Yale Daily News -- Week of Oct. 28, 2022

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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2022 · VOL. CXLV, NO. 5 · yaledailynews.com · @yaledailynews

Salovey Supreme Court to hear oral arguments on affirmative action promises new theater facility

BY ANIKA SETH STAFF REPORTER

The Supreme Court of the United States will hear oral arguments for two lawsuits that could put a death knell to the consideration of race in admissions on Oct. 31.

The first hearing will begin at 10:00 a.m., when the courts will begin to hear oral argument in Students for Fair Admissions v. Uni-

versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A second case, SFFA v. Harvard University, will be heard later that day.

40 students from Yale will join student delegations from other universities — including Harvard University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, the two defendants — on the steps of the Supreme Court that morning to protest the attempts to repeal affirmative action.

“Regardless of what the Supreme Court decides, I think it's important for us to show the community and people that come after us that we were there, we were fighting,” Resty Fufunan ’24, one of the student organizers of these actions, said. “Students for Fair Admissions does not go unopposed. There are Asian Americans and, more broadly, people of color SEE SUPREME COURT PAGE 5

Grad students file for union vote Yale must respond

by November 7

BY YASH ROY STAFF REPORTER Local 33, Yale’s unrecognized union for graduate student workers, has officially triggered the federal process of unionization with the National Labor Relations Board. The long-awaited move marks the group’s largest step towards unionization since it was founded three decades ago.

More than 3,000 of the roughly 4,000 graduate student workers signed onto Local 33’s official petition, which is the largest number of graduate students who have ever supported unionization on campus — and far more than the 30 percent needed to authorize a unionization vote and the 50 percent to approve a union.

“An overwhelming majority of graduate students want to unionize now, and we have signed cards demonstrating this,” Local 33 coordinating committee member Arita Acharya GRD ’24 told the News. “It’s now on the University to listen to us and grant us the right to organize or not use tactics to delay our ability to vote for a union.”

More than 3,000 graduate student workers signed onto Local 33’s official petition / Gavin Guerrette, Photography Editor The University has two weeks to respond to the petition and begin negotiations on parameters for an election.

The movement towards unionization Organizers traveled to the National Labor Relations Board’s Hartford Office to submit union authorization cards signed by roughly three-quarters of

those it hopes to represent. The cards have been the focus of Local 33’s semester-long collection campaign.

Acharya also called on the University to declare itself neutral in the unionization process, echoing demands of more than a thousand protestors who SEE LOCAL 33 PAGE 4

Nick Fisk in control at the GPSS I

Students and faculty say move is long-overdue

BY WILLIAM PORAYOUW STAFF REPORTER Yale will soon build a new dramatic arts building, a development which some faculty and students in the University’s performing arts community see as long overdue.

According to University President Peter Salovey, the building will include two theaters: one for the David Geffen School of Drama and another for the Yale Repertory Theater. The space will also accommodate other groups, including undergraduate theater students and the Dramat.

“The arts at Yale inspire creativity across campus and help us all search for meaning in the profound diversity of human experience,” Salovey told the News. “That search enriches and changes lives.”

The firm KPMB Architects will begin the pre-design for the building, which will continue over a period of two years, Salovey wrote.

The University will commit to the construction phase once an undisclosed fundraising goal for the project is reached.

Previous proposals for dramatic arts buildings have been located at the corner of Sachem and Prospect Streets near Pauli Murray College. The new building, which is still in a design phase, does not yet have a proposed location.

Faculty and students in the arts expressed support for the project, with several noting that Yale’s existing infrastructure for performing arts has long been in dire need of change.

Valentina Simon ’25, a dancer for the Yale Undergraduate Ballet Company and the Yale Modern Dance Collective as well as a staff reporter for the News, expressed excitement at the prospect of a new dance space, adding that it would be “wonderful” for dance groups on campus to have a greater variety of resources.

She noted that there were “rehearsal space headaches” over the lack of space dance groups had, with some existSEE ARTS BUILDING PAGE 4

Furniture for five colleges delayed

t was the end of August, late afternoon, and Nick Fisk GRD ’23 stood in the middle of the Senate Chambers dressed in a wrestling singlet.

Read on Page 5. / Tigerlily Hopson, Contributing Photographer

BY SARAH COOK STAFF REPORTER Some common rooms in residential college suites come fully furnished with shelves, armchairs and couches.

Others come empty. Five of the fourteen residential colleges — Berkeley, Davenport, Grace Hopper, Jonathan Edwards and Pierson Colleges — do not provide students with common room furniture, which students living in those colleges say can pose a high financial burden.

“All of the costs and energy we have spent on furniture is ridiculous when you realize that this is an issue that not all colleges and students face, despite being charged the same room and board,” Davenport student Nyakera Ogora ’24 told the News.

Those five colleges are expected to receive common room furniture for their suites in the next two to three years, Head of Morse College Catherine Panter-Brick told the News. PanterBrick also serves as chair of the Council of the Heads of College.

SEE FURNITURE PAGE 4

CROSS CAMPUS

INSIDE THE NEWS

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1974.

Yale-led team develops shapeshifting turtle robot

Entryway J secedes from Pierson College to form a thirteenth residential college, dubbing themselves "Ellison College." A stolen "No Parking" sign serves as an icon for Ellisonites.

PAGE 7 SCITECH

PAGE 3 EDITORIAL PAGE 8 NEWS PAGE 13 BULLETIN PAGE 14 SPORTS PAGE B1 WKND

SPOOKY STORIES Students from Yale's cultural centers gathered Tuesday night to share ghost stories.

PAGE 11 NEWS EMERGENCY ROOMS Recent Yale studies analyze the effects of overcrowded emergency health facilities on patients.

PAGE 12 SCITECH

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

ARTS Behind Fazal Sheikh’s “Exposures”

BY KAYLA YUP STAFF REPORTER Through expansive aerial shots and intimate portrait photography, Fazal Sheikh’s work documents sacred places in solidarity with their inhabitants. Viewers are transported to desert terrains and exposed to Indigenous communities who have long been displaced and erased by environmental racism.

“Fazal Sheikh: Exposures” is a new exhibit at the Yale University Art Gallery that premiered Sept. 9 and will be on display until Jan. 8, 2023. Born in 1965 in New York City, artist Fazal Sheikh documents displaced communities through photography.

Viewing portraiture as an act of mutual engagement, Sheikh seeks to make meaningful, long-term commitments to communities through years-long projects.

During Sheikh’s Artist Talk on Oct. 6, he revealed that this exhibit was almost canceled due to “the heart” of the exhibit being missing: an offering from a Diné spiritual advisor. The lack of transparency regarding its removal has prompted concern over censorship by the Yale University Art Gallery.

But Sheikh chose to proceed — inviting the Yale community to engage with and learn from the exhibit’s two main photographic projects: “Erasure” and “Exposure.”

Displacement in desert environments Based in desert regions in Israel and the American Southwest, the exhibit explores the extensive consequences of environmental racism.

“Erasure” grapples with Israel’s displacement of the Palestinian Bedouins, and the destructive legacy of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. “Exposure” is set in the American Southwest and looks at extractive mining practices and their consequences on Indigenous communities.

According to Judy Ditner, Richard Benson Associate Curator of Photography and Digital Media and organizer of the exhibit, the title “Exposures” refers to Sheikh’s practice of exposing the political and social harms done to Indigenous communities.

“The projects are both set in desert environments that have historically been written off as wastelands,” Ditner said. “Thus their largely nomadic Indigenous inhabitants have also been historically erased from the narratives, [while] that land has been actively pursued for political and economic ends.”

Sheikh’s work contemplates the manner in which states conduct their operations in desert regions.

The exhibit emphasizes Native communities’ right to retain and protect their sacred spaces, exposing the vast scale of violence inflicted on their land in the quest for resources.

Erasure Sheikh worked on “Erasure” between 2010 and 2015. The project contains both landscape and portrait works documenting the Palestinian Bedouin, a nomadic Arab community who has been displaced from their native land, the Negev desert in Israel. Many currently live in unrecognized villages, which they continue fighting to defend and maintain despite repeated demolition by Israeli authorities. According to Sheikh, the Israeli state plans to move the Bedouin into several fixed, state-planned townships. This forced displacement, he said, runs counter to their culture.

These Indigenous people come from the perspective of “honoring the land,” and have had to be “agile and innovative” enough to carve out an existence in what is often a very “inhospitable, unforgiving terrain,” Sheikh said.

“You can think of the Bedouins of the Negev desert as being forced to grapple with the same kinds of dispossession … the [same] predatory property relations that Indigenous people in the United States deal with,” said Yechen Zhao, who assisted with the exhibition as the Marcia Brady Tucker Fellow in Photography.

Sheikh was inspired to explore the aerial perspective in his photography after hearing about an unrecognized Bedouin village called Al-Araqīb, located near the city of Be’er-Sheva.

At the time, the Israeli state had slated the village to be developed into the “Ambassador’s Forest,” a green belt designed to surround the city.

The artist visited an elder named Sheikh Sayach. Around 50 Bedouin shelters had just been destroyed by the Israeli government. The Bedouins were told that they could no longer remain on their historical lands,

COURTESY OF YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY

and would be forced to move to the nearby township.

The aerial perspective offers an opportunity to see the broader expanse of the Negev desert: military installations, waste sites, unrecognized villages razed to the ground, new settlements. Alongside the landscapes, the exhibit contains a long table with forensic evidence about Al-Araqīb and its repeated demolition.

Ditner noted that the project “Erasure” includes a “touching series” called “Independence/ Nakba,” which is a set of paired portraits of Arabs and Israelis — who were born the same year between 1948 and 2013 — that demonstrates the ongoing generational trauma on both sides. This work is currently on view in the gallery’s fourth floor mezzanine.

“It’s not just walking through, wall to wall, looking at a piece and then moving on,” Zhao said. “There’s a sense that you need to sit with this information and really digest it.”

Exposure The “Exposure” section of the exhibit includes a main gallery on the Fourth Floor which displays large aerial landscape views of extractive mining practices, alongside portraits of the land’s Indigenous people.

From 2017 to 2022, Sheikh investigated the history of natural-resource extraction in the American Southwest and its consequences on the local Indigenous communities. He found that commercial mining of fossil fuels had ravaged much of the land — particularly swaths used for extensive extraction of coal, oil, gas and uranium. Poor remediation of extraction sites had allowed hazardous waste and pollution to continue poisoning the land and its water sources.

Uranium was extracted from the region from 1942 to the mid1980s, with Native Americans often enlisted as miners. These people, largely Navajo, had not been apprised of the health hazards associated with working in close proximity to uranium.

Over the years, miners and their families began to grow sick. Uranium dust had invaded “the sanctuary of the home,” Sheikh said, transmitted via the clothes of miners, in a community with “exceptionally limited” access to water.

“Those communities know, from their history, not to pierce the skin of the land, that it’s possible to then unleash [dangerous] forces that may not be able to be harnessed,” Sheikh said. “And yet those communities were convinced to work in the mines because they thought they were helping their nation at a very pivotal moment in history.”

According to Zhao, Sheikh has set himself apart in the field of photography as someone who spends a lot of time with the communities that he’s working with, and really gets to know them.

In partnership with Utah Diné Bikéyah, a nonprofit coalition of Indigenous tribes including the Hopi, Navajo, Uintah Ouray Ute, Ute Mountain Ute and Zuni, he was invited to collaborate closely with the Indigenous people.

All of the work in the Southwest had to be conducted “slowly,” Sheikh said, in order to build trust within the communities and carefully research the full extent of environmental racism in the region.

“These are communities that across generations have had very

COURTESY OF YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY

conflicted relationships with the state and with people who have come to collaborate with them,” Sheikh said. “In the case of the Southwest, I only made portraits very late.”

The portraits familiarize viewers with the Indigenous people deeply impacted by extractive mining, including important Indigenous leaders, miners and their families. In these black and white portraits, the view of the sitter meets the gaze of the photographer.

Testimonies from each person accompany these intimate shots, describing how each has been impacted by the industry. These captions were all written by Fazal, based on interviews he conducted with subjects.

One portrait captures Lola Yellowman, a Diné widow of a uranium miner named John Guy. Her caption describes the Vanadium Corporation of America’s uranium mine, where many Navajo men worked, including her father. Mineshaft rocks were constantly exploding in mines, blasting mine dust onto the surrounding community.

Her father ended up dying early from respiratory illness, after years working in the mines. Yellowman’s husband also worked in the mines, and would come home with clothes caked in uranium dust. The companies never offered the workers protective equipment, and the dangers of exposure to uranium were never disclosed.

Sheikh’s aerial shots reveal the scale of the extractive industry. One image centers a huge uranium mine in Utah, called the Mexican Hat Uranium Mill Disposal Cell, containing 4.4 million tons of radioactive waste. Previously left uncovered, the site had to be completely capped after toxic dust leached into the environment, spreading radiation.

This 68-acre site lies adjacent to the village of Halchita, whose population is 98 percent Native American.

Ditner described the aerial view as bringing a different sense of the land than one would have when standing with “your feet on the ground.” The damage is visible and visceral.

“The landscapes of extraction are devastating and also beautiful,” Ditner said. “For example, ‘Silver Bell Mine, Arizona’ depicts a copper mine, with pools of water that are this beautiful aqua [color ] … it’s always fascinating how the images can both

be repellent and so captivating at the same time.”

A smaller gallery within the “Exposure” project, called “In Place,” documents the sacred lands of the Four Corners region.

It is about the beauty, preservation and importance of those lands, rather than the extraction sites that seek to encroach upon it.

Over the course of this work, Sheikh had grown close to Jonah Yellowman — a Navajo elder and spiritual advisor to Utah Diné Bikéyah. Yellowman helped protect the 1.35 million acres of sacred land depicted in this room through advocating for former U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2016 proclamation to protect the ancestral homeland of the Tribal Nations as Bears Ears National Monument.

When former President Donald Trump downsized the monument by 85 percent, opening the region up to mining operations, President Joe Biden was pushed by continued advocacy to restore protections to the sacred land.

Sixty-six photographs of Bears Ears National Monument wrap around the room, demonstrating the utmost purity and sacredness of this land. The atmosphere is meditative and meant to be a space of solace and contemplation.

But sometimes pictures alone are misleading or simply not enough. A long octagonal bench in the room houses a speaker system that plays an audio recording made by geologist Jeff Moore.

In Utah, Moore took seismological recordings of the landforms: Monument Valley archways in the Bears Ears region which vibrate and resonate with the movement of the Earth.

The sound rumbles, quiets and grows. If you sit on it, you can “feel the vibration of the Earth,” Ditner said. It is meant to be immersive, to give a real sense of the experience and power of the land, to make the heartbeat of the land audible.

When Sheikh visited this room a couple weeks ago, he walked in on a woman meditating, with her eyes closed and hands on the sound bench. This act was symbolic of all the healing and contemplation Sheikh and his collaborators — Moore and Yellowman — wanted this room to embody.

But Yellowman’s original contribution is missing.

Adjacent to the sound bench, a pedestal holds an octagonal case filled by nothing but air. At the room’s entrance, a sign displays “The Director’s Statement”: an explanation and apology for this absence. The case was meant to house a generous offering from Yellowman, but after last minute concerns over the ceremonial items it included, this case was left empty.

According to Ditner, the gallery had reached out to advisors at Yale, within Yale’s Native community and to local Native cultural and community representatives before deciding not to display the offering. The empty pedestal remains in the room to both acknowledge Yellowman’s contribution and indicate the difficult and ongoing conversations around the display of culturally sensitive items.

Questions linger over whether this removal was respectful or transparently decided. While Sheikh had considered closing his exhibit entirely due to the offering’s absence, he saw this as a learning opportunity for Yale: to start listening to Indigenous communities and set an example for other institutions as they attempt “to atone for historical trespass.”

Isabella Robbins GRD ’25, a Diné scholar who helped organize the exhibit, hopes that more space can be made for Indigenous perspectives that have been affected by resource extraction, displacement and environmental racism.

“I don’t just want people to read about our stories and think that’s enough,” Robbins said.

“They need to question their own complicity in settler colonialism, and environmental racism — this includes [acts against] those peoples mentioned in the exhibition, but also [against] other Indigenous groups.”

On Nov. 3, the YUAG is hosting an event titled “Gallery+ Reading Exposures,” which will feature Diné poet Kinsale Drake ’22 and Afro-Palestinian writer Samah Fadil.

Contact KAYLA YUP at kayla.yup@yale.edu

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

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OPINION SCOTT: Seize this opportunity “For Humanity” A rare constellation of tragedies throughout the world, all aimed at suppressing democratic aspirations and the intelligentsia that gives them voice, provides Yale, albeit tragically, with a unique chance to give real substance to its recent slogan: “For Humanity.”

Scholars and intellectuals at-risk trapped in many countries face arrest, imprisonment, torture and death for daring to speak, write, sing, paint and tweet in defense of an open society with democratic

THIS CRISIS FOR DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS AND MOVEMENTS PRESENTS YALE WITH AN OPPORTUNITY TO INSTITUTIONALIZE A COMMITMENT TO LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE AND EXPRESSION WORLDWIDE BY CREATING A HUB THAT WILL PROVIDE SAFETY, SUPPORT AND ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL RESOURCES TO INTELLECTUALS AT RISK. freedoms. Many have been murdered. Many have been imprisoned and many are in hiding or have fled the country to seek asylum. Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar, occupied Ukraine, Russia, Sudan, Iran, Egypt, Tibet, Xinjiang do not come close to exhausting the list of places where democratic expression is often met with lethal force.

This crisis for democratic institutions and movements presents Yale with an opportunity to institutionalize a commitment to liberty of conscience and expression worldwide by creating a hub that will provide safety, support and academic and professional resources to intellectuals at risk. A Center for Refugee Intellectuals and Democracy would create an international com-

munity of scholars united by similar aspirations. They would continue their work for an open society at home by research, writing, artistic production, film, documentation and policy work. In doing so, they would greatly enrich the intellectual life of undergraduate and graduate education while benefiting from the intellectual resources that a major research university can offer. As I and others envision it, the Center would welcome several prominent intellectuals at risk from two or three countries in turmoil who would collaborate in crafting democratic strategies, documenting human rights abuses and both promoting and embodying an inclusive democratic culture in their work. The Center would hopefully become widely known as a bastion of temporary asylum for democratic intellectuals.

A university-wide committee, first conceived by President Salovey last March, has been considering initiatives for scholars at risk. Now, eight months later, it appears that a report to Salovey is imminent. One hopes it will be expansive and bold rather than minimal and timid. There are historical reasons to be pessimistic. From the mid-19th century to the mid-20th,, for example, there were at least two major pulses of refugee intellectuals from Germany to the United States that helped shape higher education in America: the refugees from the 1848 revolutions and the intellectual refugees, Jews and nonJews, from Nazism. The former was instrumental in shaping mid-Western land grant universities as well as public culture — music, museums, libraries, parks, newspapers, etc. The latter pulse, of course, completely reshaped large parts of science and humanities curricula. Yale, to my knowledge, played little to no role in welcoming these intellectuals. In the case of Jews, it was just beginning to come to grips with its own history of institutionalized antisemitism. Nor, more recently, did Yale play a notable role in offering temporary intellectual sanctuary to scholars fleeing the military regimes in Chile, Brazil and Argentina.

In my 45 years of teaching at Yale, I have come to think of this institutional lack of agility in terms of the adage attributed to the New England farmer: “Never be the first one to try something new, nor the last.”

Here’s a historic opportunity to seize the initiative, and in doing so both enrich Yale immeasurably and make a signal contribution to the defense of democracy.

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Class registration is a part of Yale’s hidden curriculum, with its own fine prints and unspoken rules that could catch students unawares upon first glance. With the shopping period gone, the Editorial Board would like to urge Yale College to do more to preserve the principles of academic exploration and pursuit of curiosity that are bedrocks of a liberal arts education. We call upon Yale College to make the course registration process more transparent and accessible, especially for classes requiring applications and pre-registration. We also call on Yale College to extend the Add/Drop period by one week, so students may make more informed decisions about their schedule.

For many prospective students, shopping period served as a major point of appeal in choosing to apply to and attend Yale — a promise that the University would provide us with the greatest space possible to explore our interests, try new things and perhaps stumble upon new academic passions through happenstance.

However, the current registration process breaks this promise, leaving students severely hindered in their capacity to expand their academic horizons.

When the College made the shift to Add/Drop in spring 2021, Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun claimed that the new registration process would constitute a reframing of shopping period, not an elimination of it.

However, there is very little evidence that the spirit of shopping period has persisted through the change. As the system exists currently, there is only one week between the start of classes and the end of Add/Drop. This means some classes only meet one time, or perhaps even not at all, before Add/Drop ends. Further, Add/ Drop allows students to enroll in no more than 5.5 credits during the trial period without special permission from their Deans.

This means that students not only have far fewer opportunities to actually attend the classes that interest them, they also have far fewer opportunities to even sign up for classes. All of the above means that the courses most outside a student’s comfort zone will be the first to go.

Students are expected to register for courses half a semester in advance, with little to no information to base these decisions on.

Many classes do not have accurate listings for times and locations during course selection. Some classes are even being added to the registration site after course worksheets are due. This lack of information causes scheduling issues for students. Classes students had initially prioritized by adding to their early registration sheet may no longer fit into their schedule, putting them at risk of not being able to find

other classes in time since most classes are overfilled by the Add/ Drop period. The current system also restricts exploration through the convoluted structure of both a first-come, first-serve basis for certain courses while simultaneously allowing internal application structures for others.

The current registration system punishes students who do not have a concrete idea of what they want to study. With early applications for preference selection courses opening on Nov.1 and the registration worksheet opening on Nov. 14, the current registration timeline falls within Yale’s elongated “midterm season.” Many students have to scramble to research and apply to

WE COME TO YALE WITH A LOVE OF LEARNING, WHICH THE COURSE REGISTRATION SYSTEM SHOULD ENCOURAGE INSTEAD OF ABATE. courses on top of studying for their exams. This issue is compounded by the fact that for underclassmen, many of their decisions on which courses they are interested in are not made until after the conclusion of the semester and they gauge their overall interest in a particular course or topic.

The pervasive sentiment among underclassmen has been that the new early registration system — which opens course registration sequentially by class year — inhibits their ability to experience courses that could be pivotal in reorienting their academic interests.

Though underclassmen typically enroll in primarily larger survey-like courses, it is often the opportunity to engage with a few higher-level seminars that steer younger students towards one potential major over others, particularly in humanities and social science courses that carry less of an emphasis on sequence.

Consequently, first-years and sophomores are incentivized to declare majors on SIS in advance to gain an advantage in registering for classes affiliated with that major. Advanced seminars often give priority to those studying related majors, and even circulate private sign-up forms to their major email list before the normal registration period begins. Students could

even declare majors to get into particular classes, then undeclare and declare new majors to get into completely different classes each semester.

We understand that the new registration system has many benefits, especially for faculty.

Some professors prefer this to the old shopping period because it gauges how much genuine interest there is in a class, which is important for hiring Teaching Assistants and designing classroom activities. Since class attendance did not settle until the end of shopping period as well, professors would lose out on two weeks of instruction time. However, this early registration system may also put extra pressure on faculty by forcing them to craft syllabi and course admission policies at the same time as teaching their current courses.

While respecting concerns from faculty, we can still create a more transparent course registration process to keep more of the benefits of shopping period. Extending the Add/Drop period by one week, for example, would allow students to make more informed decisions about the courses they are taking, but would likely not result in large admission changes. Faculty will have more time to fully show what their course is like to students and more accurately gauge their demonstrated interest at the same time. Departments must also respond to requests to increase enrollment in popular limited-enrollment subjects, such as creative writing, visual art and history seminars. Additionally, there could be more standardized measures put into place to ensure that students of all backgrounds have the ability to explore Yale’s curriculum while enabling professors to maintain intensity and rigor in smaller courses.

The course registration process sets the tone for the upcoming semester: it’s a time where the intellectual curiosity of Yalies shine. Some students download syllabi of courses they find interesting, others take courses from many different departments, and almost all become more excited about their academic journey ahead.

We come to Yale with a love of learning, which the course registration system should encourage instead of abate. A more transparent and streamlined registration process will allow students to do what they do best: make informed choices to study what they want.

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JAMES C. SCOTT is the Sterling Professor of Political Science, Anthropology and Environmental Studies.

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LETTER 10.25 The “save our sidewalks” op-ed correctly notes that New Haven and the U.S. in general is not bicycle friendly. The solution could and should go beyond more and safer bike lanes. Better and preferably-electric public transportation would reduce the need for bikes. Vigorous enforcement of actually clear ordinances on the subject of bikes would help, as would increasing fines for violations.

Unfortunately, the New Haven ordinance on the subject of where bikes can be driven is not clear at all. It is so unclear that city officials and police often have no idea what the NH ordinance allows or prohibits.

For example, the NH ordinance prohibits riding bikes on sidewalks, but there is no exception for children under the age of 12. Such an exemption has been asserted to exist by the city parking director. Furthermore, the ordinance as written prohibits people from even wheeling their bike along a sidewalk. The

prohibition is not limited to riding the bike on the sidewalk. I doubt if this result was intended by the City Government, but nevertheless, that is what the ordinance says.

Contrary to Ms. Hopkinson’s article, there is no prohibition under NH law for riding a bike on the grass on the Green or elsewhere. Only motorized vehicles are expressly prohibited from doing that.

The City of New Haven’s online “informational” site concerning bikes and sidewalks makes absolutely no mention that bikes on sidewalks are illegal. All it says is that such behavior is impolite and dangerous. That omission is not only strange, but counterproductive.

The New Haven bike-riding ordinance does not apply to grassy areas or sidewalks that are on the Yale Campus because the campus is private property. Complaints about such activities must be addressed by the Yale Administration, not the City of New Haven.

Additionally, bike lanes in and of themselves are not a proper

solution because car doors are opened into them willy-nilly.

Driver awareness needs to be improved. Also, most bike lanes in New Haven that do exist are too narrow to provide any true security. In most of Europe, drivers must allow for 1.5 meters — 5 feet — of space between car and bike when passing. If the driver cannot, then the driver cannot lawfully pass the bike.

As Ms. Hopkinson points out, a major source of problems is the bikers, not just drivers. Most bike accidents of which I have been aware over my many decades on this planet are caused by careless biking as much as careless driving.

Inattentive pedestrians too are a major cause of accidents involving bikes.

In conclusion, at least one of your faithful readers would like to see vigorous fact checking of all op-eds, especially those written by staff members.

JAMES LUCE is’66 is an alumnus.

Contact him at jaume@sbcglobal.net .

PAGE B4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2022 · YALEDAILYNEWS.COM

WEEKEND COSTUMES

The Grinch That Stole Halloween

// BY ANABEL MOORE

In 7th grade, I boycotted Halloween. It wasn’t that I was too old for it, or that it was a somewhat ridiculous, hyper-consumerized holiday, monopolized by Mars Candy Inc. to boost the sugar industry’s stock. It wasn’t that I hated how it rained in Seattle, year after year, to the point where my dad’s oversized fleece hoodies were ubiquitous elements of my costume. I’d take my soaked trick-ortreating bag to my local orthodontist’s office, trading my spoils for a dollar per pound — a stunning economic opportunity that my peers all seemed oblivious to. No, my 12-yearold self turned her nose up at Halloween simply because I cared more about Christmas.

I’d have to be crafty in how I would go about this dramatic stand; I’d still need to participate in the holiday, of course – at 12, I knew my trick-or-treating days were painfully numbered – but in doing so take a pronounced stance against the Party City costume aisle and pumpkin shaped-Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I also didn’t want to be that one loser who showed up to school wearing regular clothes and saying that their costume was either themselves or a middle-school student. Even worse, I avoided wearing that T-shirt that read “This is my costume.” If any of you show up to Hallowoads in that god forsaken shirt, I will hurl Yale Kermit at you with the force of all the frustration I currently have at my chemistry Achieve homework.

Such an undertaking would need to begin in August. After months of carefully curating my Christmas Pinterest boards and a fortuitous trip to Costco, where light up deer already dotted clearance kayaks, I arrived at the perfect solution. I would dress up as the timeless motif of commercialized Christmas, the ideal holiday abode realized in royal icing and spicy shortbread. A lot would have to go right — some serious engineering would be involved — but I had faith. If I could pull it off, I’d have every piece of evidence required to show my entire town that it was time to do away with pumpkin-spice-everything.

I was going to be a gingerbread house.

Was I still contributing to holiday mass consumerism? Yes. But I’d have a roof over my head and sound insulation as I graced Seattle streets.

I’d also have gumdrop window boxes, functional candy-cane lights along my roofline, frosting shingles, and a pretzel door. Made out of foam, tinfoil, cardboard, dollar-store lights, pillow stuffing and a really big Home Depot moving box, of course.

I should insert here that at this point, I did have some experience with building food-adjacent costumes. Sure, I had gone as Princess Aurora in Kindergarten and a vampire-catwitch in first grade — notably bringing my dog along, in a squirrel costume … not sure who said yes to that. But towards the end of elementary school, I decided I would go as edible products only. In fifth grade, I went as a bag of Jelly Bel-

lies, my older brother’s favorite candy and oddly well-mimicked by water balloons and transparent trash bags. In sixth grade, I went with a friend as popcorn and soda, cutting arm holes in a trash can spray-painted red. My final Halloween hurrah would come in eighth grade, when I’d dress up as a box of orange TicTacs – horribly mistimed, considering the mint’s mention in Donald Trump’s then-leaked 2005 Access Hollywood tape.

Nonetheless, experience didn’t simplify the endeavor. My mom and I sourced “ingredients” from just about every hobby store in town — if we were going to do this, we were going to do it right — and spent just as much money on hot glue sticks as the rest of the materials combined. We salvaged old Amazon boxes from the recycling bin and jerry-rigged straps such that my head wouldn’t be in the attic. Every artistic decision was considered with utmost architectural precision. Thoroughly anti-Gehry and Saarinen, we adhered strictly to right and normal angles. There were at least three rolls of duct tape holding the interior framework of the house together. And just in case it did get hot, we carved a functional chimney into the roof. This was not going to be a Hansel and Gretal situation: I wanted to be the champion of the Food Network Holiday Baking Championship, Life Size Edition.

There were a few caveats to the costume. I couldn’t fit through any door. I also had zero access to my arms, and my knees whacked the

front of the box as I walked. But considering the original goal of my boycott, there was no better getup to prove to everyone that Oct. 31 could be used for far more enjoyable purposes.

Why seek sugar when you can be the sugar?

Why hand out chocolate when you can hand out candy canes — which leave a jolly aftertaste of Christmas morning instead of a November 1st food coma?

Today, I’m a little less bold with my pro-Christmas rhetoric — and also have infinitely less time to engineer costumes. I do take pride in originality — my “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss” trio should have won an Academy Award for costume design last year, given the standing ovation we received at every suite party we graced during Halloweek — but my passion for the Halloween-Christmas crossover has been replaced with *ahem* vehement frustration at the timing of my upcoming chemistry midterm.

Terrified as I am by people who like candy corn, I am even more terrified by those who state Halloween as their favorite holiday. This may make me the Grinch that Stole Halloween, but I’ll forever echo my mom’s battery-powered mantle Santa “the magic of Christmas lies in your heart.” If you prefer Halloween, what do you even get to say: boo?

Lame.

Contact ANABEL MOORE at anabel.moore@yale.edu .

Spirit Halloween’s post-October pursuits // BY PO EIC QUAH The coming of fall is heralded by some magnificent changes — the gracious changing of leaves, the ambrosial scent of pumpkin spice and the overnight takeover of that one abandoned Sears down the road by a Spirit Halloween.

Every October, Spirit Halloween resurrects shuttered strip malls and grocery stores across the country, transforming these spooky spaces into emporiums for the Halloween shoppers.

These stores vanish at the end of the month as mysteriously as they appear. Yet, have you ever wondered what happens to Spirit Halloween for the rest of the year? Here are some of my most convincing theories: 1. Business as usual in other universes I wholeheartedly believe in the multiverse theory. I also wholeheartedly believe that there are multiple parallel universes out there where they celebrate Halloween at other times of the year.

Somewhere in the vast expanse of spacetime, there is at least one universe where trick-or-treating in the unrelenting blizzards of winter is a time-honored American tradition. There are an infinite amount of universes out there, and that means infinite opportunities for Spirit Halloween to make profit. That’s probably why they leave so quickly — there are universes out there that they have to warp into.

2. Backing the the gay agenda Who would buy a skeleton hooded dress outside of Halloween? That’s right, Phoebe Bridgers and her sapphic fans. What happened to the faux leather lace-up boyshorts from last fall?

Sold out by the time Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball Tour started this past summer. Spirit Halloween has been working overtime to supply the closets of Lil Nas X’s backup dancers and concert-go-

// JESSAI FLORES

ing Charli XCX fans. They’re probably one of the biggest backers of the gay agenda — I’m surprised they haven’t made their work public yet. It’s like they want to be the gay version of Hobby Lobby or something.

3. Placed back into The Freezer As November inches closer, Michael Buble and Mariah Carey are carefully carried out of The Freezer to defrost in time for Christmas. The Queen of Christmas’s mighty whistle notes and five-octave range, in particular, take up tons of storage space. The

defrosting should be underway now, leaving enough space for Spirit Halloween, Starbucks’s Pumpkin Spice Lattes, UGG boots and other fall fan favorites.

4. Orchestrating the timely closure of businesses around the country Ever noticed how stores that have done well for years conveniently run their course by September? This is no coincidence.

I’m pretty sure Spirit Halloween spends the rest of the year executing mind control campaigns to get people to stop shopping at targeted stores from coast to coast. In fact, I’m convinced that the location scouts at Spirit Halloween plotted the retail apocalypse to free up space for their spooky seasonal stores and complete their ambitious takeover of suburban America’s most middle-of-the-road strip malls.

5. Staffing flights for Spirit Airlines Where do Spirit Halloween employees get transferred to after Halloween? To their sister company Spirit Airlines, duh!

I’m pretty sure the flight attendant on my flight to Key West last spring break picked out the sexy cowboy costume I wore for Halloween the year before.

There is no mystery greater than the mystery of Spirit Halloween. No one knows what this ghastly enterprise is up to before and after October. There is only one thing one knows for sure: No commercial space between 7,000 to 10,000 square feet is safe from the haunting specter of Spirit Halloween.

Contact PO EIC QUAH at poeic.quah@yale.edu .

Yaleoween: an Annual Tragicomedy

// BY MIRANDA WOLLEN

The time has come, folks. Be afraid: Halloween szn is upon us. Of course, for the obsessive and vain — me— all Hallow’s Eve began around mid-September, when I started scheduling the three polyester nightmares I will sport this week. People say Valentine’s Day is a capitalist farce, but I think the real scam is Halloween. DIY costumes are for people with ambition and handeye coordination, of which I am zero for two.

Ethical production was made for people with time on their hands, and even though I’ve been planning this fit since Labor Day, I’m buying it frantically on Oct. 27. Morality is a privilege I don’t have if I want this tutu by tomorrow.

Instead, I metamorphosize into a fast-fashion groupie to be rivaled only by those girls on TikTok touting 74 new SHEIN outfits a week. For all the haters who have ever laughed at the capitalist monstrosity that is my Amazon Prime-brand credit card: don’t come crawling to me when I get points back for the annual pair of fairy wings I have express-shipped only for them to come, bent and smelling weird, on Nov. 2.

Regardless, I will inevitably spend an inordinate amount of money on plastic crowns and rayon capes, neither of which are known for their ability to keep one toasty on a 40-degree New Haven fall night. By the time this article comes out, I will have already sacrificed my dignity, my savings and the feeling in my fingers and ears running around York Street as a sloppy facsimile of The Ellen Show’s Sophia Grace — who, by the way, is now a grown woman, 21 weeks pregnant. It’s creepy.

The funniest thing about Halloween to me is that this is the one week a year when everyone is allowed to LARP, and everyone I’ve ever known has taken advantage of the opportunity. If Yale has a furry club, I hope they know that the pickings will be plentiful this weekend: the whole — skanky — animal kingdom emerges from hibernation and heads to High Street. If I were them, I’d set up an info tent.

WKND Hot Take: Candy corn should be the only candy sold and distributed in October.

// JESSAI FLORES

But Miranda, you say, I’m promiscuous and pretentious! Also, my roommate claimed our shared cat ears and our one bustier that doesn’t smell like Costco vodka. Whatever am I to do?

Fear not, young Jedi. I’ve got three words for you: Slutty. Historical. Figure. I’m not talking Cleopatra or Trump — dig deeper.

Think harder. I was this close to being a miniskirted Medea this year. It’s a foolproof way to have all eyes on you and remind a captive audience that you got a 5 on your AP Euro Exam. If you’ve ever wished you could be the most condescending patron at Sig Nu — and who among us hasn’t! — this is your prime time, babe.

If you do STEM, maybe go as a sexy Fibonacci sequence, or like, a ribosome; I am not the gal to ask.

Finding your costume is boot camp — the real battle comes when Halloweekend begins. Forget your midterms, you’ve got to get plastered in the exact same manner you usually do — but with sparkles on your face this time. Forget “living in the moment” — that’s for plebeians. If you don’t add to the tsunami of near-identical Instagram posts that you’ll be progressively more annoyed to look at as the week goes on, you’ll be scarlet-lettered.

Nikola Tesla once said, “Anti-social behavior is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformists.” I’d like to see Tesla when the Be Real notification goes off on Oct. 29. Dick.

But I digress: “fun” is an illusion made up by Big Spirit Halloween. I literally cannot remember a single location I ended up at last Halloweekend, and I consider it a divine gift. All I know is that I ended up Yale ID-less, rain-soaked and crying. And this year, I’m gearing up to do it all over again.

Godspeed, soldiers. This is not a holiday for the faint of heart or the easily frostbitten. Lace up your bootstraps, and for the love of god, don’t eat any candy you find in the Luther backyard.

Contact MIRANDA WOLLEN at miranda.wollen@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com · @yaledailynews

FROM THE FRONT

PAGE 5

“I know what I look like - a weird, sad clown puppet. I'm fine with that.” RAINN WILSON AMERICAN ACTOR

SC to hear arguments challenging race-conscious affirmative action SUPREME COURT FROM PAGE 1 that value affirmative action, that value diversity on campus.”

Yale’s forty-person delegation includes students from all four of Yale’s primary organizing groups for students of color.

For Fufunan, the demonstration’s core goal is to promote awareness of the potential overturning of race-conscious admissions, which some universities practice to increase numbers of students from historically-underrepresented or marginalized backgrounds in an attempt to counter structural education barriers.

Fufunan also noted the importance of publicly opposing attacks to affirmative action — which, for him, is especially critical as an Asian American. SFFA has positioned itself as defending Asian Americans, who the organization claims have been harmed by affirmative action.

A final decision on the pair of cases is expected next spring.

Students for Fair Admissions, led by longtime anti-affirmative action legal activist Edward Blum, sued both Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill in Nov. of 2014, accusing them of unlawful bias in their admissions processes. In the lawsuit against UNC-Chapel Hill, SFFA claims that the consideration of race in college admissions processes violates the equal protection rights of white and Asian American students. In the Harvard case, the group argues that Asian American rights are infringed upon.

For Blum, cases like these are “a restoration” of American civil rights, according to an interview with the Washington Post.

“The founding principles were that your race and your ethnicity should not be used to help you or harm you in your life’s endeavors,” Blum told the Post.

This past January, the Supreme Court agreed to see both cases together. Over the summer, the court reversed this decision, separating the cases once again. Legal scholars previously predicted a 6–3 decision in SFFA’s favor, per a January article in the New Yorker. Scholars expect the prospective overturning of affirmative action to incur legal onslaughts on diversity programs in other areas of American life: educational measures, yes, but also hiring, housing and other sectors.

Fufunan noted that there are also elements of on-campus organizing in place, such as a campus-wide postering campaign and a teach-in, to generate more awareness about affirmative action — and the threats it is under — among students.

Efforts at Yale Fufunan said this is the first time since 2019 that these four groups have come together for such an undertaking.

“We have representatives from all four going together, being in solidarity with each other and protesting with each other,” Fufunan said. “And I think that part is very

important, that we're setting this precedent of intercultural solidarity and intercultural organizing.”

Noting that the four groups share similar goals and “have always been in conversation together,” Fufunan expressed his hope that other organizers after this cohort will continue to collaborate across cultural communities.

The effort will be funded through the Yale College Dean’s office and the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund.

Organizers will travel to D.C. on Saturday and stay overnight until the oral arguments on Monday.

Over the past week, organizers from AASA created and posted a fact sheet with the intention of increasing awareness of the threats affirmative action is facing.

Additionally, lawyers and other staffers from organizations like the LDF are participating in a virtual teach-in to offer a general overview of the present affirmative action situation and explain the significance of its precarious legal state.

The pair of Supreme Court cases implicate Harvard University and the University of North Carolina specifically for their admissions practices but have the potential to affect schools across the country.

Over the summer, both Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill filed amicus curiae — or friend of the court — briefs in opposition to SFFA’s stance. A total of 82 corporations and business groups, including 25 Harvard student

and alumni organizations, signed three amicus briefs.

Yale, along with 14 other schools — Brown University, The California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis — also signed on to support affirmative action.

“Diversity fosters a more robust spirit of free inquiry and encourages dialogue that sparks new insights,” the joint brief reads.

Yale’s advocacy — on the student and administrative level — reflects nationwide support for affirmative action and educational diversity.

Per a national poll conducted by The Leadership Conference Education Fund in September, 87 percent of respondents believe that all students benefit from college campuses that reflect the diversity of Americans. 54 percent believe it is important that the Supreme Court protects affirmative action.

Speaking of these results during the interorganizational press conference, president and CEO Maya Wiley said that defending affirmative action is paramount to protecting American democracy.

“One thing is clear – the future of our multiracial democracy is at stake,” Wiley said.

The role of Asian American organizers in the affirmative action debate For Fufunan, a co-moderator of the Asian American Student Alliance, advocates must dispel misconceptions about who affirmative action does and does not benefit — and specifically correct the false narrative that affirmative action is harmful to Asian Americans.

On Oct. 26, The Leadership Conference Education Fund, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Legal Defense Fund held a press conference to discuss imminent threats to affirmative action.

During the press conference, AAJC president and executive director John C. Yang expressed similar sentiments as Fufunan.

“The opposition does not speak for Asian Americans, and we reject these false narratives rooted in white supremacy to pit communities of color against one another,” Yang said. “The majority of Asian Americans have consistently supported affirmative action, which allows all students to share their whole story that is inclusive of their identities, histories, and lived experiences.

A decision from the Supreme Court on the fate of affirmative action is expected in the spring of 2023.

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

Nick Fisk becomes the first transgender non-binary GPSS president FISK FROM PAGE 1

BY TIGERLILY HOPSON STAFF REPORTER Their hands, scarred from years of not being able to feel, held onto a gold and silver championship belt. Sun dappled Fisk’s face, their expression stoic, poised in perfect grace. They shifted; a smile cracked. The archaic wooden room, heavy with dust and years of Yale history, faded as Fisk came into focus.

The president of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate at Yale, Fisk, who uses any pronouns, became the first openly-identifying transgender, non-binary person to take this office when they were elected this April. In their new role, they lead the representation of the largest coalition of students on campus. The GPSS is made up of representatives from all 14 of Yale’s graduate and professional schools, and acts as the liaison between these schools and University administration.

“For someone to be able to handle all the different complex issues that come up for graduate students and professional students, Nick is the best person to do that,” Patrice Collins GRD ’22, former GPSS president and current professor of criminology and criminal justice and cultures, societies and global studies at Northeastern University, told the News. “[Fisk’s] just a kind person and I know we need good people in leadership positions at Yale.”

In addition to being a Senate leader for three years previously, Fisk is a 5th year PhD candidate in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, a National Institute of Health funded scientist studying cancer resistance, a McDougal Fellow at the Poorvu Center, a Jonathan Edwards College graduate affiliate and a wrestling coach.

Now, GPSS president is another bullet on their already storied academic career. With all of these accomplishments, it is no wonder Fisk has an 11-page CV. But not long ago, Fisk was a scared kid trying to find themselves on the wrestling mat.

Starting in the Ring “It’s a sport about being in control of your body,” Fisk said of wrestling. They sat in their office on the top of Gryphon’s Pub and down the hall from the chambers, the dwindling cross breeze brushing past their long hair and the sun glinting off their glasses. “It was a thing I could do to make my body feel more like an ally than against me.”

They started wrestling in their high school in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Committed to taking part in a sport that would make them “cool,” they were thrust into a wave of rough-and-tumble kids who were not always kind.

Fisk was not a typical student athlete. When they were young, life at home was “fraught.” Their dad was in the military and was deployed often.

Fisk and their two siblings lived with their birth mother, who struggled with drug addiction.

For most of their childhood, Fisk was unable to speak or write. They were unable to feel their hands, their motor functions outside of their control. Parents told their kids to stay away from them as they lived in the shadow of their mother’s reputation.

Their teachers told them they would not graduate. They were timid and jumpy. But, they decided they wanted to wrestle.

It was in the wrestling ring that they came into themselves. At first, Fisk was terrible. They won one out of 31 matches that first year in New Mexico, and the one was because of a forfeit. But, they persisted, out of spite, if nothing else. And, after a move with their father to Idaho, Fisk found their footing in the ring. For the first time, Fisk developed a pride in their body, a “synergy … between body and self.”

When their father took Fisk out of their mother’s care when they were in 5th grade, he stood up for Fisk. To the world, Fisk was “not all there” — the public school system was ready to discard them as a “nonverbal kid who [couldn't] write.” But their dad insisted that his kid was smart, and soon, it became clear he was right.

“There's weird times in my life where I was both in the special ed and advanced classes, a very strange whiplash for me,” Fisk said. “They were like ‘go to this advanced math’ and then ‘go learn to tie your shoes,’ and that was not an atypical day for me for a long time.”

There was finally a sense of normalcy in Fisk’s life. They started dating a girl, had a house, a dad and a stepmom and no longer had to wait outside the school cafeteria for the doors to open so they could eat a meal.

Their parents worked hard to build an all-American family. And Fisk was so close to being an all-American kid.

“I think I might want to be a woman.”

It was a text sent one night in Idaho when Fisk was 14 or 15 years old. The thoughts swirling about their brain had finally started to become coherent. The friend, one of the closest ones they had made, was not unkind but responded with a “shock” that flushed Fisk with panic. It was a jolting reminder of “the social weight that those words implied.” They took back what they had said quickly, telling their friend they were gay.

In the back of their mind for the years that followed was a murmur which Fisk tried to suppress: “think about transitioning, think about transitioning, think about transitioning.” It was a possibility that would mean ending their facade of normalcy.

“But as it turns out, you can't just wish away that sort of feeling,” Fisk said.

Pinfall After navigating the college application process without much guidance, Fisk arrived at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the fall of 2011. There, Fisk was one of the “top dogs” of the wrestling team, according to the head coach at the time. By their senior year, they were a captain of the team.

After much deliberation, they decided to double major in bioinformatics and biotechnology. They had always liked science, although they were unsure what a scientist exactly did. The choice was a challenge, both because of the educational gaps coming from their “subpar public education” and because hand mobility remained a difficulty for Fisk. “[I had to do] very precise things with my hands, which was a real challenge to me. Pipetting took me a long time to get down,” Fisk said.

“But, ultimately I am glad I got through it, because again that idea of control and seeing some progress of what I was able to do with my body.”

In 2017, Fisk began as a student in Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in the lab of Dr. Jeffrey Townsend. Their experience, academically and in the lab, was incredibly positive. However, Fisk said their initial time at Yale was marred by their faculty landlord, who two years later, would be found to have sexually assaulted and harrased students in an independent investigation commissioned by the University. Fisk, who was unaware that they were part of a pattern and grateful for a place to live, survived the landlord’s sexual manipulation and misconduct for nearly a year and a half.

It was another survivor stepping forward that made Fisk decide to pack up and leave. They were functionally homeless for two weeks and in the coming months lapsed into a “profound” depression, unsure if they could stay at Yale at all. Then, they discovered the wrestling team, giving into the sweaty mats and pinfalls to find themselves again.

The team looked out for Fisk, and Fisk looked out for the team. Two of the wrestlers “saw that I was really disturbed, really not okay,” and took them under their wing. Fisk began coaching from the sidelines, and then took a more formal coaching position.

Wyatt Sluga ’23, who captained Yale’s wrestling team for the past two years, said that it took becoming captain to understand how much Fisk “had been doing for all of us.” Each day Sluga said Fisk would run over from doing research to teach practice, get-

ting there a minute or two early to clean all of the mats.

“I remember thinking wow they put so much time into the wrestling team, like how do they do anything else … but then I learned they do that with all of their activities,” Sluga said. “If I had to describe Nick in one word, it would be generous.”

It was important to Fisk to help others, and after their experience with the landlord they wanted to make a difference. The Title IX reports released each semester show that sexual assault is not uncommon on campus, but it seemed to Fisk that no one ever discussed the issue.

During Fisk’s second year of graduate school, they ran for Senate. At first, they thought they had signed up for the Graduate Student Assembly, the governing body for GSAS. Instead, they had unknowingly run for GPSS, which is made up of representatives from all the graduate and professional schools.

They were elected, and became involved in initiatives such as the Period Project, pushing for Yale to provide menstrual hygiene products for graduate and professional school students around campus.

For the two years after, they served as funding and publications chair and composed the “backbone” of the executive board, according to preceding president Collins. During the pandemic they worked closely with Collins, assisting with technology needs to get the Senate and student population through the shut down. They spearheaded a complete renovation of the website and led the development of a robust five year strategic plan, an about 50-page document collating the progress made by the Senate and their strategy and aims going forward. “[Fisk has] institutional knowledge [from] being on executive board for so long and working with me closely to make a difference, positive impact for student life at Yale,” Collins said.

She added that Fisk was “instrumental” in conversations with administration, and uplifting student voices and their concerns regarding “belonging at Yale.”

New Beginnings As Fisk regained their footing, they decided internally they needed to make a plan about making their time at Yale sustainable.

“What do I need to be happy?” they asked themselves. They decided they needed to be around “kind people,” they needed to do something that “helps people,” and one more thing: “I need to transition,” Fisk realized.

In October 2019, Fisk started hormone replacement therapy, or HRT. It was difficult to begin

because even though transitioning was something Fisk had thought about for most of their life, it meant “relinquishing control of [their] body,” something they had worked so hard to gain.

They came out to the wrestlers on their team, and were accepted with a warm embrace.

“It’s no secret now that I’m some flavor of trans.” Fisk said. “I struggle to say exactly what. The fact of the matter is, I have hormones inside of me, and I'm moving in a trajectory.

If I knew the final destination, I'm not afraid to say it or anything, but I just don't. Turns out gender is a hard, complicated thing.”

On May 30, 2022, Fisk took office as the president of the GPSS. They spent the summer setting up for the year ahead — including releasing a statement on and wrestling with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. As the school year began, Fisk considered actions the GPSS could take on this front, and carefully designed a “Reproductive Rights Healing Circle” program for graduate and professional school students, which will take place in November. The circles aim to facilitate discussion of how students can, in the context of the overturning, care for themselves, best teach and guide undergraduate students and mentees and effect larger change.

Influenced by their own experience with food insecurity, another of Fisk’s focuses has been working with administration in the hopes of establishing a food pantry for graduate and professional students.

In addition, Fisk has been working to develop partnerships with the Yale College Council and GSA. Senators for GPSS were recently seated, their first meeting last week, and as they settle into their new roles, they will push forward initiatives from last year such as the Period Project, as well as decide on new focuses for the year going forward.

After posing in the chambers in their wrestling singlet, Fisk opened the door of The Gryphon and stepped out into the late afternoon rays.

“Can you take a picture for me,” they asked, cheeks tinged slightly pink. “My partner always says I don’t have any pictures of myself.”

They stood under an arch, after changing into a flowy blue dress. Their blond hair rested across their shoulders. The skirt fluttered in the last breaths of the summer wind, their dress so blue between the stone gray. For a moment, everything was still.

Contact TIGERLILY HOPSON at tigerlily.hopson@yale.edu .

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

THROUGH THE LENS

Fall is iconically a period of interstice, both abstractly and physically. As the bloom of summer deadens to winter, fall functions as a transitional dematerialization and decolorization. This collection aspires to capture the beauty of intervening spaces, the presence of absence, and the loneliness of change. Metamorphosis is a solitary art.

Photos and words by Rachel Shin Audience Editor

Achromatization

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

SCITECH

PAGE 7

“‘I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.” STEVEN WRIGHT COMEDIAN NOT CLOWN

Yale-led team develops shape-shifting turtle robot

BY ALEX DONG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Yale researchers have developed an amphibious robot, complete with shape-shifting limbs that can outperform both legs on land and flippers in water.

From cleaning houses, to managing warehouses, to exploring extreme terrains, the expanding diversity of mobile robotic applications has increased the types of environments that robots must be equipped to face. In their paper published in the journal Nature, a team of Yale researchers developed a robotic turtle with morphing limbs that can travel effectively through disparate natural environments. This study was guided by principal investigator Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio, the John J. Lee Associate Professor of mechanical engineering and materials science.

“Animals can’t adapt their physiology radically to change the way they move in their environment,” Robert Baines GRD ’23, one of the paper’s co-first authors, and a doctoral researcher in mechanical engineering and materials science, told the News.

“What if we could have evolution on demand?”

Most animals and robots alike are specialized to specific environments — their locomotion is designed to be efficient in a particular niche, which comes at the expense of performance in others. For instance, swimming with giraffe legs would prove quite a challenge, while walking with dolphin flippers sounds equally improbable.

To design a robot that can thrive in both worlds, the researchers studied the natural movement mechanisms of terrestrial and aquatic turtles in their respective elements, then integrated them through a design philosophy dubbed “adaptive morphogenesis.”

Morphogenesis alone refers to the emergence of form, or how an animal takes its shape. In natural organisms, this process and the resulting shapes are largely fixed, at least in the window of individual lifetimes. Baines explained that adaptive morphogenesis can be thought of as evolution on demand — changing form in a

much shorter timeframe to adapt to the surrounding environment.

Considering the fixed anatomies of animals, using adaptive morphogenesis to change limb shapes and movement patterns would only be possible for an artificial robotic system.

“The main takeaway of the paper isn’t the specific robot embodiment, but rather the design philosophy,” Baines said.

From this design philosophy emerged the Yale researchers’ amphibious robotic turtle (ART), whose morphing limbs are capable of transforming between legs and flippers. Sree Patiballa — the paper’s other co-first author and a former Yale postdoctoral researcher — described the legs as semi-circular in shape with a blunt end, advantageous for bearing the robot turtle’s weight on land. In flipper mode, the limbs become longer and flatter, ideal for propulsion in water.

Designing and constructing ART’s shape-shifting limbs was no easy feat. While many parts like the shell and joints are 3D-printed, the limbs are fabricated with materials that can radically change stiffness by a factor of 450 times.

This variable stiffness allows for a change in limb shape when needed, but remains otherwise rigid and holds the desired shape.

Without the ability to change their stiffness, the limbs would either be too rigid to morph, or too flimsy for efficient propulsion in water and weight-bearing on land.

“The variable-stiffness material is thermally responsive and holds the [limb] shape, so we don’t have to keep on pumping the pressure,” Patiballa said.

“Once it cools down, we deflate the pressure, and the limb still retains that shape. Once you reheat it, it softens and goes back to the flipper shape.”

In addition to changing limb shapes, ART can also change its movement patterns, or “gaits,” depending on the environment, since the mechanisms of motion are different in water compared to on land. For instance, trying to walk while submerged or paddle on land would prove very difficult. The researchers created the robot for three distinct environ-

COURTESY OF ROBERT BAINES

A group of researchers led by Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio have developed an amphibious robotic turtle that can adapt to disparate environments. ments: land, water and the transition zone in between.

Using twelve motors in ART’s shoulder joints, three per limb, the researchers programmed four gaits specialized to these conditions: walking, crawling, flapping and paddling.

Baines described the robot’s walking as the “creep” gait, where ART keeps three legs on the ground at all times to remain statically stable. ART’s walking was tested over diverse terrestrial terrains, from predictable lab settings to outdoor environments such as a paved sidewalk or sandy, pebbly turf. The crawling gait, similar to a beaching sea turtle, is designed for the transition zones between land and water, where ART lies on its stomach and pulls itself forward.

Swimming was divided into two separate gaits — flapping and paddling, modeled after sea and freshwater turtles, respectively.

Flapping is more efficient for propulsion when ART is fully submerged, while paddling near the

surface yields better acceleration and heightened maneuverability. Changing the angle of the flippers, along with the robot’s buoyancy, can make the robot change its depth by diving or surfacing.

Ever since the first prototype was built in 2019, the researchers, each with their own unique skill sets, have been enhancing and optimizing the robot. Waterproofing the system to prevent damage to the motors, electronics and other internal components was one of the difficult challenges they faced early on. Patiballa described the successful control of ART’s buoyancy as another major milestone. The slightest modification in buoyancy could result in ART quickly sinking to the bottom of a pool or floating up to the top — finding a balance proved to be crucial for submerged swimming.

“Mechanical designers, experts in materials science and biologists who studied actual turtles and their gaits all came together to make this happen,” Luis Ramirez

GRD ’27, one of the study’s authors, said.

The researchers used a “costof-transport” metric — the ratio of power input to the productive power output — to evaluate the efficiency of the robot’s locomotion and compare it to a variety of animals and robots. Using this metric, researchers have found that ART can outperform even exclusively terrestrial or exclusively aquatic robots.

Most notable, however, is the design philosophy behind the robot’s first-of-its-kind morphing ability. The researchers’ pioneering use of adaptive morphogenesis lays the groundwork for the next generation of mobile robots, better equipped to face complex natural environments and their interfaces in the real world.

The study was featured on the cover of Nature on Oct. 12, 2022.

Contact ALEX DONG at alex.dong@yale.edu .

U.S. Labor Sec recognizes $10 mil YNHH registered apprentice program

BY YASH ROY STAFF REPORTER Federal officials, including U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, are looking to a Yale New Haven Health apprentice program as the blueprint for a potential $303 million federal grant initiative.

On Friday, Walsh and House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro attended a roundtable at YNHH to hear from students and educators in the first class of YNHH’s Registered Apprentice program. The one-year program enhances the skills of Certified Nursing Assistants like patient care technicians, or PCTs, and patient care associates, or PCAs. Funding for the program comes from a $10 million dollar grant provided to the Connecticut Department of Labor as part of a federal $130 million pilot grant program.

“Our program was the first in the state, and we’re excited about all of its success already,” Program Manager Christine Vanvliet told the News. “Amidst shortages in healthcare staff, skilling up PCTs and PCAs and keeping them in our system will help improve patient care.”

The federal grant program stems from a nationwide nursing shortage, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimating that an additional 200,000 nurses are necessary to fill the current gap. Vanvliet told the News that increasing training of PCTs and PCAs who work under nurses can also help fill the gap.

MARISA PERYER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

On Friday, YNHH hosted a roundtable with registered apprentices under a federal and state department of labor grant award to the health system.

YNHH won the four-year grant in August of 2021 and launched the program in February.

According to Vanvliet, the program is a 12-month long course with approximately 350 current students. Throughout the course, students attend a monthly fourhour seminar on various skills ranging from communications, team building and the usage of medical technology. As the course is an apprenticeship, the program is “earn and learn:” students are full-time YNHH employees receiving salary.

Students pick up a monthly shift with a registered nurse who mentors and provides guidance and teaching to students. Vanvliet said that mentors have helped students register for courses at Gateway Community College as well as provide career advice.

Vanvliet told the News that YNHH is currently working with schools across the state to recruit students for the program. The program aims to retain graduating students as future workers for YNHH upon graduation.

Students who complete the program will receive a certificate from

the Federal Labor Department that is transferable and can be used to get a job at another healthcare facility. Students who attended the panel spoke of the benefits they have already seen 10 months into the program.

“This apprenticeship program provided me with techniques to deal with time management and stress reduction,” student Jemisa Volkmay said at the event. “During this time, we use critical thinking to reflect on our issues and problem solve together using these organizational techniques … So I really appreciate this program.”

Another student, Stanley Baxter, emphasized the importance of representation within the program and in the healthcare industry overall. He spoke of a recent patient who told him that an increase in diversity in the nursing and certified nursing assistant staff of YNHH had made it easier for him to trust the care he received.

The federal grant won by YNHH is supposed to fill nursing gaps but is also specifically tailored to improving representation and providing training to marginalized communities.

According to Vanvliet, YNHH hopes to expand the program to 400 students in the next cycle and educate close to 1400 students during the four year grant period.

“The Yale New Haven Hospital’s program to train patient care technicians is a proven example of how public-private partnerships and strengthening our workforce development system are critical tools for rebuilding our health care workforce,” Walsh wrote to the News.

At the event, DeLauro spoke on the importance of the training program and told attendees that the federal grant that YNHH had received would be codified into the next federal appropriations and increased to a $303 million grant.

Walsh served as the Mayor of Boston before he became Labor Secretary.

Contact YASH ROY at yash.roy@yale.edu .

PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

“‘This guy’s a clown! He’s just all talk!’ I’ve heard that many times in my career. And then they’re sleeping in the middle of the octagon.” CONNOR MCGREGOR IRISH MIXED MARTIAL ARTIST

Renters navigate complex affordable housing system

BY HANNAH QU STAFF REPORTER Connecticut is experiencing a severe shortage of affordable rental homes for low-income households, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

As more New Haven tenants face rising rents and eviction, the Latinx non-profit Junta for Progressive Action held a free housing legal advice session last Saturday alongside other local and state housing nonprofits.

Aimed at helping the city’s Spanish-speaking population navigate the housing crisis, the town hall meeting brought together the Fair Rent Commission, New Haven Legal Aid Association, Central Connecticut chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and other union leaders to help tenants learn about eviction issues, fair rent, filing complaints against landlords and unionization.

Connecticut currently bans rent control throughout the state under CGA §7-148b, allowing all landlords to set rent and increase it. According to Connecticut Fair Housing Center, average rents in Connecticut are up 12 percent over the last 18 months, with increases of nearly 20 percent in some markets in just the last year.

“Many people were dealing with housing insecurity more than I’ve ever seen in my time here.” said Bruni Pizarro ENV ’19, Executive Director of Junta. “We tried to … bring folks together and so that they can, in theory, receive as many access points as possible. Maybe there’s multiple ways … of solving their housing issues.”

Fair Rent Commission Excessive rent increases became a central theme at the meeting. New property owners in the city are raising rents to “excessive” levels for tenants already living in the property for some time, according to the executive director of The City of New Haven Fair Rent Commission Wildaliz Bermudez.

A fair rent commission has the authority to receive and investigate rent complaints, issue subpoenas, hold hearings and order landlords to reduce rents for specific reasons.

“I always tell them that you can file a complaint with the Fair Rent Commission, and we will investigate your case,” Bermudez said. “And ultimately, the commissioners can rule on the case, to gauge whether or not it is excessive. If they determine that

it is excessive, your rent amount does not have to be the proposed amount that your new landlord is setting it up.

It can be what the Fair Rent Commission sets it up to.”

According to Bermudez, an investigation process is triggered when a tenant files a complaint, and the five commissioners making up the Commission will have an informal hearing between the tenant and the landlord to try and reach a negotiation. If the case is not resolved in the informal hearing, the commissioners will formally hold a hearing with the tenant and landlord. The commissioners’ decision will stand for up to one year.

If the tenant or the landlord does not accept the Commission’s decision, they can appeal to a court.

In regards to tenants’ complaints about increasing rent, the Commission can set rent to a lower amount if they find it excessive.

The Commision can also eliminate the rent in the most egregious cases, such as the landlord refusing to repair the tenant’s house, making the unit unsafe.

Bermudez said that, on average, the Commission takes three to four months to investigate a case. During this time the tenant must pay the amount that they last agreed upon, meaning that if the tenant files a complaint against the increasing rent, they will pay the amount they last agreed upon instead of the new proposed rent by the landlord.

Bermudez said she is observing a housing crisis, where homes are both becoming unaffordable and inaccessible. There are two staffers, including herself, to investigate tenants’ complaints. Bermudez added that she hopes the upcoming budget process will result in one additional staffer, administrative assistant and four more commissioners.

“Our cases have doubled,” Bermudez said. “We receive new cases every day, including on weekends.”

Unionization The co-founders of Seramonte Tenants Union, Paul Xavier Boudreau and Greta Blau, attended the town hall meeting and encouraged tenants to unionize.

Boudreau told the News that tenants who file complaints to their landlord often face retaliation, such as being evicted or their cars being towed by the landlord. Boudreau said the union will show up to protest, so that the landlords know they are “not just talking to one person [but] talking to all of us. Every tenant is all of us.”

In September, the New Haven Board of Alders voted unanimously on an ordinance to recognize tenant unions. The Commission is now able to register tenants who wish to form a union as an official union.

“Unionizing helps the tenants,” Blau said. “It allows for the tenant who’s part of a union to feel like they’re not in this by themselves.

They’re in this collectively.”

According to Blau, if a union is registered with the Commission, the tenant can have a representative from the union represent them at the hearing.

In addition, Blau said that unionizing helps the Commission because the collective complaints submitted by a union provide the Commission with a pattern of repeated conflicts within a particular building or within all the complexes owned by a landlord.

In order for tenants to collectively register as a union, they must have the same landlord and live in the same building or parcels of joint land owned by the same landlord, according to Blau.

Boudreau and Blau said that their union started with three people at the beginning of the year. By recruitment efforts such as going door to door, they now have over 250 people.

According to Blau, the union had “a really big win” at the Fair Rent Commission in Hamden on Oct. 19 where they went to represent three tenants whose rents were raised. Blau said that the Commission ruled that these three tenants’ rent will not increase until next year.

“There’s power in numbers, this is the only way for us to be able to do this together,” Blau said. “The way to fight back is to gather up the people who live with you in your building, or in your neighborhood.”

Right to counsel and legal aid Attorneys from New Haven Legal Aid Association (NHLAA) provided free legal counseling for 15 minutes for each household on Saturday.

According to Eviction Help CT, only 7 percent of tenants in Connecticut have a lawyer representing them in eviction proceedings.

In June 2021, Governor Ned Lamont signed off the Right to Counsel Program so that tenants who are income-eligible are able to have a lawyer represent them pro-bono if they are facing eviction or loss of their housing subsidy.

Amy Eppler-Epstein LAW ’86, one of the attending attorneys, told

the News that the law now requires that the notice to quit, the first document served to tenants in the eviction process, must include a flier informing tenants that they have the right to have a free lawyer to represent them in the eviction case. The flier will provide a phone number for the tenants to call to apply for a free lawyer. Eppler-Epstein said that with the implementation of this requirement, more tenants have come to NHLAA for help.

NHLAA prioritizes tenants from the zip code area that has the highest number of eviction cases, including 06511, 06513 and 06519.

Eppler-Epstein identified non-payment of rent as the main cause of eviction. She explained that many tenants grow frustrated with landlords when they do not make the requested repair and thus withhold rent, which makes them “end up on the defense in an eviction case.”

“We want to … make sure people know that if they’re having problems getting repairs made … holding their rent is the worst thing to do because then you can face an eviction.” Eppler-Epstein said. “There are other options, such as filing a payment, and a court case, a Fair Rent Commission complaint that can give them the opportunity to try to force their landlord to make the repairs and maybe even refund some of their rent to them without putting them at risk of being evicted.”

According to Eppler-Epstein, another common reason for eviction is that landlords do not want to renew the expiring leases but instead increase rents with a new lease.

Eppler-Epstein said that in Connecticut, when eviction is brought in within the six months of a tenant having made good faith complaints about conditions that need to be fixed, there’s a presumption that the eviction is being brought in landlord’s retaliation.

Eppler-Epstein suggested that tenants should try to keep good records and make a paper record of everything, such as their rent payment and complaints.

Rent assistance Pizarro told the News that the pandemic exacerbated housing instability and eviction problems for the Latinx community. Since April 2020, Junta has raised $150,000 for rent assistance and supported hundreds of families and individuals.

In response to a growing eviction crisis, in the summer

of 2020, Junta created the Pay Rent Fund, prioritizing undocumented communities without access to state relief and having multiple months of accumulated back rent. In winter of 2020, Junta started Pay Utilities Fund, which supports families with their electric and gas bills to ensure that they stay warm in the colder months.

Earlier in October, the city launched the Security Deposit Program that will provide a onetime rental security deposit of $5,000 for up to two months to eligible individuals and families.

What’s the next step?

Annie Harper GRD ’10, Associate Research Scientist in Psychiatry at the School of Medicine applauded the enactment of Right to Counsel. Moving forward, she suggested that the state should consider implementing good cause evictions and eviction sealing.

“It’s on their record that they have an eviction, and then future landlords don’t want to deal with them because they’ve been evicted in the past and they think it might happen again,” said Harper. “So it’s important to have that information be confidential, because what happens is that people get evicted and then they can never really find housing again, or they have to pay a huge security deposit they can’t afford.”

Harper acknowledged that landlords prefer not to rent to tenants who might not be able to pay rent. However, she argued that denying housing based on a past eviction or increasing security deposit makes it even harder for tenants to afford housing.

On the other hand, if landlords increase rent for tenants with past evictions, it is even harder for those tenants to pay rent.

Harper also questioned if we are “really happy to live in a society where if people can’t afford to pay their rent, they live on the streets.”

“We need to be thinking about a housing system that actually works,” Harper said. “Because at the moment, it doesn’t work for tenants and It doesn’t work for landlords.”

According to the 2022 Connecticut Housing Profile, 30 percent of renter households are extremely low income.

Contact HANNAH QU at hannah.qu@yale.edu .

Asian lifestyle store Üni-Home Life opens on Chapel

BY JOSHUA ZHANG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Üni-Home Life officially opened its doors on Oct. 1, bringing its many colorful products to New Haven.

The Asian lifestyle store and gift shop is located on Chapel Street, right across from Vanderbilt Hall on Old Campus — a location within walking distance from many Yalies’ residences.

New Haven residents Christine Lim and Szeki Lam own and operate the new store together.

“It’s like a gift shop, we have all kinds of gifts: [things] you might need to decorate your home or your apartment, [like] stationery, stuffed animals,” Lim said. “We try to bring something cute, something fresh, something unique to the community, because I’ve lived in New Haven for about four years and I love this city.”

The store offers a wide array of products, ranging from phone cases and keyboards to towels with animal designs. Üni-Home Life does not currently have a website, but they operate an Instagram page under the handle @unilife_yale.

On their Instagram feed, viewers can see a variety of the products they sell in their store.

Both Lim and Lam are originally from China, where they said they often saw stores with a similar aesthetic to Üni-Home Life’s. For them, the opening of this store is a dream come true, as they are finally able to bring this experience to New Haven. “[Üni-Home Life] brings back my childhood, my teenhood, so it’s kind of a dream,” Lim explained.

“We had this idea about a year ago, so we prepared this store for a whole year and now finally it’s open.”

As a resident of New Haven, Lim said she has grown acquainted with the retail and restaurant businesses in the area. She said that while New Haven has many great restaurants, it is lacking in the retail and shopping scene. For Lim, the opening of Üni-Home Life is a solution to this problem.

“I have always liked this kind of cute stuff, so I was having trouble finding these products I like in New Haven or Connecticut,” Lim said. “I figured that maybe there are many people like me.”

Those who walk by the storefront of Üni-Home Life will notice stuffed animal decorations in the window display.

The inside of the store is lined with rows of colorful products, maintaining the cute, playful aesthetic that Lim described.

Chun-Yuan Chang, a recent customer of Üni-Home Life, told the News that she had stumbled upon the new store while visiting New Haven from New Jersey.

“We first saw the stuffed pumpkin, which is really cute, and I saw lots of cute Korean and Japanese dolls,” Chang said.

“That’s why we came in.”

Chang owns other similar products from online brands, but she said she does not personally know of any stores like Üni-Home Life in the area where she lives.

Porter Guite and Maya Quintmam, who are both residents of Hamden, first found out about the new store when they came to Chapel Street for the New Haven Night Market.

“We went to the night market here on Chapel Street and [the store] had just opened,” Quint-

JOSHUA ZHANG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The gift shop was opened by two New Haven residents and sells stationery, stuffed animals and home decor. man said. “There was this big goose [plushie] so we wanted to go in and it was like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ [because] we didn’t see this store before.”

Guite added that she “really liked the little plushies they have and the stationery,” and said that the store was the “perfect spot” for finding cute products to buy.

Gloria Kim ’26 told the News that the unique styles of ÜniHome Life are both adorable and affordable.

“I think it’s very cute and minimalistic, also the prices are very affordable so I love going there,” Kim said, “I think there should be more Asian stores in New Haven. … It connects back to home.”

For some students like Kim, who comes from an Asian background, the lack of Asian businesses in New Haven can be an adjustment when arriving at Yale. However, she said the opening of Üni-Home Life provides another outlet for Asian students to feel more at home.

“At my home, we have a lot of Korean stores at Koreatown, H Mart,” Kim said. “We have stationery and all these things, … but in New Haven, there’s just not much Asian culture. I think Üni Life reminds me of … all the things I could buy back at home. … Overall, I think [Üni-Home Life] is a very good addition to New Haven.” Üni-Home Life is located at 1046 Chapel Street.

Contact JOSHUA ZHANG at joshua.zhang@yale.edu .

PAGE 9

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

“Since childhood, I’ve been a clown. I’ve always liked being very funny or trying to make people laugh. It’s my original self..”

BAD BUNNY INTERNATIONAL ICON

Yale’s endowment, explained

ISAAC YU/CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

The Yale Investments Office’s softball team, the “Stock Jocks,” was founded in 1985.

Yale’s endowment is often characterized as a bottomless pot of cash.

Indeed, the endowment just reached $41.4 billion after gaining 0.8 percent in 2022, making it the second largest university endowment in the country, after Harvard’s. Its growth is overseen by hundreds of employees who solicit donations and invest University funds through a long-tested proprietary management model.

“The endowment is the single largest source of revenue for the university’s budget,” Vice President for Finance and Chief Financial Officer Stephen Murphy ’87 wrote in an email to the News.

“Outside of the medical school, the endowment generates over half of the [University’s] funding.”

The endowment has become a focal point for students calling on the University to revise its funding priorities. Last February, the Endowment Justice Coalition filed a lawsuit against the University for its continued investment in fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, Yale spends just a tiny fraction of its endowment in any given year — usually around five percent. The dynamics behind endowment spending and investment are nuanced, but they provide important context for ongoing campus debate over endowment usage and best practices.

Here’s a look under the hood of Yale’s endowment.

ary teaching funds, equipment funds and more.

“Our job in the development office is to work to connect our potential donors with [these] priorities,” O’Neill wrote in an email to the News.

“Some gifts are very broad, such as funding student financial aid, while others are narrower, such as supporting the care and maintenance of specific parts of our [art] collections.”

The development office begins with an idea of what it wants its restricted funding to look like and solicits gifts accordingly.

O’Neill said that about half the money the University has raised for its five-year “For Humanity” capital campaign has come in the form of gifts that are funneled toward the endowment, as opposed to gifts for new facilities or so-called “current use gifts,” used for short-term discretionary spending.

These endowment gifts are disbursed as part of the endowment’s annual budget contribution. In 2021, out of the endowment’s $1.5 billion contribution, 25 percent went toward teaching and research, 24 percent went toward “general support,” 19 percent went toward facilities and operations, 18 percent went toward financial aid and 14 percent went toward “other specific purposes.”

“New gifts to the endowment are one of the most important ways that we grow the endowment, as this allows the value to grow by both new principle and investment returns,” O’Neill wrote in an email to the News.

Restricted funds Despite popular understanding, the endowment is not a single pool of easily accessible funds, but is instead composed of about 8,000 individual accounts, each of which represents a unique gift to the University.

When a donor decides to give to Yale, they are rarely forking out cash with no strings attached. Yale allows donors to decide how they would like their gifts to be used. Thus, donations are often earmarked for specific purposes — for instance, funds might go toward undergraduate financial aid, a new building or a professorship.

In many cases, the University is contractually obligated to spend and invest endowment funds according to these purposes. About 75 percent of the endowment — which amounts to over $31 billion — is therefore “restricted” to donor-stipulated uses.

Despite the fund restrictions, the University maintains its own fundraising priorities, according to Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Joan O’Neill. These include financial aid, endowed professorships, research funds, art collections, athletics, interdisciplin-

Budget contribution and the spending rule The University’s rationale for prolonged endowment growth is captured in the guiding principle of “intergenerational equity,” a concept pioneered by the late Yale economist and Nobel laureate James Tobin.

In 1974, Tobin famously wrote that “the trustees of endowed institutions are the guardians of the future against the claims of the present. Their task in managing the endowment is to preserve equity among generations.” Intergenerational equity has guided Yale’s endowment investment policy ever since.

On its endowment overview website, the University writes that “unlike with a savings account or a rainy-day fund, only a portion of [the endowment] is available for spending in any given year, in order to preserve the endowment’s longevity.”

Specifically, Yale seeks to spend approximately 5.25 percent of its endowment annually, as this is the amount that the Investments Office estimates will

BY EVAN GORELICK STAFF REPORTER

“allow for sustained growth given projected returns.”

After accounting for an expected four percent inflation rate, the Investments Office therefore aims to grow the endowment by at least 9.25 percent annually to maintain its real value while providing budget funds to the University.

However, given Yale’s average annual return of 12 percent over the 10-year period ending in June 2022, the 5.25 percent spending distribution seems conservative. Over the last decade, Yale could have spent an additional three percent of the endowment while remaining profitable in real terms. In 2021, this would have amounted to an extra $1.27 billion, nearly doubling the endowment’s budget contribution.

The Yale Endowment Justice Coalition’s website points out that if the University spent just 0.97 percent more of its endowment, tuition could be eliminated for all Yale College students. If Yale spent 1.3 percent more of its endowment, it could contribute New Haven’s entire yearly budget.

“Last year, Yale profited from a 40.2 percent return on its investments,” Lumisa Bista ’24, a longtime member of the EJC, told the News. “In comparison, the sum of this return is almost 20 times the yearly operating budget of New Haven. Still, Yale does not pay taxes to the city.”

In justifying its 5.25 percent target contribution, the Investments Office noted that its spending policy is reviewed regularly and adjusted to take into account “portfolio characteristics and market experience.”

The Investments Office also cited long-term market cycles, which more closely match the 5.25 percent rate reflected in the spending policy.

“The last 10 years, which do not represent a full market cycle, saw an extraordinary bull market run, but long-term market returns after inflation have been more muted,” a statement from the Investments Office reads. “As such, we believe that our spending rule remains appropriate given the University’s multi-generational time-horizon.”

But 5.25 percent is just a benchmark; the actual endowment contribution changes every year.

The endowment’s actual annual contribution is determined by a “smoothing” equation, which requires the University to spend a greater percentage of the endowment when the endowment value drops, and a lower percentage when

the value rises. This practice creates a cushion when returns fall and compels discipline when they rise.

The smoothing equation is a weighted average of 5.25 percent of the endowment’s value from two years ago — weighted at 20 percent — and last year’s endowment budget distribution — weighted at 80 percent.

Endowment Contribution = 0.2(.0525 * (endowment value from 2 years ago)) + 0.8(last year’s endowment contribution) A given year’s returns do not begin to impact spending until two years later, when they are gradually incorporated into the calculated contribution.

“The spending rule says to spend 5.25 percent of the ‘rolling average endowment,’ that is the average endowment over many years,” economics professor John Geanakoplos wrote in a June 2020 FAS Senate report.

“The rolling average endowment is much more stable than the annual endowment … This smoothing rule formally recognizes the principle that abrupt changes in spending cause unnecessary damage.”

Yale’s investments For over 35 years, David Swensen managed the University’s endowment under “The Yale Model,” a framework for institutional investing that he developed alongside then-senior endowment director Dean Takahashi. Although Swensen passed away in 2021, the Yale Model has remained the University’s primary investing scheme — and has become the industry standard over the last three decades.

The Yale Model favors broad diversification of assets, allocating less to traditional U.S. equities and bonds and more to alternative investments like private equity, venture capital, hedge funds and real estate.

Yale’s investment strategy depends heavily on alternative investments. As of 2019, they made up about 60 percent of Yale’s portfolio.

Price uncertainty of illiquid assets may artificially inflate Yale’s reported returns, but they have demonstrated superior “return potential and diversifying power.”

In 1989, nearly three-quarters of the endowment was committed to U.S. stocks, bonds and cash. Today, domestic marketable securities account for less than a tenth of the portfolio, while foreign equity, private equity, absolute return strategies and real assets represent over nine tenths.

“Yale long ago abandoned the traditional 60 percent stock [and] 40 percent bond portfolio, which is having its worst year since the 1930s,” Rutgers Business School professor John Longo wrote in an email to the News. “Yale’s sizable allocation to alternative investments was likely the reason for its positive fiscal year performance.”

Nevertheless, the EJC argues that, while profitable, “these non-traditional asset classes are linked to things like fossil fuels and Puerto Rican debt.”

For years, the endowment has been an embattled issue on Yale’s campus. Endowment justice made national news in 2019 when Yale and Harvard students disrupted the schools’ annual football game to call for divestment.

In October 2020, students occupied Cross Campus to demand

that the University divest from holdings in the fossil fuel industry and the Puerto Rican debt.

Students held a similar rally at Beinecke Plaza in November 2021.

In February 2022, the EJC filed a lawsuit against the University for its continued investment in fossil fuels, alleging that such investments violate state law. The complaint hinges on a provision of the 2009 Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, which is in effect in every state except Pennsylvania. The act stipulates that tax-exempt nonprofit entities, including universities, must invest with charitable interests in mind.

The EJC acted alongside students who filed similar complaints at Princeton, Stanford, Vanderbilt and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

When divestment activists at Harvard and Cornell took the same approach in 2021 and 2019, respectively, they met with success. Each school divested completely from the fossil fuel industry within six months of the complaint filing.

“Ethical investing” Nevertheless, the Investments Office claims to act within its ethical investing policy, which the University first adopted in 1972.

In the decades since, the Investments Office has occasionally reevaluated investments according to its ethics policy. From 1978 through 1994, Yale divested shares of 17 companies operating in South Africa — representing a total market value of approximately $23 million — because of their roles in the country’s apartheid system. In 2006, the Yale Corporation voted unanimously to divest from a Sudanese oil company deemed complicit in mass genocide. In 2022, the University deemed ExxonMobil and Chevron ineligible for investment after adopting more stringent fossil fuel investing principles.

The Corporation Committee on Investor Responsibility, or CCIR, is a subcommittee of the board of trustees that considers and makes recommendations on ethical investing to the rest of the Corporation. The CCIR is supported by the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility, or ACIR, whose membership consists of an undergraduate student, a graduate student, two alumni, two faculty and two staff members.

When campus groups and other state and local organizations demanded that the University cancel investments in Puerto Rican bonds and fire investment managers who refused to sell or forgive the debt, the matter was referred to the ACIR. In January 2018, the ACIR concluded that “divestment from Puerto Rican debt is not warranted when an investor is abiding by the applicable legal framework in a process in which the debtor’s interests are appropriately represented.” Yale has not announced any plans to divest from Puerto Rican debt.

The Investment Committee meets quarterly to review asset allocation policies, endowment performance and strategies proposed by Investments Office staff.

The Yale Investments Office’s softball team, the “Stock Jocks,” was founded in 1985.

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

Limited Schwarzman hours next week

BY BRIAN ZHANG STAFF REPORTER In a Wednesday evening email from Yale Hospitality, students and administrators were alerted of various limitations to dining services at the Schwarzman Center that will take effect next week.

The Bow-Wow, Elm Cafe and Commons will be closed from Wednesday, Nov. 2 to Friday, Nov. 4. In the meantime, the University introduced several temporary accommodations to compensate for these changes.

Among these accommodations are a grab-and-go lunch option at Cross Campus on Nov. 2 and Nov. 3 from 11 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. as well as expanded lunch

dining hours at three residential colleges. Grace Hopper will open early at 11 a.m., while Davenport and Trumbull will close late at 3:30 p.m.

From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., students can also use their lunch swipes at the Yale Science Building’s Steep Cafe, or use their dining points, credit cards and Eli bucks at Ramen in the Becton Center.

“I know a lot of other students, [including myself], who don’t have a schedule that lines up with the resco dining hall hours, so we’re forced to … go to Commons or the Bow-Wow … which is a life staple of mine,” Miles Yamner ’25 said. “Without this option, a lot of kids won’t have the freedom to eat

when it’s convenient for them and might have to resort to paying out of pocket.”

Yamner emphasized that the Bow-Wow provides a quick snack without conflicting with his demanding schedule, a solution that the substitute accommodations don’t necessarily facilitate.

Kayla Wong ’25, though also disappointed that the Commons will be closed next week, looks forward to the Cross Campus grab-and-go lunch option and will be “possibly stopping by [R] amen for the first time.”

Wong noted the resourcefulness and creativity of Yale students and is confident that students will find a way that works for them by exploring the various

accommodations and changes detailed in the email.

Other students like Braiya Nolan ’25 were particularly interested in the updated dining hall hours listed in the email and wondered if these temporary changes and their convenience can be made more “continuous” throughout the school year.

“I’ve heard that during precovid times, Trumbull dining was more popular than it is now because it opened much later,” Nolan said.

“It’s exciting that they’re bringing it back, even if it’s just for several days. I do hope that [administration] will consider keeping these extended hours for students who can benefit from them.”

Viktor Kagan ’24, a YCC senator for Pierson College, was also

surprised by the University’s decision to expand dining hall hours, since students unsuccessfully tried to push for the same idea during meetings last year.

Kagan echoed Nolan’s sentiment that making these changes a more regular part of Yale Hospitality’s dining services will effect much-needed change for the student body, especially for those with demanding schedules that make eating during current dining hall hours infeasible.

Regular Commons, Underground and Bow-Wow service hours will resume on Monday, Nov. 7.

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

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

“I feel like it’s no way she should be detained right now, especially spending her birthday in there,” JA MORANT MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES POINT GAURD

Bulldogs aim for second straight NCAA title; projected third BASKETBALL FROM PAGE 14 “It’s definitely a big loss, losing guys like [Swain] and [Gabiddon], no doubt, but I think guys embrace that opportunity and they buy into a more collective unit, absorbing more in their roles and filling that void,” Feinberg said. “I think we have an abundance of leadership on this team,” he added, mentioning fellow seniors Matthue Cotton ’23, Isaiah Kelly ’23, and EJ Jarvis ’23.

Cotton — a guard out of New Jersey who was one of four players to appear in all 31 games last season and ranked fourth on the team in scoring — told the News that he will not be suiting up for the Bulldogs this year as he recovers from injury, but plans to stick around the team.

Kelly, a 6-foot-7 forward who started 27 games last season, will bring his signature grit and toughness back to the starting lineup this season. A recipient of the team’s Bill Madden Toughness award, Kelly also finished second in the Ivy League with 26 blocked shots last season. During media day, Kelly described what the award meant to him.

“Buying in pays off,” Kelly said. “I try to do everything the coaches tell me to do on and off the court. I try to be a leader and also set an example for the younger dudes to follow in my footsteps. Just buying in and toughness I think is a key thing that we focus on during games.”

Returning in the frontcourt with Kelly will be Jarvis, who was the team’s leading rebounder last season despite mainly coming off the bench.

It remains to be seen whether or not the 6-foot-8 Jarvis will start at center this season, but doing so would give the Bulldogs more size in the frontcourt with both Jarvis and Kelly.

“With this year's team, we don't really have a go-to guy like we did last year, which is why everyone on the court will need to step up, including myself,” Jarvis told the News. “We have some young guys on our team that worked hard all summer and we have great senior leadership this year that brings a lot of different experiences. As for myself, being that guy who can bring energy and effort on the court will ultimately help our team win.”

Rounding out the starting lineup will likely be forward Matt Knowling ’24 and point guard Bez Mbeng ’25. Knowling, who was the team’s third leading scorer last year, averaging 7.2 ppg, will be counted on to fill a larger role junior season, and could emerge as the Bulldogs leading scorer this season.

“I have been focused on becoming a more vocal leader and taking the experience that I have from last year and learning from it,” Knowling said.

“Understanding where I was best last year and working to expand on that are key for my personal preparation coming into this season.”

Mbeng, a first-year standout who started 13 of 14 Ivy League games for the Blue and White last season, will operate as the primary ball handler, and should take a big leap in year two of his Yale career.

Coach Jones, going into his 23rd season with the team, emphasized the depth of this year’s team as well as the opportunity for his players to step up into new roles.

“If I look at my team this year, I would tell you that I have 13 to 14 guys that I can put in the game and feel good about,” Jones said. “But I can’t play 14 guys in the game. There is always someone ready to step up. We had a lot of those guys last year that didn’t get a chance to play. They are chomping at the bit.”

The Bulldogs team will also feature three first years this season as part of their 2022-23 recruiting class.

Guard Devon Arlington ’26, forward

Women's Hockey open season against Harvard In the game against McGill, rookie Naomi Boucher ’26 scored her first collegiate goal.

Ciara Coleman ’26, another rookie, notched her first collegiate assist.

Yale also scrimmaged against Brown University and Princeton University on Oct. 15 to help prepare the team for this weekend’s competitions against Harvard University and Dartmouth College.

Yale split its two matchups against Harvard last season. In their first matchup on Nov. 12, the Bulldogs defeated the Crimson 3–1 at The Whale. However, when the team traveled up to Cambridge on Jan. 15, Yale fell 3–1 to its Ivy League rivals.

H a rva rd a n d Da r t m o u t h began Ivy League play last week, competing against one another.

Harvard managed to beat Dartmouth 3–0, despite the Big

TIM TAI/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The Bulldogs are set to kick their season off on November 7th against Sarah Lawrence College.

Nick Townsend ’26 and forward Danny Wolf ’26 will all look to make an impact this season.

Wolf, who is listed at 7 feet and immediately slots in as the tallest player on the roster, says he is learning a lot from the team’s veteran players in practice.

“There is much to learn in every aspect of practice, as the college game is so different from high school,” Wolf explained to the News.

“I am just trying to do my best to soak everything in and take after the older guys. We have an extremely close knit group of guys in the locker room. Speaking for the [first years], I would say that all of the older guys have taken us under their wings and are teaching us all there is to know about college basketball.”

Despite being the reigning conference champs, Yale was picked to finish third in the Ivy League preseason media poll.

The last time the Elis were picked third was in 2019-20 when they went on to win the Ivy championship. Yale

has finished higher than projected in 11 of the last 16 seasons.

“Yeah I don’t have any idea who picks that,” Jones said during media day. “I’m not certain how much they know about our team or the other teams. Whatever we’re picked, we’re just going to go out and work hard.”

The University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University, both of whom Yale beat during Ivy Madness, were ranked first and second, respectively.

Penn figures to be a strong team this season due to the return of point guard Jordan Dingle, who led the league in scoring last season with 20.8 ppg. Princeton, who finished first in conference play last season but fell to Yale in the finals of the conference tournament, will also be stiff competition. The Tigers are led by last year’s Ivy League Player of the Year, forward Tosan Evbuomwan, an NBA-caliber talent who is looking to build off a stellar junior season.

Last year’s fourth and fifthplace finishers, Cornell University

and Dartmouth College, each saw at least three starters graduate and might struggle to maintain their level of play.

Harvard University faltered in Ivy play last year, finishing 5–9 in conference play after an 8–4 non-conference record. While leading scorer Noah Kirkwood graduated, Chris Ledlum — a 6’6” forward who averaged 16.7 ppg and 9.3 rpg last season — could lead a Crimson resurgence.

Brown, who also finished 5-9 in conference play last season, returns a young core including guard Kino Lilly Jr., who averaged 13.3 ppg as a freshman last season. Columbia will look to be more competitive after winning just one Ivy game in each of the last two seasons.

Jarvis was adamant that Yale will be “the team to beat” this season.

The Bulldogs are set to kick their season off on November 7th against Sarah Lawrence College.

Contact BEN RAAB at ben.raab@yale.edu .

Yale falls to Penn 13-20

Green outshooting the Crimson 26–22.

Yale currently holds an eightgame winning streak against Dartmouth, dating back to 2017.

Like Yale, Dartmouth competed against McGill in an exhibition game earlier this month, which they won 5–2.

This weekend, Yale hopes to get a strong start to the 202223 season as the team chases the Ivy League Championship.

“The expectations are high for this group, but they have put in the work and trained hard in the off-season and are ready to go,” head coach Mark Bolding told Yale Athletics.

The Bulldogs will hit the road this weekend, competing against the Crimson on Friday and the Big Green on Saturday. For both games, the puck drops at 3 p.m.

Contact ROSA BRACERAS at rosa.braceras@yale.edu .

The Bulldogs will travel to New York City to face the Columbia Lions at 6:30 p.m. on Friday night.

FOOTBALL FROM PAGE 14 thing we’re hoping for and alumni pressure,” Penn student Sarah Sterinbach told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “We’re showing Penn we are not going to stop fighting until we get these demands [met].”

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS

The Bulldogs will hit the road this weekend, competing against the Crimson on Friday and the Big Green on Saturday.

The Second Half When the teams retook the field again for the second half, they were given extra time to warm up.

Following the long delay, the third quarter took on a disjointed air, with both teams struggling to move the ball. The only score of the quarter was a 20-yard Penn field goal.

Early in the fourth quarter, Bulldogs’ kicker Jack Bosman ’24 tied the game at 13 with a blast of a kick from 46-yards.

The game picked up again, as each possession took on an extra feeling of importance as it became clear that the next score could decide the outcome of the game.

“The mood of the game was

pretty electric throughout,” Yale fan Matthew Lee ’25 said. “It was homecoming weekend for Penn, so I got to sit with my friend in the Penn student section and they were energetic throughout.”

The crowd only got more energetic when Penn got the ball at their own 41-yard line with just over five minutes left in the game. Penn methodically drove down the field and won the game on a touchdown with 20 seconds left in the game.

Looking back and forward While difficult to see the win streak come to an end, the game certainly proved the mettle of the Bulldogs. In a hostile environment, the Bulldogs nearly overcame tremendous adversity to beat a difficult opponent, but fell just short.

First-year running back Joshua Pitsenberger ’26 posted another big day with 89 rushing yards and the Bulldogs’ only touchdown of the day. The Bulldogs had a successful day overall on the ground, racking up 180 yards, while quarter-

COUERTSY OF DAVID SCHAMIS

back Nolan Grooms ’24 and the passing attack struggled to gain traction, only gaining 125 passing yards.

On defense the Bulldogs were missing star defensive end Oso Ifesinachukwu ’23 after he suffered an injury last weekend, but may have found another star in the making. Sophomore Tamatoa McDonough ’25 stepped into the big shoes of Ifesinachukwu and looked right at home, generating pressure all afternoon and posting 1.5 sacks for the Bulldogs.

Team 149 will now prepare for a week different than any other on their schedule. For the only time this season, the Elis won’t play on Saturday, but on Friday instead.

The Bulldogs will travel to New York City to face the Columbia Lions at 6:30 p.m. on Friday night in a game that will be nationally televised on ESPNU. Contact AMELIA LOWER at amelia.lower@yale.edu and SPENCER KING at spencer.king@yale.edu.

PAGE 11

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

“I was a monkey child. I was like a clown.”

ANDREW GARFIELD ENGLISH-AMERICAN ACTRESS

Cultural centers host Halloween stories night

BY NATASHA KHAZZAM CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Students from Yale’s cultural centers embraced the spirit of Halloween on Tuesday, gathering in the Asian American Cultural Center to swap intercultural ghost stories.

The event — a collaboration between the AACC, the Native American Cultural Center, the Afro-American Cultural Center and La Casa Cultural — featured five storytellers, each of whom shared a folktale or presentation from their respective heritage. The presentations ranged from ghost stories to an exploration of themes including domestic abuse, gender roles and loss in traditional folklore. “[Storytelling] is a very common part of Mexican culture and I think Latin American culture in general,” said Daisy Sanchez ’24. “I grew up hearing stories from my parents and family friends.”

Sanchez recounted the traditional Mexican folktale “La Llorona,” which tells the story of a young woman named Maria who drowned her children in a fit of jealousy. The story, whose title translates to “the weeping woman,” remains a prevalent part of Mexican culture today, as the sounds of running water are typically associated with the cries of “La Llorona.”

“My dad grew up near a river, and his family would make it a point not to have kids out after sundown especially during the

seasons of heavy rain,” Sanchez said. “I think there’s a very deep sincere belief in Maria and her story.”

Diza Edghina Hendrawan ’25 shared the tales of five Javanese ghosts: “Babi Ngepet,” a boar demon, “Genderuwo,” a shape-shifting beast, “Banaspati,” a fire spirit, “Jerangkong,” an egg thief and “Kisut,” a genderless specter who haunts those with bad intentions.

Hendrawan even recounted a personal encounter with the supernatural while visiting her grandparents’ home in Java.

“I saw this baby’s head poke out from the bathroom,” Hendrawan said. “It came out a little bit more and it was on all fours. I sat there for a moment, I internalized it and I screamed.”

While the event celebrated unique aspects of various different cultures, the stories shared also touched upon important issues such as gender roles and domestic violence, emphasizing the relevancy of folktales in the modern world.

Among the stories featured was “Nale Ba,” an Indian tale about a witch from Bengaluru who lures men from their homes at night with the intention of killing them.

Ishikaa Kothari ’25 noted the cultural significance of the story, which can be perceived as more than just a form of entertainment. “Nale Ba” subverts traditional gender norms and the common discomfort women feel when leaving their homes after dark.

AMAY TEWARI/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Students from the NACC, AACC, Af-Am Cultural Center and La Casa gathered to share ghost stories Tuesday night.

“It’s a shift in the gender dynamic, because men are the ones who are scared to go out,” Kothari said.

Evan Farmer ’23 described the discovery of the ancient mummies in the Mammoth Cave region of his native Kentucky, discussing the syncretism of West African and Native American spiritual practices in the region.

Yakeleen Almazán ’25 shared the story of “La Tamalera,” a Mexican folktale about a tamale vendor who kills her abusive husband and sells tamales made from his remains.

“It was eye-opening to hear different traditions, stories and legends that have been passed down

through generations,” said attendee Kaley Mafong ’26. “Many of them are applicable to modern-day life.”

Spirit Stories Night was one of two intercultural events held this October.

Contact NATASHA KHAZZAM at natasha.khazzam@yale.edu .

Students host Mahsa Amini vigil amid Iranian unrest

BY BRIAN ZHANG & LAURA OSPINA STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Students from Yale’s cultural centers embraced the spirit of Halloween on Tuesday, gathering in the Asian American Cultural Center to swap intercultural ghost stories.

The event — a collaboration between the AACC, the Native American Cultural Center, the Afro-American Cultural Center and La Casa Cultural — featured five storytellers, each of whom shared a folktale or presentation from their respective heritage. The presentations ranged from ghost stories to an exploration of themes including

LAURA OSPINA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

By honoring Amini, who died under Iranian custody, students stand in solidarity with Iranian women.

domestic abuse, gender roles and loss in traditional folklore. “[Storytelling] is a very common part of Mexican culture and I think Latin American culture in general,” said Daisy Sanchez ’24.

“I grew up hearing stories from my parents and family friends.”

Sanchez recounted the traditional Mexican folktale “La Llorona,” which tells the story of a young woman named Maria who drowned her children in a fit of jealousy. The story, whose title translates to “the weeping woman,” remains a prevalent part of Mexican culture today, as the sounds of running water are typically associated with the cries of “La Llorona.”

“My dad grew up near a river, and his family would make it a point not to have kids out after sundown especially during the seasons of heavy rain,” Sanchez said. “I think there’s a very deep sincere belief in Maria and her story.”

Diza Edghina Hendrawan ’25 shared the tales of five Javanese ghosts: “Babi Ngepet,” a boar demon, “Genderuwo,” a shape-shifting beast, “Banaspati,” a fire spirit, “Jerang-

kong,” an egg thief and “Kisut,” a genderless specter who haunts those with bad intentions.

Hendrawan even recounted a personal encounter with the supernatural while visiting her grandparents’ home in Java.

“I saw this baby’s head poke out from the bathroom,” Hendrawan said. “It came out a little bit more and it was on all fours. I sat there for a moment, I internalized it and I screamed.”

While the event celebrated unique aspects of various different cultures, the stories shared also touched upon important issues such as gender roles and domestic violence, emphasizing the relevancy of folktales in the modern world.

Among the stories featured was “Nale Ba,” an Indian tale about a witch from Bengaluru who lures men from their homes at night with the intention of killing them.

Ishikaa Kothari ’25 noted the cultural significance of the story, which can be perceived as more than just a form of entertainment. “Nale Ba” subverts traditional gender norms and the common discomfort women

feel when leaving their homes after dark.

“It’s a shift in the gender dynamic, because men are the ones who are scared to go out,” Kothari said.

Evan Farmer ’23 described the discovery of the ancient mummies in the Mammoth Cave region of his native Kentucky, discussing the syncretism of West African and Native American spiritual practices in the region.

Yakeleen Almazán ’25 shared the story of “La Tamalera,” a Mexican folktale about a tamale vendor who kills her abusive husband and sells tamales made from his remains.

“It was eye-opening to hear different traditions, stories and legends that have been passed down through generations,” said attendee Kaley Mafong ’26.

“Many of them are applicable to modern-day life.”

Spirit Stories Night was one of two intercultural events held this October.

Contact BRIAN ZHANG at brian.zhang@yale.edu AND LAURA OSPINA at laura.ospina@yale.edu.

Bridges ESL connects Yale and New Haven

BY BRIAN ZHANG STAFF REPORTER Bridges has been serving the Greater New Haven community for over two decades, bringing locals, immigrants and refugees a language-learning experience that centralizes both conversation and application.

After adopting a virtual model during the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization is returning to Yale’s cultural centers. This fall, approximately 100 students — an overwhelming majority of whom are adults — can choose to learn through Zoom or come in-person to live sessions.

Classes are organized on a semesterly basis, with eight sessions across the fourteen weeks, and the most recent class running on a hybrid model “The most remarkable thing about Bridges is the opportunity to interact with other students in my class … students from different parts of the world and who are

also learning English,” student Juan Suarez, 57, said. “I remember one lesson where we went around and shared parts of our different cultures — the music, the food and our traditions.”

This will be the third year that Suarez will be attending Bridges classes, and he stated that one thing never changes: the intimate class size and the individualized care that tutors give their students.

Each group typically consists of one tutor and three to four students, said Club President Isabelle Stemerman ’23, who also emphasized that students are grouped based on their unique experience level.

Currently, Bridges offers instruction in five levels that model the system of Yale’s language courses: Survival as L1, Beginner as L2, Intermediate Low as L3, Intermediate High as L4 and finally, Advanced as L5.

According to Stemerman, tutors have the freedom to design their own

lesson plan, though many prioritize interdisciplinary instruction. “ I n a d d i t i o n to rea d i n g articles from The New York Times together and completing grammar exercises, I like to play Wordle with my students and have them debate about a topic,” Stemerman said. “Because many of our students are adults, it is important that we take a conversational approach to teaching and make sure that they can apply these skills in professional settings.”

It is this sense of community that Adil Achter, 34, said he looks forward most to during class time. 2022 is both Achter’s eighth year in New Haven since moving from Morocco, as well as his second year participating in Bridges. He said that Bridges literally serves as a “ bridge between the New Haven and Yale communities,” allowing him to enjoy the best of both worlds.

Daniela Costa, 29, echoed Suarez and Achter’s sentiments

about the collaborative nature of the program. Despite participating in its virtual model, Costa noted that the most significant takeaway for her has always been the “opportunity to meet new people … both inside or outside the U.S.” and the chance to talk about her rich culture with others.

Looking ahead into the future, Charlie Mayock-Bradley ’23 — former Bridges tutor, recruitment director and co-president — hopes that the current Bridges leadership will collaborate with other city and University organizations to make education more equitable and accessible. He noted previous partnerships with Matriculate, Splash and Yeti and thanked the AACC and La Casa for their support in providing critical guidance and resources for Bridges.

What makes Bridges different from other Dwight Hall organizations and Yale clubs, Mayock-Bradley said, is the

fact that anyone can join as a tutor or student regardless of prior experience. To him, the program is an emblem of working together to build teaching and language skills at a level that everyone can find comfort in — and to cultivate an organic relationship with the surrounding community.

According to Mayock-Bradley, Bridges is what education should look like.

“As a child [of ] immigrant parents, I [especially] know the importance of being able to speak English,” said Breanna Nguyen ’25, a tutor volunteering at Bridges this semester. “The entire experience is rewarding in itself, but when I get to see my students improve week by week, it assures me that we are making good progress.”

Live classes run from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Saturdays.

Contact BRIAN ZHANG at brian.zhang@yale.edu

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 13

BULLETIN

SOPHIA ZHAO is a senior in Pauli Murray College.

Contact her at sophia.zhao@yale.edu .

CLARISSA TAN is a first year in Jonathan Edwards College.

Contact her at clarissa.tan@yale.edu .

CATHERINE KWON is a sophomore in Benjamin Franklin College.

Contact her at catherine.kwon@yale.edu .

VICTORIA LU is a junior in Silliman College.

Contact her at victoria.lu@yale.edu .

FOOTBALL Utah State 31 Connecticut 20

W. SOCCER Marist 1 Cornell 1

FIELD HOCKEY Villanova 3 Fairfield 1

SPORTS

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

MEN’S BASKETBALL JONES LOCKED IN Yale men’s basketball head coach James Jones’ extension through the 2030-31 season gives him one of the longest contracts in men’s college basketball and marks the third extension he has signed since 2019.

“We have a lot of guys who have had a lot of playing time and I think that’ll bode well for us…

We’re going to be getting great work every single day.”

NICK GARGIULO ’23 YALE FOOTBALL CAPTAIN

Basketball aims to defend Ivy title

Women's Volleyball extend streak to 14 The Yale women’s volleyball team (16–1, 8–0 Ivy) won yet again on Friday night. In front of a crowd of 330 fans, they beat Brown University (9–8, 5–3 Ivy) in four sets, tacking another victory onto their win streak.

The Bulldogs put on a team effort with multiple leaders in kills — Audrey Leak ’24, Gigi Barr ’25 and Mila Yarich ’25 each contributing a game-high 12 kills. This victory extends the Bulldogs’ win streak to 14 and maintains their position as No. 1 in the Ivy League.

“We came in super focused and ready to compete against Brown,” Yarich said.

The Bulldogs surged ahead in the first two sets of the match as they beat the Bears 25–16 in the first and then 25–12 in the second. Yale had 36 kills to Brown’s 16 in the first two sets.

In the third set, however, Brown figured out how to stop the onslaught of Bulldog spikes. The Bears blocked the Blue and White six times and won the set 25–22.

The Blue and White bounced back with a 25–21 victory in the fourth set to win the match.

Throughout the match, Maile Somera ’24 led the Bulldogs with 25 digs, Fatima Samb ’25 had six blocks and Carly Diehl ’25 had 48 assists.

With the win, the Bulldogs extended their winning streak to 14.

This is the longest winning streak a

M. SOCCER Quinnipiac 2 Vermont 0

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

BASEBALL C IS FOR CARSON Carson Swank ’23 will lead the Yale baseball team as its new captain this year, as the program prepares to welcome a talented firstyear class and new members of its coaching staff.

BY HENRY FRECH CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

VOLLEYBALL Merrimack 3 Hartford 1

BY BEN RAAB STAFF REPORTER

Yale volleyball team has had since 2012, when the Bulldogs won 15 in a row before earning the Ivy League Championship.

Members of the current team, however, are not focusing on statistics in the record books.

“I don’t think it’s really about the winning streak. I think our team is far more focused on just beating the team in front of us in the moment.” said outside hitter Cara Shultz ’25.

“It’s very cool to have such a long streak, but I don’t think anyone on the team really has that as a priority.”

Coach Erin Appleman echoed Shultz’s sentiment, emphasizing the importance of staying present.

“We don’t talk about [the win streak]. That’s in the past,” Appleman said. “We are always thinking about the next game, the next opponent.”

The Bulldog’s next challenge is their Friday night matchup against Cornell University (4–13, 2–6 Ivy) ranked seventh in the Ivy League. Last week, the Big Red swept Columbia University (4–13, 1–7 Ivy). Junior Sydney Moore led the match in both kills and blocks and earned the ninth-best hitting record in Cornell’s history.

The game against Cornell will be at home at the John J. Lee Amphitheater in the Payne Whitney Gymnasium at 7:00 p.m.

Coming off one of their strongest years in program history, the Bulldogs are looking to replicate their success.

But head coach James Jones will first have to figure out how to fill the massive voids left by star backcourt duo Azar Swain ’22 and Jalen Gabbidon ’22.

“We're still the three-time defending champs,” forward EJ Jarvis ’23 said. “We might not be first in the preseason poll, but we still have the biggest target on our back. We’re the team to beat. And we know that.

And we're ready to defend our title from anyone that wants to take it

away from us,” he said.

Yale men’s basketball won the Ivy League championship in the 20212022 season and also earned their sixth NCAA tournament bid in program history.

Swain, a two-time first-team allIvy selection, averaged 19.2 points per game last season while leading the Bulldogs to March Madness with 48 points across the two Ivy League playoff games. He is the most prolific three-point shooter in Yale basketball history and his 1,529 career points are the sixth-most ever by a Yale player.

Gabbidon, Yale’s second leading scorer last year (11.3 ppg) and a former Ivy League defensive player of

the year, will also be a very difficult player to replace.

With no returning players averaging more than eight ppg last season, it is unclear who will step up as the first option on offense for this year’s team.

The Elis will likely rely on a host of players to pick up the slack.

What Yale lacks in star power, however, they may make up through experience and depth.

This year’s team will feature five seniors, all of whom played big roles last season. Guard Michael Feinberg ’23, who was named team captain ahead of this season, spoke on the new team dynamics during Ivy League media day.

SEE BASKETBALL PAGE 10

Contact HENRY FRECH at henry.frech@yale.edu .

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

Women's Hockey to play Penn hands Yale first Ivy season loss Harvard, Dartmouth

BY AMELIA LOWER AND SPENCER KING STAFF REPORTERS

VAIBHAV SHARMA/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

The Yale women's crew team clocked in five victories, effectively sweeping Radcliffe and Northeastern on the Housatonic.

BY ROSA BRACERAS CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The Yale women’s hockey team had a record-breaking 2021-22 season, earning a program-best record of 26–9–1 and their first-ever trip to the Frozen Four.

Now, the Bulldogs hope to build on their recent success with a strong start. The team will face off against conference foes Harvard University (1–1–0, 1–1–0 ECAC) and Dartmouth College (0–1–0, 0–1–0) in the first weekend of the 2022-23 regular season.

“Last year’s success has allowed us to come into this season with a lot more confidence,” captain Claire Dalton ’23 wrote in an email to the News. “We want to win everything: ECAC regular season, ECAC playoffs, the Ivy League and a National Championship. We are returning some great talent and adding skill and speed with our freshmen. We are in a great position to compete for every trophy possible this year.”

The Bulldogs graduated five seniors last year, including star goaltender Gianna Meloni ’22 and captain Greta Skarzynski ’22.

Seven of the eight top scorers from the 2021-22 season, however, will return to the ice for Yale this season.

Goalie Pia Dukaric ’25 started her season strong in a 5-0 victory over McGill University at an exhibition game earlier this month. Dukaric started in 12 of Yale’s 36 games last season, earning a .929 save percentage in 15 total appearances.

“We have been practicing hard for almost two months, which has definitely helped the younger players get used to our team’s style of play,” Emma Seitz ’23 told the News. “The two scrimmages we’ve had so far were also instrumental in giving the first-years a taste of the speed and skill that exists in women’s college hockey.”

STAT OF THE WEEK

SEE HOCKEY PAGE 10

2

The Yale football team (4–2, 2–1 Ivy) saw its four-game winning streak come to an end on Saturday against the University of Pennsylvania Quakers (6–0, 3–0 Ivy) in a 13–20 loss.

The game was a slugfest of two teams who were both undefeated in Ivy League play and not keen on dropping in the conference standings. But even with dramatic on-field action, a nearly one-hour delay during halftime due to a student protest for climate and community causes also worked to define Penn’s homecoming game.

“The team fought hard,” captain Nick Gargiulo ’23 said.

“We made some mistakes in

key moments that left the game up to chance. The team is looking forward to this upcoming week against Columbia. We will continue working and getting better.”

The story of the game for both sides was defense, both because of strong play on that side of the ball and sputtering performances for both teams' offenses. The difference came with the Quakers outgaining the Bulldogs 397 to 292 yards in total offense.

The game was deadlocked entering the half, with the score tied at 10. However, the approximately 30 minutes of homecoming activities were not the only thing that kept the teams in their locker rooms for nearly two hours in the middle of the game.

The Protest Student protestors jumped down from the stands and flooded the field following a performance by the Penn marching band in a similar manner to the protest at Yale during the The Game in 2019.

Mostly members of the student group Fossil Free Penn, the protestors were advocating for divestment from fossil fuels as well as a number of social justice issues within the Penn community.

It took nearly an hour for police and security to clear the field for the second half to kickoff, with the final protestors being handcuffed before being removed from the field.

SEE FOOTBALL PAGE 10

RYAN CHIAO/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Ami Gianchandani ’23 participated in the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship this summer.

THE NUMBER OF YALE FOOTBALL GAMES TO BE BROADCAST ON NATIONAL TELEVISION (OCT. 18 AT COLUMBIA; NOV. 19 AT HARVARD)

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2022

VAMPIRE WEEKEND

// ARIANE DE GENNARO

Welcome to Vampire WKND! While we’re unfortunately not the four-person indie-rock band, we are your favorite four-person team of YDN editors excited to present the first WKND spissue of the year!

The Halloween spissue explores the spookiest and silliest parts of the holiday — comprised of pieces from fans and haters alike. Did you know that the term “trick-or-treat” actually comes from Charles M. Shultz’s Peanuts comic strip? Neither did we. Or, did you know that Grove Street Cemetery has its very own sex scandal? Trust us, it’s not as weird as it sounds. Did you know that Hallowoads is actually recognized by the U.S. government as a national holiday? Okay, we made that one up.

Join us for a Nightmare on Elm Street (aka the Hopper dining hall) and read on, if you dare.

Happy haunts, Alex, Ava, Eda, and Jackie

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND SPOOKY

THE LITERARY VIXEN OF GROVE STREET CEMETERY // BY MIRANDA JEYARETNAM Down Cedar Avenue in Grove Street Cemetery sits a small, unremarkable gravestone topped with a cross. Its base is inscribed, “In grateful remembrance, this monument is erected by her former pupils.”

Here lies Delia Bacon, who lived from 1811 to 1859. By the time she died, at 48, Delia had held history lectures for women, been embroiled in a controversial romantic scandal and attempted to open Shakespeare’s tomb.

Delia was born into a devout Puritan family as one of six children. Her father, Reverend David Bacon, was a congregational minister from Connecticut who oversaw religious conversions of Native Americans in the Midwest. He went broke when Delia was 6 years old, and the family moved back to Hartford, where her father died immediately. Her older brother, Leonard, graduated from Yale in 1820 where he later taught, in addition to serving as a minister and anti-slavery advocate.

Throughout her adolescence, Delia was plagued with ill health and bad luck, suffering from recurring malaria and almost dying from cholera. Still, she was brilliant. She began teaching at just 15 after being mentored by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and soon after won a short story competition against then-small time writer Edgar Allen Poe. At the age of 35, Delia met Alexander MacWhorter, who was studying at the Yale Divinity School. He was 23 and fell deeply for Delia. His pursuit of her took him to a spa in Northampton, Massachusetts, where Delia and her friend Catharine Beecher — Harriet’s sister — were partaking in hydropathy. Delia, perhaps as a result of her many illnesses, had been a devoted fol-

lower of the water cure, a form of pseudoscientific medical treatment popular in the 19th century that used cold water, ice baths and wet towels to treat any and all illnesses.

Catharine and Harriet, under the impression that Delia and Alexander were a couple, spread the news that the two were engaged. Alexander was enraged and humiliated and rejected Delia, claiming that she had essentially stalked him.

Many have attested that Delia was initially aloof and had essentially been worn down by Alexander’s advances in the decades since, yet the case scandalized her. Her brother took Alexander to trial in 1847 for “slander, falsehood and conduct dishonorable to the Christian ministry,” which divided the jury of 23 ministers who ultimately acquitted Alexander. Catharine, too, attempted to restore Delia’s name, publishing a 300-page manuscript in 1850 titled “Truth Stranger Than Fiction: A Narrative of Recent Transactions, Involving Inquiries in Regard to the Principles of Honor, Truth, and Justice, Which Obtain in a Distinguished American University.”

However, their attempts only further humiliated Delia.

She left Connecticut, first for Ohio, then to Boston and finally to England, driven to seclusion and near-hysteria.

She briefly rejoined The Bostonian Society with the support of Harvard-affiliated women, where she put forth a literary theory that Shakespeare was not one man, but a group of writers led by Sir Francis Bacon.

The idea of Shakespeare as a fraud obsessed her. Delia, who had become friends with and found support from the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Carlyle, left America for England in 1854

to pursue her belief. The trip had been funded by a friend of Emerson, who later called Delia “a genius, but mad.”

While her ideas were commonly dismissed, both Emerson and Hawthorne — who secretly funded the publication of Delia’s book — felt that Delia was one of the greatest Shakespearean scholars.

Huddled in a small room in England, Delia, frail, sick, just 5 years away from death, poured over Shakespeare’s plays and wrote away at her own book unveiling their real authorship — a 682-page tome published in 1857.

Convinced that the truth of Shakespeare’s identity lay within his tomb, she made requests to open it, ignoring its engraving: “curst be he that moves my bones.” She would visit the altar at night and stare at it, her face illuminated by lamp-light.

Ultimately, the tomb remained unopened. Delia feared that what lay within would disappoint her.

Just a year after her book was published, Delia was committed to an asylum in Hartford by her brother due to fevers, suicidal tendencies and a sudden, burgeoning belief that she was related to Sir Francis Bacon. A year later, she was dead.

Her thesis and writing were later praised by Mark Twain, Walt Whitman and Henry James. But others, according to Irving Wallace, remembered her only as a “sex-starved spinster.”

Read more about Delia’s life in an essay by late Yale archivist Judith Ann Schiff.

Contact MIRANDA JEYARETNAM at miranda.jeyaretnam@yale.edu .

YOUR HALLOWEEN FILM RECOMMENDATIONS FROM A TEAM ARISTOTLE HORROR AFICIONADO // BY JESSICA SÁNCHEZ I’ve made it my personality to love horror movies. I watch several a month, almost one a day on school breaks. I listen to horror movie podcasts and watch horror movie YouTube channels.

Every other post on my Twitter feed is about horror movies. You could say I’m a horror kind of gal.

Last year, a friend sent me a YouTube video about the paradox of horror.

It addresses the question of why some people watch horror movies, why some find themselves enjoying the violence, suspense and scares when they don’t want a negative emotion like fear in their everyday life.

On one side we have Aristotle’s “Poetics” and his belief in the cathartic power of engaging in horror. He does not believe that people avoid things that cause negative emotions; instead, there is a purification of negative emotion that results from engaging in the tragic spectacle. This catharsis, in the modern age, might be thought of as “horror escapism.”

On the other hand, we have David Hume’s “Of Tragedy,” which rejects the assertion that fictional horror causes negative emotions in the first place. Because the tragic spectacle we witness is fictional, we experience a fear that is different from the fear we feel in a real-life tragedy. The fear produced by a fictional tragedy, in its fictional context, does not outweigh the pleasure granted by the tragic spectacle.

Whatever side of the philosophical fence you stand on, here are some recommendations for the squeamish, the stone-faced and the superiority-complex-holding horror explorers.

The beginner: You can’t go wrong with a good classic.

The first horror movie I remember watching was “A Nightmare on Elm Street” when I was 6 years old — shoutout to my older sisters — and I went years without a sound night of sleep after that. Eventually, though, it became my favorite horror movie, and I wielded it like a shield as I dove into the genre.

Late-20th-century horror movies are scary enough to feel accomplished after watching them, but not so scary that you can’t sleep for days. So roll a die to choose between “Nightmare,” where you come for finger knives and stay for Johnny Depp in a football jersey crop top; “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” which is surprisingly not as gory as the title makes it seem; “The Evil Dead,” which inspires me to become a filmmaker; the “It” mini-series if you have 3+ hours to spare — and you should because Tim Curry as Pennywise is iconic beyond words; “The Thing,” which is the original “Among Us;” and “The Sixth Sense,” arguably the tamest one on this list.

Good luck, newbie!

The psychopath: Damien Leone’s “Terrifier 2” made a huge splash with its limited release in theaters this month, reportedly causing people to pass out, throw up and leave the theater. But you can’t watch a sequel without watching the first film, and “Terrifier” is, in my opinion, just as horrific as the sequel seems to be.

You can even make it a quadruple movie night by watching the “Terrifier” 20-minute short, released five years before the feature-length film, and “All Hallow’s Eve,” a 2013 anthology film which also stars Art the Clown, the gore-master of Leone’s oeuvre.

The laugher: There’s no better combination than laughing and screaming!

Horror-comedies tend to combine a fun amount of gore and body horror with a witty script and loveable characters. These kinds of films are some of the most fun to watch with friends.

I recommend “Zombieland” and “Freaky,” the former being a delightful take on the zombie apocalypse that stars Twinkie-obsessed Woody Harrelson and the latter being a spin on “Freaky Friday” starring Vince Vaughn, a 6-foot-5 giant who does an incomparable job of playing a teen girl trapped in a serial killer’s body.

The thinker: “Elevated horror” is a term that first started appearing in 2019 in the wake of A24’s wave of horror movie releases. It’s a term used to describe films which generate fear from more than just blood and guts; there’s a theme and a message — often about the scariest parts of what it means to be human — that the film drives home under the guise of a horror movie.

Critics of the term argue that these films are simply psychological horror and delineating what is “elevated” creates divisions in the horror community by attempting to legitimize a genre which historically hasn’t been taken seriously.

At the forefront of the elevated horror movement are directors like Jordan Peele (“Get Out,” “Us” “Nope”) and Ari Aster (“Hereditary,” “Midsommar”), both of whom have created some of my favorite films of all time.

But if you’ve heard these names and titles so often that they’ve stopped having real meaning, herWe are a couple of recommendations that still hit the elevated horror mark: “The Night Eats the World” is a 2018 French zombie flick that plucks its strings of terror by exploring the damage isolation can have on the human psyche. It’s a mind-bender with plenty of fabulous zombie special effects to match.

“Fresh” was released to stream on Hulu this year with what I think was much less fanfare than it deserved. It has a gorgeous color palette, fantastic acting, a rockin’ soundtrack and social commentary that leans obvious (but not too obvious!).

The documentarian: Thought I was going to recommend “The Blair Witch Project”? Okay, you’re only half-right.

I watched this film for the first time over October break, and let me just say: it sort of, kind of is worth the hype? But if you’re looking for found-footage that is truly nightmare-inducing, consider “Incantation,” a 2022 Taiwanese found-foot-

age horror film that pulls no punches.

After watching this with some friends over the summer, we had to immediately turn on “Total Drama Island” to wipe the terror from our brains. It mostly worked.

If you’re looking for something less supernatural than what “Incantation” brings to the table, “The Poughkeepsie Tapes” is a mockumentary about a sadistic killer’s snuff films. More grounded in reality than “Incantation,” “The Poughkeepsie Tapes” completely fucked me up in a different yet still totally awesome way.

The not-like-other-horrorfans fan: My toxic trait is listing these movies as among my favorites of the genre in hopes of impressing whomever I’m talking to. I will not comment on whether it’s successful or not. Anyway, here’s to no more gatekeeping!

A grand majority of werewolf content in horror is about men who are werewolves, so “Ginger Snaps,” where a teen girl is the werewolf, checks a lot of boxes that other films in this niche don’t.

I would’ve put “Lake Mungo” in the documentary section of this list if not for the fact that it’s a more quiet, eerie kind of horror film. This movie unsettled me so terribly that I need to rewatch it because the first time around I was shielding my eyes too much. It’s structured as a mockumentary rather than a straightforward found-footage, which is fresh in the world of “Blair Witch” and “Paranormal Activity.”

And a note to end on: what makes the horror genre so unique is that every film is an exploration into what its team is capable of. I’m constantly delighting in special effects, cackling from a sharp script or cowering in my seat as I anticipate a jump scare. Horror movies force you into a dynamic state. They encourage conversation during and after. They’re an experience I couldn’t recommend enough.

Contact JESSICA SÁNCHEZ at jessica.sanchez.jms469@yale.edu . // JESSAI FLORES

WKND RECOMMENDS Dressing up.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND WITCHERY

Witches: The original badasses

// BY ROSE QUITSLUND

Walking home from dance class during October was terrifying as a little kid. I would sprint the whole two blocks home — running between the street lights, stopping to catch my breath every 50 feet in the warm safety of their fluorescent glow. The cold night air made me shiver in my leotard and tights; I didn’t want to risk an off chance run-in with the monsters lurking in the shadows. And I may not be 10 years old, fleeing for my life down the quiet streets of my neighborhood after ballet practice anymore, but I’ve always erred on the side of caution when it comes to scary stories.

I think ghosts are too boring, zombies freak me out and werewolves are too niche. I prefer witches. Let me tell you why. First of all, they’re not too scary. As you might’ve figured, my Halloween entertainment tends to stay more along the lines of “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” rather than Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary.” But witches have never really given me those chills of horror, just a feeling of intrigue. Now, I’ll admit that this sense of security might be ill formed — I grew up in Alaska, about as far away from the Salem Witch trials as you can get. But even if witches are everything they’re made out to be in the hub of witchcraft lore in the Northeast, the degree of nightmares that they instill is less severe than that of the supernatural halloween creatures.

I think that witches are badass, they’re just misunderstood. The first “witches” were merely women practicing medicine who were persecuted for going against patriarchal traditions. And from that ancient persecution, the story transformed into the lore of witchcraft that we

have today. Witches stand at a crossroads between paganism and satanic worship.

Frightening as they may be, they’re much more fascinating than blood chilling. There is a wealth of lore and it can’t be boiled down to a singular story.

T h ey defy being categorized.

I categorize them as bewitchingly badass, pun intended.

Think about the Harry Potter franchise.

Hermione is arguably much cooler than either

Harry or Ron. She’s a witch. Maybe I’m projecting everyone’s unspoken desire to be a Harry Potter character, which has come to fruition in attending Yale and a minor fascination with witches. Either way,

// ELIZABETH WATSON

witches are the badass counterpart of the wizarding world with a feminist agenda.

My favorite Halloween movie is “Hocus Pocus.” I watch it every year. And I’d be lying through my teeth if I said that there wasn’t

some part of me that’s always wanted to be a Sanderson Sister. Admit it. You want to be one of them too. They cast spells, fly on broomsticks and shapeshift. “I Put a Spell on You” by the Sanderson Sisters? A banger. Not to mention their outfits. The witch look may not be my everyday choice of style, but it’s undeniably an aesthetic. The cloaks, pointy boots and hat, gloves, ritualistic jewelry. There’s a reason being a witch is such a popular Halloween costume. October street style is modeled on the blueprint of the witchy wardrobe. Have I convinced you to mentally rebrand witches as badass women who do magic and wear cool outfits?

I think that witches are antagonized because we’re all a little bit jealous of them. A bit jealous of them, a bit afraid of them. Their version of a club is slightly more intense than any we have here at Yale. I don’t think they have a tap night, and the audition process might look a bit different, but a witches coven is basically a glorified club. A girl group forming a coven to do witchy activities together? Whether the purpose of it is purely recreational or to wreak havoc, sign me up.

Surrounded by the pseudo gothic backdrop of Yale, the sense of witchcraft in the air is even more poignant. I’ve begun to appreciate the witch aesthetic of the Northeast.

So this Halloween, I’m honoring the original badass. See you at the coven, I’ll be the one in the witch’s hat.

Contact ROSE QUITSLUND at rose.quitslund@yale.edu .

Trick-or…Trick!

// BY FELSE KYLE Halloween, a day of costumes, candy and chaos. Who doesn’t love a not-so-scary scary movie, the ridiculous surge in chocolate prices and makeshifting a costume last-minute? If you were to ask a little kid their opinion of the holiday, they may even declare it to be their favorite day of the year (after Christmas, or their birthday of course!).

I personally believe that Halloween has lost some of its zing. Nights of trick-or-treating (emphasis on treating) as superheroes and benevolent cartoon characters have left people feeling too secure and too cheery. Collecting pillowcases of soon-to-be cavities and reveling in self-proclaimed dress-up superiority has been done to death.

It's about time that Halloween festivities circled back to their roots: the celebration of All Hallows Eve or Mischief Night, a night of pranks, jokes and wild parties. The “trick” part of the holiday has faded away in most places, as Halloween has become more focused on ele-

mentary schoolers and dressed up adults out on a midweek binge, instead of on teens and practical jokes. You rarely see anyone TPing neighbors’ trees or applying shaving cream to their cars or mailboxes. Gone are the days of flaming poo, for obvious safety reasons (although who wouldn't relish the notion of “bulldog in a bag” scattered throughout Cambridge Mass?).

To a certain extent, I think Yalies as a collective should embrace a little mischief this October 31, so here are some ideas to get the ball rolling: 1. If you want an easy and doable prank, you can write messages on mirrors in the bathrooms with isopropyl alcohol, and shower steam will reveal whatever spooky memos you wish to share. You could go with the traditional “redrum” or write something more personalized to your floormates that’ll send shivers up their spines.

2. Stepping it up a notch, why not throw a party? But not just any party … throw the exact

party your roomies have been planning out for the past 2 months. It will be great fun for all … except your suitemates. Trick them into a late night study sesh and throw that rager without them. You know it has to be done.

3. If you feel like being bold, suggest to your roommate that a hair-cut could serve them well. If they disagree, you know what to do … in the dead of night, pull out those safety scissors that your mom packed you and snip-snip-snip away (while they're asleep of course). A classic bowl cut or a bob with bangs is always a smash hit! And remember, it’s for their own good.

4. Want to get back at a frat for not letting you in after you walked twenty minutes from your dorm to get there in the freezing cold? Create invites and tell all of your friends that there’s going to be an Adam Sandler themed party at your least favorite house. When a hundred Adam Sandlers appear at the door of Sig Chi on a night when they’re not hosting, some hell should break loose.

5. If you’re looking for a giant group prank, a library flash mob is the perfect solution.

Get your friends together and perform your song of choice (perhaps a Backstreet Boys classic) in the stacks or late-night in Bass.

People may view it as a great study break … or not.

Whatever your trick of choice is — even if you revert back to the simpler rearranging of furniture or the good old knock-and-ditch through your dorm — there is always value in a little mischief during spooky season. There will be plenty of time to indulge in treats, so do not squander this perfect opportunity for a little hooliganism. Just remember to never risk property damage (that's just vandalism) or expose anyone to the risk of bodily injury.

The best pranks are those which everyone can laugh about … at least eventually!

Contact FELSE KYLE at ali.kyle@yale.edu .

Snickering Through the Ages

// BY HANWEN ZHANG

The second-most baffling part about Halloween (besides the length of the annual Hallowoads line) might be its age. The day of king-sized Twix bars and fun-sized kindergartners draped in white bedsheets holds a few millennia of tangled history to its name (which itself has changed roughly 5 times) and has mutated its way through more eras than most historians can count. You’d be forgiven if you failed to recognize the holiday’s ancestor in the Celtic bonfires over 2,000 years ago.

All the same, the costumes would have been a running motif.

The Celts were known to wear animal heads and skins to ward off ghosts as they tossed sacrifices into sacred fires. The holiday—then called Sanheim—had been meant to mark the beginning of winter’s brutal four months and the time when the dead returned. At night, spirits were believed to roam the earth while priests received heightened prophetic powers. Most Celts gathered the remains of the bonfire after their celebrations to re-light them in their homes.

The story only gets more complicated from there. History suggests that the holiday merged with existing Roman festivals after Claudius conquered the Celts in 43 AD. Feralia—the day on which the Romans honored their dead—just happened to fall somewhere in late October, allowing most Celts to continue their Sanheim customs. Here, Halloween might have started rounding closer into form as the celebrations borrowed from Pomona, another Roman holiday that honored the goddess of fruit and trees (think costumes, prophecies, maybe bonfires, and now apples at this point).

By the time the Catholic Church rose to power in the 9th century, Christian influence had gained enough traction in Celtic territory to challenge the region’s traditional spiritual beliefs. In his letter to Abbot Mellitus, Pope Gregory I urged the missionaries to integrate Christianity into the fold of local Roman-Sanheim festivals. Sanheim celebrations eventually shifted to November 2nd—the day after All Saint’s Day—taking on the title “All Soul’s Day” in its transition to a Church-sanctioned holiday.

The change had little effect on the holiday’s spirit: costumes

WKND Recommends A Harry from "When Harry Met Sally" Costume without the Sally.

and parades continued as they did before. The day’s name would morph over a few more centuries—from “Alhalomesse” to “All-Hallows”, then “All-Hallows Eve”—and, finally, “Halloween”.

It didn’t take long for Halloween to associate itself with romantic rituals. 18th century Irish cooks would bury rings in their dinners on Halloween night, supposedly wishing true love to whoever that happened to stumble across it. Scottish fortunetellers would give hazelnuts to a girl’s suitors and encourage them to toss them into the fireplace. On the same night we spend stuffing our pillowcases, revelers in the past would have stared at bowls of egg yolk, tossed apple peels, or drank sweet mixes of nutmeg and walnuts in search of love.

Halloween’s arrival on American soil is somewhat tinted with tragedy. While the day was celebrated in certain mid-Atlantic settlements, it hadn’t entered mainstream Protestant culture until the wave of Irish immigrants fleeing from the Potato Famine gave it roots. Halloween eventually became secularized as parents catered the holiday for their children. It had gathered a strong following among adolescents by the early 1900s, and pranks and vandalism had even escalated to the point where mayors had briefly considered banning the day altogether. Following the Great Depression, hundreds of teenagers destroyed cars and telephone poles in what became known as the “Black Halloween” of 1933.” In the centuries since, Halloween’s emphasis on mischief and superstition would be tamed down to suit middle-class, suburban families.

Historians are divided over the precise origins of trick-ortreating. Some theories trace the beginning of the “treats” to Pomona, or the Scottish custom of “guising”—in which beggars prowled the streets performing tricks in return for sweets. Still others propose influences from “belsniking”, a German-American Christmas tradition in which children would dress in costumes and earned sweets when adults guessed their identities. Either way, candy factories capitalized on those cravings by mass-producing treats in the years after World War II. “Trick or

// CATE ROSER

treat” was coined when Charles Schulz released his 1951 Peanuts comic strip.

Our sugary excesses haven’t left us. America hoards up to 600 million pounds of candy for the occasion every year, making Halloween the second-largest commercial holiday (only after Christmas). Candy corn remains as polarizing a treat as ever, with roughly 35 million pounds of it consumed over the month.

Chocolate is still the fan favorite.

For all its twists, turns, and changes of hand, Halloween’s story perhaps stands as a reminder, among other things, that parts of us remain unchanged even as others move on. I outgrew the rituals of going door-to-door sometime after middle school. My sugar tooth, though, still thinks otherwise—I consider any excuse for buying a party-sized bag of red-40 infused SourPatch, after all, to be a good one.

Contact HANWEN ZHANG at hanwen.zhang.hhz3@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2022 · yaledailynews.com · @yaledailynews

FROM THE FRONT

“I've always been misrepresented. You know, I could dress in a clown costume and laugh with the happy people but they'd still say I'm a dark personality.” TIM BURTON AMERICAN FILMMAKER

Local 33 submits union authorization to National Labor Relations Board LOCAL 33 FROM PAGE 1 marched through campus two weeks ago.

“Yale has still not publicly committed to neutrality during the process,” Acharya said. “We hope that Yale does not delay during this process and gets back to us so that we can vote.”

According to National NLRB Press Secretary Kayla Blado, the NLRB will now review the petition to ensure compliance with unionization rules, namely that Local 33 has surpassed the 30 percent mark of interested workers. NLRB will then work with Yale and Local 33 on setting the terms of the process.

“We’ve just received the petition and are reviewing it,” said University spokesperson Karen Peart. “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 students.”

When asked by the News if the University will remain neutral, Peart said “we have nothing further to add until we review the petition.”

Interested parties can follow the process on the NLRB’s website in the coming days.

“The Hartford office will work with the parties on an election agreement that will have the details of the election,” Blado told the News. “If the parties do not agree on parameters for the election, there will be a hearing. After the hearing, the [NLRB] Regional Director will issue a decision with the details of the election.”

Monday’s action comes on the heels of graduate student workers winning unionization votes at Harvard University , Brown University, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University. Unionization drives across the country have increased in recent years, including efforts at Amazon and Starbucks.

Local 33’s call for neutrality follows concerns among Local 33 organizers that the University will take an anti-union position. This concern derives, in part, from the University’s past dealings with anti-union law firm Proskauer Rose LLP, which pushed against unionization efforts at Columbia and Duke.

Another source of concern has been a Sept. 22 email sent out by Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Lynn Cooley sent an FAQ to graduate students with information related to unionization which Local 33 also deemed concerning and contained “misinterpretations.”

The FAQ told workers that unionization could force students into paying dues and i n s i n u a te d t h a t u n i o n i za tion could cause the Graduate School of Arts and Science Student Government to lose power.

The email also encouraged students to call campus security or police if they felt threatened by union organizers.

“When we were forming our union Yale said we didn’t need one,’” Barbara Vereen, chief steward of Local 34 — the Union of Clerical and Technical Workers at Yale — told the News. “But what we were fighting for was

respect and equal pay for equal work. Now, our jobs are some of the best jobs in the region, something we are very proud of.

We are thrilled to see the graduate workers file their union cards and cannot wait to celebrate with them when they win!”

Local 33 is also calling for haste in the process of formally unionizing.

“One of the tactics used to prevent unionization is delaying the process,” Acharya told the News. “The University can slowwalk the entire process which makes it more difficult for all of us to exercise our right to cast our ballots for unionization.”

Why are graduate students calling for a union?

Local 33 has been organizing for a union for more than 30 years, with supporters arguing that a union will provide stronger healthcare benefits, better wages, improved working conditions, a meaningful grievance redressal system and better access to mental health services.

Local 33 Co-President Paul Seltzer GRD ’23 told the News that the current healthcare plan provides very little dental care and unreliable access to mental health care. Seltzer added that unionled collective bargaining would improve healthcare.

Graduate workers have also cited low pay as a large reason behind the push. According to Seltzer, graduate workers were expected to work longer hours with very few increases in pay during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moreover, with the current rise in

inflation and cost-of-living crisis, many graduate workers are facing further challenges covering their bills.

“When my sister was 17 and working at a [frozen yogurt] cashier, she was making more money than me as a graduate teaching fellow,” Arielle Hazi SPH ’23 told the News. “It's just really frustrating because if we want to work in academia, we have to be doing this work. And the fact that Yale doesn't really respect our work enough to pay us what we're worth. The collective bargaining of a union can help raise our wages.”

Many graduate workers also hope for an independent grievance system since the current system means that many times graduate students can only raise concerns with their direct superiors, who many times are the subject of the complaint.

Monday’s NLRB petition follows a withdrawn 2018 petition In August 2016, the NLRB allowed graduate students across the nation to unionize.

In January 2017, NLRB regional director John Walsh accepted a request from Local 33 to hold micro-elections across the 56 departments of Yale instead of one large unionization vote across the graduate school.

In February 2017, Local 33 then called for election in nine departments and won elections in eight, losing one. Yale appealed Walsh’s ruling up to the federal NLRB, arguing that the graduate school should be treated as one unit,

thus voiding the elections. Local 33 pushed forward and called on the NLRB to recognize the eight mini-unions.

During this process, presidential administrations turned over from a pro-union Democrat, Barack Obama, to an anti-union Republican, Donald Trump. This transition and the subsequent change in the NLRB’s membership makeup led to the withdrawal of the 2017 call in February of 2018.

Current Local 33 co-president Paul Seltzer GRD ’23 explained to the News that the petition was then withdrawn due to fears that a Trump administration NLRB would be hostile to the Union effort and set back unionization efforts on other campuses. Independent of Local 33, graduate students at Boston College and the University of Chicago also withdrew their petitions.

According to Fields, the ball for the current petition lies in Yale’s court as Local 33 and the NLRB await the University’s answer on terms for a unionization ballot as well as on neutrality.

U n d e rg ra d u a te o rga n i z ers in the student advocacy group Students Unite Now have launched a petition in support of Local 33, calling on University President Peter Salovey to commit to neutrality. The petition states that graduate students' working conditions are directly correlated with undergraduates' learning conditions.

The National Labor Relations Board was founded in 1935.

Contact YASH ROY at yash.roy@yale.edu .

University to build new theater performance spaces for students ARTS BUILDING FROM PAGE 1 ing spaces being booked for two groups at once.

“The dance world is a little bit meeker here on campus, and it would be wonderful to have more resources,” Simon said.

According to Tyler Cruz DRA ’23, students involved in theater “absolutely need a new building.”

Cruz described existing dramatic arts facilities, which include buildings 149 York Street and 305 Crown Street, as “terrible,” having witnessed visible leaks “coming down the walls” as well as holes “in some places.”

“There are things that are just falling apart,” Cruz told the News.

Cruz described the Yale Repertory Theatre, which is a regional theater where students perform professionally, as having several challenges, including poor auditory quality and a small performance stage. Actors can’t really feel the sound reverberate “the way they feel it in other the-

aters,” Cruz told the News, and the space itself is not optimal for performances. While the Repertory Theatre itself was founded in 1966, the building was originally constructed in 1846 as the Calvin Baptist Church.

“It’s probably my least favorite [of the theater spaces],” Cruz said. “The way that it’s set up, it’s kind of hard to connect to the audience in that space.”

Cruz has performed at other spaces, such as the Yale Cabaret, which she described as a theater meant to allow students to “kind of throw paint on the wall” by experimenting with new artistic ideas. But the existing facilities did not meet the infrastructural or technical support needed to allow students to do that.

She hopes that the designs for the new theater facilities will be able to “meet students’ ideas” by fixing these problems with the existing buildings.

“That’s something that I really hope to see if these plans come to fruition,” Cruz said.

Theater professor Joseph Roach also welcomed the change but expressed skepticism over its implementation. Roach told the News that he sat on a series of planning committees for new facility proposals over the last two decades — the University, he said, made grand promises towards the arts in these proposals but later failed to follow through on them.

In a 2012 external routine review of the University’s departments and programs, a panel of experts examined existing theater spaces for Yale undergraduates and found poor infrastructure. The status of theater buildings was “appalling,” Roach said.

To rectify the issue, Roach said, a committee consisting of members from the Theater Studies Department set out to scope out a site for a new theater, and discussed the plans with architects and consultants. According to Roach, the committee brought their plans to administrators, who

began to cut out features over concerns of cost.

But Roach said these features were necessary to make the building serve a purpose which could not be served by what the University already had.

“By the time they got through, it wasn’t … really worth building,” Roach said. “So the committee just folded.”

Soon after, Roach said, planning for the Schwarzman Center commenced. While the Sc h wa rz m a n C e n te r wa s designed to be a center for the arts at Yale, it is not necessarily a practical space to host student-run theater productions, according to Roach.

“It’s always been a promise deferred,” Roach said regarding the prospects of a new theater space. “There’s always been a reason why we couldn’t fund or we couldn’t get to a performing arts center, or even just a workable theater.”

Where the theater studies department planned to build a new dramatic arts building on the corner of Sachem and Prospect a decade ago Salovey told the News that the Schwarzman Center and the theater Roach spoke of were two unrelated projects and that “any decisions about one did not affect the other.”

He added that arts faculty members, deans and other university leaders looked into whether the theater should be built, but decided at the time that the building’s “location and the timing were not aligned.

Dean of the David Geffen School of Drama James Bundy declined to comment for this article, referring the News to the University communications website.

The School of Drama is located at 222 York St. Contact WILLIAM PORAYOUW at william.porayouw@yale.edu .

Delays in furniture shipment raise equity concerns between colleges FURNITURE FROM PAGE 1 In the past, Panter-Brick explained, students in all colleges supplied their own common space furniture and were provided summer storage space for it. Panter-Brick said she was not sure how administrators chose which colleges got common room furniture first.

Senior Associate Dean of Strategic Initiatives and Communications for Yale College Paul McKinley wrote to the News that furniture in all colleges is paid for from the University’s capital projects budget, adding that the long-term goal has been to provide common room furniture to all student suites. McKinley wrote that furniture was first provided on Old Campus and the suites in Silliman and Timothy Dwight assigned to first-years. Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray received common room furniture when they opened.

The original move to provide furniture aimed to address “equity issues across the colleges” according to Panter-Brick, who explained that each of the colleges had varying opportunities for summer storage.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented all colleges from immediately receiving furniture, she said.

McKinley wrote that these disruptions were caused by how all

construction was suspended in the summer of 2020 and how the supply chains broke down. He also wrote that there was further complication of the original planning due to the need to provide furniture to the suites used to house first-years in the four additional residential colleges including Morse, Saybrook, Branford and Davenport, in addition to Silliman, Timothy Dwight, Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray in the 2021-2022 school year.

“Many of the disruptions are now easing, and the timeline is getting back on track,” McKinley wrote to the News.

The News spoke to seven students across the five colleges that do not have common space furniture. Each expressed concerns over the cost of having to acquire, store and move their own furnishings.

For most students, the main issue with having to provide their own furniture was the cost.

Ashley Reyes ’25, who is in Pierson, told the News that not being provided common room furniture was largely a financial concern, as every member but one in her suite are first-generation, low-income students.

“Furniture is crazy expensive and just not something we accounted for,” Reyes told the News.

Reyes said she and her suitemates bought used furniture, but were not

sure if it would be sanitary. She also mentioned the time-intensive process of transporting furniture and having to limit their furniture to what would fit in a car.

William Hin ’25, who also lives in Pierson, told the News that having to furnish his suite was “definitely a financial burden.” Given the transportation costs on top of the cost of the furniture itself, Hin said that getting furniture overall was “fees on top of fees on top of fees.”

Other students also agreed that buying furniture creates an extra financial burden.

“As an FGLI student, I was worried that I would not be able to contribute any money to my suite’s furniture fund, but luckily, my suite was very resourceful and figured out a way to avoid having to spend money on furniture,” Joanna Ruiz ’25, who is in Jonathan Edwards, wrote to the News.

Ruiz said that her suitemates found free furniture through different outlets like Craigslist and rescued items from a dumpster, borrowing a car to move the furniture. However, Ruiz added that her suite was “very lucky,” as trying to source furniture would have been a “greater burden” if they did not live on the first floor.

Ogora, who is in Davenport, also wrote to the News that finding fur-

niture and transporting it was “very frustrating” and “sours” the relationship between students and their residential college.

Ellie Barlow ’25, who is in Grace Hopper, also found buying furniture difficult and expensive for her and her suitemates.

“Even to buy from For Free and For Sale [on Facebook] is expensive and when you are already paying a lot of fees, it feels very unjustified to have to spend that much,” Barlow wrote to the News.

Karley Yung ’25, who lives in Berkeley, said her suite is still in the process of getting furniture, but they had to take time out of their summer and school year to find the furniture they have.

In addition to the cost of the furniture and the time to move it, students also expressed frustration with the impact the policy has on the social community within the colleges.

“It is especially hypocritical that we are expected to form bonds and friendships within our college in these shared spaces since, without a comfortable common room with seating, it is nearly impossible,” Ogora wrote to the News.

Reyes agreed, adding that the disparity in furnishing across colleges “drives people away” from suites without furniture and “isolates students.”

Students also expressed concern over having to store their furniture, which was what prompted the move to provide furniture in the first place, according to Panter-Brick.

Head of Berkeley College David Evans ’92 wrote to the News that he looks forward to when furniture can be provided in the college. For now, Berkeley allows students to store a limited number of tagged furniture items in the following year’s suite, saving the cost of finding storage.

Ari Essunfeld ’24, who is in Grace Hopper, described finding storage as “super tricky.”

Panter-Brick said the colleges still need to consider storage for personal items as Yale-issued furniture becomes standardized across colleges, explaining that storage systems vary widely across colleges.

“It's a large issue, right in the summer when you're taking exams and then you have to move out and then you have to store your stuff,” Panter-Brick said.

The first seven residential colleges were opened on Sept. 25, 1933.

Contact SARAH COOK at sarah.cook@yale.edu .