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 · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 · VOL. CXXXV, NO. 49 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
RAINY WINDY
40 42
CROSS CAMPUS
CHOREOGRAPHY YDT EXAMINES NEW DANCE WORKS
SPRING FLING
EID
FOOTBALL
Committee meets with Women’s Center to discuss ideal artists
STUDENTS CELEBRATE OCTOBER FESTIVAL
With recent injuries, Bulldogs succeed in running the option
PAGE 8-9 CULTURE
PAGE 3 NEWS
PAGE 5 NEWS
PAGE 14 SPORTS
City sees increased voting
War of the worlds. The first
snowfall of the year blanketed New Haven yesterday, turning Yale’s campus into a sea of white and prompting students to launch snowballs at one another. In honor of the wintry event, the Freshman Class Council organized a massive midnight snowfall fight on Old Campus, while Berkeley College split into two factions — North Court and South Court — and lobbed snowballs at each other. A winter wonderland indeed.
LEVIN UPDATES PROFESSORS ON SHARED SERVICES BY SOPHIE GOULD AND JANE DARBY MENTON STAFF REPORTERS
mated that 1,500 students showed up at the polls in New Haven, exceeding an estimated 1,250 in 2008 and 800 for the 2010 midterm elections. “I was thrilled. I expected [turnout] to be high. It was outstanding,” said Amalia Skilton ’13, who served as Ward 1 committee co-
Professors codified rules governing the structure and organization of the monthly Yale College faculty meetings a week ago, after several of those meetings erupted into heated debate last spring. Yale College Dean Mary Miller and other members of the faculty steering committee presented the newly formalized rules — which Miller said were based on the unwritten “collection of customs and traditions” that have historically governed the meetings — at last Thursday’s Yale College faculty meeting. The roughly 100 professors present largely approved of the step and voted to pass two amendments that would further increase transparency for future meetings. University President Richard Levin also updated faculty on the effectiveness of Shared Services, a controversial business model intended to shift common administrative tasks in Yale’s various departments to centralized service units, and reaffirmed a decision made by the administration last spring not to impose Shared Services in departments that do not welcome the model. “The update was to make sure people understood [how Shared Services would be implemented] and to make sure they understood the successes we’ve had with departments that have used Shared Services,” Levin said. He added that several administrative departments within Yale, including the Secretary’s and Vice President’s Offices, have migrated to Shared Services and the business model has “reduced error rates and improved turnaround” in “routine transactions.” Apart from Levin’s Shared Services update,
SEE WARD 1 PAGE 6
SEE FACULTY MEETING PAGE 4
Frosty comes to Yale? As the
snow fell down, snowmen rose up, popping up around campus throughout the day. Several giant snowmen were spotted relaxing on Old Campus and Silliman College’s courtyard, seemingly comfortable despite the freezing temperatures. Walk out. A group of roughly
15 graduate students staged a walkout yesterday afternoon in response to a talk by former German defense minister KarlTheodor zu Guttenberg. After Guttenberg was introduced, the protesters booed and heckled the former minister — who was forced to resign in March 2011 for plagiarizing his doctoral thesis — before walking out of the room. According to a flyer distributed by the protesters, Guttenberg “derid[ed] the academic community” and “den[ied] the relevance of academic integrity.”
Bundle up! Juniors and seniors
in the School of Engineering celebrated “Hoodie Day” last night, receiving their traditional blue engineering sweatshirts amid food from Mamoun’s Falafel, music and much fanfare. The social event aimed to bring engineering students together as the students donned their new sweatshirts, which came just in time for the snowy weather.
Saved once more. The Yale
Admissions Office extended its early application deadline again, pushing the due date back four days from Nov. 5 to Nov. 9 due to power outages and school closings.
Yalies go to Washington.
As Election Night wrapped up on Tuesday, more than a dozen Yale alums also took office, including Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown ’74, Rhode Island Congressman Sheldon Whitehouse ’78, Conn. Congresswoman Elizabeth Etsy LAW ’85, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar ’82 and North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple ’70. THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1993 University President Richard Levin becomes an honorary Pundits member after the society crashes his weekly pick-up basketball game. Levin, who had been playing with 10 Branford students when the group arrived, let the society present him with a live lobster named Lucy and a pumpkin signed by Pundits members. Submit tips to Cross Campus
crosscampus@yaledailynews.com
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Faculty meeting sets rules
EUGENE YI/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Turnout in the city substantially exceeded expectations, topping turnout numbers from the 2008 and 2010 elections. BY JOSEPH TISCH CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Despite the cold weather, Yale students and New Haven residents came out to vote in hoards on Tuesday. New Haven Election Day results indicated an overwhelming Democratic majority in the city, with President Barack Obama receiving
over 90 percent of the presidential vote, Congressman Chris Murphy winning over 87 percent of Senate ballots and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro taking over 92 percent of the vote in the congressional race, according to unofficial figures from city voting machines. Ward 1 CoChair Ben Crosby ’14 said voter turnout results were higher than expected city-wide. Crosby esti-
Quinnipiac takes Snow blankets campus voters’ pulse BY NICOLE NAREA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Pollster Peter Brown was standing in a cab line at a Denver airport on his way to the 2008 Democratic National Convention when his phone buzzed to life — a reporter was calling for an interview about a recent poll release. A diminutive, elderly woman eyed him curiously as he answered questions about the presidential election, asking him where he worked after he hung up. Though he said he did not expect her to have heard of the Quinnipiac Polling Institute, he remembered her eyes widening in recognition. “Even she, a little old lady from Arizona on her way to visit family, knew Quinnipiac,” said Brown, the Hamden-based polling institute’s assistant director. “The name is just part of the lexicon.” The Quinnipiac Polling Institute — based out of nearby Quinnipiac University — has come a long way since its inception in 1988 as a Connecticut-only voter survey. Today, a team of veteran journalists and academics oversee a staff of more than 300 who produce nationwide polls that are regularly featured in major media outlets
such as The New York Times, USA Today and national cable news networks. The Quinnipiac poll — for which interviewers contact a random selection of registered voters to ask about political issues and candidates — has been respected for its accuracy during the last decade, Quinnipiac political science professor Sean Duffy said. During the 2012 election season, Quinnipiac polls produced nearexact predictions of voter behavior in Florida, Virginia and Ohio for the presidential election and surveyed voter opinions of Connecticut’s tight Senate race between Democrat Chris Murphy and Republican Linda McMahon on a monthly basis. Quinnipiac polls have made their mark on campaign rhetoric this year with nine national and eight Connecticut surveys. While Ben Marter, a campaign staffer for Connecticut’s new Senator-elect Murphy, said that the “only poll that matters” was the one taken on Election Day, Duffy said campaigns understand the power of polls to influence the “mass psychology of the electorate.” Favorable polling numSEE POLL PAGE 4
EMILIE FOYER/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER
The city’s first snowfall of the season sparked concern about the integrity of repairs done after Sandy. BY AMY WANG AND LAVINIA BORZI CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS Students awoke Wednesday morning to a bright sky and clear walkways. But around 10:00 a.m., flecks of snow began to drift onto campus — increasing to a winter deluge that left lawns and sidewalks covered in wet mush. The first snow of the season did not disrupt Yale classes,
but several campus events and extracurricular meetings were rescheduled. Some students took advantage of the snow, rolling snowmen on Old Campus and snapping pictures of the serene white blanket covering the city. In the evening, the Freshman Class Council invited all freshmen to a midnight snowball fight. “For now we are in our regular alert for a regular snowstorm,”
University Vice President Linda Lorimer said. “We’re following it very closely. “ Maria Bouffard, director of emergency management for the University, said that the campus would only be minimally affected by the snow, but weather forecasts predicted heavy snowfall throughout the night and SEE SNOW PAGE 6
PAGE 2
YALE DAILY NEWS · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
OPINION
.COMMENT “Calm? I think another word for it might be depression.” yaledailynews.com/opinion
$680 for a vote In Texas we don’t vote for Democrats (not often, that is — we elected Jimmy Carter in 1976, and I guess we’ve been repenting since). So on Tuesday night, when Fox and MSNBC and CNN called the election for Obama, a good number of my high school friends turned to Jesus. One guy, a political science Ph.D. candidate at Texas A&M, posted a Facebook status that read, “At the end of the day, the Lord Almighty is still in charge.” I didn’t vote for Obama. But I didn’t vote for Romney, either, which is to say, I didn’t vote at all. The last time I voted was for myself, two years ago, in the Sophomore Class Council election. I’m pretty sure I didn’t vote for YCC that year (sorry, Brandon), and I definitely abstained the year after that (who is John Gonzalez?). I may have taken the survey for Spring Fling performers last fall, but I don’t think that counts as an election. At 22, I’ve never voted. I mean, I have — for myself, and for Ke$ha as a Spring Fling headliner (a man can dream) — but I’ve never voted for real, in an election with results that appeared on CNN. It’s been a matter of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, repeatedly, starting with the fact I was born in Brazil. Brazilians gain the right to vote at 16, but by then I was in Texas, and by 18, when the 26th Amendment deems people old enough to vote, I couldn’t register because I’m not American. I applied for my U.S. citizenship about a year ago, and the process usually takes five months, so I thought I would vote (for the first time!) in 2012. And I might have, had I not derailed my citizenship application by skipping my civics test. I ended up taking the test last month, telling the proctor (this is an oral test) that the Declaration of Independence declared independence from Britain, which was apparently the correct answer to, “What did the Declaration of Independence do?” This test being the last step in the process, I am now, bureaucratically speaking, an American. I say “bureaucratically” because it’s not official yet. My American citizenship will be made real at a naturalization ceremony, which will involve patriotic music, a pledge and a 6-foot-tall duplicate of the Statue of Liberty for photo ops. I was assured that my invitation to this ceremony will come in the mail soon, so that, any day now, I’ll become an American. I mention all of this because, by the time I pose with the
Statue of Liberty, I will inherit a president I didn’t elect. I like Barack Obama, but on Tuesday when TEO SOARES night, he thanked e v e r y Traduções “A m erican who participated in this election” and spoke of the “belief that our destiny is shared,” he wasn’t speaking to me. When he said that “we are an American family,” he was speaking, mostly, to the approximately 270 million people who were born on a chunk of land labeled on maps as America. But set those folks aside, and there are a handful of us whose citizenship is elective, who made a conscious choice to buy into this country. And I mean buy literally — the fee to file a citizenship application is $680. When I set out to write this column early on Tuesday night, the networks had just called Kentucky and given Mitt Romney the early lead, and I thought about joking that I wanted my money back. But that wouldn’t be true. Because when I applied for citizenship, I wasn’t buying into a president. I was buying into the larger, loftier ideals of this country.
AMERICA IS A PRETTY NEAT PLACE TO BE I think my disgruntled Texan friends, with their Facebook statuses about Jesus, were on to something. Appealing to divine providence may be a stretch, but there’s truth in saying that, in the end, it doesn’t matter who’s sleeping in the White House. This is a sentiment grounded in faith — faith that America is a pretty neat country. That every four years both parties have at each other with a kind of viciousness seen only in MMA fights and during the 20 minutes of Toad’s penny drinks — and that their disagreements are good. That though America swerves left and right like an 18-wheeler driven by a toddler, in the end, it will always move forward. That despite the deficit and joblessness and wars and the bickering over those things, this is a country some of us would still pay $680 for. TEO SOARES is a senior in Silliman College. Contact him at teo.soares@yale.edu .
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COPYRIGHT 2012 — VOL. CXXXV, NO. 49
'DOWAGER' ON
'AFTER OBAMA WIN, A CALM CAMPUS'
G U E S T C O L U M N I S T D I A N A S AV E R I N
In defense of the cold In June, I jumped into the Alaskan Pacific for the first time. The water bit my goose-bumpcoated skin with 58-degree saltwater fangs. It zinged and buzzed and reminded me, thoroughly and completely, of where I was. I laughed and let my jaw hang beneath the surface of the water, sucking in the sea and spitting it back up as I swam further into the sound. My friend watched worriedly from the rockweed shore. Euphoria, he yelled, is the first sign of hypothermia. It’s November. In New Haven, there is snow on the ground and the cold is just beginning. With dropping temperatures, squally winds, and icy sidewalks inevitably comes the seasonal conversation that concerns only the season. These wintry whines permeate every awkward pause on campus. The Californians claim, over and over, that they’ll never adapt. The Texans refuse to buy a jacket. The Minnesotans refuse to put one on, insisting it’s not winter until your front door is buried in snow. Even the New Englanders seem to have seasonal amnesia, rejecting the notion that winter has ever been this cold, or come this early. And with all of
these theories about the inconveniences of the outside world, and our own inadaptability to it, we let go of the magic of red-splotched cheeks and snow-clumped hair, of iced-over branches and flurryfilled gusts. We let this magic melt away into the inky sky of 5 p.m. sunsets. But before this seasonal script takes over in earnest, sometimes expanding into big, not just small, talk, about how winter might depress us or suck the light out of us, I want to offer a humble defense of the cold. The beginning of this school year was objectively miserable. It was sunny and it was hot and there was never a cloud in the sky. I was in Connecticut for weeks before the rains came, waiting impatiently while becoming brittle and thirsty for a taste of the place where I lived. When the rains finally arrived, I almost cried (of happiness, of course). I rushed home with a goofy smile, then ran up Prospect towards the willow trees by Edwards Street, cut onto the grass and rolled down the hill to the Yale Farm. My skin was slick and hair gnarled. My spiraling slowed to a stop, and I stayed lying there for a while, sprawled on the ground, watching and feel-
ing and tasting the rain. Having forgotten what it felt like to know and feel the air I breathed, the touch of it overwhelmed me. I eventually got up. I ran around a bit more before returning home renewed, reminded that the Medieval fortresses and asphalt grids of New Haven cannot wall out the movement of water. Like the sea, the bite of the rain and the snow reminds me, thoroughly and completely, of where I am. The cold water reminds me that euphoria might be the first sign of hypothermia. I forget where I am when the sky is blue and the winds are still. Mild days dissolve and pass by unnoticed. I sit inside, check my emails and respond to none of them. I ride my bike to class, wear the same sweater and jeans each day, and make vague comments about politics or my sleep cycles when the need for small talk arises. But when the cold comes back, when I can feel the air around me, with my ear cartilage clenching and my knuckles stiffening, I remember the joys of the sea. New Haven isn’t always my favorite place in the world. I hate passing by the carcasses of wheelless bicycles locked to parking
meters. I hate becoming used to the ringing sound of sirens and I hate forgetting to wonder about the person for whom they were sent. Sometimes I drift into daydream, back into the cold Pacific, imaginary barnacle coated rocks beneath my feet once more, the spout of a sperm whale again in the distance. The cold brings me back to this city. It braids my mind and body together in the place where I am standing. I know that the cold does not treat us all equally well — that some of us have nowhere to retreat inside when the sidewalks turn to ice, and others of us lack a homeknit hat to keep our ears from turning an unfavorable shade of crimson. But as the yellow leaves spiral to the street and the sharpshinned hawks head south overhead, I am pulled outside, where I remember that euphoria can be the first sign of hypothermia, that feeling the weather, even when it bites, binds me closer to the air I breathe. This winter, I hope to see you in the snow. DIANA SAVERIN is a senior in Berkeley College. Contact her at diana.saverin@yale.edu .
GUEST COLUMNIST SHIRA TELUSHKIN
A harsh, charming gift This morning, I stepped out from the Pierson Master’s Office and gasped. I watched, enchanted, from under the overhang as snow drifted gently towards the earth. There was something magical about the snowflakes — big, white, fluffy. They were perfect. They fell so gently and so softly in a flurry I can describe only as angelic. The snow was a surprise visitor, a reason to delight — a reminder that the world is an incubator of endless beauty. I stood rooted to my spot. The Pierson courtyard looked as if it had been ambushed by millions of winter fairies, playing a graceful game of tag. I almost heard their laughter. Then I looked down at my phone and remembered I had section in 20 minutes and realized I was freezing. Snow is beautiful, but it has never been man’s best friend. Snow is cold, inconvenient, slippery and in the words of many of my friends today, “horrible.” Especially when it comes to preserving our standards of dress and appearance, snow can prove to be a worthy
enemy. And as much as I wanted to only love it, I also knew I had to run home and change. The first thing I did was finally collect my winter coat, which had been at Jay’s Cleaners since August. I then gingerly began making my way over to Dwight, where I live, looking out for puddles and trying not to skid. Hands jammed in my pockets, balancing my coat over my arm with glasses sliding down my nose, I looked anything but angelic. Snow doesn’t do much for human elegance and grace. The girl next to me on the street muttering — “need different coat, need different boots” — probably agreed. Snow’s antagonism became all the more apparent once I was home, with minutes to winterize my clothes. Quickly, I flung off the black jersey sweater-coat I’ve been wearing everywhere for the past few weeks (with its oversized black hood it is an ideal outer garment to throw over messy hair and shadow rings under your eyes), and pulled off my maroon leather biker boots, with heels so worn they’re trip-prone even in
the best of weather. I found a pair of jeans and a sweater. From under my bed I retrieved the durable snow boots I bought last year after the Halloween snowstorm. (Of course, it never snowed again that entire year.) Ribbed with rubber and lined with furry cotton, they made my feet feel like moving rabbits. Finally, I took my long puffy winter coat from its plastic and snapped it closed. I had broken the zipper years ago. And just like that, within a frantic five minutes, the beautiful snow had stripped me of any outer beauty. I recognize, of course, that all is not lost for those who strive to meet the snow on its own terms. We need not lose our public identity to huge parkas and heavy winter shoes. Anyone who has spent time in Russia knows that the women, with their hot pink coats and stiletto boots, do not let winter turn their fashion into solely practical necessities. Bright colors and dramatic shapes, with the help of makeup, jewelry, hats, gloves and scarves, do wonders to keep a winter look
popping. Yet we are entering a season where the universe is constantly attacking us, between the cold and the sky, and we would do well to temper our optimism with a little concession to reality. When it comes to snow, we seem to be divided between the lovers and the haters. I am torn. On the one hand, I find the lovers a little smug. Whenever I complain about the weather, they smile and say, “Oh, I love the snow,” leaving me to feel like some overworked Yalie too busy stressing out to enjoy a soul-rejuvenating romp in the flurries. On the other hand, when the haters complain to me, I now think back to that enchanted moment this morning when I first glimpsed the magic and dreamily respond, “Oh, I love the snow.” This winter will probably bring much snow, and with it, many opportunities to delight and to complain. Let’s try to embrace both sides of winter’s harshest and most charming gift. SHIRA TELUSHKIN is a junior in Pierson College. Contact her at shira.telushkin@yale.edu .
G U E ST C O LU M N I ST JA M E S L E E
The cultural center conundrum A sense of unity in a community is a key to its survival and success — and, over time, it has become easier and easier to unify ourselves. Cavemen didn’t really get out much, as they were too busy merely trying to survive. Biblical times were defined by many parasangs of dirty sandals just to talk to someone outside of one’s hometown. Then, communication got easier, and friendships began and ended much more quickly. Trust required less effort to attain, and our communities got bigger. Our world is now much more unified than we could have ever imagined. With the idea of six degrees of separation, every person is only six relationships away from any other person, regardless of his location, language or social circle. In other words, you are only six or fewer relationships away from Jake Gyllenhaal, Kim Jong Un, Emma Watson or any other person in the world that tickles your fancy. Obviously, unity plays a huge role in today’s Yale community. Yale makes its strongest contributions to the world when a collective group of people works as one. That is why each group at Yale — from small a cappella and improv comedy groups to large
organizations like Community Health Educators — can succeed. Within each group lies a sense of community and unity, and each member propels the group to greater heights. Because Yale realizes the power of unity, the University actively tries to unify the student body. However, are administrators and leaders really doing a satisfactory job, or are they in fact supporting programs that divide the Yale community further? Residential colleges, although designed to instill a sense of community across the campus as a whole, actually divide the student body into 12 random buildings. I still have not met a single person from Branford College in my months here, an event that is quite bizarre and would have never happened if the student body was categorized as one collective group. The fact that residential colleges host their own Master’s Teas, have unique facilities like Silliflicks and offer selective events emphasizes the blatant divisions that colleges artificially create. Although the residential college system fosters a small community with close relationships within one’s own college, it also draws a solid
line between you and the other eleven-twelfths of students attending Yale. However, the institutions at Yale that really alienate members of the student body are the cultural centers. There is some latent sense of irony hidden in this concept, as the cultural center is supposed to embody unity, bringing people of similar cultures together. However, from a holistic point of view, the cultural center sacrifices the whole for the benefit of a minority. Events hosted by cultural centers either celebrate the positive or gravely address the negative, hosting programs that address people, countries and issues associated with a particular culture. A good majority of the emails notifying students of these events might as well have some cheeky “If you’re not part of our culture, you won’t enjoy this” notice trailing after the time and place. The events hosted by cultural centers are extremely exclusive and inapplicable to the majority of students here at Yale. Though many events at Yale are esoteric, when the University supports the exclusive and specialized programs at cultural centers, it also supports the divisive effects that
come from these events. Namely, cultural centers promote selfsegregation in the student body. Groups succeed when their members can think in different ways, combining individual thought processes to come up with new approaches and innovative solutions to today’s projects and problems. When spending time in a cultural center, students are spending time with people who think in a similar fashion as they do instead of exchanging ideas with people of different cultural backgrounds. In a campus where there’s so much to do in not enough time, every hour is crucial, and we want to be spending our time in the right places. Now, I definitely don’t want to state that cultural centers are wastes of our time. Learning about our heritage and current events in our communities is an essential part of learning about ourselves as human beings. However, there is an undeniable sense of irony when we realize that an institution meant to give a sense of community to the Yale student body actually divides it. JAMES LEE is a freshman in Silliman College. Contact him at james.h.lee@yale.edu .
YALE DAILY NEWS · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 3
NEWS
“Devon is the perfect man to fix ‘Twinks’! He’s a gay shark — like the actor who played Jaws.” JACK DONAGHY “30 ROCK” CHARACTER
LGBTQ groups expand on campus BY CYNTHIA HUA STAFF REPORTER Despite the LGBTQ Cooperative’s large following at Yale, some students are looking to create new outlets for LGBTQ students within their own cultural communities. Fonzy Toro ’15 created De Colores, a group for Latino LGBTQ students, at the beginning of the school year, and now students in the Asian-American Cultural Center are creating an LGBTQ group for Asian students. The organizers of these groups said the smaller student organizations provide a space for more intimate discussion and self-exploration than existing LGBTQ resources on campus, adding that perceptions of sexuality can vary across racial groups. “Because [sexuality] is such a sensitive issue, it might feel safer, especially for freshmen coming to terms with their own identity, to be able to form relationships first [through cultural groups] before becoming part of an activist community,” said Amaris Olguin ’15, a La Casa staff member. Toro said he discovered the need for an LGBTQ group for Latino students while speaking with many upperclassmen in La Casa who said an LGBTQ group within the community could be beneficial. De Colores now has a regular membership of about 15 students and is growing, Toro said, adding that the group has organized events this year including a talk on Latino sexuality and a discussion about coming out in the Latino community. Jonathan Villanueva ’14 is working to create the new LGBTQ group in the Asian-American Cultural Center with other students. Villanueva, the lead organizer of the group, said he realized the current LGBTQ groups on campus sometimes do not address LGTBQ issues in different cultural contexts. “Initially, I was worried whether it would be okay to create more [LGBTQ] groups [based] on race, but it’s better to have an excess of space within which to talk,” Villanueva said. Daisuke Gatanaga ’14, an AACC peer liaison who said he would be interested in helping Villanueva’s new group, said the peer liaison system forces some students to “compartmentalize themselves” and choose between being an LGBTQ peer liai-
son or a cultural house peer liaison. Gatanaga has organized a discussion event between the eight AACC and six LGBTQ peer liaisons to take place in the next two weeks. The goal of the discussion event is to foster greater collaboration among peer liaisons, Gatanaga said, adding that he does not recall participating in any such events as a peer liaison. The meeting will allow LGBTQ peer liaisons to better understand the specific needs of the Asian student community and vice versa, Gatanaga said. Kenneth Crouch ’14, president of Prism, an LGBTQ group in the AfroAmerican Cultural House, agreed that having more groups with specific cultural audiences allows students to feel more comfortable joining the LGBTQ community.
It might feel safer … to form relationships first [through cultural groups] before becoming part of an activist community. AMARIS OLGUIN ’15 Staff member, La Casa
Students eye legal services BY JANE DARBY MENTON STAFF REPORTER The Graduate Student Assembly has unveiled a new legal aid program to address student concerns about a lack of legal services offered by the University. The initiative, which was launched with the help of University General Counsel Dorothy Robinson, allows graduate and professional school students to meet with a member of the New Haven County Bar Association for free one-on-one advice during monthly “Ask-a-Lawyer” sessions — the first of which will be held today. Students can also consult a newly compiled list of local attorneys who will offer free private consultation and reduced service fees. GSA President Lauren Tilton GRD ’16 said the organization decided to work with administrators to implement the new program after students faced several specific occurrences in which they would have benefited from legal advice. “Students had come to GSA representatives asking about legal services and past incidences have highlighted the lack of services,” Tilton said.
LEGAL OPTIONS ACROSS THE IVY LEAGUE BROWN
The Co-op will help the cultural groups in its role as an umbrella organization for LGBTQ groups on campus, said the organization’s president Hilary O’Connell ’14. Last week, De Colores threw a “Hallowqueen Party” at La Casa in conjunction with the LGBTQ Co-op. Part of the social event’s goal was to publicize the De Colores name to the many members of the Co-op, said O’Connell. “[All the LGBTQ groups on campus] focus on different identities and sexualities, but we are all working on similar goals and similar projects,” Toro said. There are 16 different LGBTQ groups on campus, O’Connell said.
An in-house attorney provides legal advice to undergraduate, graduate and medical school students. HARVARD
Harvard students can obtain free legal advice through a clinic at Harvad Law School. UPENN
The Office of Student Legal Services provides legal counsel and representation to students. PRINCETON, DARTMOUTH
The Office of the General Counsel keeps a referral list of local lawyers available for students to reference.
Contact CYNTHIA HUA at cynthia.hua@yale.edu .
Lucas Thompson GRD ’13, a member of the GSA who worked on the project, said the program aims to make representation more affordable to students, particularly in the legal matters that most directly affect graduate students — including those related to housing, intellectual property, safety and insurance. The GSA became aware that students did not have enough access to legal representation after a GSA member was injured by an uninsured driver while riding her bike but did not have easily available legal resources, he said.
No one wants to pay $100 to ask a simple question. ANTHONY LOLLO GRD ’17 When designing the program, Thompson said the GSA consulted with peer institutions who already have established legal services programs and considered other approaches to legal aid, such as hiring in-house counsel. But the GSA and Robinson decided that compiling a list of lawyers offering discounted services and hosting free sessions would be the most costeffective way to address the issue. Robinson said the General Counsel’s Office used information on students’ primary topics of concern provided by the GSA to decide the type of lawyers to contact and built on existing relationships with outside firms to compile the list. “Everyone you talk to says they could use [legal services] or know someone who could,” Thompson said. “We really see this as the first step to fixing a big problem, but by no means is it fixed.” Robert Harper-Mangels, assistant dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, maintains the list of participating lawyers and will provide students with a copy if they request assistance. Five students have already approached him about the program this week, and two asked him for the referral list, he said. Both Thompson and Tilton said if the program is successful, they would consider expanding it to include in-house counsel, but Robinson said she does not think that the University will offer direct legal service to students. Because the program is still in its
early stages, Harper-Mangels said he and the GSA will track its progress throughout the year, adding that he will not know whether the program will expand until he can assess student response. “I think we’re all looking at this as an opportunity to be educated, to figure out what the need is and how significant it is,” Harper-Mangels said. “We hope to come to the end of the year with some hard data and figure out what needs to be done.” Sung-Ho Hwang — president of the New Haven County Bar Association who helped the GSA find lawyers for the program and is also on the list himself — said he thinks it is important for students to have reasonably priced representation because many students cannot make much money while enrolled in school. He added that he plans to adjust his fee based on a student’s need and demonstrated ability to pay. For the past two decades, Princeton has compiled a similar list of local lawyers available to students if they need legal assistance, said Peter McDonough, Princeton’s general counsel. But Princeton has not negotiated with lawyers to reduce legal fees, he said. Brown has an in-house lawyer for both undergraduates and graduate students, and Harvard offers free legal consultation through the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, which is staffed by second- and third-year Harvard Law School students. All 10 graduate students interviewed said they think increased legal services would be beneficial, though six said they were unaware a new program had been created. Anthony Lollo GRD ’17 said he does not know if he will use the new service himself, but he thinks graduate students will take advantage of increased access to free or reducedfee consultation. “No one wants to pay $100 to ask a simple question,” Lollo said. Derek Ng GRD ’13 said he thinks the “Ask-a-Lawyer” sessions could help international students familiarize themselves with the American legal code — an important skill to have if a legal matter arises during their time at Yale. The GSA first proposed a legal aid program to University President Richard Levin in September 2011. Contact JANE DARBY MENTON at jane.menton@yale.edu .
Spring Fling meets the Women’s Center BY KIRSTEN SCHNACKENBERG STAFF REPORTER While Spring Fling may not be until April, the Women’s Center and the Spring Fling Committee have already started thinking about the event. Members of the two groups met Wednesday afternoon to discuss sex and gender sensitivity issues surrounding Spring Fling artists and to brainstorm ways the committee can choose performers that will not make any students uncomfortable. The meeting, which was open to all undergraduates, marked the first time the Spring Fling Committee has formally met with members of the Women’s Center before choosing performers, and it aimed to give students a chance to express concerns about the performer selection process, said Ethan Karetsky ’14, the committee’s chair. “In the past, people haven’t always been thrilled with our artist choices at Spring Fling,” Karetsky said. “We want to be as sensitive as we can to all the different constituencies who attend the concert.” Seven members of the Spring Fling Committee, two Community and Consent Educators, two representatives of the Women’s Center and roughly three nonaffiliated students attended the meeting. Kat Lau ’13, last year’s Spring Fling Committee chair, said that in recent years, several performers have received heavy criticism from students about the offensive messages of their lyrics. The Ying Yang Twins, who performed in 2010, and T-Pain, who came in 2012, stand out as the two performers who garnered the most criticism, said Erin Vanderhoof ’14, the Women’s Center outreach coordinator and a former editor for the News. Lau added,
however, that the negative student response occurred only after it was too late to modify the concert’s lineup. In 2010, the Afro-American Cultural Center and the Women’s Center organized an alternative concert during Spring Fling weekend in protest of Ying Yang’s performance, Vanderhoof said. The same year, students posted signs with Ying Yang’s lyrics they found offensive around campus, said Emily Villano ’13, a staffer at the Women’s Center. Last April, Branford College Master Elizabeth Bradley, who hosted T-Pain in her house during Spring Fling, facilitated an open meeting between members of the Women’s Center and the Spring Fling Committee after the concert, Lau said.
In the past, people haven’t always been thrilled with our artist choices at Spring Fling. ETHAN KARETSKY ’14 Chair, Spring Fling Commitee Students at Wednesday’s meeting primarily discussed past origins of issues with artists, such as specific T-Pain lyrics they found offensive. By holding a forum in October, Karetsky said he hopes to turn post-concern criticisms into constructive preconcert discussions. He added that members of the Spring Fling Committee hope to avoid “perpetuating mythologies about sex and sexual culture at Yale” through their choice of artists. Karetsky said the forum comes as part of the Spring Fling Committee’s larger effort to ensure the majority of students are “proud”
YDN
The Ying Yang Twins garnered criticism for their performance at Yale for Spring Fling in 2010. of this year’s performers, an initiative that began with a change to the YCC’s Spring Fling survey. In the survey, which was sent out on Oct. 18, a new question was added asking students whether they found any of the artists “offensive in any way.” Karetsky said he received a wide variety of responses to the question, several of which cited con-
cerns with artists who had been arrested or convicted in the past. Responses to the survey’s question have already helped the committee eliminate several artists from their performer search, he said, adding that roughly 800 students responded to the question and a total of 2,400 students completed the survey. Matthew Breuer ’14, a CCE
who attended the meeting, said he thinks the Spring Fling Committee should be sensitive to lyrics that may be offensive to some students, but that the committee should not define Yale’s music culture. Nia Froome ’15, another attendee, said she felt “very comforted” that the Spring Fling Committee made an effort to
meet with members of the Women’s Center and hopeful that the meeting will lead to a more open and transparent dialogue surrounding the selection of artists. This year’s Spring Fling concert will run April 11–14, 2013. Contact KIRSTEN SCHNACKENBERG at kirsten.schnackenberg@yale.edu .
PAGE 4
YALE DAILY NEWS · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
FROM THE FRONT
Contact SOPHIE GOULD at sophie.gould@yale.edu. Contact JANE DARBY MENTON at jane.menton@yale.edu .
GRAPH QUINNIPIAC POLLS MCMAHON 43 PREDICTED
MURPHY 49 55
43.3
OBAMA
ROMNEY
ACTUAL
41
55
CONN.
Miller and the faculty meeting’s steering committee presented the rules concerning faculty meetings. English professor Jill Campbell and computer science professor Stanley Eisenstat both drafted amendments to rules that were accepted. Campbell’s amendment will make the minutes of future meetings available online for professors to view on a password-protected site. “The faculty at Yale is in constant motion, and there are many demands on our time, so if you can’t go to a meeting, you still should be able to find out from a reliable source that gives details about what happened,” said Victor Bers, a classics professor, adding that he approved of the amendment. Another amendment, drafted by computer science professor Stanley Eisenstat, will increase the number of notices the faculty receive before each meeting. Though the agenda for the meetings are usually sent out two weeks in advance, there will now be a reminder email sent closer to the date, Miller said. Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations professor Benjamin Foster GRD ’75 also presented a motion related to the meeting’s composition, calling for the extension of voting rights to more nonladder faculty. Foster said he estimates that up to one-third of the faculty cannot vote, including those who have taught as visiting or part-time professors for several years. According to the 2012 Faculty Handbook, only ladder faculty and full-time lectors and lecturers with appointments of over a year can attend and vote at the monthly meetings. The rules also stipulate that “certain other individuals who have continuing and significant interactions with undergrad-
uates may also attend and vote,” including department chairs, residential college deans and masters and directors of undergraduate studies. Foster said his motion would extend voting rights to anyone who has taught at the University for 10 or more semesters. “I don’t understand how we can call it a Yale College faculty meeting if some faculty can’t attend,“ Foster said. “It comes down to a question of inclusiveness.” Though Foster said the faculty steering committee initially turned down his proposal before Thursday’s meeting, he added that the motion was almost unanimously accepted when presented on the floor, and will be on the agenda for next month’s meeting. Miller said she had promised the faculty at a meeting in early May that the steering committee would compile the rules governing the time, location, agenda and other aspects of faculty meetings over the summer and release the guidelines this fall. “It’s important that our practice be regular, consistent and predictable,” she said. “[It] protects minority interest and makes [everything] more transparent to members.” At last February’s meeting, faculty protested the implementation of Shared Services, alleging it is an across-the-board system that does not meet the needs of individual departments and has harmed staff. In their March and April meetings, they debated the University’s partnership with the National University of Singapore in the creation of a liberal arts college. Yale College faculty meetings are held on the first Thursday of each month.
PREDICTED
57.9
40.9
OBAMA
ROMNEY
ACTUAL
PREDICTED
45
50
OHIO
FACULTY MEETING FROM PAGE 1
The alleged diameter of the largest snowflake ever seen, according to reports from a snowfall at Fort Keogh, Montana in 1887. The reports were never officially corroborated, but recent scientific research confirms the possibility of the existence of a snowflake that size.
Poll predictions realized
VIRGINIA
Faculty discuss transparency
15
inches in diameter.
ACTUAL
50.1
48.2
OBAMA 49
ROMNEY
50.8
47.8
0
20
POLL FROM PAGE 1 bers, Brown said, can also provide candidates with opportunities to fundraise, as donors may be more willing to give to campaigns when polls show their candidate ahead. But with a proliferation of polls like Quinnipiac in recent years, political campaigns must be quick to respond whenever a new survey is released. “Campaigns want to have a response [to poll numbers] ready to go,” said Quinnipiac polls director Doug Schwartz, who conducted surveys regarding hot-button issues in the Connecticut Senate race such as McMahon’s affiliation with the wrestling world and Murphy’s personal financial history. “They want to frame the story in their best interest.” Duffy said that the 24/7 news cycle feeds a tendency for even the most accurate poll numbers to be overhyped and that it is impractical to emphasize the results of any particular poll. “We report a new poll number every day, every hour, but things don’t shift that much overnight,” Duffy said. “We are poll-crazy in this country.” Rather than relying on the results of a single poll, journalists try to account for “house effects” — systematic biases,
47 40
60
80
typically for one party, in the results of any given polling firm. Buzzfeed political reporter and former News editor Zeke Miller ’11 said that while Quinnipiac polls have a respectable track record, all polls are a mere “guessing game.” Emily Swanson, polling director for the Huffington Post, said her team gives as much context as possible when reporting a story about one individual poll such as Quinnipiac’s, supplementing with interactive graphs that average all available polls. The Quinnipiac poll is unusual among many of its peer organizations in that it remains unaffiliated with political parties and interest groups. Impartiality is a central tenet of the institute, which Duffy said “takes a lot of effort to maintain its independent reputation.” “People trust us,” Schwartz said. “People will always look at polls that are sponsored with a big grain of salt if they are trying to get an accurate read on public opinion.” As a result of Quinnipiac’s accuracy, New York Times polling analyst Nate Silver dubbed the Quinnipiac Polling Institute the home of the most accurate major poll in 2010. But David Mark, editor-in-chief of the political news site Politix, said that it has also suffered “occasional hits” from conservative
PREDICTED ACTUAL 100
pundits such as radio host Hugh Hewitt who tweeted in September that the poll is “junk” because it oversamples Democratic voters. Schwartz, however, said the institute employs unbiased methods to survey the electorate. Usually, interviewers — who are mostly Quinnipiac students selected through a competitive screening and training process — contact 1,000 randomly-selected registered voters during a period of five or six days. The interviews take place at the institute’s phone bank, which has 125 computer-assisted stations, said Dorothy Donarum, manager of interviewer operations. Pollsters scientifically analyze the results before releasing the data to the public, performing a role that Schwartz said is “critical” to democracy. “It is important that our elected officials know what issues people care about,” Schwartz said. “We are keeping the campaigns honest.” In addition to its national and state polls, the institute conducts surveys in swing states such as Florida, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Contact NICOLE NAREA at nicole.narea@yale.edu .
YALE DAILY NEWS · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 5
NEWS
Deaths due to Superstorm Sandy
106
This is a minimum number of deaths, confirmed by the Associated Press as of Nov. 6. The figure continues to change as new reports come out from across New England.
City crime follows national decline GRAPH VIOLENT CRIMES REPORTED AS PERCENTAGE OF 1992 FIGURES 100
Nationwide New Haven
BY DHRUV AGGARWAL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
80
60
40
Students gather for Eid
1992
1994
BY LORENZO LIGATO STAFF REPORTER According to Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics released last week, New Haven is keeping up with a national trend of crime reduction. The uniform crime report released last week by the FBI shows a continuous decline in violent crime nationally over the past two decades, with 1,932,274 nationwide cases of violent crime reported in 1992, but only 1,251,248 cases in 2010 and an all-time low of 1,203,564 violent crime incidents last year. Following this national trend, New Haven reported a crime reduction from 1,992 incidents in 2010 to 1,748 incidents in 2011. Last year, the violent crime rate was almost half of what it was in 1992, when 3,233 violent crimes were reported. Mark Abraham ’04, executive director of DataHaven, a nonprofit organization that compiles and shares public statistics for the Greater New Haven and Valley region, attributed the decline
1996
1998
2000
in violent crime to the tactics of New Haven Police Department Chief Dean Esserman. Esserman — who was appointed to the head of NHPD leadership last November — has adopted a “more aggressive” approach to the issues that were facing the Elm City, Abraham said, by bringing an updated model of his community policing strategy to New Haven. Last year, New Haven saw 34 homicides, the highest homicide count in the city since 1991. But since Esserman’s implementation of community policing, only 12 homicides have occurred within the Elm City. “I hope New Haven continues to make this type of progress that we’ve seen,” Abraham said. The reported figures have already made the headlines of several news agencies that have ranked cities by what they calculated as each city’s per capita crime. But in its report, the FBI cautioned against using these statistics to compile rankings of these sorts, as they typically “provide no insight into the many
2002
2004
2006
2008
variables that mold the crime in a particular [area]” and consequently lead to “simplistic” and “incomplete” analyses that create “misleading” perceptions about certain areas. City Hall spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton ’04 said this was the case with New Haven.
These rankings give university students a false understanding of the community they are going to be living in. MARK ABRAHAM ’04 Executive director, DataHaven Abraham, who wrote an opinion piece for the New Haven Register on this subject in June 2011, said such rankings are “inaccurate and counterproductive,” as municipalities with identical populations
2010
2011
might occupy extremely different land areas. Additionally, there is “tremendous variability” in the way police departments across the nation treat crime reports, Abraham said. “It’s like comparing apples to oranges,” he added. Such highly publicized rankings published by news agencies, Abraham added, can distort the image of New Haven, especially for prospective students and incoming freshmen. Instead, he said, it is more important to focus on the overall crime trends within the city, which have decreased significantly from their highs in the early 1990s both in New Haven and nationwide. “These rankings give University students a false understanding of the community they are going to be living in,” Abraham said. In particular, the 2011 figures detailed 55 instances of forcible rapes, 766 robberies and 893 aggravated assaults.
While the city of New Haven is recovering quickly from the destruction of Hurricane Sandy, relief efforts in other parts of Connecticut have faced severe property damage and isolated incidents of fraudulent recovery programs. A City Hall statement released Monday estimated the collective costs of storm preparation, response and clean-up would reach approximately $1.3 million in New Haven, in addition to approximately $1.58 million worth of damage to six public schools. The city kept an emergency operations center open throughout the storm, which residents were able to call with questions related to storm damage and services, City Hall spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton ’04 said. Ninety-nine percent of New Haven had power restored by
Wednesday, according to local utility United Illuminating Company. “New Haven didn’t register the worst of the storm damage. There were homes that were damaged, but not that severely,” Benton said. “We just didn’t sustain the type of damage that we saw in Irene or that other municipalities saw.”
The vast majority of stormrelated expenses and damages will be eligible for FEMA reimbursement. JOHN DESTEFANO JR Mayor, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. voiced similar optimism, adding that the “vast majority” of storm-related
expenses and damages will be eligible for FEMA reimbursement. Concurrently, Connecticut is continuing extensive relief efforts, opening more FEMA Disaster Recovery Centers and expanding propane distribution, according to Gov. Dannel Malloy’s office. On Nov. 1, Malloy announced that Connecticut homeowners would not face higher-cost hurricane deductibles resulting from the impact of the storm and that the U.S. Department of Transportation had approved the state’s request for an immediate $2 million in emergency funding for infrastructure repairs. Malloy, Attorney General George Jepsen and Department of Consumer Protection Commissioner William Rubenstein also warned Connecticut residents to be wary of latent scams, particularly ones in which scammers offer to help individuals obtain disaster assis-
It’s hard celebrating Eid away from home, but it feels like a family here. HANNIA ZIA ’16
tance from FEMA in Sandy’s aftermath. The governor also advised homeowners to use licensed, local contractors when seeking home repairs, pressing state residents to ask contractors for references to ensure their legitimacy and providing tips to help prevent FEMArelated fraud. “Consumers should take necessary precautions to protect themselves, both personally and financially, and should immediately report any instances of potential fraud,” Jepsen said. Preliminary estimates of Sandyrelated damages and business interruptions surpass $50 billion, which would make the storm the second-costliest Atlantic hurricane in history, behind only Hurricane Katrina.
Kimberly Goff-Crews ’83 LAW ’86, the vice president for student life and secretary of the University, told those gathered for the festival that as the student body increases in religious diversity, agencies such as the Chaplain’s Office can provide students with resources necessary to practice their religion. She added that administrators need to improve their understanding of specific religions and their traditions to make students from different backgrounds feel more comfortable on campus. Ghani said the event was a “testament to the diversity of the Yale community” because students from many different backgrounds gathered for the festival. “[Muslim students] want to show their diverse culture to Yale students who are unfamiliar with it,” he said. “And non-Muslims get to experience a taste of that diversity which everyone at Yale is interested in getting.” Houriiyah Tegally ’16 said she enjoyed the event because it provided her with a sense of community. Hannia Zia ’16 said the event made her nostalgic because it reminded her of how she usually celebrates Eid back home in Pakistan. “It’s hard celebrating Eid away from home, but it feels like a family here,” she said. Zia said she enjoyed the speeches by freshmen and seniors the most because they had demonstrated dedication to the Muslim community. In the Muslim faith, Eid is celebrated twice a year.
Contact ISABELLA D’AGOSTO at isabella.dagosto@yale.edu .
Contact DHRUV AGGARWAL at dhruv.aggarwal@yale.edu .
Contact LORENZO LIGATO at lorenzo.ligato@yale.edu .
New Haven recovers from Sandy BY ISABELLA D’AGOSTO CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Commons was decked out on Wednesday night in flags and lights to host a dinner celebrating the Muslim festival Eid-al-Adha. Hosted by the Yale Muslim Students Association and the University Chaplain’s Office, the event — which is in its 11th year — attracted about 520 Muslim and non-Muslim students, faculty and members of the local Muslim community. Although the festival was officially celebrated on Oct. 26, the MSA postponed its festivities because it fell during fall break. MSA President Mansur Ghani ’14 said the event began as a commemoration of the religious occasion but has grown to be an inclusive event that showcases Muslim culture at Yale. “[The Eid dinner] reflects the strength of relationships and the unity in all people of the Yale community,” he said. The keynote speaker, Haroon Moghul — a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University specializing in Islamic culture, history and religion — said parallels between Christianity and Islam exist in the origins of the two faiths, adding that it is important to see these similarities because of America’s relationships with Muslims abroad and because of the increasing number of Muslims living in the United States. The event featured a reading from the Muslim religious book, the Quran, by Umar Qadri ’11. Omer Bajwa, the coordinator of Muslim Life in the Chaplain’s Office, spoke about the festival’s meaning and origin in the Muslim tradition as a day of sacrifice. In his speech, Bajwa also described the similarities between Muslims making a pilgrimage of the Hajj and the survivors of Hurricane Sandy because both groups faced adversity.
PAGE 6
YALE DAILY NEWS · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
FROM THE FRONT Ward 1 votes beat forecast WARD 1 FROM PAGE 1 chair in 2010. Skilton attributed the increased turnout to the grassroots efforts of the Yale College Democrats and other organizations working for the president’s re-election, citing tactics such as door-to-door voter outreach and voter registration on Old Campus. Additionally, she said many Yale students chose to vote in New Haven over their home states because the race between Democratic Congressman Chris Murphy and Republican Linda McMahon garnered national media attention for being extremely close. “It was nothing dramatic, nothing fancy — just lots of bodies knocking on lots of doors,” Crosby said. Yale College Democrats President Zak Newman ’13 said his organization worked with other campus groups including the Yale College Republicans and Students Unite Now to register over 500 students this semester alone. He said the voter tally “disproves the thesis” of student voter apathy. “2008 was a real inspiring election for a lot of people … but I think in this race we were really fighting to protect something,” Newman said. Lenthy lines queued at several polling locations in New Haven on Tuesday as students flocked to vote. Hallie Meyer ’15 said she waited two hours to vote at the New Haven Public Library on Elm Street. In Ward 1, where Skilton estimates students form 98 percent of the electorate, Obama beat former Republi-
“As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, ENGLISH POET AND PLAYWRIGHT
Campus sees first snow
can Gov. Mitt Romney 1,109 to 195 votes. Romney won 15 percent of the Ward 1 vote, five points higher than the citywide average of 10 percent. Skilton attributed this higher-than-average number to Yale’s racial composition. “If you look at the national turnout, it is clear that Obama got most of his support from people of color. Yale is the whitest neighborhood in the city,” she said.
I think in this race we were really fighting to protect something. ZAK NEWMAN ’13 President, Yale College Democrats According to the New Haven Independent, 40,366 New Haven residents voted for either Romney or Obama on Tuesday, excluding absentee ballots. This figure greatly exceeds the 24,590 New Haven votes cast in the 2010 Senate race and approaches the 44,210 city votes cast in the 2008 presidential race, according to state voting records. Yale student election participation bucked the nationwide trend of lower voter turnout compared to 2008. According to Associated Press estimates with 97 percent of districts reporting, 118 million people voted this year nationwide, a figure down significantly from 131 million voters in 2008. Contact JOSEPH TISCH at joseph.tisch@yale.edu .
PHILIPP ARNDT/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Snowstorms will make walking across campus more difficult and may make roads dangerously slippery. SNOW FROM PAGE 1 the possibility of power outages as a result of strong winds. The emergency management team, she added, has been in conversation about the snow and that the facilities department is prepared to clean and salt streets as well as monitor trees at risk of falling. Bouffard said there are currently no concerns that safety measures will be hindered as a result of any damage from Hurricane Sandy. Chief Administrative Officer of New Haven Robert Smuts ’01, however, expressed unease that the snow could exacerbate damage to city power lines already weakened by the hurricane. “We’re concerned about the power lines with temporary
repairs,” he said. “The snow might damage them and cause a power outage.” Still, Smuts said Wednesday’s snowfall will not have any damaging effect on the Elm City. He predicted that no significant damage will result in the coming days, though he said the weather will be “cold and gross.” Both Bouffard and Smuts said weather forecasts predict high winds and flooding along the Connecticut coastline. But Smuts said the lack of lunar tides, which were present when Sandy hit the city, minimizes the danger of flooding in New Haven. Bouffard added that Yale is not at risk of coastal flooding because none of the buildings are sufficiently close to the water. Smuts said that the main con-
cern over the coming days is ensuring that roads do not become dangerously slippery and that the city prevents power outages. “We don’t have any ploughs on the ground because there has not been accumulation,” Smuts said. However, combined tree damage from Sandy and the snow could lead to “some branches coming down.” Yale Police Department Assistant Chief Steven Woznyk said that the University Emergency Operations Team succeeded in monitoring the hurricane and continued to operate effectively during Wednesday’s snow. “We find that our preparations have proven to be effective,” he said in a Wednesday email to the News, adding that campus oper-
ations relied heavily on the team during last week’s hurricane. Students reacted to the snow with a mixture of excitement and frustration. “I really love the snow, but it made my hike up Science Hill much more difficult,” Marion Hirshberg ’16 said. National weather forecasts predict heavy snow and low temperatures in the New England area this winter. Julia Zorthian contributed reporting. Contact AMY WANG at xiaotian.wang@yale.edu. Contact LAVINIA BORZI at lavinia.borzi@yale.edu .
YALE DAILY NEWS · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 7
BULLETIN BOARD
TODAY’S FORECAST
Periods of rain and snow before 1pm, then a slight chance of rain between 1pm and 3pm. High near 45.
TOMORROW
SATURDAY
High of 49, low of 36.
High of 55, low of 41.
NUTTIN’ TO LOSE BY DEANDRA TAN
ON CAMPUS THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8 4:00 PM “Philanthropy and Policy: The Modern Service Movement” A discussion with Shirley Sagawa, Dwight Hall’s 2012 Distinguished Mentor. Sagawa, co-founder of Sagawa/ Jospin Consulting Firm, was named a “Woman to Watch in the 21st Century” by Newsweek magazine and one of the “Most Influential Working Mothers in America” by Working Mother magazine. A national expert on children’s policy and philanthropy, she has been called “a founding mother of the modern service movement” in the United States. She is currently a fellow in the Center for American Progress. Dwight Hall (67 High St.), Chapel.
WATSON BY JIM HORWITZ
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9 8:30 PM Fall 2012 Japan Film Series — “Three Outlaw Samurai (Sanbiki no Samurai)” Directed by Hideo Gosha, this 1964 film is among the most beloved chanbara (sword-fighting) films. It is an origin-story offshoot of a Japanese television phenomenon of the same name, but it is also a classic in its own right. A wandering, seen-it-all ronin becomes entangled in the dangerous business of two other samurai, hired to execute a band of peasants who have kidnapped the daughter of a corrupt magistrate. 93 minutes. Whitney Humanities Center (53 Wall St.), Auditorium.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10 8:00 PM Raise the Roof — A Benefit Concert Showcase Stand up and sing out to fight homelessness in New Haven! Raise the Roof is a benefit concert to support the fight against hunger and homelessness in New Haven. It will be a night of Yale-New Haven community engagement, good music, spoken word, dancing and s’mores … all of which will support YHHAP’s efforts to raise money for homelessness prevention programs in New Haven. Featuring the New Blue, WORD, Yaakov, Aaron Jafferis, Tskz CT Dance Crew and contra dancing. Tickets will be sold at the door, and a $5 donation is suggested. Dwight Hall (67 High St.), Chapel.
THAT MONKEY TUNE BY MICHAEL KANDALAFT
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11/8/12
By Robert Fisher
6 Warmup act 7 Epidermal opening 8 It can be bruised 9 Fuse into a single entity 10 Gabfest activity 11 Entrance requirement, often 12 Plumbing bends 13 Bank (on) 18 Beastly 19 On the qui vive 23 Jambalaya, e.g. 24 Mustang contemporaries 25 More than amuse 26 Skid row types 27 Really enjoyed 28 Pours messily 29 Blow 30 Offer with no intention of giving, say 34 Beat a hasty retreat 36 Detergent ad superlative 37 Hippocratic oath no-no 38 Spot for a lectern 40 Data storage medium
Wednesday’s Puzzle Solved
SUDOKU HARD
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9 3 8 3 1
5 7 1 (c)2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
43 Summer beverage 44 “No argument from me!” 45 Spring-__ cycle: tidal phenomenon 46 Watch the boob tube, say 49 Frat party wear 50 Has a bug, or bugs
11/8/12
51 Joint sometimes replaced 52 Eyelid affliction 53 Grad 54 Sharp cry 55 Distinctive periods 57 Hide-hair connection 58 “To All the Girls __ Loved Before”: 1984 #1 country hit
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3 6 2 4 5
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YALE DAILY NEWS · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
YALE DAILY NEWS · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 9
ARTS & CULTURE ‘Drowsy’ brings slapstick to Yale
“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.” FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, GERMAN PHILOSOPHER
YDT takes transnational turn 2010
BY JASMINE HORSEY CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Freshman Christian Probst’s ’16 first theater performance at Yale is uniquely challenging. “We’ve noticed that for many of the songs in the show I have a physical impediment,” he said. “For one number I’m tap-dancing, for one I have a blindfold and roller-skates on and for another I wear a monkey mask.” Such vitality distinguishes the Dramat’s Fall Mainstage production, “The Drowsy Chaperone.” In a marked step away from previous year’s Mainstage selections, which include “Sweeney Todd” and “Rent,” the Dramat sought to dazzle audiences with a musical that is “all-around silliness,” according to director Michael Schwartz, who the Dramat recruited from outside Yale to put up its largest production of the year. A parody of a 1920s screwball comedy, “The Drowsy Chaperone” debuted in 1998 and won five Tony awards for its 2006 Broadway production, including those for Best Score and Best Book of a Musical. “It’s almost like a magic trick, because there is so much to keep you entertained,” Schwartz said. “There are laughs every minute, bright colors and a very melodic score. Yet simultaneous to all this candy, there is a great complexity to the piece, both in its structure and in its emotional journey.” “The Drowsy Chaperone” features as its narrator an eccentric, middle-aged musical theater fan known simply to audiences as “Man in Chair,” played by Ryan Bowers ’14. When Man in Chair plays a rare recording of the fictional 1928 musical “The Drowsy Chaperone” in his living room, the show fantastically materializes in his own home, enabling
him to provide a running commentary on its plot, songs and characters. “We had this opportunity to do this big dance show that’s fun, hilarious, crazy and completely ridiculous,” producer Emma Hills ’14 said. “There is an entire scene which is just spit-take after spit-take after spit-take and an entire song which has this motif of monkeys. It just needs people who really love theater doing it.” For Hills, the potential to put on what has been touted as a “love letter to musical theater” was an important reason behind the choice of “The Drowsy Chaperone” from the list of 100 proposed shows. Sara Hendel ’14, who plays the eponymous Drowsy Chaperone, said the musical’s mockery of older theatrical productions allows it to adopt an “over-thetop” slapstick sense of humor that was common at that time. Hendel, who also acted in the 2010 Fall Mainstage “Rent,” added that while “The Drowsy Chaperone” is less well-known than other musicals selected by the Dramat, it offers a uniquely introspective look at the art form of musical theater by simultaneously laughing at how silly musicals can be and causing the cast and audience to appreciate them even more. “It’s not a drama, so it’s not going to be as deep and thoughtful, but it’s still a human piece and it’s about what one can share with a piece of art,” Hendel said. Though the Dramat has largely remained faithful to the original script, Schwartz said he feels certain references will be particularly pertinent to the Yale audience. “I tried very hard to get President Levin to make a photocameo as an older version of one of the characters, but alas my powers of persuasion were
2011
TWYLA THARP
MERCE CUNNINGHAM
For Yale Dance Theater’s inaugural project, Twyla Tharp rehearsal directors Katie Glasner and Jennifer Way Rawe led the restaging of “Eight Jelly Rolls,” a canonical work of dance.
In its second year, Yale Dance Theater took a leading role in the national dance scene as one of the first groups to receive the rights to famed choreographer Merce Cunningham’s repertoire after his company disbanded in January 2012. The dancers performed a selection of “Roaratorio” and a “MinEvent,” a shorter version of Cunningham’s signature “Event,” in April.
BY CLARISSA MARZÁN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
TORY BURNSIDE-CLAPP/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Director Michael Schwartz said “The Drowsy Chaperone” gives Yale’s actors a chance to show their creativity. unsuccessful,” he said. “But yes, there are certainly a few Easter eggs throughout the show that Yalies and New Yorkers will pick up on.” Schwartz said he is excited to see the many theatrical elements — and over 130 students — involved in such a flamboyant production come together, especially given the creative freedom inherent in each role.
Three students interviewed on campus said they are excited for the upcoming performance. Megan Toon ’16 said she is looking forward to the opportunity to see such an upbeat musical comedy. “I heard about it through a friend who’s in the production, and it sounds very different to anything that Yale’s done before,” she said. “I’m really excited to
give it a go and see the audience’s reaction to what could be a new experience for Yale.” “The Drowsy Chaperone” runs Wednesday through Saturday at the University Theater, with evening performances at 8 p.m. Saturday will also feature a 2 p.m. matinee. Contact JASMINE HORSEY at jasmine.horsey@yale.edu .
Margolyes explores Dickens’ life BY MARGARET NEIL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
CREATIVE COMMONS
British actress Miriam Margolyes acted out 23 different Charles Dickens characters.
On Wednesday night at the Yale Center for British Art, British actress Miriam Margolyes celebrated Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday through a performance of “Dickens’ Women.” Accompanied only by pianist and Yale professor Wei-Yi Yang, Margolyes brought to life 23 of Dickens’ female characters while also examining Dickens’ own life. Before an audience of roughly 70 Yale and New Haven community members, Margolyes, known by the public for her screen role as professor Pomona Sprout in the Harry Potter series, recited, acted and read from Dickens’ fictional work and non-fiction sources such as letters. Margolyes, who researched and wrote the show with Sonia Fraser, highlighted the influence Dickens’ life had on his work, especially in his development of female characters based on the women in his life. “I’ve had a passion for Dickens,” she said from the stage. “I learned from him that literature is not peripheral to life.” Margolyes linked each character she impersonated to a woman in Dickens’ life that had made an impression on him, including his nanny, grandmother, sister-in-law and various love interests. She acted out her impersonations of the characters in the chronological order in which their inspirations appeared in Dickens’ life. Accordingly, Margolyes emphasized throughout her performance that she was also chronicling Dickens’ own life. She even said she sees Miss Havisham from “Great Expectations” — who is also her favorite Dickensian character — as a description of Dickens himself. Over the course of her performance, Margolyes moved seamlessly from each character to a totally different character, to the narrator and to herself — a versatility for which she is known.
“I hope I am channeling [the characters],” she said. “What I can do, which is unusual, is switch characters very easily. Most actors can’t — that’s why I’m special.” “Dickens’ Women” was brought to Yale through the efforts of Jane Nowosadko, the manager of programs at the British Art Center, who has been planning this event in honor of the literary master’s birthday for over 16 months. “I try to look for programs that will enhance and reflect our collection,” she said, adding that Paul Mellon, who donated the museum’s initial pieces, was a Dickens fan. Throughout her performance, Margolyes addressed typical somber Dickensian themes such as death, avarice, lust and poverty, but kept a comedic tone. The audience responded positively to Margolyes’ tone, if only after some congenial prompting from the actress herself. “You can clap, you know,” she told the audience. Five audience members interviewed responded enthusiastically to the performance, and the crowd was animated throughout, giving Margolyes a standing ovation at the show’s conclusion. Robin Ruth, a New Haven community member, said she felt Margolyes had given an “enchanting and stunning performance.” Professor Janice Carlisle, who teaches Dickens, attended with members of her seminar. “I teach Dickens, and this is my third time [seeing “Dickens’ Women”] — it gets better and better,” she said, adding that Margolyes teaches her more each time about what the characters are like. “Dickens’ Women” is an Olivier award-nominated production first performed in 1992. Contact MARGARET NEIL at margaret.neil@yale.edu .
This year, Yale Dance Theater will restage the choreography of well-known choreographers for the third time — but with a cutting-edge transnational focus. On Sunday, YDT announced its spring 2013 project, which will examine works from contemporary dance choreographers Reggie Wilson and Akram Khan. Unlike the past two projects, which each concentrated on one artist’s work, YDT’s upcoming project will be divided into two sessions, each culminating in a public lecture/demonstration, YDT Faculty Director Emily Coates ’06 GRD ’13 said. The first session will focus on Wilson’s works, who will be the first choreographer to personally work with YDT dancers in the rehearsal process. The second session will be led by two senior dancers from the Akram Khan Company — one from Spain and the other from South Korea — who are the program’s first international guest artists in its threeyear history, Coates said. YDT’s past projects included the restaging of Twyla Tharp’s “Eight Jelly Rolls” in 2011 and Merce Cunningham’s “Roaratorio” in 2012. Led by Coates, YDT is an extracurricular dance initiative that allows Yale students to study works by iconic and emerging choreographers while exploring the academic ideas contained in their choreography. From midJanuary through March, students will study the work of Wilson, who directs the Brooklyn-based Fist and Heel Performance Group, a contemporary dance company that blends American postmodern dance ideas with movement traditions from the African diaspora. YDT dancer Derek DiMartini ’13 said that Wilson’s personal involvement in the rehearsal process will help preserve the original intent of the work. “There is something in the choreographer’s eye that other people can never see, so any time a work is restaged, part of the vision is inevitably lost,” DiMartini said. The Wilson collaboration also marks the first time YDT students will study new and still-developing work as opposed to canonized classics, Coates said. Of the three pieces selected for study, two are currently in the company’s rep-
ing and thinking about my ongoing relationship with the written word and what impact it does or doesn’t have with the folks that are actually doing the work,” he said, adding that the impact of this sort of documentation will be long-term. Coates and four YDT dancers, including Vastola and Light, used last year’s blog on the Merce Cunningham project as the basis for a research article, which was recently submitted to “Dance Research Journal” for publication consideration — a “tremendous accomplishment,” according to Cahan. “This kind of publication epitomizes what we are trying to accomplish in the arts overall, which is to create scholarly artists and artistically informed scholars,” she added. Looking forward, Coates said she hopes to increase YDT’s visibility in the dance world both here and abroad. She also said she is interested in YDT eventually commissioning new work, adding, however, that the focus of the program would remain diverse in its examination of both iconic choreographers and works as well as emerging choreographers and works. An information session about joining YDT will take place Dec. 2, and the audition will take place Dec. 6. Contact CLARISSA MARZÁN at clarissa.marzan@yale.edu .
Contact JESSE SCHRECK at jesse.schreck@yale.edu .
WILSON AND AKRAM KHAN Yale Dance Theater’s third performance will feature the work of contemporary choreographers Reggie Wilson and Akram Khan (pictured). Both artists explore the meaning of “diaspora” through their work and, as living artists, will be able to influence and be influenced by YDT’s study.
known in the United States, he is one of the United Kingdom’s most celebrated choreographers — last summer, he was selected to take part in the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. The company’s collaboration with Yale thus comes at a time when Khan’s company is gaining international recognition. “Having members of these artists’ companies come to Yale puts us close to the center of significant contemporary dance activity,” Associate Dean for the Arts Susan Cahan said. Farro and Kim will restage excerpts from Khan’s recent works, “Vertical Road” (2010), “Bahok” (2008) and “Kaash” (2002). Coates said this spring’s project will mark a dramatic shift in the YDT’s research focus. While the program’s first two projects studied the work of 20th century American icons, Wilson and Khan are both younger artists who are on their way to becoming 21st century choreographic masters, Coates added. Light said an exciting component of this year’s project is in the opportunity to compare and contrast the work of the two choreographers, both of whom explore dance through a transnational lens. “With the Tharp and Cunningham, we were doing a sort of an investigation across time with dancers of different generations and looking at the same work,”
she said. “Here … both choreographers pull their movements from various cultures and various traditions across space, geographically speaking.” Vastola said the comparative investigation of these two artists is very timely after the World Performance Project — a six-year program that invited dance artists from around the world to Yale — ended last year. “I think [YDT] will continue that engagement with … developing art … and the changing contemporary arts scene,” Vastola said. Coates said that in addition to a rigorous six-hour weekly rehearsal, the students blog about the rehearsal process and use their studio practice to inform their movement research, which appealed to both Wilson and the Akram Khan company members. Farro and Kim said in an email that Khan’s whole company will follow the blog, adding that it will be an interesting experience to hear perspectives from dancers engaging with the work rather than from journalists or critics, who do not form opinions based on their own physical interaction with the choreography. Wilson too expressed an interest in engaging with students who would be using writing as an “integral and valid form of expressing thoughts, ideas, emotions and experience” about the process. “I’m interested in understand-
Clueless at the court In the Yale Repertory Theatre’s production of “Marie Antoinette,” revolutionary France serves as proxy for America’s current social and economic climate. Marie, in her heavy jewels and towering wigs, is a satirization of the one percent: her life is full of servants and chocolate, yet she won’t stop traipsing around her castle, endlessly and nasally bemoaning the pressures of life in the public sphere, even as her subjects face starvation and disease. David Adjmi’s script skewers Marie for having lost all touch with reality, to great comic effect. One scene finds her on a jaunt around the castle grounds in a delicate off-white dress and bonnet, sipping “peasanty” tea with a girlfriend; The two women have ventured outside to visit the royal sheep — Marie’s absurdly romantic idea of getting “back to nature.” Later in the play, Marie meets actual peasants — the 99 percent — who speak in Southern accents and say things like “howdy.” She asks what they do for a living. They are shopkeepers. Marie, clouded by her exotic fantasy of poverty, misguidedly asks if they find this job “spiritually nourishing.” This is successful satire by the metric of exposing the stupidities of a specific target society. The play knows its audience — liberal, affluent people from Yale, Boston and New York City — and traffics in our cultural vocabulary, recasting the French queen as a Valley Girl straight out of “Clueless” to garner some well-earned laughs. A great satire, however, should also implicate its audience. We, the liberal, affluent people from Yale, Boston and New York City, are supposed to leave feeling uncomfortable with our wealth, identifying with Marie despite our rational condemnation of her disposition and wondering, as a consequence, if perhaps we’re as disconnected as she is. Unfortunately, “Marie Antoinette” is not great satire. Its subject is written as a caricature — a hilarious caricature, but a caricature nonetheless. She is heightened beyond recognition, her affectations so distorted that no audience will see its own collective face reflected in hers. We are most assuredly not Marie. Every time we laugh at her, it is proof that we recognize her absurdity, and if we can recognize her absurdity then we must not partake in it ourselves. Rather than indicting us, this play assuages: We, the liberal East-Coast affluent, are infinitely more grounded in, and therefore deserving of, our wealth. Marie’s two-dimensionality becomes especially problematic in the second act when she and her family are deposed and imprisoned, and the play enters darker territory. The dialogue is slower, the lights are dimmer, and Marie is shouldered with real emotional burdens. Her slow unraveling is well plotted, but the Blanche Dubois turn is fundamentally misguided. This play does not initially ask to be understood as having a complex emotional arc — by the time we reach the second act, the audience has spent too much time laughing at Marie to suddenly see things through her eyes. Where Blanche’s descent into madness is tragic, Marie’s is pathetic and slightly uncomfortable. This is not the fault of Marin Ireland, who plays the part convincingly, and who shines as a comic force in the first act; it is the problem of a play that changes its dramatic terms halfway through. Maybe Adjmi should have written his second act with the same refreshing stylizations of the first; Marie’s histrionics may not have forced me to re-examine my life, but they did provide an hour of very real entertainment. His play won’t go down in history as great satire, but for a night of theater with friends, good satire is good enough.
2012 REGGIE
ertoire and one, “(project) Moseses Project,” is yet to have its world premiere. YDT Co-Student Coordinator Aren Vastola ’14 said this opportunity provides a fascinating insight into the creation of a dance work. “There’s definitely a sense that you’ll be sort of shaping the work in a sense,” Vastola said. “It’s not like the work is being done directly for us, but you get the sense that we’re much more implicated in the process.” YDT dancer Elena Light ’13 said that usually only professional dancers have the opportunity to learn new work. “Dancers leave huge powerhouse ballet companies on a fairly regular basis over the lack of opportunity of the type we are about to be given here at Yale,” said Amymarie Bartholomew ’13, president of Alliance for Dance at Yale, the umbrella organization for Yale’s extracurricular dance groups. The second half of the semester will involve a three-week workshop with Eulalia Ayguade Farro of Spain and Young Jin Kim of South Korea, two senior dancers from the London-based Akram Khan Company. Khan’s choreography combines European contemporary dance styles with kathak, an Indian classical dance form, and the company itself draws dancers from all over the world, Coates said. Though Bartholomew and Vastola said Khan is less well
JESSE SCHRECK
New class exposes different world BY HANNAH SCHWARZ CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Every Tuesday and Thursday at the Whitney Humanities Center, a class of roughly seven students meets to learn about and discuss kabuki, a form of Japanese theater that emerged in the 17th century. The Theater Studies Department has made it a focus to incorporate global themes and courses into Yale’s theater curriculum, said its Director of Undergraduate Studies Paige McGinley. Despite administrators’ intent to broaden the cultural scope of the Theater Studies major, neither the class’s professor William Fleming nor three students in the class were aware of this goal. Regardless, two students said that by studying kabuki, they have been inspired to define theater in a more inclusive way. “As someone who’s doing a lot of theater, this course has directly influenced me in terms of the kind of theater
I try to do,” said Gabrielle Hoyt-Disick ’15, a student in the class. Hoyt-Disick explained that kabuki is “a beautiful impulse,” often embracing the overt theatricality that Western theater hides. Kabuki, for instance, incorporates costume changes into the performance itself. Alex Oki ’13, another student in the class, said he watched a kabuki performance for the first time in Japan and had never seen anything similar in Western theater. “The elaborate costumes, stylized delivery, dramatic makeup and poses and men performing female roles … are all very unfamiliar and disorienting,” Fleming said. While Hoyt-Disick said that even the most realistic kabuki storylines are wilder than “the craziest Shakespeare plot,” Oki said love suicides and other seemingly unusual events were not particularly rare when these plays were written. During class last Thursday, Fleming explained that kabuki’s tales were often influenced by fictional Japa-
nese comic books from the Edo period, which lasted from the early 1600s to the mid-1800s. “Writers and readers were avid theatergoers, famous actors moved in the same circles as popular authors and the theater was a great source of stories and inspiration,” Fleming said. “Edo popular fiction and popular theater can’t be separated from each other.” Oki said many plots were derived from news stories that “everyone knew about, and these playwrights were producing them overnight.” The Japanese word for such plays literally translates to “overnight pickles.” Although the development of the kabuki class took place as part of the Theater Studies Department’s increasingly international focus, Fleming said he feels that the gradual internationalization of the arts at Yale has come from students, individual faculty members and small groups rather than the administration. “I’m not sure any internationaliza-
tion, real or perceived, is the result of a centralized effort so much as the product of numerous smaller programs, initiatives and collaborations around the University,” Fleming said. Three students interviewed said their interest in studying kabuki grew out of a desire to learn more about Japanese culture. “[Kabuki] comes from a completely different culture with very different societal norms,” Oki said. The link between studying an untraditional form of theater and gaining cultural knowledge is especially clear at Yale, which East Asian Languages and Literatures Director of Undergraduate Studies Tina Lu said has one of the “strongest” East Asian studies programs in the country. This is the first semester in which the class is being offered. Contact HANNAH SCHWARZ at hannah.schwarz@yale.edu .
CREATIVE COMMONS
Kabuki is a form of Japanese theater marked by elaborate costumes and stylized delivery.
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YALE DAILY NEWS · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
YALE DAILY NEWS · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 9
ARTS & CULTURE ‘Drowsy’ brings slapstick to Yale
“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.” FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, GERMAN PHILOSOPHER
YDT takes transnational turn 2010
BY JASMINE HORSEY CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Freshman Christian Probst’s ’16 first theater performance at Yale is uniquely challenging. “We’ve noticed that for many of the songs in the show I have a physical impediment,” he said. “For one number I’m tap-dancing, for one I have a blindfold and roller-skates on and for another I wear a monkey mask.” Such vitality distinguishes the Dramat’s Fall Mainstage production, “The Drowsy Chaperone.” In a marked step away from previous year’s Mainstage selections, which include “Sweeney Todd” and “Rent,” the Dramat sought to dazzle audiences with a musical that is “all-around silliness,” according to director Michael Schwartz, who the Dramat recruited from outside Yale to put up its largest production of the year. A parody of a 1920s screwball comedy, “The Drowsy Chaperone” debuted in 1998 and won five Tony awards for its 2006 Broadway production, including those for Best Score and Best Book of a Musical. “It’s almost like a magic trick, because there is so much to keep you entertained,” Schwartz said. “There are laughs every minute, bright colors and a very melodic score. Yet simultaneous to all this candy, there is a great complexity to the piece, both in its structure and in its emotional journey.” “The Drowsy Chaperone” features as its narrator an eccentric, middle-aged musical theater fan known simply to audiences as “Man in Chair,” played by Ryan Bowers ’14. When Man in Chair plays a rare recording of the fictional 1928 musical “The Drowsy Chaperone” in his living room, the show fantastically materializes in his own home, enabling
him to provide a running commentary on its plot, songs and characters. “We had this opportunity to do this big dance show that’s fun, hilarious, crazy and completely ridiculous,” producer Emma Hills ’14 said. “There is an entire scene which is just spit-take after spit-take after spit-take and an entire song which has this motif of monkeys. It just needs people who really love theater doing it.” For Hills, the potential to put on what has been touted as a “love letter to musical theater” was an important reason behind the choice of “The Drowsy Chaperone” from the list of 100 proposed shows. Sara Hendel ’14, who plays the eponymous Drowsy Chaperone, said the musical’s mockery of older theatrical productions allows it to adopt an “over-thetop” slapstick sense of humor that was common at that time. Hendel, who also acted in the 2010 Fall Mainstage “Rent,” added that while “The Drowsy Chaperone” is less well-known than other musicals selected by the Dramat, it offers a uniquely introspective look at the art form of musical theater by simultaneously laughing at how silly musicals can be and causing the cast and audience to appreciate them even more. “It’s not a drama, so it’s not going to be as deep and thoughtful, but it’s still a human piece and it’s about what one can share with a piece of art,” Hendel said. Though the Dramat has largely remained faithful to the original script, Schwartz said he feels certain references will be particularly pertinent to the Yale audience. “I tried very hard to get President Levin to make a photocameo as an older version of one of the characters, but alas my powers of persuasion were
2011
TWYLA THARP
MERCE CUNNINGHAM
For Yale Dance Theater’s inaugural project, Twyla Tharp rehearsal directors Katie Glasner and Jennifer Way Rawe led the restaging of “Eight Jelly Rolls,” a canonical work of dance.
In its second year, Yale Dance Theater took a leading role in the national dance scene as one of the first groups to receive the rights to famed choreographer Merce Cunningham’s repertoire after his company disbanded in January 2012. The dancers performed a selection of “Roaratorio” and a “MinEvent,” a shorter version of Cunningham’s signature “Event,” in April.
BY CLARISSA MARZÁN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
TORY BURNSIDE-CLAPP/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Director Michael Schwartz said “The Drowsy Chaperone” gives Yale’s actors a chance to show their creativity. unsuccessful,” he said. “But yes, there are certainly a few Easter eggs throughout the show that Yalies and New Yorkers will pick up on.” Schwartz said he is excited to see the many theatrical elements — and over 130 students — involved in such a flamboyant production come together, especially given the creative freedom inherent in each role.
Three students interviewed on campus said they are excited for the upcoming performance. Megan Toon ’16 said she is looking forward to the opportunity to see such an upbeat musical comedy. “I heard about it through a friend who’s in the production, and it sounds very different to anything that Yale’s done before,” she said. “I’m really excited to
give it a go and see the audience’s reaction to what could be a new experience for Yale.” “The Drowsy Chaperone” runs Wednesday through Saturday at the University Theater, with evening performances at 8 p.m. Saturday will also feature a 2 p.m. matinee. Contact JASMINE HORSEY at jasmine.horsey@yale.edu .
Margolyes explores Dickens’ life BY MARGARET NEIL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
CREATIVE COMMONS
British actress Miriam Margolyes acted out 23 different Charles Dickens characters.
On Wednesday night at the Yale Center for British Art, British actress Miriam Margolyes celebrated Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday through a performance of “Dickens’ Women.” Accompanied only by pianist and Yale professor Wei-Yi Yang, Margolyes brought to life 23 of Dickens’ female characters while also examining Dickens’ own life. Before an audience of roughly 70 Yale and New Haven community members, Margolyes, known by the public for her screen role as professor Pomona Sprout in the Harry Potter series, recited, acted and read from Dickens’ fictional work and non-fiction sources such as letters. Margolyes, who researched and wrote the show with Sonia Fraser, highlighted the influence Dickens’ life had on his work, especially in his development of female characters based on the women in his life. “I’ve had a passion for Dickens,” she said from the stage. “I learned from him that literature is not peripheral to life.” Margolyes linked each character she impersonated to a woman in Dickens’ life that had made an impression on him, including his nanny, grandmother, sister-in-law and various love interests. She acted out her impersonations of the characters in the chronological order in which their inspirations appeared in Dickens’ life. Accordingly, Margolyes emphasized throughout her performance that she was also chronicling Dickens’ own life. She even said she sees Miss Havisham from “Great Expectations” — who is also her favorite Dickensian character — as a description of Dickens himself. Over the course of her performance, Margolyes moved seamlessly from each character to a totally different character, to the narrator and to herself — a versatility for which she is known.
“I hope I am channeling [the characters],” she said. “What I can do, which is unusual, is switch characters very easily. Most actors can’t — that’s why I’m special.” “Dickens’ Women” was brought to Yale through the efforts of Jane Nowosadko, the manager of programs at the British Art Center, who has been planning this event in honor of the literary master’s birthday for over 16 months. “I try to look for programs that will enhance and reflect our collection,” she said, adding that Paul Mellon, who donated the museum’s initial pieces, was a Dickens fan. Throughout her performance, Margolyes addressed typical somber Dickensian themes such as death, avarice, lust and poverty, but kept a comedic tone. The audience responded positively to Margolyes’ tone, if only after some congenial prompting from the actress herself. “You can clap, you know,” she told the audience. Five audience members interviewed responded enthusiastically to the performance, and the crowd was animated throughout, giving Margolyes a standing ovation at the show’s conclusion. Robin Ruth, a New Haven community member, said she felt Margolyes had given an “enchanting and stunning performance.” Professor Janice Carlisle, who teaches Dickens, attended with members of her seminar. “I teach Dickens, and this is my third time [seeing “Dickens’ Women”] — it gets better and better,” she said, adding that Margolyes teaches her more each time about what the characters are like. “Dickens’ Women” is an Olivier award-nominated production first performed in 1992. Contact MARGARET NEIL at margaret.neil@yale.edu .
This year, Yale Dance Theater will restage the choreography of well-known choreographers for the third time — but with a cutting-edge transnational focus. On Sunday, YDT announced its spring 2013 project, which will examine works from contemporary dance choreographers Reggie Wilson and Akram Khan. Unlike the past two projects, which each concentrated on one artist’s work, YDT’s upcoming project will be divided into two sessions, each culminating in a public lecture/demonstration, YDT Faculty Director Emily Coates ’06 GRD ’13 said. The first session will focus on Wilson’s works, who will be the first choreographer to personally work with YDT dancers in the rehearsal process. The second session will be led by two senior dancers from the Akram Khan Company — one from Spain and the other from South Korea — who are the program’s first international guest artists in its threeyear history, Coates said. YDT’s past projects included the restaging of Twyla Tharp’s “Eight Jelly Rolls” in 2011 and Merce Cunningham’s “Roaratorio” in 2012. Led by Coates, YDT is an extracurricular dance initiative that allows Yale students to study works by iconic and emerging choreographers while exploring the academic ideas contained in their choreography. From midJanuary through March, students will study the work of Wilson, who directs the Brooklyn-based Fist and Heel Performance Group, a contemporary dance company that blends American postmodern dance ideas with movement traditions from the African diaspora. YDT dancer Derek DiMartini ’13 said that Wilson’s personal involvement in the rehearsal process will help preserve the original intent of the work. “There is something in the choreographer’s eye that other people can never see, so any time a work is restaged, part of the vision is inevitably lost,” DiMartini said. The Wilson collaboration also marks the first time YDT students will study new and still-developing work as opposed to canonized classics, Coates said. Of the three pieces selected for study, two are currently in the company’s rep-
ing and thinking about my ongoing relationship with the written word and what impact it does or doesn’t have with the folks that are actually doing the work,” he said, adding that the impact of this sort of documentation will be long-term. Coates and four YDT dancers, including Vastola and Light, used last year’s blog on the Merce Cunningham project as the basis for a research article, which was recently submitted to “Dance Research Journal” for publication consideration — a “tremendous accomplishment,” according to Cahan. “This kind of publication epitomizes what we are trying to accomplish in the arts overall, which is to create scholarly artists and artistically informed scholars,” she added. Looking forward, Coates said she hopes to increase YDT’s visibility in the dance world both here and abroad. She also said she is interested in YDT eventually commissioning new work, adding, however, that the focus of the program would remain diverse in its examination of both iconic choreographers and works as well as emerging choreographers and works. An information session about joining YDT will take place Dec. 2, and the audition will take place Dec. 6. Contact CLARISSA MARZÁN at clarissa.marzan@yale.edu .
Contact JESSE SCHRECK at jesse.schreck@yale.edu .
WILSON AND AKRAM KHAN Yale Dance Theater’s third performance will feature the work of contemporary choreographers Reggie Wilson and Akram Khan (pictured). Both artists explore the meaning of “diaspora” through their work and, as living artists, will be able to influence and be influenced by YDT’s study.
known in the United States, he is one of the United Kingdom’s most celebrated choreographers — last summer, he was selected to take part in the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. The company’s collaboration with Yale thus comes at a time when Khan’s company is gaining international recognition. “Having members of these artists’ companies come to Yale puts us close to the center of significant contemporary dance activity,” Associate Dean for the Arts Susan Cahan said. Farro and Kim will restage excerpts from Khan’s recent works, “Vertical Road” (2010), “Bahok” (2008) and “Kaash” (2002). Coates said this spring’s project will mark a dramatic shift in the YDT’s research focus. While the program’s first two projects studied the work of 20th century American icons, Wilson and Khan are both younger artists who are on their way to becoming 21st century choreographic masters, Coates added. Light said an exciting component of this year’s project is in the opportunity to compare and contrast the work of the two choreographers, both of whom explore dance through a transnational lens. “With the Tharp and Cunningham, we were doing a sort of an investigation across time with dancers of different generations and looking at the same work,”
she said. “Here … both choreographers pull their movements from various cultures and various traditions across space, geographically speaking.” Vastola said the comparative investigation of these two artists is very timely after the World Performance Project — a six-year program that invited dance artists from around the world to Yale — ended last year. “I think [YDT] will continue that engagement with … developing art … and the changing contemporary arts scene,” Vastola said. Coates said that in addition to a rigorous six-hour weekly rehearsal, the students blog about the rehearsal process and use their studio practice to inform their movement research, which appealed to both Wilson and the Akram Khan company members. Farro and Kim said in an email that Khan’s whole company will follow the blog, adding that it will be an interesting experience to hear perspectives from dancers engaging with the work rather than from journalists or critics, who do not form opinions based on their own physical interaction with the choreography. Wilson too expressed an interest in engaging with students who would be using writing as an “integral and valid form of expressing thoughts, ideas, emotions and experience” about the process. “I’m interested in understand-
Clueless at the court In the Yale Repertory Theatre’s production of “Marie Antoinette,” revolutionary France serves as proxy for America’s current social and economic climate. Marie, in her heavy jewels and towering wigs, is a satirization of the one percent: her life is full of servants and chocolate, yet she won’t stop traipsing around her castle, endlessly and nasally bemoaning the pressures of life in the public sphere, even as her subjects face starvation and disease. David Adjmi’s script skewers Marie for having lost all touch with reality, to great comic effect. One scene finds her on a jaunt around the castle grounds in a delicate off-white dress and bonnet, sipping “peasanty” tea with a girlfriend; The two women have ventured outside to visit the royal sheep — Marie’s absurdly romantic idea of getting “back to nature.” Later in the play, Marie meets actual peasants — the 99 percent — who speak in Southern accents and say things like “howdy.” She asks what they do for a living. They are shopkeepers. Marie, clouded by her exotic fantasy of poverty, misguidedly asks if they find this job “spiritually nourishing.” This is successful satire by the metric of exposing the stupidities of a specific target society. The play knows its audience — liberal, affluent people from Yale, Boston and New York City — and traffics in our cultural vocabulary, recasting the French queen as a Valley Girl straight out of “Clueless” to garner some well-earned laughs. A great satire, however, should also implicate its audience. We, the liberal, affluent people from Yale, Boston and New York City, are supposed to leave feeling uncomfortable with our wealth, identifying with Marie despite our rational condemnation of her disposition and wondering, as a consequence, if perhaps we’re as disconnected as she is. Unfortunately, “Marie Antoinette” is not great satire. Its subject is written as a caricature — a hilarious caricature, but a caricature nonetheless. She is heightened beyond recognition, her affectations so distorted that no audience will see its own collective face reflected in hers. We are most assuredly not Marie. Every time we laugh at her, it is proof that we recognize her absurdity, and if we can recognize her absurdity then we must not partake in it ourselves. Rather than indicting us, this play assuages: We, the liberal East-Coast affluent, are infinitely more grounded in, and therefore deserving of, our wealth. Marie’s two-dimensionality becomes especially problematic in the second act when she and her family are deposed and imprisoned, and the play enters darker territory. The dialogue is slower, the lights are dimmer, and Marie is shouldered with real emotional burdens. Her slow unraveling is well plotted, but the Blanche Dubois turn is fundamentally misguided. This play does not initially ask to be understood as having a complex emotional arc — by the time we reach the second act, the audience has spent too much time laughing at Marie to suddenly see things through her eyes. Where Blanche’s descent into madness is tragic, Marie’s is pathetic and slightly uncomfortable. This is not the fault of Marin Ireland, who plays the part convincingly, and who shines as a comic force in the first act; it is the problem of a play that changes its dramatic terms halfway through. Maybe Adjmi should have written his second act with the same refreshing stylizations of the first; Marie’s histrionics may not have forced me to re-examine my life, but they did provide an hour of very real entertainment. His play won’t go down in history as great satire, but for a night of theater with friends, good satire is good enough.
2012 REGGIE
ertoire and one, “(project) Moseses Project,” is yet to have its world premiere. YDT Co-Student Coordinator Aren Vastola ’14 said this opportunity provides a fascinating insight into the creation of a dance work. “There’s definitely a sense that you’ll be sort of shaping the work in a sense,” Vastola said. “It’s not like the work is being done directly for us, but you get the sense that we’re much more implicated in the process.” YDT dancer Elena Light ’13 said that usually only professional dancers have the opportunity to learn new work. “Dancers leave huge powerhouse ballet companies on a fairly regular basis over the lack of opportunity of the type we are about to be given here at Yale,” said Amymarie Bartholomew ’13, president of Alliance for Dance at Yale, the umbrella organization for Yale’s extracurricular dance groups. The second half of the semester will involve a three-week workshop with Eulalia Ayguade Farro of Spain and Young Jin Kim of South Korea, two senior dancers from the London-based Akram Khan Company. Khan’s choreography combines European contemporary dance styles with kathak, an Indian classical dance form, and the company itself draws dancers from all over the world, Coates said. Though Bartholomew and Vastola said Khan is less well
JESSE SCHRECK
New class exposes different world BY HANNAH SCHWARZ CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Every Tuesday and Thursday at the Whitney Humanities Center, a class of roughly seven students meets to learn about and discuss kabuki, a form of Japanese theater that emerged in the 17th century. The Theater Studies Department has made it a focus to incorporate global themes and courses into Yale’s theater curriculum, said its Director of Undergraduate Studies Paige McGinley. Despite administrators’ intent to broaden the cultural scope of the Theater Studies major, neither the class’s professor William Fleming nor three students in the class were aware of this goal. Regardless, two students said that by studying kabuki, they have been inspired to define theater in a more inclusive way. “As someone who’s doing a lot of theater, this course has directly influenced me in terms of the kind of theater
I try to do,” said Gabrielle Hoyt-Disick ’15, a student in the class. Hoyt-Disick explained that kabuki is “a beautiful impulse,” often embracing the overt theatricality that Western theater hides. Kabuki, for instance, incorporates costume changes into the performance itself. Alex Oki ’13, another student in the class, said he watched a kabuki performance for the first time in Japan and had never seen anything similar in Western theater. “The elaborate costumes, stylized delivery, dramatic makeup and poses and men performing female roles … are all very unfamiliar and disorienting,” Fleming said. While Hoyt-Disick said that even the most realistic kabuki storylines are wilder than “the craziest Shakespeare plot,” Oki said love suicides and other seemingly unusual events were not particularly rare when these plays were written. During class last Thursday, Fleming explained that kabuki’s tales were often influenced by fictional Japa-
nese comic books from the Edo period, which lasted from the early 1600s to the mid-1800s. “Writers and readers were avid theatergoers, famous actors moved in the same circles as popular authors and the theater was a great source of stories and inspiration,” Fleming said. “Edo popular fiction and popular theater can’t be separated from each other.” Oki said many plots were derived from news stories that “everyone knew about, and these playwrights were producing them overnight.” The Japanese word for such plays literally translates to “overnight pickles.” Although the development of the kabuki class took place as part of the Theater Studies Department’s increasingly international focus, Fleming said he feels that the gradual internationalization of the arts at Yale has come from students, individual faculty members and small groups rather than the administration. “I’m not sure any internationaliza-
tion, real or perceived, is the result of a centralized effort so much as the product of numerous smaller programs, initiatives and collaborations around the University,” Fleming said. Three students interviewed said their interest in studying kabuki grew out of a desire to learn more about Japanese culture. “[Kabuki] comes from a completely different culture with very different societal norms,” Oki said. The link between studying an untraditional form of theater and gaining cultural knowledge is especially clear at Yale, which East Asian Languages and Literatures Director of Undergraduate Studies Tina Lu said has one of the “strongest” East Asian studies programs in the country. This is the first semester in which the class is being offered. Contact HANNAH SCHWARZ at hannah.schwarz@yale.edu .
CREATIVE COMMONS
Kabuki is a form of Japanese theater marked by elaborate costumes and stylized delivery.
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YALE DAILY NEWS · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
AROUND THE IVIES C O R N E L L D A I LY S U N
In a hard-fought election decided by a margin smaller than any poll had predicted, incumbent Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., edged out Democratic challenger Nate Shinagawa, clinching 51 percent of the vote and winning the race for New York’s 23rd Congressional District. James Drader, chairman of the Tompkins County Republican Party, said he was confident that Reed would continue to be an effective advocate for not only “fiscal responsibility,” but also for Tompkins County in general. “Reed has represented the district well for two years, and I think he’ll continue in the same vein,” Drader said. “We’re headed down the path to Greece, and I think Tom Reed is going to be one of the ones to stop it.” The mood at Reed’s headquarters in Corning was ecstatic, as Reed addressed his supporters late Tuesday night. “These campaigns are grueling, but it was a team effort that was successful tonight, and
I really do appreciate it,” he said. R e e d pledged to “be a strong vo i c e in Wa s h i n g CORNELL ton [D.C.] for this area, for our state [and] for this region,” emphasizing the need for national unity and a focus on the issues. “It’s time to come together as a country to solve these problems,” he said, citing the unemployment rate and debt crisis. “First up, we need to put the political rhetoric and the political bickering aside.” He also promised to fight for the needs of his constituents. “We’re [going to] get out there every day like we have in the 29th Congressional District,” he said. Despite his loss, Shinagawa spoke optimistically in his concession speech. “We did a very good job,” Shinagawa said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t come close enough. And unfortunately, we lost this race 49 to 51. But that’s okay, because
we showed in this race that, even though we were outspent 3 to 1, we could come within just a few thousand votes of victory.” Shinagawa thanked his family, campaign staff, Democratic officials and organizations who assisted his campaign — as well as Reed. “I would like to thank Congressman Reed for this campaign, for this very, very hardfought battle, and I wish him success as a congressman. I hope that he will be able to represent everybody inside of this district,” Shinagawa said. Shinagawa also struck an emotional note when he reflected on the conversation he had with his grandfather, who was the first person he called after the election. “My grandfather said to me … isn’t it amazing that just two generations ago he was in the Japanese-American internment camps as a 10-year-old and thought of as a traitor to this country … isn’t it amazing that just two generations that just two generations later, [I was] able to run for Congress,” Shinagawa said.
MANZANAR JAPANESE-AMERICAN INTERNMENT CAMP IN CALIFORNIA
T H E D A I L Y P E N N S Y L VA N I A N
Rep. Tom Reed ekes out victory BY MATTHEW ROSENSPIRE STAFF WRITER
“Down in our hearts we cried and cursed this government every time when we showered with sand.” JOSEPH KURIHARA INTERNEE AT THE
Local Democrats echoed Shinagawa’s statements and praised the efforts of his campaign in narrowing the race against significant odds. “I think Nate ran an excellent campaign in a district where Republicans outnumber Democrats and where he was outspent 3 to 1. For him to close that gap and almost pull off this upset is something special,” said Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick. My r i c k a l so c r i t i c i ze d national Democratic organizations, particularly the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, for ignoring Shinagawa’s race. “Nate got outspent 3 to 1, but lost by fewer than 5,000 votes,” Myrick said. “The DCCC ignored this race from the beginning. They thought a Democrat didn’t have a chance in this district. They didn’t know this Democrat. With no national support, he lost 49 to 51. They’ll pay attention next time.” Irene Stein, chair of the Tompkins County Democratic Party, agreed with Myrick’s assessment of the race.
Top election official ousted BY JULIE XIE STAFF WRITER City Commissioner Stephanie Singer, who oversees the Board of Elections in Philadelphia, was ousted from her position as chairwoman today by her fellow city commissioners.
I’m here to serve the people of Philadelphia. STEPHANIE SINGER City commisioner, Philadelphia Republican Al Schmidt and Democrat Anthony Clark, who has had building tension with Singer in the past few months, voted to remove her as chair and make themselves co-chairs. Both Singer and Schmidt were elected to their positions last November. At a public meeting today, Singer said there had been
tension between herself and Schmidt and Clark, e s p e c i a l ly over Singer’s bid to PENN give a salary raise to her Deputy Commissioner Dennis Lee. Schmidt and Clark were against this move. “It was a surprise,” Singer said of her ousting to reporters, according to Philly.com. “I’m here to serve the people of Philadelphia, I’m here for free and fair elections and an informed engaged electorate and a respectful and effective workplace.” This comes a day after Election Day, when there were many reported city-wide issues regarding provisional ballots. In many instances, voters’ names were not in voter rolls though they had registered. They then were forced to cast provisional ballots.
YALE DAILY NEWS · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
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NATION
“If ever there was a time for true bipartisanship, it is today.” BRAD HENRY DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR OF OKLAHOMA FROM 2003–’11
Obama heads back to divided government BY DAVID ESPO ASSOCIATED PRESS
J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/AP PHOTOR
President Barack Obama and his family return to the White House for the first time since Tuesday night’s victory.
WASHINGTON — One day after a bruising, mixed-verdict election, President Barack Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner both pledged Wednesday to seek a compromise to avert looming spending cuts and tax increases that threaten to plunge the economy back into recession. Added Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.: “Of course” an agreement is possible. While all three men spoke in general terms, Boehner stressed that Republicans would be willing to
accept higher tax revenue under the right conditions as part of a more sweeping attempt to reduce deficits and restore the economy to full health. While the impending “fiscal cliff” dominates the postelection agenda, the president and Republicans have other concerns, too. Obama is looking ahead to toplevel personnel changes in a second term, involving three powerful Cabinet portfolios at a minimum. And Republicans are heading into a season of potentially painful reflection after losing the presidency in an economy that might have proved Obama’s political undoing.
They also have fallen deeper into the Senate minority after the second election in a row in which they lost potentially winnable races by fielding candidates with views that voters evidently judged too extreme. One major topic for GOP discussion: the changing face of America. “We’ve got to deal with the issue of immigration through good policy. What is the right policy if we want economic growth in America as it relates to immigration?” said former Republican Party Chairman Haley Barbour. Obama drew support from about 70 percent of all Hispanics. That far outpaced Romney, who said during the Republican prima-
ries that illegal immigrants should self-deport, then spent the general election campaign trying to move toward the political middle on the issue. The maneuvering on the economy — the dominant issue by far in the campaign — began even before Obama returned to the White House from his home town of Chicago. After securing a second term, the president is committed to bipartisan solutions “to reduce our deficit in a balanced way, cut taxes for middle class families and small businesses and create jobs,” and he told congressional leaders as much in phone calls, the White House said.
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YALE DAILY NEWS · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
WORLD
“Even in a time of fiscal austerity, education is more than just an expense.” ARNE DUNCAN U.S. SECRETARY OF EDUCATION
Greece narrowly passes austerity bill BY ELENA BECATOROS AND DEREK GATOPOULOS ASSOCIATED PRESS ATHENS, Greece — Greece’s Parliament passed a crucial austerity bill early Thursday in vote so close that it left the coalition government reeling from dissent. The bill, which will further slash pensions and salaries, passed 153–128 in the 300-member Parliament. It came hours after rioters rampaged outside Parliament during an 80,000-strong anti-austerity demonstration, clashing with police who responded with tear gas, stun grenades and water cannons. Approval of the cuts and tax increases worth 13.5 billion euro ($17 billion) over two years was a big step for Greek efforts to secure the next installment of its international rescue loans and stave off imminent bankruptcy. The country’s international creditors have demanded that the bill and the 2013 budget, due to be voted on Sunday, pass before they consider releasing an already delayed 31.5 billion euro installment from Greece’s 240 billion euro bailout. Without it, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras says
Greece will run out of money on Nov. 16. “Greece made a big decisive and optimistic step today. A step toward recovery,” Samaras said, adding that he was “very happy” with the result. Development and growth for the country, which faces a sixth year of a deep recession in 2013, will come “only with a lot of work, with coordinated action, with investments,” he said. But the close vote was a major political blow to the three-party coalition government, which holds a total of 176 seats in Parliament. The result shows support for continued austerity three years into Greece’s financial crisis is dwindling fast. “The government now has very little margin to take measures like this again,” said Dimitris Mardas, associate professor of economics at the University of Thessaloniki. “But unless it takes various obvious actions like limiting the black economy, addressing tax evasion and improving the country’s investment framework, we may end up needing new measures. And then things will be very difficult.” Straight after the vote, two of the three coalition parties —
Samaras’ conservatives and former finance minister Evangelos Venizelos’ socialists — expelled a total of seven dissenting deputies from their ranks. Lawmakers from the third, the small Democratic Left, mostly abstained from the vote in accordance with their party’s line. Leader Fotis Kouvelis had said he could not back labor reforms included in the bill. During hours of acrimonious debate in Parliament, Samaras acknowledged that some of the measures in the bill were unfair, but insisted there were vital to avoid bankruptcy and Greece being forced out of the euro and back to its old currency, the drachma. “This [bill] will finally rid the country of drachmophobia,” he said. “Many of these measures are fair and should have been taken years ago, without anyone asking us to,” Samaras said. “Others are unfair — cutting wages and salaries — and there is no point in dressing this up as something else.” But, he said, the alternative was bankruptcy that would trigger financial chaos as the country would likely have to leave the 17-country euro bloc.
THANASSIS STAVRAKIS/AP PHOTO
Greece’s Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, right, and Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras at the voting session.
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YALE DAILY NEWS · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
SPORTS
“Next month’s Nokia Sugar Bowl should be renamed the Sweet’N Low Sugar Bowl. What we’re being fed is a substitute national championship game.” JON SARACENO USA TODAY SPORTS COLUMNIST
Elis to tip off season
Benefit with the triple option FOOTBALL FROM PAGE 14 to a new level. The Elis dashed for 262 yards at Columbia two weeks ago and 201 more at Brown on Saturday. Even when Yale’s quarterbacks return to full strength, the Elis could benefit by continuing to focus on the triple option. Running the option almost exclusively, Georgia Tech has never finished worse than fourth in the nation in rushing yards since 2008, during which time the Yellow Jackets have had a combined record of 39–25. The Yellow Jackets are just one example of how a team can be successful with an unbalanced offense.
Using the option more would also take the pressure off rookie quarterback Eric Williams ’16, who leads the Ivy League with 14 interceptions thrown. Getting an athlete like Williams in the open field where he can make plays with his legs would make him a more successful quarterback. Additionally, Williams would have better throwing lanes available down the field once the defense has to commit to containing the option. Yale ranks second in the Ancient Eight with 195.2 rushing yards per game. Contact CHARLES CONDRO at charles.condro@yale.edu .
VIVIENNE ZHANG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
The Elis were ranked third in the Ivies in this year’s preseason poll, behind three-time defending champion Princeton and Harvard. W. BASKETBALL FROM PAGE 14 freshmen to its roster while losing only former captain Michelle Cahsen ’12 to graduation. Graf and Vasquez both said that they expect center Emmy Allen ’16, forward Meredith Boardman ’16 and guards Nyasha Sarju ’16 and Whitney Wycoffto ’16 to make a big impact from the start and to add a lot of depth and versatility to the team. After finishing with a 16–12 over-
all record and an 8–6 conference record last season, Yale will look to fight for an Ivy League championship this year. The Bulldogs were in the title hunt for much of last season, but dropped four of their five final Ivy League contests to slip out of contention and finish in third place. Yale took on Holy Cross in its season opener last year as well and came away with a 76–71 win behind a 23-point performance by Vasquez and an additional 15 points from Graf.
“We are looking forward to working on everything that encompasses Bulldog basketball on Friday against Holy Cross,” Vasquez said. “We have a few new plays and have been working on our defense, so I’m excited to see how it will all pan out on Friday.” Friday’s game will begin at 7 p.m at Holy Cross.
SARA MILLER/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The Elis dashed for 262 yards at Columbia two weeks ago and 201 more at Brown on Saturday.
Contact SARAH ONORATO at sarah.onorato@yale.edu .
Laganiere a team presence
Bane of the BCS COLUMN FROM PAGE 14
ZOE GORMAN/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER
Antoine Laganiere scored three goals in the Bulldogs’ opening weekend at the Ivy League Schowcase on Oct. 26 and 27. M. HOCKEY FROM PAGE 14 his talent, speed and size. Laganiere said he first started skating when he was around three years old and took to ice hockey soon after. He said his three older brothers played hockey in Quebec and introduced him to the game. Laganiere added that he has always played forward. After youth hockey in his hometown, at the age of 15, he started playing in the Quebec Midget AAA circuit for the Chateauguay Patriots. Despite being a rookie in the league, he finished with 26 points in 44 regular season games and 21 points in the 19 playoff games it took to win the provincial title. At the end of that season, Laganiere first thought he could play at the next level. Though he openly stated he wanted to go to col-
lege, Quebec Major Junior teams still contacted him and eventually drafted him. In the fifth round of the 2006 QMJHL entry draft, Rimouski Océanic — the same major junior team NHL All-Star Sidney Crosby played for — selected Laganiere. But Laganiere stuck with his deci-
Laganiere is such an intense competitor. JESSE ROOT ’14 Forward, Men’s hockey sion to attend college. His decision led him to Deerfield Academy, where he knew he could continue both his intellectual development and
advancement as a hockey player at a high level. “He is a real student of the game,” Deerfield head coach Brendan Creagh said. “I remember having a lot of conversations with him about the systems we were using. He is one of those guys that thinks the game as well as plays it.” An impact player from the start, Laganiere said his tenacity was the key to his success at Deerfield according to Creagh. In his first season, Laganiere put up 38 points in just 25 games. The competitive and highscoring forward quickly attracted college interest while at Deerfield and soon made a commitment to play for Yale. “I knew the coaches really loved him,” Creagh said. “It was great to know he was going someplace where
he would make an impact.” Entering his last season of collegiate hockey play as a Bulldog, Laganiere said he hopes to sign a professional contract with the NHL or AHL at the end of the 2012-’13 season. He is currently a free agent, but he was invited to an Edmonton Oilers training camp this past summer in Edmonton, Alberta, for newly drafted Oilers and a few unsigned college hockey players. Laganiere described the camp as a “crash course for new professional hockey players,” involving intense training as well as presentations on proper nutrition and media interactions. The Bulldogs will next compete Friday against Clarkson. Contact ASHTON WACKYM at ashton.wackym@yale.edu.
national championship. No. 1 Alabama, No. 2 Kansas State, No. 3 Oregon and No. 4 Notre Dame all sit unblemished, as does No. 9 Louisville. The Louisville Cardinals don’t get any respect because they’re from the Big East, but who’s to say they couldn’t beat one of the top teams in the country? West Virginia sure destroyed Clemson in last year’s Orange Bowl in their last season as a member of the Big East. But moving into discussion of the top four, why are these four teams ranked the way they are? Aren’t they all undefeated? Have they played each other? No. So do we really have any way of comparing them? Of course not. Yet, just as inflation is mostly set by expectations, sportswriters and coaches rank these teams to conform to their initial preseason expectations. Let’s take a took at how the current top four teams were ranked in the AP preseason poll: Alabama was second, Oregon was fifth, Kansas State was 22nd and Notre Dame was unranked. And how does the AP poll have them ranked as of Sunday? No. 1 Alabama, No. 2 Oregon, No. 3 Kansas State, No. 4 Notre Dame. Isn’t that something? If not for the human polls only accounting for part of the BCS standings, the teams would be ranked in the exact order they appeared in the preseason poll. According to voters, apparently you can’t be ranked any better than a team that was supposed to do well in the first place. And if you’re a team that’s exceeding expectations, any little hiccup is a disaster and the end of your national championship game chances. Notre Dame is feeling this most acutely at the moment. They managed to finally overcome a mediocre but feisty Pittsburgh Panthers team in three overtimes on Saturday. The Fighting Irish are still undefeated. But, according to the media, the fact that they did not win convincingly is enough to keep them out of the national title game. It’s ridiculous. To put it nicely, I strongly dislike Notre Dame. I don’t like their national TV contract, I don’t like that they’re somehow the “America’s Team” of college football, and most of all, I don’t like that they stole UC’s former head coach, Brian Kelly. So the fact that I’m defending them shows that I really, really hate the BCS. Thank goodness for the playoff system coming at the end of the 2014 season. And thank goodness for college basketball. Contact EVAN FRONDORF at evan.frondorf@yale.edu.
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CORNELL TEAMS MUST SELF-FUND The university recently mandated that 11 of its 36 varsity sports teams must cover their own budgets by 2015, according to the Cornell Daily Sun. Among the sports affected are baseball, golf, lightweight rowing, men’s and women’s tennis and men’s and women’s squash.
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MARY BETH BARHAM ’13 AND ERICA BORGO ’14 TWO ELIS EARN FIRST-TEAM ALL-IVY The Ivy League announced its annual field hockey awards yesterday, and midfielder Borgo and back Barham joined 12 others on the conference’s first-team. Midfielder Nicole Wells ’16 was named to the All-Ivy second team as the third Bulldog to be awarded post-season honors.
NBA Miami 103 Brooklyn 73
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“Every one of [our returning players] has moved their game to a higher level.” CHRIS GOBRECHT HEAD COACH, W. BASKETBALL YALE DAILY NEWS · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
Yale’s best option
EVAN FRONDORF
Bowls are bunk (what a surprise) Last Saturday afternoon, the University of Cincinnati Bearcats took home field at Nippert Stadium, looking for a win over Big East rival Syracuse after two straight losses that knocked them out of the national polls. After a hardfought 35–24 Cincinnati victory, the Bearcats became bowl eligible with a 6–2 record! I trembled with excitement as I ran to my laptop, sprinting to the UC website to sign up for updates about bowl ticket availability. I couldn’t wait to hear the news. Where would they go? The New Era Pinstripe Bowl? The AutoZone Liberty Bowl? Or better yet, the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl? I closed my computer as a smirk of satisfaction spread across my face. This, Evan, is what it feels like to be on top of the college football world. It’s time to go hard tonight, to celebrate Cincinnati’s accomplishments so far and the momentous achievements to come. Of course, I actually didn’t care at all. And I fell asleep at 11 on Saturday. Sure, it’s nice when your team makes a bowl game. There are some bragging rights on the line, and it’s another game to watch over winter break. And granted, Cincinnati isn’t worthy of playing in a BCS game anyway. But I know exactly how the experience will end up. I’ll get myself worthlessly pumped up and watch the first quarter anxiously. Midway through the second half, I’ll be asleep or on Facebook, as will half the people in the stands. Let’s make my wholly original point clear: The bowl system is almost completely useless. Really, what’s the point? Kudos to college football for creating a postseason where the games are somehow less watchable than in the regular season. At least regular season games have conference championships and national rankings at stake — the postseason is actually less important. Even the non-championship BCS games are technically useless — what does it mean to have won the Orange Bowl in a given year? Nothing — other than having won the Orange Bowl. Congrats. How should we compare that game’s winner to the victor of, for instance, the Rose Bowl? Perhaps we could pit the two teams against each other … in a sort of playoff system? What a fantastic idea. I already got started, but don’t get me started about the BCS. It’s been said many times, many ways, but there has never been a worse way to determine who’s best at something. It’s corrupt enough to warrant government investigation and infuriating enough that I occasionally convince myself it exists only to create a selffeeding media cycle. There’s no such thing as bad press, after all. Let’s retread the well-worn argument using this year’s approaching calamity. Moving into the last few weekends of the college football season, there are still five undefeated teams in the BCS. As ESPN.com’s Mark Schlabach states, we’re headed toward yet another “BCS cliff” because only two teams can play for the SEE COLUMN PAGE 13
BY CHARLES CONDRO STAFF REPORTER Running back Tyler Varga ’15 takes the snap. He runs to the outside, fakes the pitch and runs untouched into the end zone for a 28-yard touchdown run.
FOOTBALL Varga’s score gave Yale an early 7–3 lead over the Columbia Lions on Oct. 27. Yale would go on to lose 26–22, but the first-quarter run by Varga illustrates the success that the Bulldogs can have running the option. Although head coach Tony Reno stated that the option has always been a part of the Elis’ offensive package, it has moved to the forefront in recent weeks due to injuries. Reno added that more than half of Yale’s 54 offensive plays against Brown last Saturday were option plays. “We’ve been doing that since day one, whether it’s with backs or receivers,” Reno said. “You make people defend the perimeter [with the option].” Yale normally lines up for the triple option with the quarterback in the shotgun flanked by two tailbacks. After receiving the snap, the quarterback has the choice of handing off to his first running back, who would then run up the middle. If a defensive lineman is in the way of his first running back, the quarterback keeps the ball and runs towards the outside with the second back. The quarterback then reads the defensive end. If the defensive end presses the quarterback, he will pitch it to his tailback. But if the defensive end stays on the outside to contain, the
SARA MILLER/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Yale ranks second in the Ancient Eight with 195.2 rushing yards per game. quarterback will run it himself. Running back Mordecai Cargill ’13 said that the option fits well with the team’s offense. “The option makes the most of our available personnel and utilizes our
strengths,” Cargill said. Yale’s backfield trio of running backs is led by Varga, Cargill and Kahlil Keys ’15. These three running backs have combined to run for 1,313 yards this season on 5.2 yards per carry.
With Varga taking the majority of the snaps the past two weeks due to injuries to the team’s quarterbacks, the option has taken Yale’s running game SEE FOOTBALL PAGE 13
Laganiere leads Elis’ scoring BY LINDSEY UNIAT AND ASHTON WACKYM STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Hockey player Antoine Laganiere ’13 has a presence on the ice that is hard to miss. The 6-foot-4-inch, 215-pound forward is already leading the team in scoring this season with five goals and an assist for a total of six points in four games.
M. HOCKEY Laganiere scored three goals in the Bulldogs’ (2–1–1, 1–1–0 ECAC ) opening weekend at the Ivy League Showcase on Oct. 26 and 27, in addition to two goals against Dartmouth last Friday. “I can’t say I’m doing anything differently than before,” Laganiere said. “I don’t want to say that it’s luck, but let’s just say that I’m having one of those stretches where everything is going well.” This early-season success is not a surprise from the Ile Cadieux, Que-
bec native. During his junior year, he placed second on the team with 19 goals, and in his first season with the Bulldogs, he led the freshmen with seven goals. Known to his teammates as “Lags,” Laganiere is a big, strong and fast forward who has a great shot, team captain Andrew Miller ’13 said. “He uses his speed and long reach to get himself into good position to shoot and has a great release and accurate shot,” defenseman Colin Dueck ’13 said. “[Laganiere] is such an intense competitor,” forward Jesse Root ’14 said. “Whether it’s a mini game in practice or a playoff game you know he’s going to do everything he can to win. He protects the puck so well and it’s nearly impossible to play him defensively.” Miller said he thinks opposing teams make a special effort to match Laganiere during games because of SEE M. HOCKEY PAGE 13
ZOE GORMAN/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER
Laganiere was invited to an Edmonton Oilers training camp this past summer and was also invited to the Pittsburgh Penguins development camp.
Yale opens season at Holy Cross BY SARAH ONORATO CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Yale women’s basketball will open its season this Friday against Holy Cross after being ranked third in the Ivy League preseason poll.
W. BASKETBALL The Bulldogs return almost
all of last year’s squad, which finished third in the Ivies behind Princeton and Harvard. The three-time defending champion Tigers tops this year’s rankings, followed by the Crimson and the Elis. “Our goal for this season is to win the Ivy League,” Graf said. “We want to get better every game and be playing our best basketball when Ivies start.”
The Elis will bring back their top offensive weapon in Megan Vasquez ’13, a first-team All-Ivy selection from 2011-’12. Vasquez led the team in points per game with 15.3 last year, good for fourth in the Ivy League. The guard also reached another milestone last year when she scored her 1,000th career point in a 25-point performance against Cornell.
STAT OF THE DAY 5
Vasquez is currently the all-time third-leading scorer for the Elis. Yale also returns 2011-’12 Ivy League Rookie of the Year Sarah Halejian ’15. In addition to the end-of-year award, the Bulldog point guard earned Ivy Rookie of the Week honors six times last season. Along with Vasquez and Halejian, the Elis return starting forward Janna Graf ’14 and
six other letter winners, including captain Allie Messimer ’13, who appeared in all 28 games last season. Vasquez and Graf both prepared for the coming season by playing internationally this summer. Vasquez competed with the Puerto Rican junior national team and Graf with the U-20 German national team, which earned a second-place
finish at the European Junior National Championships. “One of the most exciting things about our team this year is the improvement of every returning player,” head coach Chris Gobrecht said. “Every one of them has moved their game to a higher level.” The team has added four SEE W. BASKETBALL PAGE 13
THE NUMBER OF GOALS MEN’S ICE HOCKEY TEAM FORWARD ANTOINE LAGANIERE ’13 HAS SCORED. He is leading the team in scoring this season with five goals and one assist in four games.