Yale Daily News — Week of Oct. 29, 2021

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

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · VOL. CXLIV, NO. 4 · yaledailynews.com

YALE TO ELIMINATE STUDENT INCOME CONTRIBUTION

BY JORDAN FITZGERALD STAFF REPORTER Next week, Yale College will announce three reforms to its financial aid system, including an elimination of the student income contribution.

The student share — also known as the student effort — includes a billed portion, which contributes

directly to a student tuition, and an unbilled portion, used for personal expenses. Students colloquially refer to the former as the “Student Income Contribution,” though the Office of Financial Aid does not employ this moniker. Students pay the billed portion to Yale, and the expense depends on the amount of aid they receive, but ranges from $3,700 to $5,950.

Beginning next academic year, Yale will reduce the student share for all 54 percent of students on financial aid to $3,700, the University’s standard estimates for the cost of a student’s books and personal expenses, and will therefore eliminate the student income contribution that students previously paid to the Financial Aid Office. Previously,

only students with no parent share — those whose combined family income is less than $75,000 — could pay this reduced amount. Students will still have to pay the student income contribution for the remainder of the 2021-22 academic year.

Effective immediately, Yale will also cover the marginal tax rate for international students receiving

scholarships that exceed tuition and enable them to pay for room, board and personal expenses. Yale is also immediately implementing a child care subsidy for Yale College students with dependents, equivalent to that in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

SEE AID PAGE 4

Development staff detail toxic workplace Vermund pushed "The tension is widespread"

BY ZHEMIN SHAO STAFF REPORTER With Yale staff returning to in-person work, some employees in the Office of Development have quietly raised concerns about what they call an unhealthy workplace environment, claiming that racial tension and intrusive supervision make work life unpleasant and could impede efficiency as the University launches its $7 billion “For Humanity” fundraising campaign.

The employees also relayed concerns about the potential for breakthrough coronavirus infections.

The News interviewed seven lower-ranking staffers, four of whom are Clerical and Technical workers, and three of whom hold Managerial & Professional positions. The employees are spread across four of the Office’s 23 units. All seven lower-ranking employees have been granted anonymity due to fear of professional retaliation or termination for speaking to reporters.

Eight high-ranking employees, including Joan O’Neill, vice president for alumni affairs and development, each expressed optimism about the return to in-person work.

They noted their hopes for bonding with coworkers and their excite-

ment to continue efforts for the capital campaign. Of the 15 Office of Development members interviewed, opinions on workplace culture were split along lines of rank.

“The tension is widespread,” one lower-ranking staff member wrote in an email to the News. “It adds up, in a thousand small ways and incidents. It is difficult to prove, because it is so individual, but get any three or four non-managerial employees together and soon the horror stories emerge.”

On Oct. 2, the 279-person Office of Development — which leads the University’s fundraising strategy and solicits gifts from alumni, corporations, foundations and parents — announced a new capital campaign. The campaign aims to raise $7 billion to support areas including the sciences, the performing arts and financial aid. The public launch of the capital campaign — a major fundraising endeavor that each University president oversees once during their tenure — coincided with the University-wide return to in-person work. On Oct. 4, many employees at the Office of Development returned to their workspaces for the first time in more than a year.

But behind the scenes, the six lower-ranking Office employees

and one former employee — who now works elsewhere at Yale — said that their department’s workplace environment is unhealthy in multiple respects. Several described incidents of what they believe to be racial insensitivity. Others see the Office as a web of complex hierarchies, riddled with toxic workplace politics, a lack of transparency and an unreasonable degree of supervision. Some also expressed concerns about returning safely to in-person work. All anecdotes and accounts published in this story have been corroborated by at least two sources.

Still, senior development officials maintained that the office runs smoothly, and that morale is high. In response to the concerns raised by Office employees, O’Neill stressed that office culture is “very important” to her. She pointed to the Office’s internal promotion rate, which she said is higher than the University average, as an example of her team investing in its employees’ career development. O’Neill declined to share the promotion rate with the News, but said it indicates that staff members are inclined to stay at the Office.

“The positivity is palpable,” O’Neill said. “I look forward to continuing to strengthen our culture of teamwork in this new hybrid environment.”

SEE DEVELOPMENT PAGE 13

out, affiliates say

YALE NEWS

Vermund stepped down as School of Public Health Dean after Yale offered him a shortened three-year contract rather than a typical five-year contract.

BY PHILIP MOUSAVIZADEH STAFF REPORTER While University administrators told the Yale community that School of Public Health Dean Sten Vermund resigned from his post, Yale did not renew Vermund’s five-year contract, but instead offered him a three-year one — which some faculty at the School of Public Health say is

Harvard barred from dorms during The Game

non-standard and an attempt to push Vermund from the role.

Vermund’s decision to step down was announced in an Oct.19 email from University President Peter Salovey to the Yale community. The email said that Vermund was choosing to return to his teaching position at the School of Public Health, but SEE VERMUND PAGE 4

FAS Senate: Protect gifts from donor pressure

BY ISAAC YU STAFF REPORTER

that prohibits most visitors from entering campus buildings, including residences.”

The Yale-Harvard Game, which will take place this year on Saturday, Nov. 20 at noon, is a hallmark of the rivalry between the two Ivies. The game typically draws current students, alumni, parents and friends, and it was last played at the Yale Bowl in Nov. 2019.

Last year’s game was canceled because of pandemic restrictions — the first cancellation since 1943.

On Thursday, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Senate released a resolution calling on the University to write protections from donor influence into its gifting policies.

Last month, history professor Beverly Gage resigned from her post as director of the Grand Strategy program directorship, citing outside influences from prominent donors. The move sparked conversations about academic freedom and prompted an FAS Senate investigation into academic freedom at Yale. The senate has since spoken with both Gage and a slate of administrators including University President Peter Salovey, University Provost Scott Strobel, Vice President of Global Strategy Pericles Lewis and FAS Dean Tamar Gendler. On Thursday, the senate held a meeting and released a resolution to faculty members.

The senate’s resolution calls on the University to create a new committee of faculty to review existing donor agreements and to recommend gift agreement policies that safeguard academic freedom. The faculty committee would also establish an appeals process for faculty to express concerns about violations of academic freedom.

According to FAS Senate Chair Valerie Horsley, one professor familiar with the Grand Strategy program said that its 2006 endowment agreement was created with no intent to interfere with curriculum.

SEE THE GAME PAGE 5

SEE SENATE PAGE 5

YALE DAILY NEWS

Neither university will coordinate alternative lodging for The Game; some students say the policy disadvantages low-income peers.

BY OLIVIA TUCKER STAFF REPORTER In a break with tradition, Yale College students will not be allowed to host Harvard students in residential college dormitories over the weekend of the Yale-Harvard football game due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Harvard’s Student Engagement Office wrote in an Oct. 21 email to the Harvard student body that Yale dorms will not be available to Harvard students over the weekend of the Game

because of pandemic-related restrictions. According to a copy of the email obtained by the News, Harvard students are “strongly [encouraged]” to depart Cambridge the Saturday morning of the game and return that same night, forgoing the weekend-long festivities the two student bodies traditionally share in. University administrators have yet to make a formal announcement of the policy to the Yale student body.

Yale College Dean Marvin Chun wrote in an email to the News that the decision is “consistent with the [University’s] policy

CROSS CAMPUS

INSIDE THE NEWS

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1929.

An investigation reveals that burglars rip off the bars on the rear door of the Yale Cooperative Corporation and carry off $1,500 worth of fountain pens, pencils, and other valuable small items.

MANDATE

SOLD OUT

FOOTBALL

ELICKER DEBATES CARLSON AHEAD OF NOV. 2 ELECTION

After sending warnings to 94 employees, Yale New Haven Health terminated 63 unvaccinated staff due to lack of adherence to its vaccine mandate.

Tickets to the annual YSO Halloween show sold out within seconds of their release on Monday.

The Bulldogs will face off against Columbia, which has had only one loss on its ledger all year, on Friday at the Bowl.

PAGE 3 CITY

PAGE 7 SCITECH

PAGE 8 ARTS

PAGE 14 SPORTS

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 2

OPINION GUEST COLUMNIST ISA DOMINGUEZ

G U E ST C O LU M N I ST E N D OW M E N T J U ST I C E C OA L I T I O N

The question of worth Yale’s Mission: Profit Over People I I

closed the textbook and leaned back in my chair. I stared at the dimly lit ceiling. My phone suddenly started to vibrate. Mom’s calling. I declined the call and impulsively texted, “Sorry, I’ll call you later.” “Are you okay?” she asked. “I’m fine, I’m studying.”

“Make sure to get some rest, okay mi pony?” “Ya se.” “Please don’t sleep late. You need to rest.”

I wanted to reply, “I know. But do I deserve to?” Instead, I wrote, “Don’t worry about me. Te quiero.”

Worrying other people is something I try to avoid. I’m terrible at it; I have a horrible poker face when I’m exhausted or anxious. I stare blankly at the walls instead of looking at others in their eyes. I stay silent while thoughts blare in my mind. When my friends ask, “Should I be worried?” I immediately reply, “No, no, don’t be.” You’ve got enough to worry about with school and work.

I’m not worthy of your concern. I don’t deserve it.

The question of worth has been haunting my thoughts since middle school. The question shifts depending on the season. In seventh grade, it used to be: “Do I deserve to be alive?” Last year, I wondered: “Do I deserve to be here at Yale?” This semester, it has been: “Do I deserve to rest?”

If any of my friends asked these questions, I would answer: of course you deserve to live. Of course you deserve to be here. Of course you deserve to rest. But when I’m asking the same questions, I hesitate to give myself the same grace. Readings lay untouched on my desk. Crumpled worksheets streaked with red marks litter its dusty corners. I’m not working hard enough. If I want to graduate and live the “good life,” I can’t afford to rest. I don’t deserve to. And if someone asks why I don’t follow my advice, I’ll just tell them, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

It is easier to say than it is to do.

In my experience, this applies to most things. Why this is, I’m not sure. It probably has to do with feeling. It is easy to say, “I should rest.” But to feel like that is a true statement — that is where I fail.

And Yale students seem to succumb to the same thinking process.

Hard work and worthiness have become tightly intertwined in Yale’s culture; it is difficult to untie the annoying knot that leaves most students frayed. Productivity and work are bound together. And to work means sacrificing threads of time, weaving knowledge and application into a tapestry for hours. Everyone knits to the American tune of hustle culture and tunes out their thoughts and worries. It is a badge of honor when productivity leads to a passing grade, but often, it seems like students earn that badge at the cost of their mental and physical health.

They overestimate their abilities to push through their tiredness, sickness, injury. Any holes in the tapestry are hastily patched up, and whether one deserves to do something apart from work is a question that is dismissed. If we rest at any

point, it is for the purpose of doing more work later. At the start of midterm season, when I asked a couple of students “How are you?” I’ve heard, “I’m tired” and “I didn’t get enough sleep.” I’ve responded with, “Just a suggestion. How about you nap?” “No, I need to do work,” they replied. One of them chuckled. “Isa, I know you’re in a comedy group,” he said. “But the jokes stop here.”

It should be comedic that to succeed, we feel like we must sacrifice our well-being and some of our self-worth. Our success depends on us living to succeed, not living for succeeding. Instead, the latter sentiment seems to be Yale’s mantra. It is whispered in various environments: a classroom, a club space, the Yale affirmations Instagram page: “I am not already burning out,” “I thoroughly complete all my readings,” “The thought of midterms does not make me want to vomit,” “I am too cool for hustle culture,” “I will ace my midterms I will ace my midterms I will ace my midterms I will ace my midterms I will ace my midterms.” These are the different notes we repeat, whether we’re alone or with others, whether we sing in the day or at night. But they ultimately follow the same song: success is the answer to the question of what we’re worth.

Work is how we get there.

I followed my classmates’ example and whistled along. I walked into my seminar one week while I had the “Yague.” I didn’t want to be there; I woke up feeling groggy and the inside of my mask was soaked thanks to my runny nose.

I sat towards the back and nodded a “hello” at the professor. He cautiously eyed me. “Are you okay?” he asked. “It’s just the cold that’s going around,” I told him, as nonchalantly as I could. During class, my professor quickly noticed that I was balling up countless tissues and pulling my mask down to wipe my nose. “Isa, I’m sorry, but I have to ask you to leave.”

I didn’t feel embarrassed. I felt relieved. Thank God. Someone changed the melody. Yale’s administration hadn’t said anything about the Yague until Oct. 1 when Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd sent an email reminding students about their options in deciding whether to attend class. We shouldn’t have to reach a low point in our well-being to determine if our health is worth the readings or lectures we would need to catch up on. Look at the stores, the classrooms, the public areas with signs on their doors that remind others to wear their masks, get the vaccine, wash their hands. Rest and health are not things that are or aren’t “worth” it. They are priorities.

I ask the student who wonders if they’re worthy of rest to ask a different question: why embed work with worth?

ISA DOMINGUEZ is a sophomore in Timothy Dwight College. Contact her at isa.dominguez@yale.edu .

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COPYRIGHT 2021 — VOL. CXLIV, NO. 4

n 2019, the Yale-Harvard football game came to a halt as students desperately protested the two universities’ roles in distressed Puerto Rican debt and climate annihilation. Terrified by the scientific consensus about the planet’s apocalyptic future, protestors rejected the practice of investments in the fossil fuel industry, which is uniquely culpable for the destruction of the climate. With 50 arrested and countless others storming the field, those who shouted amidst the crowds of the Yale Bowl understood that they could not allow Yale’s complicity to continue. Garnering national news attention, this protest represented a hopeful culmination of years of tireless student activism.

The movement against Yale’s destructive practices has been long, as students have been forced to endlessly protest against the University’s practice of profiting off of suffering and the structures that enable it. This movement has witnessed the coalitional courage of students who occupied Beinecke Plaza, living in shantytowns for an entire year to protest Yale’s immoral investments in apartheid in the ’80s. It has seen the disruptive bravery of a group of united students who organized sitins in the Yale Investments Office to demand divestment from fossil fuels. And after The Game, this movement hoped that Yale might finally listen.

However, on Oct. 14, those same students had to confront nauseating dread and disgust: Yale had just had one of its most profitable years in history, generating over $11 billion in the midst of a global pandemic and recession. Through the perverse structures of global capital and wealth hoarding, the University continues to profit wildly year after year. This year, the absurdities of the endowment’s billions were made grossly apparent, as a 40.2 percent return could generate a sum so preposterous that it is over 18 times larger than the entire operating budget of the city of New Haven for 2021. Still, Yale refuses to pay its fair share of $157 million to New Haven.

These very structures of Yale’s wealth hoarding are destructive and dangerous; however, the Univer-

sity also has profited from and continues to amass this wealth through investments in imperialism, such as distressed Puerto Rican and Argentine debt, and climate destruction, coupled with austerity in the New Haven community. Although the University’s mission statement says it is committed to “improving the world today and for future generations,” Yale profits from and exists because of the suffering of others, not for the betterment of all. When considering its roots in the transatlantic slave trade, theft of the land of the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian-speaking Indigenous peoples, private militarized police force, refusal to pay taxes or recent profits from selling distressed Puerto Rican debt, the only words that seem fitting to apply to Yale are nefarious and villainous. This cannot continue. This must stop.

Yet, ignoring the obscenities of its financial greed, Yale has the audacity to elicit even more wealth for itself.

On Oct. 2, the University announced its For Humanity campaign, an University-wide effort to amass an additional $7 billion for the endowment. This campaign announcement confirmed that Yale’s financial system is designed to protect its own future, not the future of humanity.

When humanity suffered amid the COVID-19 pandemic — in loss of jobs, housing, education and lives — Yale profited, and it did so massively.

The egregiously large endowment represents the University’s core value: profits over people.

Yale is not for humanity. If the University can have one of its most profitable years ever while the world is in crisis, Yale cannot be for humanity. In fact, Yale is often not even for itself: it forces low-income students to work to cover the Student Income Contribution, refuses to invest in mental health, outsources library positions that could be New Haven union jobs and disrespects and disregards its workers. Truly, Yale can be said to be for one thing above all else: the growth of its endowment.

Thus, it is no surprise that the University has already stated it has no major plans for this year’s returns. For Yale, the endowment is

an elite project divorced from material need, one which must grow for the sake of growth rather than serve to meet the needs of the community. Many students believe this is due entirely to restrictions associated with specific donations or to Yale’s spending rule, a policy which suggests expending only 5.25 percent of the endowment value each year in order to ensure “that we do not hoard the income from strong financial years at the expense of investing in our current programs and people,” according to a statement from the Office of the Provost’s website. In accordance with the outdated beliefs that investment returns and inflation are roughly equal to 8.25 percent and 3 percent, respectively, Yale deploys the spending rule with the claimed goal of maintaining the endowment’s value over time. Yet the endowment continues to grow, and billions of dollars’ worth are board-designated, meaning their use is functionally unrestricted.

In reality, Yale makes much higher than 8.25 percent returns — this year, an astounding 40.2 percent — and inflation is lower than three percent. This results in continual endowment hoarding. Yale violates its own rules with its austerity, and its doing so is unconscionable. Yale has no justification for its greed.

As students, we are disgusted by the University’s policies, and we plan to continue to force Yale to recognize the harm and destruction caused by its actions. The Endowment Justice Coalition is organizing a protest to express our anger at Yale.

On Nov. 5, we call on students to gather at Beinecke Plaza, the site of the shantytown occupations of apartheid divestment, to once again try to force Yale to understand that this cannot continue.

That it cannot continue to invest in suffering.

LUMISA BISTA is a sophomore in Grace Hopper College. Contact her at lumisa.bista@yale.edu .

GARRETT FRYE-MASON is a junior in Jonathan Edwards College.

Contact him at garrett.frye-mason@yale.edu .

GUEST COLUMNIST BRIAN ZHANG

A Letter to My Fellow Yalies B

elonging. It is the one thing we always look for no matter where we are, who we are with. We looked for it on the first day of college as we nervously scanned the dining halls for someone to sit with, and we will look for it yet again when we leave Yale.

Some of us will find it through luck and others give it our all, but I think we can all agree that it’s the absolute sweetest when we feel like we belong. In that loud banging at the door when an a cappella group finally comes to tap us. At 2 a.m. talking with that one suitemate we previously never seemed to click with. Those Zoom mukbangs when we pretended to be ASMR artists.

More often than not, however, we put up this self-image that we are struggling to fit in when we aren’t. Finding belonging becomes a marathon race, and in our heads the finish line is the equivalent of having as many connections as possible. Always having something to do, someone to be with every moment of every day. We burn out when we realize that it’s not doable, and eventually, we find ourselves running alone in that marathon. It’s pouring rain and no one can make out our cries for help.

Frustrated, we unintentionally project this self judgment onto others. If there’s one thing I always hear popping up in conversations these past two months, it’s about who should belong at Yale in the first place. About who deserves to be here most and how it’s unfair that we work harder than others, only to have a more difficult time doing well, socially or otherwise.

We start creating cookie-cutter images of our peers’ identities, whispering to friends that this guy is the popular recruited athlete.

That one is another QuestBridge

student on a full ride who doesn’t need to worry about her meal plans. Here comes the son of that one famous CEO, and over there is the international friend group that goes on a retreat every weekend.

The truth is, until we realize that no one deserves to be here any more or any less than every other person, we will never truly belong. You, me, him, her and them — we aren’t niches to be carved out, boxes to be checked off, labels to be peeled and slapped onto our foreheads for everyone to see. At the end of the day, we’re all Yalies, and beyond that, we’re all college students struggling to finish that long overdue problem set while cleaning up spilt ramen.

We’re people with stories. People who deserve a second chance.

We’re all lost — even if it feels like everyone else knows what they’re doing — and the day we finally know where we’re headed is the day we go out of our way to make others feel belonged.

True, we all gravitate toward certain people, and we’ll never get to meet every person at Yale, but we shouldn’t use either as grounds for how we choose to take care of, reach out to and love the people around us. Our journey to finding belonging should not be set on building ourselves a particular image, and it should not be intentionally wired so that we can achieve XYZ or meet ABC people in the future. There is nothing wrong with thinking ahead, but only when we stop obsessing with the future can we start living in the present, start appreciating the communities we would have never found if we had chosen to confine ourselves to preconceived labels.

Maybe these communities are the ones we already have. The communities that got us to where

we are today and where we will be tomorrow, but which we took for granted in our pursuit for “more.”

As Yalies, ignoring “more” is hard.

It takes a lot to put our foot down and settle for enough, even if we have it all.

Yet, there is no “more” to belonging than remembering that one snowy school day when you turned around and saw Mom still standing by the door, watching to make sure that you crossed the first street safely. There is no “more” to belonging than realizing that you’re going to miss your cousin’s annoying laugh more than you thought you would. And there is no “more” to belonging than passing by your ex boyfriend’s favorite pizza place, smelling his cologne in the aroma — and being grateful that your relationship happened in the first place. Belonging is apologizing to ourselves because we do belong and we need to stop saying that we don’t. People love us, damn it, and we’ll do the world a favor by loving ourselves, too.

Sometimes, it’s not that we’re running alone in a thunderstorm.

We are so set on achieving the nonexistent finish line we forget that there are people on the bleachers screaming out our names. In the rain, we can’t see that there are other runners in the same situation as ourselves — runners who are more than competitors with different numbers on their jerseys, who are there to help us up if we were to slip and fall. Runners on our team and runners we should make our friends.

Yale is challenging in more ways than one, but we all deserve to be here. Let’s make belonging something that everyone can feel.

BRIAN ZHANG is a first-year in Davenport College. Contact him at brian.zhang@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 3

NEWS

“I have always been interested in the paranormal and afterlife, everything from ghosts to angels. I think that everyone has that curiosity of the great unknown.” HILARY DUFF AMERICAN ACTRESS

Good Life Center opens in Schwarzman

BY LUCY HODGMAN STAFF REPORTER The Good Life Center will continue to offer students stress-management strategies and quiet spaces to unwind in a new larger location on the second floor of the Schwarzman Center.

The new space, which opened on Oct. 25, will allow the Center to expand beyond its original Silliman College location, which will remain open. The new location will carry out the student wellness center’s mission of improving wellbeing by providing space for meditation, rest and gratitude.

“I love that we’re able to have a prominent space on campus that’s really focused on students protecting their own mental health — that gives students access to free services and practices that we know based on research are scientifically known to reduce feelings of anxiety and depression,” Head of Silliman College and Good Life Center founder Laurie Santos wrote in an email to the News.

Santos added that spaces like the Good Life Center, alongside increased funding for Yale’s Mental Health and Counseling department, will help the University better serve students by enabling them to “flourish emotionally as well as academically.”

Santos founded the Good Life Center in September 2018 in its original space — located on the fourth floor of Byers Hall in Silliman College. Although the Silliman location will remain open, much of the Good Life Center pro-

gramming will be shifted to the new Schwarzman space.

The expanded Good Life Center is currently open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Good Life Center programming scheduled during those hours will be held in the Schwarzman Center space, while programming that occurs after 5 p.m. or on weekends will be held in the Silliman space. Alexa Vaghenas, who manages Good Life Center programming and helped oversee the expansion, said that the Center hopes to expand hours of operation at Schwarzman in the future.

“The Good Life Center at Schwarzman is a great example of the Schwarzman Center’s core purpose of convening people across schools, disciplines, and communities, to promote collaboration, wellness, and belonging,” executive director of the Schwarzman Center Garth Ross wrote in an email to the News.

“I’m grateful we’re able to work in partnership with Dr. Laurie Santos, Alexa Vaghenas, and the Good Life Center community to build on the success of the Good Life Center at Silliman in a space designed to engage and support all of Yale.”

The new space features several lounge areas, a “Gratitude Room” filled with activities intended to help students express thanks and a dedicated “Nap Room” complete with bean bag chairs, ear plugs and eye masks. The space will also host wellbeing programming, including classes about mental and physical education.

According to Vaghenas, the expansion was motivated in part

by accessibility concerns from graduate and professional students. Students without keycard access to Silliman — such as those who attend the graduate and professional schools — need to obtain temporary gate access or use the intercom to enter the original Good Life Center space.

“Accessibility to all people on campus is a core component of our mission, so we’re grateful to be opening up a location in the Schwarzman Center that is accessible to all students,” Vaghenas told the News.

Vaghenas’ central focus in designing the expanded Good Life Center was replicating elements that worked in the original space while remaining open to possibilities for change in the Schwarzman Center. Vaghenas told the News that she took inspiration from the natural light in the new space, incorporating greenery and ambient soundscapes that replicate natural settings.

For Iris Li ’24, the expansion of the Good Life Center physically emphasizes the importance of prioritizing student wellbeing.

“I like to use the Good Life Center as a space of recentering,” Li said. “I think the dedication of quiet study rooms and nap rooms near each other encourage Yale students to combat ideas of being well-rested and succeeding academically as mutually exclusive.

They shouldn’t be!”

Li routinely uses the Silliman location of the Good Life Center as both a study spot and a place to relax from everyday campus life.

YULIIA ZHUKOVETS/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

On Oct. 25, the Good Life Center opened an expanded location. The Silliman College location will remain open.

Shruti Parthasarathy ’24 told the News that the Good Life Center expansion is exciting not only because it makes student wellness more accessible, but also because it contributes to the destigmatization of mental health care at Yale.

“I think it is imperative to have places on campus such as the Good Life Center because it helps embody a larger movement

of destigmatizing mental health and creates a safe environment for people to explore their mindbody connection and ultimately enhance their state of being,” Parthasarathy said.

The Schwarzman Center is located at 168 Grove St. Contact LUCY HODGMAN at lucy.hodgman@yale.edu .

Elicker, Carlson spar in first public faceoff

ZOE BERG AND ISAAC YU/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The face-off saw the two candidates clash on issues ranging from climate policy to police presence.

BY SYLVAN LEBRUN STAFF REPORTER Incumbent mayoral candidate Justin Elicker and Republican opponent John Carlson met publicly for the first time on Tuesday for an hour-long debate at New Haven’s Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School. The candidates clashed on issues ranging from climate policy to police presence in the city.

The debate questions, which were delivered by a moderating panel of representatives from local media outlets, covered topics including mask and vaccine mandates, public education reform, affordable housing and the recent rise in violent crime. Over the course of the night, Carlson accused the mayor of hypocrisy and inaction, while Elicker defended his administration’s progress over the past two years. Carlson largely focused his remarks on his background as an educator and his hopes for a more aggressive police presence in the city. “[Elicker] talks the talk, but he doesn’t walk the walk,” Carlson said twice during the debate.

The debate was sponsored by the Shubert Theater, local media organizations and the New Haven Democracy Fund, the city’s public financing program that holds participating candidates to specific fundraising limits and campaign guidelines. Both Elicker and Carlson have taken part in this program. Democracy Fund rules require that the two candidates meet for at least one public debate.

The panel of reporters selected to moderate the debate read a combination of original and submitted questions directed to each candidate.

Paul Bass, editor of the New Haven Independent and moderator of the debate, said that sponsoring these mayoral debates had always been important to his organization as a way to help residents “take the election to be an opportunity to hear different visions for how to run the city.”

Carlson is a public school teacher who was elected as chair of the local Republican party last year, receiving the GOP mayoral nomination this summer. At one point during the debate, Michelle Turner, a reporter with WSME radio and Inner-City News, asked Carlson how he plans to sway the city’s largely Democratic voters to vote for him.

“Don’t be politically prejudiced, just like you wouldn’t judge someone by the color of their skin, don’t judge them by the name of their party,” Carlson said. “What you’re voting for, you’re voting for education, you’re voting for public safety, you’re voting for accountability, all things you don’t currently have.”

Elicker shot back at Carlson’s comparison of political party and race, which was met with applause.

He then said he found it hard to believe that people would “feel proud associating themselves with [the Republican] party” after the Capitol riots in January, the Trump presidency and the conservative resistance to masks and vaccines.

The city’s mask mandates and “vaccine or test” requirements for

city employees were a brief topic of debate on Tuesday night. Carlson said that, although he believes that masks and vaccines work, he thinks that both should be optional instead of forced.

Throughout the night, the candidates were asked a number of questions about their differing responses to the recent rise in crime in the city. While still supporting a multi-pronged policy of community uplift alongside enforcement, Elicker has recently taken a harder stance on gun violence.

Carlson said that the city “had not done enough” to increase police presence in the city, partially blaming police accountability bills for the rise in crime. Elicker denied a past accusation by Carlson that democrats like the mayor are “handcuffing” the police, citing his plans to increase officers on walking beats and direct more resources to the police department.

“Nobody is handcuffing the police,” Elicker said. “We have a proposal in front of the Board of Alders to dramatically increase the number of cameras, expand ShotSpotter… we’ve increased the number of street outreach workers, we’re increasing the number of youth engagement workers. We’ve also invested in the community by opening a re-entry center.”

Another topic of debate was the structure and funding of the Board of Education, an issue that has been a cornerstone of Carlson’s campaign due to his background as a public school teacher.

Carlson said the city needs to improve test scores in math and

reading, and that more funds need to be invested into classroom resources and hiring capable teachers, suggesting that this money could be directed through “cuts at the top” of the Board of Education. Specifically, he stated that the NHPS does not need to pay for a publicist or assistant superintendents.

Norma Rodriguez Reyes, publisher of La Voz Hispana, brought up a lack of diversity on the board.

“Latinos are the largest group of students and then weighed in the public school system, yet they’re deeply underrepresented in the Board of Education,” she said.

“Why is that? And what will you do to fix it?”

Elicker responded in Spanish that it is important to increase representation of the Latino community both on the board and across the city. He also later shared that his single appointee to the board during his term had been Latino.

Carlson, who first said to the audience, “raise your hands if you understood what he said,” attacked Elicker for hypocrisy in his claims to value diversity. He then referenced an earlier question by the New Haven Independent’s Paul Bass, in which it was stated that none of the top five appointed positions at City Hall are held by a Black or Hispanic resident.

“Again, he talks the talk but he doesn’t walk the walk,” Carlson said. “His education system… just like his administration, is not diverse. So we do need to hire more teachers of different ethnicities, of different countries. Teachers should reflect the population, just like the police department, just like City Hall.”

Another clash between the candidates was over the issue of affordable housing, which Elicker said has been central to his goals.

He shared his history of advocacy for expanded housing options on both a city and state level, mentioning the recent bill passed in the Board of Alders that will make it easier for small homeowners to create Accessory Dwelling Units — affordable apartments usually built in attics or garages.

Carlson said that he had “fought against” this new legislation in the Hill neighborhood, claiming that it will make the area unsafe and congested while also making parking more difficult.

“We should not be allowing parking to drive whether or not people actually have housing in this city,” Elicker shot back.

Towards the end of the debate, the focus shifted primarily to climate policy, with the candidates fielding questions on everything

from gas-powered leaf blowers to bike infrastructure.

Carlson lambasted Elicker for his “ironic” claims of commitment to environmental action, claiming that he had “opened the Dollar Store in New Haven” — a reference to the $1 payments involved in the lease of Tweed Airport and sale of Kensington Park to affordable housing developers.

Further, Carlson criticized the expansion of Tweed Airport as a future cause of air pollution and health issues among city residents.

“The fact of the matter is that airplanes do pollute,” Elicker responded. “But it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have a viable airport that is dramatically going to improve the economy for all of New Haven...the city is doing a lot to address climate... we’re starting to electrify municipal buildings, a senior center and several fire stations.”

After time was formally called on the debate, local high school student Dave Cruz-Bustamante, who is a member of Citywide Youth Coalition and the founder of Socialist Neighborhood Action and Care Corps, stood up in the crowd to address the candidates on stage.

“We’re talking about the climate crisis, which is one of the most existential threats that we face in the country right now, but it sounds like the words and the sentences that we’re hearing are just a little bit of fluff to make your ticket look better,” Cruz-Bustamante said. “I need to see what change y’all would implement if elected as mayor, to make sure that our climate crisis is solved in a holistic way.”

In response to Cruz-Bustamante’s question, Carlson said that he wanted to reduce littering and increase recycling incentives, before again attacking Elicker for passing the Tweed expansion. He also claimed to be part of “several environmental organizations.”

Elicker said that there is a “much bigger picture” of his climate action plan than just the issue of Tweed, which includes “creating an office of climate and sustainability” and using American Rescue Plan funds to invest in energy efficiency programs. Meanwhile, Cruz-Bustamante’s friends and fellow Citywide Youth Coalition members sat in the crowd shaking their heads at the candidates’ responses.

“It’s not fluff,” Elicker said to Cruz-Bustamante. “I think we care about these issues.”

The 2021 mayoral election will take place on Tuesday, Nov 2.

Contact SYLVAN LEBRUN at sylvan.lebrun@yale.edu .

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

"I love having my ghosts, and I love having my memories."

DEBBIE REYNOLDS AMERICAN ACTRESS

In diversity push, Yale College to expand aid

YALE DAILY NEWS

Yale College overhauls its student share, international tax rate and child care costs.

AID FROM PAGE 1 “Yale is a school, and if you go to a school, you go there to learn, and grow, and have fun.” Sammy Landino ’21, who directed the Yale College Council Financial Aid Task Force from 2018-21, wrote in an email to the News. “But hitting students with costs that they have to find employment to earn money to repay takes away their chance to make the most of the school.”

These reforms came from the fourth round of recommendations made by the Financial Aid Working Group, a group founded by former Provost Benjamin Polak in 2015. The working group reviews and recommends financial aid policy changes.

Members include the University Provost Scott Strobel, Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah

Quinlan and Director of Undergraduate Financial Aid Scott Wallace-Juedes among others.

The YCC Financial Aid Task Force, which collaborates with Quinlan and Wallace-Juedes to brainstorm strategies to increase financial equity on campus, also worked with the Financial Aid Working Group in proposing these changes.

The Student Share According to Landino, reducing the student share was the largest priority of his tenure, although the group also focused on healthcare coverage and home equity evaluations. After Princeton University announced in 2019 the same student share elimination that he and other Yalies were calling for, Landino said his goal seemed much more feasible.

In 2020, Yale capped the student share at $3,700 for students

at the highest level of financial need, thereby eliminating the so-called student income contribution for this group. Students receiving less aid still had to pitch in $4,450 for their first year and $5,950 for each following year.

Now, Yalies receiving needbased aid will only have to account for books, laundry and other personal expenses, which could amount to less than the $3,700 dollar estimate. This marks a 34 percent decrease in cost of attendance, which amounts to about $7,500 over the course of four years, Wallace-Juedes claimed.

The University invested about $3 million into this accessibility initiative. Landino emphasized that Yale, whose endowment soared to $42.3 billion this year, has the funds and the responsibility to increase financial accessibility.

He and Yale administrators agreed that the policy may increase socioeconomic diversity at Yale and limit student loans.

“In addition to reducing costs and increasing Yale scholarship grants for current students, the reduction in the student share will help us communicate Yale’s commitment to affordability with prospective students,” Quinlan said. “The change simplifies the financial aid award and helps us continue conveying a clear message to all students: if you are admitted, cost will not be a barrier for your family.”

Student activists, like those in Students Unite Now, have been advocating for this policy change for at least a decade.

YCC Financial Aid Task Force Director Angela Avonce ’22 joined the task force as a first year and now leads the group as a senior.

She highlighted that as a first-generation, low-income student, she understands that the FGLI community is especially affected by Yale’s financial aid policies.

“Student testimonials are powerful,” Avonce said. “Students have talked about the student income contribution’s negative impact on their academics and mental health in town halls, YDN articles, Facebook posts, group meetings, group chats. … It's difficult for FGLI students to have a seat at the table, and even more rare for FGLI students to be one of the leading voices at the table. It's an opportunity I'm very grateful for.”

International Student Equity and Child Care Support Unlike the diminished student share, the other two amendments to Yale’s financial aid policy will take effect immediately.

Though Yale has offered full needbased aid for international students since 2001, the students must pay United States taxes on all scholarship money that exceeds their cost of tuition — even if that money was meant to pay for room and board, school supplies or other academic expenses.

Yale previously financed this marginal tax for an international student’s first two semesters in New Haven. But with the new policy, the University will cover all eight semesters.

According to Mark Dunn, director of outreach and communications at the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, this expansion will make financing smoother for international Elis and help them navigate the U.S. tax system. He attributed the change to the YCC task force’s advocacy efforts.

Yale will also subsidize child care costs for students with dependent children.

Though the policy does not directly target Eli Whitney students, that group is the most likely to benefit. About a quarter of Eli Whitney students have children who are under 18, according to Dunn. The Eli Whitney Advisory Committee — a group consisting of faculty, Dean’s Office administrators and Eli Whitney students who advocate for the group — called for this expansion.

The subsidy grants almost $5,000 per year to students with at least one child under 13. Students will receive an additional $1,000 per year for each child under the age of six.

Students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences are eligible for the same subsidy.

“We hope that adding dependent child care support will help those Yale College students caring for children [to] engage more fully in the undergraduate experience, and we hope that the tax support for international students will help simplify their finances and prevent surprise bills from the IRS,” Dunn said.

International students and students with dependents will receive this funding as part of their financial aid awards for the fall 2021 semester.

Avonce said there is still more work to be done, but she is proud of what Yale students and administrators have accomplished so far.

“Yale's financial aid policies aren't perfect; there's always going to be room for improvement,” she said.

“But every time there is a new reform, a victory — big or small — I think it is worth celebrating.”

Yale raised the threshold for the zero-dollar parent share to $75,000 in 2020.

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

Dean Vermund turned down non-standard three-year contract VERMUND FROM PAGE 1 included no mention of his attenuated contract offer. In all other cases, Yale’s graduate and professional school deans are renewed for five-year contracts or not asked to continue in the role. On Friday, University Provost Scott Strobel and Yale School of Medicine Dean Nancy Brown hosted a Zoom meeting open to the YSPH community. But the meeting was quickly derailed by faculty who pressed Strobel and Brown on the causes behind Vermund’s departure, according to three meeting attendees.

“It is not credible that someone who cut his teeth caring for AIDS babies in the burned out Bronx in the ’80s would cut and run in another pandemic,” Gregg Gonsalves ’11 GRD ’17, associate professor of epidemiology, wrote in the chat section of the Zoom meeting, according to screenshots obtained by the News. “It is quite credible that as part of a “cleaning house” at the med school Sten was not offered a new full term, as many other heads have rolled at the med school over the past 18 months.”

During the meeting, a number of faculty members accused Strobel and Brown of “pushing [Vermund] out,” according to two School of Public Health affiliates who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fears over job security.

Responding to the accusations, Brown explained on the Zoom call that administrators had sent out a survey to all YSPH faculty and staff and, having reviewed the results, chose to offer Vermund only a threeyear contract, as opposed to the standard five-year contract for a dean.

The School of Public Health is one of two University schools that is structured within another school, meaning that Vermund reports to Brown, while other Yale deans report directly to Strobel.

The School is currently in the midst of multiple department chair searches, a re-accreditation process and the University has embarked on a major fundraising push, Gonsalves wrote in an email to the News. “Was this really the time to leave YSPH without a leader?” he wrote.

“There is nothing here that suggests to me that Sten Vermund stepped down,” said A. David Paltiel, professor of public health and management. “This was simply a case of his not being renewed.”

He added that there were many people at the meeting who “were very angry” about the decision not to renew Vermund’s contract.

In an email to the News, Vermund spoke of his excitement to return to teaching and declined to comment further on the circumstances regarding his departure.

“I am stepping down to concentrate on my research in prevention and control of infectious diseases, teaching in our onsite and online graduate courses, and contributing to the community service mission of YSPH,” Vermund wrote.

Brown did not respond to the News’ inquiries regarding Vermund’s departure.

“Yale School of Medicine values our close partnership with Yale School of Public Health and never more so than after the last 18 months,” Brown wrote in an email to the News. “We share many faculty members and collaborate extensively. YSM benefits when YSPH is strong.”

Howard Forman, School of Public Health professor, said that Vermund’s shorter contract offer seemed like a punishment for the dean.

“The problem when you offer somebody a short term, is you’re basically holding their feet to the fire for some reason… [it’s] sort of like probationary and it shows that there’s not a full throated support,” Forman said.

Forman added that the process regarding Vermund’s resignation was unusual and that Vermund’s decision seemed “sudden” and “unexpected. In standard dean turnover processes, Forman said, there is a multi-month procedure that begins with University leadership announcing that they are looking for a new dean and soliciting a wide array of faculty input.

He further added that it is highly unusual for a dean to leave after just one term, especially one who is as popular as Vermund.

“I do know that as of a few weeks ago… in all of our conversations, he was deeply committed to advancing the school,” Forman said. “I cannot remember a dean stepping down when there was so much support for him and where nobody had actually reached out to the people most affected to get feedback before it happened. So it is an unusual situation. And I do think the University is a lesser university for removing him at this point.”

Albert Ko, a professor at the School of Public Health, said that he views Vermund’s departure as a shame, and attributed the decision to the University.

“All I can say is many of us, including myself, would have looked forward to having Dean Vermund as our Dean for the next five years,” Ko said. “And… this was not his decision not to continue. It was the decision of the University.”

Gonsalves wrote in an email to the News that University leadership has failed to properly articulate the future of the School of Public Health.

He further said that the future of the School of Public Health has broad implications for the rest of the country, given its role in fighting the pandemic.

“For the past few months they have brazenly offered us platitudes about the importance of public health at this university, which is in stark contrast to years of neglect of the school, even in the midst [of] the worst pandemic in over a century,” Gonsalves said.

Paltiel similarly questioned what the School’s direction would be over the coming years. He questioned who would chair the search for Vermund’s replacement, and whether the person would be in a position to search for a national figure, rather than an “insider caretaker.”

In the announcement of Vermund’s stepping down, Salovey wrote that he will form an advisory committee to aid with the search for a new dean, which will “seek broad input from School of Public Health faculty, students, staff, and alumni.” He further added that the university will retain an search firm to support the process.

JESSIE CHEUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Allegations about the circumstances of Vermund's departure were aired on a Zoom call about the YSPH community last Friday.

Forman added that, in his opinion, there is “absolutely nothing” that could explain Vermund’s sudden departure. If anything, Forman said, the opposite should be the case, with the University renewing Vermund’s contract and “praying” that he stays as dean.

During the pandemic, the School has proven itself a major player in fighting COVID-19. Most notably, scientists at the YSPH developed SalivaDirect, a COVID-19 testing mechanism used around the country and by the NBA. Faculty at the YSPH have also aided in informing the public and the government in navigating the country through the pandemic. During the Friday meeting, Gonsalves wrote that the school was doing well by all metrics, notwithstanding finances.

The School of Public Health has long faced significant financial shortfalls, which were exacerbated by the pandemic and sometimes occupied researchers in writing grants instead of studying COVID19. According to Friday’s meeting, the school is in $2.6 million of debt this year alone.

“We balanced the budget a few years ago, but have not been able to keep revenues above expenditures,” Vermund wrote in an email to the News. “To ensure affordability of a YSPH education for our students, we plow much of our tuition money back into scholarships since our endowment only funds 13% of our operating budget, the lowest of any school at Yale by far.”

Melinda Irwin, YSPH Deputy Dean, said that in order to restore their finances, the School will likely need to rely on “very large gifts” or other donations.

Jackson Higginbottom, a program administrator within the School of Public Health, said that the School needs more money from the central University. The School of Public Health is one of the University’s seven self-supporting schools, which means that it pays the central University to use the Yale name and facilities. YSPH is one of the least well-endowed schools at Yale. As of last December, the school had only 0.6 percent of Yale’s endowment.

“The University needs to put more money into the School of Public Health, because that’s the only way we’re going to continue to be a top school in the nation,” Higginbottom said.

Brown told the News that Yale School of Medicine financially supports the School by covering its annual budget deficit and funding certain research expenses. But Paltiel said that during Friday’s meeting, one attendee noted that $2.5 million was a relatively small sum for the School of Medicine to cover.

“The endowment went up $11 billion, and the medical school is paying $30 million in stolen iPads,” he said.

Vermund’s term as dean of Yale School of Public Health began on Feb. 1, 2017.

Contact PHILIP MOUSAVIZADEH at philip.mousavizadeh@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

FROM THE FRONT

"I don't believe in ghosts."

RYAN GOSLING AMERICAN ACTOR

College gates closed to the Crimson

DAVID ZHENG/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Harvard students were told of the policy in an email from their administration; Yale students have yet to receive an official communication.

THE GAME FROM PAGE 1 In previous years, Harvard students were permitted to stay in the common rooms of Yale’s residential colleges over the weekend of the game on a first-come, first-serve sign-up basis. The arrangement allowed students to partake in night-before traditions like Toad’s Place’s annual Yale-Harvard night.

Associate Vice President of Student Engagement Burgwell Howard wrote in an email to the News that while planning for the game typically begins early in the fall semester, preparations have been impacted by the evolving state of the pandemic.

Administrators at Yale and Harvard have been in talks to determine “the safest ways to facilitate this sporting event and the related gatherings for many students, fans and alumni from both institutions,” he wrote.

According to Howard, the decision not to host overnight guests from Harvard on Yale’s campus came in early October as a mutual agreement between the two schools.

The choice was influenced by the

nationwide surge in the Delta variant in September, Howard wrote.

According to Jordi Bertrán Ramírez ’24, the Yale College Council health and safety policy director, YCC leaders were not informed of the decision prior to Harvard’s announcement.

“We found out along with everyone else, which has made it harder for us to advocate on behalf of students,” Bertrán Ramírez said.

While the decision not to permit Harvard students to stay in the dorms might be disappointing to Yale students, Bertrán Ramírez said, it is ultimately a decision that prioritizes the health and safety of Yale students, faculty and staff.

The University’s ability to safely host audiences at live performing arts events and sporting events — and, indeed, the ability to invite Yale alumni and Harvard students to attend the game itself — has been contingent on maintaining low case rates, Bertrán Ramírez noted. He added that he hopes the policy will be another step towards a gradual return to normal campus life.

Still, the policy has led some students to seek alternate arrangements. Emma McKinney ’23 said

that she is planning on hosting four or five students in her off-campus apartment over the weekend of the game — some young alumni and some Harvard students. McKinney said that she and other off-campus friends are hosting more people in their apartments than originally anticipated as a result of the policy change.

“I’m concerned that this policy will have a disproportionate effect on either lower-income Harvard students or those without a lot of Yale friends, as at that point the only option is to book an Airbnb or hotel,” McKinney said. “I’ve heard from friends visiting for the Game that these places book out a long time in advance and since this policy was only recently announced, the few options left could very well be prohibitively expensive for many students.”

Bertrán Ramírez echoed the sentiment, saying that while they “[commended]” the University for trying to keep the Yale community safe, the policy is nevertheless disadvantageous to many Harvard students. Students without the “financial means or social networks” to book a hotel or stay with off-cam-

pus Yale friends will be “unable to participate in the same festivities as those who do,” they said.

According to Chun, all students should receive the same level of support, “regardless of income,” because Harvard is planning on its students returning to Cambridge after the game on Saturday evening.

However, according to the Oct. 21 email from Harvard’s student engagement office, the number of event tickets will significantly outstrip the number of shuttle bus tickets available to transport Harvard students to and from New Haven on that Saturday. A substantial number of Harvard students will therefore likely find themselves forced to find alternate transportation — such as a Zipcar, train or Uber — and pay for it out-of-pocket.

Harvard’s email did not indicate any plans to financially support students for whom finding alternate transportation was cost-prohibitive.

While Howard noted that fans have the individual liberty to book local hotels or Airbnbs for the weekend, he stressed that neither university recommended doing so, nor will either school participate in organizing lodging arrangements.

For off-campus students planning to host Harvard guests, Howard wrote, he urged caution. Howard encouraged students hosting guests to confirm their vaccination status, mask indoors and keep the windows open.

Chun echoed Howard’s sentiments about off-campus guests and safety practices, adding that Yale and Harvard students who receive positive COVID-19 test results in proximity to the weekend should follow instructions regarding quarantine and isolation.

Howard said that the University is still expecting a “strong turnout” of Yale and Harvard fans at the game. He also acknowledged that the crowd may not be as big as in previous years.

“We recognize that some fans may not wish to gather with a large crowd in-person this year, and may choose to gather in smaller groups and watch the televised event,” Howard wrote.

In 2019, Yale rallied from a 17-point deficit in the fourth quarter to beat Harvard 50–43 in double overtime.

Contact OLIVIA TUCKER at olivia.tucker@yale.edu .

FAS Senate calls for Yale to institute academic freedom safeguards SENATE FROM PAGE 1 Horsley did not name the professor. Still, senators unanimously passed the resolution to increase University-wide transparency around academic freedom.

“It was clear that the faculty were concerned about academic freedom,” Horsley told the News. “We, as the senate, wanted to make sure that the University provides transparency and establishes principles for protection of academic freedom that are clear to faculty and anyone else that might interact with the faculty and try to interfere with academic freedom.”

The resolution asserts that donor influence on specific curricula, faculty hiring and the direction of research may pose “threats” to academic freedom and notes that “events in recent years” have raised concerns about donor influence on faculty activities. It also claims that the Faculty Handbook “lacks specific policies to protect academic freedom from donor influence” and directs administrators to incorporate such policies into the handbook.

University spokesperson Karen Peart did not comment on the resolution, but pointed to the webpage of the University’s current $7 billion fundraising campaign, which states that only gifts that “do not infringe academic freedom” are accepted.

“The University fully shares the FAS Senate’s desire to uphold academic freedom,” Peart wrote to the News.

Professor of law and political science Akhil Amar ’80 LAW ’84, who was invited to speak at the meeting about the relationship between academic freedom and the First Amendment, said that Yale’s current discussions around academic freedom mirror discourse from the past.

“I urged that just as the faculty 50 years ago took a leading role in defining the first principles in the context of the disputes of that era, so too now, the faculty should play a leading role in trying to think about issues of academic freedom implicated by recent developments,” Amar said.

Amar pointed to the 1975 Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression at Yale, commonly referred to as the Woodward Report. In his 2014 first-year address, Salovey lauded the report, which was authored in response to outcry over several canceled speaking engagements with controversial figures like George Wallace and William Shockley.

University lawyers, however, recently argued in Bandy Lee’s MED ’94 DIV ’95 free speech lawsuit that Yale is not contractually obligated to the report, and it is predominantly a “statement of principles.” Lee’s lawyers claim

that she was fired from her faculty post at the School of Medicine because of a tweet she wrote saying Alan Dershowitz LAW ’62 and other Trump supporters have “shared psychosis.”

Gendler told the News that academic freedom is “foundational” to the University’s mission and that Yale is “uncompromising” in its commitment to supporting such freedom.

Still, in contrast to the capital campaign policies, Yale’s University-wide gift policies do not currently mention the protection of academic freedom explicitly, and do allow donors to make certain restrictions on the spending of gifts. The policies do state that gifts must not “contradict” the University’s mission.

Several other universities have policies that contain language concerning academic freedom.

Horsley pointed specifically to George Mason University in Virginia, which was sued in 2019 for creating gift agreements that gave donors influence over faculty affairs and now has several clauses explicitly protecting academic freedoms in its policies.

Harvard’s policy guide explicitly names academic freedom as a “broad consideration” over gifting terms; the University of North Carolina requires that faculty are consulted about the effects of a gift on academic curriculum during the gift accep-

tance process. Stanford University’s faculty handbook contains a formal process for faculty to appeal decisions they deem violations of academic freedom.

Meanwhile, Brown’s policy defines gifts as donations “for which nothing in return is promised, expected, implied or forthcoming to the donor.”

Gendler told the News she is pleased that the University has made explicit commitments to academic freedom in the recent capital campaign.

Horsley began her year-long term as FAS Senate chair in September.

Contact ISAAC YU at isaac.yu@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS

Horsley began her year-long team as FAS Senate chair in September.

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Yale Health reminds students to get their mandatory flu shots

BY BRANDON WU CONTRIBUTING REPORTER As the “Yale Plague” spread this past month, University health officials have urged Yale community members to get a flu shot — a mandatory component of the Yale Community Compact.

As flu season approaches, University and Yale Health administrators have been urging students and the broader campus community to get their free flu shots as soon as possible. In frequent University-wide emails, officials have also reminded students that this is a tenet of the community compact they signed prior to arriving on campus. On Tuesday, preliminary reports on flu shot compliance will be shared with leadership only, according to Kathleen Omollo, Director of Health Strategy and Portfolio Management at Yale Health.

After, the University will distribute the reports and begin notifying noncompliant students. “[Flu shots] are an important part of the toolbox for influenza, and these vaccines have an effectiveness which varies each year,” said Albert Ko, the Raj and Indra Nooyi professor of public health and professor of epidemiology. “It’s always good to get it early. In order to get immunity it takes probably up to one month to get peak immunity after the shot.”

Ko also noted a second reason to get the flu shot as early as possible, especially this year, is because the epidemiology community can not predict the upcoming flu season’s severity or when strains of influenza will pop up. He said that currently, the Yale community has seen a lot of respiratory illnesses that come out of the typical winter season, such as the “Yale Plague” and also another illness, respiratory syncytial virus, which primarily affects children. Getting the vaccine would be a smart decision since the influenza season may be more unpredictable than usual, according to Ko. Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, expressed similar sentiments. He emphasized the importance of getting flu shots as early as possible so that students can be prepared for flu season once it begins in the coming months.

“In a pandemic year, things are a bit uncertain. Not a lot of people’s immune system saw a flu virus last year because of distancing,” said Omer. “So there is this concern that there may be more pockets of vulnerability, so therefore, taking it now would be a really good idea.”

Students can either schedule an appointment for their flu shot at Yale Health’s website or walk in to Yale Health, Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., to receive their vaccine.

In addition, Yale administration has reminded students in frequent emails that taking the flu shot was a part of the community compact that they signed prior to arriving on campus. After taking the flu shot, students must register their vaccination information into the Health and Safety Database. To request an exemption for the flu vaccine requirement, students must complete an influenza vaccination medical or religious waiver form. While there is no specified date, the compact reads, “I will obtain the current flu vaccine as soon as it is available.”

Many students who have already taken the flu shot at Yale Health said that they had a positive experience, noting the system’s streamlined and straightforward process for vaccinations.

“I got my flu shot at Yale Health, and it was super easy,” Kevin Xiao ’23 said. “From scheduling a week in advance to actually getting the shot, I was done in no more than 10 minutes. Honestly, walking from [Pauli Murray College] to Yale Health took longer than getting the shot.”

Two other students echoed Xiao’s flu shot experience as being quick and seamless.

Students who live farther from Yale Health than Murray also had an easy process with vaccinations.

“My experience was straightforward,” Karen Lin ’24 said. “I just walked into Yale Health where there were flu shot stations.”

Lin also shared that she recommends other students to also get their flu shots, as it is an effective way to combat the flu.

Some students also shared they had a very amiable experience with the Yale Health vaccination team.

“I had a great conversation with my nurse about the music she was playing in her office,” added Sarah Wang ’24.

One student who has not yet taken the flu shot pointed to his busy schedules as the reason behind the delay, but said he planned to get it.

“There’s no real reason I haven’t gotten the shot yet, I’ve just been busy with midterms,” said Krishna Dasari ’24. “I plan to get it as soon as possible.”

Both Ko and Omer said that if students have any concerns or questions and want to speak to someone, they should contact Yale Health.

As of Oct. 17, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists Connecticut as minimal risk on the Influenza-Like Illness Activity Indicator.

Contact BRANDON WU at brandon.wu@yale.edu .

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

As the number of respiratory illness cases increase on campus, Yale Health reminds students to get their flu shot.

Looking forward: School of Public Health professors weigh in on the future of the pandemic

BY AISLINN KINSELLA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER In conversations with the News, four experts in epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health analyzed the COVID-19 pandemic and how the country can be better suited to face the next public health crisis.

After nearly two years of life upended by the coronavirus pandemic, four of Yale’s public health experts analyzed lessons learned to end the current pandemic and prevent the next one.

Looking to the future, each expert explained that ensuring equitable distribution of vaccines while battling misinformation is of the utmost importance for global health. Akiko Iwasaki, professor of epidemiology and immunobiology, said that Yale as an institution handled vaccinations well. The University instituted a mandate for students, faculty, staff and postdoctoral trainees. Yale now has a 99.5 percent vaccination rate among students. But as students move into the winter season, when there is an increased risk of transmission due to indoor activities and holiday travel, the four Yale experts discussed public health measures that should be taken on a national and global level to address the future of the pandemic.

“Going forward, we need to do a much better job of educating and communicating with the public,” Iwasaki said. “Even if we do produce excellent vaccines, if half the population doesn’t want to take it, we’ll still be in the same position.”

According to Iwasaki, there are two main reasons that individuals might not be vaccinated. In some populations, the problem is a lack of accessibility.

Other populations with access to vaccinations may experience hesitancy due to misinformation.

Albert Ko, professor of public health and epidemiology, explained that populations experiencing poverty, both around the world and on a local level in New Haven, have been disproportionately affected by new COVID-19 variants.

These pockets of unvaccinated individuals are areas of concern, not only because of the risk of outbreaks, but also because of the potential for new variants to emerge, he explained. According to Ko, variants such as Alpha and Delta have emerged in populations that had uncontrolled transmission of the virus. Although vaccines remain effective against existing variants, there is the dangerous possibility that a vaccine-resistant strain develops in the future.

“I think for the world, the big issue is how fast we can get vaccination programs out, and particularly to our poorest countries,” Ko said.

In terms of vaccination rates among students at Yale, Iwasaki, Ko and Saad Omer — the director of the Yale Institute for Global Health — agreed that Yale as an institution mitigated COVID-19 using successful public health policies. Over the last academic

year, before mRNA vaccines became widely available, the University instituted a twice-a-week COVID-19 testing policy, along with stringent face masking and social distancing rules.

“Yale has had a pretty good response in terms of vaccination,” Omer said. “It was both the policies, but also the compliance of the students, especially the undergrads.”

Although Yale has successfully implemented its vaccination requirements, Omer pointed out that many other universities have not reached the same levels of immunization among students.

He specifically noted that many state schools have been prohibited from mandating vaccination against COVID-19 due to political reasons.

“There may appear a disparity in risk because of higher pockets of vulnerability in state schools, especially the ones who are prohibited from having a vaccine mandate,” Omer said.

YALE DAILY NEWS

Professors at the YSPH explain the pandemic’s implications, According to Omer, this risk is especially concerning looking ahead to the winter months. There may be a higher risk of transmission once activities and gatherings move indoors, especially at state schools that already have higher density gatherings due to larger student populations.

Ko echoed Omer’s concerns, noting that there was a surge in cases across the country last winter, including in New Haven. In addition to increased time spent inside, both Ko and Omer said that holiday travel could play a role in spreading COVID-19.

In order to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 in the upcoming months, Omer suggested that policymakers institute a vaccination mandate for airlines and other forms of travel. With the knowledge that holiday travel could contribute to a surge in cases nationwide, he said that instituting such a mandate in anticipation is a good

opportunity to minimize the damage. Currently, airports have a mandated mask policy through January 2022.

Professor of epidemiology Robert Dubrow emphasized the importance of taking action on a global level to combat the pandemic.

“One of the most important steps the world can take to deal with the current and future pandemics more effectively would be for the nations of the world to agree to provide substantially greater resources and authority to the World Health Organization, which needs to grow in stature to be universally recognized as the premier public health agency in the world,” Dubrow wrote in an email to the News.

Although 99.5 percent of Yale College students are vaccinated, Ko noted that the vaccines are not 100 percent effective against infections. He said that Yale might see breakthrough COVID-19 cases occur, but emphasized that vaccination does prevent severe forms of infection. Additionally, he said that increasing the vaccination rates across the wider population will reduce the risk of these breakthrough cases.

Although Yale might see small clusters of COVID-19 cases in the future, Ko said that he does not anticipate a large outbreak disrupting classes. The most important thing is educating students, he said, and it is unlikely that changes in infection rates or policies will have an impact on education.

Ko speculated that Yale may implement more conservative guidelines for winter gatherings in response to increased infections, although he noted that the highly-attended Harvard-Yale game is currently scheduled to occur on Nov. 20.

“The winter is going to pressure-test us, but I think the vaccinations, with the face masks, are going to go a long way,” Ko said. “And I think we’re just going to need to see if we’re going to need to have testing weekly of vaccinated people.”

According to Ko, looking ahead to the next semester and beyond, people will have to learn to live with the virus on an endemic level. Iwasaki agreed that the pandemic will eventually become an endemic situation — most people will have immunity. However, she said that it may take some time before most people have developed some immunity from either infection or vaccination.

Although Ko is optimistic about the future at Yale, he said that he is concerned about the low vaccination rates across the country.

“There’s going to be transmission of COVID,” Ko said.

“What we can hope for is low-level transmission or clusters and not large outbreaks, and certainly not the large surges that we’ve experienced in the past.”

Yale saw 23 positive cases in the last seven days, according to the University’s COVID-19 dashboard.

Contact AISLINN KINSELLA at aislinn.kinsella@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

Eligibility for COVID-19 vaccine booster shots expands According to Genecin, the response to the expanded eligibility has been “very enthusiastic” based on the number of people getting booster shots at Yale.

The University has expanded eligibility for who can Genecin added that immunocompromised individureceive a COVID-19 booster shot after the CDC on Thursals can also schedule an additional dose, which is distinct day announced updated recommendations. from booster vaccines. According to the Yale Health webOn Friday, Yale Health CEO Paul Genecin and Vice Prosite, additional doses are “recommended for people who vost for Health Affairs and Acado not have an adequate response demic Integrity and Univerto their original vaccine series sity COVID-19 Coordinator due to conditions or medications Stephanie Spangler sent emails that suppress their immune sysdetailing the new eligibility for tem.” For the Moderna and Pfizer booster shots. According to the vaccines, additional doses can emails, individuals who are six be administered 28 days after the months out from their second second dose, but booster shots Pfizer or Moderna vaccination must be six months after the seccan receive booster shots if they ond dose. Patients who received are 65 years of age or older or if the J&J vaccine are not eligible for additional doses. they are 18 or older and are living in a long-term care setting, have Prior to these recommendations, the CDC only expanded an underlying medical condition booster shot eligibility requireor work or live in a high-risk setting. Those over 18 who initially ments for people who received the received the Johnson & Johnson Pfizer vaccine. vaccine can receive a booster two Spangler encouraged everyone eligible to get a booster and months after their initial vacciemphasized the opportunity for nation. At Yale, the booster clinunvaccinated community memics are over 90 percent booked this week, according to Cheryl bers to receive their first doses.

Carden, a registered nurse at Yale “I hope that you will take advantage of these opportunities Health. to get a booster shot if you are eli“We know all COVID vaccines show evidence of waning effecgible,” Spangler wrote in her email. tiveness over time and so the “If you are not yet vaccinated, it’s booster shots are important in not too late to schedule your initial preventing breakthrough infecvaccination. Taking these importREGINA SUNG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR tions,” professor of epidemiolant actions will help to keep you, ogy Michael B. Bracken wrote in your loved ones and our Yale and After the CDC issued new recommendations for booster shots for COVID-19 on Thursday, Yale expanded eligibilNew Haven communities as safe ity for booster shots for some recipients of the Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. an email to the News. “When the pandemic is over, we will most and healthy as possible.” likely have COVID as an endemic Genecin also said that memdisease, requiring annual shots –– just like we have for flu.” erna booster is different than the original series of bers of the general public at lower risk of severe COVID-19 According to Genecin’s email, the CDC recommends two shots, but the Pfizer and J&J boosters have the cases will likely next be able to receive the booster. that individuals receive the same booster vaccine as their same dosage as the original vaccinations.

Students eligible for booster shots can schedule primary series, but “mixing vaccine doses from different Genecin wrote to the News that the amount of peo- appointments at 310 Winchester Ave. through the Yale manufacturers is permissible.” ple who will now get boosters is “hard to estimate” COVID-19 Vaccine program. For assistance, students can In her email on Friday, Spangler wrote that the CDC because eligibility is defined loosely. call the Campus COVID-19 Resource Line at 203-432allows people to choose from any of the three vaccines.

“No doubt, we will see thousands of people seeking 6604.

She recommended that people consult with their health- boosters, including all in the designated age range and care provider should they have questions about which vac- many who interpret the CDC guidelines as applicable Contact SARAH COOK at to them,” Genecin wrote to the News. cine to receive. sarah.cook@yale.edu .

BY SARAH COOK CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

“Many individuals will choose the same vaccine for their booster shot that they originally received, especially if they had no problems with that vaccination,” Spangler wrote in her email.

The CDC’s Oct. 21 “Interim Clinical Considerations for Moderna and Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine Booster Doses” notes that booster dose and volume for a Mod-

YNHH terminates 63 employees over refusal to receive COVID-19 vaccination “Any medical professional that declines vaccination should be terminated.”

The News was unable to reach YNHH employees who refused vaccination. However, according to Balcezak, some On Oct. 18, Yale New Haven Health’s human resources of their reasoning include distrusting the vaccine due to department sent notices of termination to 94 employees its relatively rapid development and manufacturing time, who refused to comply with a COVID-19 vaccine mandownplaying COVID-19’s severity or believing that an date. After receiving the notices, a third of the non-compliant employees opted to receive the vaccine that week, employer, such as YNHH, does not have the right to enforce ultimately resulting in 63 employees officially leaving a vaccine mandate. He added that YNHH has tried to answer YNHH due to lack of adherence to the system-wide vacthese concerns and provide reliable information about the cination mandate. safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines through the infection management staff and weekly town halls.

In late July, YNHH instated a vaccine mandate for all of its employees, requiring them to receive two doses of Derrick Todd ’95, Chief of Clinical Rheumatology at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, told the News the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of the Johnson that one of the concerns patients have in regards to the & Johnson vaccine by Oct. 1. Employees could apply for religious or medical exemptions by that COVID-19 vaccines is the seemingly sustime. Throughout the first three weeks picious speed at which the vaccines came of October, employees without proof to market. He explained that the techof vaccination or approved exemptions nology used for the vaccines had been researched for several years before the received verbal and written warnings. On pandemic, and the vaccines still underthe evening of Oct. 18, the 94 non-comwent a rigorous approval process before pliant employees received formal letters of termination. By Oct. 22, 31 of those 94 becoming readily available. showed proof of vaccination. “[Vaccine development] was expedited out of haste because Covid was The termination letters sent to the not going to wait for another ten years,” 94 individuals on Oct. 18 incentivized Todd said. “We can now say, with hunapproximately a third of the non-comdreds of millions of doses administered, pliant employees to receive their vaccinations, according to Ohm Deshpande, Vice that the vaccines are safe. In the end, the President of Population Health & Clinimathematics and statistics are unassailcal Financial Services and Associate Chief able in showing that the vaccine protects Clinical Officer at YNHH. lives and will allow us to get back to some sense of normalcy.”

“Ultimately, as we went through processing those terminations a number of In terms of the YNHH vaccination individuals either got vaccinated on site mandate, Todd said that mandates are or provided proof of vaccination.” Dessometimes necessary and efficacious phande wrote to the News. “The number because they remove the responsibility of as of Friday evening was that 63 individchoice from individuals who are hesitant uals left the organization due to lack of to get the vaccine. adherence to our vaccine mandate.”

Todd added that there are also other Desphande added that non-compliant ways to communicate with vaccine-hesYALE DAILY NEWS employees who were terminated last week After sending notices of termination to 94 employees who refused to comply with the vaccine mandate, itant colleagues. In fact, Todd said that reaching out to vaccine-hesitant would be welcomed back if they received approximately a third decided to receive a COVID-19 vaccine at the last minute. their vaccinations. The current loss of 63 patients or colleagues has become a part employees will not affect the Yale New Haven Health SysBalcezak told the News that employees could express of a physician’s duties. tem’s ability to serve its patients, according to Desphande. any concerns about the mandate and ask questions during “The problem with a mandate is that it is coming from Thomas Balcezak, YNHH Chief Medical Officer, weekly town hall meetings. They could also submit com- an entity, not from a person,” Todd said. “Sometimes, it’s explained that the human resources department sent every ments anonymously. just educating a patient about the vaccine. Sometimes, it’s manager in the Yale New Haven Health system a list of The majority of YNHH employees received their about breaking down deep-seated distrust. Sometimes, employees that did not have documentation of vaccina- COVID-19 vaccination before the deadlines, and most it’s about finding a way to build trust and have difficult tion; those managers have been monitoring their employ- even received their vaccines before the mandate was conversations.” announced, Balcezak told the News earlier this month. ees’ vaccination status since July.

Yale New Haven Health is the second-largest employer According to Balcezak, since the Oct. 1 deadline, manag- The health system has 28,589 employees, as of its 2020 in Connecticut with close to 30,000 employees. ers have also been responsible for issuing verbal and written annual report. warnings to employees under their purview who have not Francesca Palladino-Welburn, a physician assistant affilContact SELIN NALBANTOGLU at received an approved exemption or a vaccine. iated with Yale-New Haven Hospital wrote to the News: selin.nalbantoglu@yale.edu .

BY SELIN NALBANTOGLU CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

“I believe [employees] were very aware that this was coming,” said Richard Martinello, YNHH Medical Director for Infection Prevention. “Not only has there been quite a bit of discussion from leadership over the last several months, but also, since the beginning of October, the 94 individuals all received a verbal warning followed by a written warning the next week, culminating in termination this week. They were informed each step along the way of what the outcome would be.”

Martinello explained that the reason for the universal mandate is safety. Vaccinations create the safest work environment because COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective, he said. The YNHH system has provided nearly half a million vaccinations over the course of the pandemic, according to Martinello.

PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

ARTS YCBA displays controversial painting of Elihu Yale and enslaved child

COURTESY OF YALE CENTER FOR BRITISH ART

YCBA has redisplayed a painting of the University’s namesake after investigating the identity of an enslaved Black child depicted in the portrait.

BY GAMZE KAZAKOGLU AND TAMAKI KUNO STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER After a year-long investigation, the Yale Center for British Art has put the controversial 18th-century group painting of Elihu Yale — an early benefactor and namesake of the University — back up on its walls.

Completed around 1719 and believed to have been painted at Yale’s house in London, the painting portrays Yale alongside members of his family and an enslaved Black boy with a silver collar and padlock around his neck. The painting was removed from the gallery a year ago following feedback from visitors and staff on the distressing depiction of an enslaved child, according to the Elihu Yale Portrait Research Team.

It was replaced with a work by Titus Kaphar, a New Haven-based African American sculptor and painter.

Kaphar’s piece reframed the painting, focusing solely on the child as an individual, and removing the collar present in the original painting.

Since the painting was removed from the gallery’s walls, the YCBA has conducted an investigation on its history and the individuals within its frame. Researchers have discovered the painting dates between 1719 and 1721. The child it depicts was likely born around 1712, and brought to England around the age of five. The researchers searched baptism, marriage and

burial records, but were unable to recover the child’s name. Still, the painting, with additional context and a new name that highlights the enslaved child, was put back on display earlier this month.

“The painting [of Yale] is ugly both in meaning and aesthetics and deserves the same treatment as the stained-glass window smashed by Corey Menafee,” said Sean O’Brien, visiting fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.

“I echo the sentiment of Titus Kaphar in his piece ‘Enough About You’ — perhaps if the original portrait were transformed to honor the enslaved child in it, there might be some good to come from that.”

Kaphar told Artnet in 2019 that his aim behind the piece was to “imagine a life” for the child, with “desires, dreams, family, thoughts, hopes” that the original 18th-century artist — thought to be a Dutchman active in Britain named John Verelst — was likely indifferent to.

“Enough About You” parodies the original painting of Elihu Yale by crumpling up the depictions of Yale and his family and putting a frame around the enslaved child’s face. For six months, Kaphar’s painting hung in the exact spot the group portrait previously hung, but as of May it has been returned to its owners.

In August 2020, two months before the Yale painting was removed from the gallery wall and replaced with Kaphar’s, museum

Director Courtney J. Martin formed the Elihu Yale Portrait Research Team to identify the enslaved boy of African descent depicted in the work. The Team consists of YCBA staff members Eric James, Abigail Lamphier, Lori Misura, David K. Thompson and Edward Town.

“The recovery of someone’s name is a basic step in any attempt to work against the dehumanizing acts of marginalization and enslavement,” the team told the News. “Hopefully this work will spark more conversations about what institutions can do to reckon with these types of objects and inspire more close looking at collections in an effort to contextualize and better understand these paintings.”

According to the team, the research entailed establishing the painting’s date of creation, author and subjects. A significant breakthrough was made through scientific analysis of the painting undertaken by members of the Center’s Painting Conservation team and colleagues from the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage at Yale.

Together, they narrowed down the painting’s date of creation and aided in the identification of other subjects in its frame. The identification of Dudley North — an English merchant, politician and economist who married Yale’s daughter and is also depicted in the painting — also allowed the Center to embark on a search through his personal papers, which have survived in a manuscript archive in Britain.

The team consulted with a pediatrician and discovered that the enslaved boy appears to be about 10 years old. The curatorial investigators noted that records from the early 18th-century demonstrate the recurring pattern of shipping boys of African descent below 10 years of age to Britain for them to serve as domestic servants in affluent households.

Although slavery was not legal in Britain at the time of the painting’s creation, many Black individuals were brought into the country in a similar servitude to slavery, given that the country had a significant investment in the transatlantic slave trade. The child in the painting wears a silver collar on his neck, reflecting the common practice in British soci-

ety of making captives wear either silver, steel or brass collars.

Despite some historical discoveries, the research process posed challenges for the team. Neither personal nor private papers of either Lord James Cavendish, who owned the painting, or Elihu Yale, who may have commissioned the painting, are in sufficient shape to reconstruct the composition of their respective households. Records pertaining to enslaved people from this period are scant, if existent at all, which adds to the difficulty of tracing the child’s life.

In part because of the loss of his personal papers, it is not clear to what extent Yale profited directly from involvement in the Indian or Atlantic slave trades, according to research done by Teanu Reid GRD ’23 and Town as part of Yale’s broader study into its ties to slavery.

“While it remains unclear if Yale owned this enslaved child, Yale’s status and wealth were nonetheless reinforced by his presence,” Reid and Town wrote. “Additionally, there is no doubt that Elihu Yale was comfortable having his portrait made alongside figures who were demonstrably enslaved. His relatives in New Haven were slave holders; the company he worked for oversaw slave-shipping in the Indian Ocean; and even in London, where the law did not make provision for existence of chattel slaves, Yale and his sons-in-laws chose to have their portrait made alongside an enslaved child over whom they would have claimed ownership.”

According to the research team, the investigation into the painting’s context is one of many similar initiatives across the cultural sector in which institutions allocate resources to better understand marginalized and neglected histories. Portraits in Western art that depict children of African or Indian heritage fall into this category, as “historically their presence has barely been acknowledged and rarely been the topic of scholarly enquiry,” the team added.

“Emotional responses to the painting and what it depicts have certainly been a motivating force, and have added to the sense of urgency and importance of this research,” the team said. “Individually and collectively, there is a feeling that the work

undertaken thus far has been worthwhile but there is a strong acknowledgement that the work needs to be sustained and built upon by others.”

For the Elihu Yale Portrait Research Team, the painting’s public display raises awareness about the child and may encourage others to contribute to the search for his identity. The long-term plan for the display of this group portrait is still under discussion and will be shaped by the feedback that visitors can leave via the Center’s website.

Edward Rugemer, associate professor of African American studies and history, said the painting should remain on display to allow the University to reckon with its history, as opposed to hiding from it.

“The alternative is not to display the painting,” Rugemer said. “And it seems to me that if the University decides not to display the painting, then the University is enchanting to its dimension of legacy. I think especially today, with race and racism playing such an important part in national discourse, Yale needs to come to terms with [the fact] that one of its founders was involved in slavery.”

Rugemer also said that Elihu Yale is not the most obvious choice to be blamed for his involvement in slavery, as “there are many Yalies involved in gaining wealth from slavery.”

O’Brien, who previously penned an opinion piece entitled “Yale Must Change Its Name,” wrote in an email to the News that “Elihu Yale’s legacy is a stark reminder of a horrific and traumatic past that should not be forgotten.”

“However, Elihu himself should never be honored or lend his namesake to any institution that values its community and abhors racism,” O’Brien added. “Though another year has passed, Yale has still not shed the name of Elihu the slavemaster.”

YCBA currently has a small display that presents some of the research undertaken alongside a selection of works. There is also a survey on the YCBA’s website to hear the public’s thoughts on the painting.

Contact GAMZE KAZAKOGLU at gamze.kazakoglu@yale.edu and TAMAKI KUNO at tamaki.kuno@yale.edu .

YSO Halloween Show tickets sell out within seconds

BY KAYLA YUP CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Tickets for the Yale Symphony Orchestra’s annual Halloween concert sold out in under a minute on Monday night, leading to a burgeoning black market for tickets, with some students reselling them at more than 10 times the original price.

Tickets for the 2021 YSO Halloween Show went on sale on Eventbrite at 10:31 p.m. Yet most students eager to attend the annual Halloween tradition were left empty-handed, as the 2650-capacity Woolsey Hall was restricted to just 275 available seats due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I sat with my friend to purchase tickets right at 10:31, looking at a clock with seconds to ensure we hit the button as soon as it went on sale,” Sarah Shapiro ’25 said.

“Unfortunately, despite clicking on it at the same time, I was able to get a ticket and he wasn’t.”

Although the exact amount of seconds before tickets sold out is unknown, Supriya Weiss ’24, YSO president and co-producer of the Halloween show, stated that it “was certainly under a minute.”

“Typically tickets sell out in under 10 minutes — I suppose 10 percent of the capacity meant 10 percent of the time,” Weiss said.

According to Weiss and co-producer Aria Harris ’24, the COVID-19 capacity restriction was assigned to the YSO by Associate Dean for the Arts Kate Krier and the University COVID-19 Review Committee.

Harris added that the 275-person limit is also applied to the Yale Philharmonia, whose concerts are only open to School of Music affiliates. However, these constraints did not account for the difference in the number of eligible audience members between the YSO and the Philharmonia.

“Even a 275-person cap would leave enough room for most of the School of Music [to attend Philharmonia concerts] because there

just aren’t very many students,” Harris said. “Unfortunately, we have been forced to follow the same guidelines. It’s unfortunate because it’s literally 10 percent of Woolsey Hall, which is really inconsistent with any other guideline given by Yale.”

Krier said that the limit of 275 people, including front-of-house staff, in Woolsey is in place for all users of the concert hall and applies to the School of Music, the Institute of Sacred Music and Yale College ensembles.

“There are COVID restrictions of various sorts that affect audiences campus-wide,” Krier said. “I am working with partners in other arts units to make proposals to continue to reactivate performance activity on campus. Together with other arts colleagues, I’m in active discussion with student group leaders as well as with the public health and safety group about next steps.”

Entrepreneurial students have taken advantage of the high demand for tickets; there have been reports of people reselling tickets for drastically marked-up prices. Tickets are originally $10.

“In a bunch of the group chats, they’re going for $80 to $120,” said Atticus Margulis-Ohnuma ’25, a YSO violinist.

Emma Polinsky ’25 added that she suspects the prices are so high because this year is seniors’ final chance to attend the concert, which they could not attend last year due to the pandemic.

Harris said that she “heard from so many seniors who really, really wanted to go but won’t be able to see [the concert] in Woolsey Hall before they leave Yale.”

She added that within an hour of tickets going on sale, people began posting on Facebook Marketplace, offering to pay $50 to $100 for a ticket, with others offering to sell theirs for $100. Harris said she believes this resale of tickets is undermining the YSO’s effort to make concert tickets equitable.

COURTESY OF YALE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Yale Symphony Orchestra tickets sold out seconds after their release, following reduction in Woolsey Hall capacity.

“The YSO has made it a mission to make all their tickets free and to lower the price of Halloween show tickets, and all of that is being overridden because the capacity of the hall is so reduced that people are buying tickets for over a hundred dollars,” Harris explained. “I feel that it’s unfortunate that the people who have the means to do so will be able to sit in the hall, whereas the people who don’t won’t be able to.”

According to Weiss, the YSO does not support or endorse the reselling of its tickets and “doesn’t condone the reselling that’s been happening online.”

Weiss and Harris emphasized that despite in-person capacity limits, the livestream will be available and free to everyone.

Though the YSO has livestreamed the Halloween Show previously, viewers were charged a fee. Last year, it offered the livestream for free for the first time as the show took place fully virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We want everyone to be able to have access to music; we don’t want there to be a financial barrier

preventing anyone from attending our concerts,” Weiss said.

In light of the limited in-person capacity, Weiss and Harris said they look forward to seeing watch parties organized around campus.

“At the end of the day, all I want is for people to watch the show and to have fun,” Harris said. “A livestream will allow people to have really nice events with their friends. You can watch it with snacks and beverages, which you wouldn’t be able to have if you were in Woolsey Hall. There will be various options for people to organize and watch the show around campus.”

Harris noted that Silliman College plans to livestream the concert in the courtyard, and many FroCos are using their duty nights to put together live streams for their first-years.

“We’re hoping that people can still gather and that this can still be a community activity, even though we won’t all be in the same place,” she said. According to Harris, viewers from all over the world tuned into last year’s livestream of the Halloween show.

Although the hybrid show may be able to reach an audience greater than years prior, Harris said that she is disappointed by the capacity limits.

“A lot of the magic for the orchestra is playing to a really, really packed, really, really excited audience,” Harris said. “So while it’s great to have a live audience at all, it is disappointing that it won’t be to the extent that it could.”

The YSO opened its season with the “Hope’’ concert on Oct. 16 — the group’s first in-person performance since 2020.

“I have to say that after this year and a half of not being able to play at all, even just having a live audience cheering for us was such an incredible experience to return to — so I still think it’s going to be a great time,” Weiss said. “It’s been a real labor of love for [Harris] and I. I think this year will be a spectacular show that is going to surprise people in a lot of ways.”

The concert will be streamed live on the YSO website.

Contact KAYLA YUP at kayla.yup@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 9

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.” STEPHEN KING AMERICAN AUTHOR

FAS plans hiring spree in three dozen departments

VAIBHAV SHARMA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Yale will aim to fill more than 70 positions in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences following administrative recommitments to invest in faculty.

BY ISAAC YU STAFF REPORTER This year, Yale will nearly double its job searches for tenured and tenure track faculty, chipping away at the deficits some faculty say have grown between their departments and those of peer institutions.

Over the coming year, the University will seek to fill 71 ladder positions — nearly double the typical number — in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Tamar Gendler announced in an Oct. 14 email to faculty. The move comes as the University attempts to bolster its faculty size, which has lagged behind peer institutions in recent years. Though not all 71 positions will be filled in the next year, the unprecedented number of searches points to an unusually large class of faculty arriving in the fall.

In a statement to the News, Gendler said that searches will occur across all four divisions of the FAS: Humanities, Sciences, Social Sciences and the School of Engineering & Applied Sciences. Departments conducting multiple searches include History, Statistics & Data Science and Computer Science; a number of others will see individual searches as well. Gendler also told the News that 37 searches are new, 14 are ongoing searches from previous years and 20 are unresolved, meaning an offer has been made or will be made in the near future. An additional 16 faculty members have already committed to begin next fall, Gendler said.

John Geanakoplos, economics professor, recently called for increased investments in faculty hiring following the release of astronomical endowment returns.

He called the searches “a step in the right direction.” Still, he said

that the growth of Yale’s faculty ranks has not kept pace with competitors for many years.

“There’s an opportunity now to fulfill the promise the Provost made two years ago on the floor of the faculty Senate: he acknowledged the size gap and salary gap between us and our competitors, and he promised to close the gap,” Geanakopolos said.

Geanakoplos pointed to a January 2020 FAS Senate meeting in which Strobel acknowledged that the FAS had not grown at the rate of Yale’s peer institutions. At the time, he promised to deliver strategic responses.

New faculty searches were soon halted in a hiring freeze, however, due to the University’s pandemic austerity measures. The move sparked backlash among faculty, who signed onto a letter urging continued hiring.

Ultimately, the University thawed the hiring freeze, bringing on a slightly smaller-than-average class of new FAS faculty. But by then, several departments had missed out on candidates they had pursued.

At a March 2021 Senate meeting, Strobel once again committed to growing faculty ranks. The Provost could not be reached for comment at the time of publication.

According to the FAS office’s internal counts, the FAS currently includes 676 tenured or tenure track faculty, up from around 640 in 1985 after dipping below 600 in the 1990s. The figure reached a high of 696 in 2010 and has hovered between 650 and 690 in the last decade. The FAS has never reached 700, the goal that Yale revised down from 800 during the 2008 financial crisis, Geanakoplos said.

Meanwhile, Harvard’s Faculty of Arts & Sciences, which for many

years was comparable to Yale’s, has jumped to 738 in the last two decades.

Princeton currently has more than 800 tenured or tenure track faculty.

The Computer Science department, which has swelled in recent years to 25 tenured or tenure track faculty, will conduct around three searches, said Lin Zhong, computer science professor. Still, with more computer science majors than ever and significant non-major interest in department courses, Zhong called for more future hiring. He and others have advocated for prioritizing institutional and infrastructural support to avoid “handicapping” new hires.

Zhong noted that he and another professor had been invited to submit a proposal to the National Science Foundation for a multimillion dollar grant that would have put Yale at the “forefront” of computer science research. Zhong ultimately dropped the project because of a lack of support staff in his department.

“We are still in dire need of more faculty members,” Zhong said.

“And Yale has a lot of things to do – not just in hiring faculty but with space, facilities and staff support.”

Beyond Computer Science, a variety of Yale departments across the Sciences, the Social Sciences, the Humanities and the School of Engineering & Applied Sciences will conduct searches.

In the School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, one or more searches will be conducted for Applied Physics, Biomedical Engineering, Chemical & Environmental Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science.

In the Sciences, all three biology departments — Ecology & Evolutionary Biology; Molecular, Cellular &

Developmental Biology; and Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry — will each see one or more searches. The Astronomy, Earth & Planetary Sciences, Chemistry, Math and Physics Departments will also see new hiring.

In the Social Sciences, hiring is concentrated in Statistics & Data Science, which was reorganized in 2017. Several searches will occur within the statistics department, and four searches will be conducted for joint appointments between the statistics department and other social science departments. Linguistics, Political Science and Sociology will also see one or more searches, while several are conducted in Psychology for specialists in clinical psychology, social psychology and neuroscience.

Among the humanities departments, African American Studies, American Studies, East Asian Languages and Literature, Film and Media Studies, French, German, History of Art, Italian, Music, Religious Studies, Slavic and Spanish and Portuguese will all see at least one search. Ethnicity, Race, and Migration will see two searches for specialists in Latinx and Indigenous studies. The English Department will also see two searches for scholars of early modern drama as well as history of the English language, rhetoric and writing. History, the largest humanities major and department, will see several searches for specialists in Qing history, Southeast Asian history, early modern European history and modern Middle Eastern history.

The next FAS Senate meeting will take place on Thursday.

Contact ISAAC YU at isaac.yu@yale.edu .

Library workers call on Yale to end subcontracting

SAI RAYALA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

At Tuesday’s protest, library workers deliver a book to the Provost’s office and call for an end to subcontracting.

BY SAI RAYALA STAFF REPORTER In a Tuesday protest, Yale’s library workers offered their own gift to the University’s capital campaign — a book symbolizing their demand to end subcontracting.

Library workers from Local 34, the University’s union of clerical and technical workers, gathered at the Provost’s office at 2 Whitney Ave. to demand that Yale end the subcontracting of library work.

Through subcontracting, the University pays outside firms to carry out specific work for the institution by utilizing the outside company’s employees. As part of their “donation” to Yale’s capital campaign, the workers delivered a book to the provost’s office consisting of 148 photos with personal stories from library staff on why Yale should not be subcontracting its library work. “[Despite] its $7 billion campaign, they’re choosing to send Beinecke

collections to be processed by subcontractors instead of investing in growing their staff,” Ann DeLauro, the vice-president of Local 34, said during the event. “That’s why we’re here today. To make our donation to Yale’s campaign.”

DeLauro said that library workers had been fighting against subcontracting since 2019, when Yale had initially announced an outsourcing initiative. She added that because of the union’s past campaigns, its most recent contract with Yale includes first-time language against subcontracting that “gives them a foot in the door.”

According to the new union contract, Yale has to give a 90-day notice before subcontracting union employees’ work, and the University is required to negotiate its plans with Local 34.

But DeLauro said that despite the “incredible contract” that “secured their economic standard for the next five years,” the work of the unions and the workers was not over yet.

“We know that the fight doesn’t end when we sign the contract,” DeLauro told the crowd. “Subcontracting is still happening now.”

According to Julia Salseda-Angeles, a researcher for Local 34,

Yale is paying millions to subcontract the special collections of Beinecke to two companies: Backstage Library Works and Winthrop Group. Backstage Library Works, based in Pennsylvania, provides a range of specialized services to library collections, such as digitization and microfilm services. The Winthrop Group — based in New York — provides information, archival services and consulting, among other benefits.

University spokesperson Karen Peart told the news that Yale “is acting within its rights.”

“Yale is resuming a project started three years ago to make a backlog of new collections more readily available for scholarship and research,” Peart said. “The project was paused at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The new union agreement provides guidance for how such projects will be handled in the future.”

Lynell Graham, who works at Yale’s Coordination, Appointment, Referral and Engagement Center, or CARE, spoke at the event. Graham helped negotiate the recent union contract, which explicitly protects CARE workers from subcontracting layoffs.

“I live in New Haven,” Graham told the News. “I pay taxes in New Haven. I’ve been in New Haven all my life. And to watch Yale grow so many other areas instead of what belongs here in this town that they actually work in — they need to give it back.”

Amelia Prostano, who has been working at the Beinecke Library for around 40 years, also expressed her concerns with library work being subcontracted to outside firms. She said that the local library workers have “loyalty” to the libraries and collections.

“I just can’t imagine that they would subcontract precious books from the Beinecke,” Prostano told the News. “There’s no need for it. They should hire local, train people.”

After delivering the book to a representative at the Provost’s office, the action ended with chants of “Read the book,” “If we don’t get it … shut it down” and “We’ll be back.”

Local 34 represents 3,700 University clerical and technical workers.

Contact SAI RAYALA at sai.rayala@yale.edu .

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

“I'm really no different than anybody else; except that sometimes I get my name in the paper.” BOBBY ORR CANADIAN ICE HOCKEY PLAYER

Crew returns to Head of Charles

Elis look to maintain Penn momentum FOOTBALL FROM PAGE 14

COURTESY OF DAVID PAUL

Lightweight crew finished the three-mile course almost nine seconds ahead of Cornell to claim the gold medal.

CREW FROM PAGE 14 weight Eights, Men’s Championship Eights and Women’s Championship Eights.

The Yale lightweight crew team entered three eights and one four to HOCR — the most boats of any school in lightweight competition.

While the Bulldogs finished eighth in a field of 13 boats in the lightweight fours, Y150 secured the victory in the eights as well as placing 10th and 13th out of 16 boats.

“This was a total team effort,” head coach Andy Card told the Athletic Department. “It took nine to win gold medals, but 32 worked to get us there.”

The victorious bow number 7 crossed the finish line in just 14:30.961, a whopping 0:08.789 ahead of second-place Cornell.

Massachusetts native Geoff Skelly ’22 — lightweight captain and stroke — had extra motivation to win gold this weekend.

“Turns out his little sister had won the Charles previously and would tease him about being the only Charles champ in the family,” Card added. “Sibling rivalry is a powerful motivator!”

Because of its victory at the 2019 HOCR and first-place finish at the Head of the Housatonic this

season, the heavyweight team was a strong favorite to win the Championship Eight race this weekend.

Throughout the full three-mile stretch of the race, Yale kept close to boats from the University of Washington and Dartmouth. At the Cambridge Boat Club checkpoint about a half mile from the finish line, the three boats were within 1.5 seconds of each other. In the end, the Bulldogs crossed the finish line in third place — just three seconds behind Washington and less than one second behind Dartmouth.

“Going over this course at 31-32 strokes per minute… was very satisfying, and it bodes well for the spring,” head coach Steve Gladstone said to Yale Athletics.

At the Bulldogs’ final showing at the regatta, the women’s team finished third and fifth in a field of 19 boats in the Championship Eights. Yale’s first boat finished eight seconds behind leader Stanford and two seconds behind second-place Princeton. The fifthplace second varsity boat placed behind Brown as well.

Based on cumulative scores across teams, Yale placed fifth out of 619 participating clubs.

Contact MELANIE HELLER at melanie.heller@yale.edu .

title if they win their remaining four games, including the penultimate contest against Princeton.

“Our opponent this week is the best team we've played on our schedule so far,” Yale head coach Tony Reno said. “Overall, really good in all three phases.

They’re coming off a shutout of a very good team in our league on the road. There’s really not a lot of weaknesses in what they do, but we’ve got to just worry about ourselves and prepare well and get ourselves ready to be the best versions of Yale football in 2021.”

Columbia’s offense has been carried by its running game. Six different Lions have recorded a rushing touchdown and senior Dante Miller leads the Ivy League in rushing yards with 608 in just six games. As a team, the Lions sit second in the conference with 185 rushing yards a game. They trail only Harvard, who average 185.3 yards. To accompany their prolific running game, sophomore quarterback Joe Green has done an excellent job of limiting turnovers, with the Lions signal

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

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

SAILING FROM PAGE 14

Last tourney cut short, Bulldogs pull sixth WOMEN’S GOLF FROM PAGE 14

MELANIE HELLER/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The Bulldogs also placed second at Boston College’s Savin Hill Invite and third at Dartmouth’s Captain Hurst Bowl. what they knew about how tides, winds and currents interact with the landscape and adjusted their boats accordingly. However, shifty WNW winds made sailing strategy difficult for all the boats in the competition.

“The racing was very much about being patient and keeping our options open,” Emma Cowles ’25 told Yale Athletics.

“Catherine [Webb ’23] and I worked on our starts and communicating about the oncoming pressure as it was very shifty and puffy.”

From the second race in the regatta, the Blue and White placed first in the standings and were able to hold onto their lead for the rest of the weekend.

Just half an hour from New Haven, the Fairfield Cup was a chance for many young sailors to become accustomed to collegiate competition. This regatta was either the first or second

and orchestrated a 14-point win over Penn.

“Oh, man,” Nickerson said when asked about Grooms. “He’s a problem. He’s a problem. He’s been causing problems ever since he got here. The [defensive line] likes to joke around because in practice, we’ll get right up next to a sack and then he’ll just outrun us 20 yards.”

Grooms was named Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week for his performance against the Quakers, which included a team high 113 rushing yards and four total touchdowns. Grooms’ ability as a dualthreat quarterback, running and passing the ball, has been a key storyline in his young career.

“I really pride myself on being a passer first,” Grooms said. “But then, once stuff breaks down, you gotta be able to move a little bit, so I got to be decisive … I got to keep working, gotta keep my eyes downfield as a passer, but as soon as I personally pass the line of scrimmage, it’s time to go.”

Grooms and the Bulldogs will kick off against Columbia on Saturday at 12 p.m.

The Lions are coming off an impressive 19–0 shutout against Dartmouth.

Sailing ranked 1st in nation single race — both in the round robin and the playoffs.

The Yale team — Jack Egan ’25, Megan Grimes ’24, Christophe Chaumont ’23 and Nicholas Davies ’24 — won NEISA Coed Sailors of the Week awards for their dominating performance at the regatta.

At the Women’s ACCs in Cambridge, a breezy weekend made for tricky conditions on the notoriously shifty Charles River.

“Saturday was some of the windiest conditions we've seen all season, and the wind direction made it super shifty as well.”

Helena Ware ’23 told the Athletic Department. “We were able to [succeed] by constantly looking for the next pressure and being quick to transition between puffs and lulls while working super hard in the windy spots to get every bit we could.”

By the time Saturday racing finished, Dartmouth had a strong lead while Yale and Brown were neck-and-neck for second place.

On Sunday, the Bulldogs lived up to their No. 1 national ranking by averaging in fourth place across 16 races and pulling ahead of both Dartmouth and Brown to secure the victory.

The Bulldogs’ rivalry with the Big Green continued at the Coed ACCs the following weekend. After the completion of seven races on Saturday, Yale and Dartmouth were tied with 26 points each. The Elis picked up a lead during the eleven races on Sunday, leaving Dartmouth in second place.

The Elis made the most of the home team advantage at the Yale Women’s regatta. On familiar waters, the Yale team took

caller having just one interception all year. Green won the conference’s Rookie of the Week award on Monday, for his performance against Dartmouth.

“Columbia has done a great job on offense all year,” defensive end Reid Nickerson ’23 said. “They have a really fast running back and their offensive line can get after it a little bit as they’ve shown in previous weeks. But, you know, we’ve emphasized, really, that it’s us versus us. If the defense goes out there and executes, then we’re going to be fine as we've shown throughout the year.”

Of the four Lions to have won an Ivy League weekly award, two of them are on the defensive side of the ball. Senior linebacker Cam Dillon and senior defensive back Ben Mathiasmeier have both been honored as defensive players of the week. Dillon is second in the conference with seven sacks this year, trailing only Yale defensive end Clay Patterson ’24.

Mathiasmeier, meanwhile, is tied for the conference lead in interceptions with three.

Yale’s offense will be led by quarterback Nolan Grooms ’24.

Grooms made his first career collegiate start last Saturday

competition of the year for all six Yale sailors. The rookies represented the Blue and White well, placing first — 14 points ahead of second-place host Fairfield University.

“I think we all learned a lot and it was great having a chance to practice some skills in such a sportsman-like fleet,” said Emily Lau ’24.

This weekend, the Bulldogs will wrap up their fall season on home waters at the Dave Perry Trophy and head up to Boston for the Nickerson Trophy at Tufts, the Urn Trophy at Harvard and the Schell Trophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Since its third-place finish at the season opener Toni Deutsch regatta, the women’s sailing team has won every regatta it’s participated in.

Contact MELANIE HELLER at melanie.heller@yale.edu .

Alexis Kim ’25 and Gianchandani made 12 and 11 pars, respectively, to contribute to Yale’s top-three finish in the same category — 48. Kim had the second strongest finish for the Elis as she tied for 13th place with a round score of four over par. Lee tied for 21st place with a score of five over par.

Given the abrupt end to the tournament with only a third of the competition completed, only six players across the field finished with a placement that was not a tie.

“I believe many of the best lessons are also the toughest to learn,” Yale women’s golf head coach Lauren Harling told the News. “We are looking at this event as a way to really focus on how to prepare over the winter for our spring season. We have high expectations and this group of women are some of the most talented I have had the opportunity to coach. We’re adopting a growth mentality and looking forward to a productive offseason.”

The Yale women’s golf team will resume its season in the spring.

Contact HAMERA SHABBIR at hamera.shabbir@yale.edu .

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

The Bulldogs traveled to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, to compete in the St. John’s Invitational.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 11

“On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.” DAVID BOWIE ENGLISH SINGER-SONGWRITER

After months of negotiations, Yale’s unions ratify five-year contracts

BY SAI RAYALA STAFF REPORTER Sixteen months after negotiations began, members of Yale’s two main unions voted to ratify new five-year contracts with the University, covering over 5,000 workers.

Locals 34 and 35 separately gathered on Wednesday to ratify two separate five-year contracts. The University announced last month that it had reached a tentative agreement with the two unions after nearly 16 months of debate. The contract negotiation process was the subject of a protest by New Haven unions last spring, in which members demanded that Yale settle “fair contracts” with the union. The protestors spoke out against preliminary salary and benefit cuts and stressed the importance of job stability, sustained healthcare and retirement benefits and increased hiring of New Haven residents.

The new contracts will cover 3,700 clerical and technical workers in Local 34 and nearly 1,400 service and maintenance workers in Local 35. They include job security provisions and wage increases for members of both unions, along with pension and healthcare benefits.

“Together, our unions rose to the challenges created by the pandemic and worked with the University to settle a contract that provides two of the best standards in the nation,” Local 35 President Bob Proto wrote in a Wednesday press release.

Members of Local 35 gathered on the New Haven Green for their ratification meeting. After listening to a presentation on the contract by Proto, members cast their votes in ballot boxes. The majority of workers voted in favor of the contract, and Proto told the News that there was only one no-vote.

“This new agreement maintains the high standard that we’ve

SAI RAYALA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

On Wednesday, Local 34 gathered near the Yale Bowl, while Local 35 gathered on the Green to ratify 5-year contracts. always had which is important,” Proto said. “It is absolutely the strongest university contract in the country.”

Local 34 members gathered near the Yale Bowl that same evening for their ratification meeting.

According to the New Haven Independent, the vote to approve the contract was taken by voice, with people asked to respond as a group to approve or reject the agreement.

Rich Esposito, who is part of Local 35’s executive board and was involved in the bargaining process, said negotiating the contracts with the University took “a lot of hard work.” The nearly 16 months of negotiations took place solely over videoconferencing technology, according to the University’s September press release.

“I am delighted that we have reached tentative agreements

with Local 34 and Local 35,” Yale President Peter Salovey said in a September press release issued after tentative agreements were reached. “Yale’s strong partnership with our unions has helped the community overcome many challenges, including the unforeseen difficulties brought about by the pandemic.”

Esposito, who is also one of the workers taking care of plumbing and heating for the University, said the most important benefit of Local 35’s new contract was the job security it provided. Local 35’s contract includes a no-layoff clause which states that the University can not lay off any workers for the duration of the contract. The contract also includes a one-for-one hiring mandate, which requires the University to hire for each employee who retires or otherwise leaves.

The Local 34 contract includes a new “alternative placement” system for laid-off employees, which involves a 90-day process for employees to transition to a different position with salary protection, according to the New Haven Independent.

“We’ve just achieved a great contract, especially in these times,” Esposito told the News.

Esposito said the wage increases were also an important benefit that stuck out to him from the contract. Local 35’s contract includes a 13 percent increase in wages over the five year term. This includes a 2.75 percent increase in January 2022, a 2.75 percent increase in January 2023, a 2.50 percent increase in January 2024, a 2.50 percent increase in January 2025 and a 2.50 percent increase in January 2026.

According to the New Haven Independent, Yale had originally proposed an annual two percent raise across the board for Local 34 members. The union ultimately negotiated a 2.25 percent annual raise from 2022 to 2024, and a 2.5 percent annual raise from 2025 to 2026. These raises are on top of an additional two percent raise each year for employees in their first 11 years at Yale.

“Our members made their voices heard. Now, thousands of families will benefit from the economic standard and stability that these contracts provide,” said Local 34 Secretary-Treasurer Ken Suzuki in the unions’ press release.

The new contracts will expire in January 2027.

Contact SAI RAYALA at sai.rayala@yale.edu .

PAGE 12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

THROUGH THE LENS

T

here is nothing quite like Halloweek.

The infamous days leading up to Halloween. A time to put midterms aside and become someone, or something, else.

A chance to escape from everyday reality.

After a long hiatus, Halloweek has officially returned to Yale, with Hallowoads kicking things off in its typical Wednesday night fashion. And yes, while this week is destined to be chaotic, it will also be nothing short of memorable. Happy Spooky Season y’all.

Photos by TENZIN JORDENE, illustrations and writing by ZOE BERG.

PAGE 13

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

"When we did this reboot, I thought 'Ghostbusters' fans would be so excited: 'They've got the new technology - the ghosts are going to look real now.'" LESLIE JONES AMERICAN COMEDIAN

At Office of Development, tensions abound DEVELOPMENT FROM PAGE 1 Emilio Caballero, director of gift and records services, concurred. There is a “renewed energy” in the air as staff return to the office, he said.

Upon beginning work at the Office, staff are presented with a confidentiality agreement. After hearing that a reporter had reached out to staff members for this story during the summer, O’Neill sent out an email reminding employees of the agreement. Though staffers are not required to sign the contract, the expectation to maintain confidentiality is a specific job requirement, O’Neill said.

Office culture and politics All seven lower-ranking employees interviewed by the News described a workplace environment pervaded by social tension.

Six employees reported excessive managerial oversight, and several described incidents of favoritism and a high level of office politics.

According to a 2017 workplace survey obtained by the News, only a third of employees in one of the Office’s units agreed that their unit handles workplace conflicts constructively, compared to 55 percent of Yale employees overall. The same survey shows that only 36 percent of employees in the unit rate their office morale as “high,” as opposed to 55 percent of Yale employees as a whole.

But six high-ranking employees that O’Neill connected the News with — Caballero; Alison Cole, senior associate dean for development, external affairs and special projects; Mary Beth Congdon, university director for planned giving; Mathwon Howard, associate vice president for development; Jocelyn Kane, managing director of the Yale alumni fund and Dayle Matchett, deputy director of principal gifts — said they enjoy their work. They commended the intelligence and dedication of their colleagues and highlighted the collaborative nature of their workplace.

But some lower-ranking employees disagreed. One staff member said that many Yale alumni are generous gifters who are devoted to the University, allowing office leaders — particularly the high-ranking gift officers who establish and maintain relationships with key donors — to raise substantial amounts of money without having to work particularly hard.

“They spend a lot of their time on useless things like reviewing work from home arrangements or forming cliques and clubs and ostracizing others,” the staff member said. “It’s this very pernicious atmosphere that does not, I think, contribute at all to Yale’s success, donor engagement, alumni satisfaction or the University’s health.”

Lower-ranked staff are constantly watched over, according to five employees. Two employees recalled leaving their cubicles to use the restroom or attend a meeting and subsequently receiving an email asking where they were.

“Where are you?” reads one 2019 email from a supervisor to a subordinate who left her cubicle to attend a meeting. “Coat’s here but you’re not.”

By contrast, the six higher-ranking employees described their workplace atmosphere in a far more positive light. The Office’s culture is “very collegial, creative, and upbeat,” Matchett wrote in an email to the News.

Still, five employees recounted hearing various colleagues ridicule co-workers.

Four staff members described a clique in the Office dubbed the “Mean Girls,” a “really high school” group that travels in a pack, makes comments about other employees and ignores those outside their circle.

Two employees separately recounted the story of a senior staff member who attempted to streamline the donor pipeline process and increase the accountability of gift officers by raising their donation target threshold. According to one employee, the senior staff member was ostracized and quietly ridiculed by higher-ranking Office directors for having a southern accent and wearing vibrant flowery dresses. She eventually resigned from her position. The former employee confirmed that she chose to leave the Office, but did not respond to inquiries about the reasons behind her resignation.

On the other hand, six higher-ranking Office employees lavished praise on their co-workers. Cole said her team members are “kind, fun, smart and collaborative,” while Congdon said her colleagues are “talented and caring.” Kane said that her co-workers are “amazing,” adding that they have “a lot of fun” together.

But three staffers described being treated like “children.” One wrote

that Office directors treat employees like “irresponsible children who must be closely monitored.” Another employee concurred, saying that they and their colleagues are seen as “naughty children.” Yet another staffer said that subordinates are viewed as “very young children” incapable of focusing on daily tasks.

“I know that a lot of it can seem like entitled whining,” one employee said. “It’s different … I’ve never seen anything like this where it’s so strict and it’s such a tension-filled atmosphere.”

According to Jeff Haden, a management expert and public speaker, good workplace leaders establish standards and guidelines for completing tasks, but they give employees the freedom to work however they operate best within those guidelines. Employee engagement and satisfaction are “largely based on autonomy and independence,” Haden said. He spoke generally, not in response to specific incidents within the Office of Development.

Five higher-ranking employees said that the Office maintains an excellent workplace environment.

According to Caballero, Office leaders, from his direct supervisor to O’Neill, “encourage collaboration, are accessible and provide the necessary resources to perform our work.” “[The Office of Development] is one of the most supportive environments I have worked in,” Caballero wrote in an email to the News. “All staff are valued and recognized as key contributors to the success of our fundraising efforts.”

"[The Office is] obsessed with secrecy," one employee said.

"We're operating, we don't know how we're doing. It's rather like trying to run a race for time but they don't tell you how long it is. They only blow the whistle and tell you your time was great."

Fundraising inefficiencies and a lack of transparency But staffers said the office culture could interfere with fundraising, whether from unhappy employees or unoccupied managers.

In the 2020 fiscal year, Yale raised $567,000,051 in private donations, ranking seventh among private nonprofit institutions — behind Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

At 28.3 percent, Yale had the second lowest alumni giving rate in the Ivy League in 2019, according to a U.S. World and News Report ranking. One employee drew a direct link between the office culture and the low giving rate.

“We have people here trying to figure out how to solicit donations from Yale alumni, but they hold them in a weird kind of contempt,” the staffer said. “That can’t end well, that can’t end well at all.”

The staffer noted that there are very few Yale alumni in the workplace. The Office “simply will not hire Yale graduates,” the employee said.

Two other employees corroborated the Office’s dislike of Yalies.

According to two staff members, an Office supervisor said during the 2016 Calhoun College renaming protests that Yale students are the “most privileged people on the planet” and should “just shut up.”

Despite these accounts of fundraising difficulties, recently released fundraising figures appear promising.

With more than 30,000 alumni making commitments or gifts, O’Neill said that the 2021 fiscal year saw the highest amount of money received and pledged in the University’s history. Between July 2018 and Oct. 2, 2021 — a period before the public launch of the campaign — the Office raised over $3.5 billion, more than half of its $7 billion goal.

Still, four staff members criticized the lack of transparency with regard to fundraising goals. O’Neill said that the Office establishes over-

all fundraising goals each year, as well as smaller goals for individual units.

According to two employees, the unit-specific goals are shared with staffers in the unit, but the overall goals are concealed from most. “[The Office is] obsessed with secrecy,” one employee said.

“We’re operating, we don’t know how we’re doing. It’s rather like trying to run a race for time but they don’t tell you how long it is.

They only blow the whistle and tell you your time was great.”

Racial tension Progress toward diversifying the Office’s racial makeup lags behind the University as a whole. More than 80 percent of the office’s employees are white, and six sources said it is noticeable when employees of color are treated differently.

According to a November 2019 workplace survey obtained by the News, across the University, 68 percent of staff members are white. Only five percent of staffers in the Office of Development are Black. The University average is 12 percent.

Six employees recounted episodes of what they see as racial discrimination and microaggressions in the workplace. Although the Office has launched Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives — which, according to O’Neill, have included discussion sessions, programs for staff and efforts to enhance workplace diversity — staffers said that these efforts have not led to change.

The 2017 workplace survey reveals that only 46 percent of employees in one of the Office’s units believed that the University upholds an inclusive environment in which diversity is valued, compared to 70 percent of Yale employees as a whole. The 2019 survey shows 85 percent of Corporate and Foundation Relations employees responding affirmatively to the same prompt.

O’Neill said workplace survey results are only shared internally and declined to provide them for the Office of Development as a whole.

On one occasion, a former staff member of color said managers repeatedly passed over him for a promotion, despite him and another source’s assertion of his superior abilities at using Hopper, a software program that the Office employs.

The former staff member also said that responsibilities not included in his job description were added without a raise in his pay. His dispute of this change was corroborated in emails the News reviewed.

His white colleagues were treated differently, he claimed, and they were allowed to attend meetings that were not open to him. An email reviewed by the News shows that the staff member was told there was no space in the room for him to attend a training session, but that there would be future offerings.

“You just don’t know [whether the disparate treatment is racially motivated], but when you’re the only African American person there, what do you assume?” he said.

A different employee — a Black woman — also reported being repeatedly left out of meetings with donors.

Though she was often told that the exclusions are oversights and that she would be invited next time, the same situation has recurred “too many times to count,” she said.

O’Neill challenged the claim that staff members are excluded from meetings on the basis of race. Meeting participants are chosen based on the relevance of their roles and responsibilities, O’Neill explained.

University spokesperson Karen Peart declined to share whether there are human resources complaints about the Office of Development. Lisa Nolen, an HR generalist at the University, similarly declined to say whether there are complaints regarding discrimination and workplace culture at the Office.

Two staff members at Yale’s Office of Institutional Equity & Accessibility — Senior Director Valarie Stanley and Equity and Accessibility Support Specialist Jonathan Bailey — did not respond to multiple inquiries about whether they had received complaints regarding discrimination and workplace culture at the Office.

In addition to being excluded from meetings, two employees reported being called by the name of a Black colleague they did not resemble.

During one Black female staff member’s first few days on the job, a colleague expressed their fear of walking to the train station in New Haven. The staffer chimed in, sharing that she also rides the train. Their supervisor — a mid-level employee at the Office — responded by saying the staffer could “handle it” because she was from Harlem. Another staff mem-

ber overheard this exchange and corroborated the details.

The supervisor wrote in an email to the News that they have no recollection of the conversation.

On another occasion, the staffer arrived at the office with her hair braided. Multiple people asked questions about her braids, one requested to touch her hair and during a work meeting she was asked to explain her braiding process. People looked at her like “some sort of museum exhibit,” she said.

For Christmas one year, her boss gave her a book about slavery, expressing that the gift would be well-suited for her, she said.

The employee’s supervisor saw it differently, expressing that the gift was not related to race. According to the staffer’s supervisor, she had read “Washington Black” by Esi Edugyan and “gave it to several people of different races.” She said she believed the staffer’s “expressed interest” and academic background in African-American history and literature meant she would enjoy it.

By contrast, the employee said her boss would also bring her to events and meetings, and introduce her as “the Black studies major.” It felt “like show and tell,” she said.

“I think that I was hired because I was young and Black and then those same characteristics basically were the reason why I never felt comfortable and another reason why I was treated the way I was,” she said.

In her email to the News, the supervisor wrote that the staffer often mentioned her ambitions of attending graduate school in African-American studies, so “I did on occasion introduce her to or describe Yale faculty who I thought she would be interested to know, to assist in her professional development.”

According to one staffer, it is difficult for employees to make formal complaints to the Office’s Human Resources department, but employees have reached out to HR. According to Larry Gladney, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean of Diversity and Faculty Development and Professor of Physics, racial microaggressions can induce physically harmful stress on victims, who may feel the need to withdraw or hide their authentic self for fear of incurring further discrimination.

Gladney spoke generally about the effects of microaggressions, but was not responding to specific incidents within the Office of Development.

The staffer arrived at the office with her hair braided. Multiple people asked questions about her braids, one requested to touch her hair and during a work meeting she was asked to explain her braiding process. People looked at her like “some sort of museum exhibit,” she said.

He further explained that power differences make it difficult for employees to push back against microaggressions perpetrated by their supervisors.

Though Yale does not have guidelines specifically regarding microaggressions, the University’s policy against discrimination affirms its commitment to prevent and address harassment. The policy defines harassment as acts, whether severe or persistent, that have the “purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with [an] individual’s work” or that create an “intimidating or hostile environment.”

After police officers murdered George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, spurring protests throughout the summer of 2020, many departments in the Office established DEI task forces, holding regular meetings and discussions. The female staff member quoted above took part in the meetings for her unit.

At the first Corporate and Foundation Relations DEI task force meeting, employees took turns sharing their personal experiences in the workplace. According to Patricia Pedersen, an associate vice president at the Office and director of the Corporate

and Foundation Relations division, the unit had several hours of “listening sessions” led by Dannika Avent, Associate Director of Learning and Development and DEI Liaison. The female staff member spoke up about the microaggressions she had experienced, sharing that she never felt comfortable in the office and did not feel that she belonged on the team.

Her colleagues generally responded apologetically, she said.

But during the next meeting, Pedersen said that one employee had felt uncomfortable with the previous meeting’s format. As a result, she discontinued the practice of sharing personal anecdotes during DEI meetings. This factored into the female staff member’s decision to leave her unit, as it was “clear” the unit would not make progress toward diversity and inclusion if it was afraid of making people uncomfortable, she said.

According to three staffers in the unit, the ensuing meetings were not productive. Ideas were often shut down for being too controversial or impractical, two staff members said.

Soon after, in the spring of 2021, the unit’s task force was shut down.

“The Office of Corporate & Foundation Relations task force is no longer active because staff members from various backgrounds and for many different reasons, were uncomfortable with the sessions/activities implemented by the task force,” Pedersen wrote in an email to the News.

According to O’Neill, the Office has shifted its resources toward a division-wide, five-year Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging strategic plan. The plan is led

by Avent with assistance from an external DEI consultant and a small group of staff. The details of the plan will be published on the Belonging at Yale website, Avent told the News.

Concerns over returning to in-person work Consistent with the University-wide return to campus guidelines, Office employees started working in-person for at least two days a week beginning Oct. 11.

Though high-ranking Office staff expressed their enthusiasm for the return to campus, the revival of in-person work elicited pushback from six subordinate employees interviewed by the News.

The six employees cited their conviction that working from home is both more flexible and more productive. They also raised concerns about what they see as inadequate COVID19 safety measures in the office.

O’Neill, however, shared her excitement about collaborative opportunities and face-toface meetings with employees and donors. The six high-ranking members whom she connected with the News expressed similar sentiments.

“It’s been terrific to be back on campus and see many of my colleagues in-person again after a long hiatus,” Matchett wrote in an email to the News. “I especially appreciate the new work/flex schedule of on-campus two days a week as it allows for the best of both worlds — the opportunity to be together with my colleagues as well as the remote flexibility the other days of the week to do my more intensive writing and research-oriented work.”

Six staff members the News spoke to said they should be allowed to continue working from home as long as they complete their tasks. In addition to protection against breakthrough COVID-19 infections, the benefits of working virtually include more flexible hours and fewer distractions, staff said. In particular, three staff members argued that the success the Office saw during the past year demonstrates the efficacy of virtual work. One described what they saw as “contradictory messages” from the Office administration: that Yale is having one of its best fundraising years yet, but that no one can work effectively outside of the office.

Last spring, one staff member assembled an unofficial survey to gauge interest in work flexibility. According to the survey results, which were shared with the News, nearly 95 percent of the 66 respondents said that remote working was “very important” to them.

For some employees at the Office of Development, any time spent in the office is unwelcome.

“Things are very tense,” a staff member wrote in an email to the News. “No-one is happy. We see all of the bad things going on and are powerless to stop them. Our livelihoods are on the line if we speak or step out of turn.”

Staff reporter Isaac Yu contributed reporting.

Contact ZHEMIN SHAO at zhemin.shao@yale.edu .

W SOCCER Princeton 1 Harvard 0

VOLLEYBALL Princeton 3 Penn 2

SPORTS

FOOTBALL Princeton 18 Harvard 16

FIELD HOCKEY Columbia 2 Dartmouth 1

FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE goydn.com/YDNsports Twitter: @YDNSports YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

FIELD HOCKEY ELIS TAKE TWO OF THREE GAMES In a span of five days, the Yale field hockey team clashed with three different opponents. Last week, the Bulldogs secured a victory over Sacred Heart before falling to Penn and stunning Hofstra.

MEN’S SOCCER BULLDOGS DRAW WITH PENN The Yale men’s soccer team posted its fourth straight Ivy shutout against Penn on Saturday night. Yale now sits in third in the Ivy standings, trailing Princeton and Cornell by four points and one point, respectively.

Lightweights win at Head of Charles CREW

“I worked with the team for a few years... We have a great relationship and the squad is fired up for the upcoming season” MARAT ISRAELIAN INTERIM FENCING COACH

Bulldogs to host Columbia at the Bowl

BY NADER GRANMAYEH STAFF REPORTER The Bulldogs will host their second straight game at the Yale Bowl on Saturday when they face off against Columbia. The Lions are coming off an impressive 19–0 shutout against Dartmouth, who beat the Elis in overtime just a few weeks ago.

FOOTBALL COURTESY OF DAVID PAUL

At the famed Boston Regatta, Yale’s rowing teams secured a podium finish in four races.

BY MELANIE HELLER SPORTS EDITOR The Yale rowing teams returned to the Head of the Charles Regatta last weekend, coming first in the Lightweight Eights and securing podium finishes in four of five races.

Blue skies and still air provided a fitting backdrop for success, with Lightweight Crew finishing the three-mile course almost nine seconds ahead of Cornell to claim the gold medal in the eights.

Women’s rowing placed second in the Club Eights as well as third and fifth at the Championship Eights. Heavyweights also placed third and twelfth at the Men’s Championship Eights.

“It is just amazing to be racing again,” head coach Will Porter told the Athletic Department. “It has been two years since our last competitive strokes. It is good to be back at it.”

W HOCKEY Harvard 4 Dartmouth 1

notably the 90-degree turn after Eliot Bridge toward the end of the course. Y150 coxswain Akshay Khunte ’24 noted that in the lead up to the race, all the lightweight coxes met to study the course.

“We watched a lot of recordings to see what turns could be better where,” Khunte said.

On Saturday, the first day of competition for the Bulldogs, the Women’s crew team set the pace for the weekend with a second-place finish at the Club Eights.

The Blue and White led the pack for the majority of the race.

In the final stretch, the University of Southern California slipped ahead of Yale to claim victory. The Bulldogs finished the course in 16:38.504 — just over six seconds behind the Trojans.

The Elis participated in four more races on Sunday: Men’s Lightweight Fours, Men’s Light-

As the largest regatta in the world, the 2021 edition of the Head of the Charles brought in almost 11,000 competitors across 2,231 entries from 619 clubs to compete across 65 events. Participants range from high school students to “senior veterans,” who have an average age of at least 70.

The annual regatta traditionally takes place on the penultimate weekend of October. This year, the regatta expanded from two days to three, with competition starting on Friday, Oct. 22. According to Row2k, spreading competition across three days allowed for rescheduling for bad weather as well as giving more breaks for the regatta volunteers.

The infamous regatta ropes around the Charles River, the border between Boston and Cambridge. Throughout the threemile span of the race, boats must cross under seven bridges and brave the river’s twists and turns,

SEE CREW PAGE 10

Bulldogs claim 1st place at ACCs

Columbia (5–1, 2–1 Ivy) has only one loss on its ledger all year. In their Ivy opener, the Lions lost 24–7 in Princeton, New Jersey to the Tigers. Princ-

eton entered the year as the Ivy League preseason favorite and is the only undefeated team left among the Ancient Eight.

Columbia entered its last contest as 17-and-a-half-point underdogs to Dartmouth but rode a defensive shutout en route to victory. The Big Green loss put Yale (3–3, 2–1 Ivy) squarely back into the mix for the Ivy League crown. The Bulldogs’ only conference loss came against Dartmouth and with the Big Green dropping a game to Columbia, Yale will be guaranteed a share of the Ivy League SEE FOOTBALL PAGE 10

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

After beating the Penn Quakers last week to end a two-game skid, Team 148 will host the Columbia Lions on Saturday.

Women’s Golf at St. John’s

BY HAMERA SHABBIR STAFF REPORTER The Yale women’s golf team played a single round at the St. John’s Invitational to finish off its fall schedule.

WOMEN’S GOLF The Bulldogs traveled to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, to compete in the St. John’s Invitational, which was originally scheduled for Monday, Oct. 25th to Tuesday, Oct. 26th. However, inclement weather on Tuesday meant that the second and third rounds of the competition could not be played. The tournament was

shortened to 18 holes and Yale’s sixth-place result reflects only that first round of play.

“It's definitely not how we wanted our season to end,” Kaitlyn Lee ’23 said. “I think we all wanted a little redemption on Tuesday but unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate. On the bright side, we know what we need to work on and we're ready to put in the work this winter. We can't wait until the spring season comes because I think we've just scratched the surface of how good we can be as a team.”

The team began the season with a win at the Boston College Intercollegiate, had a fourthplace finish at the Princeton Invitational and tied for sec-

ond-place at home in the Yale Invitational. At St. John’s, the Bulldogs finished sixth out of the ten teams present while Quinnipiac took the first-place position. Columbia, the only other Ancient Eight squad at the tournament, finished third.

The Bulldogs finished with a team score of 25 over par, with captain Ami Gianchandani ’23 tying for eighth place with a score of three over par.

“It’s a bummer we had our last tournament of the season cut short,” Gianchandani said.

“But it reinforces the drive in all of us to play our best when we are out there.”

SEE WOMEN’S GOLF PAGE 10

MELANIE HELLER/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The No. 1 Elis secured placement at the Match Race Nationals and favorable seeding leading into the spring season.

BY MELANIE HELLER SPORTS EDITOR On the weekend of Oct. 16, the Yale sailing teams secured critical wins at the Larry White Trophy and the Women’s Atlantic Coast Championships, hosted by the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and Harvard, respectively. The Bulldogs also placed second at Boston College’s Savin Hill Invite and third at Dartmouth’s Captain Hurst Bowl.

SAILING The following weekend, the Blue and White picked up a win at the Coed ACCs at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Yale also finished the weekend victorious at the Fairfield

Cup and Yale Women’s Trophy and placed second at Northeastern’s Oberg Trophy.

The Bulldogs qualified for the Larry White Trophy — the NEISA Match Race Championships — by finishing first at the Pine Trophy earlier this year. The Elis also won the White Trophy and qualified for the Match Race Nationals next month at the University of Florida.

Yale is the only Ivy League school that qualified for the Florida regatta.

Match race regattas consist of two boats racing head-to-head.

Results from a round-robin determine seeding for playoffs. The Blue and White not only won the Match Race New Englands, but won every

STAT OF THE WEEK

SEE SAILING PAGE 10

9

COURTESY OF YALE ATHLETICS

Yale women’s golf finished fall play at the St. John’s Invitational, which was cut short due to inclement weather.

THE NUMBER OF RETURNING YALE MEN’S ICE HOCKEY PLAYERS IN THEIR 25-MAN ROSTER.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021

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

Obsessing over sex is a Yale tradition as old as the Oldest College Daily itself. Whether you’re fucking your roommate, still yearning for your first kiss, or dealing with an unsettling skin rash, Sex on the WKND is here for you. Nothing is too personal or silly. Ask us anything ;) Dear Sex on the WKND, My ex-boyfriend still wears my homemade gifts around campus. How am I supposed to go about my life when any walk to class could come with a glaring reminder of our relationship and breakup?

Sincerely, Unhappy ex This summer I lived among ghosts. I shared a century-old home with other college students who reported all sorts of paranormal experiences, from mysterious patches of cold air to strange sounds in the night. I don’t consider myself superstitious, but there were times where even I admitted to experiencing an eerie feeling of being watched.

I thought I had left behind the preternatural as I made my way back to New Haven, but I found that returning to a fully-populated campus meant brushes with a different kind of specter: the ghosts of lovers past.

When I think about the scariest parts of college, I would put the constant threat of bumping into a past partner or fling near the top of the list, just below facing the wrath of Dr. G in Gen Chem Lab. “Out of sight, out of mind” is a noble mantra, but blocking a number and unfollowing on social media only goes so far when you share a campus. Yalies take all sorts of preventative measures in the name of limiting post-breakup chance meetings: no suite-cest or dating friends or hooking up with someone in your college. I’ve broken all of these cardinal rules, which honestly indicates a short-sightedness that should disqualify me from giving any sort of relationship advice. But no matter how careful you are, living in the same square mile as an ex means that unexpected encounters are almost guaranteed.

Every relationship is different, and so is every breakup. Some exes will cross the street to avoid eye contact, while others can manage a friendly hello in line at Commons — we’ll leave the ageold question “Can exes be friends?” for another day. While what’s healthy or comfortable looks different for everyone, there’s one universal hardship that comes with navigating the new terms of an ended relationship: you have to do it on your own. Relationships themselves are exercises in collaboration, a set of dynamics and norms that partners create together in constant conversation.

But a breakup necessarily ends this partnership, and each person is left to define their own rules of engagement. Even in // ZOE BERG

the most mutual of uncouplings, exes might have totally different ideas of how to proceed, paving the way for plenty of tense or awkward moments.

Deciding what to do with physical reminders of a relationship is one of the hundreds of little choices that need to be made after a breakup, and it sounds like you and your ex have elected to go about it differently. I get why you feel a little weird about your exes choice to continue using your gifts, especially because they’re homemade. If the gift was practical or generic, it might be more economic or sustainable to keep it in use. I have a friend who’s kept an air fryer she got from a past anniversary because, as she says, a breakup wouldn’t come between her and convenient, low-calorie fried treats. But your homemade gifts are not air fryers, and — no offense — I doubt your hand-knit scarf or whatever could be considered half as useful as an all-in-one countertop gadget that can cook Trader Joe’s Mandarin Orange Chicken in 12 minutes plus pre-heating. More importantly, your gifts carried much more sentimental meaning than the fastest growing kitchen appliance in America, which can prepare anything from golden-brown mozzarella sticks to perfectly crisp cauliflower nuggets.

You didn’t mention what kind of terms you and your ex are on, but if seeing him wear these gifts really bothers you, it might be worth bringing it up with him. Just because a breakup means less communication doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to mention something that’s making you feel uncomfortable or hurt.

But if you’re like me, you’re probably less concerned about your ex’s choice itself than you are about what glimpses it may give into his mental state. It’s easy to obsess over the possible meaning of every little action after a breakup, zooming in on Instagram posts and analyzing text message punctuation with the precision of a Comp Lit major. You might be thinking he’s hanging on to these items because he’s not ready to let go of the relationship, or that it’s evidence he’s moved on Joshua Bassett-style to the point where these gifts don’t mean anything at all.

The hard truth is that whatever this choice might say about how he’s processing the breakup — if it even says anything at all — is none of your business. One of the universally acknowledged hardships of breakups is that you must go through it without the support of the one you considered your person. Even for exes who

stay in touch, talking about in-the-moment individual experiences of heartbreak is usually off-limits, and for good reason. Keeping that emotional distance is kind of the point of breaking up. Navigating your own way from heartbreak to healing is a challenging, vital first step in the process of disentangling your life from another’s.

Bumping into exes on this claustrophobic campus is usually just awkward, but in the early days of a breakup it can also really hurt. Greeting someone you once loved with the same quiet wave you’d give a near-stranger from section is a reminder that you no longer get to

// MALIA KUO

know each other deeply, not in the way you once did. Maybe it’s just the season, but I’d say that’s a pretty spooky feeling. Acknowledging this is a first step in growing comfortable with the way your life and that of your ex have diverged.

This takes time — there’s a reason it’s called “going through” a breakup — but you might find that establishing these emotional boundaries will allow you to continue to exist in one another’s lives on new terms. After all, haunting is better left to ghosts.

Submit your anonymous question here: https://bit.ly/sexonthewknd .

PAGE B2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND URBAN

// BY JESSAI FLORES

LEGENDS

THE ECHOING GREEN

Nestled in the atrophied heart of the city, beyond the iron gates of Old Campus, is the uneasy sprawl of the New Haven Green. It is like any ordinary park. The children play their sports under the pulse of the sun as their elders watch them from the shady benches. Around them the city spirals into a noisy cavalcade of hurried life. Tires on wet pavement, coins rattling in purses, the hisses and squeals of city buses. In the core of that loud spiral, in the Green, sits an unperturbed silence. The Green is an oasis of grass in the desert of city life. For newcomers, it might even be a nice place for a picnic. For those of us who know better, the Green’s air of peace is nothing more than a ruse hiding something sinister behind it.

In fact, what looks like a park and sounds like a park, is really a massive graveyard long destroyed.

Deep within the earth of the Green remain the bones of thousands of people, long dead and rotted away.

Their headstones were ripped up and moved to Grove Street, but they were all left behind. The silence of the Green is no peaceful refuge but a simmering rage. One that tumbles over itself thousands of times as every lingering soul trembles in fury.

While the spirits cannot stalk in the daylight, they still cast their unease across the Green. Enough to cause people to scurry away the minute the sun begins to set. When it does,

the Green spills itself empty, save for the silence of the dead long forgotten. For when the sun sets upon the lawn, and the last echo of life is heard, you best not be seen on the darkening Green.

They say that if you were to remain after dark, when the moon casts its drowsy gaze upon the greying lawn, you will hear something faint beneath the silence.

An echo of a whisper hovering just beneath what your ears can perceive. It is a quiet calling, just discernible enough for you to wring meaning from it but not enough for you to understand it. The echo will lure you deeper into the Green with nothing but the yellow fog of the streetlamps to lead your way. As you meander through the maze of sidewalks, the echo will grow louder.

This time, it is a muffled chorus of voices, as if you were hearing a conversation through a wall. Still, you will not understand what it is that the echo is saying. So, you venture further into the park. As you do so, you will notice that just beyond the corners of your eyes, the shadows cast by the lamps will blur rhythmically in the space between what you can and cannot see. Almost as if the shadows are breathing. In and out, the shadows move as if they were waiting. But waiting for what?

The echo will lead you to its source in the deepest part of the

darkened Green. Only those who have lived to tell the tale have recounted in fits of screams and agony what exactly it was that waited for them in the moonlight.

Some say it is an immense darkness, a tangle of nothingness in the center of the park. A void so black and empty that it cannot be understood by the human mind.

The mind tears itself apart rather than attempting to understand what cannot be understood. Others say that at the end of the echo is evil itself. So hot and vile that few have the words to explain it. One woman once reported going to the source of the noise, only to find herself hung upside down by her shoe from her bedroom ceiling fan, with no knowledge of how she got there.

One group of Yale first years once recalled going through the Green at night to go to a cookie shop and then found themselves at the opposite end of the park, nearly thirty-two hours from when they first entered.

Yet it only felt like a brisk walk. One man took his wife with him to stargaze in the Green and then got back home, only to discover that his wife had different colored eyes. Across all these stories, lies one thread of similarity: the horrific realization that they were not alone on the darkened Green.

Right before the dark heart of the New Haven Green, those who were

allowed to leave, unscathed or forever changed, all remember the dance of the shadows. The shadows that were suspended in the lamplight had the form and shape of something human. According to those poor souls that found their way into the center of an ancient evil, there were thousands of shadows. Each took the shape of a person but not quite. They were always out of focus, as if the shadow could not remember what a human looked like. These shapes, these remnants of darkness moving in the lamplight, are perhaps the echoes of the lives buried under the Green, trampled in the daytime and forgotten. They are furious at the state of their existence. Their graves were snatched away and a giant park was plopped on top of their earthly tomb. So, every night, they climb up from the pits and roam the Green in hopes that whatever lies at the center of the Green devours the unfortunate lives who make their way in. These ghastly shadows are vindictive and clever. They lure you into the Green with their dance and watch as you become ensnared with curiosity for the mysterious echo at the core of the park. Be warned: know that if you follow, you follow them to your doom.

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

// GIOVANNA TRUONG

DON’T LOOK // BY ABIGAIL DIXON It is said that the Stacks, housing millions of books in Sterling Memorial Library, are also home to a ghost.

This ghost was once a lonely first year, Class of 1999. Hours away from home, driven by an unwavering passion for intellectual pursuits and impelled by five-and-a-half credits of readings and essays, he was not very social. Instead, he spent his evenings studying in a carrel in the Stacks, enjoying the view, the quiet and the solitude. He began spending hours upon hours each day on the top floor. Allegedly his name was George, but nobody was sure. He did not have any friends due to his time spent secluded — people barely even knew his face. His name is lost to history.

One blustery fall evening, when the sun had already set and a bonedeep cold blanketed New Haven, George made his daily trip to the Stacks.

He settled in his carrel for another night of philosophy readings. However, after weeks of this routine, approaching the peak of midterm season, his body worn down by stress and near-chronic sleep deprivation, when he tried to comprehend one more chapter of his Aristotle reading, his soul finally detached from his body. Have you had times when you find yourself reading the same page countless times but not registering any of it? Or staring blankly at a wall with no conception of how much time has passed? This means your soul has begun to roam. But, in this case, his soul went so far that it could not find its way back.

With his soul gone, George suddenly lost his moral sensibilities. He had a sudden urge to go into consulting after graduation, despite his 200 volunteer hours with nonprofits in high school. Because of the uncertainty surrounding his identity, we do not know where his soulless body ended up, but we do know where his soul is: the Stacks.

Filled with regret of how he spent his short time at Yale, his soul has become a sorrowful spirit that still haunts the Sterling Stacks, yet to understand ancient philosophy. Now, he seeks out first years that venture into the Stacks, hoping to find a friend.

However, given George’s unfamiliarity with the social scene at Yale, his quest for friends is not harmless. If you lay eyes on him, he will simply steal your soul. You will then be cursed to the same fate as him: eternally wandering the Stacks as your body goes on without you.

So, next time you think you hear someone in the cubicle in front of you, or you think you see a reflection in the window… don’t look.

Contact ABIGAIL DIXON at abigail.dixon@yale.edu .

// TORI LU

By Amy Cohen Each poem contains references to a different location on or near Yale’s Campus!

Many were turned from man to pale stone By this poor, cursed woman so venenosa With slithering hair, these words she heard ne’er “Tú eres la chica más hermosa” (Note: No need to read into the Spanish.)

A: BOOK AND SNAKE TOMB

SPOOKY RIDDLES

Read in this tome of the Gorgon Medusa, Whose secret rape was not kept hushed Columns of writing tell the tale How she received locks not easily brushed

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND SCARY

PAGE B3

STORIES

Yale Health Horror Stories:

As spooky season falls upon us, WKND asked readers to share their spookiest personal stories… their experiences with Yale Health. //IRIS TSOURIS: The greatest threat to Yalies everywhere is the stairs of Linsly-Chittenden Hall. I say this because those little divots in each step can and will fling you from your 9 a.m.

English seminar to a Yale Health examination room — with the bones in your foot chipped, crushed and in various other states of injury.

It happened on Sept. 8, 2021, just one week into the semester. A figurative fall down the Platonic ladder of love resulted in a literal fall from the LC stairs: I was gripped, wholly, by my seminar’s discussion of “The Symposium.” Perhaps a little too gripped because just as I was about to leave the building, my right foot pivoted sideways. A sharp inhale, a step missed.

Stars momentarily filled my vision.

I heard an unnatural crack and tried, fervently, to rise from the ground. But I could not. I don’t entirely remember what happened afterward. Two indelibly kind students must have found me, hoisted me up by my arms and helped me hobble across the Old Campus courtyard to an Uber, which arrived at Yale Health Acute Care half an hour later.

Let me preface this by saying that Yale Health has to be some sort of altered reality. I’m not sure if it was the strange, sterile room, or the stupor that I was in, but I cried so violently that the nurse could not take my vitals. “Oh honey,” she asked, “can you try taking a few deep breaths?”

The x-ray technician then asked me if I had kicked someone too hard. “Ugh, I wish,” I told him. Imagine being taken out by one silly little step! But it was plausible: the verdict was two fractures, a harrowing visit to Yale Orthopaedics, five unbearable weeks in a walking boot and many, many moments of surprising and invariable tenderness. Yale, as an institution, may be one of the most overtly inaccessible spaces ever, but its people — its understanding strangers, earnest suitemates and excessively accommodating professors — are not.

So, to whoever was praying for my downfall that day: it worked! I fell! But if there is any beauty to be found in broken bones, it is that they cannot help but mend themselves. Just as the mottled bruise expels itself from the body, a first year acclimates, inevitably, to the demands of college life — even if such demands include traversing century-old staircases.

Contact IRIS TSOURIS at iris.tsouris@yale.edu .

//ANABEL MOORE:

//ISABEL KALB:

Midterms: looming. Death by Yague: impending. Already dashing out of my classes at least three times an hour to empty my sinuses and hacking as if I had a severe lung disease — ahem, but let’s make this abundantly clear… NOT COVID-19 — I notice in the middle of my Math 116 midterm that my eyes are burning. In the Dunham Labs mirror, I look as though I’ve come to class still recuperating from a night of Woad’s mayhem.

At this point, I’ve already called Yale Health twice, describing in no uncertain terms that I am extremely close to losing both my lungs. Both times I was greeted with the chipper lady on the phone saying I’d get a call back from a nurse who would help me set up an appointment. This appointment never came.

So I drag myself to Yale Health, calling to say there is something seriously wrong with my eyes:I can’t see, I am literally outside, you cannot turn me away, I’ve already called twice, I know I need medicine, please let me see a doctor, and don’t tell me someone is going to send me a message in MyChart. When I finally see a doctor, they take one look and say I have pinkeye. Pinkeye! They give me ointment and eye drops for my eyes — spilling half of the tiny vial on the floor, I might add, as they demonstrate how to properly use eye drops, a novel task — and tell me to come back for the rest of my prescription in the morning.

But doc! I implore. This cough has been here for weeks. Is there anything you can give me for my painful and extremely obvious bronchitis?

Now, I must admit that this doctor is very kind. It is 11 p.m. on a Tuesday and a fatigued and ill first year shows up at their door, demanding meds. But they then proceed to tell me that I should really try ingesting straight honey, right out of the beehive. Sensing the futility of my endeavour, I get up to leave, thanking them for this astounding advice that will almost certainly help me stop getting weird looks every time I’m the one who starts the coughing domino effect in SSS 114.

Six weeks after contracting the Yague, I’m still sick, but at this point I think I’m better served cleaning out the cold medicine section at CVS than trying my hand at 55 Lock Street.

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

Entering college, first years are warned about the “freshman flu,” the vague sickness that haunts many new arrivals. This year, as we emerge from a sheltered pandemic environment, the impact on our immune systems has been even more drastic. But we at Yale are told not to worry, thanks to the resources of Yale Health.

When I began to feel sick about a month ago, I called Yale Health. After confirming that it was not an emergency, I was put on hold for almost half an hour, at which point I gave up and went to sleep. When I woke up the next day, I felt my throat beginning to swell. I called Yale Health, hoping to have a strep test. I was instead informed that I should have called the day before, because as of that morning, my COVID-19 test results — at that point just over 3 days old — were too old for me to be seen by Yale Health. I was told to gargle with salt water and get another COVID19 test. Here’s the issue: COVID-19 tests can take several days to come back, possibly longer, depending on how many students need tests. Midway through “yague season,” unsurprisingly, turned out to be a busy time for student COVID-19 testing.

Told that it would likely be around three days before my results would be emailed to me, I went back to my room to follow instructions and gargle with salt water.

Throughout the day, my throat continued to swell, to the point that swallowing was painful and breathing was difficult.

At this point, a friend of mine had been waiting for an appointment with Yale Health for over a week, getting sicker every day. I gave up. Unable to get a strep test, doctor visit, or any kind of medication from Yale Health, and knowing I could end up waiting a week or more, I cracked. Being from southern Connecticut, I was able to go home, see my hometown doctor and get antibiotics. The vast majority of Yale undergrads do not have this option. While I was lucky enough to be able to take this way out, students, especially Yale undergrads in the verging-on-post-COVID-19 yague season, depend on Yale Health for personal safety and support — and Yale Health is letting us down.

That same friend, not from Connecticut, resorted to a telehealth visit with her home doctor in California, who immediately diagnosed her with bronchitis, a dangerous combination with her asthma that required immediate medication. Had she not given up on Yale Health, things could have gotten very scary. While it’s understandable that Yale Health is adjusting to new COVID-19 restrictions and is simultaneously overrun with “yague” patients, the way it’s operating right now is not giving students the support we need. Spooky season may be upon us, but our health resources should not be what’s scaring us the most.

//DOROTHEA FAITH ROBERTSON: On Sunday afternoon, Oct. 9, I called Yale Acute Care with a throat so sore I could barely speak. I was told to wait for a call from a nurse. A few hours later, I still hadn’t heard anything, so I called again, and again was told to continue waiting until I could speak to a nurse. Finally, I was told to come in immediately.

Following the half-mile walk in my dirty sweatpants and unbrushed hair, I was stopped by security outside the Yale Health building; for me to enter, my name needed to be on a list. After calling twice — again — and being placed on hold for 15 minutes, Acute Care confirmed that I had an appointment and allowed me to enter.

Nurses asked me questions, took my vitals, and swabbed my throat for a rapid strep test, which came back as negative. They then told me that there was nothing they could do. “It’s just a cold; your symptoms should subside shortly, and if they don’t, go to Internal Medicine.”

By Friday, Oct. 15, I wasn’t feeling any better, but I told myself that I couldn’t let a common cold keep me in bed for a week.

In the middle of Spanish class on Friday morning, my professor walked up to me, looking very concerned, and touched my arm. “¿Tienes fiebre?” she asked, as I was sweating profusely, looking pale. “No sé, pero es posible.” She told me to go home and rest.

I called Internal Medicine and explained my situation. I had a fever. Over the next five hours and multiple phone calls, I was repeatedly told there were no nurses available.

On Saturday morning, I checked for my weekly COVID-19 test results from the day before — which had not yet been posted.

Instead, I found a positive test result for my strep throat culture from the previous Sunday: five days ago.

I waited outside for 30 minutes before simply walking in, but a nurse quickly walked into the waiting room to tell me to go outside. They could not treat anyone without a negative COVID-19 test from the last 48 hours. With tears in my eyes, I explained to her that I’ve had strep throat for over a week with no treatment and I just need some antibiotics. She went back inside, and after speaking with doctors, allowed me inside. As she’s taking my vitals, I tell her the story of the past week. “That’s ridiculous,” she says, “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.” I was prescribed antibiotics and told to rest.

I picked up my prescription and headed back to my dorm. I slept for hours, but woke up with two exams, a paper, and a project still awaiting my attention.

Contact DOROTHEA FAITH ROBERTSON at dorothea.robertson@yale.edu .

Contact ISABEL KALB at isabel.kalb@yale.edu .

// CECILIA LEE

The Voice of Toad Seeps Into the Stacks // BY ANDREW CRAMER There I was, working diligently on the seventh floor of the stacks.

‘Twas a Wednesday evening. I looked out the window and stared wistfully down at Toad’s Place. Oh, the shenanigans I could be partaking in right now!,” I thought to myself.

My daydreaming ended abruptly when I heard a sound.

On this fateful night, the noise didn’t come from two illicit lovers desperate for privacy. Nor was it the wail of a defeated Directed Studies student.

For a moment, I believed my ears were playing tricks on me. “It’s just the wind outside,” I told myself. But there was no wind on that day.

Suddenly, my computer shut off.

Was this a sign from a higher power that I should stop writing my article for the News? Maybe. But I wouldn’t let it deter me.

I stood up and took a brief walk around the dark, dusty, deserted bookshelves to clear my head. I returned and restarted my computer. I got back to my article, minding my own business. But after only a few minutes, I heard a sound

again. This time, I could make out a voice.

“Andreeeeewwww… it’s me, Toad from Toad’s. Join us!” I saw Toad’s on the awning across the street, smiling smugly up at me –– he looked ready to boogie in his slick three-piece suit, microphone in hand. The inviting night air beckoned to me. Surely, the News could wait.

“I’m on my way, Toad,” I mumbled.

A fellow workaholic shot me a funny look. I didn’t care. This is the voice of Toad’s we’re talking about. If you hear it, you obey. I hustled down the stairs, abandoning my backpack in the stacks, and headed over to Toad’s Place. The night was magical, like no other night at Woads ever has been.

I’ve gone back to the seventh floor of the stacks on other Wednesday nights, telling myself I have to do work. But I secretly hope each time that I will hear that ribbit-y baritone voice calling out to me once again. I never have.

Contact ANDREW CRAMER at andrew.cramer@yale.edu .

// CATE ROSER

By Amy Cohen Each poem contains references to a different location on or near Yale’s Campus!

Life is precious, this we know But we must learn of our coming decay Many a time there is to go But choose the latest that you may

You may search, of course, for a trick so clever It preserves the self in vanity But dark arts fail on the scope of forever For we cannot escape our humanity Some are taken past one hundred

Some after seconds and some in their prime Let it resonate that our days are numbered The circuit will close at this ultimate time A: LC 103

SPOOKY RIDDLES

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND HAUNTINGS

Old Campus Ghost Museum

// SOPHIE HENRY

// BY AMELIA DILWORTH Old Campus is heavy with the weight of centuries of Yale. Since the university first laid claim to the ground of New Haven, buildings have occupied this space— but Yale continuously modernizes, forever outgrowing itself, discarding buildings every generation as it reinvents itself, buying new buildings with the enthusiasm of little kids going back-to-school shopping. Many of these buildings have long ago disappeared, their footprints fading away, forgotten but never truly annihilated because construction is earth’s materials and human labor, and no energy is ever fully destroyed. Buildings are born of someone’s desire, designed for someone’s use — and so buildings take on souls and attitudes. Buildings have personalities — and when they are destroyed, buildings leave behind ghosts, benevolent or jealous or defeated, or maybe just disappointed. Today, Old Campus is scattered with architectural corpses and the spirits hovering over them.

Here are the ghosts you can meet on Old Campus.

Connecticut Hall Connecticut Hall is still standing, but he is only a shell of who he once was.

Completed in 1752, he held the first Yale dorm and then the Dean’s Office; today he is the Philosophy department. He used to stand arm in arm with his brothers along Old Brick Row, a string of buildings stretching down Old Campus, parallel to today’s Phelps Gate. Yale destroyed the rest of the Old Brick Row, reluctantly sparing Connecticut Hall when alumni pleaded for his life. But Connecticut Hall was never meant to stand alone. He is used to being surrounded with friends and now he juts out into Old Campus awkwardly, alive but alone. Yale threw McClellan Hall onto Old Campus hoping to give Connecticut Hall a friend, but he remains empty inside. In the 1950s, Yale gutted Connecticut Hall, carving out his entrails, preparing to mummify him — callously renovating him as if lobotomizing a troublesome relative, because if he was still around he might as well be useful. Connecticut Hall does not have the privilege of a time-of-death because his body is still alive, even if he has been forced out of himself.

The Yale Fence The Yale Fence is perhaps the most frightening ghost of all because he is more alive than ever. The physical Yale Fence was removed by 1888, but his ghost cackles, unconcerned, liberated from materiality.

He is now immortal, intangible, now not a place but an ideology.

From 1833 to 1888, every student at Yale perched on that fence, the essential gathering space. The Yale Fence was foundational to the Yale community, but he also structured a hierarchy between students – which sounds like the kind of thing that happens when your ideal social scene means just sitting in a straight line.

The Yale Fence supported a companionate exclusion, a socializing elitism, a friendliness within stratification.

The last pieces of the Yale Fence were removed to make way for Osborn Hall – but today, the Yale Fence has metastasized into the fortress of buildings that separates Old Campus from the New Haven Green. Now people live in the barrier between Yale and the world. We don’t sit in straight lines for fun – but we’re not looking out at the street or the Green anymore, either. There’s nothing wrong with socializing over a meal in the dining hall or frisbee in the courtyards or tea in a friend’s suite. But I wonder if the Yale Fence still surrounds us even here, his splintery wooden rails always one step behind you.

The Yale Fence is something bold and exciting, because he is friendship and ambition and the satisfaction of finally earning your spot on the corner. But he’s self-absorbed, opportunistic, a community built on division, a network built upon barriers.

That spirit still haunts Yale. We don’t just live behind a fence: we live behind gates and walls. It’s fun, and I’m proud to live within such formidable and breathtaking architecture – but we live perched on a constructed elitism, and the ghost of the Yale Fence passes by, whispering that if you don’t lean forward into clubs and coffees and internships, you’ll fall endlessly backwards.

Osborn Hall Poor Osborn Hall. He didn’t ask to replace the Yale Fence. He didn’t mean to thrust himself into the infrastructure of the university – yet when Osborn Hall first opens his big dumb eyes and looks around, he sees scowls, he sees glares, he sees that he is hated before he knows what hatred means.

Osborn Hall is insecure and tries too hard. He shows up to the first day of school in this absolutely ridiculous Romanesque style and all the other buildings stare at him with their perfect brick faces. Osborn thinks he’s better than everyone else anyway. He decides to look out at the street instead, expecting the world to love his gratuitous grandiosity while the other Yale buildings turn their backs on him and the city.

Because he’s facing a busy corner, and so round inside, it’s too noisy to hold a

lecture in Osborn Hall. But he can still hear a professor curse and students complain inside of him, he still hears the architects on the street whispering about tearing him down.

Osborn Hall wanted to prove that he could replace the Yale Fence, and he dies knowing he has failed. He is empty with shame, finds himself friendless and abandoned. Yale tears him apart while he’s still relatively young, putting the poor building out of his misery and replacing him with something that conforms. Osborn Hall was Yale’s embarrassing teenage phase, and the University wants to delete all the photos. The University was still growing up, still figuring itself out, using Old Campus to experiment with new identities and new buildings.

Osborn Hall still haunts Old Campus, watching with sullen jealousy as Bingham Hall takes his place. Osborn Hall is the cold presence of unburied mistakes and sleep-stealing regrets. His voice floats into meetings asking, “are you sure that’s a good idea? What if no one likes it? What if no one comes? What if you fail? What if you don’t belong here? What if you’re an excessively ornate Richardsonian Romanesque building with a noisy lecture hall?”

Dwight Hall But Dwight Hall still stands, you say!

That’s the Old Library, renamed for Dwight Hall’s disembodied soul. Originally, “Dwight Hall” referred to a separate building, next to Alumni Hall (which has been replaced by LDub). Now there’s just empty space there. There’s a bench, sure, but only so many people can use a bench at once.

Maybe you’ve heard the legend that Mrs. Harkness couldn’t see Harkness Tower because Dwight Hall blocked her sightlines– so they tore it down, and today that is the only building-less spot on the perimeter of Old Campus. Dwight Hall didn’t do anything wrong — he was just in the way of bigger and better things.

But Dwight Hall’s soul was never tied to a building. He finds a home in the Old Library, replaced by Sterling in the 1920s, and lives on. The spirit of Dwight Hall — at the time, an “independent, non-profit educational and religious organization,” according to its website – is a thing too kind and strong to be limited to a physical space. Dwight Hall has a conscience, an identity; he’s not dependent on the institution.

But what does it mean for service and leadership to move into a library? What does it mean to serve from the mind and not the soul? Today, the Old Library building is officially known as “Dwight Hall and Memorial Chapel.” Why does Yale have a chapel in an old library, and have a library in

a cathedral? Buildings at Yale are always on the move.

Dwight Hall isn’t vindictive or vengeful. He’s settled into his new self. But his old building leaves behind a vacancy like a gap-toothed smile. An emptiness like the grassy patch beneath a tombstone still stands witness to the space where an innocent building was sacrificed in favor of a donor’s aesthetics.

Durfee’s When I was in middle school, my dad finally let us adopt a cat: Marcie. About a week after we got her, Marcie stopped eating. My mom took her to the vet, who saw a “blockage” in Marcie’s stomach, so she probably ate some yarn or a lego or something. During emergency surgery they called my mom: that “blockage” was actually cancer that had already spread throughout Marcie’s entire digestive system.

They put Marcie down during surgery.

We never got to say goodbye.

And we had only had Marcie for a week.

That’s how I feel about Durfee’s. His death is not a massive architectural loss, it doesn’t shatter the infrastructure of my life like the death of a parent or a best friend. But it’s a premature loss, an unexpected loss, the first loss I’ve known for myself. We left for the pandemic and when we returned Durfee’s was gone. His familiar body, once warm with chicken tenders and Awake chocolate, now lays lifeless beneath Durfee Hall: closed eyes, closed doors, dark windows.

And this year, some weak zombie Durfee’s has emerged as the package center possesses Durfee’s dead body. It’s sad and empty, a box full of boxes. It’s an extension of an Amazon warehouse.

The Bow Wow, the implied reincarnation of Durfee’s, is subsumed into the glorious monopolizing belly of the Schwarzman Center. It is glittery and touchscreen-y and inhumanly clean, slippery-modern like a tech company lobby. It’s spectacular, but we still cling to the nostalgia of something quirky and imperfect, carrying on the traditional heartache of Yalies mourning architectural change.

Yale gives us the Bow Wow like a parent in the pet shop at midnight hoping to convince their toddler of a goldfish’s immortality, as if death were the inconvenient loss of a replaceable object and not the end of natural life, the final stage in growing-up, the fence between us and eternity.

Modernization comes for us all.

Contact AMELIA DILWORTH at amelia.dilworth@yale.edu .

Woads Witch Brew Ingredients: Lime jello Vodka or gin Lemon, lime or pineapple juice Lemon soda or ginger ale Instructions: Pour in 2 fl oz of water for every 3/4 oz of green lime jello.

Stir until the jello completely dissolves, then add equal part of ginger ale or lime soda, lemon or lime or pineapple juice for flavor. Finally, add half parts of liquor (vodka or gin). Serve chilled or with ice.