Yale Daily News -- Week of Oct. 14, 2022

Local 33 calls for union-neutrality

1000 rally in support of graduate workers

BY MEGAN VAZ AND KHUAN-YU HALL STAFF REPORTERS

Graduate student workers are renewing calls for Yale to remain neutral in their unionization e orts.

Over a thousand people withstood pouring rain at a Thursday rally to support graduate students in their longtime fi ght for a contract with better working conditions and pay, as well as recognition as University employees. Speakers celebrated the importance of unions at Yale and the work of Local 33, Yale’s unrecognized graduate student union.

“University leaders should not use their positions of power to interfere in our e orts to form a union,” Chris Camp GRD ’27 said. “I came to graduate school — like many of you — to research and teach what I love … I want to be able to focus on these responsibilities, not on my dental care, paying

Dining halls face sta

Possible service changes announced, to sta surprise

BY WILLIAM PORAYOUW STAFF REPORTER

On Friday, Yale Hospitality announced in an email to students that staffing challenges made it likely that dining hall services would soon be altered. Those potential service changes were not announced, however, to the staff in question.

The email, sent by Associate Vice President of Yale Hospitality Rafi Taherian, told students that there were significant staffing challenges nationwide — which have affected the Yale Hospitality team. Due to the staff shortage, Taherian warned that there may be shifts in the team’s service models in the next few weeks, which would come as a “last resort.”

“Our team has done its best to provide uninterrupted service across multiple dining locations, made possible by working lengthier shifts and sacrificing their work-life balance,” Taherian wrote in the email. “While talent recruitment is ongoing to fill vacant positions, we are at the point where we have to make some difficult decisions.”

Christelle Ramos, senior manager of marketing and communications at Yale Hospitality, described the potential changes in dining service in an email to the News. According to Ramos, changes may range from leveraging to-go containers or unexpected delays in service. She also told the News that some decisions may be specific to certain dining halls, which will be communicated to affected students.

The Ivy, a late-night servery in the basement of the Schwarzman Center that was launched last spring, remains closed due to sta shortages.

“This unique staffing shortage is not news to our team members, hospitality workers in general, and throughout the nation,” Ramos wrote.

The News spoke to eight dining hall workers across multiple dining halls. All

eight dining hall workers said they were not told by their direct managers or by Yale Hospitality administrators about the possible service changes. Many were not aware of the current sta ng shortage at all.

All workers were granted anonymity for fear of professional retaliation or termination for speaking to reporters.

Dining hall workers react

One anonymous dining hall worker told the News that unlike students, he was never informed by the Yale Hospitality team about the current staffing shortage. The worker said he only found out about the University-wide issue after being contacted for this story.

Many of his fellow co-workers in their dining hall had recently been working longer shifts, the worker said, but he assumed that it was a problem restricted to that specific residential college.

“I know there’s [workers] who aren’t as happy [as before] that they have been having to make sacrifices in their daily life because it’s been busy in the dining halls,” he said.

YPD arrests Kline Bio. Tower vandals

BY SOPHIE SONNENFELD STAFF REPORTER

A sweatshirt helped Yale Police detectives track down a group of young white teens who coated the walls of the Kline Biology Tower with racist and antisemitic gra ti in two incidents last fall.

This week, YPD o cials confirmed to the News that they arrested and charged five people — two juveniles and three adults — in connection to the vandalism last year. The YPD had not previously announced any arrests made in this case.

YPD arrested the teens in November 2021, just one month after the second of two incidents during which the group snuck into the building and spray-painted gra ti inside. After collecting footage of the perpetrators committing the second vandalism attack, detectives publicly released photographs asking for assistance from the public to identify the vandals.

The tower has been closed for renovations and reconstruction since a 2019 electrical fire scarred the building’s basement with smoke and water damage. Those renovations are expected to be done by the summer of 2023. With construction ongoing, the five individuals snuck into the site, spray painting the hate-based graffiti in two incidents in the fall of 2021: the first,

Blue State shutters three cafes

Only Orange St. location remains

BY KHUAN-YU HALL STAFF REPORTER

Three of New Haven’s four Blue State Coffee locations closed their doors for good this Friday at 5 p.m.

The three closed locations have been bought by Commons Grounds Cafe, another small Connecticut chain. The storefronts, located at Wall Street, York Street and near the Medical School, have operated in New Haven since 2009. Blue State’s fourth New Haven location, on Orange Street, will remain in business.

The closure came as a surprise to both regulars and employees, who are now out of work for the time being. Blue State Co ee Chief Executive O cer Carolyn Greenspan told the News that she felt confident Commons Grounds would consider rehiring the outgoing Blue State baristas and managers.

Greenspan described her time running the chain’s expansion to six locations

Senators push

free laundry

BY JANALIE COBB STAFF REPORTER

$1.50 to use the washer, then another $1.50 for the dryer.

It might not sound like much, but members of the Yale College Council argue that laundry costs can add up quickly over a year and pose a fi nancial strain. Over the last year, the body has doubled down on a longstanding push to make laundry free for all students.

“Paying $1.50 for every load of washing and drying adds up quickly, posing a real fi nancial strain on the students of this institution,” Davenport College senator Amanda Buster ’25 wrote in an email to the News. “This price is calculated based on the current market, which Yale argues is currently far more expensive, but the truth of the matter is that Yale students should not have to pay for laundry in the first place.”

A survey conducted by the YCC in the spring revealed general student frustration with pricing as well as the ongoing maintenance issues that plague many

do we want?

The hidden curriculum of language learning at Yale

In most L1 language classes at Yale, you learn to introduce yourself, talk about your likes and dislikes, maybe a few colors and some food. But speaking as someone who has taken a new language every year at Yale, the things you retain are not necessarily the most useful.

One of the first phrases I learned in Mandarin was “Playboy magazine.” I don’t remember anything else from that chapter. In L1 Arabic, apparently, you learn the word for “United Nations” before you learn anything else. In my L1 Korean class, the first question we learned to ask was “Are you Korean?” Since answering yes is easier than answering no, there was a time this semester when the only thing I could confidently say in Korean was “Yes, I’m Korean.” (I’m not actually).

Every Yale College student is required to take a language other than English. Some choose to study their heritage language (the one their parents spoke to them at home), others use it as an opportunity to gain a resume-worthy skill, others continue studying a language they learned before Yale, or begin a new language that they’ve always been interested in.

Regardless, language classes teach a lot more than just language. They teach cultures, affirm identities and expose students to new ways of thinking. But if we’re not careful, language classes can also establish the superiority of some cultures while erasing others. Yale needs to think more critically about the implicit curriculum that people learn in its language classrooms and what we assume about the students who learn these languages.

At its best, language learning is a window into someone else’s world. For example, in American Sign Language classes, students learn about access needs of D/deaf and hard of hearing individuals and gain a vocabulary to talk about disability and advocacy. As an ASL student, I learn just as much about D/deaf culture and ableism as I do how to sign. We shouldn’t take the ASL program for granted — it’s the result of advocacy and wasn’t permanently established until 2018, my first year at Yale.

There are some languages which haven’t been granted the same institutional support. Despite the rigor and urgent need for Indigenous language speakers, Yale does not allow students to use Indigenous language classes o ered by the NACC to satisfy their

foreign language requirement, or even count them for academic credit. What values is Yale implicitly signaling with its course o erings and the way that languages are taught here?

In Yale language classes, the professor might be the only native speaker of the language that the student knows. But the language class setting creates an artificial dynamic in which the professor is the sole arbiter of what is “correct” or “incorrect,” which means that they have a disproportionate amount of power when it comes to shaping student’s perceptions of a language and the culture behind it. Even in North American English, everyone has accents, favorite turns of phrase, different grammar intuitions, or words we don’t pronounce like other people. Imagine how much greater diversity is among languages like Spanish and Mandarin which are spoken across di erent countries with distinct cultures.

As a Taiwanese American who grew up speaking Mandarin at home, I struggled when teachers tried to change my accent to sound closer to the way people talk in Beijing. I’m sorry, but I’m never going to be able to add er to my sentences organically. Even after my professors stopped trying to change my accent,

the fact that the Beijing accent was taught as the “correct” or “standard” way to speak meant that white

YALE NEEDS TO THINK MORE CRITICALLY ABOUT THE IMPLICIT CURRICULUM THAT PEOPLE LEARN IN ITS LANGUAGE CLASSROOMS

students would often try to correct me in conversation outside of class. Now, my family in Taiwan thinks I pronounce things weird.

The fact that there are higher prestige and lower prestige accents is not a problem that is unique to the language learning environment — there’s a reason that many students from rural towns in the South consciously

change their accent as first years. But the structure of language learning at Yale can spread implicit biases to new language learners.

As an institution, Yale should carefully consider its policies and the implicit signals it is sending to students about what languages and accents are valued. On an individual level, professors should be aware of the di erent language backgrounds that their students come from and acknowledge that judgments about accents or dialects within native speakers of a language are arbitrary. This might look like exposing their students to di erent accents, allowing heritage speakers to speak in the way that their families do or tailoring lessons to individual learning goals and current events.

Language learning is an important exercise. But unless students find avenues in which to use their language skills after Yale, vocabulary and conjugation rules will likely be forgotten. The cultural norms and how we were made to feel when we took the language are the real lessons we’ll remember.

SERENA PUANG is is a senior in Davenport College. Contact her at serena.puang@yale.edu .

A humanitarian crisis at the border

It’s been one year since those horrific images of Customs and Border Protection agents on horseback with whips in Del Rio, Texas. While public outrage at CBP’s actions has receded over the past year, conditions at the border continue to worsen. As a result of Title 42, a Trump-era policy that blocks individuals from seeking asylum at ports of entry on the southern border, migrants are forced to remain in Mexico or face potential deportation.

I recently returned from a trip to the Mexico-U.S. border as a Haitian Creole translator with Project Corazon, an immigrants’ rights initiative run by Lawyers for Good Government (L4GG). I learned that most Haitian migrants left Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake. Many continue to flee due to the lack of security, political instability and devastation from natural disasters. Most aspire to reach the U.S.

As a member of the Haitian-American diaspora who follows news on the ongoing crisis in Haiti, what I witnessed in Reynosa, Mexico shocked me. I saw thousands of Haitian asy-

lum seekers in Reynosa living in deplorable conditions, forced to wait for months on end in Mexico as the U.S. continues to enforce

THE U.S. IMMIGRATION SYSTEM IS STILL BROKEN AND PERPETUATES CONTROL, VIOLENCE AND SOUL-BREAKING TRAUMATIC STRESS.

Title 42. The lucky ones are living in camping tents behind a shelter wall, protected from the violence and kidnappings perpetuated by the cartels that run Reynosa. The unlucky ones pitch tents next to the walls of the

shelters and have no access to running water or regular food.

While Reynosa — just across the Rio Grande from Hidalgo, Texas — is no stranger to migrants, the city’s migrant support and shelter infrastructure has recently been completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of arrivals, the majority of whom are Haitian.

Aid groups in the Rio Grande Valley are struggling to find Haitian Creole translators, which is how I came to fly from my home in Connecticut to the border to help for a few days.

During my two days in Reynosa, I heard stories of mothers who experienced multiple miscarriages, several diagnoses of hernias, lack of proper nutrition, diabetes, children with fevers for days and parents and partners separated from their loved ones.

Although migrants were grateful that they were on the inside of a shelter, many still felt unheard, unseen and forgotten. Most migrants had spent several years living in countries such as Chile and Brazil.

On Tuesday, a lawyer for Project Corazon and I visited the largest shelter, Senda de Vida, where I translated a Know Your Rights presentation explaining the bureaucratic immigration process. The line

to listen to our presentation — which we presented to groups of 12 to maintain crowd control — snaked around the compound, hundreds long. The desperation for better knowledge of their situation was palpable.

During our presentation, migrants were told that Title 42 blocks them from applying for asylum, but that they can request humanitarian parole, a process that prioritizes women and children, members of the LGBTQ+ community and those with medical emergencies. The catch? The list of parole requests can take many months.

In spite of all this, I came away from the trip with hope. We can act to help asylum seekers in Reynosa.

First, we must collectively call on the Biden Administration to end Title 42, the policy that is causing thousands to live on the streets in Mexico while they are barred from pursuing their U.S. asylum claims. The result of maintaining this policy has resulted in deportations of Haitian migrants at drastically higher rates than other countries. It is a discriminatory policy that has a disparate impact on migrants of color, and it is against both U.S. and international immigration policy to block individuals from U.S. territory and

Announcing

not allow them to seek protection from persecution. In its place, the Biden Administration should establish a functioning asylum system with fair processes for all who seek protection in our borders.

Second, we can help the helpers in Reynosa. The organization I traveled with, L4GG’s Project Corazon, are among the only attorneys that ever visit and provide pro bono legal services in the camps. They work closely with a group called the Sidewalk School, which also helps with immigration paperwork and other social needs. The shelters themselves, such as Senda de Vida and Kaleo, are run by fantastic organizations that also need our support.

Finally, we can promise not to look away. This is a crisis that has not been solved. The U.S. immigration system is still broken and perpetuates control, violence and soul-breaking traumatic stress. The very least we can do is to support the organizations trying to save lives on the border while pushing to change the policies creating this humanitarian crisis.

SARAH MENARD is an M.Div. student at the Yale Divinity School. She can be reached at sarah.menard@yale.edu .

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YPD confirms new details in Kline graffiti case

sometime over the weekend of Sept. 17, and the second on Oct. 4.

The first incident: Septempber 17-20, 2021

When workers from the con tracted construction company came into work Monday morning on Sept. 20, they noticed swastikas and the N-word spray-painted inside the building. The graffiti also covered one employee’s project materials. The next day, they notified the YPD, who opened an investigation.

“The first incident was not cap tured on camera because there were no cameras,” Chief Campbell told the News. He said without camera foot age it would have been difficult to find success with such an investigation.

The YPD then began camera installation at the site. In an email released to the University commu nity on Oct. 5, former YPD Chief and Associate Vice President of Yale Public Safety and Community Engagement Ronnell Higgins wrote that Yale Facilities and the con struction company had installed security cameras and strengthened the perimeter fencing and access gates around the site.

The construction and facilities teams worked to scrub off and paint over the graffiti by the end of the day on Sept. 21. But two weeks later, the perpetrators struck again, defacing the site with fresh hate-based graffiti.

The second incident: October 4, 2021

As soon as YPD caught word that the graffiti was back, officers doc umented and photographed the antisemitic and racist messages before once again scrubbing and repainting the area.

“We had suggested to the con struction company that we really [thought they] should put some cameras there,” explained Campbell. “They did. And the cameras captured the entirety of the incident.”

With the full incident on cam era, Higgins alerted the University in a public safety advisory email and posted photos of the perpetrators on the YPD website one day after the incident on Oct. 5. Those photos have since been removed from the web site. Higgins wrote in the email that he was posting the photos to get help from the public in identifying the individuals captured on video.

According to Campbell, posting those photos worked.

From the sweatshirt to the arrest

Someone who had seen the photos circulating through local news out lets was able to identify a local high school’s emblem on one of the perpe trator’s sweatshirts. Detectives then went to that high school, showing photos to school employees to help identify the teens.

An employee was able to rec ognize one of the teens, according to Campbell, providing detectives with their identity.

“Once we had that, we spoke to that individual and we were able to get all the other individuals,” Campbell said.

Within two weeks, the YPD had identified all five suspects, who then came to police headquarters with their parents and their law yers. Campbell said they all admit ted to spray painting the graffiti.

According to YPD Assistant Chief Von Narcisse, five indi viduals were arrested on Nov. 10 and Nov. 13, 2021. Narcisse noted that none of the arrestees were affiliated with Yale.

The vandals were charged with different combinations of criminal mischief in the sec ond degree, intimidation based on bigotry or bias, conspiracy to commit burglary in the third degree, conspiracy to commit criminal mischief in the second degree and conspiracy to commit intimidation based on bigotry or bias in the third degree.

The aftermath

At the time, the incident prompted a swirl of media atten tion and responses from public officials including New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker and U.S. Representative for Connecticut’s third district Rosa DeLauro, who both condemned the incident.

The Anti-Defamation League reported in April that the number of antisemitic incidents in the US reached an all-time high in 2021 climbing up by 34 percent rise from 2020. This rise has ripped

across college campuses in par ticular, as a recent ADL and Hil lel International report found that one in three Jewish college stu dents had personally experienced antisemitic hate on campus in the last year. That report was released just weeks after the Kline Biology Tower vandalism.

“It was certainly a highly unfor tunate incident both for and beyond the Jewish community,” said Slifka Center Executive Director Uri Cohen. “I am optimistic about the communication and coordination

between the authorities and Slifka Center in future such instances should they occur.”

Antisemitic graffiti was found outside the Yale Law School steps between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in early Octo ber 2019. Still-unidentified per petrators sculpted swastikas in patches of snow on trees in 2008 and scrawled swastikas in chalk on Old Campus in 2014.

YCC continues perennial effort to make laundry free

college laundry rooms. Laundry services then appeared on many Senate candidates’ platforms in last April’s elections.

On Sept. 30, a group of sena tors met with Associate Director for Student Financial Services Heather Abati, as well as a rep resentative from CSC Service works, the company that ser vices and maintains all machines on campus.

The aim of the meeting, YCC Speaker of the Senate Ryan Smith ’24 told the News, was to gather more information about the stip ulations of the contract between Yale and CSC — a contract that is confidential, they were informed.

“It’s a frustrating issue, because Yale is entangled in various legal contracts, and we’ve been work ing on it for at least two years,” Smith wrote in an email to the News. “But we now know more about Yale’s laundry system than we ever have before and I’m hope ful that we can make progress.”

Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis declined to comment for this article.

A perennial issue

Laundry is by no means a new issue. Successive slates of sen ators have worked on laundry accessibility for at least the past three years based on perennial student complaints over cost, broken machines, servicing delays and laundry room cleanliness.

Emma Madsen ’25, a soph omore in Silliman, frequently finds her college’s laundry machines broken.

“It’s not just paying for laun dry,” Madsen explained. “It’s that the laundry machines them selves are really bad, and they break down a lot in Silliman. It’s not really appropriate to only have four working washing machines and four working dryers for a col lege of five hundred kids.”

The News obtained previous proposals for free laundry pre sented to administrators by two previous slates of senators. The proposals focused on differ ent aspects of the issue — from the fiscal impacts on University budget to the condition of laun

dry rooms and machines. Sena tors last year incorporated direct student testimony and pictures of laundry rooms to demonstrate their points.

But the Council’s high turn over rate has hindered meaning ful progress.

“Because YCC did not have institutional memory on the issue, each year, a new group of senators made the same mistakes,” wrote Pierson senator Viktor Kagan ’24.

Kagan says senators this year are more aware of previous efforts, which could lead to a more effec tive strategy this year.

The language of Yale’s contract with CSC Serviceworks is confi dential. But Jonathan Oates ’23, who worked on laundry accessi bility as a senator two years ago, said he was able to get a gist of what the contract stated when he advocated that the administration make laundry free.

Oates explained that, per the contract, CSC owns the machines and is responsible for making all repairs and replacements when units break. Yale Facilities is responsible for maintenance of the laundry rooms.

The contract also states that Yale is responsible for collecting the pay ments from the machines, which is then split between Yale and CSC per the details of the contract. Yale loses money in the process, Oates claimed.

“It should be noted that on-cam pus laundry operates at a defi cit, meaning Yale pays CSC Ser viceWorks more than they bring in through fees,” Oates explained. “Yale continues to work with CSC Service Works because it is cheaper to rent the machines than buy and maintain new ones. The question is: If Yale can operate at a deficit … why can’t they simply increase the subsidy?”

Hidden costs

Some students said they felt that Yale’s refusal to pay for laundry was emblematic of larger accessibility problems in the University.

“I think having us pay for laun dry is symbolic of Yale’s approach to undergraduate life,” Sourav Roy ’25 wrote in an email to the News. “It always feels like they skimp a bit on the silliest things.”

Roy added that paying for laun dry is like “having a 15 dollar monthly

subscription to a service” that should be subsidized by the University.

Five other students agreed, high lighting the disparities that these “subscriptions” can create within the Yale community. These hidden living fees, they say, pile on top of the room and board charges.

“Whenever you put a price on something, you’re making the implicit statement that it’s OK for somebody to go without it,” Nina Grigg ’24 wrote in an email to News. “It just adds to the invisible burden that [first-generation students] have to carry that other students might not even realize.”

Aaliyah Thomas ’26, who iden tifies as FGLI, was surprised to find that laundry costs money when she

came to campus. She was under the impression that Yale, like multiple other universities, would cover that cost for students.

“So many other institutions have free laundry with way less money and resources, so Yale not having it is a bit ridiculous,” Thomas wrote in an email to the News. “I think it definitely poses accessibility issues for low-income students. I’ve seen many people do things like pool their laundry together in one load to get past it, and they shouldn’t have to do that.”

The road ahead YCC delegates believe they are now on stronger footing than in previous years.

“In the past, the YCC has been trying to work on this issue with out all the necessary informa tion, and this [Sept. 30] meeting with administration was help ful to inform our future plans,” Smith explained.

For now, senators are optimis tic that laundry could become one of this Senate’s signature wins. Kagan told the News that he is determined to overcome the issues that the YCC has faced on the matter in the past.

All Yale campus laundry machines can be operated through CSCPay Mobile App.

Contact JANALIE COBB at janalie.cobb@yale.edu

Contact SOPHIE SONNENFELD at sophie.sonnenfeld@yale.edu .

“To me, the American Dream is being able to follow your own personal calling.”

At

including Mayor Elicker / Tim Tai, Photography Editor

is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.”

Local 33 accuses Yale of anti-union stance

rent or finding a therapist.”

So far, the University has announced no official stance on the union and has repeat edly claimed to support “free and robust debates.”

But protestors say that Yale’s previous hiring of a law firm with an anti-union reputation and recent messaging on Local 33’s weeks-long campaign process reveal a hostile position against the union question.

“Given Yale’s global prom inence, the example it sets on the question of graduate worker unionization will have impli cations that extend far beyond the campus,” said rally orga nizer Abigail Fields GRD ’24. “In this moment, we hope that this example is one that not only supports but celebrates democ racy and action.”

Local 33 has collected signed cards from graduate students in hopes of scheduling a vote to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board. Yale, they argue, should either vol untarily recognize the union or allow unionization to proceed without interference.

“Yale supports a free and robust debate over graduate student unionization among those who may be affected by it, including the graduate students who would make up its ranks as well as faculty and other stu

dents,” University spokesperson Karen Peart wrote to the News.

“Yale also supports the rights of employees to form unions.”

Peart also referred the News to a frequently-asked questions webpage on the University’s stance on unionization.

That FAQ, sent by Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sci ences Lynn Cooley in a Sept. 22 email to the GSAS student body, was interpreted by many graduate workers as anti-union. Beyond basic explainers on unions, authorization cards, NLRB elec tions and contract negotiations, the FAQ made several claims about the nature of a potential recognized union.

Local 33 organizers released an annotated version of the FAQ, raising concerns with Yale’s “misrepresentation” of the union.

The FAQ asserted that workers cannot revoke their pro-contract authorization card signatures once submitted — a claim Local 33 has said is untrue. Administra tors also mentioned that a union would become the “exclusive bargaining agent” for workers, indicated that the union could compel all workers to pay dues with the threat of dismissal and insinuated that the GSAS student government would lose power.

Notably, the email also encour aged students to call University Public Safety if they felt pressured or coerced into casting ballots.

“To tell us to call Yale Security on our coworkers, on our fellow graduate students, can be really dangerous for some people and actually lead to some risky life and death situations, potentially,” Porras told the News. “The way I feel about it is that there is no real care about our well-being.”

The crowd on Thursday erupted into loud boos when organizers referred to Cooley’s email.

Local 33 organizers also pointed to Yale's past work with the law firm Proskauer Rose. As an employer-side labor firm, Proskauer Rose has earned a rep utation nationwide for push ing against unionization efforts at major employers like the New York Times and other universities, including Columbia and Duke.

Local 33 argues that collec tive bargaining rights as a union would help alleviate a range of hardships faced by graduate stu dents. Thursday’s protest drew new attention, for example, to the dangers faced by inter national graduate students as immigrant workers.

Lihao Yan GRD ’27, a gradu ate worker from China, told the crowd that many student work ers must choose between their research posts and going back to their home countries.

Harvard’s graduate worker union helped their interna tional students navigate immi gration challenges and threats to safety, while MIT’s was able to

ensure they received continuous pay and employment benefits to those unable to return to the U.S. Without a union, Yan said, Yale’s international graduate workers remain vulnerable.

“I did not return home for four months, fearing that my visa sta tus could be affected if I left,” Yan said. “I was fearing that any thing could happen to my family members who were thousands of miles away with no possibility of me going back to see them again. International students here live in constant fear and instability. And it is Yale’s job to provide us with the necessary protection and support we need.”

Sasha Tabachnikova GRD ’26 referred to difficult experiences with finding mental health care, shar ing that it took eight months to get matched with a therapist. Camp added that they joined Local 33 as soon as they got to campus, hoping to combat a culture of hazardous work ing conditions they faced in previous research positions, where they had no grievance procedure.

Javier Por ras Madero GRD ’26 said that, despite recent increases to graduate student stipends, workers have found it chal lenging to keep up with the high cost of living in New Haven.

Throughout its thirty years of organizing, Local 33, formerly called the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, has often resorted to headline-making tactics, including a hunger strike and employee strikes of hun

dreds. During the hunger strike, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro D-Conn. and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73 D-Conn., who spoke at Thursday’s rally, met with orga nizers in support.

In these situations, Yale negoti ated to end the crises themselves, but remained unwavering in its refusal to consider a contract.

“We don’t have much trans parency from Yale on why they won’t commit to neutrality,” Arita Acharya GRD ’24 told the News. “They could do it right now. And Yale has their own honestly great history of labor peace with the other unions here on campus.”

Graduate students saw significant support from Local 34 and 35, which together represent the University's service, maintenance, technical and clerical workers.

“You cannot have a partnership with us anymore,” Local 35 Presi dent Bob Proto said at the rally. “We are joined at the hip with Local 33. You cannot give us health benefits in writing a great pension and writing paid time off and writing raises and whining without giving the folks that do your teaching and research [a] contract.”

In 2021, the National Labor Rela tions Board ruled that graduate stu dents at private universities have the right to unionize.

Announcement of changes to dining services surprise staff

Another dining hall worker said she had recently begun to feel overworked and decided she would no longer work overtime. The worker described assist ing other co-workers at her own dining hall who needed help cov ering shifts. But this, in combi nation with her own 10-hour days, had proven to be too much.

“That’s why I stopped [work ing overtime hours],” she said to the News. “I was burnt out.”

Full and part-time dining hall staff suggested that Yale Hospital ity elevate more casual workers to permanent positions to combat the shortage. Casual workers are not officially hired by Yale Hospitality, one worker said, but rather work a certain number of hours in hopes of obtaining a contract as a full or part-time employee.

One casual worker said that she noted many job openings, espe cially in the mornings and on week ends. When asked by the News if she hoped to work more hours every week, she said yes.

“I would do it in a heartbeat,” she said.

In the meantime, she does not have a contract and is not part of a union — so the news about staffing shortages worried her. On the other hand, some full and part-time work ers interviewed by the News were not afraid about potential changes in dining hall service, since they have contracts and cannot be laid off.

All eight workers interviewed by the News noted a lack of com munication between Yale Hospi tality administration and staff.

“As far as communication [goes], I will say, there’s a lack,” another worker said. “Because students know what’s going on and us being

the worker, you know you’re a server for the students, you should also know too.”

One worker told the News that she has not changed her regular hours, assuming that staffing short ages were present in certain dining halls — not all.

“You know, we should be informed about stuff like that,” she said. “Well, if they’re gonna announce this to the world, we should have had a meeting about it first. I’m sure the managers knew about it.”

The News attempted to speak to four dining hall managers, all of whom directed questions to Yale Hospitality’s senior leadership team. Ramos told the News that while “detailed information” regarding staffing shortages was shared with over 60 members of management teams, some employees “may not have received updates at the same time due to their varied schedules.”

In response to dining hall workers’ complaints, Ramos told the News that senior man agement is engaged in efforts to relay transparent communi cation with the rest of the Yale Hospitality team.

“Our aim is to ensure that our managers and team members feel supported while they do their best to support you, the stu dents,” Ramos wrote in an email to the News. “There are vast com plexities with properly outfitting a hospitality organization.”

A national problem George Washington University professor of hospitality manage ment Liang Yu explained the sur rounding context of Yale Hospi tality’s current staffing shortage to the News.

“Before the pandemic, in 2019, everything was operating at a

capacity for speed … the dining hall was all filled to its capacity,” Yu said. “Now when the pandemic hit, [the operators] had to cut the staffing because students all went back home or turned to virtual spaces for learning. And so the facility probably was shut down for a while. And now the tricky part was to bring them back.”

Yu said that when staff in the institutional dining sector of the hospitality industry were let go, it affected employees physically, mentally and psychologically — with many wishing for a career, not a job, and a more stable one.

When the hospitality indus try began to recruit again, these workers had a different outlook on job choice.

“All organizations had to fight for talent,” Yu said. “So then opportunities came for the hos pitality workers…[they] could go into retail, [they] could go into real estate, and [I know some are now] sales managers for hotels.”

Many workers found these alternative sectors more attrac tive, generally because they had higher pay and more flex ible hours, Yu said. He also mentioned that a respect fac

tor played an important role in pushing these workers away from institutional dining — three dining hall workers inter viewed by the News mentioned that they felt spoken down to or subject to condescension by their manager.

“We have potential, our hos pitality workforce,” Yu said. “If we take care of them, they will take care of our students.”

The Yale Hospitality office is at 246 Church St.

Three Blue State locations closed on Friday

across New England as a wonderful experience. But now, she said, is the right time to move on and focus on other projects.

“I am a grandmother now, and I have other things that I like to do,” Greenspan said. “The timing was just right for us.”

Blue State Coffee was founded in 2006 by Greenspan’s son, Andrew Ruben ’11 LAW ’17, with the goal of supporting nonprof its and creating a “ripple effect of positive change.” Blue State paused their donations over the COVID-19 pandemic, but previ

ously gave 2 percent of all sales to nonprofits, resulting in total donations of over $1,000,000.

Employees at the three loca tions were informed that they would soon be out of work over email earlier this week. Many were surprised by the news, but said they did not feel animosity towards their employers.

“I was walking with my boy friend and ran into my manager, and he asked if I had checked my email,” one employee, who was granted anonymity due to profes sional concerns, told the News.

“And then he was like ‘We’re closing on Friday.’ I was just in a

huge shock. Nothing is too clear. I am still scheduled for this week end, so I don't really know what is going on.”

Other employees expressed similar confusion.

Patrick, an employee who asked to be referred to only by his first name due to professional concerns, had only started working at Blue State Coffee last week. Patrick said that he had hoped to work at Blue State for a while, but is now unsure of what comes next for him.

The employees told the News they were hopeful that they would receive jobs at the new

Common Grounds Cafe loca tions, but were not confident or clear on the terms that Blue State and Common Grounds had agreed to.

Greenspan said that the secu rity of Blue State’s employees was the first thing she asked Common Grounds’ team about when they first spoke, request ing that they consider hiring their baristas and managers.

Some students mourned Blue State’s departure, recalling the chain’s several locations near campus and importance to some caffeine enthusiasts. Asked to describe Blue State’s impact in

two words, Alvaro Perpuly ’23 said, “home, home.”

“The Blue State on Wall Street is a staple that I pass by every day,” said Emily Zhang ’25. “The world will not be the same with out it. Ask me not how many times I have actually gone in there to buy something, but how many times I have been on the receiving end of vibes from there.”

Blue State Coffee’s last remaining cafe in New Haven is near the School of Management, at 534 Orange Street.

Contact KHUAN-YU HALL at khuan.hall@yale.edu .

Contact MEGAN VAZ at megan.vaz@yale.edu and KHUAN-YU HALL at khuan.hall@yale.edu .

Full and part-time dining hall staff suggested Yale Hospitality elevate more casual workers to permanent positions / Tenzin Jorden, Photography Editor

New coalition seeks to revitalize Yale’s student art scene

BY OPHELIA HE CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

The Dramat opened its fall season during Family Weekend with “The Government Inspector,” a satirical comedy originally written in Russian.

Written by dramatist and novel ist Nikolai Gogol and originally pub lished in 1836, the play ran at the David Geffen School of Drama’s Ise man Theater from Oct. 6 to Oct. 8. “The Government Inspector” tells a story of corruption, bribes and human greed. Its plot centers on a traveler from St. Petersburg, Ivan Khlestakov, who is mistaken as a gov ernment inspector by town officials.

“It’s a play about deception, and what it feels like to be duped and the shame of emerging from decep tion.” said the director of the show, Leo Egger ’24. “My work has always been interested in the experience of going into a play and losing yourself in it.”

The Yale Dramatic Association is the second-oldest college theater association in the country and the largest undergraduate theater orga nization at Yale. Students organize two shows every semester. Accord ing to Egger, over 70 people audi tioned for a cast of 16 parts.

This was Egger’s first time direct ing a non-classical piece. Describ ing his goals for the show, Egger said he wanted to be “as authentic as possible to the text Gogol’s writing about” while also combining “[his] own artistic vision.”

Miriam Huerta ’23, the sound designer and engineer of the show, said her biggest challenge was including “authentic Russian music.”

“We actually did a really cool col laboration with the Yale Russian Chorus,” Huerta said. “They just had their anniversary concert ear

lier in September, and we were able to record it and use some of the songs that they performed in our show.”

Working from early August until the start of the show in October, the production team and actors commit ted to rehearsing on a tight schedule.

Simon Rabinowitz ’23, who played the Mayor in the show, described the time commitment to the play as between two to ten hours a day.

“[Egger’s] got such a great vision,” Rabinowitz said. “He’s able to exe cute that in such an efficient way,

while at the same time being really detail-oriented.”

The team also consisted of peo ple with varying experience levels. Rabinowitz, who had only ever per formed improv comedy before, said this was his first experience acting in a show on this scale.

For Nico Taylor ’23, who played Khlestakov, the show marked a tran sition from acting in sketch comedy to a role in a longer production.

“The main difference is just that with a sketch, you have at

most five minutes that you have to sustain laughs, and so you can pack a lot more,” said Taylor. “You can get away quickly with it, like a shooting star, … but this is kind of like a whole day, like the sun going over it and everything. … This show has to come less from gags than from a character. You actually have to think about other things like characterization and making a believable world.”

The show was performed over Family Weekend. Sarah Brockus,

who came to see her daughter Anya van Hoogstraten ’23 as the Mayor’s Daughter, was excited for the show.

“They did a terrific job of high lighting the organization of the farce and keeping weaving around all the characters,” said Brockus.

The Dramat’s next show, the musical RENT, will be held Nov. 9-12 at the University Theatre.

New Haven Documentary Film Festival kicks off packed schedule

BY MIA CORTÉS CASTRO CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

The New Haven Film Festival, also known as NHDocs, returned to the Elm City for its ninth installment with 116 screenings of films made around the world.

Topics this year ranged from the silent epidemic of benzodi azepine abuse to the experiences of a death-positive farmer who documented his life on film in rural England.

NHDocs has been key to con necting creatives from around the city and now around the globe to each other, helping them market and distribute their films. One of the short films screened at the festival in 2021, “The Queen Of Basketball,” went on to win an Oscar for Best Doc umentary Short in 2022.

“I think, in terms of the art world, film is the one artform that combines all other art forms,” said Gorman Bechard, director and founder of NHDocs. “I think film is the most import ant art form. For there not to be a film festival in a town with so many people and so much cul ture, it would be a travesty.”

Originally created in 2014 by four New Haven filmmakers, the festival has grown rapidly, from showing four films in its first year to 116 this year, including 12 as a part of a student film competition.

Programming included a vari ety of events, including a beer tasting by Westville brewer Alisa Bowens-Mercado, a DJ party by Talking Heads’s drummer Chris Frantz and a performance by Air Guitar World Champion Andrew “Flying Finn” Finn.

In highlighting these film makers’ works, the New Haven Film Festival brings together creatives and lovers of film alike, spreading important messages and educating viewers on top ics they would not typically be exposed to.

NHDocs will be hosted at the New Haven Public Library, Cafe 9, The State House, and The Cri terion. The Criterion was added as a venue this year.

“The Box Truck Film,” Oct. 16 at The State House Films screened at NHDocs are full of purpose and perspective, connecting to the filmmakers’ val ues and priorities.

Alex Eaves, who directed “The Box Truck Film”, expressed appre

ciation for the festival’s focus on documentary.

“Especially in this day and age, when we’re getting so many posts and videos on social media, these festivals are important because this is real life, there’s important things to take away and learn from doc umentaries,” said Alex Eaves, who directed “The Box Truck Film”.

“It’s not like you’re going to the movies and getting two hours of entertainment. You’re also gonna learn and take away something from the experience.”

Eaves’s film discusses his jour ney to build a sustainable home from completely used material and covers his three years of traveling around the country and living in his new home. This is Eaves’ sec ond film on sustainability.

“As Prescribed,” Oct. 15 at the Criterion

Some films are infused with per sonal history, and others with calls to action. “As Prescribed,” a film written and directed by Holly Hard man, engages with a community of people affected by benzodiazepines.

Hardman follows advocate Geral dine Burns’ experience raising aware ness about the dangers of these com monly-prescribed medications.

After struggling with the effects of the drug Clonazepam herself and seeing the damage it caused in her life, Hardman used her expe riences to create awareness about the issue.

“Art has given a deeper mean ing to my life,” Hardman said. “More than inspired to make this film, I felt it was a duty because I didn’t think that enough peo ple knew about this. I didn’t want anyone else to go through what I went through. I felt called. I felt as though to live with myself, to be a decent person who tries to do the right thing, I had to make this film.”

“Deerwoods Deathtrap,” Oct. 14 and 16 at the Criterion “Deerwoods Deathtrap,” a short film by James P. Gannon, was recently selected for Sundance Film Festival.

The comical and intriguing film follows Gannon’s parents as they revisit the site of a car crash they were in 50 years prior.

Being back at the site jogs his par ents’ memories, with each recalling the vastly different version of the same event. The result is an intrigu ing, two-perspective story.

“It’s cool having a festival that’s just dedicated to documenta ries,” said Gannon. “Especially

with my documentary which is very unusual. I’m glad that they’re embracing something that’s differ ent and quirky like that.”

“A Life On The Farm,” Oct. 14 and 22 at the Criterion

With a similar perspective on the importance of documenta ry-specific film festivals, British and Irish filmmaker Oscar Hard ing voiced both his appreciation for documentary film festivals and film festivals in general.

Harding’s film, “A Life On The Farm,” centers around the home movies made by a farmer in rural England who happened to be Hardgin’s grandfather’s neighbor.

When sifting through his grandfather’s possessions, Hard ing’s family found a tape made by this neighbor, Charles Carson.

Though Harding was prohib ited from seeing what was on the tape at the time it was found, his curiosity about the content never faded and he was able to watch it 12 years later. In his film, Harding follows Carson’s love for film making and for his subject: death.

Discussing the death positiv ity movement and other themes that are not typically discussed in film, NHDocs will help “A Life On The Farm” gather an audi ence that loves the story as much as Harding. He said NHDocs helps the film reach audiences it would not normally reach.

“There’s a very real chance that if this movie plays in the aters, it’s not gonna play any where in New England,” Hard ing said. “It may sell in the big markets like LA and New York,

but then you’ve got tens of thou sands of movie lovers that won’t get a chance to see it. Festivals like NHDocs are really import ant for that.”

How to get tickets for NHDocs

Accessible to all members of the New Haven community, tickets range from free to $15. Tickets are on sale on the NHDocs website.

“New Haven is such a cultur ally diverse town but a lot of the time, culture is out of reach to the average New Havener,” Bechard said. “That’s what’s so special about NHDocs.”

Entries for film submissions for NHDocs will reopen in March 2023.

Contact MIA CORTÉS CASTRO

Contact OPHELIA HE at chuning.he@yale.edu .

GAVIN GUERRETTE/PHOTO EDITOR

The satirical comedy tells the story of corrupted officials and was originally written by Ukrainian-born novelist Nikolai Gogol.

DANIEL ZHAO/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale’s research labs contend with environmental impacts of plastic use

BY KAYLA YUP AND BRIAN ZHANG STAFF REPORTERS

Plastic’s use has been cemented in scientific research by promises of accuracy and standardized rep lication. Yet researchers are still weighing the impacts of labs pro ducing an estimated five and a half tons of plastic waste yearly, bal ancing necessity with efficiency.

With over 1200 labs span ning across disciplines, Yale is not new to the plastic discourse. The imagery of waste bins brimming with discarded single-use plas tic and scientists replacing plas tic equipment at incredible speed has incited concern from both an internal and external perspective.

But environmentalists, research ers and students alike are urging people to take a step back, weighing in on the paradoxical complexity of the “plastic problem” in science.

“I believe that medical research is a very justified use of discardable plastic,” Ellen Foxman, an associ ate professor of laboratory med icine and immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine and the principal investigator of the Fox man Lab, said. “We live in a time when many people worry about sustainability, and I do, too, but there are good uses for plastic as opposed to bad uses.”

Foxaman’s lab works with human pathogens, using dispos able plastics to prevent cross con tamination and to contain infec tions. She mentioned that what the public considers to be more “sustainable” forms of plastic may not be suitable for a labora tory setting due to experimental parameters for durability.

Different types of plastics have different polymer makeups and structure, affecting the way it can interact with different substances at various heats and pressures demanded of laboratory work, according to Foxman. Thus, many lab exercises are designed with a specific plastic in mind.

Moreover, some plasticware used in Foxman’s pathogenic experiments undergo corrosive bleaching and disinfecting pro cedures afterwards, making them “unsuitable” for a subsequent experiment or trial.

“At Yale, we have labs perform ing research with a wide vari ety of hazardous materials, all having different degrees of risk,”

Kevin Charbonneau, the exec utive director of Yale Environ mental Health and Safety (EHS), wrote to the News. “Safety is the first and most important hur dle to overcome. We have to con sider what we are asking peo ple to do and determine whether

or not the benefit outweighs the risk to them as well as the workers downstream. Once the safety and regulatory hurdles are taken into account, one also needs to assess the feasibility and economics of implementing such a change.”

According to EHS, which over sees the waste management of lab supplies and equipment at the University’s undergraduate and professional programs, any plas tic that has come into contact with biochemical substances is consid ered a biohazard. Any plastic con taining any form of cell culture is then considered Biosafety Level 2, requiring additional care in dis posal and transportation to curb contamination and infection.

The classification excludes dis carded single-use plastic with bio chemical exposure from the list of laboratory materials that can be recycled with official permission, as per a list of guidelines designed by EHS, Yale Sustainability and Yale Recycling.

Used pipette tips fall under this category, making them one of the greatest sources of plastic waste in labs and stymying the effort to curb plastic consumption overall.

Daniel Mendoza ’25, a student researcher at Yale, said that he goes through about 100 plastic pipette tips daily — sometimes even 200 to 300 during a busy day.

Miles Yamner ’25, who also has laboratory experience at Yale, added that much of the disposable plastic pipette tips used in his lab are designed to “degrade faster,” and thus are not meant for reusing. In fact, reuse can be more harmful than helpful.

Compared to shifting to non-plastic labware, recycling sin gle-use plastic can sometimes be environmentally counterproduc tive in terms of associated green house gas emissions and energy costs, according to Reid Lifset — a research scholar at the Yale School of the Environment.

This paradox contradicts the common “public perception” of plastic as purely an enemy, he said, and of our tendency to ethically default to either recycling or find ing alternatives without additional research. While this perspective sometimes holds true and plays a role in creating environmental consciousness, Lifset mentioned that it is important to consider context, urging people to approach the plastic problem from a “lifecy cle perspective.”

Rather than limiting our atten tion to the last stage of single-use plastic’s life cycle — discardment — Lifset suggested that those con cerned about the environmen tal impact of different materi

als consider the entirety of their life cycles. First, substances are extracted from the natural envi ronment, then processed and turned into products before finally being thrown away.

Some materials that are tradi tionally viewed as greener than plastic, such as glass and metal, may actually have greenhouse gas and energy expenditures through out their entire life cycles that exceed those of single-use plastic, according to Lifset.

Lifset described this in the con text of bags. One single-use plas tic bag requires less emissions to make than one cotton tote bag. But the continual use of the tote bag replacing many plastic bags makes it more sustainable in the long term.

Thus, Lifset contended, con tinual use of products is key. Since the reusable product will leave a more significant environmen tal dent during production, it will only benefit the environment if it is used many times in place of a single-use product.

Despite acknowledging the advantages of plastic in experi mental science, some students are speaking out in favor of streamlin ing or improving lab practices to be more environmentally favor able. Hyerim Bianca Nam ’24, who is familiar with laboratory set tings both at Yale and overseas in Germany, paid close attention to the differences in plastic protocol between the two countries. Nam is also a staff columnist for the News.

“In the German ecological lab where I was working with chem icals and RNA, we would put tips and even gloves into the autoclave bin, where they would be auto

claved for reuse in certain circum stances,” Nam said. “The two labs were in different disciplines, so they’re not perfectly comparable, but … it was interesting that in the lab here [at Yale], people were a lot more careless about throwing away tips that could maybe be reused.

“If they missed with the pipette, [if a] tip fell or was crooked in the box … [and sometimes even if pipette tips were] in the same [liq uid] medium, we would just throw it away,” Nam said.

EHS currently does not enlist any formal policies for the afore mentioned situations, but Char bonneau noted that while there has not been a “monumental change” to wet lab practices that has reversed this policy, the Univer sity has been working to engineer a more individualized approach to creating sustainable science over the past decade.

In 2011, Yale launched the Green Lab Initiative, urging scien tists to cultivate a socioemotional consciousness of their environ mental footprint — even if it’s just “the basics,” he said. Labs would check off small action items like printing double-sided pages and recycling sterile pipette boxes, ultimately working toward four different levels of certification.

As of this year, nearly 363 prin cipal investigators have partici pated in the program according to EHS records, though Charbon neau described the effort as “more reserved and complicated [when it comes to plastic recycling] due to waste regulations and health and safety risks.”

Virginia Chapman, director of Yale Sustainability, added that Chris Incarvito, associate pro

vost for science initiatives, actively serves on the board for the Inter national Institute for Sustainable Laboratories, which will soon be releasing “recommendations” that her team looks forward to incorpo rating “as possible,” she said.

Chapman also looks forward to expanding outreach to more inti mately engage the broader com munity in conversations about environmental waste, as well as educating them about what exactly the “best practices” are when it comes to plastic in science.

Meanwhile, on a more local ized level, some principal inves tigators and lab personnel are committing to developing lab oratory cultures that “work smarter,” and not just harder, to improve sustainability efforts.

Foxman, for example, keeps efficiency at the forefront of her research, “always thinking” about ways to be resourceful by “care fully planning” out experiments to prioritize “high impact experi ments.” Equipment is not the only valuable resource, she said. Her lab is also handling “precious” clinical samples and primary human cells that, like plastic, are not always feasibly recyclable.

“Biomedical research may be one of the last areas where you can get rid of consumables, but we want to get the maximum amount of science done with the minimum amount of cost,” Foxman said.

This year, Yale Sustainabil ity Week took place from Oct. 3 to Oct. 7.

Contact KAYLA YUP at kayla.yup@yale.edu@yale.edu and BRIAN ZHANG at brian.zhang@yale.edu@yale.edu .

increases investment in blockchain research

BY ALEX YE STAFF REPORTER

This time last year, Yale was unranked in CoinDesk’s Best Uni versities for Blockchain. A year later the University places 34th overall, on par with Harvard and other major universities around the world.

The report’s results recognize Yale’s recent significant invest ments into blockchain research, including the hiring of four new blockchain experts to the Com puter Science faculty, — Ben Fisch, Charalampos Papamanthou, Kater ina Sotiraki and Fan Zhang — one of whom is leading a project that has received a $5.75 million grant for blockchain development.

“In the last few years, block chain, as an interdisciplinary field, has spurred a huge amount of development in distributed sys tems and cryptography and their intersection,” said Fisch. “This is also why it’s such a fascinating aca demic topic, because it ties together so many different fields, not only from computer science, but also from economics, law and policy. Yale has a very unique combination of strengths in all these different areas, especially at present.”

In August, Yale blockchain researchers accepted a $5.75 mil lion grant from the Algorand Foun dation, a not-for-profit organiza tion focused on the development of blockchain technology.

The grant will support PAVE: A Center for Privacy, Accountabil ity, Verification and Economics of

Blockchain Systems, which will be led by Papamanthou. PAVE will bring together a cross-disciplinary team of experts from four institu tions — Yale, Columbia University, the City College of New York and the Swiss Federal Institute of Tech nology Lausanne, with Yale being the leading institution — to advance research of blockchain systems.

Apart from the technical agenda, PAVE will also host hack athons, symposiums and block chain summer schools.

The expansion of blockchain research at Yale coincides with the rise of the blockchain technology market. The value of blockchain technology in the banking, finan cial services and insurance sec tor market is expected to grow by $4.02 billion between 2021 and 2026, according to Technavio. The Technavio study found that easier access to technology and disinter mediation of banking services will create more growth opportunities within the industry.

Papamanthou believes the hir ings acknowledged the impor tance of blockchain, and that the University has more generally “acknowledged the interdisciplin ary nature of the blockchain space.” He emphasized the University pro vides opportunities to explore the blockchain industry, such as inter disciplinary majors like computer science and economics.

Papamanthou spotlighted the newly established Roberts Innova tion Fund created by the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which assists blockchain proj

ects that could be commercialized through funding and mentoring.

An increasing number of stu dents are interested in the field of blockchain, according to Mariam Alaverdian ’23, president of the Yale Blockchain Club.

Alaverdian explained that because of the many applica tions of blockchain technology — from personal identity security to healthcare to money transfers — the emergence of blockchain into our lives is “inevitable.” She added that the Yale Blockchain Club has seen interested students come from a variety of backgrounds, with some having no prior expo sure and others who already have startups in the space.

“The Yale Blockchain Club started last spring and we received a lot of attention from Yale under graduate and graduate students,” Alaverdian wrote in an email to the News. “We had 600 people sign up for our mailing list within a couple of weeks … there is definitely a high demand from Yale students for edu cational materials and guidance.”

As the blockchain industry has continued to grow, Yale has been a “fierce advocate” for block chain research and development, Papamanthou noted.

Papamanthou explained that because Yale’s faculty is now made up of “leaders in the field of distributed computing and cryptography,” the potential blockchain innovation at Yale could be “unprecedented.”

“It’s amazing that Yale has hired two phenomenal professors,

Ben Fisch and Fan Zhang, whose research focuses on aspects of blockchains,” said Roshan Pal akkal ’25, a student in Frontiers of Blockchain Research, a course taught by Fisch. “Yale CS typically isn’t known to be the best, but I think the new classes and faculty have positioned it to become one of the best universities for block chain, with lots of potential for interdisciplinary collaboration in areas like economics, global affairs, and public policy.”

Papamanthou added that stu dents who are interested in block chain have access to a variety of courses across the Computer Sci ence and Economics Departments, as well as at the Yale School of Man agement and Yale Law School.

According to Fisch, from a computer science perspective, Yale is educationally competitive with any other university in the field of blockchain.

“I will be offering a course in the spring that is comparable to the blockchain course that’s offered by Stanford,” Fisch said. “And the research seminar that I’m teaching now is uncommon at other uni versities, as it really goes in depth at a graduate level into all the most recent research topics that are being worked on currently.”

The Yale Computer Science Department is located at 51 Prospect St.

Contact ALEX YE at alex.ye@yale.edu .

ZOE BERG/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER Yale, which was ranked 34 in Coindesk’s 2022 Best Universities for Blockchain, has invested significantly in the rapidly growing field.

DANIEL ZHAO/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Environmentalists, students and professors say that sustainable research practices will remain a critical area to address.

15 local nonprofits expand employment services

BY KHUAN-YU HALL STAFF REPORTER

Fifteen nonprofits received a total of $684,000 in grant funds this month that local advocates hope will boost pathways to employment.

The funds were awarded by the philanthropic Community Foun dation of Greater New Haven, which aims to help New Haven res idents find long-term employment and provides wraparound services like help with childcare, transpor tation and credentialing.

“There aren’t as many opportuni ties for people who live there and for people who want to stay,” said Matt Higbee, the content and engagement manager at the Community Foun dation. “And we also have the sec ond problem … the people who don’t have access to quality jobs or have their own business get left out when the economy does well.”

The grants hope to tackle two problems at once: New Haven’s eco

nomic growth, which ranks 46 out of the 57 large metropolitan areas in the United States, and economic inclu sivity, which ranks 54th, according to the same study.

The grants, Higbee said, gives local residents access to careers and wages that can support families and reduce stress about paying bills or having to work multiple jobs.

“We have absolute competence and confidence that [these nonprof its] are going to make lives better in New Haven and the surrounding area,” Higbee said.

New Haven Promise, whose work has focused on providing scholar ships for New Haven students and ensuring that students leave the New Haven school system with marketable skills, received $50,000 from the Foundation.

According to New Haven Prom ise’s program manager Jorgieliz Casanova, the organization plans to use the funds to pilot partner ships with the Yale Medical School

to train, mentor and prepare underrepresented professionals in healthcare careers.

Casanova said that the partnership will help low-income undergradu ates and students of color to become medical scribes, positions that many hospitals are struggling to fill.

The program will also give them access to the medical profession through mentorship with residents at Yale New Haven Health. Casanova hopes that the partnership can help reduce the racial and class disparities in medicine.

“The traditional pathways to medicine are not really tapping into the incredible talent that’s in our nation, especially around folks who have less means, who are interested in medical education,” Casanova said. “And so this leaky pipeline doesn’t get us to where we need to be around having a diverse, inclusive, you know, medical community.”

Casanova said that as New Haven’s economy changes, it

requires more career develop ment programs. While the Elm City’s economy has been carried by manufacturing firms in the past, the top employers are now Yale and Yale New Haven Health.

For Casanova, this shift in the economy means that a different type of individual and type of job training is required, focusing on entrepreneurial skills rather than those used in manufacturing.

“New Haven Promise is about giving families hope and inspiration around a path forward,” Casanova said. “Because so many of our citi zens are first generation college stu dents and we are a sanctuary city, this is where American dreams are made, and folks can really buy into that vision.”

Christian Community Action, another group receiving funds, focuses on providing lower-income residents with emergency services like housing and food, in addition to policy and advocacy work.

The group plans to hire an employment specialist and a child and family specialist with the new funds. According to Execu tive Director Bonita Grubbs, these employment and counseling ser vices will complement their exist ing housing programs.

“The funding was absolutely essential to us being able to not just provide housing, but provide the services to individual heads of household and the children within those households,” Grubbs said. “So that once they leave the shelter, that there’s more than just a bed in an apartment that they have, but that there’s a bet ter life by increased income ser vices that would help the families survive and thrive.”

The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven is located at 70 Audubon Street.

Contact KHUAN-YU HALL at khuan.hall@yale.edu

City disputes FOCUS account of homeless encampment clearing

BY MEGAN VAZ STAFF REPORTER

A homeless encampment at a New Haven-area park was aban doned by its residents — not evac uated by police — New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker told the News. His account clashes with that given by leaders of the Yale ori entation program FOCUS on New Haven, which cleared the encamp ment under the supervision of city officials over a month ago.

On Aug. 24, members of Yale’s FOCUS first year orientation pro gram traveled to West River Memo rial Park, where employees in New Haven’s Parks and Public Works Department directed them to clear a homeless encampment of cloth ing, tents and other items left there by former residents.

A previous statement released by program leaders claimed that the encampment’s former residents were “forcibly evacuated” by New Haven police. City officials, however, have contended that the encamp ment was abandoned long prior to the cleanup, with Elicker defending the city’s treatment of people expe riencing homelessness.

Nevertheless, advocates for New Haven’s homeless commu nity have raised concerns with the critical attitude toward encamp ments that some allege city poli cies have historically reinforced.

“People who are homeless are liv ing on the precipice of sort of life and death in a way,” said Mark Colville, a longtime community activist for the rights of homeless people in New Haven. “Your possessions become, in some ways, an anchor for you.”

FOCUS

One of the University’s five “Camp Yale” orientation programs for incoming first-year students, FOCUS leads participants on com munity service projects throughout

the city. Directors of the program, whose volunteers helped to clean up the West River site at the behest of city officials, said that the “violence” they participated in was “antitheti cal” to the program’s values.

FOCUS leaders did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.

Peter Davis, who supervised the project as a volunteer with Parks and Public Works and has been homeless in the past, told the News that he was certain the site was abandoned, say ing he had visited the area mutiple times. He claimed that his work reg ularly involves scouting out sites full of litter in need of cleaning.

“There were two spots, and both spots were littered with debris, and it was an abandoned homeless encampment,” Davis said. “I find out by going to these areas three times a week … I discovered the area needed to be cleaned up. When I was told that we could have some students from Yale to help out, I decided that would be a good spot.”

Davis acknowledged that New Haven police had been at West River earlier in the week, but said he was unsure of why.

While FOCUS leaders previ ously stated that this year’s part nership with the Parks and Pub lic Works Department was new, Davis told the News that the pro gram had partnered with the department numerous times over the past three decades.

Elicker said he believes FOCUS leaders mistook the West River Memorial Park encampment for a different encampment on state property which he said had previ ously been cleared by state workers.

“The other part of this story conflated state property and a sep arate encampment removal that the state initiated,” Elicker said.

“And they did so in a way that apparently was quite different than how we would have done.”

Elicker told the News that the site cleared by the FOCUS group was located farther down the river, in neighboring West Haven. Fol lowing the incident, he told the News he spoke with city staff and the supervisor of the FOCUS site and determined that no one still lived in that area.

According to Elicker, FOCUS participants and the Department of Public Works played no part in dis carding the items of homeless people actively living at the site.

“They were removing materi als that were dirty, old and clearly not used,” Elicker added. “During the experience, they talked with the Yale students, they had a break with them, and no student raised to them any concerns whatsoever.”

Elicker said that the city of New Haven, “more than any municipal ity in Connecticut,” puts resources toward supporting the homeless and ending homelessness.

New Haven’s clean-up policies

Elicker said the city has “an understanding” that when encamp ments are clean and free of violence, not posing a disruption to any neigh bors, there is no need for removal.

The city chooses to clear out tent cities when they fall onto private property or there are public health and safety concerns, said Mehul Dalal, a city Community Services administrator. When this happens, the city posts a 72-hour notice for residents to evacuate, which most homeless people observe, accord ing to Dalal. When people choose to remain, the police are called for “assistance in getting folks along” as a last resort. Still, he claimed that arrests are rare.

Colville pointed to this statement as a sign that homelessness is crimi nalized in New Haven.

“It indicates that there’s this standing illegality about the real ity of being homeless,” Colville said.

“So, by the mercy of the cops, they’re saying, ‘we rarely arrest people.’ That statement is made with an assump tion that they have every right to arrest people for doing what is their human right when the state doesn’t provide people with housing.”

Nonetheless, Dalal maintained that the city approaches the issues homeless people face through col laborations between departments and with nonprofits. For example, a Homeless Outreach Task Force involves representatives from the Local Cities Initiative, the New Haven Police Department, Pub lic Works, library services and other partners, meeting monthly to dis cuss the health and safety needs of the homeless.

The city also has a Department of Community Resilience, which collaborates with local nonprof its to address “complaints” by homeless people on a case-bycase basis, connecting them with resources. New Haven’s bud get allocates over a million dollars toward homelessness services.

Elicker said that through these partnerships and task forces, the city engages with homeless peo ple to find “alternative solutions” when they must leave a tent city.

While Elicker said that the city tries to help these homeless peo ple keep their property during evacuations, although Colville recalled instances where people had been “roughly” evicted.

Encampments’ importance Alexis Terry, who used to be homeless, told the News that liv ing in homeless encampments can be “the better choice” com pared to living in homeless shel ters. Still, she said she’s wit nessed evictions from tent cities and seen volunteers and other groups throw residents’ items away, attributing these practices to the city and police.

Colville noted the importance of tent cities as “transitional hous ing.” He explained that many peo ple are not completely ready for life in apartments or public housing after long periods of surviving while homeless. Tent cities, however, can allow these people to get used to social settings and develop trust with neighbors.

At a Wednesday morning meet ing of homelessness activists at the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen, Colville and others — including people who are cur rently and formerly homeless — discussed the city’s treatment of the homeless, the pressing needs of homeless people and their goals moving forward.

They called upon the city gov ernment to codify homeless peo ples’ rights to privacy, pointing to the state’s Homeless Bill of Rights.

Colville told the News that homeless people must play a role in facilitating tent city evacuations, adding that they should be able to publicize the eviction process. He specu lated that public pressure would encourage the city to “get a handle on” the notification and monitoring system when people must leave tent cities.

“When they go to evict peo ple, homeless people should have the option to make it pub lic, so that other people can see what the experience is of being evicted from your home,” Colville said. “Let’s not do these things in secret, because if the public knows what’s happening, then the public might have an opinion on how it should be done — or if it should be done at all.”

A new tent has gone up at the site cleaned by the FOCUS group in the month since the incident.

Contact MEGAN VAZ at

“We are going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.” HILLARY CLINTON AMERICAN POLITICIAN

Students celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day

For Makomenaw, this joy is not something one can read in a book or see in a panel. It comes with interpersonal interactions and collective laughter. The cel ebrations have greatly expanded in recent years, Makomenaw said, noting the full week’s worth of programming beyond Indige nous People’s Day on Oct. 10.

He said that in the ongo ing journey to make Indigenous identities in America more visi ble, “happy celebration” should come hand-in-hand with aca demic education on the colonial genocide and systemic struggles that some Indigenous Americans have faced.

Makomenaw praised stu dents for heralding the initia tive and creating an interac tive experience that transcends such academic structures and the preconceptions people have of Indigenous culture based on “westernized movies and books.”

NISAY chairperson Joaquín M. Lara Midkiff ’24 under scored joy as an integral part of the healing process.

Day in a city that has historically honored Columbus Day each fall.

Debate over the celebra tion of Columbus Day has rico cheted throughout New Haven in the last two years, with the city’s Board of Education voting in 2020 to redesignate Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day and remove Columbus’ name from a local school.

Lara Midkiff hopes that this week’s programming — beyond recognizing Indigenous “pride and patrimony” — will approach Columbus Day from a corrective lens and instead celebrate the people who have suffered most at the hands of American colonial projects.

“Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Columbus Day cannot coexist,” agreed Nyché Andrew ’25, who is on the house staff at the NACC. “The latter has no honorable means of celebration given the history of colonialism.”

group of Native Hawaiian stu dents, along with Native and Indigenous Studies Assistant Professor Hi’ilei Julia Kawe hipuaakahaopulani Hobart, returned iwi kūpuna — native Hawaiian skeletal remains — that had been in Yale’s pos session to a repatriation group that met them in New York.

Makomenaw urged students to take advantage of the yearround programs offered by the University’s cultural centers, which provide them with oppor tunities to connect with each other as well as to get a glimpse into Yale’s diverse communities. The events, similar to this week’s programming, welcome students of all backgrounds, Indigenous or not.

BY BRIAN ZHANG STAFF REPORTER

Joy is taking center stage as Indigenous student groups on campus herald a week of Indige nous Peoples’ Day programming.

This year’s schedule features meals, speaker panels and events — such as beading and smudg ing — hosted by the Native and

“Something about Indige nous communities that I think most people don’t realize is that we laugh a lot and we tease each other a lot,” said Assistant Dean of Yale College Matthew Makomenaw, who also serves as the director of NACC.

“When I ask myself what it means to be Indigenous — and what it means to live and con tinue on [as] faithfully, fully and vividly as I can … it’s for all the millions of people who were robbed of the opportunity to do so,” Lara Midkiff said.

Lara Midkiff acknowledged the tension that comes with cel ebrating Indigenous Peoples’

Both Makomenaw and Kala’i Anderson ’25, a peer liaison for the NACC, said that while events like Indigenous Peoples’ Day and other cultural heritage months are important in center ing marginalized voices, there remains a need for a more per sistent inclusion of those voices in the mainstream narrative.

Yale should continue to edu cate itself on its colonial his tory, Anderson said. He men tioned a recent trip to Vassar College during which he and a

“Visibility is important,” Makomenaw said. “Part of the role of students and myself is to push towards having more rep resentation of Indigenous iden tities in the curriculum, the fac ulty, and the staff. But just as important is smiling and having a good laugh. Seeing students gather today to eat cake prepared by an Indigenous staff mem ber, taking pictures and enjoying the time with one another, that made me really proud.”

The Yale University Press’ 2022 Indigenous Peoples’ Day Reading List can be found here.

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

Endowment returns may be lower than reported

BY EVAN GORELICK STAFF REPORTER

The University seems to have preserved its capital in a year marked by volatility and shrinking college endowments.

But experts say that the way certain assets are priced may mean Yale’s true returns are lower than reported.

Their analysis hinges on the pricing of illiquid assets — assets that cannot be quickly converted to cash, such as real estate, private equity and venture capital. These assets, which have no concrete market value until they are sold, must be estimated when report ing returns, and during downturns could be estimated more favorably to aid otherwise poor numbers.

“It’s hard to know for sure what these investments are worth at any point in time, and any endow ment that invests heavily in illiquid assets is really just producing esti mates of the portfolio’s fair market value each year,” NYU Stern School of Business professor David Yer mack wrote to the News.

Alternative investments refer broadly to non-traditional assets, which are often illiq uid. These assets were partic ularly difficult to appraise in 2022, Yermack wrote, because a slow economy translated to fewer transactions and less data on which to base an estimation.

The Yale School of Manage ment’s James Choi and institu tional fund expert Charles Skorina also described illiquid assets as a point of difficulty in estimating the endowment’s returns. Overall, the analysis suggests that Yale’s endowment return could be lower than the 0.8 percent gain the Uni versity posted last week.

Nevertheless, Yale’s numbers this year outperformed those so far released by its peer institu tions, which Skorina said is relevant given that other endowments may be similarly vulnerable to pricing imprecision. So far, Cornell Univer sity, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College and Duke Uni versity have all reported negative or near-zero endowment returns.

As of 2019, about 60 percent of Yale’s portfolio was allocated to alternative investments, imply ing that reported returns depend in large part on estimated values.

For over 35 years, David Swensen managed the Yale endowment under “The Yale Model,” a frame work for institutional invest ing that he developed alongside then-senior endowment director Dean Takahashi.

The Yale Model favors broad diversification of assets, allocat ing less to traditional U.S. equi ties and bonds and more to alter

native investments like private equity, venture capital, hedge funds and real estate. Swensen passed away last year, but the Yale Model has remained the University’s primary investing scheme — and has become the industry standard over the last three decades.

A revolutionary idea of the Yale Model is that liquidity — the abil ity to quickly buy or sell an asset without drastically changing its price — can be undesirable. The bulk of Yale’s investments are illiquid, and thus difficult to value. Until they are sold, the value of these assets can only be estimated, often using a combi nation of complex market anal ysis, mathematical models and subjective reasoning.

But the model’s strong prefer ence for alternative investments makes Yale’s endowment numbers much more susceptible to estima tion-based imprecision.

That imprecision could “[apply] more to Yale than any other university, given its very large over-weighting of so-called alternative invest ments,” Yermack wrote.

Imprecision itself can also be difficult to pinpoint because of the Investment Office’s reliance on third-party managers. Instead of carrying out in-house investing for specialized assets, the Office gen erally delegates to external invest ment managers, allowing Yale to diversify its investments more than it could otherwise.

Heavy reliance on invest ment managers has made man ager selection at Yale a famously deliberate process. According to the Yale Investments Office web site, Yale’s “superior manager selection” contributed 2.4 per cent per annum of outperfor mance relative to the median uni versity endowment.

While these third-party manag ers can boost returns, they can also make accurate asset valuations more difficult.

“The smartest people on earth can’t figure out what these assets are worth until they sell them,” Skorina told the News. “If a private equity firm tells Yale an asset is worth some amount, how do they really know that?”

The Yale Investments Office confirmed that it “generally uses valuations provided by its invest ment managers.”

“The majority” of these manag ers report their investments at fair market value in compliance with Accounting Standards Codification 820, the Investments Office reported.

“Determination of fair value relies upon several accepted valuation methodologies: third-party appraisals, similar

transactions, marketable com parables, option pricing mod els and discounted cash flow models,” an Investments Office spokesperson wrote in an email to the News.

The spokesperson said that the Office believes its valuation pro cedures are currently applied in a manner consistent with stan dard industry practice and Gen erally Accepted Accounting Prin ciples GAAP, which are guidelines imposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Skorina told the News that, regardless of these precautions, there is “wiggle room” — particularly in private equity and venture capital.

“Swensen was terrific,” Skorina said. “There is beauty in alterna tive assets. Everyone has a vested interest in showing wonder ful gains and minimizing losses. But, until an asset is sold, there’s a lot of flexibility around what you can say it’s worth.”

Other experts, including Rut gers Business School professor John Longo and School of Manage ment professors William English, wrote to the News that Yale’s per formance was good considering the market circumstances.

Choi, however, pointed out that this does not mean Yale’s pub lished returns are totally reliable.

“That return looks pretty good, considering that an investment in the S&P 500 that reinvested dividends back into the index lost 11 percent over the same period,” Choi wrote in an email to the News. “The caveat is … there’s evidence that pri vate equity managers smooth out reported returns over time, rather than recognizing the full impact of market losses and gains immediately. That sort of smoothing would temporar ily make endowment losses look less severe.”

Skorina explained that this smoothing can happen any year, but, when the market is doing worse, these problems are often more pronounced because “there is a greater incentive to cheat.”

This year, Yale’s returns were their lowest since the Great Recession, when the endowment tanked nearly 25 percent.

After large university endow ments dropped record levels in 2009, a 68-page report released in May 2010 argued that “the endow ment model of investing is broken.

Whatever long-term gains it may have produced for colleges and universities in the past must now be weighed more fully against its costs — to campuses, to commu nities and to the wider financial system that has come under such severe stress.”

In response to the report, Mark Yusko, a veteran endowment man ager and the founder of Mor gan Creek Capital Management, argued in a video interview that the endowment model — a more gen eral name for Swensen’s Yale Model — remains the most viable proposi tion for long-term investors.

However, he commented that pricing obscurities can have an outsized impact on reported performance now that large endowments depend so heavily on alternative investments.

“You can’t fault the endowments, but they’re just as aware of the issue as everyone else,” Skorina said.

The S&P 500, short for “Stan dard & Poor’s 500,” was intro duced in 1957 to track the value of 500 large corporations on the New York Stock Exchange.

Contact EVAN GORELICK at evan.gorelick@yale.edu .

Indigenous Student Association at Yale and the Native American Cultural Center.

AMAY TEWARI/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

the

Field Hockey falls to Harvard, UMass

BY BETSY GOOD CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

After a hard-fought weekend, the Yale field hockey team fell to two Massachusetts schools.

The Bulldogs (6–5, 1–2 Ivy) trav eled to Cambridge to play Harvard University (8–3, 3–0 Ivy) on Friday at the Berylson Family Field Hockey Field before hosting the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (10-3, 3-1, A-10) on Sunday.

The Crimson scored twice in the first 10 minutes against the Bulldogs during the game on Fri day in Cambridge. The Blue and White played aggressively for the rest of the game, but two more goals from Harvard came in the second and third period. The Bull dogs remained goalless on Friday with the final score reading 4–0.

About a minute into the second period, Ellie Barlow ’25 took a pen alty corner that midfielder Théo dora Dillman ’23 attempted to con vert into a goal, but was blocked by the Crimson’s goalkeeper. Bulldog goalie Luanna Summer ’24 main tained strong form by securing six saves as she played all 60 minutes for the Bulldogs.

“I’m most looking forward to get ting back into Ivy play and prov ing ourselves within the league. Our team goal is top three and that is still very achievable,” Keely Comizio ’25, a sophomore on the team, said. “After this weekend we realized we need to come into every game believing we are as good as the teams we are playing and not start playing scared where we then concede a goal

and are forced to come from behind.”

On Sunday, the Bulldogs came home to New Haven to take on the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (10–3, 3–1 Atlantic 10) for family weekend at Johnson Field.

The Minutewomen began play by scoring a goal 54 seconds into the game. Although the Minutewomen had the opportunity to put another goal in with six penalty corners throughout the match, goalie Sum mer remained strong for the second game in a row.

In the tenth and 11th minutes of the first period, the Bulldogs attempted six shots. While the Bulldogs fought hard, the Minute women did not let any goals in, leaving the Bulldogs scoreless again this weekend.

“The highlight of the weekend was Sunday, when we debriefed as a team,” coach Gonzalez wrote to the News. “The group has big goals and they’re willing to work towards them. Our focus is set on continually improving and the games ahead.”

The Bulldogs attempted 11 shots against the Minutewomen and Sum mers completed four saves through out the game.

Looking ahead, the Blue and White will host Columbia to continue their Ivy League play on Friday.

“In practice, we plan to continue to work hard to get back on track and secure an Ivy win against Columbia.” Julia Freedman ’25 said. Yale will also host Lafayette on Sunday at Johnson Field.

Contact BETSY GOOD at betsy.good@yale.edu.

Seven Bulldogs advance to Super Regionals

BY GRAYSON LAMBERT STAFF RERPORTER

Both the Yale men’s and wom en’s tennis teams kicked off Octo ber with powerful performances at the Intercollegiate Tennis Associa tion individual competition in sin gles and doubles.

Singles victories at the ITA Northeast Regionals at Penn this weekend qualified Walker Oberg ’25 and Aidan Reilly ’25 for the ITA Super Regionals at Harvard, where they will join doubles team Theo Dean ’24 and Michael Sun ’23, who previously qualified. Wins in the finals of the ITA Women’s North east Regionals at Dartmouth earned Ann Wright Guerry ’26 and Viv ian Cheng ’23 spots at their Super Regionals at home later this month. There, they will join Chelsea Kung ’23 who previously earned a spot.

“Ann Wright Guerry had a great performance at ITA regionals,” women’s head coach Rachel Kahan said. “Especially as a first year, to qualify for super regionals is very impressive. I was proud of how we competed in general and adjusted our games when needed. We are continuing to improve our doubles and making big courageous moves.”

At Super Regionals, players will vie for a spot at the ITA National Fall Championships, which will be held in San Diego from Nov. 2 to Nov. 6.

The National Championships will feature 32 of the nation’s stron gest singles players in both men’s and women’s competition for a combined 64 players. In doubles, 32 of the strongest teams from each side will compete for a combined 64 doubles teams.

“I am looking forward to Harvard next weekend for Super Regionals,” Oberg said. “Looking ahead, I am excited to be back in the team envi ronment cheering on everyone.”

In practice, Oberg noted that he has been working on his serve and backhand in anticipation of his upcoming competition.

Oberg earned his Super Region als spot after cruising to a 7–6, 6–1 victory over St. John’s Axel Vila Antuna.

Although Reilly lost the first set to the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Nejc Skorjanc, he rebounded and secured wins of 6–0, 6–3 in the second and third sets to qualify for Super Regionals.

Sun and Dean qualified as a doubles team for the Super Regionals in an earlier round at the Northeast Regionals.

“I think all of the guys that qualified, and even most that didn’t, have been improving con siderably over the last year,” men’s head coach Chris Drake said.

“Aidan made some significant technical changes this summer that are paying off, and Walker

has really increased his focus throughout this fall.”

Cheng earned her spot at the upcoming competition at Yale via a 6–3, 6–3 victory over Brown’s Sophia Edwards. Guerry posted a victory over Boston College’s Addie Ahlstrom in a super tie-breaker (10–5). Cheng and Guerry will com pete alongside Kung, the reigning Ivy League Player of the Year in the Super Regionals.

Earlier this month, Kung played at the ITA All-American Championships where only the top 64 Women’s DI players com peted in the qualifying round. In Kung’s first match of qualifying, she beat LSU’s Safiya Carrington. However, Kung ultimately fell to UCLA’s Kimmi Hance 6–1, 6–4 in the second round.

Players from both teams not competing in Super Region als this weekend will have the opportunity to compete in other invitationals. Members of the men’s team will travel to Dart mouth, while members of the women’s team will venture to Brown. These players will get a glimpse at Ivy competition ahead of the spring season.

The Bulldogs will begin their spring season in late January. Their schedules have yet to be released.

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

Football picks up first win against Dartmouth since 2016

BY AMELIA LOWER AND SPENCER KING STAFF REPORTERS

The Bulldogs (3–1, 2–0 Ivy) took down Dartmouth (1–3, 0–2 Ivy) in their second Ivy League game of the season, pushing their win streak up to three.

Donning new commemorative jerseys this Saturday, the Yale foot ball team started off in a deficit before soaring back to secure a 24–21 vic tory over the Big Green. The game came down to the last minute with Dartmouth in possession, but middle linebacker Hamilton Moore ’23 ended the game with an interception at the Dartmouth 15-yard line.

“We say all the time that we have to be ready to win on the last play,” head coach Tony Reno told Yale Athletics. “[Moore] made an amazing play to close it out. For our team, it was really special.”

Yale’s win against Dartmouth was its first since 2016.

With under three minutes left in the first quarter, Dartmouth quar terback Dylan Cadwallader made a 12-yard pass to wide receiver Jonny Barrett for the Big Green’s first touch down of the game. Cadwallader filled in for quarterback Nick Howard and completed 28 passes on 45 attempts during the game.

Despite a first period where both teams were getting a sense of the other, the Bulldogs entered the sec ond quarter down in score but deter mined to take the lead.

Over five minutes into the sec ond, quarterback Nolan Grooms ’24 ran the ball in on a designed quar terback keep to score a five-yard touchdown, and kicker Jack Bos man ’24 added the extra point to

tie the game. Grooms had a total 90 rushing yards during the game and was 19-of-22 in the air, throwing for 170 yards and a touchdown.

“Every league win is important [and] the team played well,” offen sive lineman and team captain Nick Gargiulo ’23 said. “The offense did a nice job establishing the run and dic tating the tempo of the game, [and] the defense was able to force two key turnovers that shifted the momen tum of the game.”

Following Grooms’ touchdown, it was the Eli defense’s turn to shine. With the game knotted at seven, Dartmouth seemed poised to take the lead, as they drove the ball to the Yale 15-yard line. Big Green running back Q Jones took a hand off all the way down to the Yale one-yard-line where Moore and sophomore corner back Sean Guyton ’25 stacked him up to prevent the touchdown.

As Moore and Guyton worked to bring down Jones, Bulldogs safety Brandon Benn ’24 jumped on top of the pile and ripped the ball out before falling on it himself to force a momentum-shifting turnover.

Following the fumble, the Yale offense worked its way down the field, and with 16 seconds remaining in the half, Bosman made a 41-yard field goal to give Team 149 a threepoint lead at the break.

After a halftime show featuring the Amistad drumline from Achievement First Amistad High School in New Haven, wide receiver Mason Tip ton ’24 reeled in a 25-yard pass from Grooms in the endzone to cap off a 96-yard scoring drive. Tipton led the Elis in receiving for the second time in four games with six catches for 73 yards.

Three minutes later, run ning back Tre Peterson ’24 tallied another six points with a two-yard run into the endzone.

Prior to Moore’s game-seal ing interception, Peterson was the story of the game, as the junior run ning back ran rampant through the Big Green defense all afternoon. The game marked the second straight Sat urday in which Peterson has gone over 100 yards, as he followed a 144-yard performance against Howard with a career best 173 yards on 28 carries.

The Bulldog running back’s per formance did not go unnoticed, as he won the New England Football Writ ers Association Gold Helmet Award as the outstanding performer of the week and was also named the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week.

Despite Yale’s strong 24–7 lead, Dartmouth attempted to come back in the fourth frame. Cadwallader scored off a seven-yard run, and kicker Ryan Bloch added an extra point to cut the deficit to 10.

With 1:44 left in the game, Cad wallader made a 23-yard pass to wide receiver Paxton Scott, bringing the Big Green within three points of an overtime game.

The tension on the Yale side line grew, as Dartmouth maintained possession in the final minute of the game. Facing the possibility of over time, the Bulldog defense worked to keep the Big Green at bay, holding Dartmouth to 20 total yards rushing over the course of the game — the Big Green’s lowest output in a decade.

Dartmouth took over the ball at their own 13-yard line follow ing a Yale punt with 41 seconds left in the game, leaving them an opportunity to drive the length

of the field for a tying field goal or game-winning touchdown.

Operating out of the shotgun, Cadwallader took the snap before fir ing a ball to the left sideline, looking for a quick throw and catch to start the drive. Moore, however, had other ideas, as he reached his right hand in front of the Dartmouth receiver, tip ping the ball into the air. Before it landed, he was able to secure it for an interception to seal the Bulldogs’ sec ond Ivy League win of the season.

“Just wanted to thank our coach for putting us in a lot of two-min ute situational drills during practice,” Moore said. “It wasn’t our first time doing that, and [we knew] that they were looking to go for the sidelines.”

In addition to his late-game heroics, Moore also led the team with nine tackles on the day and

was named the Ivy League Defen sive Player of the Week.

Other key players for the Blue and White were wide receiver David Pan telis ’25, who had eight catches for 67 yards, and defensive back Wande Owens ’23 who had seven tack les. Defensive linemen Tamatoa McDonough ’25 and Clay Patterson ’24 each added a sack.

“There are areas where we need to improve,” Gargiulo said. “[We’re] looking forward to our last out-of-conference game this week end against Bucknell.”

The Bulldogs will kickoff against Bucknell at noon next Saturday at the Class of 1954 Field at the Yale Bowl.

Contact AMELIA LOWER at amelia.lower@yale.edu and SPENCER KING at spencer.king@yale.edu

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS

Looking ahead, the Blue and White will host Columbia to continue their Ivy League play on Friday.

"We are not just healthy young things in blue and white uniforms who perform feats of strength for Yale in the nice spring weather; we are not just statistics on your win column. We're human and being treated as less than such,”

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS

The Bulldogs will begin their spring season in late January. Their schedules have yet to be released.

YALE ATHLETICS

The Bulldogs will kickoff against Bucknell at noon next Saturday at the Class of 1954 Field at the Yale Bowl.

ONE MORE NIGHT AT BROADWAY

WEEKEND

When it’s senior year of college, and I’m wondering

Sometimes,

I wish I were Broadway with rainwashed streets and bitter winters that never faze buildings standing so tall, a repertoire of motorcycles and quiet nights that startle, cheek to cheek, skin against skin always managing to draw life back to this place in the city where there’s never a shortage of visitors or feelings or people.

I love people I hope people love me too

When I sit hungover in Gheav sharing avocado chips with my girlfriends and earbuds with my boyfriend Old pop songs airing from older speakers I tell myself: I wish I were Broadway because these moments the color of pastels that I love so much I want to keep them, like I still keep the farmer’s market carnations he bought for me, now dry and brown on my nightstand I look at them as I try to sleep. And I can’t sleep. I’m scared of closing these eyes because I know that I’ll find myself alone when I open them.

People I used to hold around my chest leaving me for new cities that never sleep, surrounded by new names I’ll never know Forgetting me. Wait, hold on, What about me? What about me?

I wish I were Broadway My head craves aspirins, pangs with jealousy of these streets That get to keep their memories forever Deep in graveled soil, Protected by asphalt Layered and relayered underneath New Haven snow, I’m jealous of this place with buildings always standing so tall And never a shortage of visitors or people or life or feelings

When I’m rushing to class, and a hungry man stops me, Asks me to buy him a bacon, egg and cheese I tell myself: I wish I were Broadway Because Broadway would never turn someone down, Broadway is home, Broadway would never say no And yet I do, I say no when I know I should be saying yes I say no because I think

People are watching — why do I care about who is looking?

People are staring — are they really staring, though? I say no because my two feet are always on the move and I’m not used to stopping and helping, I only know how to walk, walk, and walk away And so I do,

Wishing I were Broadway as I lie that I have a class to return to, no change in my pockets I wish I were Broadway Buildings always standing tall Never a shortage of visitors, Always home, always here, never leaving I love people

How do I love people?

Do I love people?

Where all this time went, slipped past my fingers like water, pricked them like pins, nursed them like blankets

I’m trying to remember the happys, the sads, the dids and didn’ts,

The bright lights and the birthdays — 18, 19, 20, 21, 22

That kind girl in the dining hall who always waved hi

That boy from Russian class who I never said hi to again

It’s so hard to remember, because this place is home and I never needed to remember home

All I know is how to live in one,

But when I wake up tomorrow and see that the world will have moved on Just a bit Friends parted for di erent lives, leaving our past blowing away with the autumn leaves, pumpkin-spice weather

When I wake up in the morning and see graduation balloons, tied on fences — mostly blue and white but all the other colors, too I ask myself if home is still here Am I proud of myself?

Did I give more than I took?

Is this it? So this is it?

What now that I’m finally free?

It doesn’t feel free.

And finally, when I revisit this place on my tenth year reunion, seeing how much everyone has changed, fathers, mothers, toddlers holding burgers, editors at The New Yorker I can’t help but put my hands in my pockets awkwardly, nervously, like the first day of freshman year

I can’t help but look at these rainwashed streets, listening to deafening motorcycles, Catching the snow on my tongue, Running past the Willoughby’s down the street, where I see two boys drinking peppermint tea behind the glass windows.

They look familiar, and I wonder if He’s still there. If I’m still there.

If we’re still there, together. Will he recognize me?

He doesn’t. I keep walking, and I keep wishing I were Broadway buildings always standing tall Never a shortage of visitors or people or life or feelings. I want to stay here

Please let me stay, I need to Stay. Will you let me Stay? Will you Stay with me one more night?

Sometimes, I wish I were Broadway so much that I repeat it to myself.

“I wish I were Broadway” over and over again In and out of Urban Outfitters

From one frat party to another, friends on my shoulders and mine on theirs Up and down the streets so bright and cold And warm and dark and silent and loud Until I become, until I am I repeat it to myself until I am Broadway. I’m exhausted, but these words roll o my tongue, molding cement around my feet and grounding me in a permanence made of human soul I belong right here, History belongs to me I am history, and I’m not going anywhere.

I don’t need to know you to remember everything about us.

Contact HANNAH QU at hannah.qu@yale.edu and BRIAN ZHANG at brian.zhang@yale.edu .

//

HOROSCOPE

// BY MARSHALL ADAMS // CLARISSA TAN

Aries Feeling frustrated? Take it out on your suitemates! Now is the time to put yourself first. You were born to crush these midterms – and maybe the people around you in the process.

Taurus Skip that class. If you nap for long enough, the readings you have due tomorrow will simply cease to exist. It’s true – I read it in the stars.

Gemini You’re having a terrible week because I said so. I don’t trust you – you literally have two faces. Sorry, but not really sorry.

Cancer Midterms are well underway, meaning you’re probably going to spend the majority of this week trying not to cry. Spoiler alert: it won’t work. Cue the waterworks.

Leo We’ve gotten to the point in the semester where you’ve realized you’re just a small fish in the big pond. If that’s not the case, sorry to have broken the news to you! Your ego will cope.

Virgo You’re probably in the midst of a nervous breakdown. Embrace the mess. After all, you have absolutely no other choice! The only way out is through.

Libra It’s your season. You’re almost definitely thriving right now, and I kind of resent you for it. Enjoy your birthday dinner at Harvest while the rest of us go down in flames.

Scorpio

The imminent prospect of Halloween is the only thing keeping you going right now. Cling onto that hope and don’t let go. School might be kicking your ass, but you bet your goth makeup will put everyone to shame come Oct. 31.

Sagittarius Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Good job on tuning out the noise – your liver might not thank you, but your sanity’s staying intact! At least until your GPA comes in.

Capricorn It’s recruiting season for finance, but you already knew that. I have literally no other news for you. Do we even go to the same school?

Aquarius What’s going on with you? Where even are you right now? Call your mom. She misses you.

Pisces Now is not the time for introspection. Go people-watching on Cross Campus and be reminded of how ugly Handsome Dan is. I promise, it’ll make you feel better.

Contact MARSHALL ADAMS at marshall.adams@yale.edu .

ODE TO TOMATO-EGGS

// BY KAYLA YUP

My inner child often escapes. She knows I cannot ground her — college students are tethered to nothing but air. Removed from home, life shifts around us like a giant rubix cube. Instead, she teaches me to be grounded in sensations. To relish thick, gusty winds that envelop me like a weighted blanket. To trust a taste as simple as Commons’ tomato-eggs to bring me home.

Every Chinese person I know was shocked to see tomato-eggs o ered by Lotus. It’s an unexpected love story. If tomato-eggs is the classic ‘boy-next-door,’ then Lotus is the ‘it’ girl. Everyone wants her or wants to be her. She’s hot, popular, bold — her devotees wrap around Commons like a conga line. But for some reason, Lotus picked tomato-eggs and his simple, small town charm.

The marriage of scrambled eggs and tomatoes is foreign to the Western world. After all, Chinese restaurants rarely serve it. It feels like a secret. Tomato-eggs is the definition of comfort food, often the first dish a Chinese kid learns how to cook. Having grown up on cafeteria lunches, I’d learned to lower my expectations when ethnic food was on a school menu. But to everyone’s surprise, Lotus delivered a rendition that tasted authentic, that captured the classic sweet and sour tang. Either they had a real Chinese person behind the menu or there was a Chinese Ratatouille hiding under their chef hats.

As the nosy person I am, I arranged to interview six members of the Lotus team to find out how they unlocked this cultural gem. Spoiler alert, the tomato-eggs dish — now o the menu — tasted authentic because it was.

The current menus for Lotus were developed by Executive Chef David Kuzma and Cooks Helper Sherry (Xuewei) Chen. Kuzma was the one who actually pitched the dish. He had traveled to Beijing around nine years ago, where he

stumbled upon the combination of eggs and tomatoes. When he proposed the idea to Chen, who was of Chinese heritage, she brought it to life. Four years ago, Chen had started at Yale Hospitality as a dishwasher. When Lotus launched, she began to cook, striving to bring her own vision to the menu.

“Honestly, I didn’t think it was ever going to make it to the menu because it was such a comfort food,” Chen said. “The tomatoand-egg dish was actually the first dish I ever learned how to make … I was nine years old.”

The recipe for tomato-eggs is not something you get from a cookbook. It is simple, yet intimate — a tradition passed down. Francis Lam, a writer also of Chinese heritage, states in his New York Times piece that the tomato-eggs recipe would have to come to him through his people or not at all.

“Calling up my mother to ask her, I knew, would be like asking her to describe how to tie shoelaces: almost impossible to articulate, buried so deep in her muscle memory,” Lam writes.

Growing up in New Haven, Chen learned how to make the dish by watching her grandma. She would proceed to cook the dish whenever her grandma visited. Chen adapted the recipe for Lotus’ rendition, with the only modification being some added hoisin sauce. While this allowed the Lotus dish to capture the dish’s core flavors, naturally, it is impossible to match every Chinese individual’s way of cooking it. My mother’s tomato-eggs is usually juicier. Chen’s own sister likes to add a little bit of ketchup. Seeking to learn my mother’s rec-

ipe, I watched her make the dish, taking pictures and jotting down notes. She found it amusing. To her, the way she cooks tomato-eggs is nothing special. To me, it is a family secret: the way her pillowy eggs float perfectly in a tangy pool of tomato juices. A generational gift.

“For me the secret ingredient is ketchup,” Commons-goer Yuen Ning Chang ’25 said. “It brings out a sort of sweet and sour tang, and you don’t even need sugar.”

Admittedly, my family uses sugar. But I trust the origins: my grandmother was always the one called up when her village needed good catering. My mother learned by watching her, emphasizing the slight tartness of the tomatoes and balancing the

salt with a little bit of sugar. Now I’m her mirror. I like to think that her own inner child is at play, grounded in the inherited comfort written all over my face.

Chen and Lobsang Dolma, another cooks helper, described students regularly approaching them about the dish. I didn’t doubt it — I had already seen countless Chinese Yalies post the dish on their Instagram accounts, as if it were a beacon of Chinese culture.

“There are six of us sitting here talking about tomato-and-egg,”

Adam Millman, senior director of Yale Hospitality, said. “Something so simple, but that is so important because it means something to you. It’s something that you and your friends grew up with and it gives you that little sense of comfort. As homesickness sets in, having that comfort of remembering that you ate it with your family at home is reassuring.”

Amid the usual instability of life, Commons o ers consistency. Humans are creatures of habit. We like to be surprised, but not too surprised. We seek a constant flavor, something to ground us. Something to bring us back to a memory, to make college feel a little less lonely. It’s why I ate Lotus’ tomato-eggs multiple times a week.

As heartwarming as it was to see the dish brought to life at Yale, I must acknowledge that tomato-eggs is gone. O the menu. In the grave. But I’m not too worried.

Every time I return home during breaks, I see six juicy tomatoes on the counter and a fresh carton of eggs in the fridge. It’s a love language that sparks fluent dialogue between my mother and me. It welcomes me home. In a world that keeps on spinning, tomato-eggs manages to ground my wayward inner child, tethering her to generations’ worth of love.

CECILIA

TORI

WOMEN'S HOCKEY YALE FREEZES OUT

In their parents’ weekend exhibition against McGill, the Bulldogs got off to a dominant start to the season

seven months after reaching the Frozen Four.

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FIFTY YEARS OF VARSITY WOMEN

BY ANIKA SETH & BEN RAAB STAFF AND CONTRIBUTING

This weekend, former female student athletes will return to campus to celebrate 50 years of women’s varsity athletics at Yale.

Celebratory events are scheduled to run from Oct. 14-16, including a dinner at University President Peter Salovey’s house and presentations on both the history of women’s athletics at Yale and hopes for how women’s athletics across the nation will continue to evolve.

The weekend has been in the works for the past two-and-ahalf years, according to Maura Grogan ’78, who chairs the Yale Women’s Athletic Network.

“It's a complex three-day event with a lot of moving parts — three panel discussions, a sold-out gala dinner with a keynote discussion, a reception at Salovey's house, a Sterling Library archive presentation on the history of women's sports at Yale, field hockey and volleyball games, and much more,” wrote Grogan, who played for the inaugural women’s hockey team at Yale and later competed in the 1976 Olympics as a luger.

18 figures in women’s varsity athletics at the University will be featured across three panel events. This includes current and former athletes, coaches and athletic director Vicky Chun.

Chun is the first-ever woman to run Yale Athletics, as well as the first Asian American. She is also the first Asian American woman ever to serve as an NCAA Division I Director of Athletics. Formerly, she was the athletics director at Colgate University — her alma mater — where she also played volleyball as an undergraduate, eventually becoming head coach. Chun began her tenure with the Bulldogs on July 1, 2018.

“As Yale’s first woman to serve as the director of athletics, I am humbled and grateful to celebrate our past and current student-athletes,” Chun wrote to the News. “None of us would be here at Yale without our Pioneers and Trailblazers whom we are celebrating and honoring this historical weekend.”

For the women who will be in attendance, this event is about building relationships with other members of the Yale women’s athletics community, celebrating contributions and working to build both the skills and community necessary to continue pushing for better.

Chelsea Kung ’23, who is on the varsity women’s tennis team, said she wants this series of events to facilitate connections across generations of Yale’s female varsity athletes, providing mentorship and a support network to current and future female athletes at Yale.

“My biggest hope is that current female student-athletes at Yale see these accomplished women as mentors and people to look up to when their time on the Yale playing surface comes to a close,” Kung wrote to the News. “It’s something that has pushed me to be the woman I am today, and I only hope that this event is a catalyst for inspiring the next generation of successful women in the world.”

Grogan expressed similar sentiments, commenting that being an athlete helped her reach academic success while at Yale, but also provided “the underpinning” for the rest of her life, noting specifically the confidence that sports gave her.

As such, Grogan hopes that this weekend’s celebration will help empower women.

“Given the various inequities that remain for women in the US and globally, I'm hopeful that we can harness our smarts, energy and Yale's global reputation to achieve equity soon,” she wrote.

This weekend’s events also celebrate 50 years since the passage of Title IX in June of 1972.

Passed as part of the Education Amendments of 1972 and enacted by the 92nd U.S. Congress, Title IX prohibits sexbased discrimination in any school or education program that receives funding from the federal government.

Athletics, which are considered a part of an institution’s education program, are covered under this law.

While Title IX passed in 1972, conditions for female athletes were still not equal. Some women's teams continued to experi-

ence harassment and were provided with poorer facilities than their male peers.

In addition to facing harassment, the Yale women’s crew team lacked access to a proper locker room in freezing conditions and were given fewer boats than the men’s teams.

IN MARCH OF 1976, THE YALE WOMEN'S CREW TEAM MARCHED INTO THE OFFICE OF THEN-DIRECTOR OF WOMEN'S ATHLETICS AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION JONI BARNETT’S OFFICE AND STRIPPED IN PROTEST. ON THEIR BODIES WERE WRITTEN EITHER "TITLE IX" OR "IX."

In March of 1976, the Yale women's crew team marched into the office of then-Director of Women's Athletics and Physical Education Joni Barnett’s office and stripped in protest. On their bodies were written either "TITLE IX" or "IX," and captain Christine Ernst ’76 read aloud a statement demanding equal treatment.

“Our experience was like being under water, or in a mine — you want to get to the surface, or into the light — you know you have to, to live as the person you were born to be, but you don't know what you'll find when you get into the sun and air,” Ernst wrote in an email to the News. “There wasn't a map or a menu for what was next.”

Katrina Garry ’18, a varsity track alumna, discussed the significance of Title IX in women’s

varsity sports. Garry is now the Deputy Title IX Coordinator at the University of San Francisco and has been involved in planning this weekend’s programming since 2019.

Garry was part of a September event featuring four decades of Yale women reflecting on the impact of Title IX on women’s athletics. The panel, moderated by Regina Sullivan ’83, featured Garry, Lisa Brummel ’81 and Mónica Lebrón ’01. Brummel is the owner of the WNBA team Seattle Storm, and Lebrón is the Deputy Athletics Director at the University of Tennessee. Sullivan is the Deputy Athletics Director at Northeastern University.

“It was an opportunity for many of us to reflect that we are lucky to not know a world without Title IX,” Garry told the News. “Many of the pioneering Yalies who were on the first varsity field hockey team, swim team, ice-hockey team … had to fight to get opportunities in highschool or were on boys teams.”

University Title IX Coordinator Elizabeth Conklin touched on the “new opportunities” made available to Yale women over the past half-century.

Conklin is also Yale’s associate vice president for institutional equity, access, and belonging.

“Athletics are an integral part of our university’s programs and activities and we celebrate this 50th milestone anniversary for both women’s varsity athletics at Yale and also the passage of Title IX, which opened new opportunities and pathways for generations of students at Yale,” she wrote in an email to the News.

But even with great strides, Garry acknowledged that there is more work to be done.

“It is critical to reflect on how far we've come, but the conversation also highlighted the battles we still are fighting whether it is the prevention of abuse and sexual violence in sports, pay equity at the professional level, or inclusion for trans and non-binary athletes in athletics,” Garry told the News.

As of May 24, 18 states have enacted laws or issued statewide rules that bar or limit participation of transgender athletes in sports.

For Yuliia Zhukovets ’23, who is a current member of the squash team, a central part of

this weekend’s objective is to look toward the future.

Similar to Garry, Zhukovets hopes that attendees are able to reflect on the past, commending graduates of Yale women’s athletics for all their efforts, but also remind themselves that “there is so much more to accomplish.”

“I am hoping that current Yale Women Athletes will take this weekend as an inspiration to keep giving 100 percent and more to their sports and to advocate for themselves,” Zhukovets told the News. “At the same time, I think it would be incredibly rewarding for the returning Yale Women Athletes to see all the amazing things that have been achieved over the past 50 years and how influential their input was.”

Yale Athletics and YWAN formally announced the weekend’s events on Feb. 2 — which also marked the 36th annual celebration of National Girls and Women in Sports Day.

In the announcement, YWAN also promoted its own fundraising campaign, in conjunction with Yale’s broader ‘For Humanity’ fundraising efforts. Yale launched this $7 billion ‘For Humanity’ campaign last year, which is the University’s largest capital campaign to date.

YWAN noted its goal to raise $5 million for Women's Intercollegiate Sports Endowment and Resource, or WISER, which is “the first and only endowment” that supports all of Yale’s 18 varsity women’s programs, per the announcement.

The YWAN Committee, composed largely of alumni, guided much of the planning for this weekend’s programming. Grogan and Garry are both members, as is Zhukovets, who is a current student.

Over the past 50 years, Yale has gone from zero varsity women’s teams to 18. 27 of Yale’s female athletes also competed as Olympians. Grayson Lambert, Paloma Vigil and Hamera Shabbir contributed reporting.

Contact ANIKA SETH at anika.seth@yale.edu and BEN RAAB at ben.raab@yale.edu .

CREW

CAPTURE TOP SPOTS

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the Bulldogs

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COUERTSY

LIFTING UP LATINX IDENTITY

Norman

Rockwell once imagined the American family as the scene of a Thanksgiving supper—relatives frozen in conversation and eyeing the turkey. Inspired by Rockwell, I too imagined the American family. One that looks like mine and eats the same food that I do. At the dinner table, heritage and tradition are made tangible. They lie in the embroidery of an apron. They rest in the clay curves of earthenware dishes. They are celebrated in the o ering of a lime, the unfolding of a corn husk, and the tearing of hot tortillas. Food is the love we share and the stories we pass down. I, like Rockwell, o er you a family at dinnertime. A family just like any other, connected by invisible bonds and partaking in the recipes of the history that flow through them. Jessai Flores, Illustration Editor

Introducing the Latinx Heritage Month issue

Welcome to the News’ special issue celebrating Latinx Heritage Month! We are thrilled to showcase content centered on Latinx members of our community — including profiles, spoken word poetry, photography and illustrations.

We hope you enjoy these pieces and share them with your broader communities. The work reflected in this special issue has been produced by people both within and outside of the News, and we would like to o er a special note of thanks to guest contributors who submitted content specifically for this issue: Zenaida Aguirre Gutierrez ’24, Anna Chamberlin ’26, Michelle Foley ’25, Kassie Navarrete ’25 and Luana Prado Oliveira Souza ’26.

As editors of this special issue, we want to acknowledge that this is the first time in recent institutional memory that the Yale Daily News has produced and printed a full special issue for Latinx Heritage Month. There are three primary reasons for this — none of them adequate.

First, a historical lack of representation of Latinx people in the newsroom contributes to these perspectives often being left out of coverage. But it is not the burden of people of marginalized backgrounds to be the sole voices advocating for their communities — this coverage is long overdue, and it should happen whether or not Latinx individuals in our newsroom decide to do so themselves.

Second, our Board has historically turned over in the middle of September, right at the start of Latinx Heritage Month. The News has a history of pursuing initiatives related to diversity and inclusion if and when it is convenient for leadership. This is unacceptable, and we strive to make change.

And third, overall, the News has historically not had the infrastructure, vision or effort dedicated toward appropriately covering marginalized groups, with the attention and care they deserve. As members of the News stepping into new leadership roles, we apologize. The News commits to learning more, working harder and doing better to include more Latinx voices in our paper — both as part of our sta and in the content we produce.

We recognize that significant work still needs to be done toward appropriately uplifting Latinx and representing Latinx voices. This issue, still, is not fully representative, as many Latinx identities and backgrounds are not included. Our coverage of these communities is not, and will not be, restricted to this issue, and we intend to ensure that diverse communities are consistently part of our daily coverage.

Thank you to the members of the News — including reporters, desk editors, copy editors, production and design editors, audience editors, photographers, illustrators and management — who contributed their time and e orts to the creation of this issue.

And thank you to you, our audience, for your readership! We welcome any feedback — please feel free to contact us at our Yale emails, or to reach out to us individually at the email addresses below.

ANIKA SETH, PALOMA VIGIL, AND SOPHIE WANG are the editors for the Latinx Heritage Month Spissue and staff reporters and editors for the News.

¿Latinx, Latine, Hispanic — Que?

The terminology used to describe people of Latin American or Hispanic descent has become increasingly confusing for people in the Latinx community and others alike.

The term “Hispanic,” historically the most popular, refers to any descendant of Spanish-speaking communities in the Americas and Spain. According to an infographic by Sebastian Ramírez Feune for the Harvard Institute of Politics, the term “Hispanic” is a complicated one — serving as more of a linguistic label that includes most Latin American countries as well as the African country of Equatorial Guinea, another nation with colonial ties to Spain.

The term does not refer to all Latin people, only the Spanish-speaking ones, and has received backlash recently because of its ties to Spanish colonization. Many Latin people feel that the United States Census Bureau imposed the label Hispanic on all Latin immigrants, regardless of nation of origin or language spoken.

The term “Latino” encompasses all Latin people with roots in Latin America, which includes Portuguese-speaking Brazilians and Haitian-Creole-speaking Haitians, but not Spanish-speaking Spaniards.

But in recent years, the term “Latino,” too has faced criticism for being inherently male-gendered. “Latina,” its counterpart, only refers to those of the same background who identify as female.

One gender-neutral term to describe someone of Latin American descent is “Latinx.”About one-in-four U.S. Hispanics have heard of the term, and only 3 percent use it, according to a Pew Research study from 2020. Yet the Spanish language is naturally gendered and conflicts with gender-neutral terms aris-

ing from the usage of “Latinx.” The use of “x” to replace the “o” in “Latino” is seen with disdain by many in the community, as they feel it crosses a line — anglicizing an identity label to the point where, for many, it loses its meaning and cannot be pronounced within the Spanish language.

A solution that some use is “Latine” — another gender-neutral term that can be used in lieu of “Latinx” — as it aims to remove the gender binary found in the general Spanish language by using the neutral “e” to end the term instead of an “a” or “o,” while still preserving the linguistic norms of Spanish. This term then opens the door to gender-neutralizing all Spanish nouns by replacing the “a’s” and “o’s” with “e’s,” and it is easier to pronounce and acclimate into the Spanish language and grammar. Many still disagree with this proposition because of the old linguistic traditions of “o’s” and “a’s” that the Spanish language has upheld for hundreds of years, considering the appending of an “e” to be antithetical to the language.

The University and La Casa Cultural, which describes itself as Yale’s Latino Cultural Center, refer to this month of recognition as Latinx Heritage Month. For that reason, the News has decided to use the gender-neutral term “Latinx”. Though we choose to adhere to what the University and La Casa use in the present, the News wants to recognize that each of these terms has its own set of pros and cons and should not be used interchangeably.

PALOMA VIGIL is a sophomore in Pauli Murray College from Miami, Florida. She can be reached at paloma.vigil@yale.edu.

Tio Time: Latin Family Orientedness vs. American Individualism

Much fanfare was made about thEvery Mexican has a tio who they aren’t quite sure is their tio — biologically, at least. That is to say, if an adult around your parents’ age is around enough, they’re granted the tio title. I’ll be guilty of this, too. My friend Andrea jokes that to immerse my future children in Spanish, I can send them over to her for a month and lie that Tia Andrea doesn’t speak any English so it’ll be puro Español with her.

Mexican families are typically more extensive, and so is their role in daily life. Generally, family connectivity is celebrated more prominently in Latino cultures than American culture. Of course, no particular culture loves their families more than others — love is just shown di erently. Many Latinos fundamentally believe that individual action reflects one’s family values, so loyalty, tradition and honor are prioritized accordingly. Greater group orientation characterizes the family as a larger safety net against hardship.

It’s an imperfect system. Strict adherence to the family unit may entail that instances of abuse and dysfunction are swept under the rug. At my local community college’s sociology symposium, one presenting student explained that Latinas are less likely to transfer to a fouryear college after community college

partly due to cultural pressure to stay home. Increased family dependence may also enforce unbalanced power dynamics, enabling parents to dictate children’s career paths or enforce religious and gendered ideas into the minutia of their children’s lives. But familial culture doesn’t necessitate hypercontrol: there’s plenty of room for diverging perspectives. A personal standout is my mom’s conversation with a friend who’d pushed her daughter to turn down a master’s degree program scholarship abroad to stay closer to family.

“It’s Mexican culture,” she said, but my mom disagreed. She told me she almost saw her children as an extension of herself, so their successes and travels felt like hers, too.

Therein lies the distinction between family-oriented and helicopter parenting. Hovering over growing children carries a perception of weakness, so many American parents pridefully send their children “out of the nest” as soon as they can. To be a “helicopter parent” implies that you believe your child can’t handle the real world on their own. A more balanced perspective is that your child can absolutely tackle adulthood, but you’ll remain an important part of it.

Americans often romanticize the ’50s nuclear family model as the suburbanite ideal, but there’s merit

to an expanded family. One or two caretakers per family unit allow for fewer shock absorbers; with a smaller group of people to rely on, familial strife may affect us more acutely and leave us lonelier. One dysfunctional parent can more easily fracture a smaller family, but having grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins to turn to helps dilute the problem.

“It takes a village” isn’t just a saying: it’s evolutionary biology. Take the widely-explored grandmother hypothesis, which suggests that grandparents long outlive their reproductive years partially because their presence in their grandchildren’s lives increases the parents’ reproductive fitness and resource availability. We benefit from wider familial systems not only for our own upbringing, but also for that of our children.

Platonic touch is comparatively rare in cultures like the U.S. and U.K., so we may turn to family for touch instead. We should put our fingers on the dissonance that many patients of color feel when encouraged by culturally white American therapists to simply cut off unhealed family members, or told that self-love is enough to compensate for lacking close relationships.

Of course, we should welcome various definitions of family and

found family. In this way, we may stop turning to the hyper-individualistic, materialist default of American sociality for achievement, fulfillment and belonging in this world. The Latin practice of defining and redefining family combats isolation through resortion to some of the most natural systems we have. When we have a strong emotional core

to return to again and again, we can live in abundance and resilience, regardless of what life has to offer.

A land of tomorrows stuck in yesterdays

Latin America has a complicated relationship with democracy, filled with plot twists, unbelievable comebacks of dictatorships, and a lack of democratic political culture. Despite the chaotic reality, the region is generally regarded as the most promising democratizing region, a land of very hopeful tomorrows that unfortunately has not yet come. With a disturbing past, it seems that the region keeps repeating its history because it hasn’t learned from it.

According to The Economist’s Democracy Index 2021 - Economist Intelligence Unit 59% of Latin America lives in a flawed democracy and 30% in hybrid regimes. But only 1.3% live in what is considered a “full democracy”(Uruguay and Costa Rica). The most concerning factor here is that this is not an isolated reality — there is a cycle of instability that pervades the region and repeats itself frequently.

Until 1991, Latin America counted 253 Constitutions and 133 coups’ of State. Thus, instability is the norm. If you analyze 253 Constitutions, considering that Latin America has 33 countries, it is an average of 7.6 Constitutions per country, which shows a weakness in the respect of the institutions and legal uncertainty, besides the clear lack of judicial stability. The very unfortunate number of the 133 Coup of State also demonstrates how sadly Latin Americans are used to this reality of authoritarianism. Especially remembering the bloody dictatorships in the recent past is disheartening to observe how the cycle doesn’t seem to be over yet. This melancholic relationship to its past is seen in cultural expressions, raising the question of when this cycle will be over, as it is possible to see in Caetano Veloso’s song Podres Poderes, one of the greatest names of Brazil-

ian music: “Won’t we ever do nothing but to confirm // The incompetence of catholic America // Which will always need ridiculous tyrants? // Will, will, will, will // Will this stupid rhetoric of mine // Need to sound, need to be heard for a thousand years more?” (Translated version).

The low marks on political culture in 2021’s Democracy Index materialize the issue of instability in the past. The ranking gave the mark of 4.53, which is lower than the Global average (5.36) and 2020’s Latin American average (5.18). But how could you blame Latin Americans for not trusting democracy when they never quite experienced a stable form of government? The lack of political culture is extremely connected to the troubled past and the only form for it to change is by rethinking education about Democracy to its citizens.

It is worth noticing that most Latin American democracies emerged in the

transition from the colonial past to the beginning of their own history. However, I am afraid this new chapter just reproduced several forms of exploitation from when they were colonies to their own people.

Speaking in general terms, when the democratic transition occurred, they didn’t think about creating a system that would work for them; the general system of the United States Democracy was applied there, and so Latin American democracy didn’t start democratic at all. This 1982 quote from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” reflects on this topic: “Latin America neither wants nor has any reason, to be a pawn without a will of its own; nor is it merely wishful thinking that its quest for independence and originality should become a Western aspiration.”

Therefore, thinking about the future, I would go even further by

stating that Latin Americans need to have the chance to dictate their own story by rethinking and building their own democracy. A democracy that is thought for their own climate, their own people, and their own rules. In honor of all that already died in Latin American dictatorships, I optimistically still see hope in the future because of my unquestionable faith in the resilience of the people that always come back ready to fight for another day.

“So many times I was killed many times I died nonetheless, I’m still here coming back to life” (Como la Cigarra, Elena Walsh, translated version).

Guest columnist LUA PRADO is a freshman in Jonathan Edwards College from Aracaju, Brazil. She can be reached at luana.souza@yale.edu.

Guest columnist MICHELLE FOLEY is a sophomore in Benjamin Franklin College from Carmel Valley, California. She can be reached at michelle.foley@yale.edu.

MICHELLE FOLEY/CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

Seven Latinx athletes talk heritage and representation

BY PALOMA VIGIL STAFF REPORTER

From track to sailing to soccer, Latinx athletes are excelling.

Football player Joe Gonzales ’25, grew up playing sports in an area with very few Hispanics. Gonzales, a Washington native, is Mexican on his father’s side of the family and a defensive back on the football team. He told the News that he appreciates his team’s “broad spectrum of cultures and ethnicity.”

“I am proud to be a Hispanic athlete and to represent my heritage every time I strap up the helmet,” Gonzales said.

His Hispanic heritage, Gonzales said, has “strengthened” his relationship with athletics.

Gonzales’ favorite player of all time is NFL star Tony Gonzalez, who he respects both on and o the field.

“Seeing someone on a stage like that, in the NFL, with my last name was so awesome,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales is one of seven Latinx athletes who spoke to the News about their relationship to sports during Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15. Yale Athletics held a “Noche Latina” at Reese Stadium to celebrate its Latinx athletes.

Around 40 Yale student-athletes identify as Latinx out of over 1,000 student-athletes at Yale, according to Yale Athletics assistant director Sam Rubin.

Moving from the gridiron to the docks, California native Ximena Escobar ‘25 is one of a handful of Hispanic sailors competing for Yale.

The Mexican-American sailor recently aided the women’s sailing team to come in second in the FJ fleet and third in the 420 fleet at the Yale Invite hosted at the McNay Family Sailing Center on Sept. 17.

Escobar’s parents moved to San Diego when she was young and put her and her older brother into an aquatic summer camp that included sailing. As she watched her brother become one of the best sailors in her hometown, she was motivated “to take sailing seriously,” she said.

Now, Escobar has worked her way to the top and is on the 2022 NEISA Women’s Crew of the Year Watch List.

Her teammate, Carmen Cowles ’25, grew up speaking French and Spanish at home and has always considered Spain a “home away from home.”

The Hispanic female athlete has found that being multicultural has

helped her “connect” with competitors from other Hispanic or Spanish-speaking countries.

Carmen Berg ’26, also on the sailing team, feels “wonderful” that she is part of an extended Latinx community that shares the same values of hard work and collaborating as a whole in the same fashion that athletics does.

“As a student-athlete, we are training and competing as one; working for the victory and bringing all teammates up to the podium,” Berg told the News.

Berg is part Puerto Rican and commented on the strong role of women in her family. Berg explained that in her culture, “Gran Madre, Madre and Tia are strong role models and worked alongside [her] male role models in business and in the home.”

However, Yale Athletics has supported Latinx heritage events around campus to promote even more inclusion among its student-athletes.

Women’s volleyball first-year, Isabella Mendoza ’26, calls Miami, FL home. There, she felt that she was able to connect with various coaches and players because they all spoke Spanish and shared many of the same customs that she knows from her Ecuadorian parents.

Mendoza also mentioned the accompanying “culture shock” that comes with being Latinx on majority-white teams that do not share these same customs. But coming to Yale has also presented new opportunities.

“I have a unique story to tell people, whether it’s about how my parents came to the US or how I learned to speak English,” Mendoza said. “I am also able to listen to new stories and ideas that weren’t there back home.”

Dominican women’s soccer player, Giovanna Dionicio ’23, is a seasoned player who also played for the Dominican Republic National team while at Yale.

“Being able to play for my heritage and represent the Dominican Republic has helped me appreciate soccer in a different way and makes me more grateful to play the sport each time I go to compete with them,” Dionicio said.

Dionicio said that she loves being a Latinx athlete at Yale and has never felt “limited” as an athlete due to her heritage.

Christian Pereira ’25 is Mexican-Cuban and performs in the long jump special event for the Track and Field team. Soccer has

always been a big sport for Pereira culturally, and he would always heer on Team Mexico in international competitions. Although he chose to pursue track at a collegiate level, he will “always have a soft spot for soccer.”

Pereira said he has thought about quitting sports a couple of times in his life, but his dad encouraged him to stay.

“He thought it would be essential to my self-realization to overcome those challenges, and he was right,” Pereira said. “Must be the Cuban grindset.”

SAAC Executive Board members Chelsea Kung ’23, Ashley Au ’24, and Kaity Chandrika ’26 described the organization’s diversity goals in a joint statement.

“It is important that we continue to embrace and welcome the diversity amongst our student-athletes in order to continue making strides towards creating an inclusive and equitable community within Yale Athletics.”

Escobar, Cowles and Berg will look to defend their title as the top sailing team in the country this year.

Latinx professors at Yale break barriers in STEM

BY KAYLA YUP AND SOPHIE WANG STAFF REPORTER AND SCITECH EDITOR

Latinx educators are pushing the bounds of human knowledge while inspiring and guiding students through mentorship in a wide range of roles, from professor to head of college.

Assistant professor Martha Muñoz, and professors Enrique M. De La Cruz, Daniel Colón-Ramos are three professors whose identities have been foundational to their research, impacts and future goals. As they continue to conduct groundbreaking research and serve in leadership roles at Yale, they strive to increase diversity and inclusion in academia.

“[My background] contributes to how I view research and my roles as an academic and a scientist, and it certainly contributes to my dedication and commitment to science and teaching,” De La Cruz said. “I’m well aware that I am lucky to be here … I also recognize that I’m here because of others’ goodwill and … I understand that I am very privileged now, and I intend to use this privilege in a form of service to help others achieve their goals and experience things they may not even be able to imagine because they don’t know what it is.”

Martha Muñoz

Munoz is an assistant professor of ecology and environmental biology

Growing up in a tiny apartment in New York City, Muñoz rarely experienced the natural world. Yet her imagination ran wild during visits to museums, which she saw as magical places.

“It’s a real act of love for me, the way that collections and museums can stimulate wonder and curiosity in people and connect them to the natural world,” Muñoz said. “[And they] very much fuel the beating heart of science.”

Muñoz also serves as an Assistant Curator at the Yale Peabody Museum, but growing up, she hadn’t known that there were scientists in the museums, seeing scientists as an abstract concept — an “elite group of folks.”

At her middle school in Queens, she was one of the few Hispanic kids. According to her, it was a burdensome feat to even have access to good schools, especially for those new to the country and trying to escape poverty, as her parents’ generation had.

“My grandmother never got a break,” Muñoz said. “She went straight from working to the bone to raising both me and my

sister. If I had had the privilege I would have given her a much more peaceful retirement.”

In her first year at Boston University, Muñoz discovered “real science” as a work study student in a neurophysiology lab led by Ayako Yamaguchi. Muñoz learned of the struggles Yamaguchi experienced coming to the U.S. and drew parallels to her own Cuban American experience.

“She was just really energetic, surprisingly relatable, surprisingly human,” Muñoz said. “I thought scientists were these superhuman beings who couldn’t possibly be as human as the rest of us.”

Muñoz went on to earn a doctorate degree at Harvard University while working with collections in their Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Now, her research asks how the organisms themselves can influence evolution as it does not proceed evenly, Muñoz explained. Sometimes evolution can be rapid, sometimes there can be lineages with lots of species — and sometimes neither occurs.

“I knew in particular that I wanted to work in Latin America because I wanted to, in a sense, go home and connect to that part of myself by studying evolution and organisms that were found there,” Muñoz said.

Though now an award-winning biologist with a successful lab under her belt, she had to overcome self-doubt. Muñoz sees imposter syndrome as the natural doubt people experience amplified by societal pressures — such as a “societally induced toxicity” from not seeing anyone who looked like her in a certain space.

She said to disregard the societal pressures that amplify doubt, but also allow the voice of doubt to ground yourself, while still holding onto the voice of the dreamer who maps out somewhere greater to go.

“The way I see it, there’s nothing I’ve done or could do with my life that could ever match the sacrifice, commitment and e ort of my parents and my grandparents,” Muñoz said. “They were heroes, they went through real struggle.”

Enrique De La Cruz De La Cruz is a professor and chair of the department of molecular biophysics and biochemistry

De La Cruz’s passion for his field of study began when he was an undergraduate studying biology at Rutgers University.

After taking physical chemistry, he realized that he wanted to work in a chemistry lab and joined the

program called the Minority Biomedical Research Support Program, an NIH funded program that helped members of underrepresented groups get lab experience.

De La Cruz recalled having “very supportive” advisors and the “liberty of having a job,” which made it possible for him to transition from working in a biology laboratory to a chemical one.

Beginning as a graduate student, De La Cruz has strived to increase diversity in science and in education. As a graduate student, trainee and postdoctoral student, he “focused on teaching and [facilitating] workships.” He also mentored postdoctoral students, other graduate students and even elementary school students.

As a professor, he has continued with those same efforts and has formally mentored members of underrepresented groups in institutions beyond Yale. De La Cruz — who serves as the head of Branford College — noted that, on campus, he has the ability to provide individual attention by mentoring students one-on-one in the lab, classroom or residential college.

“I’ve tried to be active and done what I could along the way … it just seemed natural to care for people who didn’t have the same opportunities,” De La Cruz said. “My family is from Cuba, and I know … the di erence when you have the opportunity.”

Last month, De La Cruz and Colón-Ramos were named two of the one hundred most inspiring Hispanic/Latinx scientists in America.

De La Cruz described his approach to leadership as the same for all his roles, from department chair of molecular biophysics and biochemistry (MB&B) to

head of Branford college. He said that “first and foremost, … lose the ego.” In addition, he “strives to be the first among equals,” “lead by example” and to not ask other people to do what he isn’t able or willing to do himself.

“It’s very important that I do serve as an example for what a scientist looks like and where scientists could come from,” De La Cruz said.

De La Cruz noted that feeling “unprepared or unqualified” can be a challenge. He mentioned how many people might share this struggle and advises people to be just as fair to themselves as their loved ones would be.

Daniel Colón-Ramos, Colón-Ramos is the Dorys McConnell Duberg professor of neuroscience and cell biology.

To Colón-Ramos, science is for the people.

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, he derived inspiration from the tropical environment. As an undergraduate at Harvard, he traveled to Central America to work with Indigenous groups living in rainforests.

His senior thesis explored the use of medicinal plants by Indigenous groups near the watershed area of the Panama Canal. But Colón-Ramos was not satisfied by just knowing the identity of the “invisible [chemical] compounds” in the plants: he realized that his brain naturally wanted to know why the leaves caused the e ects described, getting closer to the root of the science.

He entered a graduate program at Duke University, where his experiences in Central America equipped him to maneuver the research setting and commu-

nicate his science. To Colón-Ramos, science is not a solitary process, it relates to “our shared human experience.”

At Yale, his lab uses the transparent model worm C. elegans to investigate neurons. His lab is able to visualize neurons “talking” to each other. Colón-Ramos is proud to contribute knowledge to better understand the nervous system and how it goes awry in disease.

A committed mentor, Colón-Ramos compared students to “high performing athletes” as they progressed from consuming knowledge to producing it. In his mind, for students to overcome hurdles, they have to find their pace.

Colón-Ramos has hosted science workshops across the world and collaborated with other scientists in Puerto Rico to spearhead mentoring programs. He helped lead a scientific coalition that advised Puerto Rico’s governor during the process of delivering massive vaccinations during the pandemic. Drawing on his knowledge of scientific findings, he advises policies that a ect the lives of millions, which he considers one of the most beautiful experiences he has ever had.

“I still get letters from people afterwards thanking me for making the information accessible, for being able to explain it,” Colón-Ramos said. “I would have never imagined that the skill sets that I had as a scientist would be valuable in that way.”

As of 2020, 4.9 percent of Yale College faculty were Hispanic or Latinx.

Contact KAYLA YUP at kayla.yup@yale.edu and SOPHIE WANG at sophie.wang@yale.edu

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

YALE

Martha Muñoz, Enrique M. De La Cruz and Daniel Colón Ramos spoke on their journeys and reflected on diversity in education

La Casa showcases Latinx talents POETRY SUBMISSIONS

BY DALIYA ALI EL ABANI CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

The Underground filled with students and families Saturday night gathering for a diverse set of performances from Latinx talents.

The sold-out LatinXcellence showcase, organized by La Casa Cultural Center as part of Hispanic Heritage Month, brought singers, bands, spoken word poets, comedians and artists to the Schwarzman Center, marking the event’s first in-person iteration since its establishment in 2019. Acts and exhibitions centered around Latinx life, with traditional salsa and bachata rhythms flowing through a space vividly decorated with student artwork.

“This is an artistic space where Latinas take up space outside of La Casa,” said Eileen Galvez, the director of La Casa Cultural Center and an assistant dean of Yale College.

This year’s event coincided with Family Weekend. The LatinXcellence Showcase was first held in the fall of 2019 at the Crescent Underground Theater. The initiative was brought forth by a student who found the Latinx community lacked a space to present their work beyond La Casa, Galvez said.

Galvez recalled that numerous students immediately jumped on board with the idea as performers. The venue that year was “packed” with audience members, as musical performances turned into impromptu dance halls.

“It was a lovely, warm and beautiful space where people were affirmed in who they are, in their cultures and in their identities,” Galvez said.

Over the COVID-19 pandemic, La Casa hosted the showcase virtually.

The showcase is an entirely student-driven project, Galvez emphasized. She added that her favorite part is giving students the opportunity to personalize it in ways that feel most natural and relevant without strict guidance.

Jaden González ’25, a student coordinator at La Casa, co-coordinated the showcase alongside Sebastián Eddowes Vargas DRA ’24, a graduate assistant at La Casa. They were in charge of finding artists, providing the platform and organizing the full event.

As the heart of campus, the Schwarzman Center was a deliberately chosen location, González said.

“La Casa is just off campus, so it is really important for Latinos to know that they are allowed to take up space at Yale where they can be seen,” González said.

González added that the goal was to recognize the Latinx life that already exists beyond the walls of La Casa while also creating new spaces on Yale’s campus for celebrating Latinx heritage. Regina Sung ’24, a photographer, visual artist and former photography editor for the News, emphasized this purpose in her array of photos on display at the event.

Sung held an open call for Latinx individuals interested in presenting their expressions of their own Latinidad. Traditional photography can sometimes be “artificial and performa-

tive,” Sung said, so this method showcased the “individualistic expression of identities” of Latinx people on Yale’s campus.

“This is a documentation of our present moment, of what the Yale student body looks like and is composed of,” Sung noted.

The showcase also acknowledged the current natural disasters that have impacted communities in the Caribbean. Mariana Vargas ’23, announced that Despierta Boricua, the Puerto Rican Student Organization, would be collecting donations during the showcase for hurricane relief efforts.

Over the course of the evening, the group raised around 400 dollars, adding to a total donation pool of 7,000 dollars. La Casa’s next event will collaborate with De Colores in celebration of intersectional queerness this Wednesday, Oct. 12, as Latinx Heritage Month nears its end.

Latinx Heritage Month, federally recognized in the United States as National Hispanic Heritage Month, occurs annually from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15.

Contact DALIYA ALI EL ABANI at daliya.alielabani@yale.edu .

ER&M class bakes for Hurricane Fiona relief

BY ELENA UNGER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

The Program on Ethnicity, Race, and Migration held a bake sale on Cross Campus on Sept. 30, raising $1,710 for relief e orts in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic following Hurricane Fiona.

The bake sale was organized by Ximena López Carrillo, a lecturer in the ER&M department and the students in her first year seminar, “Latinx Activism in the United States.” At the sale, students solicited donations and sold a host of traditional Latin American treats including vanilla and chocolate conchas, mantecadas, alfajores and Mexican ponche.

“The students have made all the decisions and mobilized others to help, I have only facilitated coordination and distribution of tasks,” López Carrillo wrote in an email to the News. “They deserve all the credit for this, and we should definitely keep an eye on them because they will do great things at Yale.”

Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico on Sept. 18, leaving more than 100,000 citizens devoid of shelter, food and electricity. As of Sept. 30, 44 percent of LUMA Energy customers — the island’s primary energy provider — remained without power, including major medical facilities.

Fiona reached the Dominican Republic one day later, on Sept. 19, causing significant damage to physical and technological infrastructure. Over 2,000 homes were destroyed and over 12,000 people were displaced as of Sept. 26.

“Many of our students and even faculty and staff come from the very communities who will benefit from this bake sale,” ER&M chair Ana Ramos-Zayas wrote in an email to the News.

“We have family in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and other communities in the path of the Hurricane. This is something close to who we are and what we do.”

When students introduced the idea of a bake sale to the depart-

ment, Ramos-Zayas told the News, she initially expected “some small gesture” but was “really proud” of what the students achieved.

Norma Mejía ’26, who helped run the bake sale, noted that the event was not only an opportunity for her and her peers to help others, but a chance to celebrate their own respective cultures.

“Most of us in the class are Hispanic so we enjoy all these traditional desserts,” Mejía said. “We collectively came together and pitched some of our favorite treats.”

According to the funds distribution report, 70 percent of the proceeds will be donated to Puerto Rico, which was more severely a ected by the hurricane.

The remaining 30 percent will be donated to relief e orts in the Dominican Republic.

Half of the donations going to Puerto Rico will go to Junta for Progressive Action, a Latinx nonprofi t based in New Haven that is working to resettle Puerto Ricans displaced by Hurricane Fiona.

The other half of proceeds will go to Techos Pa’Mi Gente, a Puerto Rican organization that works to construct weatherproof homes.

The 30 percent of total funds going to the Dominican Republic will be donated to Abrazos de Esperanza,

which is collecting sanitary items and food for a ected families.

The bake sale’s fi nancial success was accompanied by a strong sense of community among ER&M faculty and students.

“Everybody in the class, we all just came together,” said Michaell Santos Paulino ’26, who played a central role in organizing and running the bake sale. “The fact that a professor initiated the conversation and then invited the class to join in, I think that was really unique.”

López Carrillo expressed her gratitude for Ramos-Zayas’ support, saying it illustrated ER&M’s “philosophy of fostering scholarly work that also engages with social issues.”

Before organizing Friday’s bake sale, students in López Carillo’s Latinx Activism seminar have previously partnered with Junta for Progressive Action and Comunidades Unidas to improve local LatinX voter representation.

“In a sense, ERM is a product of solidarity. Solidarity and struggle are at its very core,” Ramos-Zayas wrote.

López Carillo was appointed as a lecturer in the ER&M Department in Spring 2022.

ELENA

During La Casa’s LatinXcellence showcase

Two members of ¡Oye! Spoken Word recited poems during. After the event, they submitted their work to the News.

Mamá’s Song

BY ZENAIDA AGUIRRE GUTIERREZ

In a pueblo

Sways a río

Grazing cows give it a song

As the water and dirt meet

Subtle splashes give tune

And from a towering stone

The conductor guides

The musical pulse

A metrical rhythm

Mamá your ensemble composed for only a few years

Adulthood interrupted your flow at 8

Before the song went something like Arroz con leche,

Me quiero casar

Then it was changed to Tamales a 7 pesos,

Morisqueta a 9 45 years ago The río lost its jingle

You visited it only on your long days

To prepare for miles of child labor

Paths of dirt

Where the only melody Cried from your heavy feet

Mamá your music was the closest you got to

Childhood No dressing up a doll

And giving her a name

No plucking Earth’s gifts

To make caldito de tierra, agua, y pasto

Your Papá said they are business

Nothing more

No sinking in a plastic pool

On a desert-like afternoon

Your Papá siad it is a day of business

Nothing more En la primaria

You suppressed the feelings you had for bright-eyed Mario

Your Mamá said boys lead to a panza

A panza that won’t let you scream and sell 45 years ago You

Reluctantly Dismounted the stone

Because your songs were sold to A life of toil

Struggle Strive Stress

Mamá you grew up too quick

In another life

At 8 years old Little Lupita would Race with the pueblo’s stray dogs Until her lungs Denied the sour air

She’d lay in The nearest patch of green

To let the southern sun burn Until she melted into A perfect bronze medal

The one she would deserve But never receive

At 14 years old Young Lupe would Plan a red quinceañera

Shop for the dress of her princess dreams And gold hoops that Drag her perky ears And heels as Tall as her pride

So high

Every step

Would be even more powerful than the last She’d sing corridos

About the drugs she’d never take And the men she’d never desire

She’d be smothered in kisses

From her papás

Telling her she’s a blessing And so much more Than business

Mamá today you are living your teenage dream

Your 16 Wishes

A 13 Going on 30 fantasy

Except more like 52 Going on 18

So I smile everytime you lift your phone

A few inches away from your face

To take a selfie

With a filter

That hides your manchas Your worry wrinkles

A reflection that makes you feel 17 Again

Through the screen you see The Lupe you desire to be A reflection of Microbladed brows

Soft skin Shining under eyes Sanity—

And perfectly carved metallic eyeliner That calls out my name Zenaida

Como te pones las pestañas postizas

Mamá I wish you

Saw the beauty and strength we all see

Your mamá didn’t read you bedtime stories Teach you the ruthlessness of racists Raging men

Or the repulsive truths of reality And yet

You made a life of your own By your own Planted your seeds in los estados

To watch them grow into Enchiladas made on a gas stove

Water running through the pipes of your home Gifts under the Christmas tree

Your Mamá’s smile on FaceTime

And four What you call Hijos de la chingada All inspired Motivated Moved Mothered by you

45 years ago

The pueblo stopped smiling The río stopped dancing Earth no longer chimed Mamá the world begs for you to compose again Necesitamos tu música

Para verte Bailar y cantar Aprender y gozar Amar y volar

ZENAIDA AGUIRRE GUTIERREZ is a junior in Branford College from Los Angeles, California. She can be reached at zenaida.aguirregutierrez@yale.edu .

Niña Mezclada

BY KASSIE NAVARRETE

ANNA CHAMBERLIN/CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

KASSIE

DALIYA