T H E O L D E ST C O L L E G E DA I LY · FO U N D E D 1 8 7 8
NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012 · VOL. CXXXV, NO. 55 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
CLOUDY CLOUDY
44 49
CROSS CAMPUS Harvard sucks. Don’t you
forget it. Make sure to make that clear when you root for the Bulldogs at the YaleHarvard game tomorrow. And while we’re on the subject. Harvard also sucks at
filmmaking. Harvard’s comedy group “On Harvard Time” released a video parodying Yale yesterday afternoon titled “Yale Side Story.” The video, which attempts to follow the plotline of “West Side Story,” includes all of the classic marks of a Harvard-produced video: atonal singing, unclear story line and jokes about Tasers.
YALE-HARVARD THE LEGACY, TAILGATE & GAME
LATINOS
LOBBYING
VOLLEYBALL
With immigration reform as a key priority, Hispanic voters leaned Democratic
FACULTY DONATE TO POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS
Undefeated team looks ahead to NCAA Championships
THE 129TH GAME SUPPLEMENT
PAGE 5 CITY
PAGE 7 CITY
PAGE 12 SPORTS
Elevate victim sues city, police BY MATTHEW LLOYD-THOMAS CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Over two years after New Haven police raided the Elevate Lounge nightclub on College Street, Jordan Jefferson ’13, who was Tasered during the raid, is suing the city and seven police officers who were involved.
Jefferson, a 6-foot-3-inch, 225-pound tight end for the Yale football team, claims that he sustained serious and longlasting injuries after being Tasered and assaulted during the raid in October 2010. Jefferson filed suit against the city and police officers this week in New Haven Superior Court on grounds of civil rights vio-
lations, supervisory liability, negligent assault, assault and negligent infliction of emotional distress. Attorney William Dow confirmed with the News Thursday night that he will represent Jefferson in his suit against the city and seven police officers. “If cooler heads had prevailed, none of this would have
occurred,” Jefferson attorney William Dow told the New Haven Register. “It was a sanctioned event that was intruded upon without sufficient cause or forethought.” Jefferson declined to comment on the suit to the News. According to the complaint, Jefferson’s injuries included electrical shock and puncture
Yale to host three tailgates
Going green. The
Sustainability Service Corps celebrated “America Recycles Day” on Cross Campus yesterday. Organizers put up posters about sustainability efforts and encouraged passers-by to write down what they thought recycling meant on a whiteboard.
Smackdown! A recent article
Cash for Connecticut.
Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy said yesterday that the state may face a $1.2 billion deficit next year. Though state residents saw the largest tax increase in Connecticut history last year, Malloy said he has no intention of raising taxes to address the deficit.
Seeking employment. The number of people seeking unemployment benefits has risen to its highest level in 18 months because of damage from Hurricane Sandy. THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1982 More than 300 medical school workers attend a union rally at noon for Local 34. Submit tips to Cross Campus
crosscampus@yaledailynews.com
ONLINE y MORE cc.yaledailynews.com
Early apps rise Yale received a total of 4,514 early applications for the Class of 2017 — a roughly 4.4 percent increase from last year. The number is a slight increase from the 4,323 early applications Yale College received in 2011, the first year that Harvard and Princeton reinstated their early action programs. Before the two colleges brought back early action, Yale received 5,257 applications in 2010, 5,265 in 2009 and 5,556 in 2008. Admissions experts interviewed said that though the numbers naturally fluctuate each year, early applications always stay high at elite institutions.
Haven Police Department will host a delegation from the Tajikistan police force today as part of an ongoing training program between the two departments. The delegation is representing the Community Policing Partnership Team program and will learn policing methods from various American law enforcement agencies.
Thanksgiving cheer. Officials at Connecticut food banks say they will need more food or money donations this Thanksgiving due to damage wrought by Hurricane Sandy. In particular, officials say, they need turkeys to help ensure Connecticut residents can celebrate Thanksgiving Day.
SEE ELEVATE PAGE 6
BY AMY WANG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Joining forces. The New
by The Boston Globe placed New Haven and Cambridge in an Ivy League brawl, comparing the merits of both cities based on food, shopping, and arts and culture experiences. Though The Globe named New Haven the superior city for hamburgers, it gave Cambridge the edge on the “Dinner on Mom and Dad” category.
wounds, a concussion, postconcussive syndrome, headaches, blurred vision, cognitive difficulties and depression, among others. Named in the complaint are seven members of the New Haven police, three of whom acted in super-
CHARLIE CROOM/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The Yale College Council, Saybrook College and Timothy Dwight College will all host tailgates at Harvard on Saturday. BY KIRSTEN SCHNACKENBERG STAFF REPORTER Two residential colleges and the Yale College Council will host tailgates at the 129th Yale-Harvard Game on Saturday, a year after a fatal crash at The Game in New Haven caused administrators to tighten restrictions on pregame activities. This year marks an increase in the number of residential college tailgates
at the Yale-Harvard game when held in Boston, as only Timothy Dwight College hosted a full tailgate in 2010. Saybrook College and Timothy Dwight will put on a joint tailgate this year, while the Yale College Council will again host a tailgate open to all students. After a November 2011 U-Haul crash led to the death of Nancy Barry of Salem, Mass., and the injury of two others, University administrators passed new tailgating restrictions last
ICE fines state businesses BY CHRISTOPHER PEAK STAFF REPORTER Broadway’s famous grocery store and delicatessen Gourmet Heaven was fined nearly $6,000 during the last fiscal year for employing undocumented workers. On Thursday morning, a press release from the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigrations and Customs Enforcement announced more than $130,000 in fines for 12 Connecticut companies that had hired undocumented employees, including a $5,891 fine for New Haven’s Gourmet Heaven Inc. ICE auditors in a unit known as Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) conducted 18 audits across the state, inspecting employees’ I-9 forms, which certify one’s identity and work eligibility. Local politicians did not dispute that the 12 employers fined had broken federal law, but they took the fines as an indication that comprehensive immigration reform is needed.
“Compliance with I-9 audits is not optional. It is the law,” said Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for ICE. “If you do hire an illegal work force, there are penalties.” Calabro Cheese Corporation, a family-owned Italian cheese manufacturer located in East Haven, was hit with the largest fine of $45,000 last fiscal year. When reached Thursday afternoon, Rich Kaninski, the general manager, said ICE officials had inspected their I-9 forms a few years ago. The audit revealed some employees “purporting to be citizens” were using stolen Social Security numbers. Kaninski added that taxes withheld for these employees by the Internal Revenue Service had, to his knowledge, not been returned. Gourmet Heaven’s managers could not be reached for comment on Thursday evening. When HSI’s new inspection strategy was adopted in 2009 “to reduce SEE ICE PAGE 6
We are seeing an extraordinary range and diversity among the most accomplished students in the world seeking to do their undergraduate work at Yale.
January that ban U-Hauls and kegs in tailgate areas, require tailgating activity to end at kickoff and limit student tailgating to restricted areas near Yale’s football stadium. But students interviewed from the 10 residential colleges that will not host tailgates this weekend said neither Yale’s tighter restrictions nor the events at last year’s tailgates affected their decision.
“Once again, we are seeing an extraordinary range and diversity among the most accomplished
SEE TAILGATE PAGE 4
SEE EARLY APP PAGE 4
JEFFREY BRENZEL Dean of undergraduate admissions
Citing bias, cops sue city BY MATTHEW LLOYD-THOMAS AND ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS Ten black New Haven police officers will appear in the Connecticut Superior Court Monday to argue they were unlawfully passed over for promotion based solely on the color of their skin. The plaintiffs — known as the “New Haven 10” — claim that the New Haven Civil Service Board, or CSB, improperly invalidated the results of a 2009 examination for promotion to the rank of sergeant after no Latino officers passed the exam. According to the plaintiffs’ attorney John Williams, the board’s decision was a racially motivated effort to limit the number of African-Americans promoted. The plaintiffs filed suit in Superior Court in late 2011 seeking the reinstatement of the exam results and monetary judgment greater than $15,000, and they will appear in court on Monday to argue for an injunction against promotions based on a newly administered 2011 test.
“The monetary damages are potentially a huge factor, but what I’m more interested in is getting these guys promoted,” Williams said. The case is the second iteration of the charge of racially motivated employment discrimination against the city in recent memory. In 2004, 20 New Haven firefighters — “the New Haven 20” — sued the city after the CSB invalidated the results of a 2003 test on which no African-Americans scored high enough for promotion. The case, titled Ricci v. DeStefano, was eventually argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the firefighters, 19 of whom were white, requiring the city to pay $2 million to the plaintiffs and $3 million to their attorney, Karen Lee Torre. In its decision, the court ruled that the city engaged in disparate treatment, violating Section VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The examination at the heart of the current case, which was administered SEE LAWSUIT PAGE 6
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
OPINION
.COMMENT “That's why I prefer phrases like 'Join me at the table tonight. The hosyaledailynews.com/opinion
NEWS’
I
VIEW Transparency in the Chaplain's Office
W
e must maintain the integrity of religious
life at Yale.
For nine years, Indigo Blue played a crucial role in the lives of many Yale students. For Buddhist students, the center and its spaces enabled them to practice their faith among a community of their peers; for other students, regardless of faith, Indigo Blue provided meaningful respite from the pace and pressures of life at Yale. Yet Indigo Blue is no more. Over three weeks ago, Yale’s Buddhist chaplaincy was unceremoniously disaffiliated from the University, denying many students a formal and functional spiritual home on campus. For over three weeks, these students have tried to determine the future of their faith on campus against the opaque background of a silent Chaplain’s Office. Over three weeks later, it’s time for some answers. Much has been said concerning Bruce Blair '81, the former Buddhist chaplain at Yale. And it remains unclear why he was fired. We take issue with this lack of transparency. If Blair’s actions were reprehensible to the degree that an immediate firing was a necessity, it becomes incumbent on the University to notify the students who worked closely with Blair. Given the fact that Blair continues to host Indigo Blue in his own home, students continuing to attend have a right to be notified if the University has serious concerns about Blair’s conduct or professionalism. If Blair’s actions were not so egregious, the University still owes students an explanation as to why he
was fired, and why their place of worship was closed without notice or justification. It also owes students solutions. A focus on Blair overlooks the larger issue. Indigo Blue was disaffiliated with no clear vision for the future of the Buddhist chaplaincy, without a replacement chaplain or open, accessible spaces for worship. In the messy processes of hiring and firing, vacancies can be inevitable, but the University must avoid impeding religious practices in the process. Buddhist students should not have to endure a lengthy “transition period” as the University scrambles to restore their religious life on campus, as though the human consequences of disaffiliation were a mere afterthought. Every moment students lack a spiritual home — and a spiritual leader — on campus is a moment that the University fails to fulfill the promises made to these students upon matriculation. Having stumbled in their initial handling of the Indigo Blue situation, it has become incumbent on the Chaplain’s Office to rectify the harm caused to Buddhist students. This means expediting the process through which a new Buddhist chaplain is selected, reopening sacred spaces and responding to the concerns of Buddhist students with concern and compassion, rather than capped meetings and closed doors. When we return from Thanksgiving break, we look forward to seeing Buddhists able to worship and Yalies able to meditate.
pitality of Winterfell is yours.'”
'GOLDIE08' ON 'LET'S (NOT) GET A MEAL'
Defending the social sciences
n the midst of comparisons tying current University President Richard Levin to his successor, Provost Peter Salovey, one particular strand of continuity deserves our attention: each man earned his doctorate in a social science. It’s a fitting sign of a much larger trend. Ten years ago, more undergraduates majored in the humanities than in any other branch of study, and the largest major at Yale was history. Now, history lags behind both economics and political science, barely edging out psychology. English has shrunk from over 100 majors to just over 60, and the social sciences, with 457 majors last year, now claim far more undergraduates than either the humanities or the sciences. But while the makeup of the student body — and the person in Woodbridge Hall — signals an increased recognition of the role of social sciences in modern life, a large segment of the Yale community denigrates them as an academically inferior, largely contrived field of scholarship. An odd mix of Burkian conservatives, humanities majors and old-school political philosophy devotees oppose the social sciences in their modern incarnation. They are, respectively, suspicious of attempts to analyze and reform societies; critical of
a perceived lack of original thought and academic rigor; and frightened they have been supplanted by a more mathematical and HARRY d a ta - d r ive n LARSON discipline. As a social science Nothing in major, I disagree. Particular Many students who spend their four years reading philosophy and literature feel simultaneously assaulted by and superior to their peers who choose paths perceived as having more of a “real-world” application. So the English major tries to defend himself, saying that while the economics major may get a better job, he at least spent his college years thinking real thoughts. Social sciences can be easily ridiculed as reducing human interactions to simplified, quantitative models even as they fail to fulfill their predictive promises. Such critiques are compounded by the perceptions of several social science classes as “guts,” requiring no originality and not even that much work. But social sciences are just as
culpable in creating this perception. Many disciplines haven’t figured out how to tailor themselves to a large audience without losing their integrity; the absurd hoops professors teaching Intro Microeconomics hop through to avoid using any calculus make economics seem a little ridiculous to the hundreds of freshmen who take it each year. Moreover, there has been too much of a tendency towards making social science classes about current events, thus making the field seem preoccupied with answering questions that won’t be relevant in a few years. Readers of Milton can claim to have learned something more permanent than students of a particular country’s development issues during one decade. Nonetheless, the social sciences are not themselves transitory. They change more rapidly than the Western canon, but no more rapidly than the schools of literary criticism that dominate much academic thought about literature. And while it’s true that economics or political science or psychology have frequently brought us to incorrect or incomplete conclusions, it’s also worth noting that all three are, in their modern form, relatively new fields. That in and of itself might make them suspect, until we remember that not that long ago,
the only literature being studied in universities was written in Latin and Greek. What we shouldn’t forget, though, is the vast wealth of knowledge these fields promise us as they become more mature. It’s true that no economist will ever be able to completely explain a large and dynamic economy, but economics tells us far more about the global economy than we could know about a much smaller economy 100 years ago. And outside of any practical utility — though of course, when we’re talking about the lives and livelihoods of billions of people, practical utility is important — the social sciences offer hundreds of new and exciting modes of intellectual inquiry that many of us just find interesting. How a game is played, or how a complex economy reaches equilibrium, can be fascinating questions. Reaching for the answers doesn’t render Hobbes less valuable, just as the science of gravity didn’t make Aristotle obsolete. Rather, such questions simply add to our ways of knowing a little bit more about an inscrutable world around us, and thousands of inscrutable worlds within us. HARRY LARSON is a junior in Jonathan Edwards College. His column runs on Fridays. Contact him at harry.larson@yale.edu .
GUEST COLUMNIST SOPHIA WEISSMANN
Strength through education I
n 2011, Stefan Pryor ’93 was named Connecticut’s commissioner of education. Pryor is a former policy advisor to the mayor of New Haven. He also co-founded Amistad Academy, a high-performing public charter school that still exists in New Haven today. Last year, Tom James ’12 received his certification and began teaching high school math at High School in the Community, another local school. What do these Yalies have in common? They both studied in the now-defunct Yale Teacher Preparation program as undergraduates. They have both committed themselves to giving back to the education system in the city where they studied. These are only two examples of the many people who have been influenced by studying education at Yale. At almost every New Haven high school, you can find a teacher who became certified through the graduate Urban Education program, or who completed the Teacher Preparation program as undergraduates. But both of these programs are no longer offered at Yale. Instead, I met these teachers in the only current avenue for Yale students to pursue education — the small and disparate set of courses that remains, called Education Studies. Now it
is unclear what the future of Education Studies will be at Yale. I was inspired by the teachers that I met while taking these courses: the creativity and intelligence that goes into creating lesson plans, the dedication involved in working in urban education and the painstaking reflection that seems crucial to a teacher’s success. These teachers have reaffirmed my desire to work inside a classroom after I leave Yale. Not only does the program provide positive role models for future teachers, it exposes students to the actual problems faced by New Haven schools today. By involving Yale students in the New Haven education system, we increase the chance that they will return to the Elm City as educators, administrators or future policymakers. In 2010, President Levin attested to Yale’s commitment to local education through the New Haven Promise, a scholarship program for New Haven high school students. “Yale’s strength is inextricably linked to the community’s strength,” he said in a 2010 speech marking the launch of the program. “Yale’s support flows from our commitment to New Haven and our belief that quality education should be accessible to all.” If Yale is truly committed to quality education in New Haven,
we should provide students with a program that promotes their future involvement in the education system. While there are plenty of extracurricular activities that place Yale students in classrooms, Education Studies has given students the theoretical background to understand what they see in a classroom, and the foundation in policy that enables them to change it.
EDUCATION CAN BE OUR INVESTMENT So let’s take the steps that are necessary to preserve Education Studies at Yale. In a News article on Monday, Dean Miller said that the changes happening to the program “are actually a transition rather than a phasing out.” However, the administration has left this program in limbo for the past two years, deterring prospective Yalies interested in education and interfering with current students’ plans of study. If there is a plan for a new Education Studies program, why has the administration been so reluctant to share it with students?
The administration needs to make a clear statement on their vision for the future of Education Studies. Their program should take into account the student need for a clearly structured program of study with classes on theory, policy and practice. More than just one professor should teach these classes, to ensure students receive a diverse perspective — an important component of any program of study. Courses from other departments, such as Psychology, Statistics and the Child Studies program, should be cross-listed in the program in order to ensure that students can engage in a holistic study of education. This program should be connected to the existing structures involved in the New Haven education system, such as the Dwight Hall Education Network. If Yale is serious about its commitment to the New Haven community, it should invest something more valuable than its money in the education system: its students. SOPHIA WEISSMANN is a junior in Silliman College. Contact her at sophia.weissmann@yale.edu .
G U E ST C O LU M N I ST V I V E CA M O R R I S
Forgo the turkey
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W
e work hard each year to make Thanksgiving dinner express the very best of us. We cook all day, festoon our tables and even put up with our extended families. At Thanksgiving dinner, more so than any other meal, we are deliberate about “good eating and good thinking,” in the words of Jonathan Safran Foer. And more than any other dish, says Foer, the Thanksgiving turkey exemplifies the paradox of eating animals. Our treatment of the 45 million turkeys that spend their entire lives on factory farms and go on to serve as our Thanksgiving centerpieces is perhaps as cruel as any act man has committed against animals. Yet, puzzlingly, sharing the taste of turkey with our loved ones, feels to so many of us, as Foer points out, “good and right.” The best traditions should be thoughtful — and it’s time we rethink the ritual of eating turkey. We eat turkey, first and foremost, to honor tradition. Yet, if our Pilgrim and Indian forefathers were to be reincarnated this Thanksgiving Day, they would not recognize the feasts, or the tur-
keys, on our tables. It is unlikely, though possible, that wild turkey was served at the first Thanksgiving dinner, which was shared by the Pilgrims and Wampanoag in the autumn of 1621. Indeed, turkey did not become the centerpiece of American Thanksgiving until the 1860s, when poultry companies saw a profit opportunity in sentimentalizing the bird. It wasn’t long until poultry companies saw an opportunity in producing the birds as efficiently as possible, too. Our forefathers would undoubtedly not recognize our modern turkeys. Turkeys — natural turkeys — are magnificent animals. They are far smarter than most of us imagine, according to Tom Savage, a poultry scientist at Oregon State University. They exhibit complex behavior, partake in intricate courtship, form strong social bonds, speak a refined language of cackles and protect their young. But with the exception of the negligible number of humanely raised turkeys, these animals are not the turkeys that we eat today. Factory farming has transformed these
animals into commodities. Factory-farmed turkeys are selectively bred to be an average of 29 pounds — 121 percent greater than the average turkey in 1929. (According to one report, modern turkeys are grown so rapidly that if a 7-pound human infant grew at the same rate, the infant would weigh 1,500 pounds in less than five months of age.) Their beaks are clipped without pain relievers in order to prevent them from hurting each other in confined spaces, a behavior induced by the psychological stress they experience in factory farms. Unlike the wild birds of yesteryear, they are unable to fly or even bear their own weight due to their size and swollen legs. They are incapable of reproducing naturally. They have never breathed fresh air. They live a fleeting 140 days, rather than the wild turkey’s average lifespan of 10 years. On our Thanksgiving plate rests an animal that has never received a second of human kindness. Knowing this, we must now consider whether to eat turkey this Thanksgiving. Would for-
going this tradition compromise the special holiday? Or, as Foer writes, would our Thanksgiving be enhanced? “One of the greatest opportunities in life to live our values — or to betray them” lies in the food we eat, he writes. This is, after all, what Thanksgiving is at its core about. We reflect on the principles that guide us and reaffirm, with the people we love, what we value most deeply. If we value treating sentient creatures with basic decency, we should start applying these principles to what’s right in front of us. I believe deciding whether to eat turkey at Thanksgiving is therefore not a problem, but an ethical opportunity we should each act on. Next week we each will have the opportunity to demonstrate our character, to add kindness to the world or to add anguish. We will all say grace. But oh, how much more powerful it is to show it. VIVECA MORRIS is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles College. Contact her at viveca.morris@yale.edu .
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 3
FRIDAY FORUM
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN “[The bald eagle] is generally poor, and often very lousy. The turkey is a much more respectable bird.”
YALE TALKS FICTION G U E S T C O L U M N I S T M I C H E L L E TAY L O R
Nietzsche in the Stands “The horror! The horror!” — Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”
T
here is a word for my experience of Yale-Harvard, and that word is “tragedy.” Please do not misunderstand me. I mean to extol The Game, not undermine it. For Aristotle, tragedy was a ritual of catharsis. For Nietzsche, it was the artistic experience of purest reality, a Dionysian rite of terrifying, transcendent primal unity in the face of the terrible secret of living. When I say, “The Yale-Harvard game is a tragedy,” that’s what I mean. I mean, as Nietzsche would have meant, that when I watch the Harvard football team demolish the Yale football team, I approach the horrifying truth of existence. I realize that life is suffering. At the heart of all great Greek tragedies, Nietzsche posited, is the story of the Dying God, through whose agony we are reborn and in whose death we know life in all its abjection and glory. The Yale football team is our Dying God: the central character in the tragedy, like Oedipus or Pentheus. We are the audience. Aided and united by the
impassioned music of the satyr chorus (the YPMB), our eyes are forced open to the monstrosity of this yearly ritual. Together, we behold the brutish, Cantabrigian Titans — those proto-Ivy Leaguers still caught in the dark, primordial eons before Yale shed Light on the Truth — as they savagely rip our noble deity limb from limb. In the team’s sparagmos — its literal and symbolic death by dismemberment — we find our own unity. We come into our identity. We experience Dionysus, and we become him. Dionysus, according to J.G. Frazer, was the death-rebirth god. His was the sacred life that continually renews itself, the frenzy of distilled vitality, life’s pure and terrifying eternal essence. His is the soul of The Game, whose sacrament is the Tailgate. Let no one forget the importance of the Tailgate to the ritual tragedy of Yale-Harvard. As Nietzsche tells us, it is only through the power of Dionysus that we may shed the Apollonian illusion of identity. Without the Tailgate, we are a mass of miserable indi-
viduals — artists, editors, nerds and athletes in the myriad other sports that receive the remaining 5 percent of Yale’s limited interest in athletics — watching a football game. Through the Tailgate we shed our inhibitions; we enter into empathy, into community, into Bacchic frenzy. We prepare ourselves for our rite of suffering. The Greeks, unlike members of Yale’s and Harvard’s administrations, understood the necessity of this. Who can withstand the agony of life-as-it-is without the support and intoxication of Dionysus, life’s god and champion? Who can watch football without getting drunk first? Not me. I cannot comprehend the madness; I cannot stand the slaughter; I cannot bear to wait for five minutes every time the mass of men-inspandex moves approximately 10 feet in either direction — unless united in primal unity with my comrades. I need to lose myself in a good mimosa and the admirable, Dionysian fury of school spirit to appreciate the essence of The Game. If I don’t, I’ll spend it thinking about my senior essay and watching the scoreboard — both of which will be, I am sure, in miserable condition. The Yale-Harvard game isn’t about the scoreboard, and it isn’t about my
impending academic failure. Also, it isn’t about football. Not really. YaleHarvard is about life and living. It’s about how bad things happen to good people, and bad sportsmen still win at football, and bad schools are still somehow ranked higher than Yale by U.S. News and World Report. It’s about how Nietzsche might be right, and life might really be suffering. But life is still essentially worthwhile. When we look into the horror, we can’t really say why it’s worthwhile, but — freezing together in that stadium, loving and hoping and hurting and screaming “Harvard sucks!” — we know somehow that it is. Because we are alive. Which is more than we can say for the brain-dead idiots on the other team. We are Yale. We look, like the ancient Greeks, into the brutal heart of life, and we raise the wineskin to our lips in praise. Harvard sucks; life is suffering. Long live Dionysus. Boola boola. MICHELLE TAYLOR is a senior in Davenport College. Contact her at michelle.a.taylor@yale.edu.
G U E ST C O LU M N I ST JAC KS O N M C H E N RY
Pride, prejudice and cyberspace A
couple days ago, someone “liked” one of my friend’s Facebook statuses. This made me think of Jane Austen. For those of you who have never read one of Austen’s novels, they all have the very same arc. Let me summarize: young woman meets man, there is some sort of ritualized 19th-century dance party, complications ensure, more complications undo the earlier complications and then there are lots of marriages. In fact, Austen’s protagonists are very much like college students. Not in the sense that we all want to get married and spend our time freeloading off each other in various mansions, but rather in our ability to read anything into anything. Austen’s characters spend their time inventing gossip, chasing romances and proclaiming universal truths from little to no evidence. I challenge you to prove that we don’t do the same. Consider how easy it is to dissect a “like.” When, a couple days ago, my friend told me that the man she liked (not in the Zuckerberg sense) had “liked” her status (in the Zuckerberg sense), the only course of action seemed obvious — we had to decipher his encoded message.
We took the standard taxonomic approach to understanding the like she received: had she experienced any prior, non-cyber interest from this man before? How many other people had liked the status? When did the like in question happen? Could we assume that the man in question was in a chemically balanced mental state? Was he covering up for another relationship (as in “Emma”), or was he another victim of the “one in four” rule (as in “Clueless”)? This sort of dissection seemed completely natural to us. We never once considered that the mystery man had accidentally clicked the icon — or that he might have actually liked what she had to say. For us, a “like” is never just a like. Then consider that the “like” is the least complicated mode of Internet communication (barring the poke, which narrowly beats out Instagram for the title of the Facebook feature most likely to be used by Lydia Bennet). Imagine how much more nuance is assumed in the sly whisper of a Gchat or allowed in the double meaning of three consecutive text messages. Electronics promise to make everything clearer, but every new
kind of communication needs its own rules. What’s the etiquette on responding to a Facebook message now that your friend is notified once you’ve read it? Is it the same sort of obligation that forces Mr. Bennet to repay house calls, even if he disapproves of them? Sure, you say, there are some Mrs. Bennet-level crazies out there who waste their nights overanalyzing life
SOMETIMES A LIKE IS JUST A LIKE like it’s a Netflix costume drama, but the rest of us are off at Toad’s actually living. But the fact that you may ignore the implications of your actions doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. You make think that there is nothing to be said about a kiss, or hookup or elopement to Scotland (looking at you, Mr. Wickham), but that doesn’t mean that the other person (or worse, their family) agrees. To be honest, that sort of complication sucks. There are nights that I wish I could simply cut loose and
moments I wish I could excise the consequences my actions spawned. Relationships are always difficult and prone to misunderstanding, even if you aren’t playing Austen’s marry-or-die-a-poor-spinster hard mode version of the social scene. Now we can create drama with the click of a button — and it’s ridiculous. But compared Austen’s world, where a woman has no choice but to fixate on the one man she’ll ever talk to, college life is comparatively harmless. We may not have solved the mysteries of relationships, but, wow, it’s great that women who aren’t married after 25 are no longer a disgrace to their families. So obsess over your Facebook statuses, your unanswered texts, friend requests and half-completed chains of chat. I’m right there with you. But every now and then, think of Jane and be thankful that, while we may still live in the world she observed, our lives are so much broader than she ever could have imagined. JACKSON MCHENRY is a sophomore in Silliman College. Contact him at jackson.mchenry@yale.edu .
GUEST COLUMNIST HELEN ROUNER
May the force be against this “W
elcome back, my master. How was the singles cruise?” Darth Vader asks the Emperor as he waddles off of his spacecraft. The Emperor answers, “Well, let’s just say there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, which was confusing, since it was raining chicks!” The terrifying, tragic exchange above appears in the trailer for “Star Wars Detours,” an animated television series scheduled to begin airing next year. Writers and producers from shows including "SpongeBob SquarePants," "The Backyardigans" and "Robot Chicken" are collaborating on the series. It then ought not come as a surprise that Lucasfilm, the owner of the Star Wars franchise and the company behind this sadistic animated undertaking, will be adopted into none other than the Disney corporation, which this year released such cinematic gems as “Frankenweenie” and “Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3: Viva La Fiesta!” Disney announced its $4.05 billion acquisition of Lucasfilm last
month. We, the global fans of Star Wars, are afraid that our franchise and story will become Disney-fied, a term we use to denote the shameless merchandizing and soulless commercialization that results from associating with the titan corporation. Star Wars was about good and evil. It was about growing up thinking you’re alone, but realizing you have the ability to fight for what matters. And now, Star Wars has fallen to the dark side — a moneymaking scheme that takes our story’s heroes and puts their heads on PEZ dispensers. Consider Lucasfilm’s Star Wars branding initiatives over the last three and a half decades. They include video games, books, comics, TV shows, action figures, Halloween costumes, theme parks rides, Chewbacca slippers, Lego Star Wars advent calendars and the Jar Jar Binks toothbrush I had when I was 9. It takes a perverse imagination to guess what more commercial damage Disney might manage to do to one far away galaxy’s political conflict.
Star Wars as we know and love it ended with small fuzzy creatures called Ewoks, from the forest moon of Endor, dying in selfsacrifice during an epic battle. It was sentimental, it was powerful and it allowed us to imagine how our heroes would live out their love stories while leading the Galactic Republic in peace. But Disney has announced its intention to release the first installment of a third Star Wars film trilogy in 2015, to be followed by another film every two or three years after the trilogy’s completion. Luke, Han and Leia’s fates will no longer be for us to decide. Some more generous fans have expressed hope that a veteran sequel-maker like Disney might be able to save Star Wars by returning it to its original cinematic medium. But faith in Disney to restore the dignity of sequels seems misplaced: we’re talking about the company that thought there ought to be another Atlantis movie. My guess is that Episode VII will feature Han and Leia’s daughter’s training in the Force, but we should
consider ourselves lucky if we see anything short of an eventual Episode XIX: Prom on Tatooine. We, the loyal fans, fear we are already on our way there. What was once the Jedi (the good guys) against the Sith (the bad guys) has devolved into a cartoon television series. In “Detours,” Obi-Wan Kenobi and Han Solo do '70s dance moves in a disco-ball Death Star to a dubstep remix of the iconic Star Wars theme, while a fist-pumping storm trooper calls out, “All my troopers in the party say yeah!” Of course, the Star Wars premise has been continuously remarketed since 1977. Rather than let the Jedi era come to a dignified close, George Lucas has given his creation to a notoriously shameless label in order to be further manipulated. As Yoda tells a young Anakin in "Episode III: Revenge of the Sith," “The fear of loss is a path to The Dark Side … train yourself to let go.” I guess Lucas belongs with the Sith. HELEN ROUNER is a freshman in Davenport College. Contact her at helen.rouner@yale.edu .
Reject binge writing L
ike most fourth graders, I didn’t have too much homework. Yet every night, for language arts class, I was instructed to try to read for 15 minutes and write for 15 minutes. This small assignment, which I pretended to complete every night without SCOTT fail, no doubt made me a better STERN reader and writer. But the two tasks were not equal. Reading for 15 minutes was nothing A Stern — I’ve loved to read ever since Perspective Harry first emerged from the cupboard under the stairs. Writing for 15 minutes is actually quite a chore. When you’re not inspired, those 15 minutes drag. I’d like to think we’re past the age when we need due dates and quotas to force us to become better readers and writers. But in high school I learned about a movement that is both a continuation and a bastardization of my childhood homework. National Novel Writing Month — NaNoWriMo for short — was something of a phenomenon among the more literary members of my high school class. Last year, I discovered that NaNoWriMo exists at Yale too. NaNoWriMo, according to its website, is “a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing on November 1. The goal is to write a 50,000-word (approximately 175-page) novel by 11:59:59 p.m. on November 30.” It is not a small movement. More than 250,000 people participated in NaNoWriMo last year, of whom nearly 40,000 (including several Yale students) completed the assigned task in the alloted amount of time. For some people, NaNoWriMo has all the fun of a marathon while sitting in front of a computer. I have friends who participate, many of whom have become addicted to the energy of frenetic writing. Writing with utter abandon certainly sounds liberating to me, someone who is quite often disappointed with my own work and feels the need to go back and revise compulsively. But NaNoWriMo also worries me. Though it is a satisfying and liberating activity for some people, for others (and for the literary canon) it may be harmful. For starters, art should not be predicated on length or time frame. Not all great novels need be 50,000 words — an arbitrary length, I think we can all agree. Some people write quickly, while others write slowly. If the goal of NaNoWriMo is “novel writing” — and presumably good novel writing — then I think one month is a little restrictive. Genius cannot, and should not, be forced. Virgil reportedly wrote only two or three lines a day. Proust spent decades on “Remembrance of Things Past.” Margaret Mitchell and Harper Lee each toiled painstakingly over their respective novels for years, a task so arduous that neither ever wrote anything else — yet they produced perhaps the two greatest American novels. If they were given a time limit and word limit, would either of them have been able to achieve greatness? For those who write slowly, introspectively, or in spurts, NaNoWriMo puts dangerous constraints on their writing. For those who like to rewrite and revise, NaNoWriMo may make them feel like they’re falling behind. Some accept NaNoWriMo’s time constraints and insane length requirement as an incentive to get them to finally start that novel they were thinking about. “[NaNoWriMo] has gotten me to write,” said Zeke Blackwell ’13 in a Yale Daily News Magazine article last year. “Granted, this is not the best writing I’ve ever cranked out.” Sadly, NaNoWriMo pushes its participants to sacrifice quality for quantity. As Nat Harrington ’14, another NaNoWriMo participant, put it in the magazine article, his novel includes “two French essays, a German paragraph and a fable,” all of which he took from class assignments. “One of the French papers even makes sense where it is.” According to NaNoWriMo’s website, its participants “started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.” But did they walk away with something they were really proud of? Binge-writing is like binge-anything — indulgent and rarely productive. Especially for us college students, where so much of our work is produced in an intensely rushed atmosphere, it can be argued that good work can be done in the face of a looming and specific deadline. But D.S. papers are typically not art. Class work serves a stated purpose and answers a specific question. Novels create a new world that can spur our imaginations and maybe even inspire us. I think writing — especially fiction writing — is one of the healthiest things people can do. But I refuse to have the terms of my art dictated to me. On its website, NaNoWriMo keeps statistics on the “winners” — those who complete the prescribed length in the prescribed amount of time. Restrictions are not the way to encourage good novel writing. SCOTT STERN is a sophomore in Branford College. Contact him at scott.stern@yale.edu .
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
FROM THE FRONT
“All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian.” PAT PAULSEN AMERICAN COMEDIAN AND SATIRIST
Early applications increase from 2011 EARLY APP FROM PAGE 1 students in the world seeking to do their undergraduate work at Yale,” Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel said in a Thursday email to the News. Brenzel said his office expects to admit between 650 and 750 applicants in this year’s early admissions round, making for an admit rate of about 14 to 16 percent in the early round. The University of Pennsylvania, Brown and Dartmouth received 4,780, 2,957, and 1,526 early applications this year, respectively. Penn and Brown both saw increases in their applicant pools to record-high numbers, while Dartmouth saw a 12.5 percent decrease in applications from the previous year. Columbia, Cornell, Harvard and Princeton have not yet released their early application counts at this time. Jon Reider, a college counselor at San Francisco University High School, said high numbers and low admit rates are “pretty much business as usual” for elite schools. He added that he has seen many high school students, nervous about their chances, try to “figure out where all
the other smart kids are applying” and strategize their applications for the early admissions round. In the end, Reider said, there is “no real pattern” to where students send their early applications, though he said he sometimes encourages students to apply early to schools where they have a legacy. David Petersam, president of Virginia-based higher education consulting group AdmissionsConsultants, said some students may be too intimidated by low acceptance rates to send early applications to their top-choice schools. “There’s more anxiety this year, from what we’ve seen,” he said. “It just seems like more and more qualified applicants — and no one’s ever a sure thing at a Yale or a Harvard or a Stanford. With press and social media out there, I think, it feeds a little bit of the frenzy.” Petersam said the early admissions process should ideally be a way for students to show their sincere interest in their chosen school. But it has unfortunately become a “bit of a gamble,” he said, as students scramble to submit applications before they are ready to apply to college. He said he thinks too many people use the
early action process as a “Hail Mary strategy,” applying to schools where they are not competitive applicants. Several universities nationwide extended their application deadlines this year to account for power outages and school closings on the East Coast caused by Hurricane Sandy. Yale extended its deadline from Nov. 1 to Nov. 9, and the Admissions Office announced on its website that it will notify students in the event that their applications come in too late to be considered for the early round and must be pushed to the regular decision round in the spring. Applicants this year were also offered a chance to share their applications with Yale-NUS College, with both Yale and the liberal arts college in Singapore considering applicants separately. Brenzel said the number of applicants who chose this option will not be released until January, though he estimates the number to be “a few hundred applications at most.” Students applying early to Yale will be notified of their admissions decisions mid-December. Contact AMY WANG at amy.wang@yale.edu .
GRAPH EARLY APPLICATIONS OVER THE YEARS 6000
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Tailgate policies deter students
Because the Harvard restrictions haven’t changed, neither has our approach to tailgating at Harvard. EMILY ULLMANN ’14 President, TD College Council Ezra Stiles College Council President Lee Kennedy-Shaffer ’13 said that Harvard’s regulations, the logistical challenges involved in coordinating an away tailgate and the expenses associated with pre-game activities caused Stiles to decide against holding a residential college-sponsored tailgate on Saturday. Other colleges such as Jonathan Edwards College, Trumbull College and Calhoun
is not bothered by his college’s lack of a tailgate. “As a matter of college pride, it’s slightly disappointing but it
doesn’t have any tangible effects on what I’ll be doing, since all the tailgates are open to everybody,” he said.
Yale-Harvard tailgates will begin in the student tailgate area outside Harvard Stadium on Saturday, Nov. 17 at 10 a.m.
Contact KIRSTEN SCHNACKENBERG at kirsten.schnackenberg@yale.edu .
CHARLIE CROOM/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER
University administrators passed new tailgating restrictions last January after a fatal U-haul crash.
Send submissions to opinion@yaledailynews.com
“To my knowledge, Harvard’s tailgate policies haven’t really changed in recent years, and the changes in policies at Yale have had no effect on Harvard tailgate policy,” TD College Council President Emily Ullmann ’14 said. “Harvard has traditionally had stricter tailgate restrictions than Yale, but because the Harvard restrictions haven’t changed, neither has our approach to tailgating at Harvard.” Yale’s new regulations closely resembles Harvard’s, which will be enforced at this year’s Game. Harvard’s tailgating restrictions limit tailgating activity to two hours before the start of kickoff at noon and ban U-Hauls, kegs and grills, according to the Harvard Athletics website.
College also could not host tailgates because of logistical planning issues, said members of the college councils. Ullman said she reached out to other colleges to plan a joint tailgate after she realized TD was the only college preparing a tailgate setup. Saybrook was the only college that responded positively, she said. Saybrook College Council President Cyndi Chen ’13 said the limitations of the YCC tailgate, which will not have food or music, also prompted the two colleges to host a separate event. Ullmann added that TD traditionally hosts a tailgate at every Yale-Harvard game because tailgating is a “huge part of TD culture” and a crucial opportunity for TD alumni to “get together with one another.” YCC President John Gonzalez ’14 said the Council will provide free beer and wine for over-21 students but will not serve any food. He said that instead, students can eat lunch at Harvard’s student tailgate. While the YCC did not independently fund a DJ, Gonzalez said he does not know whether music will be provided by Harvard. Several students interviewed from residential colleges without tailgates said they are disappointed to learn they could not attend a college-specific tailgate but added they are confident they will find other ways to have fun. Sophia Jia ’14, a student in Morse College, said that without a Morse tailgate, it will be more difficult for her to find friends in her college if they get separated from one another, but added that she plans to attend the YCC tailgate as well as TD and Saybrook’s joint tailgate. But John Mark Taylor ’14, a student in Ezra Stiles College said he
OPINION.
TAILGATE FROM PAGE 1
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
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NEWS
“Immigration is a gateway basically. It’s a checkoff point for Latino voters.” JEB BUSH FORMER GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA
Latinos vote blue BY NICOLE NAREA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER All was quiet inside Church Street’s Ecuadorian consulate Wednesday, but for New Haven County’s estimated 265,000 Hispanics, it was far from business as usual. Latino newspapers piled high next to the consulate’s information desk told the story of a movement under way on New Haven streets: “7.500 latinos votaron por primera vez en Connecticut” — read the front page of La Voz Hispana in striking yellow typeface — “7,500 Latinos vote for the first time in Connecticut.” New Haven Latinos comprise a demographic that has increased by 35 percent in the past decade, according to New Haven nonprofit DataHaven. The explosive growth in the local Latino electorate reflects a countrywide phenomenon that has dominated national headlines since the presidential election, when Hispanics, 10 percent of the electorate for the first time, voted for President Barack Obama over Republican Mitt Romney by a 71–29 margin, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. In the wake of last week’s election — which saw Obama re-elected and Democrats riding to larger numbers in the Senate and House — several prominent Republicans, including Speaker of the House John Boehner and FOX News host Sean Hannity, called for the party to support comprehensive immigration reform. But on Wednesday, Romney reportedly told top donors that the reason he lost against Obama was due to Obama giving “gifts” to constituencies like Hispanics, leading to renewed concerns that Latino voters would continue to flock to Democrats. But Republicans responded to the flash fire of media criticism following Election Day by claiming that the electoral process is about “fighting for 100 percent of the votes,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told the Los Angeles Times. “Our policies benefit every American who wants to pursue the American dream, period,” Jindal said. Buoying the president into his second term, Latinos rated immigration reform a top priority next to the economy, sparking a national conversation about a comprehensive overhaul of current immigration policies and forcing Republicans to re-evaluate their stance, according to a report last week by Latino Vote 2012. Because the Obama administration has presided over a record number of deportations in spite of his pro-amnesty image, Latinos are “frustrated” and “expecting more this time,” said John Lugo, organizer for Unidad Latina en Acción, a local immigrant rights advocacy group. “Tensions are heating up,” said Diana Enriquez ’13, moderator of MEChA de Yale, a student organization that promotes Latino political activism on campus. “It isn’t new that our votes are important and that politicians need to court our interests.” Based on turnout at local voter registration events, New Haven Latinos overwhelmingly identify as Democrats because local party
officials seek to represent their interests, said Ana Maria Rivera of Junta for Progressive Action, a New Haven-based nonprofit that serves the local Latino community. City Hall spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton ’04 said New Haven is indeed welcoming to all residents and “proud of its position on the forefront of municipal immigration policies.” She cited the Elm City Resident Card, which provides all residents with a tool to access basic public amenities regardless of immigration status, as an example of the city’s inclusiveness.
Everyone has a friend or relative impacted by the [immigration] issue. ANA MARIA RIVERA Junta for Progressive Action State Democrats also claim to support legislation that represents their Latino constituency. Roy Occhiogrosso, senior advisor to Gov. Dannel Malloy, said Malloy has been an outspoken critic of the Secure Communities program — under which nonviolent undocumented immigrants have been detained and deported — and proposed Connecticut’s version of the DREAM Act, which provides a path to legalization for undocumented minors who seek college education or military service. Rep. Rosa DeLaura of Connecticut’s 3rd District said she hopes to give each member of her Hispanic constituency good jobs, health care and education. She has voted in favor of extending immigrant residency rules and was rated 0 percent by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, indicating a record of voting to loosen immigration regulations. “Throwing up a wall and being exclusive [to Latino immigrants] undermines the basic principles on which this country is founded,” Occhiogrosso said. In contrast to the policies of state Democrats, Republican rhetoric alienates Latinos, projecting a hostile image on undocumented immigrants and appearing to ignore the “economically disadvantaged,” Lugo said. Latino conservatives recommend that Republicans amend their platform to support pro-family immigration reform and engage Latinos “consistently,”
said executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles Alfonso Aguilar, instead of only paying attention to Latinos around Election Day. Hispanics nevertheless recognize Obama’s failure to address immigration reform. A 2011 Pew Hispanic Center poll found that Latinos disapproved of the president’s handling of deportations by a 2-to-1 margin, which undocumented activist Juan Escalante said left “a very sour taste for Hispanics heading to the polls.” But the president has taken steps toward comprehensive reform. Enriquez lauded Obama’s 2010 support of the Latino community in the face of Arizona’s SB 1070, which allowed law enforcement officials to request documentation of citizenship from anyone they deemed suspicious of residing in the country illegally. Juan Gomez — who garnered national media attention in 2010 as a Georgetown University undergraduate and undocumented Colombian immigrant — said he has benefited from Obama’s Deferred Action program introduced earlier this year, which granted him a twoyear work permit and saved him temporarily from the fate of deportation. He now works for a financial consulting firm in Manhattan, but he cannot leave and then return to the country — not even to visit Colombia to see his parents, who were deported when he was 18. Escalante calls Deferred Action a “small olive branch” that could lead to comprehensive reform. But the Latino community cannot arrive at a consensus regarding immigration reform legislation. Enriquez said that immigration reform is not supported by a “Latino-wide solidarity movement” because voters who are distanced from the issue may be worried about issues that affect their daily lives, such as the economy. Yet Rivera said even thirdgeneration Hispanic immigrants still view immigration reform as a priority. “We are all affected by it, whether or not you’re documented,” Rivera said. “Everyone has a friend or relative impacted by the issue.” Junta for Progressive Action estimates between 10,000 and 15,000 undocumented Latino immigrants reside in New Haven. Contact NICOLE NAREA at nicole.narea@yale.edu .
BY THE NUMBERS LATINO VOTE 26.9 15.4 391 35
Percentage of total Connecticut Latinos in New Haven County Percentage of New Haven County population that identifies as Latino Thousands of immigrants deported in 2011 Percentage of registered Latinos voters that identified immigration reform as the top issue in the Presidential election.
77
Percentage of Hispanic voters that said undocumented immigrants should be offered a chance to apply for legal status
‘Reintegrate’ merges arts, sciences BY HELEN ROUNER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER “I’m basically making 200 glass gallbladders,” said Daryl Smith, the glassblower for Yale’s Chemistry Department and a member of the “Conversations on Body and Faith” team, one of seven groups selected to participate in the Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s “Reintegrate” project. On Tuesday, the Arts Council announced that it will give $10,000 to each of seven Connecticut-based teams of artists and scientists to conduct collaborative, cross-disciplinary projects. Forty-two teams applied for the grant in early September, and the winners will present their projects in New Haven during late May or early June. “We’re hoping to see some real innovations, to bring two disparate worlds together and see a spark,” said Amanda May, the communications manager for the Arts Council and Reintegrate’s project coordinator. Other Reintegrate projects include a multimedia performance piece about stem cell research, a dance and photography presentation about the Higgs particle discovery and a database of places from scenes in literature that the team will analyze to discover how authors create a “sense of place,” according to Reintegrate’s website. “Conversations on Body and Faith” will be an art installation consisting of glass replicas of human organs, such as gallbladders and uteri, as well as photographs of those organs, said medical student Lucinda Liu MED ’14, who is spearheading the project. The team consists of Liu, Smith, another glass artist and three Yale surgeons. Liu said she was surprised to learn during her medical training that parts of the human anatomy are so brightly colored. Fat, for instance, ranges from a tan, golden-yellow to a canary yellow depending on where it is in the body, she explained. “In the body, you see the colors of organs only because the light hits them,” she said. “That’s how glass works, too: it only works if you have light streaming through.”
We’re hoping to see some real innovations, to bring two disparate worlds together and see a spark. AMANDA MAY Project coordinator, Reintegrate Liu said she hopes that in addition to being visually striking and informative, the installation will have a political message. “I hope people will realize that perhaps the hospitals and doctors can’t do everything, that the problems in our society are more rooted in the way we eat and smoke and drink and sit around with our laptops,” she said. “Hopefully this project will make people take a step back and appreciate our bodies.” Dexter Singleton, the executive director of Collective Consciousness Theatre in New Haven, is working with Eric Jackson, an associate research scientist in psychiatry at the School of Medicine and a psychologist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in West Haven, on “Living with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” a multimedia performance piece for Reintegrate. At the Collective Consciousness Theater, Singleton works on original plays and workshops based on social issues in the New Haven community. He said he was particularly drawn to the Reintegrate project
‘ R E I N T E G R AT E ’ PROJECTS PLACE AS CHARACTER
The project will create a database of places from scenes in literature and analyze the data to learn how authors create a “sense of place.” CROSS-DISCIPLINE LEARNING KITS
Combining math, education and design, the project will create educational tools to be used in both professional and academic settings. DISCOVERING THE HIGGS
The project will communicate the details of the Higgs boson discovery through photography and dance. SCULPTING THE CENSUS
The team will represent local census data through the medium of sculpture. CONVERSATIONS ON BODY AND FAITH
The project involves an installation of photographs and glass replicas of human organs.
LIVING WITH POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER
The team will produce a multimedia performance piece about PostTraumatic Stress Disorder. SCIENCE CHOREOGRAPHY
The project will explore stem cells and stem cell research in a multimedia performance piece.
because science was one of his weaker subjects in school. “When I fear something, I find myself running the fastest to it,” he said. Singleton said he asked Jackson to work with him because he needed a scientist with whom he could collaborate artistically, citing Jackson’s previous work as a club DJ as evidence of Jackson’s love of the arts. Jackson’s specialty is post-traumatic stress disorder, a subject that appealed to Singleton because of its current political relevance with soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. “So many soldiers are coming back with PTSD, and they need a platform to talk about what they experienced. Mental health issues so often take a backseat in American society,” Singleton said, adding that he hopes “Living with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” will help start some of these necessary discussions. Singleton and Jackson’s ultimate multimedia piece will involve acting, video clips, original music, hip-hop, modern dance and spoken word poetry. Singleton said he wants to use multiple types of media to “touch a lot of different parts of the brain and stimulate a lot of senses in the body.” A panel of both artists and scientists chose the seven winning teams and scored the applicants’ proposed projects on their depth of two-way collaboration and the individual credentials of the team members, May said. Preference was given to teams from New Haven. Contact HELEN ROUNER at helen.rouner@yale.edu .
Kreiss-Tomkins’ election unclear BY HANNAH SCHWARZ CONTRIBUTING REPORTER While Election Day was last week, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins ’13 will not know whether or not he has won a seat in the Alaska State House of Representatives until this Wednesday. Kreiss-Tomkins, who is taking a year off from Yale to run for State Representative in District 34 of his home state, is currently behind his opponent, Republican Rep. Bill Thomas, by just two votes. But more ballots may be arriving in coming days, as today is the deadline for domestic by-mail absentee ballots and Wednesday is the deadline for international by-mail absentee ballots. “[Watching ballot results] is like watching Olympic coverage, and the terrible irony is that I’m one of the competitors, and I don’t know whether I’ve won,” Kreiss-Tomkins said. “As soon as there’s a winner, there’s going to be a recount.” Eli Bildner ’11, one of KreissTomkins’ campaign managers, said that it is impossible to predict the election’s outcome, add-
ing that the election could be a tie. “Being down two votes is the difference between one vote being miscounted,” Bildner said. Before the election, Republicans held a 24–16 majority in the House. Were Kreiss-Tomkins to lose, that majority would increase to 26–14. Bildner said that on the night of the election, the preliminary results had Kreiss-Tomkins up by 44 votes, but after the absentee ballots came in, the Yalie was lagging by 43 votes. Co-campaign manager Tully McLoughlin ’11 noted that the margin separating the candidates was only 0.2 percent, adding that because the final votes are arriving by mail, and the campaign doesn’t know where they are coming from, it is difficult to know if Kreiss-Tomkins has an advantage. Today, two more ballots will be counted in Port Alexander, and on Monday, the divisional ballots that have been trickling in by mail will be counted, Kreiss-Tomkins said. Any absentee ballots that arrive by mail from Thursday, Nov. 15, to Wednesday, Nov. 21,
will be counted that Wednesday, he added. Kreiss-Tomkins ran unopposed for the Democratic Party nomination in August and campaigned against Thomas, the Republican incumbent who out-fundraised Kreiss-Tomkins by around 40 percent, Bildner said. He added that the majority of Kreiss-Tomkins’ funds have come from in-district donations, while 80 percent of Thomas’ have come from outside. Instead, the Kreiss-Tomkins campaign has benefitted most from the time and effort of volunteers, Bildner said. McLoughlin said that Kreiss-Tomkins’s campaign has seen around 70 volunteers who canvassed and phone banked for the candidate. “It was never about outraising and outspending our opponent. It was a very people-centric campaign,” McLoughlin added. Kreiss-Tomkins noted that the populations of some of the District 34 villages are almost completely Alaska Native. “Many of [the communities] are extremely isolated. It’s a world completely removed from the lower 48 states,” he said, add-
LORENZO LIGATO/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Supporters of Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins’ Alaska State House campaign form his initials with their bodies. ing that he thinks District 34 is the most beautiful congressional district in the nation. “I want to make the world a better place,
including my own little corner of the world. I deeply care about southeast Alaska, my home.” District 34 has a population of
roughly 15,000 people. Contact HANNAH SCHWARZ at hannah.schwarz@yale.edu .
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
FROM THE FRONT
“The game is nothing. The game is crap. The game makes me sick. The real reason we Americans put up with sports is for this: behold, the tailgate party.” HOMER SIMPSON CHARACTER
Gourmet Heaven fined
Seven officers face suit ELEVATE FROM PAGE 1 visory roles during the raid, including thenNHPD Chief Frank Limon. The complaint alleges that five of the officers “were personally involved in the deprivation of [Jefferson’s] constitutional rights” and that the three supervising officers, including Limon, “acted with gross negligence.” The raid, which broke up Morse-Stiles Screw in the early morning of Oct. 2, 2010, came as part of a New Haven Police Department crackdown on bars and clubs called “Operation Nightlife” in the wake of a shoot-out between club-goers and police officers the previous month. Police, wearing bulletproof vests and masks and carrying rifles, entered the club to check identification, ordering students to “not say a word.” Marty Evans ’11 said at the time that as students were told to sit on the ground, Jefferson struggled with police who attempted to handcuff him. Shortly afterward, Jefferson was Tasered and hit by police. “I did see [the police officers] absolutely slamming on him,” Danny Zelaya ’13 told the News at the time. “I could see the electricity from the Taser.” Witnesses at the nightclub told the News at the time that officers Tasered Jefferson at least five times and punched and kicked him repeatedly. An officer at the scene turned to the student crowd and shouted “Anybody else?” and another asked “Who’s next?” according to students who were present. Following the raid, an NHPD internal affairs investigation cleared the police department of wrongdoing but nevertheless criticized the officers’ actions. Sgt. John Wolcheski wrote in the report after the raid that officers did not use execessive force in Jefferson’s arrest, but that he was “actively resisting and fighting the officers.” Limon, who placed much of the blame on former Assistant Chief Ariel Melendez, said that the incident resulted from “poor planning, poor decision and poor leadership.” Jefferson was charged on accounts of assaulting a police officer, inciting a riot, interfering with police and disorderly conduct and taken into custody, for which a $25,000 bond was set, according to the complaint. The charges were dropped last year. Limon left his post as NHPD Chief in October 2011, after which he was replaced by current Chief Dean Esserman the same month.
SALLY CHO/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Gourmet Heaven was fined nearly $6,000 during the last fiscal year for employing undocumented workers. the demand for illegal employment and protect employment opportunities for the nation’s lawful workICE FROM PAGE 1 force,” only one audit was conducted in Connecticut, Thursday’s press release stated. Last year, 14 audits were conducted in the state, but only one company was fined. In the last fiscal year, HSI conducted 18 audits and fined 12 companies. “These settlements serve as a reminder to employers that HSI will continue to hold them accountable for hiring and maintaining a legal and compliant workforce,” Bruce Foucart, a special agent who runs HSI throughout New England, said in the press release. “My agency will continue to focus its attention on employers that are knowingly employing illegal workers and will continue to target specific industries and businesses known or alleged to hire illegals.” Foucart stressed the importance of work site enforcement as not only a tool to maintain national security, but also a mechanism to prevent
employers from flaunting labor laws to exploit undocumented laborers. In their investigations, HSI searches for evidence of trafficking. If criminal behavior is uncovered, ICE may pursue criminal action through the U.S. Attorney’s Office rather than through fines.
ICE’s aggressive behavior has not served American communities or employers well. JOHN DESTEFANO JR. Mayor, New Haven This strategy differs from the Bush administration’s policy of deporting workers, Foucart added, as the Obama administration now focuses on punishing the employer. This new policy is designed to disincentivize immigrants from coming to the U.S. illegally in search of work,
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said Diana Enriquez ’13, president of Latino-affiliated advocacy group MeCHA de Yale. She added that the new policy is “less hypocritical” because it also hold employers accountable. “It protects their dignity because it doesn’t give employers the incentive to just rotate and deport workers as they please,” Enriquez said. “There is a stake in this for employers as well now.” Feinstein declined to say if any undocumented employees had been deported as a result of the 18 audits in Connecticut. New Haven has had a contentious relationship with ICE since June 2007, when federal agents raided five households in Fair Haven, without search warrants and sometimes with guns drawn, and detained 29 residents. And this February, city officials worried that Secure Communities, a program which checks fingerprints submitted by local police departments against federal ICE databases, would hinder new attempts at community policing. “ICE’s aggressive behavior has
not served American communities or employers well,” Mayor John DeStefano Jr., said in a Thursday email to the News. But DeStefano added that he looks forward to emerging bipartisan efforts to reform national immigration policies. State Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney said Connecticut has attempted to address immigration problems through a state-level DREAM Act, a tuition program for undocumented students who were raised and went to high school in the state. But Looney said more work needs to be done at the federal level. “We need to move towards a more enlightened policy to provide a pathway to citizenship for immigrants,” Looney added. The Pew Hispanic Center estimated 11.2 million undocumented immigrants lived in the United States in 2010. Contact CHRISTOPHER PEAK at christopher.peak@yale.edu .
Contact MATTHEW LLOYD-THOMAS at matthew.lloyd-thomas@yale.edu .
Lawsuit claims racial prejudice LAWSUIT FROM PAGE 1 in April 2009, consisted of a written and oral portion. Of the 33 officers with passing scores, none were Hispanic. When the CSB met in July 2009 to approve the list of officers eligible for promotions, board members expressed discomfort “with the fact that no Hispanics passed the exam,” according to minutes from the meeting. As a result, the board decided it would allow the list of eligible officers to expire after one year rather than the usual two. Over the course of the year, 12 officers were promoted — fewer than would have been promoted were the list valid for the entire two years. Williams cited the current case’s similarity to Ricci v. DeStefano, explaining that a precedent already exists for the plaintiffs’ argument. “It’s a winning case because it’s Ricci redux,” Williams said. “We’ve been down this road before.” New Haven Corporation Counsel Victor Bolden, who disagreed, saying in a press release that “the motion lacks merit.” Bolden declined to comment further. Legal experts interviewed emphasized the difficulties faced by cities in adhering to fair employment practices while accounting for racial diversity. New Haven attorney Norm
Pattis, who is uninvolved in the case, suggested that cities often struggle in weighing race in employment decisions, saying that they are “under a mandate both to consider and not to consider race.”
It’s important for credibility and legitimacy that the police force somehow reflects the diversity of the population. CYNTHIA ESTLUND Law professor, New York University “There’s a lot of good policy reasons why employers might wish to have a racially diverse workforce,” said New York University law professor Cynthia Estlund, who focuses on employment and labor law. “Police is a classic example. It’s important for credibility and legitimacy that the police force somehow reflects the diversity of the population.” Estlund noted, however, that the conscious weighing of race in employment decisions remains a hotly contested legal question that often divides the Supreme Court. For the city to prove that it was
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justified in allowing the promotion list to expire, Estlund said, it will have to show that its own test not only disparately affected Hispanics but that the disparate impact was highly job-related, unlike in Ricci. But even with the case before the Superior Court, life at the New Haven Police Department has continued largely as usual. New Haven Police Department spokesman David Hartman emphasized that, from what he knew, the city did not think the case would grow to the proportions of Ricci v. DeStefano. “From what our union president has told us already, this is at the very beginning stages of something that they don’t expect to blow up into something huge,” Hartman said, emphasizing that the police department was not involved in the handling of the case. In addition to Bolden, the city has also hired Cheshire attorney Nicole Chomiak for its defense. Chomiak could not be reached for comment Thursday. The Ricci v. DeStefano decision was split 5–4 at the U.S. Supreme Court, with Justice Anthony Kennedy writing the opinion of the court and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg writing the dissent. Contact MATTHEW LLOYD-THOMAS at matthew.lloyd-thomas@yale.edu . Contact ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER at isaac.stanley-becker@yale.edu .
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TIMELINE ‘NEW HAVEN TEN’ 2003 New Haven Fire Department administers exams for promotions to Lieutenant and Captain. 2004 New Haven Civil Service Board, citing bias against African-Americans, throws out exam results. 2009 U.S. Supreme Court, in Ricci v. DeStefano, finds New Haven in violation of Section VII of the Civil Rights Act. APRIL 2009 New Haven Police Department administers exams for promotions to Sergeant. JULY 2012 New Haven Civil Service Board, citing bias against Hispanics, declines to extend list of promotions. NOVEMBER 2011 Ten African-American New Haven police officers file suit against New Haven for discrimination. NOVEMBER 2012 Plaintiffs appear in court to argue against promotion list from new exam.
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
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“The most important factor driving campaign finance upward is ‘more government.’” PATRICK BASHAM ADJUNCT SCHOLAR AT THE CATO INSTITUTE
Yale faculty give big to Democrats BY CHRISTOPHER PEAK STAFF REPORTER From 1989 to 2009, a Yale graduate resided in the White House, and though no Yalie has appeared on the presidential ticket since then, recent political spending figures show the University still wields influence through lobbyists and campaign contributions from employees. According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, Yale University has spent nearly half a million dollars to lobby lawmakers this year, making it the second-highest spender in the Ivy League behind the University of Pennsylvania. While federal laws forbid direct participation in partisan politics due to the University’s nonprofit status, Yale employees, free to donate to any candidate, contributed $429,506 toward candidates and political groups in this year’s election cycle. Nearly 97 percent of the contributions from Yale employees were for Democratic candidates, the highest percentage among Ivy League schools. Dartmouth College had the lowest percentage of Democratic contributions, at just over 78 percent. President Barack Obama — who defeated former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the presidential election by a 3.5 million voter margin last week — received $221,176 in campaign contributions from Yale employees. This figure far exceeds the $8,705 University employees donated to Romney. Taken together, employees in the education industry provided Obama his third-largest source of income, together totaling $19.5 million. higher than donations from Wall Street securities and investment firms, Silicon Valley tech startups and the entertainment industry combined. Obama’s top source of funds came from University of California employees. Meanwhile, donations from the education industry ranked 15th in the largest donor groups for Romney, with only $3.1 million in contributions. “Giving money is probably a poor substitute for volunteering, but it was I felt I could do,” said Yale philosophy professor and ethicist Steven Darwall ’68, who donated $2,500 to Obama last year. University spokesman Michael Morand ’87 DIV ’93 made the largest contribution from a Yale employee with a $5,935 donation to the Democratic National Committee this October and a total contribution of $4,750 to Obama since January. His donations came closest to the individual contribution limit set out by the Federal Election Commission of $2,500 to a candidate per election for a total of $5,000 across both the primary and general election. Morand declined to comment on the reasons for his donation. “My household’s civic contributions are made personally … and are unrelated to the University or employment,” he wrote in a
Wednesday email to the News. Another Yale donor for Obama who contributed the $2,500 maximum contribution was William Rosenblatt, a professor of anesthesiology and surgery at the School of Medicine. Rosenblatt said he had “not been completely pleased” with Obama’s policies in his first term but donated because he was worried about the negative effects a Romney administration would have on access to health care for the uninsured. “Though I believe that the principal problem with our current electoral system is the unfettered giving by individuals, corporations and unions, for the time being we need to ‘fight fire with fire,’” Rosenblatt wrote in a Tuesday email to the News. “The money on the conservative side is outrageous and must be answered.” The largest donor to Mitt Romney’s campaign from Yale was Laura Niklason, professor of anesthesiology and biomedical engineering at the School of Medicine, reportedly donating $1,000 in June and $2,500 in September to Romney’s bid for the presidency. She declined to comment on her donations, writing in an email to the News that she prefers to keep her job and politics separate. Other candidates who received large sums from Yale employees included Elizabeth Esty LAW ’85, a Connecticut Democrat who won a seat in the House of Representatives, and Democrat Chris Murphy, who defeated Republican challenger Linda McMahon for the Senate seat formerly held by Joe Lieberman ’64 LAW ’67. Collectively, contributions from Yale University ranked as Murphy’s fourth-largest source of funds, behind two insurance companies and a law firm. Employees from Harvard contributed the most among the Ivy League in the 2012 elections with $1.9 million. Contributions from employees at Columbia University, who gave $879,832, the University of Pennsylvania, which gave $571,838 and Cornell University, which saw $500,961 in political donations, also topped Yale’s contributions. Yale also employs two lobbyists to communicate its interests in government. The University’s $440,000 in lobbying as of the end of October puts it as one of the highest in the education industry, and second highest in the Ivy League. In recent years, Yale’s lobbyists have attempted to influence legislation to authorize stem cell research, repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” and provide a road to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children through the DREAM Act, among dozens of other bills. The Center for Responsive Politics predicts that $6 billion was spent in the 2012 election, making it the most expensive in U.S. history. Contact CHRISTOPHER PEAK at christopher.peak@yale.edu .
BY THE NUMBERS FACULTY POLITICAL DONATIONS $353,538 $12,692 $1,903,133 $429,506 Contributions to Barack Obama’s political campaign Contributions to Mitt Romney’s political campaign Harvard University total political donations Yale University total political donations
Housing project challenged
JENNIFER CHEUNG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
The Board of Aldermen addressed challenges faced by the Livable City Initiative Thursday night. BY ROSA NGUYEN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Leaders of the Livable City Initiative — an agency that ensures safe housing for New Haven residents — met with aldermen Thursday night to discuss possible revisions for the LCI’s Residential Rental Licensing Program. Although the New Haven agency met with the Board of Aldermen last April to address issues with the licensing program, existing concerns — including housing code violations and the lack of specific guidelines regarding exemption applications — fueled the demand for a second meeting, which took place Thursday. At Thursday’s meeting of the board’s legislation committee, aldermen met with LCI officials to consider changes to its licensing program for rental properties. Enacted in August 2005, the licensing program was designed by the Livable City Initiative to ensure that renters’ and landlords’ licensed property satisfied minimum state housing code standards. “People have brought in issues of buildings in really bad shape — safety hazards, roofs buckling,” Ward 1 alderman Sarah Eidelson ’12 said. The presence of dilapidated housing units raised questions regarding the LCI’s method of prioritizing inspections. The initiative, according to Executive Director Erik Johnson, primarily performs inspections based on a complaint system, and priority is given to the earliest scheduled
complaints. “Because housing code violations are so complaint-driven, typically we just address the complaints,” Johnson said. One hundred percent of Class A complaints — which include life-threatening hazards such as lack of heating — are addressed, according to LCI officials. Class B and C complaints, which include such issues as garbage buildups and leaky faucets, will see longer response times.
Because housing code violations are so complaint-driven, typically we just address the complaints. ERIK JOHNSON Executive director, Livable City Initiative “[Livable City Initiative] needs to step up [its] game and inspect these things on a regular basis — not just on complaints,” Ward 24 alderman Evette Hamilton said. “This is necessary for the quality of life for the residents.” Eidelson questioned the availability of previous inspection records, asking LCI officials if she could find the latest inspection date for a city property online. After LCI officials responded no, they said they would work to make such information accessible online.
The board further addressed the need to clarify the process for exempting property owners from requiring a residential rental license. New Haven residents who can apply for exemption from the program, such as property owners of single-family housing units, must send in photo identification, as well as two items listing their mailing address. A standard for acceptable mail will be created, and the initative will create a kiosk in their main office to instruct residents how to file exemptions and renew licenses. The Livable City Initiative will send renewal notices to property owners who belong to the rental licensing program. In addition, the agency will increase public access of the program through the internet and will create an online program that residents can use to renew their licenses. Johnson also admits that the licensing program must improve its system of tracking compliance. “It’s not that we don’t address issues — it’s that we don’t track them and cannot be sure of our effectiveness,” Johnson said. So far, Johnson said 54 percent of owners have complied with licensing program regulations after housing violations were noted, a figure he calls “a strong story of compliance.” Livable City Initiative will begin its next inspection cycle in January 2013. Contact ROSA NGUYEN at rosa.nguyen@yale.edu .
Bridal show star discusses path to success BY CORINNE KENTOR CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Randy Fenoli, star of TLC’s reality television show, Say Yes to the Dress, thinks the world is a beautiful place. More than 75 fans and aspiring fashionistas attended Thursday’s Silliman College Master’s Tea, where Fenoli recounted his evolution from an Illinois farm boy into one of the most recognizable faces of the wedding dress industry. Say Yes to the Dress features brides-to-be shopping for their perfect wedding day attire at a New York City wedding boutique called Kleinfeld Bridal. During his talk, Fenoli emphasized to audience members the imporance of pursuing their dreams and finding a career path that inspires them to work hard. “Thank god I love what I do. I don’t work — I play,” he said. Though he is a well-known flamboyant television personality, Fenoli said he was nervous about speaking to Yale students. He discussed the sequence of events that led him through careers as a waiter, a female impersonator, a real estate investor and a personal chef before he found his way into television. He
added that he never imagined he would end up hosting several bridal shows on TLC. Fenoli said he has not forgotten his rural Illinois roots, though he said he had trouble as a child fitting in with six siblings and “a hundred head of” cattle that roamed near his childhood home. After years of abuse from his father, a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force, he decided to reevaluate his direction in life, he added. “I ran away five times,” he said of the experience. “But it taught me strength, courage, and independence. [My father] taught me what not to be.” Fenoli said he was able to pursue his love of fashion and design by sewing and repairing clothing for his mother, who will turn 90 this year. Fenoli moved to Louisiana at the age of 16, where he finished his last two years of high school before studying for three semesters at Louisiana State University. After dropping out in the middle of his sophomore year, he said, he started doing hair and makeup to support himself until he entered a female impersonation contest on a dare. He said he later grew his hair down to his waist and sewed his own evening
gowns, before achieving a successful stage career, winning the title of Miss Gay America in1990 and landing on The Joan Rivers Show. He added that these experiences gave him the confidence to pursue a career as a fashion designer.
I’m a really big believer in breaking rules … It’s important to do things that are uncomfortable. RANDY FENOLI Star, “Say Yes to the Dress” Fenoli said he is currently working on developing his own reality show, Randy to the Rescue, which premiered last year. Say Yes to the Dress has recently begun filming its tenth season, he said, adding that he is focusing on future projects and aims to gain enough influence to make as large a difference as his idols, Barbara Streisand and Oprah Winfrey. He said he hopes to transition from television to community service and social action.
“I’m a really big believer in breaking rules,” he said of the his new focus on philanthropy. “[I think] it’s important to do things that are uncomfortable.” Nicole De Santis ‘15 and Hannah Fornero ‘15, who organized the event, said they decided to email Fenoli the first day of fall semester after watching the show together all last year. “They were really enthusiastic [about the idea]” Fornero said, explaining that she and De Santis anticipated the worst result of their request would be a polite refusal. Rhiannon Monta ‘14, said she noticed other students in the audience getting emotional as Fenoli described his early experiences growing up in the midwest. “I appreciated how open and forthright he was about his personal history,” she said. Kiara Hearn ’13 said she thought Fenoli’s expressive personality made one of her last Master’s Tea’s at Yale particularly memorable. New episodes of Say Yes to the Dress and Randy Knows Best air on Friday afternoons on TLC. Contact CORINNE KENTOR at corinne.kentor@yale.edu .
EMMA GOLDBERG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Randy Fenoli discussed the sequence of events that led him to his television career at a Silliman College Master’s Tea Thursday.
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
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BP agrees to pay $4.5B for Gulf spill BY MICHAEL KUNZELMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW ORLEANS — A day of reckoning arrived for BP on Thursday as the oil giant agreed to plead guilty to a raft of charges in the deadly Gulf of Mexico spill and pay a record $4.5 billion, including the biggest criminal fine in U.S. history. Three BP employees were also charged, two of them with manslaughter. The settlement with the federal government came two and a half years after the fiery drillingrig explosion that killed 11 workers and set off the nation’s largest offshore oil spill. In announcing the deal, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said the tragedy “resulted from BP’s culture of privileging profit over prudence.” BP will plead guilty to charges involving the 11 deaths and lying to Congress about how much oil was spewing from the blown-out well. “We believe this resolution is in the best interest of BP and its shareholders,” said Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP chairman. “It removes two significant legal risks and allows us to vigorously defend the company against the remaining civil claims.” The settlement appears to be easily affordable for BP, which made a record $25.8 billion in profits last year. And it will have five years to pay. But the oil giant still faces several billion dollars in additional claims for damage to people’s livelihoods and the environment. Separately, BP rig workers Rob-
ert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine were indicted on federal charges of manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter, accused of repeatedly disregarding abnormal highpressure readings that should have been glaring indications of trouble just before the blowout. In addition, David Rainey, BP’s former vice president of exploration for the Gulf of Mexico, was charged with obstruction of Congress and making false statements. Prosecutors said he withheld information that more oil was gushing from the well than he let on.
The worst-case scenario for BP would be an Exxon Valdez-style decade of litigation. NICK MCGREGOR Oil analyst, Redmayne-Bentley Stockbrokers Rainey’s lawyers said he did “absolutely nothing wrong.” And attorneys for the two rig workers accused the Justice Department of making scapegoats out of them. Both men are still with BP. “Bob was not an executive or high-level BP official. He was a dedicated rig worker who mourns his fallen co-workers every day,” Kaluza attorneys Shaun Clarke and David Gerger said in a statement. “No one should take any satisfaction in this indictment of an inno-
CHERYL GERBER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
David Rainey, BP’s vice president for Gulf of Mexico production, was indicted on Thursday. cent man. This is not justice.” The settlement, which is subject to approval by a federal judge, includes payments of nearly $2.4 billion to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, $350 million to the National Academy of Sciences and about $500 million to the Securities and Exchange Com-
mission, which accused BP of misleading investors by lowballing the amount of crude that was spilling. It also includes nearly $1.3 billion in fines. “This marks the largest single criminal fine and the largest total criminal resolution in the history of the United States,” Attor-
ney General Eric Holder said at a news conference in New Orleans. He said much of the money will be used to restore the Gulf. Holder said the criminal investigation is still going on. Before Thursday, the only person charged in the disaster was a former BP engineer who was arrested in April
Officials testify on sex scandal BY NANCY BENAC AND ROBERT BURNS ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — Top national security officials trudged to Capitol Hill on Thursday to grapple with fallout from the David Petraeus sex scandal as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta asked service chiefs to review ethics training for military officers. He said he was unaware of any other top brass who could turn out to be ensnared in the debacle. One person missing from the tableau: Afghan war chief Gen. John Allen, whose nomination to take over in Europe is on hold because of suggestive emails turned up in the investigation. Legislators went forward with a hearing on the nomination of Gen. Joseph Dunford to replace Allen in Afghanistan. But with Allen’s own future uncertain, they put off consideration of his promotion to U.S. European Command chief and NATO supreme allied commander. Allen had initially been scheduled to testify. Panetta, speaking at a news conference in Bangkok, gave new words of support to Allen, voicing “tremendous confidence” in the general. Citing a string of ethical lapses by senior military officers, however, Panetta asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to review ethics training and look for ways to help officers stay out of trouble. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., opened Dunford’s hearing with kind words for Allen, saying, “I continue to believe that General Allen is one of our best military leaders. And I continue to have confidence in his ability to lead the war in Afghanistan.” Leading administration officials, meanwhile, met privately with lawmakers for a third straight day to explain how the Petraeus investigation was handled and explore its national security implications. Among those appearing before the House Intelligence Committee: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Acting CIA Director Michael Morell. Maryland Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the committee’s top Democrat, said after the hearing he was satisfied that the FBI had behaved properly in not notifying the White House or lawmakers about the inquiry sooner, in keeping with postWatergate rules set up to prevent interference in criminal investigations. But committee member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said lawmakers would continue to ask questions because “there’s a lot of information we need … with respect to the facts about the allegations against General Petraeus.” Petraeus, the much-honored retired general, resigned his CIA post Friday after acknowledging an extramarital affair with his biogra-
pher, Paula Broadwell. The FBI began investigating the matter last summer but didn’t notify the White House of Congress until after the election. The CIA on Thursday opened an “exploratory” investigation into Petraeus’ conduct. The inquiry “doesn’t presuppose any particular outcome,” said CIA spokesman Preston Golson. At the same time, Army officials say that, at this point, there is no appetite for recalling Petraeus to active duty to pursue any adultery charges against him. In the course of investigating the Petraeus situation, the FBI uncovered suggestive emails between Allen and Florida socialite Jill Kelley, both of them married. President Barack Obama then put Allen’s promotion nomination on hold. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he expects Allen to eventually take over the European Command, but he acknowledged, “I see this investigation and how long it could take affecting that.” Dempsey said he “absolutely” had confidence in Allen’s ability to continue in command in Afghanistan despite the distraction of the scandal. He spoke in an interview with American Forces Press Service. While Allen’s nomination has been put on hold, the fact that it wasn’t immediately withdrawn suggests there is at least some feeling that he could survive the investigation. The initial expectation is that the Defense Department inspector general’s probe into the emails will be done within weeks rather than months. The final decision would likely be made by Panetta and the White House after discussions with Capitol Hill leaders. Even if Allen’s move to NATO is shelved, Dunford’s nomination to take Allen’s place as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan will move forward.
[Moral lapses] can be detrimental to the execution of our mission to defend the American people. LEON PANETTA U.S. Secretary of Defense Panetta this week sent Dempsey a memo asking the Joint Chiefs to brainstorm “how to better foster a culture of value-based decisionmaking and stewardship” among senior officers and their staff. In other words: Come up with a game plan for ending bad behavior. “As has happened recently, when lapses occur, they have the potential to erode public confidence in our
on obstruction of justice charges, accused of deleting text messages about the company’s handling of the spill. Greenpeace blasted the settlement as a slap on the wrist. “This fine amounts to a rounding error for a corporation the size of BP,” the environmental group said.
Diabetes rates rocket in south BY MIKE STOBBE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK — The nation’s diabetes problem is getting worse, and the biggest jump over 15 years was in Oklahoma, according to a new federal report issued Thursday. The diabetes rate in Oklahoma more than tripled, and Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama also saw dramatic increases since 1995, the study showed. The South’s growing weight problem is the main explanation, said Linda Geiss, lead author of the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study. “The rise in diabetes has really gone hand in hand with the rise in obesity,” she said. Bolstering the numbers is the fact that more people with diabetes are living longer because better treatments are available.
The rise in diabetes has really gone hand in hand with the rise in obesity. LINDA GEISS Lead author, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on diabetes
CLIFF OWEN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Then-CIA Director-designate Gen. David Petraeus testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington in June. leadership and in our system for the enforcement of high ethical standards,” Panetta wrote. “Worse, they can be detrimental to the execution of our mission to defend the American people.” Panetta didn’t mention Petraeus in the memo, and the defense chief’s spokesman said the request for an ethics review was in the works before the Petraeus matter came to light. Petraeus, in his first media interview since he resigned, told CNN that he had never given classified information to Broadwell. He also said his resignation had nothing to do with his upcoming testimony to Congress about the attack on the U.S. Consulate and CIA base in Benghazi, Libya, that caused the death of four Americans. He told the network he wanted to testify about the Libya matter. And he’ll have that opportunity on Friday, when he appears before the House Intelligence Committee. Committee officials planned to limit the subject of that hearing to Libya, ruling out questioning about the affair with
Broadwell and any potential national security implications. Both Petraeus and Broadwell have said she didn’t get any classified documents from him. But the FBI has found a substantial number of classified documents on her computer and in her home, according to a law enforcement official. That official spoke only on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. Broadwell, a former Army intelligence officer, has told agents that she took classified documents out of secure government buildings. The Army has now suspended her security clearance. Asked why the Justice Department did not inform the president and Congress regarding the investigation involving Petraeus, Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday, “As we went through the investigation and looked at the facts and tried to examine them as they developed, we felt very secure in the knowledge that a national security threat did not exist.”
The disease exploded in the United States in the last 50 years, with the vast majority from obesity-related Type 2 diabetes. In 1958, fewer than 1 in 100 Americans had been diagnosed with diabetes. In 2010, it was about 1 in 14. Most of the increase has happened since 1990. Diabetes is a disease in which the body has trouble processing sugar; it’s the nation’s seventh leading cause of death. Complications include poor circulation, heart and kidney problems and nerve damage. The new study is the CDC’s first in more than a decade to look at how the nationwide boom has played out in different states. It’s based on telephone surveys of at least 1,000 adults in each state in 1995 and 2010. Participants were asked if a doctor had ever told them they have diabetes. Not surprisingly, Mississippi — the state with the largest proportion of residents who are obese — has the highest diabetes rate. Nearly 12 percent of Mississippians say they have diabetes, compared to the national average of 7 percent. But the most dramatic increases in diabetes occurred largely elsewhere in the South and in the Southwest, where rates tripled or more than doubled. Oklahoma’s rate rose to about 10 percent, Kentucky went to more than 9 percent, Georgia to 10 percent and Alabama surpassed 11 percent. An official with Oklahoma State Department of Health said the solution is healthier eating, more exercise and no smoking. “And that’s it in a nutshell,” said Rita Reeves, diabetes prevention coordinator.
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
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BULLETIN BOARD
TODAY’S FORECAST
TOMORROW
Mostly sunny, with a high near 51. North wind 3 to 8 mph.
SUNDAY
High of 51, low of 34.
High of 50, low of 39.
DOONESBURY BY GARRY TRUDEAU
ON CAMPUS FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16 12:00 PM “Emotional Literacy” A talk by professor Marc Brackett, deputy director of Yale’s Health, Emotion and Behavior Laboratory and head of the Emotional Intelligence Unit in the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy. Sterling Memorial Library (120 High St.), Lecture Hall.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17 2:00 PM “Summertime” Directed by David Lean. Part of the Yale Center for British Art’s film series, “The Traveler in Italy,” selected to accompany the exhibition “The English Prize: The Capture of the Westmorland, An Episode of the Grand Tour.” Free admission and open to the general public. Yale Center for British Art (1080 Chapel St.).
A CANDIDATE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT BY ILANA STRAUSS
7:30 PM Yale Undergraduate Jazz Collective: Weekly Jam Session Instrumentalists and vocalists of all abilities are welcome. There will be someone at the door to let people in. Morse College (53 Wall St.), Practice Room.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18 2:30 PM Meditation with YMindful YMindful is a community of Yalies who support each other in meditative practice. They seek to cultivate a welcoming, peer, non-religiously affiliated environment for Yalies to encounter mindfulness and meditation. Sunday meditation sessions last about an hour and include sitting, walking, sharing, listening to a recorded talk and/or relaxation training. Newcomers are always welcome, regardless of previous knowledge about or experience with meditation. Jonathan Edwards College (68 High St.), Dance Studio.
THAT MONKEY TUNE BY MICHAEL KANDALAFT
y SUBMIT YOUR EVENTS ONLINE yaledailynews.com/events/submit SCIENCE HILL BY SPENCER KATZ
To reach us: Questions or comments about the fairness or accuracy of stories should be directed to Editor in Chief Tapley Stephenson at (203) 432-2418. Bulletin Board is a free service provided to groups of the Yale community for events. Listings should be submitted online at yaledailynews.com/events/ submit. The Yale Daily News reserves the right to edit listings.
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FOR RELEASE NOVEMBER 16, 2012
CLASSIFIEDS
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle CROSSWORD Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Lewis ACROSS 1 Restraint at a rodeo 6 Magnum __ 10 Telegraph “T” 13 Respond to 14 Receive with relish 16 Headline-making NYSE event 17 What makes a cat a cat? 19 Pro at balancing: Abbr. 20 Second-smallest st. 21 To date 22 Elevated church area 24 Greek vowel 25 Bearish directors? 28 State from which the Utah Territory was formed 30 Tarzan, for one 31 No longer in 32 Prefix with culture 33 Former word for former days 34 Sea dog who’s actually a wolf? 39 Calendar pg. 42 Texter’s “Zounds!” 43 Many a Johann Strauss work 47 Muscle Shoals site 50 Countless 52 Dogs who inspire artists? 54 Marshal at Waterloo 55 “__ Schoolchildren”: Tracy Kidder book 56 Nancy Drew’s beau 57 Econ. measure 58 San Francisco’s __ Hill 59 Deliverers of certain farm news? 64 Shakespeare title word 65 French income 66 iComfort mattress maker 67 Shooting locale 68 1967 #1 hit “Somethin’ Stupid,” e.g. 69 Former “NOVA scienceNOW” host Neil deGrasse __
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11/16/12
By Gareth Bain
DOWN 1 Churchill’s “so few”: Abbr. 2 Summer quencher 3 In any event 4 Slave 5 Wilson of Heart 6 Least fresh 7 Story opener 8 Org. managed by Scripps until 1982 9 Soccer mom’s ride 10 Work with a steno 11 Worn things 12 Accumulated to a fault 15 R&B singer Bryson 18 Lake __, Australia’s lowest point 23 Sever, with “off” 24 Announcer Hall 25 Language spoken in New Delhi 26 Church section 27 Change, in a way 29 Unadon fillets 32 Taiwanese-born Lee 35 Apple or pear 36 Mosque leader 37 PDA add-ons
Thursday’s Puzzle Solved
SUDOKU DASTARDLY
6 2
(c)2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
38 Foolish talk 39 Tropical birds that run on lily pads 40 Fashionable 41 Hypothetical high-tech predator in Crichton’s “Prey” 44 Banks, e.g. 45 Abides by 46 “__ objections?” 48 Storage unit 49 Steamed state
11/16/12
50 Online discussion venue 51 Assyrian’s foe 53 Link 57 Like rainy London skies 60 Logical abbr. 61 Onetime Burmese statesman 62 L.A. setting 63 __ Mateo, California
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
WORLD
“If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.” ABBA EBAN ISRAELI DIPLOMAT AND POLITICIAN
Hamas targets Tel Aviv
Xi takes China’s helm BY CHARLES HUTZLER ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEBASTIAN SCHEINER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ultra-Orthodox Jews attend the funeral of Mirah Sharf, who was killed by a rocket thought to have been fired by Palestinian militants. BY KARIN LAUB AND IBRAHIM BARZAK ASSOCIATED PRESS GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Palestinian militants targeted densely populated Tel Aviv in Israel’s heartland with rockets for the first time Thursday, part of an unprecedented barrage that threatened to provoke an Israeli ground assault on Gaza. Three Israelis were killed. Air raid sirens wailed and panicked residents ran for cover in Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial and cultural capital. Israel responded by moving troops and heavy weapons toward Gaza and authorizing the call-up of tens of thousands of reservists. There was no word on where the two rockets aimed at Tel Aviv landed, raising the possibility they fell into the Mediterranean. A third rocket landed in an open area on the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv. The fighting, the heaviest in four years, came after Israel launched a ferocious air assault Wednesday to stop repeated rocket fire from Gaza. The powerful Hamas military chief was killed in that strike, and another 18 Palestinians have died over two days, including five children. Some 100 Palestinians have been wounded. Israeli warplanes struck dozens of Hamas-linked targets in Gaza on Thursday, sending loud booms echoing across the narrow Mediterranean coastal strip at regular intervals, followed by gray col-
umns of smoke. After nightfall, several explosions shook Gaza City several minutes apart, a sign the strikes were not letting up, and the military said the targets were about 70 underground rocketlaunching sites. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the army was hitting Hamas hard with what he called surgical strikes, and warned of a “significant widening” of the Gaza operation. Israel will “continue to take whatever action is necessary to defend our people,” said Netanyahu, who is up for re-election in January.
After four years, we became stronger, we have a strategy and we became united with all the military wings in Gaza. FAWZI BARHOUM Spokesman, Hamas There were mounting signs of a ground operation. At least 12 trucks were seen transporting tanks and armored personnel carriers toward Gaza late Thursday, and a number of buses carrying soldiers arrived. Israeli TV stations said a Gaza incursion was expected on Friday,
though military officials said no decision had been made. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he authorized the call-up of reservists, and the army said up to 30,000 additional troops could be drafted. “We will continue the attacks and we will increase the attacks, and I believe we will obtain our objectives,” said Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, Israel’s military chief. Hamas, meanwhile, warned it would strike deeper inside Israel with Iranianmade Fajr-5 rockets, acknowledging for the first time it has such longer-range weapons capable of hitting targets some 47 miles away. Tel Aviv is 40 miles from Gaza. By nightfall Thursday, Hamas said it had fired more than 350 rockets into Israel. Israel, which estimates Gaza militants have as many as 12,000 rockets, said some 220 rockets struck the Jewish state and another 130 were intercepted by an anti-missile shield. Israel believes Hamas has significantly boosted its arsenal since the last Gaza war four years ago, including with weapons from Iran and from Libyan stockpiles plundered after the 2011 fall of the regime there. “After four years, we became stronger, we have a strategy and we became united with all the military wings in Gaza,” said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum, referring to Hamas’ setbacks during Israel’s last major offensive in late 2008.
BEIJING — Long-anointed successor Xi Jinping assumes the leadership of China at a time when the ruling Communist Party is confronting slower economic growth, a public clamor to end corruption and demands for change that threaten its hold on power. The country’s political elite named Xi to the top party post on Thursday, and unexpectedly put him in charge of the military too, after a weeklong party congress and months of divisive bargaining. The appointments give him broad authority, but not the luxury of time. After decades of juggernaut growth, China sits on the cusp of global pre-eminence as the second largest economy and newest power, but it also has urgent domestic troubles that could frustrate its rise. Problems that have long festered — from the sputtering economy to friction with the U.S. and territorial spats with Japan and other neighbors — have worsened in recent months as the leadership focused on the power transfer. Impatience has grown among entrepreneurs, others in the new middle class and migrant workers — all wired by social media and conditioned by two decades of rising living standards to expect better government, if not democracy.
Our responsibility now is to … achieve the great renewal of the Chinese nation. XI JINPING Leader, the People’s Republic of China All along, police have continued to harass and jail a lengthening list of political foes, dissidents, civil rights lawyers and labor activists. A 14-year-old Tibetan set himself on fire in western China on Thursday, in the latest of more than 70 self-immolations Tibetans have staged over the past 20 months in desperate protests against Chinese rule. In his first address to the nation, Xi, a 59-year-old son of a revolutionary hero, acknowledged the lengthy agenda for what should be the first of two five-year terms in office. He promised to deliver better social services while making sure China stands tall in the world and the party continues to rule. “Our responsibility now is to rally and lead the entire party and the people of all ethnic groups in China in taking over the historic baton and in making continued
efforts to achieve the great renewal of the Chinese nation,” a confident Xi said in nationally televised remarks in the Great Hall of the People. He later said “we are not complacent, and we will never rest on our laurels” in confronting challenges — corruption chief among them. By his side stood the six other newly appointed members of the Politburo Standing Committee: Li Keqiang, the presumptive premier and chief economic official; Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang; Shanghai party secretary Yu Zhengsheng; propaganda chief Liu Yunshan; Tianjin party secretary Zhang Gaoli; and Vice Premier Wang Qishan, once the leadership’s top troubleshooter who will head the party’s internal watchdog panel. Xi gave no hint of new thinking to address the problems. The lack of specifics and the new leadership heavy with conservative technocrats deflated expectations for change in some quarters. “We should be expecting more of the same, not some fundamental break from the past,” said Dali Yang of the University of Chicago. Fundamental for the leadership is to maintain the party’s rule, he said. “They are not interested in introducing China’s Gorbachev” — the Soviet leader whose reforms hastened the end of the Soviet Union - Yang said. Many of the challenges Xi confronts are legacies of his predecessor, Hu Jintao. In addition to relinquishing his role as party chief, having reached the two-term maximum, Hu also stepped down from the party commission that oversees the military. The move is a break from the past in which exiting party leaders kept hold of the military portfolio for several years. During Hu’s 10 years in office, policies to open up China to trade and foreign investment begun by his predecessors gathered momentum, turning China into a manufacturing powerhouse and drawing tens of millions of rural migrants into cities. Easy credit fueled a building boom, the Beijing Olympics and the world’s longest high-speed rail network. At the same time, Hu relied on an everlarger security apparatus to suppress protests, even as demonstrations continued to rise. “More and more citizens are beginning to awaken to their rights and they are constantly asking for political reform,” said rights activist Hu Jia, who has previously been jailed for campaigning for AIDS patients and orphans. “The Communist Party does not have legitimacy. It is a party of dictatorship that uses violence to obtain political power. What we need now is for this country’s people to have the right to choose who they are governed by.”
France explores idea of arming Syrian rebels BY ELAINE GANLEY ASSOCIATED PRESS PARIS — France raised the possibility Thursday of sending “defensive weapons” to Syria’s rebels, but Russia warned that such a move would violate international law. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said his country will ask the European Union to consider lifting the Syrian arms embargo, which prevents weapons from being sent to either side. “We must not militarize the conflict … but it’s obviously unacceptable that there are liberated zones and they’re bombed” by President Bashar Assad’s regime, Fabius said in an interview with RTL radio. “We have to find a good balance.” The civil war in Syria, which began as an uprising against Assad’s regime, has killed more than 36,000 Syrians since March 2011, according to anti-government activists. The fighting and flood of refugees seeking safety have also spilled over into several of Syria’s neighbors, including Israel, Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. The fighting has descended into a bloody stalemate, and rebels say they desperately need weapons to turn the tide. “The question of defensive
arms will be raised,” Fabius said, without providing details about what such arms would be. “This cannot be done without coordination between Europeans.” The topic of Syria is sure to be on the agenda at the EU foreign ministers meeting Monday in Brussels.
We must not militarize the conflict … but it’s obviously unacceptable that there are liberated zones and that they’re bombed. LAURENT FABIUS Foreign minister, France France has taken a leading role among Western countries in supporting Syria’s rebels. On Tuesday, it became the first Western nation to formally recognize Syria’s newly formed opposition coalition as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people. On Saturday, the president of the new opposition coalition, the 52-year-old preacher-turned activist Mouaz al-Khatib, is to
visit Paris and meet with President Francois Hollande. AlKhatib is scheduled to hold talks a day earlier in London with British officials, who have said they will urge the opposition to set out a strategy to halt the conflict. Syria’s splintered rebel factions agreed to a U.S.-backed plan to unite last weekend under the new umbrella group, which seeks a common voice and strategy against the regime. A French diplomatic official said Thursday that Paris sees quick recognition as a primary way to assure success for the opposition. “There won’t be many other occasions like this,” said the official who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter and asked not to be named. “We have a collective responsibility, to the Syrians and ourselves, to make this live.” Turkey, which shares a long border with Syria and is a major backer of the opposition, followed suit on Thursday, with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu saying Ankara recognized the Syrian National Coalition as “the only legal representative” of Syria, the Anadolu news agency reported. The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council already has recognized the new broad-based Syrian opposition group. The
SPA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, right, presents French President Francois Hollande, left, with the Order of Merit. GCC includes Qatar and regional power Saudi Arabia, both of whom have been some of the strongest supporters of the rebels fighting to oust Assad. The U.S. also recognized the leadership body announced in Qatar on Sunday as a legiti-
mate representative, but stopped short of describing it as the sole representative, saying the group must first demonstrate its ability to represent Syrians inside the country. President Obama on Wednesday reiterated that the U.S. isn’t
considering sending weapons to the opposition because of concerns the arms might end up in the hands of extremists. Although Assad remains isolated internationally, he still has the backing of key allies Russia, China and Iran.
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 11
SPORTS
Mark Buehrle traded to Toronto, but can his dog come along? MLB pitcher Mark Buehrle was traded to Toronto from Miami on Tuesday, but his beloved American Staffordshire terrier wouldn’t be able to make the trip. Ontario has a ban on pit bulls that was enacted in 2005. The Toronto Star has raised the possibility that the trade could be hampered by the law — currently, Buehrle purposely lives outside Miami-Dade County because it has a similar ban on pit bulls.
Keys to the Game BY CHARLES CONDRO STAFF REPORTER Yale has a tall order ahead of it to bring down Harvard. Here’s what the Bulldogs will need to do to put the Cantabs back in their place. Stay Furman: No quarterback has started back-to-back games for Yale since Eric Williams ’16 went down with a separated shoulder against Penn in October. That lack of continuity has shown — Yale has fumbled three times on routine handoffs and snaps since that date. The Elis also struggled to move the ball through the air, going a combined 8–30 passing with two interceptions against Columbia and Brown. Yale found its saving grace last week, however, in fifth-string quarterback Henry Furman ’14. Converted to a wide receiver when Tony Reno took over as the 34th head coach of Yale football in January, Furman stepped smoothly back under center for the Bulldogs last weekend against Princeton. Furman was 18–28 for 184 yards and a touchdown pass while adeptly managing Yale’s offense. Better still, Furman showed the arm strength, accuracy and presence in the pocket required to throw the ball downfield and stretch the defense. Even if quarterback Derek Russell ’13 can play through his separated throwing shoulder, Reno should still call Furman’s number because he has logged more practice time with the first team recently and has the stronger arm. With Furman back at quarterback tomorrow, the Elis can build on last week’s offensive production and show Harvard the most balanced attack Yale has had in 2012. Turnover a New Page: At the risk of beating a dead horse, Yale must try to hold on to the football to have a chance at silencing the 10,000 Men of Harvard. Yale leads the Ivy League in turnovers by leaps and bounds above the second-worst team. The Elis’ 26 giveaways is seven more than Columbia, which ranks second in total turnovers. The Elis’ turnover troubles cannot be traced to one particular problem – Yale tops the Ancient Eight in both interceptions thrown (15) and fumbles lost (11). The consequences of turnovers were never more evident
than in last week’s 29–7 loss to Princeton. With the score tied 7–7, the Bulldogs were sitting pretty with second and goal on the Princeton 5-yard line and 1:01 remaining in the first half. Then disaster struck when Reno called for a running back pass and Mordecai Cargill’s ’13 toss across the field was jumped by cornerback Trocon Davis, who returned it 100 yards for a touchdown. That 14-point swing was made worse in the third quarter when Cargill fumbled into the end zone as he tried to stretch the ball across the goal line. Yale had two turnovers on the goal line and all three of its giveaways happened within 30 yards of Princeton’s end zone. Yale lost by 22 points and arguably gave up a 21-point swing because of turnovers. Last week’s outcome was changed because Yale could not hold on to the football when it counted. This week, the Bulldogs must hold on for their lives. Thin Red Line: The Crimson are overwhelming favorites over Yale, but they are not without weaknesses. The Harvard Athletic Department canceled the JV version of The Game that was to be played in Boston today because of a slew of injuries on Harvard’s offensive line. Yale’s defensive front is used to playing against larger offensive linemen, but the newly found lack of depth on the Cantab’s front line creates an opportunity to disrupt a Harvard offense that has averaged 40 points per game this season. Yale’s defensive line is also better prepared to attack Harvard’s weak front line than ever before. Despite registering just three sacks through Yale’s first four games, the Bulldogs’ pass rush has turned it up in recent weeks; sacking the quarterback a total of 12 times in the past five games. Defensive end Beau Palin ’14 has led Yale’s assault on opposing quarterbacks with a team-high four sacks for 32 yards this season. No Bulldog has disrupted offenses behind the line of scrimmage more than nose guard Nick Daffin ’13. He paces Yale’s defense with 6.5 tackles for a loss in 2012. Stopping the Crimson attack before it starts will give Yale its best chance to keep Harvard off the scoreboard and pull off the upset. Contact CHARLES CONDRO at charles.condro@yale.edu .
Yale takes on Houston
Furman provides stability Q&A FROM PAGE 12 was harder for you: QWhat transitioning to wide receiver or transitioning back to quarterback in a new system?
A
I would say transitioning to wide receiver because I’d literally never done it before. I was athletic but there’s a lot of technique to what I was doing. The transition back to quarterback was actually easier than the transition from high school to college quarterback just because I ran a spread offense like the one I run right now, whereas obviously the last few years we ran a pro-style offense, so that was difficult for me. I didn’t transition well, so coming back to the spread was actually pretty easy.
that you’re the varsity QNow starting quarterback, do you prepare for the games differently?
A
I wouldn’t really say I prepared any differently. Obviously the stakes are higher but I thought we did a great job during the week preparing me and preparing the offense to play together and glue together … A big part of it was making me feel comfortable and making sure I knew what I was doing at all times.
Q
You are preparing for this week like you’re the starter. How do you look at it differently because it’s Harvard?
A
I wouldn’t say I’m going to prepare any differently this week. It’s fun to think that my first two starts at quarterback were Princeton and Harvard.
That’s really cool, but I wouldn’t want to psych myself out or prepare any differently. I’ve always had the same routine and that will alleviate a lot of stress. Just making sure I know what I’m doing on the field, getting the ball out quickly … They have a good defensive line so I want to make sure that I’m not holding onto the ball too long. Nothing’s really going to change, it’s still the same game.
considered the underQYale’s dog. How has that motivated
WOMEN’S BBALL FROM PAGE 12 and play smarter to avoid foul trouble,” Keita said. With a veteran team stacked with juniors and seniors, Houston will be traveling to New
Haven looking to redeem their recent losses to Mississippi State and Alabama last week. Senior Porsche Landry and freshman Jessieka Palmer are the Cougars’ leading scorers, each contributing 29 points each in their past two games.
The Bulldogs are currently amidst non-conference play and will not see their first Ivy League matchup until January. Tipoff is set for 7 p.m. Contact DINEE DORAME at dinee.dorame@yale.edu .
ing quarterback that leads Yale to its first victory in six years against Harvard?
A
I wouldn’t say it means more to me. It would mean a lot, but I would be more proud to just be a part of the team that was able to right the ship. I just know that a lot of guys coming back, that’s one of their big regrets that we still haven’t beat Harvard. It doesn’t matter what position I’m playing it’s just that we were able to win.
the team?
A
Unfortunately, we’ve been considered the underdog for a while now, the last five or six years. That’s not a new environment for us. More so we want to get a win for the seniors. We haven’t beaten them in a long time so I don’t know if we really need any more motivation. It’s more just a matter of realizing that we’re fully capable. We handled Penn pretty easily and obviously Penn beat them last week, so we should have all the confidence in the world going into the game regardless of who’s favored.
heavily does the losing QHow streak weigh on the team?
A
It weighs heavy. It means a lot to us. It’s a big part of why we all came here. A lot of us had offers to go to other big-time schools where they play bowl games. This is our bowl game. It’s every year, and we play the same team. We want to get that straightened out as soon as possible.
time next week, has Yale QThis ended the streak?
A
Oh yeah. Harvard’s going to come in here like they always do, expecting that they’re going to win. I’m sure they’re going to be all pissed off after last week when they lost to Penn and obviously with Reno coming over last year emotions are going to be high. It’s going to come down to who executes and who will keep a level head, because it’s going to be a game with a lot of ups and downs. I think we have a better ability to fight through adversity and keep our composure. As long as we do that and we can execute, then we’ll be good. Contact CHARLES CONDRO at charles.condro@yale.edu .
Bulldogs travel to Indiana MEN’S BASKETBALL FROM PAGE 12
MARIA ZEPEDA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
would it be like for you QWhat personally if you are the start-
from both our first games, it’s just a matter of fixing the things that went wrong.” Pritchard added that the team learned from its season opener that it had to maintain a high level of play throughout an entire 40-minute game. After dominating Sacred Heart over the first 25 minutes of the contest to build a 24-point lead, the Elis watched that lead slip away over the game’s last 15 minutes and allowed the Pioneers to send the game into overtime. Yale built a five-point advantage in the first two minutes of that period, but that lead also dissipated, and the Pioneers captured the victory, 85–82. While St. Joseph’s overwhelmed the Bulldogs on Monday, Pritchard said that game gave the young Yale squad a chance to play against a very strong team on the road in a boisterous environment. “Everything at this point is kind of a learning curve,” he said. “It’s just a matter of what we can pick up and how fast we can adjust, so the better we can keep our heads up and keep improving … [the better] we’ll be able to turn this ship around.” This weekend, the Bulldogs will compete against three opponents that none of the current Elis on the roster have faced. They will face play Evansville (0–1, 0–0 MVC) tonight and Buffalo (0–2, 0–0 MAC) on Saturday in Evansville, Ind. before making the trip to Oakland City, Ind. to challenge West-
ern Illinois (1–1, 0–0 Summit) on Sunday. Although the Bulldogs have already received a scouting report of the Evansville Purple Aces, Pritchard said that the key for the Bulldogs in all three games will be to capitalize on their own strengths. “Defensively, we always focus on team defense and defensive rebounding and not giving up easy buckets,” he said. Despite the lopsided loss to St. Joseph’s, the Elis limited a Hawks squad that averaged 71.9 points per game last season to 61 on Monday. Pritchard said the team will focus on improving offensively this weekend by trying to create uncontested opportunities to score. The Elis have struggled to find their offensive rhythm in the absence of Greg Mangano ’12 and Reggie Willhite ’12, last season’s top two scorers, who graduated last spring. “I think we have a lot of weapons, but we need to figure out what role guys are going to play,” captain Sam Martin ’13 said. All three of the Bulldogs’ games are part of the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic. The team will tip off against Evansville tomorrow night 20 minutes after the conclusion of a contest between Western Illinois and Buffalo at approximately 8:35 p.m. Contact ALEX EPPLER at alexander.eppler@yale.edu .
Volleyball team looks to NCAA tournament VOLLEYBALL FROM PAGE 12 the NCAA tournament.” It was just last year that the majority of the Yale squad got its first taste of the tournament. After capturing the Ivy title with a 12–2 conference record, the Bulldogs received the Ancient Eight’s automatic NCAA tournament bid and were matched up against USC in the tournament’s first round. The Trojans swept the Elis 3–0 and made it all the way to the semifinals before losing 3–2 to eventual runner-up Illinois. “Last year was great because we got to go in and play a big team,” Reetz said. “To play USC, at their home and in the first round, was
a cool experience for the program and for us in general. We got to show the rest of [Division I] volleyball what the Ivy League has to offer.” This year’s squad will not find out who its first-round opponent will be until Nov. 25, when the entire 64-team field will be announced during a selection show on ESPNU. In the meantime, the Elis will head their separate ways for Thanksgiving break before they resume practicing on the day of the selection show. Setter Kendall Polan ’14 said that maintaining the team’s winning mindset will be the key for the Bulldogs in the weeks leading up to the match. “It’s going to be really mental
for us,” Polan said. “Whoever we play, we’re probably going to go in as the underdog so we just have to go in and be confident and keep playing how we have been over the last few weeks.” The Bulldogs’ rise to national prominence began in 2004, when the team played in its first-ever NCAA tournament. Yale went 10–4 in Ivy League play that season and shared the Ivy title with Cornell, Harvard and Princeton, giving the Elis just the second conference championship in program history. After defeating its fellow champions in a four-way playoff to determine who would receive the Ivy League’s automatic NCAA bid, Yale took on Albany in its opening
tournament contest. The Bulldogs knocked off the Great Danes 3–1, the first time an Ivy League team had ever won an NCAA tournament match. The went on to lose 3–0 in the second round to the eventual runner-up Minnesota Gophers. The Bulldogs did not reach postseason play again until 2008, when they took the Ivy crown with a 13–1 conference record. In the first round of the NCAA tournament, Yale took down Ohio University in a five-set thriller that featured 20 kills from outside hitter Cat Dailey ’10. The Bulldogs went on to fall in the second round to Penn State, who eventually captured the national championship with a 3–0 win over Stanford
in the title match. Last year’s team captain Taylor Cramm ’11, who was a freshman during the 2008 season, expressed confidence in the Elis’ chances in the national tournament. “[In 2008] we all really enjoyed playing together … and I think that took us to the next round,” Cramm said in a message to the News. “This year’s team is incredible and I am so proud of everything they have done. I have no doubt that they have what it takes to be a formidable presence in the NCAA tournament.” Postseason expectations are certainly sky-high for this year’s team after the Bulldogs compiled just the second 14–0 regular season record in league history and
cleaned up the conference’s postseason awards. Polan won her second consecutive Player of the Year award while setter Kelly Johnson ’16 was named Rookie of the Year, the third consecutive season the award has gone to an Eli. Those two, along with outside hitter Mollie Rogers ’15, were named to the All-Ivy First Team, while libero Maddie Rudnick ’15 and middle blocker Haley Wessels ’13 earned Second-Team nods. The Bulldogs currently rank second in the nation in kills per set and third in assists per set with 14.9 and 13.9, respectively. Contact KEVIN KUCHARSKI at kevin.kucharski@yale.edu .
IF YOU MISSED IT SCORES
QUICK HITS
NCAAB Louisville 80 Samford 54
NCAAB Baylor 84 Boston Coll. 74
NCAAB NC State 72 Penn St. 55
SPORTS ROGER GOODELL SPEAKS AT HARVARD NFL HEAD TALKS PLAYER SAFETY NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell spoke at Harvard’s School of Public Health on Wednesday to discuss increasing concerns about player safety in football. According to USA Today, Goodell vowed progress in preventing on-field concussions but asked fans for patience.
THE GAME’S TICKET WOES CONTINUE BUSINESSWEEK REPORTS After Yale failed to sell out its allocation of tickets to The Game, Bloomberg Businessweek reported Wednesday on the factors behind the poor sales. The article blames Sandy’s devastating effects on the East Coast for keeping alumni away.
IVY M. SOCCER Syracuse 1 Cornell 0
y
IVY M. SOCCER Brown 2 Drexel 0
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“I think there are good things to take from both our first games.” JESSE PRITCHARD ’14 GUARD, MEN’S BASKETBALL
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
Elis build on historic season BY KEVIN KUCHARSKI STAFF REPORTER After a spotless 14–0 Ivy season, a third straight conference title and an NCAA tournament berth, most teams would be satisfied.
WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL But this kind of success is nothing new for the Yale volleyball program. The Bulldogs are set to play in their fourth NCAA tournament in the past nine seasons and will attempt to win a first-round match for the third time since 2004. “Coming out of the season, winning the Ivy League was our first and foremost goal,” outside hitter Erica Reetz ’14 said. “But now that we’ve made it out of the Ivy season, we’re really excited about the potential we have in SEE WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL PAGE 11
Furman thrust into the spotlight BY CHARLES CONDRO STAFF REPORTER Recruited as a quarterback, Henry Furman ’14 switched to wide receiver when Tony Reno became head coach in January. Furman returned to quarterback last month to save the Bulldogs when injuries began to plague Yale’s signal callers, and he will reportedly start under center when the Bulldogs take the field at Harvard tomorrow. He sat down with the News to discuss his changing role and the 129th Yale-Harvard game.
position were you QWhat recruited to play at Yale?
A
I was recruited at quarterback. I started two years of high school at quarterback. Actually, I was always a baseball player, but Yale came around wanting to see me … so I took that offer. I played different positions in football growing up but I was always a quarterback in varsity football.
you get recruited anyQDid where to play baseball? What position did you play?
A
I played center field. I had some interest from Stanford, Santa Clara and USC but once I decided that I was going to go with football I started telling baseball coaches that I wasn’t really interested. The interest sort of died off after junior year.
you ever think about playQDid ing both sports here?
A
Yeah, it’s definitely come to mind. I’ve always held the option for senior year, but I wouldn’t want to make myself be in season for nine months or 10 months out of the year.
SARA MILLER/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Outside hitter Mollie Rogers ’15 was named firstteam All-Ivy for the second straight year. Rogers led the Bulldogs with 237 kills and was second on the team with 313 digs.
ZOE GORMAN/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER
SEE Q&A PAGE 11
Henry Furman will start under center when Yale takes the field at Harvard tomorrow for the 129th playing of the game.
Elis seek first win in Ind. BY ALEX EPPLER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER As the Yale student body heads up to Cambridge this weekend, the men’s basketball team will travel in the opposite direction.
BY DINEE DORAME CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
MEN’S BASKETBALL The Bulldogs (0–2, 0–0 Ivy) will take on Evansville, Buffalo and Western Illinois in three non-conference matchups in Indiana. The team will look to rebound from a disappointing start to its campaign in which it squandered a 24-point lead to Sacred Heart last Saturday to drop its season opener in overtime. Two days later, the Elis were outplayed by Atlantic-10 favorite St. Joseph’s in a 26-point loss on Monday. “After the first two games, the team is doing its best to stay positive,” guard Jesse Pritchard ’14 said. “I think there are good things to take SEE MEN’S BASKETBALL PAGE 11
Bulldogs to fight off the Cougars
BLAIR SEIDEMAN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The men’s basketball team lost its season opener to Sacred Heart last Saturday.
STAT OF THE DAY 10
The Elis will return to Payne Whitney this weekend aiming to notch their first victory of the season and revive last year’s win against the University of Houston. The Yale women’s basketball team will take on the Cougars (0–2) at home, coming off two losses to Holy Cross and New Hampshire. The Bulldogs (0–2) are looking for a win on Saturday to kick off their three-game series over Thanksgiving break. “Moving into this weekend, we need to continue to improve defensively and really focus on our rebounding efforts. As long as we continue to work together, things will begin to fall into place more and more,” captain and guard Allie Messimer ’13 said. Yale took on Houston last year and came away with an 80–62 victory. This season, the Bulldogs are struggling to find an offensive edge, only posting an overall .333 field goal percentage. “I think the team dynamic this year is the
best it’s been since I have been here … The most exciting thing is the amount of respect that everyone has for each other on and off the court,” Messimer said. Yale’s four freshmen have also been forced to contribute early on. They’ve seen a combined 128 minutes of playing time and have appeared in both of the opening games of the season. “We are a young team, so we have to get our groove on the court, but that will come as we play more together,” Messimer said. She added that executing on box outs and crashing the boards should be a focus for the team in upcoming games. Center Zenab Keita ’14 and forward Janna Graf ’14 are currently leading the team in rebounding with 12 apiece. Yale lost some presence in the paint with center Arrice Bryant ’15 and forward Alexandra Osborn-Jones ’14 both out due to injury. “Our two freshmen have held their ground for us in the post. I’ve also had to toughen up SEE WOMEN’S BASKETBALL PAGE 11
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