed. On the one hand, soda is unequivocally unhealthy (and, in my opinion, not tasty). At the same time, the idea of the government restricting access to a food product is a bit creepy and this seems to be a big part of why so many people oppose the ban. But leaving aside its potentially Orwellian nature, is there actually data that support Mayor Bloomberg’s hypothesis that limiting access to large sugary drinks will curb obesity? Two recently published studies suggest that he may be right. In one study, one group of overweight or obese teenagers received shipments of bottled water or diet soda every week for an entire year
along with ongoing healthy eating advice while a control group did not. The experimental group gained, on average, significantly less weight and had healthier BMIs than the control group after one year. Notably, once intervention stopped, the difference disappeared. In the second study, healthyweight Dutch schoolchildren were randomly assigned to drink the same size sugar-sweetened or non-caloric, artificially sweetened drinks every day for a year and a half. Children who consumed high calorie, sugar-sweetened drinks gained more weight and had higher BMIs than children who did not. The results of these studies suggest that reducing or eliminating soda intake can significantly reduce weight gain, in contrast to the arguments of beverage industry officials who claim that soda does not constitute a sufficiently significant or regular part of most people’s diets to have a real effect on obesity. However, both these studies also demonstrated that weight and body fat reduction will require sustained intervention efforts — it is clearly not easy to change one’s diet on one’s own. There is no doubt that obesity is a serious public health problem, even if its causality for many diseases is not as obvious as, say, the link between smoking and lung cancer. The majority of American adults and approximately one-third of American children are overweight or obese. Obesity is a risk factor for both heart disease and diabetes, two chronic diseases that affect many Americans and that are costly — both to the individual and society at large — to man-
age. Unfortunately, obesity reduction is more complex than simply eliminating one or two food items and this makes the problem more difficult to tackle. In fact, some critics of the soda ban have argued that it may not go far enough. If large sodas are banned, why not restrict sales of other unhealthy foods and drinks such as insanely large hamburgers or milkshakes (the latter are not covered by the ban due to their high milk content)? It is certainly possible the ban on large sodas won’t work – in fact, it is even possible that it won’t go into effect as the beverage industry has promised to challenge the city health board’s decision legally. Consumers may start saving or re-allocating money to simply buy more 16-ounce sodas or switch to other, non-regulated but still sugary, beverages, thus negating the impact of the sales ban. It is also possible that an alternate strategy — such as taxing sodas — may be more effective. But at a time when many of our elected officials shirk real challenges, it is refreshing that Mayor Bloomberg is not, even if his manner is rather irksome. The mayor has not been unsuccessful with earlier public health initiatives — in 2006, the city banned the use of artificial trans-fats in restaurants and a study published earlier this year showed that city transfat consumption did in fact go down afterwards. The soda ban may end up being a failed experiment, but it is still an experiment worth conducting. Contact SAHELI SADANAND at saheli.sadanand@yale.edu .
f you’re like me, microeconomics classes often end with feelings of desperation. Markets are as efficient as technology allows, arbitrage opportunities don’t exist, and what can be done that’s worth doing has HANS TEJA already been done. However, time and again brilliant minds have turned Economic to economic principles to Wisdom create new ideas and develop them into disruptive products. A message to econ majors: you don’t have to be resigned to not creating great ideas just because you’re not doing research in a technical field. Take, as an example, Honest Tea, a beverage company founded by a Yale professor and his former graduate student. Their big idea was that, for many people, the level of sweetness that’ll make the best-tasting iced tea is a lot less than (or roughly half of) the typical amount of sweetener found in products available at that time. As a result, a substantial portion of the market is willing to pay for a particular type of less sweet drink. Companies that only focus on maximizing their addressable market size would miss these lucrative opportunities. They developed the thinking further by introducing another economics concept: utility. A customer who wishes to maximize their overall enjoyment, or utility, from consuming a product would take factors like health and guilt into account. Co-founders Seth and Barry realized that cutting the sugar level a little farther back than people’s peak preference would reduce the taste by a little bit, but that loss is more than compensated for by the health and guilt-reduction effect from the low calorie amount in the resulting drink. In effect, Honest Tea’s rigorous approach to maximizing the utility of each bottle allowed them to gain significant market share, and advanced their mission of spreading healthy habits while running a profitable business. That double-bottom line certainly tastes sweet. On the opposite coast and in a different industry, Netflix was taking incumbents headon with their flat-rate DVD-by-mail product. At the time when Blockbuster was gouging customers with hefty late-fees, Netflix promised movie buffs no such penalty and a reasonable monthly fee structure. In this example, the innovation came from an ingenious way to lower the marginal cost of servicing each subscriber.
WHAT’S THE USE OF BEING BRILLIANT IF YOU’RE NOT IN THE POSITION TO MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF IT? The “secret sauce” came in the form of a recommendation algorithm that gives suggestions to users when they’re browsing the library. When Netflix figured out that you like watching romantic comedies, it recommended you other movies in that category. That gave Netflix the opportunity to rent out older DVDs in its library and lower the spike in demand for new releases. Combine that with the pooling effect of a nation-wide inventory, and Netflix has created for itself a significantly lower cost structure and significant competitive advantage in that process. I could go on and on describing how companies build enduring competitive advantage with economic principles, but it seems that some personal application is appropriate. After all, what’s the use of being brilliant if you’re not in the position to make something out of it? Once you select an industry of interest, can we use economics to help you get a job in those roles? You bet we can. First of all, thoroughly research the requirements for your dream job. Hopefully, you have acquired the academic skills necessary and can show those on your transcript. What do we do with the bullet points that go like “passion for X” and “interest in Y”? It may seem like any applicant will make the claim that they have that passion or interest, making it impossible to really differentiate yourself. Luckily, that is not quite true. Think about activities you did in the past as a result of your interest. For example, if you’re passionate about clean energy, maybe you attended a solar energy conference three years in a row. While it’s true that anybody could’ve joined the conference, those with no real interest probably have not done so because they did other things they’re more interested in. Hence, your participation in those activities actually is evidence for your passion. A credible signal is one that’s harder or costlier to create by a “fake” compared to a genuinely interested applicant. Send enough of those to employers, and your resume has just migrated to the top of the pile. As recruiting season begins, use those concepts that you’ve picked up in economics classes to land your dream job/internship, kick ass and make Yale proud. Boola, boola! Contact HANS TEJA is a second year student at the School of Management. Contact him at hans.teja@ yale.edu .
PAGE 6
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 7
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
“Playing a robot is possibly the most difficult role you can have … because you have to take all your innate emotional responses and completely suppress them.” KRISTANNA LOKEN ACTRESS
Harsh anti-obesity ads ineffective
Self-aware robots created
How to succeed in business I
YALE
Justin Hart GRD ’13 has developed a robot that may pass the test of self-awareness, the ability to recognize itself as distinct from its surroundings. BY ANISHA SUTERWALA STAFF REPORTER
LET’S MOVE!
A recent study by Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity cited First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” fitness initiative as benefitting from its strategy of positive reinforcement of general fitness and healthy living principles. BY PAYAL MARATHE CONTRIBUTING REPORTER A recent study by Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity shows that many anti-obesity campaigns might be stigmatizing obese people instead of encouraging healthier behaviors. The study, published in this month’s issue of the International Journal of Obesity, found that people are more likely to change their habits in response to advertisements promoting specific behaviors than to those that blame obese individuals for their weight. Rebecca Puhl, director of research at the Rudd Center and lead author of the study, said she hopes it will highlight the need for more research to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-obesity initiatives. The research team took a random sample of 30 visible anti-obesity campaigns and surveyed over 1,000 subjects on their attitudes towards the campaigns. Participants were shown 10 of the ads at ran-
dom and then asked to rate how accurately characteristics such as “motivating, stigmatizing or vague” applied to the ads. They were also asked to what extent they would change their health behavior based on the advertisement. According to the study, campaigns that did not mention obesity at all were the most effective. Those that were rated as more stigmatizing were also the least effective at changing behaviors. “Messages that emphasized specific health actions that people could take like daily physical activity or eating more fruits and vegetables — messages like Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign and the Five-a-Day campaign — were rated the most motivating and least stigmatizing,” Puhl said. Bryn Austin, professor of health communications at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the study was excellent in its methodology and analysis. She cited the range of different types of campaigns and the national sampling design as
strong elements of the study’s approach. “There’s a belief that we need messages that ‘wake people up’ or that shock people, but what this study shows and what we know from health communication literature is that convincing people that obesity is real is not the problem,” Austin said. Instead, she said campaigns should offer something concrete, like reducing sugar consumption, and to encourage strength. Puhl said she would like to see antiobesity marketing focus on health instead of weight. “We don’t even need to mention the words ‘body weight,’ ” she said. Austin said that one of the most offputting ads used in the study was the controversial campaign launched by Children’s Health Care of Atlanta, which features billboards with overweight youth and captions like “Being fat takes the fun out of being a kid.” Timothy Edgar, graduate director in
CHILDREN’S HEALTHCARE OF ATLANTA MOVEMENT
Ads like this one from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta are less effective at preventing obesity than ads that promote specific healthful behaviors. health communication at Emerson College, said the study’s conclusion that people are best motivated by messages that instill them with a sense of confidence should discourage such stigmatizing advertisements. “I hope that groups such as Children’s Health Care of Atlanta stop wasting valuable resources on initiatives that defy research on how to most effectively change behavior,” Edgar said. According to Puhl, this study came at a crucial time, because the number of antiobesity campaigns is rapidly increasing without anyone measuring their effectiveness.
Puhl added that, without research into these campaigns’ effects, they could accidentally stigmatize obese populations without supporting changes in behavior. “To our knowledge this is the first research to systematically access public obesity campaigns,” Puhl said. “It’s seen with other health conditions like AIDS, but never with the obesity issue.” The Rudd Center was founded in 2005 by psychology professor Kelly Brownell, who still serves as its director today. Contact PAYAL MARATHE at payal.marathe@yale.edu .
Study touts school choice BY ASHTON WACKYM CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Seth Zimmerman is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics who has conducted research on the effect of school choice on test score performance and attendance in low-income urban schools. Zimmerman coauthored a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research titled “The Effect of School Choice on Intrinsic Motivation and Academic Outcomes,” which found a 21-percent decline in truancy rates for males entering high school after they found out they would be attending their first choice school. He spoke to the News about the implications of his current research.
who wanted to attend a new school or attended a school of choice to students who didn’t, that would be a problem. What we do in the paper to deal with that is we use these lotteries. We say, anyone who wants to attend a school, signs up for the lottery. Then, within the lottery, some students are randomly selected to have that opportunity. If you compare the students who wanted to go versus the students that wanted to go but weren’t selected, that is a pretty clean comparison because they would both in theory have the same level of motivation.
accepted to the lottery program also affect truancy rate if, let’s say, they lost motivation due to the rejection?
School choice is when students have the option to attend schools other than those in their local school zones. In the district we studied, there is a pretty comprehensive district-wide choice program where students can choose from a variety of public magnet schools or charter schools. Each year there is a lottery in the spring where students will submit a ranked list of the schools they want to attend. After the district conducts the lottery the students find out where they are going to go the next year.
Q
Do you think that the motivation to go to a choice school would in itself have an effect on lowered truancy rates and improved test scores?
A
I think that in general if you were comparing students
B
Q
In the paper you focused on truancy rate change after students were admitted to their choice school, but before they actually enrolled. What was the reasoning behind that?
dents who win the lottery to the students who lose the lottery, and we then compare both groups to students who don’t enter at all. The idea is the students who don’t enter at all don’t receive a positive or negative shock, and what you see is the students who lose the lottery and the students who don’t enter at all basically continue along the same trend, whereas the students who win the lottery tend to have lower truancy rates. That’s sort of the way we deal with that.
do you think your study QHow would fare in terms of repeatability and scalability?
A
There have been other studies of these high-performing charter schools, especially in Boston and neighboring cities that have come up with results that are qualitatively similar to ours in terms of finding these large
sen school benefit in at least two ways. On the one hand, they may benefit if their new school is better than the school they might have attended, or if the school is a better match for them. That could be true for how they score on tests, or for how they behave in the classroom if the pedagogical style is better suited to them. At the same time, students may benefit if they are more motivated and bring more to the table themselves when they have the opportunity to attend a school that they want to attend. Now, the problem is that generally those two things take place at the same time, so you are becoming more motivated, but you are also attending a school that may be a better match for you. The insight that we had is that there is a brief period of time when students haven’t been directly exposed to this new teaching that happens at their chosen school, but may already have accrued some of the motivational benefits just by knowing they have the opportunity to go in the future.
artificial intelligence is a fairly new one, this kind of development is still far away. He added that the robotics community would still benefit from the technology required to create self-aware robots. “In current engineering practice, there’s a lack of updating,” Hart said. “We should be able to change models if a robot damages or degrades.” With a self-aware robot, keeping robot models updated will be significantly easier. Hart has used the robot Nico for purposes beyond self-awareness models. In early 2010, Hart ran a study in which Nico played rockpaper-scissors with participants, occasionally cheating. When Nico cheated, participants grew angry and blamed Nico. “They [participants] would attribute agency to the robot,” he said. “It implied that the robot was thinking in the mind of the subjects.” A self-aware robot, Hart said, is not a thinking or feeling robot — instead, it is a robot programmed to know itself. Goswami gave the example of a robot programmed to come to a screeching halt once it reaches a staircase, or a similar drop in height. The robot stops moving, but because sensory input relayed to the program commands it to, not because the robot has a fear of falling. The humanoid robots of film are beyond the realm of current robotics, but Hart said that if Nico passes the test, he thinks the robotics community “can still get a lot of mileage out of the low-hanging fruits of robots which ponder about their bodies.” Hart said he plans to conduct the test within the next few months. Contact ANISHA SUTERWALA at anisha.suterwala@yale.edu .
Soda bans worth a shot
couldn’t the students The idea is that students QBut who applied for but were not Athat get to attend their cho-
the essence of school we do to think about QWhat’s that is we compare the stuchoice? AWhat
A
test score effects. I would say that the result is beginning to appear more frequently. There have also been other large-scale studies on the effect of school choice, like in New York City … , that have found modest but positive effects. I would say, in general, our test score findings are broadly consistent with current research.
A robot developed by Computer Science Ph.D. candidate Justin Hart GRD ’13 at the Social Robotics Lab may pass a landmark test by recognizing itself changing in a mirror. Self-awareness, the ability to recognize oneself as distinct from one’s surroundings, is a mark of higherlevel cognitive skills. This test was first developed to test the presence of self-awareness in animals, and requires the subject to recognize a change in its appearance by looking at its reflection. In the mirror test, developed by Gordon Gallup in 1970, a mirror is placed in an animal’s enclosure, allowing the animal to acclimatize to it. At first, the animal will behave socially with the mirror, assuming its reflection to be another animal, but eventually most animals recognize the image to be their own reflections. After this, researchers remove the mirror, sedate the animal and place an ink dot on its frontal region, and then replace the mirror. If the animal inspects the ink dot on itself, it is said to have self-awareness, because it recognized the change in its physical appearance. Only a few species of animals, including chimpanzees, bottlenose dolphins, magpies and elephants, have passed the test. Ambarish Goswami, a principal scientist at Honda Research Institute in California, said that a robot could never be self-aware in the same way an animal can be. Instead, the kind of limited self-awareness for which the researchers plan to test is “purely an image-processing program.” To adapt the traditional mirror test to a robot subject, computer science Ph.D. candidate Justin Hart said
he would run a program that would have Nico, a robot that looks less like R2D2 and more like a jumble of wires with eyes and a smile, learn a threedimensional model of its body and coloring. He would then change an aspect of the robot’s physical appearance and have Nico, by looking at a reflective surface, “identify where [his body] is different.” Brian Scassellati, associate professor in the Computer Science Department and Hart’s Ph.D. advisor, said that Hart’s research postulates that robots can demonstrate some of the characteristics that qualify as selfawareness — in this case, recognizing the spatial relationship between mirrors and real life. If Nico passes the self-awareness test, the technology could have important implications for the field of robotics, Scassellati said. For example, a robot that has a working model of itself can self-calibrate. “In terms of building more robust, more stable systems, every robot, even from an assembly line, is slightly different,” he said. “So as they wear and tear they will change differently. If you can adapt to that you can build systems that last longer and are more complex in initial construction.” A self-aware robot could also repair itself if damaged, or at least compensate for damage sustained. “You could picture a car that has a popped tire, notices it has a popped tire, and self-adjusts steering to adjust for a popped tire,” Hart said. Goswami said that this kind of technology exists to a certain degree in the form of sensors, like when the flat tire light turns on in a car, but that for a robot with a working model of itself, this type of self-adjusting technology is feasible in the near future. Hart said that because the field of
SETH ZIMMERMAN
Seth Zimmerman GRD ’14, a doctoral candidate in economics, studies school choice — the option to attend a public school outside of a student’s assigned zone. kind of reminds me of colQThat lege admissions.
A
Yeah, right? College admissions might be the opposite though because once you find out you got in, it’s over [laughs].
you QAre research?
A
continuing this
One project I’m currently involved with is a project I am doing with one of the coauthors of this paper, Chris Neilson, about school construction. New Haven has one of the biggest per capita school construction projects in the country and it’s been sort of a high priority of the mayor and the school administration for about 20 years now. They’ve rebuilt nearly every school in the city. If you walk around New Haven you’ll notice that a lot of these elementary schools are really beautiful. [Cooperative Arts and
Humanities High School] downtown was rebuilt under this project. [Worthington] Hooker School at East Rock was rebuilt as well. It’s about a $1.5 billion project. Chris and I worked with the New Haven district to evaluate that project and tried to understand what impact rebuilding the schools had on the students in terms of scores and also what the impact was on neighborhoods and home prices around the schools. [We found] that these schools had relatively large and sustained effects on student performance and the neighborhoods that surround the schools had increases in home prices. If they build a new school in your school zone, the value of the surrounding homes will tend to go up by a modest to large amount, I would say. This suggests that people value these projects because people are willing to pay more for a house that has default access to the newly constructed schools.
about your upcoming QWhat projects?
A
We’re doing a big project in Chile right now where we’re trying to run a large informational experiment with the goal of seeing how having better information about the costs and benefits of different college degree programs affect students’ choices about where to attend college. Chile is facing many of the similar issues that we are facing here in the sense that they have a partially privatized higher education system together with public loans. [This means that] choices that students make about where to go to college have consequences as far as student loan default, [which can pose] big costs to the government. In some ways it is a more extreme situation than we have here. Contact ASHTON WACKYM at ashton.wackym@yale.edu .
i pa r t i sa n ship in Congress may be a pipe dream, but it is alive and well in the Big Apple thanks to an impending soda SAHELI which has SADANAND ban united people of all political perScience suasions in anger. Babble On Sept. 13, the New York City Board of Health almost unanimously approved Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s controversial proposal to ban sales of large (greater than 16 ounces) sodas and similarly sugary drinks in restaurants and movie theaters. The ban was approved in spite of widespread disapproval amongst New Yorkers — one New York Times poll showed that 60 percent of those asked thought it was a bad idea. My feelings on this issue are mixed. On the one hand, soda is unequivocally unhealthy (and, in my opinion, not tasty). At the same time, the idea of the government restricting access to a food product is a bit creepy and this seems to be a big part of why so many people oppose the ban. But leaving aside its potentially Orwellian nature, is there actually data that support Mayor Bloomberg’s hypothesis that limiting access to large sugary drinks will curb obesity? Two recently published studies suggest that he may be right. In one study, one group of overweight or obese teenagers received shipments of bottled water or diet soda every week for an entire year
along with ongoing healthy eating advice while a control group did not. The experimental group gained, on average, significantly less weight and had healthier BMIs than the control group after one year. Notably, once intervention stopped, the difference disappeared. In the second study, healthyweight Dutch schoolchildren were randomly assigned to drink the same size sugar-sweetened or non-caloric, artificially sweetened drinks every day for a year and a half. Children who consumed high calorie, sugar-sweetened drinks gained more weight and had higher BMIs than children who did not. The results of these studies suggest that reducing or eliminating soda intake can significantly reduce weight gain, in contrast to the arguments of beverage industry officials who claim that soda does not constitute a sufficiently significant or regular part of most people’s diets to have a real effect on obesity. However, both these studies also demonstrated that weight and body fat reduction will require sustained intervention efforts — it is clearly not easy to change one’s diet on one’s own. There is no doubt that obesity is a serious public health problem, even if its causality for many diseases is not as obvious as, say, the link between smoking and lung cancer. The majority of American adults and approximately one-third of American children are overweight or obese. Obesity is a risk factor for both heart disease and diabetes, two chronic diseases that affect many Americans and that are costly — both to the individual and society at large — to man-
age. Unfortunately, obesity reduction is more complex than simply eliminating one or two food items and this makes the problem more difficult to tackle. In fact, some critics of the soda ban have argued that it may not go far enough. If large sodas are banned, why not restrict sales of other unhealthy foods and drinks such as insanely large hamburgers or milkshakes (the latter are not covered by the ban due to their high milk content)? It is certainly possible the ban on large sodas won’t work – in fact, it is even possible that it won’t go into effect as the beverage industry has promised to challenge the city health board’s decision legally. Consumers may start saving or re-allocating money to simply buy more 16-ounce sodas or switch to other, non-regulated but still sugary, beverages, thus negating the impact of the sales ban. It is also possible that an alternate strategy — such as taxing sodas — may be more effective. But at a time when many of our elected officials shirk real challenges, it is refreshing that Mayor Bloomberg is not, even if his manner is rather irksome. The mayor has not been unsuccessful with earlier public health initiatives — in 2006, the city banned the use of artificial trans-fats in restaurants and a study published earlier this year showed that city transfat consumption did in fact go down afterwards. The soda ban may end up being a failed experiment, but it is still an experiment worth conducting. Contact SAHELI SADANAND at saheli.sadanand@yale.edu .
f you’re like me, microeconomics classes often end with feelings of desperation. Markets are as efficient as technology allows, arbitrage opportunities don’t exist, and what can be done that’s worth doing has HANS TEJA already been done. However, time and again brilliant minds have turned Economic to economic principles to Wisdom create new ideas and develop them into disruptive products. A message to econ majors: you don’t have to be resigned to not creating great ideas just because you’re not doing research in a technical field. Take, as an example, Honest Tea, a beverage company founded by a Yale professor and his former graduate student. Their big idea was that, for many people, the level of sweetness that’ll make the best-tasting iced tea is a lot less than (or roughly half of) the typical amount of sweetener found in products available at that time. As a result, a substantial portion of the market is willing to pay for a particular type of less sweet drink. Companies that only focus on maximizing their addressable market size would miss these lucrative opportunities. They developed the thinking further by introducing another economics concept: utility. A customer who wishes to maximize their overall enjoyment, or utility, from consuming a product would take factors like health and guilt into account. Co-founders Seth and Barry realized that cutting the sugar level a little farther back than people’s peak preference would reduce the taste by a little bit, but that loss is more than compensated for by the health and guilt-reduction effect from the low calorie amount in the resulting drink. In effect, Honest Tea’s rigorous approach to maximizing the utility of each bottle allowed them to gain significant market share, and advanced their mission of spreading healthy habits while running a profitable business. That double-bottom line certainly tastes sweet. On the opposite coast and in a different industry, Netflix was taking incumbents headon with their flat-rate DVD-by-mail product. At the time when Blockbuster was gouging customers with hefty late-fees, Netflix promised movie buffs no such penalty and a reasonable monthly fee structure. In this example, the innovation came from an ingenious way to lower the marginal cost of servicing each subscriber.
WHAT’S THE USE OF BEING BRILLIANT IF YOU’RE NOT IN THE POSITION TO MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF IT? The “secret sauce” came in the form of a recommendation algorithm that gives suggestions to users when they’re browsing the library. When Netflix figured out that you like watching romantic comedies, it recommended you other movies in that category. That gave Netflix the opportunity to rent out older DVDs in its library and lower the spike in demand for new releases. Combine that with the pooling effect of a nation-wide inventory, and Netflix has created for itself a significantly lower cost structure and significant competitive advantage in that process. I could go on and on describing how companies build enduring competitive advantage with economic principles, but it seems that some personal application is appropriate. After all, what’s the use of being brilliant if you’re not in the position to make something out of it? Once you select an industry of interest, can we use economics to help you get a job in those roles? You bet we can. First of all, thoroughly research the requirements for your dream job. Hopefully, you have acquired the academic skills necessary and can show those on your transcript. What do we do with the bullet points that go like “passion for X” and “interest in Y”? It may seem like any applicant will make the claim that they have that passion or interest, making it impossible to really differentiate yourself. Luckily, that is not quite true. Think about activities you did in the past as a result of your interest. For example, if you’re passionate about clean energy, maybe you attended a solar energy conference three years in a row. While it’s true that anybody could’ve joined the conference, those with no real interest probably have not done so because they did other things they’re more interested in. Hence, your participation in those activities actually is evidence for your passion. A credible signal is one that’s harder or costlier to create by a “fake” compared to a genuinely interested applicant. Send enough of those to employers, and your resume has just migrated to the top of the pile. As recruiting season begins, use those concepts that you’ve picked up in economics classes to land your dream job/internship, kick ass and make Yale proud. Boola, boola! Contact HANS TEJA is a second year student at the School of Management. Contact him at hans.teja@ yale.edu .
PAGE 8
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
FROM THE FRONT
“Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answred to, int he strongest conjuration.” “MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT” CHARLES DICKENS
State sheds economic gains with summer job losses 16% 14%
New Haven
12% 10%
Connecticut
8%
United States
6% 4% 2% 0 01
1 t. 2 N o 011 v. 20 11 De c. 20 11 Ja n. 20 Fe 12 b. M a 201 rch 2 Ap 201 2 ril 20 M a 12 y2 01 Ju ne 2 2 Ju 012 ly 2 Au 012 g. 20 12
Contact BEN PRAWDZIK at benjamin.prawdzik@yale.edu .
GRAPH UNEMPLOYMENT RATES, 2011-’12
Oc
ment to fall earlier in the year was that some of the unemployed gave up on searching for jobs, exiting the labor market and thus not counting as unemployed. She said Connecticut’s workforce is smaller than it was one year ago, but added that the number of discouraged workers quitting their job search is difficult to track accurately. While the new data paints a bleak picture for the state’s economy as a whole, similar figures have not yet been made available for the Elm City. The BLS is scheduled to release its metropolitan area employment data for August 2012 on Oct. 3. City Hall spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton ’04 said that with the dispute over the accuracy of the BLS data, the city “is not yet fully prepared” to comment on where its unemployment rate stands. The New Haven unemployment rate has climbed from 10.9 percent in April 2011 to 13.6 percent in July 2012.
.2
closely with the BLS to investigate every possibility.” Condon said other economic indicators such as unemployment insurance claims, layoff events and reports of business expansions and contractions have not been reported in sufficient quantity to “support the sudden and steep decline” in state employment figures. Gov. Dannel Malloy issued a statement on Thursday expressing similar skepticism of the federal labor data. He noted that the number of people filing for unemployment benefits declined between August and July — with average weekly filings reaching 4,802 and 4,779 people in July and August, respectively. “Those two trends are the opposite of what you would expect to see if the state was losing jobs at the rate suggested in this report. However, I am well aware that we continue to battle strong headwinds at the national and international levels,” Malloy said. “And I’ve said time and again that we’re not
going to reverse 22 years of job stagnation in 20 months.” The summer job losses come after very strong employment gains during the winter and early spring months of the past year. According to Alissa DeJonge GRD ’00, director of research at the Connecticut Economic Resource Center, mild winter weather at the time allowed construction projects across the state to begin earlier than usual. Those added construction jobs helped fuel seven months of consecutive employment gains earlier this year. The Department of Labor reported that unemployment in Connecticut dropped from 8.6 percent in September of 2011 to 7.7 percent in April. “There was no real, lasting frost this year, so we were able to start post-winter work a bit early,” said Ivan Sachs, owner of Connecticut-based Cherry Hill Construction. Sachs added that he was able to employ 50 people earlier last winter given the milder weather. DeJonge added that on a national level, one additional factor causing unemploy-
Se pt
JOBS FROM PAGE 1
After losing tomb, Aurelian seeks alumni help AURELIAN FROM PAGE 1
PHLLIPP ARNDT/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The Executive Committee has banned the Aurelian Honor Society from using its traditional home in Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall.
John Meeske, associate dean for student organizations and physical resources, said the University is not typically involved with senior societies, many of which have their own facilities off campus and distinct traditions. While Meeske said he did not know what terms were established when the SSS room was originally assigned to Aurelian, he said societies are still required to comply with undergraduate regulations — even if the administration’s jurisdiction over the group is not always clear. “It’s not that it’s written down anywhere [that] we have the right to do this and they have the right to do that,” Meeske said. “It’s a tradition that we’ve inherited, but we don’t even know what the story is.” The decision to cite and penalize Aurelian for facilitating underage drinking comes alongside several other recent University efforts to curb underage drinking among students. Last March, administrators banned freshmen from rushing Greek organizations in the fall, and they have required registration for off-campus parties with more than 50 people since this semester began. In early September, Dean of Student Affairs Marichal Gentry sent a lengthy email to Yale College students explaining the new regulations, reinforcing Connecticut’s and Yale’s policies on alcohol, and cautioning students against the harmful effects of excessive drinking. Two recent Aurelian alumni, Adam Goodrum ’10 and Karan Arakotaram ’10, said they believe the University has not altered its attitude toward underage drinking since they graduated, but has begun enforcing regulations more strictly.
“I do think that if you simply look at the policies the University has enacted over the past few years, [administrators] are taking a more active role to ensure they’re doing everything they can about underage drinking,” Goodrum said. Members of Aurelian’s class of 2010 never faced disciplinary action from Yale administrators with regard to underage drinking, Goodrum said, and they acted in “complete compliance” with University policy and state law. Goodrum added that the ban has the potential to be “very detrimental” to the society’s long-term morale, and Arakotaram said the society’s room in SSS shaped much of his Yale and senior year experience. Since the society can no longer meet routinely in SSS, the group has held events at its members’ off-campus housing and in other campus venues. It can still use the SSS space to host speakers and hold special events, current society member Elsie Sowah ’13 said. Hillas said in his email that Aurelian is also short on funding for this semester and cannot afford to rent a temporary meeting space. The group has already raised member dues in order to continue financing dinner meetings, discussions and activities. Another senior society — Torch — was banned from its space in SSS in 2005 for damaging University property. Current Torch President Traci Tillman ’13 said the group has settled into a new location and has no immediate plans to move back into SSS. Aurelian was established in 1910 and is the fifth-oldest landed society at Yale.
State rep’s treasurer arrested MCKINNIE FROM PAGE 1 “She took that money, too,” McCormack told the Independent. “People still said they didn’t get paid.” In all, she said, about $3,000 had gone missing. Neither McCormack nor NHPD spokesman David Hartman could be reached on Monday. In both cases, McKinnie was the only signatory on the campaign accounts. HolderWinfield said that when he and McKinnie created his campaign account together, he did not make himself a signatory on the account so that his constituents would know with certainty that he was not using campaign money for personal purposes. “I was so disconnected I couldn’t even get the bank records that the state had asked for,” he said. Holder-Winfield cooperated with SEEC officials from the start of the investigation, Dupuis said. He added that after McKinnie appears in court separately for each arrest, the two cases will likely be combined. Holder-Winfield’s campaign was awarded $25,000 from the state’s public financing system, according to SEEC spokesman Josh Foley. Contact MICHELLE HACKMAN at michelle.hackman@yale.edu .
Contact CAROLINE TAN at caroline.tan@yale.edu and JULIA ZORTHIAN at julia.zorthian@yale.edu .
City evaluates DeStefano era, looks beyond it DESTEFANO FROM PAGE 4 more than most public officials, Bass said, and is effective at achieving the results he wants. It was the mayor’s interest in progressive policy that led to some of the more notable achievements of his tenure, including the school reform effort that led to what many have called a breakthrough teachers’ contract in 2009, as well as the Elm City Resident ID Card, which provides documentation to city residents whether or not they reside legally in the U.S. This interest in progressive policy, DeStefano said, came out of his work at City Hall under DiLieto in the 1980s. “In order to be here 20 years and be relevant to the people who live here, I think you have to be open intellectually and emotionally to what people are facing, and recognize the challenges of 2012 are different from the challenges of 2002 or 1992,” DeStefano said. “If you’re going to be able to stick around, you have to be able to engage things.”
TWO MORE YEARS?
Acknowledging the desire among many city residents for a fresh face in the mayor’s office, DeStefano said his time in office has offered him a perspective on “what works and what doesn’t work.” Still, he said, longevity breeds complacency. “It’s important to grow with your city: people who live here and work here are different than the people who were here 20 years ago,” DeStefano said. “I think when you’ve been around for a long time you run the risk of isolating your relationships.” Over the next 20 years, New Haven will face a whole new set of problems. Cheap housing stock, DeStefano said, will will continue to attract many to the city, where they will likely face a gap between the skills they possess and the type of work available. With New Haven’s growing reliance on its education and medical sectors, DeStefano said he sees that gap quickly widening. This issue, however, may not be DeStefano’s worry much longer. While no one has yet declared their
candidacy in next year’s mayoral race, an August phone poll by Yale’s unions for their internal use asked city residents for their opinions on DeStefano, Kerekes, Fernandez, State Reps. Gary Holder-Winfield and Toni Walker, State Sen. Toni Harp, Board of Aldermen President Jorge Perez and Greater New Haven NAACP President Jim Rawlings. Most of the names in the poll are recognized citywide, suggesting potential mayoral candidates in next fall’s election. DeStefano, though, said he has set no limit on the time he would spend in office. He will leave City Hall, he said, once he decides he is no longer serving a useful purpose and enjoying his position — or if he should lose an election. “I don’t think it’s so much the time [spent in office], I think it’s whether you’re relevant and whether you can derive satisfaction,” DeStefano said. “Whether you’re actually a part of solutions and helping people accomplish their aspirations, whatever that may be: starting a business, going to
school, having a splash pad in their neighborhood, getting their potholes fixed.” While he said he is most proud of New Haven’s transformation into an “opening, welcoming community” to immigrants and other groups, DeStefano said he won’t be giving much thought to his legacy once he leaves office. The only people whose opinions concern him are his wife, children and other loved ones. But that hasn’t stopped others from opining on the mayor’s tenure. “You can quibble with any one thing or things he’s done,” Farnam said. “But overall he’s guided the city well through very tough times.” “He’s not only been mayor for 20 years but he’s provided strong, effective leadership in this community for 20 years,” Ginsberg added. “Not many communities have been that fortunate, I think — what he chooses to do with [that leadership] remains to be seen.” Contact NICK DEFIESTA at nick.defiesta@yale.edu .
CHRIS PEAK/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER
The campaign treasurer of Gary Holder-Winfield, who represents New Haven in Hartford, was arrested for embezzlement this weekend.
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 9
BULLETIN BOARD
TODAY’S FORECAST
TOMORROW
Sunny, with a high near 73. Southwest wind 6 to 15 mph.
THURSDAY
High of 76, low of 60.
High of 70, low of 47.
THAT MONKEY TUNE BY MICHAEL KANDALAFT
ON CAMPUS TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 5:45 PM Intro to Swing II. Push your swing out even further! In Swing II we’ll be examining our swing outs under a microscope, adding some more advanced moves to our repertoire, and learning new ways to improvise and be silly on the dance floor. No partners required. Close-toed shoes recommended. GPSCY Ballroom (204 York St). 8:00 PM Ventures in Science Kickoff Meeting. Ventures in Science is an organization dedicated to exploring the intersection of science with business, law, policy, technology, and entrepreneurship, and this kickoff meeting will help YOU discover your interests! William L. Harkness Hall (100 Wall St.), Room 119.
ZERO LIKE ME BY REUXBEN BARRIENTES
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 10:00 AM “Big Food: Health, Culture and the Evolution of Eating.” Exhibition will begin with the neuroscience of appetite, genetics of obesity, and how food and energy are stored in the body. It will examine behavioral choice in nutrition and exercise as well as the influence of social, environmental, and cultural settings. Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History (170 Whitney Ave.). 12:00 PM “Sisterhood across the Color Line? Audre Lorde, German Women, and Feminist Solidarities.” Katharina Gerund will examine Audre Lorde’s transatlantic journeys and her interactions with Afro-German and white German women in order to explore the possibilities and limits of feminist solidarities across “the color line.” 230 Prospect St.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27
SCIENCE HILL BY SPENCER KATZ
8:00 PM Premiere: Yale Dramat’s Production of Measure for Measure. Measure for Measure is Shakespeare’s most provocative and paranoiac play, a portrait of a city in turmoil thanks to its citizens’ unruly desires and its rulers’ oppressive hypocrisy. A panoply of comedic characters from Vienna’s underbelly round out this vivid, voluptuous, politically-charged morality tale. Yale Reperatory Theater (1120 Chapel St.).
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9/25/12
By Kurt Mueller
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
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Romney assails Obama after U.S. ambassador’s death BY DAVID ESPO AND KASIE HUNT ASSOCIATED PRESS PUEBLO, Colo. — Mitt Romney led a chorus of Republican criticism of the administration’s foreign policy on Monday, accusing President Barack Obama of minimizing the recent killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya as a mere “bump in the road” rather than part of a chain of events that threatens American interests. White House press secretary Jay Carney called the accusations “desperate and offensive,” an attempt by Romney and his allies to gain political advantage in the latter stages of a political campaign that seems to be trending Obama’s way. The president did not comment on the criticism when he and first lady Michele Obama taped an appearance on ABC’s “The View” that blended the personal with the political. Asked if a Romney presidency would be a disaster, Obama said the nation can “survive a lot.” He added: “The American people don’t want to just survive, we want to thrive.” The back and forth on foreign policy occurred as Romney said he was shifting to a more energetic schedule of public campaign events, bidding to reverse recent erosion in battleground state polls. After days spent largely raising campaign cash — and trying to minimize the fallout from one speech to donors last spring — he pledged to make the case for “real and positive change.” While national polls make the race exceedingly close, Obama has gained ground on Romney in many recent surveys when potential voters are asked to compare the two rivals in their
ability to fix the economy. Sluggish growth and national unemployment of 8.1 percent make the economy by far the dominant issue in the race, and the two men have focused much of their time and advertising budgets on highlighting their differences on taxes, spending and plans for job creation.
Israel continues to find itself on the receiving end of harsh language by the president. ERIC CANTOR U.S. Representative, R-Va. The same polls show Obama with a healthy lead over Romney when voters are asked which candidate is better equipped to handle foreign policy, and the president has not shied away from trumpeting his decision to order the secret mission by U.S. forces that killed terrorism mastermind Osama bin Laden in his Pakistani hideout more than a year ago. At the same time, Romney’s advisers say voters are more inclined to question Obama’s handling of foreign policy after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, earlier this month resulted in the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. Not only Romney, but other Republicans, as well, challenged Obama on foreign policy on Monday. In a conference call with reporters, Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the House majority leader, said, “Israel continues to
Two marines to be courtmartialed in urination case BY ROBERT BURNS ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — Two Marine non-commissioned officers will be court-martialed for allegedly urinating on the bodies of Taliban fighters last year in Afghanistan and posing for unofficial photos with casualties, the Marine Corps said Monday. The charges against Staff Sgt. Joseph W. Chamblin and Staff Sgt. Edward W. Deptola are in addition to administrative punishments announced last month for three other, more junior Marines for their role in the urination episode. The disclosure in January of a video showing four Marines in full combat gear urinating on the bodies of three dead men led to a criminal investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service as well as a Marine investigation of the unit involved, the third Battalion, second Marines, which fought in the southern Afghan province of Helmand for seven months before returning to
its home base at Camp Lejeune, N.C., last September. In the video, one of the Marines looked down at the bodies and quipped, “Have a good day, buddy.” In a statement Monday, the Marine Corps said disciplinary actions against additional Marines will be announced later. It also said there are “other pending cases related to this incident,” but said no specifics would be made public now. The urination video was one in a string of embarrassing episodes for U.S. forces in Afghanistan in recent months. American troops have been caught up in controversies over burning Muslim holy books, posing for photos with insurgents’ bloodied remains and an alleged massacre of 16 Afghan villagers by a soldier now in U.S. confinement. The Marine Corps said the urination took place during a counterinsurgency operation in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province on July 27, 2011.
find itself on the receiving end of harsh language by the president of the White House. … There is a somewhat continued pattern of throwing Israel under the bus when Israel stands as our closest ally.” And the National Republican Senatorial Committee issued challenges to Democratic candidates in several races to “share their view” on Obama’s remarks in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” over the weekend. In the interview, Obama was responding when asked if recent events in the Middle East gave him pause for supporting governments that came to power following a wave of regime changes known as the Arab Spring. He said he has long noted that events were going to be rocky, adding that the question itself “presumes that somehow we could have stopped this wave of change.” “I think it was absolutely the right thing for us to align ourselves with democracy, universal rights. … But I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road because — you know, in a lot of these places—- the one organizing principle has been Islam. “There are strains of extremism, and anti-Americans, and anti-Western sentiments and you know can be tapped into by demagogues,” he added. Romney was eager to talk about the topic, squeezing interviews with three television networks into his schedule and touching on the subject at the beginning of a rally in Pueblo, Colo. “I can’t imagine saying something like the assassination of ambassadors is a bump in the
BRYAN OLLER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Flags wave as Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks at Pueblo Weisbrod Aircraft Museum in Pueblo, Colo., Monday, Sept. 24, 2012. road, when you look at the entire context, the assassination, the Muslim Brotherhood president being elected in Egypt, 20,000 people killed in Syria, Iran close to becoming a nuclear nation, that these are far from being bumps in the road,” he told ABC. “They represent events that are spinning out of the kind of influence we’d like to have. We’re at the mercy of events rather than shaping the events in the Middle East.”
U.S. officials are investigating the deaths in Libya, which occurred when the consulate was breached. In his appearance on “The View,” the president avoided a direct answer when asked if the attack had been terrorism. “There’s no doubt that the kind of weapons that were used, the ongoing assault, that it wasn’t just a mob action. What’s clear is that, around the world, there are still a lot of threats out
there,” he said. Romney intends to return to the subject of international affairs and discuss foreign aid, trade agreements and international development when he addresses the Clinton Global Initiative in New York on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the campaign’s thinking. Romney, like Cantor, took a slap Monday at Obama’s handling of relations with Israel.
Barron’s slams Facebook, stock falls BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK — Facebook Inc.’s stock took a hit Monday after an article in the financial magazine Barron’s said it is “still too pricey” despite a sharp decline since its initial public offering. Though Facebook’s stock has plunged since its May IPO, Andrew Bary at Barron’s said the stock trades at “high multiples of both sales and earnings, even as uncertainty about the outlook for its business grows.” At issue is the shift of Facebook’s massive user base to mobile devices. The company is still figuring out how to advertise to people who use their mobile phones and tablet computers to access the social network. Bary said success in the mobile space is “no sure thing” for the company. Mobile ads must fit into much smaller screens, which doesn’t give Facebook “much room to configure ads without alienating users,” Bary said. Facebook also has what Bary called “significant” stock-based compensation expenses. Last year, the company issued $1.4 billion worth of restricted stock and $1 billion so far this year, he noted. Yet technology companies such as Facebook “routinely encourage analysts to ignore stock-based compensation expense — and most comply. This dubious approach to calculating profits is based on the idea that only cash expenses matter,” Bary wrote. “That’s a fiction, pure and simple.” Menlo Park, Calif.-based Facebook’s stock fell $2.03, or 8.9 percent, to close at $20.83 on Monday. The company went public on May 18 at a share price of $38, which it has not matched since. Bary said he thinks Facebook’s stock is worth $15, well below its current price even with Monday’s drop. “That would be roughly 24 times projected 2013 profit and six times estimated 2013 revenue of $6 billion, still no bargain price,” he wrote.
Facebook declined to comment. Last week, research firm eMarketer said it expects Google Inc. to surpass Facebook in U.S. display advertising revenue this year. In February, eMarketer predicted Facebook would stay ahead of Google. The social networking company had surpassed Google in 2011. But Facebook’s ad revenue has fallen short of the expectations eMarketer set in February. That said, some analysts are still bullish on Facebook. Last week an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald started coverage of
its stock with a “Buy” rating and a target price of $26. The analyst, Youssef Squali, said he’s “positive on the stock longterm” despite its botched IPO and the worry that Facebook’s stock will be held down as employees become eligible to sell their stock in the coming months. “We see significant opportunities ahead of Facebook, largely from brands moving online seeking mass reach and user engagement and from the explosion of mobile advertising in the next 2-5 years,” Squali said in a note to investors.
RICHARD DREW/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Facebook Inc.’s stock took a hit Monday, Sept. 24, 2012, after an article in Barron’s said it is “still too pricey” despite a sharp decline since its initial public offering.
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
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SPORTS
PEOPLE IN THE NEWS TONY HAWK With the U.S. presidential election drawing near, pro skateboarder Tony Hawk joined the nonpartisan “Rock the Vote” campaign yesterday. The campaign, which enlists celebrities such as members of the “Glee” cast, seeks to raise voter registration by 1.5 million.
Elis dominate at Penn invitational BY JOSEPH ROSENBERG STAFF REPORTER The Bulldogs played like the favorites they were at the Cissie Leary Invitational Tournament last weekend.
WOMEN’S TENNIS Five members of the Yale women’s tennis team dominated the three-day, Penn-hosted tournament in Philadelphia, Pa. The Bulldogs, who entered the tournament with the highest ranking among the participating teams, won Singles Flight B and the doubles bracket, and came in second in Singles Flight A. Hanna Yu ’15 was part of a three-women Yale contingent to play in Singles Flight A. She and Annie Sullivan ’14 advanced to the semifinals, but Yu lost her semifinal match, 6–0; 6–2, to Kanika Vaidya of Columbia. Sullivan advanced to the final, where she also went down against Vaidya, 6–3; 6–4. “I played pretty solidly throughout the whole tournament,” Yu said. “Unfortunately when I played in the semis I couldn’t hit as well as I wanted to and play my game style. It
was a little frustrating because I played well Friday and Saturday coming into it.” The Cissie Leary Tournament was slightly less competitive than the tournament the team entered the previous week, the Duke Fab-Four Invitational. The Elis finished last season ranked No. 29, the highest for the Cissie Leary. The next highest-ranked team in Philadelphia was Penn State, ranked No. 51. Playing in her first collegiate tournament, Courtney Amos ’16 won Singles Flight B with a finals win against Cornell’s Lauren Frazier. Amos romped to a 6–0, 6–2 triumph. “I was really nervous at first,” Amos said. “As the match went on, I just kind of got used to it and took it point by point.” Also in Singles Flight B, Sarah Guzick ’13 lost her first round match but got to the quarterfinals of the second-round consolation bracket. Guzick and Sullivan teamed up to take the doubles bracket, an all-Yale affair as the duo faced teammates Li and Yu in the finals. In the end, Guzick and Sullivan cruised to an 8–3 win. The final was not an entirely friendly affair despite being
played among friends, Yu said. “It was really great that we both ended up in the finals,” she said. “But it wasn’t as much fun as one would think. It was a little tense, but right after the match we were back to normal.” Also in the doubles bracket, Amos coupled with Penn State’s Sarah Henderson. After losing their second round match, the two entered the consolation bracket, where they also dropped their second match. Four members of the team have been selected to participate next week in the prestigious ITA All-American Championships in Pacific Palisades, Calif. Captain Elizabeth Epstein ’13, ranked No. 85 in the country in the ITA preseason rankings, will lead the Bulldogs in singles. Blair Seideman ’14 and Yu will also compete in the singles tournament. Sullivan will make the trip to participate in doubles with Epstein. The duo is 21–1 together and is No. 40 in the ITA rankings. Head Coach Danielle McNamara said she believes that her players will have a chance to do some damage at the top-tier tournament. “They’ve all worked really
YDN
The Bulldogs took the singles Flight B and doubles brackets of the Cissie Leary Invitational Tournament. hard this summer and all of last year to give themselves a good opportunity going into this event,” McNamara said.
“They’ve earned their entrance to this event.” The ITA All-American Championship begins Saturday.
Contact JOSEPH ROSENBERG at joseph.rosenberg@yale.edu .
Bulldogs take fourth at Yale Intercollegiate BY JOHN SULLIVAN STAFF REPORTER The women’s golf team finished in a solid fourth place on their home turf in the Yale Intercollegiate this weekend.
GOLF
SEO HEE MOON
The women’s golf team finished fourth at the Yale Intercollegiate this weekend with Seo Hee Moon’s ’14 17th-place individual finish leading the team.
Elis pack tournament finals M. TENNIS FROM PAGE 12 after easily defeating Harvard player Andy Nguyen. In the finals, Huang lost to No. 67 Tiger Matija Pecotic, who emerged the champion of the A draw. Daniel Faierman ’15 and Zach Krumholz ’15 both moved to the semifinals in the E draw of the tournament. Brown defeated Emilio Mora of Fordham in a strenuous three-set match to advance to the semifinals as well. “It was really exciting playing my first matches of the year,” Krumholz said. “We all still have room for improvement, but I am pleased with the way our team is playing thus far.” On the second day of play, Huang encountered the highest nationally ranked player in the invitational, No. 38 Vasko Mladenov of St. John’s, and defeated him
in a three-set battle to move on to the finals. Faierman and Martin Svenning ’16 also made the finals in their respective draws. All three Yale players fell to their opponents.
It was really exciting playing my first matches of the year. ZACH KRUMHOLZ ’15 Brown extended his undefeated match streak to seven after he overcame Farleigh Dickinson’s Yuri Grechenko. The week before, Brown earned a championship title at the Princeton Farnsworth Tournament when his finals opponent withdrew. Among Ivy rivals Princeton, Harvard, Brown and
Columbia, Yale earned the most slots in the main draw singles finals. In doubles, traditionally a strength for the Elis, only the BrownSvenning freshman duo advanced to the finals, where they lost to the No. 1 seeded team from Princeton. “These tournaments definitely give us a good indication of how we stack up against the other Ivy League schools,” Hoffman said. “We try to approach them like a team match so we can get used to playing in highpressure situations.” The Elis will go right back into play this coming weekend in Tulsa, Okla., at the All-American Championships. Depending on how far the players go in the draws, the team could be on the road for up to seven days. Contact ADLON ADAMS at adlon.adams@yale.edu .
With sixteen teams competing, Yale came in second of the six Ivy schools participating, just after Harvard, which took third. The women’s team closed the third round of play Sunday with 909 points overall to tie with Seton Hall for fourth. “We could’ve done better this weekend — we obviously have very talented players and everyone could have shot lower rounds,” Sun Gyoung Park ’14 said. “Still, I think we gave it our best and even though it could have been a better performance and there is definitely room for improvement, it was still a very successful tournament.” Leading the team for Yale was Seo Hee Moon ’14, who took 17th place overall, and just behind her Marika Liu ’15 and Park were at each others heels all weekend. The Yale duo tied for 23rd place. The Bulldogs started out the weekend in fourth with a team score of 303 — five strokes behind Harvard — paced by 75s from Moon and Liu. Though the Elis were unable to make up any ground over the three teams ahead of them, their even play kept them near the top of the standings. No Bulldog player was further than seven strokes behind the team leader on any individ-
ual day or more than nine strokes back over the entire weekend. “As a team we were very consistent, which I thought was quite commendable,” Shreya Ghei ’15 said. “We didn’t really have a high round throughout the weekend by any of the players, and we finished fourth out of 18 among some really good teams from all over.” Last year, Moon clinched the tournament title after winning a playoff against Harvard’s Tiffany Lim. But this year, the now-seasoned Crimson sophomore outshot Moon with a score of 218 for fifth place. Despite changes at the top of the rankings, the Elis maintained a strong showing overall. Yale also finished fourth in the Intercollegiate last year. This year, however, the Bulldogs’ home-course advantage was offset by alterations that the tournament directors made to the Course at Yale for the weekend. “We’ve seen the course numerous times and we should have an advantage playing here, but the tee boxes this weekend were ones that we hadn’t practiced enough from,” Park said. “It was different to see the new boxes and the environment of the course changed. The distances especially were affected [by the new tee box locations].” Nova Southeastern University took the tournament with a final score of 859, while Penn State came in second. Contact JOHN SULLIVAN at john.sullivan@yale.edu .
Women’s team takes third at Regis Bowl SAILING FROM PAGE12
YALE BULLDOGS
Cam Cullman ’13 is coming off a season in which he was named to the All New England Skippers Second Team
“We just want to keep getting experience,” Kiss said. “The goal is to perform at the Atlantic Coast Championships.” Cullman added that he and a few of the female sailors, will look forward to making their mark at singlehanded championship meets at the end of the season. The qualifiers for the women’s team will be held next weekend at the New England Women’s Singlehanded Championship at Connecticut College. Members of the women’s team not seeking to qualify for the singlehanded nationals will also compete at Connecticut College, but at the college’s Women’s Invitational. The co-ed sailing team will continue their season next weekend at the Danmark Trophy, the Mystic Lake invitational and the Smith Trophy. Contact ALEX EPPLER at alexander.eppler@yale.edu .
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SPORTS QUICK HITS
MEN’S SOCCER BULLDOGS TO HOST NO. 2 UCONN The Elis will take on the national powerhouse, No. 2 University of Connecticut at Reese Stadium today. After a slow start to its season, Yale (3–3–2) is 3–0–1 in its past four matches. UConn is undefeated this season and owns an 8–2–0 record. Kickoff is at 7 p.m.
SOCCER Real Madrid 2 Rayo 0
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CORNELL FOOTBALL BIG RED PLAYERS EARN AWARDS After dismantling Yale 45–6 on Saturday, Cornell quarterback Jeff Mathews was named Ivy Offensive Player of the Week, and Cornell running back Luke Hagy earned Ivy Rookie of the Week. Hagy ran 150 yards, and Mathews completed 29 passes against the Elis.
“Everyone in college is good, and they make you earn every single point.” JASON BROWN ’16 MEN’S TENNIS YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
Yale shows depth in singles BY ADLON ADAMS STAFF REPORTER The Yale men’s tennis team packed the final rounds in singles at the historic site of the U.S. Open last weekend.
MEN’S TENNIS While Yale traditionally shines in doubles matches, the Bulldogs sent four players to the final matches in the singles draws at the USTA Collegiate Invitational in Flushing, N.Y. Since entering the tournament in 2010, Yale has never before sent so many players to the finals in singles, and this year the team was better represented in the late rounds than any other Ivy League school. Second seed Jason Brown ’16 was the only Yale player to win his draw and receive a championship title. But Brown said that victory was not easy. “The transition [from high school to collegiate play] has been tough,” Brown said. “Everyone in college is good, and they make you earn every single point.” On the first day of play the Bulldogs had nine players entered into the singles draws. Captain Daniel Hoffman ’13, who is ranked No. 114 nationally, was edged out of the competition early on by Columbia’s Winston Lin, ranked 95th nationally. Kyle Dawson ’14, Zachary Dean ’13, Tommy Ratchford ’14 and Patrick Chase ’14 all had close opening matches but were not able to move on to the semifinals. No. 4 seed John Huang ’13, ranked 113th in the nation, made it to the semifinals in the A draw SEE M. TENNIS PAGE 11
MARIA ZEPEDA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The men’s tennis team sent four players, including John Huang ’13, to the singles finals in the USTA Collegiate Invitational last weekend.
Th
Cullman ’13 qualifies for nationals BY ALEX EPPLER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Amid yet another superb week for the Np. 1 coed and women’s sailing teams, captain Cam Cullman ’13 won the New England Men’s Singlehanded Championship at Boston College.
SAILING
VICTOR KANG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Coed sailing captain Cam Cullman ’13, the defending singlehanded national champion, won the New England singlehanded title this weekend.
STAT OF THE DAY 4
Cullman’s effort capped a weekend that featured a second-place finish for sailors from the co-ed team at the Tuftshosted Hood Trophy, and a third-place finish for the women’s team at the Regis Bowl Regatta at Boston University. Cullman was the only Yalie from the coed team to place high enough to qualify for the ICSA National Singlehanded Championships. The women’s qualifiers will be held next weekend. “The pressure was on a little bit to defend my title,” Cullman said. “But I just went out there, and I was really lucky I have some great coaches who got my head on right.” With the victory, Cullman qualified for the national championships, which he won last year. The next three finishers and qualifiers for the national championship came from other schools, while in Yale’s second boat Max Nickbarg ’14 finished just out of a qualifying position in 11th place. Cullman credited Nickbarg, along with their coaches, for helping him prepare for the race and added that Nickbarg should qualify for nationals next year. Sailors from the co-ed team competed
in two other regattas over the weekend. The Bulldogs placed second at the Hood Trophy, an event Cullman described as a “tier one regatta.” Graham Landy ’15 and Heather May ’13 sailed in the A division and placed first among a field of teams from several different conferences. In the B division, the Yale boat of Chris Segerblom ’14, Katherine Gaumond ’15 and Charlotte Belling ’16 finished third. For Belling, the meet represented the second regatta of her career at Yale. “I thought this weekend went really well,” she said. “It was really exciting being back on a lake because I sailed on a lake in high school.” The Elis placed seventh at the University of Rhode Island’s Salt Pond Invitational. The women’s sailing team also completed a successful weekend and finished third at the Regis Bowl Regatta at Boston University. Sophomore duo Morgan Kiss ’15 and Urska Kosir ’15 finished first in the A division, while the freshman pair of Marly Isler ’16 and Emily Johnson ’16 placed third in the B division. “We felt pretty good about it,” Kiss said. “The race took place on the Charles River, which is a pretty difficult venue to sail at and has different conditions than what we have at Yale, so it was good practice for our team and we were happy with the result.” Despite their success at this weekend’s regattas, the Bulldogs are focusing on the remainder of the season and on the Atlantic Coast Championships in November. SEE SAILING PAGE 11
THE NUMBER OF YALE PLAYERS MEN’S TENNIS ADVANCED TO THE FINALS IN SINGLES AT THE USTA COLLEGIATE INVITATIONAL LAST WEEKEND. Yale has never gained so many finals slots in the tournament, and the Elis were the best represented Ivy League school in the finals.