Yale Daily News -- Week of Nov 18, 2022

Law School ditches U.S. News rankings

BY INES CHOMNALEZ STAFF REPORTER

Yale Law School will no longer participate in the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, Dean Heather Gerken announced Wednesday morning.

Yale Law School, which has held the number one spot on the magazine’s list for the past three decades, will be the first top 14 school to part ways with the ranking system. Harvard Law School withdrew later the same day.

“Over the last few years, U.S. News has begun to adopt metrics that have become increasingly damaging to the profession,” Gerken told the News.“They’re making it harder and harder for other law schools to do the right thing.”

Gerken’s announcement characterizes USNWR rankings as “profoundly flawed,” and fundamentally at odds with the institutional values of YLS. According to the statement, the metrics considered by the magazine disincentivize law schools from introducing programs to increase accessibility and dissuades institutions from supporting public-interest careers.

Admin defend mental health services

BY SARAH COOK STAFF REPORTER

Yale’s mental health services department is adding several major updates to its operations after several years of renewed student criticism.

Director of Mental Health and Counseling Paul Hoffman wrote to the News that his department has seen a “really significant decrease” in wait time for both initial appointments, or intake appointments, and for assignments to treatment after the intake appointments. Ho man attributed the improvements to recent changes including adding more clinicians and also highlighted ongoing e orts to add more clinicians and a third location at 60 Temple St.

“It can be hard to make the decision to seek mental health treatment only to be told that you have to wait weeks for a follow-up appointment,” Ho man wrote to the News.

Ho man’s updates come after a school year marked by record-breaking demand for services. MHC served over a thousand students per week in the 2021 fall semester.

Ho man wrote that while MHC has always been able to treat students with major mental health symptoms quickly, the last school year saw a surge in volume” last year that led to many students waiting “longer than [MHC] would like.”

He added that these shortened wait times can be attributed to numerous recent changes, but he also detailed numerous changes MHC is undergoing including con-

tinuing to add more clinicians and adding a third location.

Dean of Yale College Pericles Lewis told the News that in addition to hiring more mental health professionals, Yale College and MHC aims to provide various ways for students to enter treatment. One of these efforts Lewis pointed to is Yale College Community Care, which was introduced in 2021, which some students have used while waiting for MHC appointments.

Lewis said that shorter wait times might be due to the addition of YC3, which provides short-term care with wellness specialists and mental health clinicians in locations outside of Yale Health. Lewis added that the addition of YC3 is also part of an e ort to SEE MENTAL HEALTH PAGE 5

named Rhodes scholars

BY ANIKA SETH STAFF REPORTER

Sophie Huttner ’23 waited painfully on a Zoom call for four hours on Saturday evening, sitting in her Silliman College dorm in anticipation of potentially life-changing news. When she heard the final decision, she logged out, ran outside and cheered — then headed straight to dinner at Mory’s to celebrate. Huttner was named one of the United States’ 2023 Rhodes Scholars, joining a prestigious cohort of 32 students across the country. She is also one of five Yale winners this year, marking the most Yalies to receive the prestigious award in a single application cycle in a decade.

“I thought I had misheard the chair, and it didn’t sink in that they had actually said my name until the other finalists began logging o the call,” wrote Jonathan Oates ’23, another of Yale’s winners. “Honestly, it still doesn’t feel real.”

The Rhodes Scholarship is broadly considered one of the most prestigious graduate awards across the globe, funding two to three years of studies at the University of Oxford. This application cycle marked the third consecutive year in which candidates were chosen virtually. Huttner and Oates will join JT Mullins ’23, Veer Sangha ’23 and Henry Large ’23 at Oxford in the fall.

“As successful as the [virtual] process was, we of course hope to return to in-person interviews and selection next year in cities across the country, as had been done for over a cen-

tury,” said American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust Elliot F. Gerson in a Sunday statement.

For the 2022 application cycle — from which winners will enroll in Oxford in 2023 — more than 2,500 students submitted initial applications to their college or university, and 840 received a school endorsement. Most of the 16 districts interview 14 or more finalists. Only 1.28 percent of total applicants received a Rhodes Scholarship.

According to Gerson’s statement, Rhodes Scholars are selected in a “two-stage process.” Applicants must first be endorsed by their university, and then apply to one of 16 U.S. regions

based on their home state or the state of their school. Each district interviews its own set of finalists and then selects two winners, totaling at 32 scholars nationwide each year.

Director of Yale’s O ce of Fellowship Programs Rebekah Westphal told the News that she begins advising prospective applicants to the Yale nomination about six months ahead of the first deadlines, which are in early August. Then, Yale’s process involves several nomination committees — including faculty, deans and sta — who interview every applicant.

Two sculptures taken from art school

BY KAYLA YUP STAFF REPORTER

Villares’ sculpture, his wife said, was missing. “I would love to know why they stole it,” Villares said. “I’m giving myself the comfort of

Investment o ce spurns diversity survey

BY EVAN GORELICK STAFF REPORTER

Yale has declined to participate in a comprehensive study on asset manager diversity, even as its peers with large endowments, including Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and the University of Texas system, have chosen to do so.

The ongoing study on asset manager diversity is a project of the Knight Foundation, which funds journalism, arts and research in the areas of media and democracy. So far, the study has collected data from 16 universities. The Foundation is waiting for more schools to participate before publishing a final report.

“Without more information from Yale and other non-participants, we can’t assess how strongly diversity and inclusion factor into the management of their significant financial assets,” Ashley Zohn, vice president of Knight Foundation’s Learning and Impact Program, told the News.

The study follows the Knight Foundation’s decade-long e ort to reinvest its own multibillion-dollar endowment in so-called “diverseowned firms,” which it defines as firms “owned by women and people of color.”

According to Zohn, Yale’s endowment was one of the largest eligible for the study. The endowment reached $41.4 billion after gaining 0.8 percent in 2022, making it the second largest university endowment in the country, after Harvard’s.

Dartmouth College, Duke University, Columbia University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Texas

Gerken calls list "profoundly fl awed," Harvard follows suit

Rafael Villares ART ’24 was in class on Nov. 10 when he received a call from his wife, who was visiting the Yale School of Art’s Green Hall Gallery to take photos of his work on display.

Five Yale seniors were announced as winners of the Rhodes Scholarship / Yale News

Courtesy of Malik Jalal

Didn’t get into a creative writing class? You’re not alone.

BY VALERI VANKOV CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Admission for Yale creative writing courses remains exceptionally competitive, even as the English department says it will take steps to make its offering more accessible.

The department has seen record interest in recent semesters, leading to widespread student dismay. According to registrar Erica Sayers, the department received 1,029 applications this fall for the 13 spring creative writing courses that require them.

The department expects that roughly a third will be ultimately admitted.

Professor Richard Deming, the director of the creative writing program, told the News that the department has increased its class offerings and is currently working on hiring more faculty. In particular, he said, they are conducting a national search for a fiction writer who can “be on campus” throughout the academic year.

“We are actively trying to address the need,” Deming said. “We want to be able to give people that chance to learn the art. If they really want to, our job is to help facilitate that.”

In the meantime, students are fighting for limited seats in legacy courses that have long ranked on “must-take” class lists. Creative writing courses, with the exception of “Daily Themes,” are held in a seminar format and are typically capped at 12 students. The introductory courses, “Introduction to Creative Writing” and “Reading Fiction for Craft,” are open to all undergraduates and require no prerequisites or application.

To register for intermediate and advanced courses, however, students have to complete application forms and often submit writing samples.

This year, the department added two new courses, neither of which required an application.

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, a Pulitzer prize-winning essayist, and Tyehimba Jess, a Pulitzer prize-winning poet, will be joining Yale this spring to teach “Writing Outsiderness and Interiority” and “Diggin’ in the Historical Crates: Breathing Poetry into the Archives” respectively. These courses, along with the introductory courses, admit students on a firstcome-first-served basis.

Because this year’s registration process is staggered by class year, enrollment for “Writing Outsid -

erness and Interiority” was filled on Nov. 14, the first day of registration for seniors.

Two out of the five professors that teach courses that require an application told the News that they received more than 100 applications and all of them received over 70.

Professor Anne Fadiman, who teaches “Writing about Oneself” in the spring, wrote to the News that she received 109 applications — an increase from 97 last fall. According to Fadiman, the preregistration deadline is “way too early” which can be “a burden for many students.”

Professor Derek Green, whose course, “Writing the Television Drama,” expects between 80 and 100 applications each year, agreed that although early registration has not affected the quality of the applications, the process itself is a “distraction” given that it occurs mid-November when students have to study for midterm exams or write papers for their current classes.

All seven professors, including Green, said that they read the applications thoroughly and sought to create a group of students with a variety of backgrounds and interests.

Professor Amity Gaige, who is teaching two spring courses, “Introduction to Writing Fiction” and “Advanced Fiction Writing,” compared the review of applications to a “Venn diagram of all sorts of considerations.”

While Gaige gives priority to students majoring in English who are pursuing the writing concentration, her goal is to create a class that is both culturally and intellectually diverse.

Gaige added that she also appreciates when a student takes “an extra step” when they apply, whether it be a well-researched writing sample or a note from a professor that has previously taught them.

Unlike Gaige, professor Jake Halpern ’97, who will teach “Young Adult Writing” in the spring, told the News that he does not give preference to any group of students and does not require writing samples in his application in an attempt to even the playing field.

“I found early on and what happens for me, at least when I took writing samples, is that students who took other writing classes just submitted a very polished piece of work they created in the previous writing class and used that to then gain access to the next rate class,” Halpern said. “And so what happens

is you’re just creating a system where the students who take one writing class end up taking all of them and it makes it harder for students that have never taken a class.”

Instead, an application for Halpern’s course only asks for a student’s name, email, major and a few lines about who they are and what they might want him to know. He added that this allows him to create a class that has a “range of eclectic interests,” rather than just pre-professional writers.

Chidima Anekwe ’24 told the News that requiring writing samples in applications can be a “frustrating barrier” for students who are “looking for instructional spaces to begin assembling a writing portfolio in the first place.”

“As a result, students without considerable creative writing experience become essentially barred from or at least highly discouraged from applying to these courses, creating a strange and souring paradox: you need to get into the creative writing classes to learn how to produce work good enough to get you into the creative writing classes,” Anekwe wrote to the News.

Both Deming and Fadiman, however, admitted that moving the registration deadline to a later point in time is not an easy task since the decisions made by faculty influence how students schedule their other classes and determine staffing for lecture classes.

Deming, Green and Halpern all said that the University has added many course offerings over the years.

Halpern said that when he was

a student at Yale, there were only a couple of fiction classes. Likewise, Green emphasized that until recently, the University did not have courses ranging from humor writing to young adult writing and screenwriting.

Deming also noted that, due to an increase in demand, his course “Introduction to Creative Writing” is offered for the first time both in the fall and the spring.

All seven professors, however, agreed that more classes should be added and more faculty should be hired to meet future demand.

According to Yale Course Search, the number of creative writing classes per year has increased from 35 to 44 since the 2016-2017 academic year. During the same period, the undergraduate population has increased by almost 1,200 students.

According to Fadiman, increasing class size would not solve the problem, since writing requires “intimacy.”

Due to being notorious for their selectivity, students tend to apply for multiple creative writing courses, at times even more than five. According to professor Ryan Wepler, who is teaching “Writing Humor,” this is not necessarily a negative, since it means that application numbers are “inflated.”

Wepler added that a number of students always end up dropping out of his course, sometimes even before the semester begins, whether it be as a result of scheduling conflicts or change of preferences. Professor Adam Sexton, who is teaching “Reading Fiction for Craft” both

in the fall and the spring, echoed Wepler’s ideas stating that such a practice is not uncommon, and so those who are waitlisted have higher chances of being accepted if they decidetokeeptheirspot.

Despite the competitive nature of these courses, Gaige encouraged students to continue applying for classes and writing in their own time.

“The same system was in place when I was an undergraduate at Brown,” Gaige said. “I was rejected from a fiction writing workshop in my sophomore year, and I remember the abject disappointment of that. That was a long time ago … and I guess things haven’t changed that much.”

Gaige told the News that students should not get discouraged if they were not accepted to the creative writing course they wanted to take.Instead she recommended looking into courses from other departments that allow one to exercise their creative writing skills She also suggested that students could join creative writing groups or run one themselves

Ultimately, Deming praised the English faculty, stating that its dedication to teaching and bringing students into the “conversation” contributes to the popularity of these classes

“People want to create the possibilities for their voice and be part of theconversation,”Demingsaid.

Applications for creative writing coursesweredueNov 4.

Contact VALERI VANKOV at

valeri.vankov@yale.edu

Yale stands with Iranian protestors

BY WILL POURAYOUW AND BRIAN ZHANG STAFF REPORTERS

Following weeks of unrest in Iran, University President Peter Salovey has condemned the current state violence in the country — making Yale the first Ivy League university to issue a formal statement of support in support of Iranian protesters.

The statement, published on Nov. 9, was issued in response to a letter signed by nearly 500 Yale faculty members asking that the University officially denounce the state violence directed against Iranian civilians. The faculty letter to Salovey spotlights attacks on academic institutions and hospitals across Iran and calls for an end to the murder, torture and imprisonment of Iranian civilians.

In the past few years, Iranians have found themselves at the crossroads of various socioeconomic, health and human rights crises, only to have their protests — many peaceful — subjugated to brutal crackdowns from the government. On Nov. 14, 2022, the Iranian government issued the first official death sentence associated with recent protests following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody. Amini was arrested by Iran’s religious morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab in accordance with the standards outlined by the Iranian government.

“I have been following the news in Iran closely, and I am profoundly disturbed by what I am seeing,” Salovey wrote in his statement. “I grieve for Ms. Mahsa Amini and the other individuals whose lives have been cut short. I stand with all those who are courageously seeking to protect women’s rights and human rights.”

Salovey continued by emphasizing the University’s focus on

supporting Iranian University, mentioning that the Office of International Students and Scholars is in touch with these students and scholars. He will soon travel to Washington D.C., where he will speak with government leaders.

Commending the courage of the protesters in Iran, the faculty letter draws attention to “those among our Yale family who may be directly impacted by these demonstrations, as well as our numerous Iranian colleagues experiencing the loss and pain associated with the violent response by the state.”

The faculty letter was submitted to Salovey on Oct. 30 by Travis Zadeh, associate professor of religious studies and director of the Yale Program in Iranian Studies, on behalf of a group of Iranian and Iranian-American faculty. Seven people in total authored the letter.

“The Iranian government is specifically targeting academic institutions,” Zadeh told the News. “The violence directed toward students, children, professors, and doctors shocks the conscience. As a global leader, Yale’s message of solidarity is profoundly meaningful.”

Yale students and faculty have held events, discussions, teachins and vigils to raise awareness of current human rights violations being committed toward Iranian civilians. Faculty and students across the University have released statements, including the Council of Middle Eastern Studies, the Program in Iranian Studies, the School of Medicine and the Persian Students Association.

At first, student organizer Nader Granmayeh ’24 said he was not convinced that words were enough. But as the movement went on, Granmayeh said, he came to realize the importance of Yale’s position in publicly condemn -

ing such violations in a way that merits serious attention from the international community. Granmayeh is a former staff reporter for the News.

“It signals to people both abroad, both in the U.S. and especially people in Iran, that this … is not just a fringe movement that a couple of people are starting,” Granmayeh said. “It’s not that it doesn’t have support. In fact, it has the support of one of the most famous and oldest and premier educational institutions in the United States. And to me, at least, that feels very powerful.”

For assistant professor at the Yale School of Medicine Susan Kashaf, who co-authored the faculty letter, Salovey’s words are a beacon of “hope.” She acknowledged that the road to providing Iranian Americans and homeland Iranians the security, confidence and emotional support they need is still arduous and long, but that this statement is a strong first administrative step.

“Words really do matter,” Kashaf said. “The University is saying that it is committed to supporting us — and that gives us hope. It truly is encouraging.”

Kashaf said there were moments when she wondered if the late nights spent advocating were worth it, but it is seeing the very human reaction to conflict in Iran and growing sense of community around the resistance cause that keeps her going. Earlier today, she had been in conversation with a student in tears who told her that the University’s solidarity has already started playing a role in alleviating “loneliness” and giving “a voice to the voiceless.”

Moving forward, Kashaf and her colleagues will be hosting regular Wednesday meetings to discuss what more can be done

— on both the administrative and faculty ends. In addition to fuelling the existing conversations at Yale and taking it to greater stages outside of the University, she also emphasized that one of her greatest priorities will be ensuring social, workplace and personal wellbeing for all. These meetings will therefore also function as a support space.

“A next action item is raising [this] awareness among different universities across the country,” said Anahita Rabiee, a clinical fellow at the Yale School of Medicine, noting the possibility of hosting bigger solidarity events in collaboration with other academic institutions.

Kashaf echoed that the Ivy League overall has stagnated a little in its response and solidarity with Iranian protesters,

in comparison to other colleges in the country. She hopes that Salovey’s words will push other colleges to follow suit in creating a platform for more stories to be shared.

Rabiee and Kashaf expressed immense pride for students who have been speaking out against the crackdowns in Iran on protesters, thanking them for their participation and initiative.

“Community is the most important thing right now,” Kashaf said. “We can only do this together”

Iranian security forces have killed at least 326 people since the protests following Amini’s death began.

Contact WILLPOURAYOUWat will.pourayouw@yale.edu and BRIAN ZHANGatbrian.zhang@yale.edu

“Noodles are not only amusing, but delicious.”

JULIA CHILD, AMERICAN COOK

TENZIN JORDEN/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The English department received 1,029 applications for its fall creative writing courses.

LAYA JALILIAN/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale President Peter Salovey condemned the Iranian government crackdowns on Nov. 9 in light of ongoing protests and heavy outcry from students and faculty.

ZHANG: Second chances

The first of Yale’s life lessons you learn is that getting in was only half the battle.

Maybe not even half. There’s schoolwork to contend with, the flurry of a cappella auditions or extracurricular applications, internship cover letters and the CourseTable browsing sessions with all of registration’s course interest applications. There are enough sets of hoops to pass through to make college applications pale by comparison.

A handful of those efforts might come to fruition. Perhaps a seminar will place you on the waitlist if you’re lucky, or you’ll perform just well enough to make callbacks. But you spend most of the time acquainting yourself with rejection emails.

Often, those unassuming invitation flyers or syllabi advertising space for “all levels of experience” don’t quite live up to reality. Yes — prior experience might not be necessary — but it doesn’t help when you’re matching up against others who are vastly more seasoned and qualified. In a place like Yale, you probably had to have picked up the pen in third grade or created a portfolio dense enough at this point to find a seat at that writing workshop. You had to have fallen in love with the violin somewhere between age 6 and 12 to reasonably land a spot with the symphonic orchestra. At times, I’ve felt as if our lives had to be predetermined from the very start of childhood, with every step building incrementally to the success of some grander plan.

The selectiveness is frustrating yet understandable. Not every class or club can cater to the size of the interest they command. There are simply limits to entrance, some of them based on inevitable differences in experience or skill.

But rejection, no matter how soft-handedly dealt, still stings. We’re our harshest critics, and it’s tempting to craft warped narratives in which we are destined for failure when a single application goes awry. Missed out on the internship? Maybe you’ll have nothing to do this summer. Never got into the orchestra? Blame your middle school chair auditions, your musical mediocrity, or those afternoons back in fifth grade when you abandoned Bach to peck at your self-made, sloppy renditions of Taylor Swift. Give up. Call it quits. Pack away the books and felt-lined instrument cases, because maybe you were never cut out for music.

This destructive reflection— this fault-finding when outcomes don’t turn out as we’d wanted to— helps no one. We’re not the products of perfect linear plans or five-step self-improvement regimens. When we shape our lives too closely to a self-imposed plan, we succumb to nagging regrets and self-doubt. We deny the fullness of our past selves when we squint through the filters of qualifications and cover letters.

COLUMNIST AMELIA PROSTANO

A union yes vote changed my life

HANWEN ZHANG Thoughtful Spot

And yet I wish we could have more opportunities open to everyone, spaces where we can learn to flail and fail without the judgment of our peers or future employers, where there are no trophies to be won or personal reputations to defend.

I’m halfway through my junior year now and five-eighths of the way to graduation, a pair of fractions that escapes every attempt I make to wrap my mind around them. It’s a time when extracurriculars and classes have settled into their familiar groove. I’ve sent out some cover letters for internships; I’ve picked out the usual creative writing courses and filled out the forms; I’ve applied to some extracurriculars, without much success. Life’s routines boil down to a strange kind of clockwork: the sun finishes carving its path across the sky before 4:50 p.m., and from my desk I usually watch the light fade away into a faint smear of yellow off the Malone Engineering Center’s windows. I usually have dinner at 6:30 p.m. or 7:00 p.m., then work or read until 11:00 p.m.. I repeat it all again at 7:00 p.m.. What I’m saying is that we’ve fallen into a predictable stasis, where wills and mights are becoming would-haves and what-ifs. Sometimes there’s a lurking sense of dread, as if it’s too late to begin — as if some of the doors have started closing behind us and can’t be opened again. I’m afraid that others are too far ahead and that I’ve somehow missed out on the chance to begin something new again. I just finished Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being for an English class, and I’m reminded of the ways in which its characters marry, move, and betray each other, failing to shape their lives into anything close to the grand visions they had in mind.

I want the sense of possibility to be as full and alive as it was that first time we stepped through Phelps gate. To do that, we’ll need to open our clubs and classes to accommodate those whose passions and interests make up for their lack of experience. In a place that’s committed to exploration and self-discovery on paper, we should fulfill that promise of bringing more opportunities for everyone.

But maybe the change also comes from within ourselves. We must remember that we still have time. We will always have time. We’ll retry, reapply and start again. It is never too late.

HANWEN ZHANG is a junior in Benjamin Franklin College. His column, “Thoughtful Spot,” runs every other Tuesday. He can be reached at hanwen.zhang.hhz3@yale.edu.

It’s a special thing to get to vote in a union representation election. You’re lucky if it happens once in your life, as it did for me in 1984 when I voted for what would become Local 34, the clerical and technical workers’ union at Yale. That vote changed my life, and that union made me who I am. I want to share some of that experience for the members of Local 33, so they can reflect on what this moment means for them.

BUT IT WASN’T JUST THAT WE WEREN’T PAID ENOUGH: THE UNIVERSITY’S THOUSANDS OF CLERICAL AND TECHNICAL WORKERS, MAINLY WOMEN, WEREN’T RESPECTED.

I first got a job at Yale in the library in the late 1960s, but I left after I got married and became a mother. When I came back in the early 1980s, my starting annual pay was around $10,000—about $30,000 in today’s dollars. But it wasn’t just that we weren’t paid enough: the university’s thousands of clerical and technical workers, mainly women, weren’t respected. I remember after I came back to work, my boss said to me, “It’s nice to have a little pin money, isn’t it?”—as though my family wasn’t depending on this job, as if I wasn’t doing anything of real value.

THEY THOUGHT LOCAL 35 WOULD REFUSE TO HONOR OUR PICKET LINES, HOPING TO PLAY UP PERCEIVED RACIAL TENSIONS BETWEEN THE WORKFORCES. BUT OUR SISTERS AND BROTHERS IN THAT UNION STAYED OFF THE JOB IN SOLIDARITY.

Thousands of us had experiences like this, which led us to organize and build Local 34—to

demand respect and establish our worth, in both symbolic and economic forms. It wasn’t easy going. The university told us we’d never have a union, that we weren’t like the workers in Local 35 for whom a union made sense. (Of course, they’d fought Local 35 tooth and nail too, just as they would later fight Local 33. There isn’t anyone who’s tried to organize a union at Yale who had an easy time.) They told us we’d be fired for organizing on the job, which scared many. But we spent our days and evenings organizing with all our hearts. It was wonderful to walk through the space now called Bass Café (back then it was “Machine City”) and see every table buzzing with discussion as people talked about how to move forward together, signing cards, making plans. Nothing would stop us.

We knew we’d win our election, but it was closer than we thought and this only meant we had to work harder to get a first contract. We spent 10.5 weeks on strike at the end of 1984. Yale said we’d never last, that we’d be back in a few days. They thought Local 35 would refuse to honor our picket lines, hoping to play up perceived racial tensions between the workforces. But our sisters and brothers in that union stayed off the job in solidarity.

NO CONTRACT SOLVES EVERY PROBLEM, BUT WE’VE PASSED THAT IDEA ON DOWN THE GENERATIONS, AS EACH CONTRACT BUILDS ON THE ONE BEFORE AND GETS BETTER EVERY TIME. .

When we won that contract, we put ourselves on a new path. While we were on strike, my daughter used to come to the picket line with a sign that said, “My mother is striking for my future wage.”

She knew what it meant that her mother was fighting for dignity, respect, and equality for women on the job. No contract solves every problem, but we’ve passed that idea on down the generations, as each contract builds on the one before and gets better every time. In those first negotiations, Yale refused to pay our members who were taking time to negotiate on our behalf, so hundreds of us wanted to donate a day to those members negotiating on our behalf. Yale refused. But as part of our first settlement

Yale did agree to pay our negotiators. In the negotiations, we had to deal with middle management, who didn’t really have the authority to agree to anything. Today, the university’s vice presidents sit down with us as a matter of course,

BEING A FOUNDING MEMBER OF LOCAL 34 IS ONE OF THE PROUDEST ACHIEVEMENTS OF MY LIFE—I KNOW THAT WHAT IT DID FOR ME, IT DID FOR THOUSANDS.

and members of our union have the right to take paid time off to work on behalf of the union as a whole. For two decades we have enjoyed labor peace at Yale and settled excellent contracts without strikes—a testament to the power we have built as a union.

What we did together changed my life. After I lost my husband in 1995, I didn’t think I’d be able to stay in my house on one salary. But I could because of what the union had won. When I retired, I was able to retire comfortably with a good pension and excellent healthcare, two major benefits my union won through years of hard work and intense negotiations with Yale. My retirement and my health care were, and remain, secure.

No two workers or two unions are identical, but the essence of this experience is there for anyone who wants to stand for herself and her coworkers on the job. Being a founding member of Local 34 is one of the proudest achievements of my life—I know that what it did for me, it did for thousands. I know that we made these into jobs that could support a family, blazed a new path for women in the workplace, and made good on my daughter’s picket sign. More than all this, it made me who I am: a person who knows she is worth something, not because anyone else told me so, not because I am unique, but because of the strength I found with others around me. It carried me through decades of work and defined my life. For every member of Local 33, I am so happy that you get the chance to find this same knowledge and same strength.

AMELIA PROSTANO retired in December 2021 after 40 years at Yale where she worked as an Acquisitions Assistant at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and was a Vice-President of Local 34. Contact her at amelia.prostano@me.com .

COURTESY

Yale Investments office declines to participate in diversity survey

system and Vanderbilt University all reported manager data.

Out of the ten universities with the largest endowments, Yale, MIT, Notre Dame and the University of Michigan did not report data.

At the time the News initially contacted the Investments Office for comment, the Office’s team page displayed the names and photographs of 22 upper-level financial staff — such as directors and analysts, a group that appears to skew white and male.

Within two hours, the website was updated.

The new page displays names and photographs of 39 staff members, now including administrative assistants and legal staff whose names or photographs did not appear before. On the redesigned page, white men no longer appear to make up a majority of the pictured staff.

“We understand the value and importance of having a diverse team and are working hard to strengthen our team on this dimension as well as many others,” the Investments Office wrote in a later email referring the News to its newly updated website.

Instead of carrying out in-house investing, large endowments — including those of universities —

generally delegate to external managers. In 2010, the Knight Foundation decided that its outsized reliance on white, male managers was incompatible with its underlying mission.

Today, after 12 years of deliberate reinvestment, over a third of the Foundation's endowment is managed by diverse-owned firms.

The Foundation’s study aims to discover whether or not — and to what extent — large university endowments use diverse asset managers. In the meantime, the Foundation released some initial data in an interim release.

Though the University declined to provide data for the study, it provided a statement that can be found in Appendix B of the release.

“Matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion are extremely important to Yale, as highlighted by David Swensen’s work to draw attention to such issues in the industry before he passed away,” the statement read. “While we declined to participate in this study for various reasons, we agree that women and people of color face significant barriers in the asset management industry. We at the Yale Investments Office remain committed to building a more inclusive investment organization and a more diverse roster of

investment partners and appreciate the work of all who are pushing these important issues forward.”

The University did not elaborate on further questions about its reasons for not participating.

In October 2020, Yale’s thenChief Investment Officer David Swensen publicly instructed the firms that manage the University’s endowment to diversify their ranks. Yale has stayed largely silent on its progress since.

Swensen asked managers to complete a diversity survey, writing that Yale is “interested in the numbers of diverse professionals on the investment team and in … support functions, at various levels of seniority.”

Yale did not share firm-specific data from the survey.

“Universities serve the public and have mission statements about their commitment to [diversity, equity and inclusion],” Zohn said. “But do their dollars also display that commitment?”

The Investments Office did not provide specific details about its ongoing diversity initiatives, but a representative from the Office told the News that diversity is a “major focus” of staff recruiting efforts.

Institutional asset expert Charles Skorina said that he can understand why the Investments

Office would not want to release data for the study.

He argued that after releasing manager data — which would inevitably show little to no use of diverse-owned firms — Yale would be forced to explain that diverse-owned asset managers simply did not meet their “performance standards.” Skorina said that such an admission would draw enough criticism to outweigh any potential benefit of releasing the data.

“Every news organization in the country would pick it up,” Skorina said. “It’s a no-win for Yale if they release anything.”

Skorina argued that the larger issue is the scarcity of diverse-owned asset managers. These firms, he said, make up “a very small sliver” of the market. Moreover, few “top-performing” firms — like the ones that Yale uses to invest its money — are diverseowned, Skorina said.

The Knight Foundation reported that diverse-owned firms, which indeed account for just 1.4 percent of American assets under management, “perform at a level comparable to that of their predominantly white, male owned peers.”

Skorina suggested other ways for the Yale Investments Office to affirm its “commitment” to diversity, equity and inclusion, including devoting money to scholarships in financial

management or hiring a more diverse office staff.

Tara Bhat ’25, an organizer for the Yale Endowment Justice Coalition, argued that the lack of representation in the Investments Office is a symptom of the Office's greater disregard for underrepresented and marginalized communities, pointing to a wider student movement pushing for the University to divest from holdings in the fossil fuel industry and in Puerto Rican debt.

While Bhat said she believes that representation in the Investments Office staff is important and “should be a priority,” changes to Office demographics must coincide with structural changes.

“Their investing ethos, historical and continuous unethical investments, and prioritization of profits over people wouldn't be completely done away with by just rearranging the diversity of the office,” Bhat wrote in an email to the News. “Both diversity and investing reform need to take place simultaneously.”

The Knight Foundation study was conducted in partnership with the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

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

Stolen work at School of Art raises security concerns

thinking that they liked it too much, so they wanted to keep it and have it closer to them … But apart from that, I’m really blank.”

The sculpture is one of two pieces stolen from the Yale School of Art’s exhibition “Blanket Statement: 1st-Year MFA Fall Exhibition,” which was open until Nov. 11. Both Villares’ sculpture and another piece created by Malik Jalal ART ’24 appear to have been taken from the exhibit sometime between the night of Nov. 9 and the morning of Nov. 10.

Green Hall Gallery has been accessible to all ID-holding members of the Yale community 24 hours a day for the entire semester, according to Jalal. The Gallery houses a rotation of exhibitions that change every few weeks. While the gallery hours are listed as 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., the doors have been kept unlocked, allowing anyone with a valid Yale ID to walk in. The culprit remains unknown as campus police continue investigating the situation.

“We are all disheartened and disappointed that someone with access to this building, which is limited to the Yale community, could have treated Yale artists in such a way,” School of Art Dean Kymberly Pinder wrote in an email to the School of Art community sent on Monday afternoon and obtained by the News. “The galleries are educational spaces that are open to provide access and conversation among the community.”

Pinder announced in the email that reduced gallery hours and limits on student and faculty access to student exhibitions would soon be imposed. These new policies will be communicated before the opening of the undergraduate exhibition in the gallery space on Nov. 28.

Pinder did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.

“I couldn’t quite believe that this would happen,” Jalal said. “Once I actually saw it for myself, that my piece was missing and so was Rafael’s, I started to get con -

cerned about whether there was any possibility that either of us would be made whole.”

Jalal’s work, “The Anthropocene,” is an abstract form made of stainless steel and composed of tendril shapes. The sculpture sat on a red Chevrolet floor mat on the ground. Less than four feet long and “relatively small” in size, he concluded that it would be easy for someone to carry the object off.

Villares’ installation is titled “Unknown Land” and included a large drawing and a blue spherical object. The blue object sat on a wooden shelf within reach. Jalal suspects that the culprit stole these two objects in particular because they were freestanding and highly visible.

This blue spherical object is a part of Rafael Villares’ installation, titled “Unknown Land.”

The School of Art photographed the entire exhibition at 9:30 p.m. on Nov. 9 in anticipation of the exhibit’s closing on Nov. 11. Both objects were still in the exhibit at that time. Around 10:30 a.m. the next day, when Villares’ wife visited the gallery, both objects were found to be missing.

A few hours later, while walking around the gallery with Ivana Dama ART ’24, Villares noticed that Jalal’s piece was also gone.

Villares warned others in a groupchat for MFA students of the theft, prompting them to check on their own work in the exhibition hall. When Villares and Jalal realized that theirs were the only works missing, they reported the theft to the campus police around 1:30 p.m. on Thursday.

Though there are two security cameras in the hallways of the School of Art building, there are no cameras or personnel surveilling the actual gallery, according to David Jon Walker ART ’23.

On Nov. 11, Walker hung a series of signs by the entrance of the School of Art building, designed to be the first thing visitors see when they walk in. The signs state that a crime occurred, and that per policy, the liability for those stolen projects falls “squarely” on the students.

The final sign reads “the trust in OUR public has been fractured.”

Walker told the News that he felt disappointment and disgust that this theft had occurred in what should have been a safe space.

“The work was an informational gesture to all parties involved,” Walker said. “The administration is now dealing with having to figure out how to safeguard this space that students trust their work will be safe in.”

The signage warns other students to read the fine print of the student handbook which all MFA students sign upon matriculation to the program. Under handbook policy, student work is not insured or protected, leaving students to bear the cost of damage incurred. The handbook recommends that all students obtain personal property insurance.

“Yale does not cover theft or damage to personal property for any reason,” the handbook reads. “Students are responsible for the safety and security of their belongings.”

When Villares and Jalal initially reached out to people in “leadership positions” at the School of Art, Jalal said they abdicated responsibility, referring them to the handbook policy.

According to Andina Clarkson MFA ’24, this caused an “uproar” among the MFA students who wanted “better action” to be taken. Villares and Jalal have since received a few emails stating that the school is willing to reimburse them for materials, despite the policy.

“The actual things we purchased to make the work don’t even remotely reflect what the value of the work is,” Jalal said. “There’s a great deal of labor put directly into both of those objects. Their value is not determined by material expenses.”

Villares emphasized that this incident raises concern beyond the financial burden — a fundamental level of trust has been breached. Many students no longer feel safe exhibiting at the gallery. Villares hopes that this inspires the School of Art to reconsider safety measures, such as modifying the hours

of access and hiring someone to monitor the artworks.

While this situation was “really upsetting and bad,” Villares said, he sees potential for long term change in how the school hosts exhibits. Although only Yale ID card holders have door access to the building, it remains unknown whether the culprit is a member of the Yale community. Walker said that if someone looks like a member of the Yale community, he suspected it was likely that another person would hold the door open for them and “not think twice” about granting a stranger access.

“The school could rethink the handbook, or the relationship of the students with the gallery,” Villares said. “Or maybe the safety of the gallery, if they need someone there at the gallery taking care of the works [who] could also explain the exhibition to the rest of the visitors.”

In her email, Pinder stated that law enforcement is investigating the incident with the hope that anyone who has information about the missing art workers will come forward. Confidential reports can be made online or by calling the toll-free Yale University Hotline at 877-360-YALE.

“The issue is much bigger than just these two works disappearing,” Jalal said. “That space is the go-to space for all of our group exhibitions and our thesis work … this puts us, as artists, in a very precarious and uncertain, unsafe, uncomfortable position. Something’s owed.”

The School of Art is located at 1156 Chapel St., New Haven, CT 06511.

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

Yale boasts most Rhodes Scholars in a decade

Yale’s nominees enter the Rhodes process in early October.

“Our office supports students in many ways: with application prep, figuring out who to ask for recommendations, degree selection, interview strategy, practice interviews etc,” Westphal wrote in an email to the News. “Applying for Rhodes is a long but rewarding process.”

Four of Yale’s winners have interest in politics-related academics.

Huttner plans to pursue a master’s degree in refugee and forced migration studies at Oxford. While at Yale, she noted she has worked as an interpreter and a legal intern for immigrants. She hopes to ultimately work in refugee advocacy and help craft policy to better support asylum seekers.

Mullins intends to spend his first year at Oxford pursuing a master’s degree in criminology and criminal justice and to then tackle either a Master of Public

Policy or a second Master of Science degree in comparative social policy during his second year. For Large, the award will help him access new military opportunities, specifically in Latin America. He will complete a two-year degree in Latin American studies, which will make him eligible to become a foreign area officer in the region. In addition to his academic pursuits, Large told the News he also is excited to play rugby for the Oxford team.

Deviating from explicitly political areas of focus, Sangha intends to work toward a Doctor of Philosophy in health data science. Presently a computer science major at Yale, Sangha is interested in cardiovascular health disparities and ways to tie artificial intelligence into patient care.

“I’m excited, shocked, and incredibly humbled to have been elected,” Oates, who will pursue a degree in political the -

ory, wrote. “All of the finalists in my district were absolutely amazing. I’m grateful to so many people who helped me along the way—my family, my recommendation letter writers, my friends, mentors, and professors who helped me prepare for the interview.”

Last year, four Yale students won the Rhodes scholarship.

Contact ANIKA SETH at

anika.seth@yale.edu .

“Football is like life - it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.”

VINCE LOMBARDI FOOTBALL COACH

Villares emphasized that this incident raises concern beyond the financial burden—a fundamental level of trust has been breached. / Courtesy of Rafael Vilares

City residents call for permanent free buses

BY MEGAN VAZ STAFF REPORTER

Following months of free rides, New Haven’s elected officials and bus riders are advocating for fare-free buses to become a permanent state fixture.

The state of Connecticut first introduced the suspension of bus fares in April 2022, hoping to make public transportation more affordable for residents amid rising gas prices and inflation. As bus ridership across the state increased to exceed pre-pandemic levels over the next few months, Gov. Ned Lamont announced in May that the state would extend the free fare program until Dec. 1.

As the program approaches expiration, though, New Haven’s residents have raised calls to make bus rides across the state permanently free, citing issues of economic equity, accessibility and environmentalism. After dozens of New Haven residents publicly testified in support of fixed free fares at a committee meeting and in writing, the Board of Alders City Services and Environmental Policy committee unanimously approved a resolution encouraging the state to adopt such policies on Nov. 3.

“Personally, my rent has gone up $400. … Myself and many others, I’m sure, have basically during this time, barely — during the time when buses were free — adjusted to this inflation,” said New Haven worker Dan Bevacqua at the meeting. “I was barely able to make ends meet. I feel like it’s going to be difficult for many to conceive of making ends meet with another expense on top of the present economy.”

After speaking with his constituents, who voiced strong support for free bus transport, Ward 7 Alder Eli Sabin ’22 presented the resolution at the Nov. 3 meeting for committee review. He first submitted the resolution to the board in April, immediately after the state announced the new temporary policy.

Before the other alders, Sabin testified that New Haven bus usage rose 12 percent between

August 2019 and August 2022. He said the free fares brought economic relief to those with transportation needs, encouraging more residents to ride the bus in their daily lives.

“It’s had a really big impact — not just in terms of ridership, but also in terms of dollars and cents,” Sabin said. “If you work five days a week, 52 weeks a year, then you’re paying $3.50 for a bus ride to work and a bus ride home. That’s almost a thousand dollars — over 900 bucks per year you’re spending if you take the bus — and that’s not counting other trips you might take to the grocery store, to get around town, to see family and friends.”

One resident, Joe Fine, remarked that New Haven has some of the “worst, biggest disparities between wealth and poverty” of any city in the state, making affordable transportation an effective way to address the needs of the poor. The 2020 U.S. Census reported that while

Connecticut’s poverty rate stands at 10.1 percent, 25.2 percrent of New Haven residents live in poverty. The city’s working class, according to Sabin and the dozens of residents who spoke up, have benefited greatly from free rides in the face of record inflation rates and high costs of living.

“Free transportation is a way to fight homelessness, unemployment and increase access to healthcare and other life-saving services,” noted Eric Goodman, a member of the Local 777 union and organizer with the New Haven Socialist Revolution. “This is a bandaid for the problems inherent in capitalist systems, but an important one.”

Beyond the topic of economic equity, many speakers portrayed the issue of free buses as one of accessibility for those with disabilities and other medical problems. Lorena Mitchell, coordinator for the city’s Community Mental Health Initiatives, emphasized that in the city, nearly

half of those who are “transportation insecure” have missed a medical appointment due to a lack of transportation access.

According to the CTtransit website, all buses are equipped with wheelchair lifts and ramps, and they accommodate most types of mobility devices, including wheelchairs and walkers. Resident William Long, who uses a wheelchair, additionally brought attention to the economic hurdles many disabled people face when buses charge for rides.

“From my standpoint being disabled, a lot of disabled people can’t afford even the 85 cents they charge,” Long said. “They have to go to the doctor’s. They have to go to the grocery store. They are trying to be independent, but it’s a very difficult thing.”

In promoting public transportation over automobile use, a permanent free bus program would also entail positive environmental impacts, according to some who spoke at the Nov. 3 meeting. Alice Sara Prael, an

archivist at the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, stated that free public buses would help address the city’s climate impact and represent a commitment to sustainability. Several other residents reflected on the relationship between buses and the city’s environmental conditions through email statements sent to the committee, including Kiana Flores ’25. Writing on behalf of the New Haven Climate Movement, Flores stressed that transportation is both the city and state’s top source of carbon emissions, making the free bus program “essential” to New Haven’s goal of becoming a carbon-zero city by 2030. Others tied the rise in emissions brought by automobile use to public health problems.

“That means reduced traffic and emissions during a climate crisis,” resident Adam Callaghan wrote of the free bus policy. “That means cleaner air in neighborhoods where the rates of asthma and pollution are higher because of the harms of private car dependency.”

Mayor Justin Elicker has lent his full approval to fare-free buses at the state level, making several social media posts championing the policy throughout the past year. Len Speiller, the city’s director of communications, confirmed Elicker’s support.

“The Mayor, who takes CT Transit buses to commute to and from City Hall from time-time, is in full support — and, in fact, called to make free fares permanent several weeks ago,” Speiller wrote to the News.

The committee, after voting in support of the resolution, sent it to the full Board of Alders for review. At the full board’s Nov. 10 meeting, the item received acknowledgement, but a full vote will remain pending. Meanwhile, Gov. Ned Lamont has not commented on the prospect of making the free bus program permanent across the state after Dec. 1.

As of 2019, about 29 percent of families and households in New Haven have no personal vehicles.

Contact MEGAN VAZ at megan.vaz@yale.edu .

BY KINNIA CHEUK CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

After losing its 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit status, the New Haven Pride Center has replaced its executive director and taken action to reinstate its nonprofit status as soon as possible.

The revocation was a result of the Pride Center failing to file IRS Form 990 for three consecutive years. In response, the Pride Center has made a change in leadership by removing former executive director Patrick Dunn and appointing Juancarlos Soto as the acting executive director via unanimous vote by the board of directors.

“The revocation of the status was just based on 990 tax returns not being filed in a timely manner,” said Board President Dolores Hopkins. “If you go over three consecutive years, you automatically are put on a hold status. And that’s what had occurred.”

On Oct. 31, the Pride Center released an official announcement on its Facebook page stating that the board had been conducting a thorough investigation of the situation. The Pride Center said they are working with an outside professional service to determine the exact nature of the situation and seek retroactive reinstatement of the Center’s 501(c)(3) status.

“Part of us releasing that statement is practicing our commitment of transparency to the community,” said Board Member Hope Chávez. “As soon as we became aware of the egregiousness of this situation, it was important to say, ‘Oh, my goodness, community, this is where we are.’”

The Pride Center has been working with BryteBridge Nonprofit Solutions to regain their 501(c)(3) status. According to Hopkins, the Pride Center has been able to move forward in the nonprofit reinstatement process quickly. She said BryteBridge is

prioritizing completing the tax forms, which is a necessary step for the Pride Center to be reinstated as a tax-exempt nonprofit.

Filing the required tax returns is explicitly mentioned as part of the executive director’s responsibilities. According to Chávez, the Board had previously directed Dunn to hire an accountant to support him in his capacity management. The Pride Center’s relationship with BryteBridge had started earlier this year — before the Pride Center’s nonprofit status was revoked — to provide support with ongoing tax filings.

“[BryteBridge] was retained and paid for — part of what led to the removal of the executive director was our awareness

that they had not actually been engaged,” Chávez said. “And nor had an accountant really been engaged in the way that we understood they would be.”

Dunn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In light of this incident, programming at the Pride Center was suspended from Oct. 30 to Nov. 5, and the Pride Center’s staff took the week off. The only event held during this period was the “Chocolate and Cheesecake” fundraiser to support Connecticut’s LGBTQ+ Youth Conference.

Both Hopkins and Chávez believe that the Pride Center’s loss of nonprofit status will not cause donations to dwindle. They noted that they received support from

the community for their youth programming fundraiser.

“There just wasn’t a concern [about a lack of donations],” Hopkins said. “The people donated from their heart for what we were doing and to support.”

Hopkins and Chávez also emphasized that when the Center’s 501(c)(3) status is reinstated, it will retroactively cover the period of time that the Pride Center has not been able to issue tax deduction letters. They said there is a high probability that donors will eventually be able to receive tax deductions on their current contributions to the Center.

Looking forward, the Pride Center’s goal is to keep functioning as planned. Upcoming events at the

Pride Center include the TDOR — short for Transgender Day of Remembrance — Art Exhibition on Nov. 14 and a TDOR Panel on “Trans and Non-binary Joy” on Nov. 19.

“The New Haven Pride Center has served this community for over 25 years,” wrote Samuel Byrd, the director of Yale’s Office of LGBTQ Resources. “We look forward to continuing our partnerships here in New Haven and nationally to advance access, equity and inclusion, both on and off campus.”

The New Haven Pride Center is located at 84 Orange Street.

Contact KINNIA CHEUK at kinnia.cheuk@yale.edu .

“Football is like life - it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.”

VINCE LOMBARDI FOOTBALL COACH

NEEHAAR GANDHI/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

After enjoying free public transport for the past seven months, New Haveners spoke in support of permanently eliminating bus fares.

COURTESY OF NEW HAVEN PRIDE CENTER

City employees fight for fair contract after two years of delay

BY KHUAN-YU HALL STAFF REPORTER

Two dozen members from city employee unions gathered at City Hall last week in a show of support ahead of contract negotiations with the city.

The new contract under negotiation is already two years late. The last agreement between the city and the two unions — Local 3144 and Local 844 — expired in 2020. Local 3144 and Local 844 represent city managers and clerical workers, respectively.

About a dozen librarians were present at last Monday’s rally. Several told the News that they felt underpaid and overworked.

“We just want a fair contract,” said Gilda Herrera, president of Local 3144. “Everybody wants to be treated with respect. Everybody wants fair wages. And everybody wants benefits that make you want to stay. That’s all.”

Herrera said her union is focused on reaching fair terms for members’ pensions, healthcare and salaries.

Employee retention has been one of the recent major challenges faced by New Haven libraries and other city departments.

According to Phillip Modeen, Local 3144 representative and a children’s librarian, librarians in New Haven are some of the lowest paid in the state, making between $7,000 and $10,000 less than those in other towns and municipalities.

For Modeen, the goal of these contract negotiations is to create terms that will bring in and retain new talent, so that the New Haven city government does not become a “stepping stone” for workers who quickly move to other municipalities.

In addition to addressing issues of salary, members of Local 3144 hope that ongoing negotiations will produce a contract that reduces their currently unmanageable working hours. According to Herrera, the overload is the result of many employees departing to neighboring municipalities due to low pay in New Haven. She said that the remaining employees have needed to pick up their slack yet have not received overtime.

Additionally, in their budget for the 2022-2023 fiscal year, the city committed to having libraries open on Sundays, which has further burdened librarians.

“We’re really stretched,” Modeen said. “It would be great if we could open seven days a week, but we are stretched as it is.”

Modeen added that covering these extra shifts has been particularly difficult as, due to the low city salary, he and his peers often also have to work multiple jobs to support themselves. To make working Sunday hours mandatory without overtime pay “takes away our opportunity to supplement that income that we’re not receiving.”

Herrera noted that there is a misconception in New Haven that city employees do not do very much. Instead, she described how the IT team that she heads for New Haven Public Schools often cannot meet demand, with their phones constantly ringing o the hook.

“We’re understaffed,” Herrera said. “We are all being tasked with doing additional duties. I don’t know of any department that isn’t su ering some sort of sta shortage. That’s actually why we came together. I wanted them to realize this isn’t just a 3144 issue.”

Modeen hopes that this contract will allow him and his peers to focus on interacting with the community and their families, no longer worrying about how they will make ends meet.

Mayor Justin Elicker acknowledged the workers’ demands, noting that shortages are present in nearly every department — notably, he said, the police department that has over 100 open positions.

Elicker said that negotiations are moving fast, and he hopes that a new contract will be able to attract and retain employees, citing recent success with the teacher’s union. He added that the city government faces significant financial problems including high and rising pensions, debt and healthcare costs.

“We need to make sure we get those costs under control,” Elicker said. “And those costs are closely tied to our union contracts and the benefits that employees receive and the wages employees are paid. And so, I need to balance ensuring employees are treated respectfully, as far as their salaries and benefits, and the financial health of the city.”

Elicker said that though many people believe that the city government itself is the problem, state structures and the restrictions of New Haven’s tax base underpin its financial challenges. Elicker described how in a typical city, wealthier areas on the outskirts — like Woodbridge, Hampton, East Haven and West Haven — would be part of the tax base.

This is not the case in New Haven. Between the limited size of New Haven and the large portion of tax exempt property, the city is in a uniquely precarious economic position.

“We’ve all had a very stressful two years,” Herrera said. “All these things, inflation, COVID, all these things. Emotionally, mentally, people are drained, and then when they look at their paycheck, they’re like, ‘oh my god, we are drained. And I don’t see the return.’”

Local 3144 represents more than 400 municipal employees in New Haven.

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

Unhoused advocates push city to expand winter resources for homeless people

BY HANNAH QU STAFF REPORTER

Tyrell Jackson and Kathy Mire have been living in a tent city in the West River neighborhood for six months. It’s not ideal, they said, and there is the occasional robbery. However, they still found the situation generally better than living on the street, as in the tent city they at least have a place to “gather themselves.”

Now that winter is coming, Jackson and Mire are doing everything they can to stay warm, layering multiple tents for insulation and staying close to preserve body heat. While the tent city residents wait for local warming centers to open, they say that they hope that the city will provide more resources during this harsh winter.

Unhoused people in New Haven are now speaking up about winter resources by joining the Unhoused Activists Community Team, or U-ACT. They are asking Mayor Justin Elicker to change city policies regarding the treatment of low-income people who use public spaces.

“Our current campaign is designed to pressure [the mayor] to make some big real policy around respecting people’s human rights to take refuge in [public space].” Mark Colville of Amistad Catholic Worker House and one of U-ACT’s founders said. “To me, that is the essential change that

needs to happen in order for the city to move from the reality that we are in now, which is basically an approach that’s driven by the denial of human rights.”

What is it like to be homelessness in New Haven?

Eric Carrera has been homeless for 14 years. Last year, he said that six people that he personally knew froze to death.

“I’ve had a lot of people die not just because of it being cold, but because of addiction.” Carrera said. “I think I’m no longer in that boat. I am eight months clean as of October 31 this year. It is a struggle and it’s a big hard thing to get rid of and to get done.”

Carrera said he has tried everything he could in order to find housing, but the results have been frustrating. For the past month, he has been living in the West River tent city with his husband.

Their daily routine involves waking up at 5:30 a.m. to go to a health appointment at the APT Foundation. Afterwards, they stay in a public library till 1 p.m., and then go to DESK from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. for dinner, returning to their tent for the night at around 10 p.m.

“It’s a lot of walking, a lot of stress on my feet.” Carrera said. “And then we do it all over again. It’s recurring every day and every day, but it’s fun, because I have [my husband] to help me.”

Carrera said the couple is close to getting a Section 8 housing voucher.

Jackson and Mire relied on the warming center at Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen to endure through the last winter. According to Mire, the warming center is open from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., and can accommodate up to 50 people.

“You have to wait in line at night and every day is a shot in the dark.” Jackson said.

Jackson noted that if “there’s a disturbance before everyone gets in,” then the center will stop letting people in. According to Jackson, the warming center does not have a screening process or security, which means sometimes they have to “remove” a few people and be on the watch to make sure they don’t come back.

Jackson recalled that on his first night at the warming center, he had to physically restrain another guest to stop them from attacking an old woman.

“Since I’ve been in warming centers, I would say that I’ve had to regulate at least seven situations, like I personally have had to put my hands on people,” he said.

Mire said that they have received housing vouchers recently, but have struggled to find a landlord who will accept the voucher, leaving them unhoused in the interim. What does U-ACT demand?

Billy Bromage of Witness to Hunger and Evan Serio of Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen, the co-founder of U-ACT, said he started U-ACT after three col-

leagues reached out and suggested that he should organize unhoused people to share their stories and push for changes in city policy.

In the meeting last Wednesday, U-ACT summarized their demands, which included access to free public storage lockers and clean restrooms and showers with full-time, year-round hours.

They also demanded an end to discriminatory practices including homeless profiling in public libraries, evictions from public spaces without due process and the use of police action against the unhoused as anything beyond a last resort.

Lastly, they urged the city to legalize tent cities, as well as to take inventory of and preserve any confiscated personal property.

New Haven community services administrator Mehul Dalal, who oversees the O ce of Housing and Homeless Services, told the News that the city invested one million dollars in homelessness prevention and rapid housing in 2021. Dalal said that the city also opened navigation hubs that provide phone charging stations, showers, laundry and other basic services during evening and weekend hours.

According to Dalal, there have been over 2,000 visits to the navigation hub. In addition, the city also runs One Stop Pop-up, a mobile initiative that provides mobile shower services, health care, harm reduction services and access to case management services for unsheltered individuals.

Bromage said he personally thinks the navigation hubs are fantastic, but their function is limited by their operation hours.

“That really is something that should be available to people when they need it. Rather than at the time that’s convenient for a social service provider.”

Bromage said.

As to the question of tent city legalization, Dalal said that though the city has not legalized tent cities, the city wants to work with them instead of relocating them, and it’s “accommodating to the best of [their ability] right now.”

Colville said that the West River tent city was created in 2019 when the city closed all shelters and the homeless population doubled during the winter. Colville claimed that shelter bed shortages among local social service agencies have sent more people to tent cities.

There are approximately 30 to 35 people living in the tent city by Ella T Grasso Blvd in West River.

Colville has also turned his backyard and his neighboring daughter’s backyard into a tent city, which currently hosts approximately eight people.

According to Colville, tent cities are a very e ective means of transitional housing. Having worked with homeless people for decades, Colville explained to the News that homelessness often places people in a situation where they feel that they must compete with others instead of cooperating, because “they are thrown on the street without rights.”

“The main problem that homeless people deal with is how to secure their things, their material possessions.” Colville said. “When you don’t give people land or a place to be the only thing they really have to carry [their belongings] with them all the time … So people, combined with mental health issues, are always paranoid about their stu being stolen. And then whenever they misplace something, they almost always blame somebody else.”

Colville said that these “lifestyle problems” make it di cult for unhoused people to transition once they acquire an apartment of their own. In contrast, he believes that tent cities can combat this issue by fostering a valuable network of support.

“We believe that when you do tent city in a supportive way, and you give people their own piece of land, and independent living, that they will, they will take care of the property and they will take care of themselves much better,” Colville said.

Colville said that the problem with not legalizing tent cities is that people can still be arrested and evicted on a whim. Meanwhile, Colville found it concerning that homeless people who live in tent cities do not have access to running water and are not allowed to make fires, which would help them stay warm during the winter.

Since June of 2022, Colville and those who live in his backyard have been cooking breakfast and bringing it to the tent city every Tuesday, encouraging them to join U-ACT and speak up.

According to the Greater New Haven Regional Alliance to End Homelessness, there were 1,922 evictions in the New Haven area in 2021.

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

COURTESY OF GILDA HERRERA

City librarians hope that a new contract will address concerns regarding pay, sta ng and number of hours they are required to work.

“When you win, nothing hurts.”

JOE NAMATH AMERICAN FOOTBALL QUARTERBACK

COURTESY OF MARK COLVILLE

The Unhoused Activists Community Team is campaigning for public amenities and greater protections during eviction processes.

Yale public health students respond to water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi

BY KAYLA YUP STAFF REPORTER

To Maame-Owusua Boateng SPH ’23, on-the-ground work is the only way to get things done in public health.

Boateng was recently in Jackson, Mississippi, where she and five other public health students saw first-hand the devastating effects of the country’s worst water crisis in recent history. Floods in October damaged the city’s already-troubled water treatment system, leaving as many as 150,000 residents without safe drinking water for over two months.

“It made me cry a little bit listening to other people who were volunteers in the community, and then meeting new people and seeing their life perspectives,” Boateng said. “How they came to be and how they’re impacted by these issues [including] the water crisis and incarceration.”

Research alone, Boateng explained, cannot address a population’s immediate, individual needs — community engagement is key.

That’s the ethos Rukia Lumumba, a prominent community activist from Jackson, flew in for the Yale School of Public Health’s first Change Talk by activist-in-residence Angelo Pinto. After speaking with students at the event, Lumumba felt it was necessary for students to “see with their own eyes” what was happening in communities affected by the water crisis. Lumumba, on behalf of the Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition, arranged for six students to visit Jackson on Nov. 1, accompanied by Pinto and the School of Public Health assistant professor of social and behavioral sciences Ijeoma Opara.

“I think that this was a great opportunity for the university to do something different, to show up and participate in the process of recovery and not just write about it,” Lumumba said.

Lumumba leads the Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition, which was started in 2020 and encompasses over 30 organizations. These organizations work together to respond to disasters caused by issues such as failing infrastructure and climate change.

The water crisis in Jackson has left over 150,000 residents under boil advisories, with water line breaks, contamination hazards and low water pressure threatening access to clean water in an 82 percent Black city.

“Unfortunately, it is often the urban, predominantly Black and Brown cities that are impacted by something as simple as access to clean water,” Opara said. “It shouldn’t be happening in America. We need to uplift this more so that our politicians who have the power

to fund this stuff can actually take this seriously.”

Opara noted that activism is not just protesting — it encompasses campaigning and highlighting the importance of social change. She handpicked most of the students based on their participation in her Community-Based Participatory Research class or their attendance at the Change Talk. The students included Boateng, Nassim Ashford SPH ’23, Rosa Gonzalez Juarez SPH ’23, Katie Soden SPH ’24, Eryn Pawluk SPH ’24 and postdoctoral researcher Sitara Weerakoon.

Her goal for this trip was to work closely with the Jackson community to devise solutions as public health researchers, students and activists.

“When the community members saw us coming, they were extremely excited,” Ashford said. “They were like ‘Yale’s here!’ It shows them that other people actually care about what’s going on, and it gives them the fight to keep going.”

Knocking door-to-door

The coalition conducts “wellness checks,” which consist of calling residents and performing doorto-door surveys to assess peoples’ needs. Last year alone, they performed 10,000 wellness checks. The first wellness checks were implemented in 2021, during which the city was struck by a winter storm and had been without water for nearly six weeks.

Students conducted wellness checks at a senior home which had 152 units and was government-run, inhabited mainly by people over 65 on Medicare. According to Opara, many of the seniors had comorbidities, including diseases like cancer, diabetes or heart disease which put them in an especially vulnerable population.

The students surveyed residents, asking how they were dealing with the water crisis, what their needs were and how they felt about the government’s response. Based on their needs, the students offered water filters, water tests and basic necessities like cleaning supplies.

Sitara Weerakoon, a postdoc in Opara’s lab, asked one woman how she was coping with the water crisis. The first thing the woman said was that she was hungry and dying of cancer. All she wanted was for someone to get her food. She was on a breathing machine, had medications to take and did not have the strength to cook. After talking with Weerakoon, Pinto and Opara brought food to her doorstep.

“If we hadn’t knocked on her door and asked her that question, we would have never known that she needed that,” Weerakoon said.

“She might not have gotten food that day, who knows what could have happened. To me, the biggest takeaway from this was how important it is to be in the community and figure out what their individual needs are.”

Weerakoon is a self-professed “quantitative person” used to the process of analyzing data, writing reports and then publishing them. Her public health research naturally falls at the population level. Compared to canvassing, she felt that research could not help individuals or have impact in the short term because of the years it takes for research to be translated into practice.

Community involvement contextualizes research, and reveals the larger story of which publications are “just one tiny fraction,” Weerakoon explained. While these crises often point to a systemic cause, she viewed empowerment at an individual level as key to propelling long term systemic change.

“If you look at public health as promoting the health of the public, research is really insignificant, and that is because it takes 10, 20, 30 years to translate research into practice,” Weerakoon stated. “So to really do public health, you need to be in the community, fighting for change to make sure that everybody has equitable health in every possible way.”

Ashford emphasized the need to understand lived experiences when conducting research to figure out “what it is that you’re doing” and avoid bias.

Opara conducts and teaches community-based participatory research, which seeks to bridge the gap between academic institutions and community members. While the community teaches researchers about their experiences, the researchers teach them how to understand data on their situation and utilize the research for their benefit.

“It’s a co-learning process that allows researchers to come into a community and remain humble,” Opara said. “People in Jackson are the experts of their lived realities. I may be an expert on health disparities and health equities and using research to inform practices and policy, but I’m not the expert of their lived experiences — they are — so I’m learning from them.”

According to Opara, when they met with residents in Jackson, almost all of them said that the water crisis was not their biggest issue. Some people were dealing with food insecurity and did not have access to healthy food. Others needed access to doctors who could address their comorbidities.

Opara also noticed a rift between the local and state government, with residents unsure where to direct their frustration. While blame would often target the local government, there was also the issue of the state controlling the distribution of funding necessary to address the water crisis.

“The water crisis exacerbates all the other issues that Jackson residents are facing,” Opara said. “If

we’re not working with policymakers to figure out how to get more funding to low income people in the community that need it, the water crisis is an added issue that’s going to further push them into multiple states of crisis.”

The status of the crisis Pinto found that many people use an average of 16 to 20 bottles of water a day. While people are beginning to use the water again for bathing, they still do not trust it for drinking, cooking or even brushing their teeth. Conscious of the hazards, Lumumba likewise chooses not to drink water from the pipes in Jackson.

“They’ve never trusted the water,” Pinto said. “They continuously boil their water or they use water bottles to shower or to brush their teeth. They’ve been forced to kind of have that be their everyday reality, but it doesn’t hide the fact that there’s so many other things that are compounded.”

The students continued their day by volunteering at one of the coalition’s six water distribution sites. The coalition distributes water five days a week to areas all over Jackson. Lumumba wanted the students to experience the act of passing out water “in a massive way,” to people who had lined up for hours to get bottled water to drink.

“A lot of times you’re sending in all this money or you’re saying people need water, but to actively be there and to put water in somebody’s car, and know that this person actually needs water is a really humbling experience,” Ashford said.

According to Lumumba, while water is largely restored and flowing through pipes in Jackson, boil water notices remain in many parts of the city. Though the EPA claims that the water is safe to drink, the issue lies in the infrastructure. Water coming out of processing plants may start out safe, but many homes still have pipes made out of lead, copper and other contaminants that mix with water as it travels from the plants to homes. Many pipes across Jackson still need to be replaced, but the funding is sparse and the problem is widespread.

Residents may not even know that their property’s pipes require replacement, according to Lumumba. Many homes in Jackson were built in the 1960s, with private pipes that the city does not track. The coalition handed out water tests and water filters to help residents diagnose their own water for potential contamination.

Opara spoke to coalition volunteers who worked at the water distribution site ‘day and night.’ Many expressed their love for the city of Jackson, a community that raised them. Bringing their “full selves” to the site every day, they put aside

their own struggles to serve their community. Opara called them the real heroes of Jackson.

“It’s not easy work,” Opara reflected. “When you’re distributing water and canvassing, you’re hearing really hard stories. You’re seeing people that are struggling, that are literally depending on you to give them free water and free supplies […] I commend them for doing this work.”

Reflections

Pinto admitted to being surprised by “how good” the students were at administering surveys and navigating the needs and challenges of the residents they encountered. But all of them had some type of experience working on-the-ground in communities. A nontraditional student, Rosa Gonzalez Juarez spent ten years doing community organizing work before coming to Yale.

“I miss being back in community, I miss working with them, I miss hearing their stories,” Gonzalez Jaurez said. “I miss being an advocate for them and with them, and teaching them about their rights.”

From her last two years as a student, Gonzalez Juarez said she merely learned the academic, professional terms for what she had already been doing as an organizer. One term was “community-based participatory research,” Opara’s field of research. It is a process Gonzalez Juarez loved doing as a community advocate, conducting needs assessments and collecting data directly from people. This process, observed too in the canvassing done in Jackson, was important to build trust and partnerships within communities.

Through the academic knowledge of public health work, Gonzalez Juarez envisions shifting her advocacy work to focus on project proposals and project funding in support of disadvantaged communities. Opara hopes that this experience was life-changing for the students, and that it inspired them to be more engaged in community-level work as they graduate and move on in their careers.

The students ended their trip at city hall, meeting policy decision makers and municipal government members, including Chief of Staff Safiya Omari, who Zoomed into the previous Change Talk. Omari gave the students historical context on the city of Jackson.

While Ashford’s coursework typically involved reading studies and research that were decades or years old, he valued having an activist show the urgency of current issues and the need for an active team of researchers to figure out how to remediate specific situations.

“As a Black man from the South … and also a political activist, one of the most impactful things for me was just being in the presence of people like Rukia and hearing the history behind the fight and the struggle for rights in Mississippi,” Ashford said.

Lumumba’s coalition is aiming to complete wellness checks on at least 60,000 residents this year. They are also requesting that the state and federal government fully fund a rebuild of Jackson’s water and sewage infrastructure, which Lumumba estimates will cost close to $1.5 billion.

Boateng recommended that public health students connect with local community members and use their academic knowledge to write op-eds. Using Yale’s name could help attract public attention to these issues and create better funding opportunities for them.

“Water is important, infrastructure is critical,” Lumumba said. “We hope that from the experience of the students that came that they will be inspired to find some way big or small to help heal us here in Jackson to overcome this water crisis and our water infrastructure issues.”

Pinto and Opara hope that future trips can be arranged to bring students to other states, or even inspire work within the local New Haven community. Ashford wants the master’s program to create an ‘activism’ track, similar to the tracks dedicated to Global Health and U.S. Health Justice, because “public health is activism.”

Donations to the Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition can be made here.

Contact KAYLA YUP at kayla.yup@yale.edu

“Football is a game played with arms, legs and shoulders but mostly from the neck up.”

KNUTE ROCKNE COLLEGE FOOTBALL COACH

COURTESY OF IJEOMA OPARA

Students visited the southern city to bridge the gap between academia and activism.

Podcast reshapes Indigenous media representation

on conversations with Indigenous leaders, journalists, youth and teachers about spirituality, colonization and history.

“I realized that most media for Indigenous people is about trauma and struggle, which is a very real thing,” she said. “[But] there should … also … be a space for Indigenous hope and the good in our lives that have been left to us, because there is a lot. It shouldn’t be just trauma porn.”

Parisien’s project, she said, is rooted in family and her tribe, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. She emphasized seeking inspiration from her people’s Seven Prophets story, which she first heard as a junior in high school. Every prophet had something to say about what was going to happen in the future, she explained.

stories are currently seen in modern pop culture and media.

By inviting the original narratives of Indigenous community members and being an endeavor separate from the Yale institution, Parisien’s podcast returns sovereignty over tribal affairs to their rightful owners and creators. The decision to separate the project from Yale was a conscious one, with Parisien noting that the University should not receive credit for cultures and stories that it historically did not play a part in creating or supporting.

She frequently encountered this idea of “sovereignty” in an Ethnicity, Race and Migration course that she took with postdoctoral associate and soon-to-be associate professor Tarren Andrews, who is also an advisor on the project.

then able to engage outside of this institution, Andrews said. She looks forward to supporting Parisien and helping her secure funding from both University-affiliated and community-based organizations.

In the past few weeks, Andrews has also put Parisien in contact with national writers and members of her own community on the Flathead reservation, who are working on language and cultural revitalization.

Part of what makes the podcast unique, according to Ethan Estrada ’25, a friend who helped with some of the audio editing in the project, are the many additional voices across disciplines and Indigenous backgrounds that will find a home in it. They echoed Andrews’s excitement as to where the project will take itself in the future.

BY BRIAN ZHANG STAFF REPORTER

“I can feel myself searching for the answer that I’m running away from. Its truth feels too big to carry from one generation to the next.”

So begins Sunni Parisien ’25’s podcast “Following Our Fire,” which arrives at the intersection of

her ongoing self-discovery journey and a desire to centralize Indigenous hope and love in American media. The first episode is available for download on Apple Podcasts and Spotify as of Nov. 4.

The podcast, which has been in the works since last November, is still in its budding stages. Future episodes, Parisien said, will focus

When it came to the seventh fire, which is “the time of right now,” the prophets discussed that despite the loss and devastation confronting the tribe, there will come a people who will retrace the steps of their ancestors and reclaim the identities, teachings and practices that have been lost through colonization and assimilation, Parisien said.

Parisien, who also serves as a peer liaison at Yale’s Native American Cultural Center, hopes that the podcast will be a medium of a “radical imagination” that breaches the colonial framework and lens through which many Indigenous

For Andrews, the podcast will hopefully serve as a “model for how other students who have personal, political, and cultural commitments to communities … within [and] beyond Yale” can make use of the resources at Yale to make their impact on communities where change “matters most.”

Andrews’s own introduction to Indigenous media at the University, she said, was through an opinion piece published in the News by Oscar Turner ’24 that called on Yale to introduce a Native American and Indigenous Studies major.

Amplified representation in a place like Yale is critical for shaping the way Indigenous peoples are

“Our generation is full of changemakers and people who are really willing to take on systemic and intergenerational challenges,” Parisien said. “That’s kind of what I was inspired by, and I’m looking forward to highlighting that in future episodes of [Following Our Fire].”

Yale occupies Indigenous land, among whose owners include the Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples.

Contact BRIAN ZHANG at brian.zhang@yale.edu

Happiness class leaves students unhappy

BY ALEX YE STAFF REPORTER

The science of learning how to be happy has left some students feeling rather unhappy.

When Psychology and the Good Life was first taught in Spring 2018, the course made national headlines as one of Yale’s most popular classes of all time.

Taught by professor Laurie Santos, a celebrated cognitive scientist and psychologist, the course utilized psychological insights to teach students how to live a better, happier life. At the time, 1,147 students were enrolled in the course, roughly one quarter of the undergraduate population.

In Spring 2022, the course was offered again, but with an enrollment cap of 461. The course was once again met with high demand, with over 700 students considering the course – making it the most “shopped” course for undergraduates.

Despite the popularity, the course received an average student rating of 2.9 out of five by students in Spring 2022, a nearly onepoint decline from the 3.7 rating in Spring 2018. Anonymous course ratings and evaluations are available to students on the University’s online course registration system, Yale Course Search.

“I was a little surprised [by the rating] but I guess it made sense once I thought about it,” said Micky Rose ’25, who took the course in Spring 2022. “I think some people were annoyed to find that to do well grade

wise, they actually had to try, so they gave it low ratings. I obviously don’t know if any of that is actually true, but I feel like there was a perfect storm of individual and social expectations that led a lot of people to rate it lower than it deserved.”

Psychology and the Good Life explores scientifically-validated strategies for living a better life. According to the class’s syllabus, the course begins by introducing misconceptions about what makes for a satisfying life, then proceeds to cover psychological biases and psychological research in order to identify what is truly important for leading a better life and concludes by asking students to think critically about how to make a difference in their communities.

According to Andy Jiang ’25, another Spring 2022 student, Psychology and the Good Life felt like a “must-take” because of its high popularity and because of its relevance for his personal life. He added, however, that the course often covered topics too quickly.

“Oftentimes it felt that a lot of the content was presented as ‘you should know this’ with a citation or two and we quickly moved on,” Jiang said. “Despite the relevance of the material, the way it was presented oftentimes wasn’t as engaging.”

Justin Li ’25, who also took the course in Spring 2022, explained that he felt certain conclusions were “stretched to fit a narrative,” which he believes took away from the legitimacy of the class.

For Rose, the decision to take Psychology and the Good Life was motivated both by a need to fulfill a social science credit and an interest in happiness and mental health. He added that the scientific studies made the course particularly engaging.

“I’m a STEM major and it’s kind of my overall personality type to question claims that I find not very believable,” Rose said. “Obviously the class made a lot of claims about money, grades, happiness, that are counterintuitive to most people and to Yale students especially. So my favorite part was that everything was cited, everything had a credible source and study to back it up.”

Psychology and the Good Life has no prerequisites and can be taken by any student at Yale. Over the course of the semester, students are graded based on quizzes, a midterm exam, a final exam and a research project proposal.

In addition to developing Psychology and the Good Life in 2018, Santos also founded the Good Life Center in Silliman College, which also opened in 2018. The center serves as a wellness space that also offers programming and events to promote mental health.

In February 2022, Santos announced that she would take a one-year leave from Yale in the 2022-23 academic year to address her own feelings of burnout.

Santos did not respond to a request for comment.

Despite the drop in overall course rating, Santos has main -

tained a 4.1 professor rating out of five both times that Psychology and the Good Life has been taught. The workload rating was 2.1 out of five in both 2018 and 2022.

Overall, students interviewed by the News described the course content as engaging and relevant. Jiang explained that he particularly enjoyed assignments that applied psychological topics to daily life.

“If you put aside the expectations that come with the popularity of the class, I do think anyone can leave Psych and the Good Life with one or two useful things they can implement into their lives,” Li said.

Psychology was Yale’s fifth most popular major in the 202122 academic year.

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

Students demand a cap on insulin prices

BY BEN RAAB CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Yale students gathered on Cross Campus on Sunday to rally in support of “Insulin for All,” a movement seeking to place a cap on insulin prices.

Arden Parrish ’25, the founder of Yale’s chapter of the “Diabetes Link,” organized the rally in anticipation of World Diabetes Day, observed on Nov. 14. A few minutes into the rally, a crowd had assembled around Parrish, who spoke into a microphone on the steps of Sterling Memorial Library. Students held up homemade signs with slogans like “Patients over profit,” “Insulin is a human right” and “Health is wealth.”

“Insulin costs 49 cents a vial to produce, yet I pay $300 a vial with insurance,” Parrish told the News. “It’s inhumane. I’ve known people who have had to ration it, and I myself have rationed it. I’ve

known people who have died from rationing it.”

Rationing insulin is the practice of underusing the prescribed dosage needed to maintain safe levels of blood glucose. It can result in a deadly condition known as diabetic ketoacidosis.

A 2022 report found that an estimated 1.3 million adults with diabetes rationed insulin in the past year, making up 16.5 percent of all diabetes related insulin prescriptions.

Parrish, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of seven, was forced to ration insulin in high school after their father lost his job.

“Eight doses a day was suddenly cut to two,” they said. “Losing your job means losing your insurance, and we live in a country where losing your insurance can mean losing your life.”

In 2020, 49 percent of Americans received health insurance through

their employers. Roughly 10 percent were left uninsured.

Spencer Greenfield ’25 attended the event in support of reducing insulin prices.

“Healthcare is broken in this country,” Greenfield told the News. “I’m a fundamental believer in healthcare as a human right, so the bare minimum they could do is put a price cap on it, but ideally it should be provided for free.”

Parrish expressed frustration with Congress’s inaction regarding the insulin affordability crisis. They reflected on a time they testified in front of a Senate panel expressing support for capping insulin prices, but were “unable to actually get it done.”

Tony Li ’26, who is not diabetic, saw a flyer for the rally and decided to attend.

According to Li, “This is a cause you should advocate for regardless

of if you have diabetes or where you stand politically. The price of insulin is way too high considering what it costs to make.”

World Diabetes Day is observed in commemoration of the birthdate of Dr. Frederick Banting, who discovered insulin and its applications in 1923. Notable for his refusal to put his name on the patent, Banting declared, “Insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the world.” The patent was sold to the University of Toronto for one dollar.

Coincidentally, the rally was held a day after insulin producer Eli Lilly saw a five percent drop in its stock price after a fake tweet announcing that “insulin is now free” went viral. Eli Lilly released an apology for the message, drawing criticism from many.

“We have been demanding apologies from [Eli Lilly] for years, apologies for our friends and loved ones

who have died due to their criminal inaction, and instead they apologize for a tweet that lowered their stock price,” Parrish said.

In June, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, proposed a bipartisan “Improving Needed Safeguards for Users of Lifesaving Insulin Now (INSULIN) Act,” which would cap insurance co-pays at $35 a month. The act has yet to be put to a vote.

Parrish expressed support for the INSULIN Act while commenting on their personal experience lobbying before congress.

“I was young enough to be surprised when it didn’t pass, old enough to know better,” Parrish said. “This is a long fight. And we are taking it one step at a time.”

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

MIKIALA NG

Sunni Parisien ’25 is changing the way media organizations approach Indigenous stories.

KAREN LIN/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Laurie Santos’ Psychology and the Good Life saw a nearly one-point drop in course ratings this past spring.

WHEN 24 HOURS AREN'T ENOUGH

BY MAYA ASHABOGLU

It’s 1:45 a.m. on a Sunday night (well, technically, a Monday morning) and you hear the much-dreaded announcement through the Bass Library speakers telling you to “make your way towards the exit.” “Have a good night,” they tell you. “Good night?” you ask yourself, thinking of all the lectures you need to catch up on in order to complete your pset. Does it make sense to complete all the readings first, or should you study for your quiz and then try to finish your book in bed? Oh shoot, you also need to find time to do laundry. Trying to keep your eyes open, you pick up your books and let your feet drag you to your residential college’s common room: the sixth different study spot of the day. It’s that time of year again. When 24 hours in a day does not feel like it’s enough. Midterms, papers, the sudden fall in temperatures, the never-ending extracurriculars, all accompanied by the constant headache and coughs that prevent you from getting the already limited sleep you’re trying to get. It’s a weird feeling, a combination of physical and mental exhaustion. At least you know everyone else is in the same situation. Misery loves company.

I believe what makes midterm season even more challenging is that it roughly marks the three-month period of being at college. With Thanksgiving break coming up, most students have been away from home for a very long time. As the orange leaves disappear and the temperatures begin to fall, students are left with a feeling of nostalgia. For me, my first three months of college have been the longest, and farthest, I’ve ever been away from home. Nov. 5, the weekend before all of my midterms, marks the first time I’m not with my sister on her birthday. She turns 16. I remember my 16th birthday — it was right before COVID-19 hit. I remember tearing up during my surprise birthday party and coming back to my room only to see the balloons my sister had blown

up. One of the toughest parts of college has been being away from her; not being in the same time-zone, not being there to help her get through any minor inconvenience. I face the reality of distance as I see photos of her blowing out her candles sent to the family group chat. Nov. 10, the Commemoration of Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. I guess this is where I need to explain I’m from Istanbul, Turkey. I’ve

at school we have a ceremony, if you’re in traffic you park your car and stand on the sidewalk. Whatever you’re doing at 9:05 on Nov. 10, you stop and stand for a minute, fighting goosebumps and tears, as the siren all over the country sounds for a minute. This year, when it was 9:05 in Istanbul, it was 1:05 a.m. here and I was at the Stiles library solving a practice midterm for my math exam. It felt weird that life around me was normal, that nobody

thinking wasn’t going to bring me success. I needed to stay productive.

What I am trying to get at through these personal stories is that I think burnout is caused by more than academic work. I love all of my courses, I love writing for the YDN, I love my volunteer activities, I love spending hours in the library with my friends and going to the buttery to get a milkshake. Yet, I still can’t shake off the feeling of vulnerability that this time of year brings. Maybe it’s the constant worry of failure, the imposter syndrome that kicks in from time to time or maybe it’s just that glimpse of homesickness I usually try to fight off by reminding myself how grateful I am to be here. But something doesn’t feel quite right as I force myself to finish my 8-page cognitive science paper. I feel burnt out.

It helps that I love cold weather and that I absolutely adore our campus. Whenever I step outside, I’m filled with peace. I also try to change my study spaces: the Gilmore Music Library, Trumbull Common Room, Silliman Acorn, some reading rooms in residential college libraries, the lower level of Bass and more. I’m having trouble deciding on how to end this piece, because I’m just a first year who’s still trying to figure out college life. There will be highs and lows, and I’ve realized the cycle will always continue. I think I’ve decided the only way around it is by accepting burn out, while making sure you know what makes you feel better and doing your best to fit that into your 24 hours, as well. I genuinely love being here and intend to make the most out of my time at Yale.

lived in Istanbul my whole life. Every year, we remember the first president of the Turkish Republic in respect, gratitude and awe; we stand for a moment of silence at 9:05 a.m., the exact time of his passing. I’m used to life stopping at that time:

even knew what that day meant for my country, my home.

Both days, however, I didn’t have time to dwell upon such emotions; I knew I wouldn’t be able to teleport back home, and I knew I had work to get done. Over-

Now that it’s officially 12:45 a.m. and I’ve finished writing my piece, I can close my laptop and go to sleep, hoping that I’ve made my way through my first college “burn out.”

Contact MAYA ASHABOGLU at maya.ashaboglu@yale.edu

IMPERCEPTABLE CHANGE, CAPTURED IN TIME CAPSULES

BY ANDREW CRAMER

Recently, I found myself worrying that my personal growth was nearing its apex. Thinking that my identity was starting to solidify scared me. I worried that my writing was growing boring, that I was out of fresh ideas. I’m too young to be washed up, I told myself. But I just couldn’t shake the feeling.

My friend coerced me into looking through old photos the other day. As painful and embarrassing as it was — very — it made me notice something strange. In every image, I looked essentially the same. Except suddenly, we were looking at stuff from 2015, and we saw a geeky middle schooler: bowl cut, braces and all. Oddly enough, however, there didn’t seem to be any photos of the stages between that young, scrawny, middle-schooler and the Hulk of a man I am now.

That obviously can’t be true. I didn’t just abruptly go from a seventh-grade boy to a college sophomore. But the changes were so small that you couldn’t differentiate from picture to picture. It triggered the mindset shift I didn’t realize I needed.

The changes in my life are almost always imperceptible on a day-to-day basis. The only way to notice them is to zoom all the way back out.

Returning to my current crisis of stagnation, I tried to compare my present to my past. It’s eas -

ier said than done, consid ering how difficult it can be to truly separate dif ferent versions of self.

The lines are blurry.

That’s why we need time cap sules. And I real ized I’m lucky enough to have built two more in addition to those photos: writing and Snapchat.

On Nov. 15, 2021, I published the first game recap of my sports beat reporting career: “Bull dogs prevail against North eastern in sec ond consecutive overtime thriller.”

Exactly one year ago to the day, I wrote my third article for WKND. I couldn’t have imagined then that I would be editing for sports and writing weekly personal essays today.

Beyond the difference in the amount of content I’ve produced at the News, however, I found myself actually reading those old pieces and thinking to myself, “Wow, these are not as well written as I thought they were.” I remember thinking the same thing as an eighth-grader

reading my seventh-grade personal essays, or as a high school senior reading my junior year reflections or even as a first year rereading my Common App essays.

Every time I look back on my old personal writing, I scoff at

how smart younger Andrew used to think he was. Current me would never be so dumb. Except, in a year, I know I will laugh at this article, too. Instead of being as embarrassed as I probably should be, I find that knowledge comforting. Because as stuck as I feel now, I know that I’m still growing, and I just can’t notice it.

The other way I remind myself of change is perhaps less poetic: Snapchat’s “One year ago, today” feature. It reminds me that the things that seem like the biggest deal today will in fact

Last November, I was letting people know that I was stressed about my first college exam in Math 115 — not stressed enough, as it turned out. Last November, I was wondering if I was going to get blown up by 40 bombs scattered across the Yale theaters —

too stressed, it turns out. And last November, I had to frantically call my best friend’s parents to pick him up from a Thanksgiving party I hosted while my parents weren’t home — I would say I was appropriately stressed about that one.

Two Novembers ago, I couldn’t stop watching Election 2020 coverage. Three Novembers ago, I scored my first points on varsity basketball. Four Novembers ago, I was worried that I was going to mess up in our jazz band performance. Five years ago, my Snapchat content was not very good at recording the biggest happenings in my life.

In the moment, those dramas all seemed like the most important thing that was ever going to happen to me. Now, they’re ancient history. They belong to the old Andrew. They’re stories to tell while reminiscing. They were moments that mattered in my life but ultimately seem relatively insignificant to who I am today.

So I don’t think I’m stagnating as much as I thought was. The dramatic changes this year are few and far between compared to starting college last year. But I’m still growing, still changing, one incremental day at a time.

Future Andrew, cheers to your laughter at my current naïvete, cheers to how far you’ve come and cheers to our continued growth.

Cheers to one year from now, today.

//

// ARIANE DE GENNARO

// ARIANE DE GENNARO

BY ASHLEY CHOI

I first received the name of my residential college while walking down the graduation aisle last year in a scratchy, distasteful and non-Yale blue gown. Yale had meant to release room pairings earlier on the morning of June 16th, but at the last minute, the website crashed, and I, along with 1,557 enrolled firstyears remained deprived, nervous of who we were going to live with and where we were going to live. The cosmic game of waiting finally ended as I walked up the steps of the graduation podium, when my phone, hidden under my shapeless blue tarp, dinged. My hand reached for the phone, the entirety of my being ready to assimilate into that Yale person, the one who swore and died by their college.

I admit, despite my lack of knowledge on most Yale residential colleges, I knew then what type of college I wanted to be in. I had dreams of dorms with big courtyards, beautiful finished basements, white walls and sunlight filtering in through black rimmed glass windows (hint, hint Silliman).

Instead, I was greeted by Saybrook’s blue and yellow coat of arms.

I turned to my friend beside me and whispered in her ear “I got Saybrook” in the way someone who knew nothing about Saybrook would say. “Oh,” she whispered back, and her blue painted nails typed the word into Google; her eyes scanning Wikipedia.

“You have to strip,” she said.

And like a fool, I stared horrified.

Months later, I learned more about the Saybrook Strip when I received an email from the head froco of Saybrook College, with the bolded words, “IMPORTANT: SY Strip Chant — study up because I do not want to be

The Silly Saybrook strip

embarrassed at Harvard if y’all don’t learn the chant.”

The Saybrook Strip is infamous, questionable and almost elusive — the whole concept of attending an elite private college and stripping for tradition seems almost high-end; fun for some, but unaffordable by most. Only a Logan Huntzberger type would post the Strip on Instagram with a slightly confusing, extremely exclusive caption that only

is more convoluted than my concern with being naked, cold and afraid in a sea of blue and red (strange thoughts of patriotism

is a time-tale tradition and not limited to the Saybrook Strip; friends at UChicago have talked excitedly about the Polar Bear Run, Dartmouth’s slightly concerning Ledyard Challenge is an eye-opening revelation about the college and even Saturday’s losers have the Primal

sive history of nakedness at Yale leaves readers with the idea that “the Saybrook Strip has been a site of generational conflict as well as a product of generational change.” It seems plausible that an anthropology class at Yale might say these traditions reveal the human desire to revert back to primal instincts: to run around naked, adrenaline-pumped and screaming. Despite being a fan of anthropology, I’m not sure where I stand on the matter.

BY HANNAH MARK

For a sunny week in November, Rachmaninoff is my undoing.

In the frosty, see-yourbreath morning, I stroll past the graveyard. As yet another tree sheds the last of its leaves, the intense opening chords of his Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor build into the swell of an orchestra. A statue of an angel bends its gray head in salute. Then the piano begins a low rumble of arpeggios as the entire string section joins in a broad, mournful melody. I recognize the sound — Rachmaninoff and I belong to the camaraderie of the broken-hearted.

In the slanting midafternoon light, I squash myself into a shuttle seat next to well-bundled strangers. The cellos pick up the melody briefly before the piano sends it flinging into a rapid, dancing tune. The orchestra answers with a furious pizzicato, like the sound of rain on a tin roof. As the shuttle lumbers along between stops, the swell of the orchestra builds, layering timpani and brass until the full orchestra reaches that same desperate intensity of the opening chords. Abruptly, the melody ceases. There is a heartbeat of quiet. I for-

and six others would understand. The absurdity of the event earns the disapproval of my second-wave feminist mother and even annoys me at times when Saybrook fi rst years open conversations with, “are you going to strip at the game?”

The history of taking one’s clothes off on college campuses

have filled my mind as I’ve written that). Streaking in colleges

Rachmanino ate my soul

get about the bus entirely. I am not here. I am floating somewhere above time and reckoning, somewhere in a dazzling soundscape of Rachmaninoff’s creation.

In the newly-dark evening, I trek down Science Hill, mourning the premature loss of daylight. Into the pause of music and dusk, the violas enter in a delicate theme that is altogether sweet and sad.

The piano answers, weaving its own rich melody as I pass a warmly glowing street lamp. Cellos join the piano, then strings. I remember for a brief and glorious moment what real living tastes like. It tastes like this, like passion and power, like a raw, hungry yearning for beauty, meaning and pain.

Rachmaninoff gets it. He’s full of drama and pure, needless decadence, but he knows something about beauty too. Listening to him is like eating chocolate in bed on a Saturday morning — entirely indulgent.

Let’s be clear: I know basically nothing about classical music. I spend more time listening to Taylor Swift than Franz Liszt. Even my discovery of Rachmaninoff

started in the most sacrilegious of all internet corners: TikTok. I’m also not sure that it’s acceptable to describe a piece by a 19th century Russian romantic composer as a “certified banger,” but it’s true.

I haven’t had an interesting thought all semester. I spend most eve-

maninoff makes me want to write sloppy poetry and call my mother and eat cantaloupe with an unwarranted vigor and bury my heart under a granite angel.

The weight of midterms and looming final projects and vanishing sunlight and onset of winter is held, momentarily at bay. Even seasonal depression takes

on a grand and cosmic meaning. Rach-

nings in the library, whiling my life away on psets and papers. Sometimes, for a change of pace, I schedule crying into my GCal. But Rach-

maninoff quenches the thought that I shall be vastly ordinary until I die. He demands greatness or nothing at all. After all,

As to whether I will participate in the tradition — that remains to be seen. The shackles of high school embarrassment have only recently come off. Is there really a need to encapsulate myself within the nudist circles of Yale?

and only gian,

Perhaps this makes me a fake Saybrugian, but the past week’s weather has been an indication that temperatures below 60 degrees and I are the coldest of friends. To be naked on top of that would be a level of masochism on par with taking 5.5 credits as a STEM major. For all those who are planning to strip at the game this weekend, know that you have my support when we (really, the Yale’s Men Football team) crush the Pilgrims. As the tradition of stripping lives on, Saybrugians, know I love you, cherish you and will forever be grateful that we remain one of the best parts of the Harvard-Yale Game.

Contact ASHLEY CHOI at ashley.choi@yale.edu .

what grade could matter as much as the capacity to feel passion and fury and artistic angst?

Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor. Go and listen to it right now. I like the Yuja Wang recording on YouTube. If you don’t have time for the whole thing, at least listen to the first 30 seconds of the Moderato to hear those dazzling opening chords.

I don’t care if you don’t like classical music. I don’t care if you’re suffering from

stacks and I don’t care if you’re in the middle of a pivotal physics exam. These 35 minutes and 25 seconds of your day are more important than anything else in your life at this moment. Possibly more important than anything in your life ever. And if you see me walking the sidewalks, headphones on, beaming and crying all at once, just know that it is because Rachmaninoff ate my soul.

the yague and I don’t care if you’re studying in the

Contact HANNAH MARK at h.mark@yale.edu

Scream. At Yale itself, nakedness is embraced. Whispers of naked parties linger in corners and tales of the Naked Run infiltrate first-year suites. The exten-

WKND Recommends Kicking pilgrims.

VOLLEYBALL: Bulldogs beat Harvard, winning Ivy League Title

BY TIFFANY HU AND HENRY FRECH CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS

The Yale women’s volleyball team (21–2, 13–1 Ivy) is the 2022 Ivy League regular season champion.

This weekend, the Bulldogs beat Dartmouth College (16–8, 8–6 Ivy) and Harvard University (5–17, 4–10 Ivy) to finish the regular season at the top of Ivy standings. With the victory, the team secured the right to host next weekend’s Ivy League playoffs as the No. 1 seed.

“I’m honestly just so proud of the team and how we have worked all season,” Audrey Leak ’24 told the News. “I think our championship is just a reflection of all the work that we put in practice every day … Both Harvard and Dartmouth are super solid teams and I’m just happy that we were able to trust in each other and fight to the win.”

On Nov. 11, the Bulldogs beat the Big Green in three tight sets. During the first set, both teams battled with back-and-forth wins and kept the score close. However, the Blue and White ended the set with two attack errors from Dartmouth to take the period by a score of 27-25.

Dartmouth opened the second set with a competitive spirit and fought to stay close in score. With a narrow 9–7 lead, Gigi Barr ’25 landed a kill that shifted momentum in favor of the Bulldogs.

The Elis went on to nab an eight-point streak with 4 kills and a service ace before comfortably winning the set with a 25–19 victory.

The third set followed a similar script to the second as the Big Green remained competitive before the Bulldogs swung into another winning streak of eight points. The Blue and White racked up six kills from Fatima Samb ’25, Leak and Lauren Kellen ’26 and a service ace by Mila Yarich ’25. This time, the Blue and White took the set by a score of 25–18 to claim a 3–0 victory.

On the following night, the Bulldogs kept to their dominant ways and swept Harvard during their senior night to clinch the conference title.

Leak started the first set with two kills in a row. Yale shot out to a 13–5 lead before Harvard made it 17–10. The Bulldogs went on a run which ended with a kill by Amelia Brown ’24 and a first set victory of 25–11.

“I just thought we did a really great job of defending our own court and coming out aggressive from the start.” said Maile Somera ’24. “We’re a young team so there was the potential to … play with nerves and be tentative knowing what was on the line, but I thought we came out and went for it 100 percent the whole time.”

In the second set, the Bulldogs rode their momentum to a 25–12 victory. Cara Shultz ’25 had six kills and Carly Diehl ’25 had 11 assists in the set.

In the third set, both teams won back and forth points until late in the set, when the Bulldogs pulled away to win 25–19. Their third set win capped off a regular season in which the team had an overall winning percentage of .913, the best out of any Yalevolleyballteamonrecord.

“We’ve been working hard each week and it s certainly been paying off,but we’re not done yet”said captain Renee Shultz ’23. “I’m thrilled we can host the Ivy tournament next weekend. Until then we’re going to celebrate this regular season championship and keep working hard for theplayoffs”

The playoff bracket is set. Yale has the number one seed, Princeton (21–3, 13–1) has the second, Brown (14–9,10–4)hasthethirdandDartmouth the fourth.

The Bulldogs will play Dartmouth on Nov. 18 at 7 p.m. for the first round of the tournament. That game and all other Ivy playoff games will be at John J. Lee Amphitheater in Payne Whitney Gymnasium.

Contact TIFFANY HU at tiffany.hu@yale.edu and HENRY FRECH at henry.frech@yale.edu

Yale sailors become Match race national champions

BY PALOMA VIGIL STAFF RERPORTER

Four of Yale's coed sailing team members snatched first place at the ICSA Match Race National Championship for the second year in a row and the second time in program history.

Jack Egan ’25, Megan Grimes ’24, Christophe Chaumont ’23 and Nicholas Davies ’24 competed together for the second year in a row at the match race championship at the San Diego Yacht Club this past Sunday. Under leadership from coaches Thomas Barrows and Hall of Famer Dave Perry, the team coordinated in unison to beat out the University of Charleston and Brown University and win the match.

“It felt really special to win this event with this team, especially for the second year in a row,” said Chaumont, who will leave the team of four when he graduates. “Couldn't have asked for a better way to end my senior fall season.”

The team's skipper Egan, was the overall brains of the operation as the one making a lot of the stressful decisions as commander of the vessel. He mentioned that there were a couple of times he put the team in a bad situation, but the group’s teamwork was able to "bail them out of it."

"Being able to defend the title is a special feeling,” Egan told the News. “The field this year was certainly tough, but we were able to overcome it.”

The team opened the three-day race weekend with a win against Tulane and then Georgetown in the semifinals. Then, in the final

round, the team swept the waves anddefeatedCharleston3–0.

Although not the match race coach, head sailing coach Leonard commented that, since the team has worked together for two years now, they have "really gelled into a cohesive unit." He said the great resultwasawaytorepaythesailors' hardwork.

Grimes, one of the three crew members, said that the win meant a lot to the group of four because this was Chaumont's last year of racing It was the last time the four would be able to compete together making the two-year win even more meaningful Chaumont said that although they didn't have much practice in the boats they raced in as they did fornationalslastyear,theteam"did a good job of taking each race as a learning opportunity and improvingastheeventwentalong."

Grimes also attributed most of the success to Egan's "composure underpressure”asaskipper

According to Davies, the three days had champagne conditions, a light wind condition typical of San Diego.Thisallowedformorestands and less time pressure than the regattasinthepast.

"Weprovedourselvestoberesilient in close matches in the knockoutstagesandadaptabletotheJ22s, boats in which we had only been abletopracticeforadaypriortothe regatta,"saidDavies.

Thesailingseasonwillresumein 2023.

PALOMA VIGIL at paloma.vigil@yale.edu

MEN’S BASKETBALL: Yale dominates at Rainbow Classic in Hawaii

BY BEN RAAB CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

The Yale men’s basketball team (4–0, 0–0 Ivy) made the 5,000mile trip to Hawaii this week.

The trip was not a vacation. The Bulldogs took care of business at the Outrigger Rainbow Classic, bringing home a trophy after emerging victorious from all three games to remain undefeated for the season.

Head coach James Jones described his takeaways from the tournament as “all positive.”

“We were tested in a number of ways and came away unblemished,” Jones told the News. “Our defense was very good, and we maintained a great team focus.”

They began the trip with a convincing 74–60 win against Eastern Washington (1–3, 0–0 Sky). In their second game, they trounced Mississippi Valley State (0–4, 0–0 SWAC) 80–51. And in the championship game, the Blue and White topped Hawaii (2–1, 0–0 West) 62–59 in an overtime thriller.

Forward Matt Knowling ’24 was named the tournament MVP, building on his 20-point opening night with a series of strong performances, averaging 21.3 points per game on 58.7 percent shooting for the tournament.

Knowling, who averaged seven ppg last season, credited teammates for his strong performances as the team’s primary scoring option.

“I give my teammates a majority of the credit,” he said. “They

did a great job of finding me when I was open and trusting me to make the right play. So this role has come naturally thanks to the support and trust I have from my teammates and coaches.”

In their opening matchup against Eastern Washington, the Elis ended the first half down 33–32, but came firing back in the second, scoring 19 unanswered points to blow the game open 57–38 with 10 minutes remaining.

Knowling finished with 26 points, hitting 10 of his 15 shots from the field, while guard John Poulakidas ’25 added 13 points of his own.

Against Mississippi Valley State, the Bulldogs got out to a hot start from the field, powered by guard August Mahoney’s ’24 three first half three-pointers to give the Blue and White a 35–21 heading into the locker room. Yale cruised through the second half to finish the game 80–51, securing a berth in the championship game.

Knowling contributed 20 points while forward Yussif Basa-Ama ’24 had 12 off the bench.

The Elis came into their final matchup against Hawaii as fourpoint underdogs, their first time not being the favored entering a game this year.

Both teams struggled early, with a completely scoreless first four minutes of play. At the half, Yale held a 17–16 lead in the low-scoring affair, with both teams combining for 28 percent shooting from

the field and just one made threepointer on 14 attempts.

“We were getting good shots for the most part, and we needed to have confidence that they would fall in the second half,” Jones said regarding the slow start.

The scoring picked up after the break, but neither team could pull away. Samuta Avea hit a three to put Hawaii up 38-33 with 10:42 left, but the Bulldogs tightened up on defense and forced the Rainbow Warriors into missing their next 10 shots, allowing the Bulldogs to climb back into the game. A layup by forward EJ Jarvis ’23 put Yale back up 39–38 with 6:44 to go.

As the final minute of regulation was winding down, the Rainbow Warriors seemed to be in control. Guard Bez Mbeng ’25 — one of the team’s best defenders — fouled out with 32 seconds left, and Noel Coleman then hit two free throws to give Hawaii a 51-49 lead. Mahoney answered back for the Bulldogs, however, drawing a foul and hitting two free throws of his own to tie the game with 18 seconds left.

Hawaii had the chance to win it on their last possession, but Jarvis switched off his man to come up with a game-saving block on Coleman’s drive to the basket with 3 seconds left on the clock, sending the game to overtime.

“I saw him drive baseline and knew there were only a few seconds left on the clock,” Jarvis said. “He tried to maneuver around me, but

I was thankful I got a finger on it. Once we got the game to OT, I knew we would win.”

The game came down to the final minute once again in overtime, but the Elis broke through as guard Yassine Gharram ’25, filling the role of the fouled-out Mbeng, got a long defensive rebound and threw an outlet pass to forward Isaiah Kelly ’23, who threw down a slam dunk to gain a decisive 58–56 lead with 54 seconds remaining.

After another key defensive stop for Yale, Mahoney hit four more clutch free throws in the final seconds to seal a 62–59 victory.

The win marked Yale’s second time winning the Rainbow Classic title, also doing so in 1969 after beating LSU in the final game. But the successful tournament also came with a cost for the student athletes, who took several days off from school in order to make the 14 hour-long trip from New Haven to Hawaii.

“With long trips like these, it is very tough to balance school and sports,” Jarvis said. “We had to email teachers in advance to coordinate how to handle missing sections, classes and even de adlines. Being an Ivy League student-athlete is not easy at all, but as a senior, I have developed a routine for when we travel — which includes doing work on the buses and planes.”

During the Ivy League’s media day, Jones expressed reservations about going to Hawaii, saying, “The

only reason we’re going to Hawaii is because we had three teams at home drop us.”

Jones also mentioned that ever since the Bulldogs’ upset victory over UConn in 2014, he has been unable to schedule a single game with another Connecticut team.

“I think that most teams try to schedule teams that they feel that they have a good chance at beating. There are enough teams to play without taking a chance at playing Yale,” Jones said.

Despite playing in the Ivy League, generally considered a relatively weak conference across Division I basketball, the Bulldogs have amassed a number of upsets over top-tier teams in recent years, including wins against Baylor University, University of California and University of Miami, each of whom play in “power five” conferences.

“The thing that makes student-athletes so special is that we perform at the highest levels in the classroom and in our sport,” added Jarvis.

Yale’s toughest test this season will come against the University of Kentucky on Dec. 10, a team ranked No. 4 in the nation.

The Blue and White, back from Hawaii, will return to the John J. Lee Amphitheater on Sunday, November 20th for a matchup against John Jay College.

Contact BEN RAAB at ben.raab@yale.edu

JENNY LIU/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The Yale women’s volleyball team beat Dartmouth and Harvard this weekend, capping off a historic regular season.

" But it can only last so long. We know this isn't going forever. This could be the last year, maybe next year is the last year. We're in the final stages. We know that. We want to make the most of it.”

STEVE KERR GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS COACH

Contact

PALOMA VIGIL/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER A team of four Yale sailors won the 2022 ICSA match race championship this past weekend for the second-straight year.

GIOVANNA TRUONG LU is a senior in Pauli Murray College.

Contact her at giovanna.truong@yale.edu .

CLARISSA TAN is a first-year in Jonathan Edwards College.

Contact her at clarissa.tan@yale.edu .

ZI LIN is an alumna of the Class of 2022 .

WEEKEND

FRIENDS WITH THE ENEMY

// BY ABBY ASMUTH

“call me ASAP.” Kate’s text comes in on July 7, 2022, 7:54 p.m.

When we start the FaceTime call, Kate greets me with a wide, playful grin on her face. She’s framed with her face up close to the camera. As always, I instantly pick up on Kate’s magnetic excitement. “What’s up?” I ask, smiling too. “Exciting news?”

Kate giggles. She slowly backs up in the FaceTime frame, revealing a crimson shirt, and eventually, Harvard written across her chest. “I’M GOING TO HARVARD!”

I let out a squeal — an honest first for myself. We scream and we laugh and we cry. After she hangs up to head to work, I send her an additional 17 texts, bursting with giddy pride. Admittedly, I even exclaim Harvard’s merits — which I’ll never repeat again, of course. But at that moment, there was no rivalry, only my friend’s accomplishment. Kate’s perseverance and resilience at last and so deservingly rewarded.

When Kate and I first met, I would never have expected to be one of her first calls with such life-changing news. And one of her only calls — in the most spectacularly Kate fashion, she revealed her Harvard news to most with a gender-reveal-esk announcement at her graduation party. Confetti cannons were popped, a flag was rolled down and the Harvard alma mater played over the loudspeaker. It was absolutely over-the-top and nothing short of sensational.

Kate and I first met in junior year of high school. Her parents’ work forced her from the romantic beauty of Lyon, France to Madison, Wisconsin. That

Kate lived in France is one of the first things you will know about her. That she is not from Wisconsin is an important second. Kate came to my small class of 40, a class used to its normative characters and dynamics — loud, opinionated and boldly individual. Her hair was dyed jet-black, her outfits carefully coordinated, all of them distinct, monochromatic pairings. She shamelessly acknowledged that she had a polarizing personality. She declared her judgments with firm conviction, never shying away from an argument. Kate was fully and beautifully herself.

I, on the other hand, was more compromising: always working to bring my class together, to be friendly and agreeable to everyone around me. While Kate found joy in asserting her individualism, I found satisfaction in being a connector. Kate’s boldness — her commitment to being herself, for herself — took me off-guard. At first, it was discomforting; With time, it was captivating. Kate’s vitality and spunk were magnetic.

By senior spring, Kate and I had become incredibly close. Our personalities came to compliment each other: Kate empowered me to be bolder, while I softened Kate’s edges. And so, the fateful night of March 31, 2022 — Ivy Day — we were both rooting for each other, too. Kate knew Yale was my long-held dream; I knew Kate’s top choices were Harvard and Barnard — and as Barnard had waitlisted her, tensions were particularly high that night.

After decisions came out, Kate was first to text: “how did you do? I was waitlisted at Columbia and Harvard.” I waited a few minutes to respond, wanting to be honest about my excitement, but respectful to my friend. When I shared my news, her eagerness

was clear: all caps and seven exclamation marks. I saw her later that night, and she brought me into a huge hug, exclaiming her excitement and pride.

Despite Kate’s daring individualism, despite her contentment in living for herself, she knows when to just be there too. She cheers on and uplifts those she holds close.

To her own news, Kate wasn’t distraught, but determined. She persisted and was accepted to Harvard, becoming the first person from our high school to ever get in.

Kate’s triumph was fabulous. Of course, after my initial giddiness at her acceptance, jokes of the Harvard-Yale rivalry ensued. My comments on her Instagram announcement echoed both my pride and “Huck Farvard” sentiments. When we traveled together later that summer — a last hurrah girls trip — Kate noted how fun it was when people would be impressed at the name Yale, but then doubly impressed when Harvard was dropped; I rolled my eyes. Meeting up in New York City this fall, we both wore our school’s respective merchandise to tease each other.

But really, rivalry aside, I know that Harvard is lucky. Lucky to have one of the most exceptional people I know in its student body. Lucky that someday, Harvard can tout Kate’s impact on the world on its alumni list.

And I have to admit, I’m even grateful to Harvard. Thanks to Harvard, one of my best friends is only two hours away.

Contact ABBY ASMUTH at abby.asmuth@yale.edu .

// CLARISSA TAN

The Yale football team (7–2, 5–1 Ivy) is set to face off against Harvard (6–3, 4–2 Ivy) with everything to play for in the biggest game of their season.

Cont. on page B2

With a win in the 138th playing of The Game, the Bulldogs would secure at least a share of the Ivy League championship in addition to a victory over their biggest rivals. Yale currently leads the all-time series 68–61–8, but were defeated last year by a heartbreaking last-second touchdown by the Crimson.

“Our team honors legacy, they honor tradition, so it definitely is more important and you feel the buzz around campus,” captain Nick Gargiulo ’23 said. “But the second part is it all falls back to us. We’re going to focus on what we need to do and how we need to do it. So that outside noise, while it’s encouraging, you know you’re excited to play in front of a big crowd and all the buzz around campus, it’s just about us. We’re just playing another game.”

All eyes in the sold-out Harvard Stadium will be on the rushing attacks for the two teams. However, for the Crimson, there will likely

Ivy League title on the line

only be one rusher to watch, while the Bulldogs boast two lead backs and a dangerous running quarterback.

Harvard is led by one of the best running backs the Ivy League has seen in years with senior Aidan Borguet. Borguet is an explosive runner that leads the Ancient Eight in rushing yards with 1,120 yards across nine games.

The Crimson back will look to build on his already-legendary performances in The Game, namely his record-breaking 2019 showcase in which he set the Yale-Harvard record with 269 rushing yards. Maybe even more impressive was that the yardage only came on 11 carries, four of which were touchdowns.

If Borguet is able to break a long run this year, head coach Tony Reno trusts that his team has what it takes to respond because he has seen it from them before.

“In my experience as a coach, for your very best teams, there’s a

moment of opportunity that the team either seizes or the team lets go by,” Reno said. “I really feel like this team, as others we’ve had that have been this type of team, they saw an opportunity to really chase something and they took advantage of it.”

For the Bulldogs, the approach to running the ball is a bit di erent. After Borguet, the Elis have the next three highest rushers in the Ivy League with quarterback Nolan Grooms ’24 and running backs Tre Peterson ’24 and Joshua Pitsenberger ’26, each of whom has at least 585 yards . With an o ensive line that has been hailed by many as the best in the Ivy League, either the Bulldog runners often find plenty of space to take o , or Grooms typically has a clean pocket and time to deliver a strike to the talented receivers he has available.

For Harvard, the challenge with defending the Yale o ense will be the

balance of stopping the potent running attack without being exposed to deep play-action passes.

If Grooms fakes the hando and pulls the ball to throw, he has multiple deep threat wide receivers. The duo of Mason Tipton ’24 and David Pantelis ’25 have proven their ability to get open against almost any defense in the league, with both averaging over 13 yards a catch.

For many of the Bulldogs, there is extra incentive, as The Game marks the final opportunity for the team’s seniors to don the Blue and White.

“I mean, they’re my brothers,” safety Kyle Ellis ’23 said. “For instance, I broke my ankle last year and that two-year period where you don’t play the game, you’re really looking forward to getting back on the field, getting back on the pitch with your brothers. I live with four other players and I come in and receive

the same amount of love playing on the field. Through hard times, through good times, the thing I’m going to remember the most is the bonds I have with them.”

In the end, the task is simple for the Bulldogs: win and they will be champions of The Game.

In a ten-game season, everything has come down to the final game, but regardless of the outcome, the feeling around the team is sure to be a positive one.

“I love this team, I really do,” Reno said. “This is one of those teams that, as a coach, when I’m older and grayer, I’ll think back and smile about this team because of how they handle themselves day in and day out.”

The Game kicks off at noon on Saturday at Harvard Stadium and will be televised on ESPNU.

Contact SPENCER KING at spencer.king@yale.edu .

How does it feel to be A cocky crimson fool, Realizing that all the hype Veils the truth of your school?

Andrew’s here to Reveal what is known: Down with Harvard, it’s bad to the bone.

First, thing’s first: * Crimson * is the worst. * Bulldog * a real mascot. Keep that as a thought. I prefer a cute doggo over Non-personified red. Go figure out a real mascot instead.

So let’s sit and chat and talk about sports. Unlike in mascots, it’s close on the courts C’mon, even if you might win a few games, Know that you must put respect on our names: See our 18 titles in the Hall of Fame.

Yet here we are, rivals forever, And writing our roasts, feeling oh-so clever. Look, you’re kinda brash as we talk here and now, Even in writing, still holierthan-thou.

We Yalies have manners In the way we talk smack. Little do you know the content Lenience made me hold back. Why charge for parties In the range of hundreds of bucks?

No fun for free, you capitalist f**ks?

The thing about villains, Hating you feels too easy. Elitism at its peak just seems so sleazy.

Greatness attends Yale And so many come to mind.

Morse, Streep, the Clintons, Education so refined.

Ever competitive, let’s talk ‘bout your alums, Arnold, Benedict; Cruz, Ted, those are just some; Shut up, little Crimson, this argument’s dumb.

I guess you have more, so let’s keep on going

Like Zuckerberg — oh wait! Yup, he just stopped showing.

But there’s more to the Crimson Your college color so grand

Allow me to explain why you just seem so bland.

Somehow, your school’s not top one in your town Crazy, we know the Engineers take you down.

Or maybe BC or BU or Tufts Running your town, that must feel so rough.

Eventually you’ll find that fifth-best is enough.

Old Harvard, you’re washed, you’re so past your prime. Forfeit the game, for this is Yale’s time.

3 times a day, we sit down to eat, 7 days a week, we know Harvard’s dead meat.

Time to end this for once and for all. Out with damn Harvard, no more time to stall.

2 all of the Harvard students not up to the test 4ever Yale triumphs, but keep doing your best.

! Bet the Harvard kids didn’t even realize this was all an acrostic!

Contact ANDREW CRAMER with fan mail at andrew.cramer@yale.edu .

Only losers write roasts as odes Eliys, your lack of wit forebodes Your impending doom The downfall of your team does loom Our real message, we wrote in code

Why are all of your parties 18 plus? No wonder last year we had to pregame on the bus Looks like we won’t be seeing you at Game On Have fun, the line for Oliver’s is preatty long The tomfoolery that went down at Toad’s was kinda sus

Our final clubs are actually fun Your societies can’t throw parties, not even one John Kerry won’t talk about Skulll and Bones But we know it’s a mere factory for clones We have DJs and darties; you’d be pretty stunned You claim to exercise editorial restraint

Yet the actions of your judicial alumnus make us faint Yes, you have some soft as Charmin alumni No wonder your list of titles is hard to come by At least your stadeium is sort of quaint

To your little New Haven hamlet, you sing praise But to your snobbish town I riaise A city with some actual personality You need a cure to your banality To be or not to be original — there’s only pizza for days

Nolan Grooms is today’s Phil Mickelson A lefty who fumbles the bag, no titles trickle in Meanwhile, Charlie Dean’s got major successs We know it’s Yale that puts Grooms under duress It was Charlie, and always will be, racking up the wins No manners I see, calling out elitissm is gauche

But while your dorms have street views, the river’s our approach Gothic in style, your dorms are scary The rats and roaches must make your students wary If our dorms are first-class, yours are coach

Honestly, your mascot is inhumane

Slobbery, perhaps, but “handsome” is insane

Whatever your logo, you still don’t have that dawg You’re part of the machine, an inconsequential cog

Your stunted, robottic efforts will, again, be in vain

To the YDN, our silly younger brother Five years our junior, did the world really need another?

Though snubbed by the Assoociated Press, the Elis read you Probably cause there’s nothing fun to do

Front page will show the loss, not close, just smothered

To the Eli on the other end of this limerick — not ode Perhaps consider transferring; UConn is right down the road After this defeat, you won’t be welcoome here

Please go out and get yourself a beer Before you break down, a call with your mom is owed

She can comfort you and whisper in your ear

To try to ameliorate your rising fear That at our school, even droppouts make money on clicks

Zuck beats out your Cheney, you can thank Dick

Our wars are in the meta, yours are out in the clear

Nice try, you thought you were funny like Jerry

But your wit moves slower than the Staten Island Ferry Your true spirit is more Elaine Heed this roast, we’ll spell it to you plain:

If theiy play like you write, little fear will we carry

We pray you enjoyed our limerick We wrote it for fun, just a little kick Harvard kidds can actually enjoy intellectual exercise Knowing one day our bank accounts will be greater in size So, dear Elis, we have a message we must advise: Get the hell out of Cambridge real quick.

Contact JACK SILVERS and KATHERINE FROST with grievances at jack.silvers@thecrimson.com and katharine.forst@thecrimson.com .

THE GAME: Bulldogs o ensive line leads the way THE GAME

BY SPENCER KING STAFF REPORTER

The Yale football team (7–2, 5–1 Ivy) prides itself on being a physically dominant team. Nowhere is that more prevalent than on their offensive line.

Led by starting center and captain Nick Gargiulo ’23, the line has paved the way for the number one rushing attack in the Ivy League, which generates 5.5 yards a carry and an average of 234 yards a game.

“This year we’ve been able to have consistent play with the five guys that are out there,” the 6’5’’ and 290 pound Gargiulo said. “Just a constant and never-ending improvement from week to week to be able to put a good product out on the field.”

That effective running game has led to success for the Bulldogs, even when other teams know that it is coming. At 380 rushing plays on the season, Yale’s coaching staff has opted to run the ball more than any other team in the Ancient Eight, while amassing more than 600 total yards higher than the next best rushing attack.

The line is also quick to point to the complementing styles of their running backs. With lots of newly implemented gap scheme plays that take time for the line to set their blocks, the linemen appreciate the patient style of their running backs, namely three-time Ivy League Rookie of the Week Joshua Pitsenberger ’26.

“It just allows the play to develop,” left guard Cubby Schuller ’23 said, regarding Pitsenberger’s patience. “We have certain schemes that, they’re not immediate, they’ll take a second for two guys to get together and move the defensive lineman off the ball, so I think that [Pitsenberger’s] play style fits very well with our blocking scheme.”

At 6’6” and 301 pounds, it is easy to understand the power of any double team involving Schuller, especially if the play is to the left, where the second man coming to the double team would be 6’5”, 318 pound left tackle Kiran Amegadjie ’24.

At left tackle for his junior season, Amegadjie knows the importance of his and the o-line’s job. Several of the returning members of the unit

felt that last season left lots of room for improvement.

“Specifically talking about the offensive line, I think that we were one of the weaker links and we didn’t want to be that coming into this season,” Amegadjie said. “We were coming into the film room on Sunday after games last year and being like ‘you know this is the same stuff that keeps showing up, the same mistakes.’ That’s where this offseason came into play and we didn’t want to be that group anymore.”

While much of the o season for the players was spent improving technique and in the weight room, they also undertook the tall task of learning a di erent running o ense.

As head coach Tony Reno has said, much of the o season for the coaching staff was spent “really researching a lot of really good teams and how they run the football” and then implementing what they saw into their own playbook. With the threat of a running quarterback and dangerous running backs, the offensive line never finds a shortage of work in each game, as they are ninth in the FCS in rushing o ense.

JESSAI FLORES/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

The

When asked what his favorite play was, Amegadjie had a quite straightforward answer.

“The most physical run play we have is ‘duo,’” Amegadjie said. “It’s just two double teams and that’s my favorite play cause me and Cubby [Schuller]

just get to double-team guys. Put ‘em, take ‘em ten yards down the field.”

The Bulldogs lead the Ivy League in rushing touchdowns with 20.

Contact SPENCER KING at spencer.king@yale.edu .

THE GAME: A rivalry as old as time

BY NICOLE RODRIGUEZ STAFF REPORTER

Steeped in history, the Yale–Harvard game is one of the oldest collegiate athletic events. The Blue and White have been meeting the Crimson on the gridiron since 1875, completing 137 total meetings to date.

The Bulldogs have claimed 68 victories, leading Harvard by seven.

“We take legacy very seriously in this program, so to be able to build upon that is very important to us,” team captain Nick Gargiulo ’23, who will play in his fourth game on Saturday, told the News. “It’s always a major game for us. Personally, for our senior class, as you are a part of these games you realize how special they really are. You appreciate them a lot more as you get older in this program.”

The News has combed through records detailing the 147 years of Yale–Harvard history to highlight six games that have made the biggest headlines.

1875: The “Foot Ball Match” Yale and Harvard donned the first team uniforms in an American intercollegiate football event on Nov. 13, 1875, according to Connecticut records.

The football rivalry began in an unusual fashion for the time at Hamilton Park, the first home field for the Bulldogs. Using a mixture of rugby and soccer guidelines, the first playing consisted of 15 players per team and established that a point was secured after each team successfully scored a touchdown and the kick afterwards.

As a prize, Yale guaranteed the Crimson $75 to play and tickets sold for 50 cents to the 2,000 spectators, according to Yale archives.

From his time at Yale to his death, Bulldog football coach Walter Camp ’81 — known as

“The Father of American Football” — served on various committees that developed guidelines for the American game.

Harvard won the first game 4–0, but the Crimson did not claim another victory until 1890.

1914: Yale Bowl christening

Nearly 40 years into the rivalry and 22 victories later, the Bulldogs had outgrown their wooden, 33,000-seat home at the Yale Fields. As a replacement, Yale commissioned a stadium with nearly 70,000 seats uniquely surrounding the field — the Yale Bowl.

The federal government designated the Bowl as a national landmark in 1987. Since its completion, the grounds have hosted Harvard on odd-numbered years, with few exceptions.

One year after ground was broken, the Bowl opened its doors for the 35th playing of The Game on Nov. 21, 1914. The following morning’s New York Times’ issue described the event as a “real spectacle,” which drew in a crowd of 70,000 spectators.

Unfortunately for the Bulldogs, Crimson player T.J. Coolidge, Jr., completed a 95-yard run — the longest run in Harvard history at the time, according to the NYT.

Harvard won 36–0. The Bulldogs claimed their next victory in 1916.

1934: Handsome Dan kidnapped — twice

On the eve of the 53rd playing of The Game, Handsome Dan II was dognapped by a group of Harvard students, according to Yale Athletics.

Morning newspapers captured a photo of Handsome Dan at the feet of John Harvard’s statue. No records included the aforementioned photograph.

Accounts of the event di er. Yale Athletics writes that Handsome Dan simply ate “‘a ham-

burger,’ and quite joyously, at the feet of the John Harvard’s statue.” But an archived Yale Bulletin post and a 1950 article published by The Harvard Crimson places the mascot in a more compromising position — licking the statue’s feet after being lured with hamburger grease.

The mascot had been the victim of the same crime earlier that year. The NYT ran an article on March 16, 1934 detailing the first kidnapping.

“Return Handsome Dan within thirty-six hours or take the consequences,” said the Eli freshman committee, who had raised funds to purchase the mascot the previous fall. “Handsome Dan is a sick dog and the veterinarian says he may die unless he is provided with proper diet.”

Handsome Dan II died three years later after sustaining a leg fracture from a jump.

The Bulldogs began a three year winning streak in 1934 after defeating Harvard 14–0.

1968: Yale Beats Harvard 29–29

The 85th playing of The Game resulted in a 29–29 tie after Harvard miraculously scored 16 points in the last 42 seconds. On the following morning, The Harvard Crimson published the now-infamous headline “Harvard Beats Yale 29–29.”

In an article published in 2019, the Crimson detailed the story behind the headline, which inspired a documentary in 2008.

William M. “Bill” Kutik, Crimson editor in 1968, told the newspaper that even if the headline was clearly inaccurate, it “captured the emotional sense of the game.”

Kutik described the moments before the clock struck zero at the game to his fellow editors in hopes of convincing them to run the headline.

“Two half-minutes before the game ended, Yalies were

unspooling rolls of toilet paper from their side of the stadium, cheering and screaming because they knew for sure that they had won the game,” Kutik told the Crimson. “And then when those unbelievable 16 points were scored in the last forty two seconds, emotionally, they all felt they had lost.”

Yale came into the game with high hopes after completing the season with a 16-game winning streak. For the first time since the 1909 season, the Bulldogs and the Crimson both boasted perfect 8–0 records.

This game marked the final tie in Yale-Harvard history, as rules later eliminated ties from college football by mandating an overtime period.

The Bulldogs claimed a 7–0 victory the following year.

2004: The “We Suck” prank and the airplane During the 121st game, Harvard students graciously accepted red or white fliers from the “Harvard Pep Squad,” who ran up and down the stadium with painted faces and megaphones encouraging a crowd of 1,800 to hold up their papers. They were told the sign would read “Go Harvard.” Unbeknownst to them, the “Pep Squad” was 20 Yale students in Crimson disguise.

The crowd of Harvard students, faculty and alumni proudly held up the papers spelling “We Suck” to the rest of the stadium.

Pierson students Michael Kai ’05 and David Aulicino ’05 originally engineered the prank for the 2003 game, where they planned to tape the papers to the stadium seats. But their attempts were thwarted by security guards, who asked them to leave the premises after a pre-game bomb scare.

“It was almost sad,” Dylan Davey ’05 GRD ’13 MED ’14 told the News in a 2004 article.

“There were all these grandfather and grandmother types — and they all had big smiles, saying, ‘Oh you’re so cute, I’m so glad you’re doing this.’ I felt bad for about two minutes. Then I got over it.”

According to the article, the Harvard crowd held up the sign for 4 minutes and 47 seconds before halftime. They proceeded to hold it up several more times after that — prompted by Kai and Aulicino, who “ran up and down the aisles, cheering them on.”

The prank made national headlines, but it was hardly the only one orchestrated by Yale students. The senior class hired an airplane to fly over the stadium with a sign that read “Too Many Can Tabs, Not Enough Kegs, Love, Yale ’05.” Other Bulldogs stole the Harvard flag as a decoy ran around the field with a residential college flag to distract security guards.

Harvard added another victory to its four-year streak with a 35–3 win. The Bulldogs broke

it in 2006 before the Crimson began a nine-year streak the following year.

2019: “Nobody Wins” Protest

As the halftime show ended, 150 people flocked to the field at the Yale Bowl demanding that Yale and Harvard divest from fossil fuels, private prisons and Puerto Rican debt. Their banners read “Nobody Wins: Yale and Harvard are complicit in climate justice,” “Presidents Bacow and Salovey: Our future demands action now” and “This is an emergency.”

“We planned to remain there until Yale and Harvard met our demands to divest from the fossil fuel industry and cancel their holdings in predatory Puerto Rican debt,” Nora Heaphy ’21 and one of the organizers of the protest, told Grist.

Urged by the Yale and New Haven police departments, most of the protesters left the field after half an hour, according to the News. But a small number of them remained and were later arrested. The protest delayed the start of the second half of the game.

The protest made national headlines and received mixed reactions throughout the media.

Harvard football captain Wesley Ogsbury supported the protest in a video statement posted afterwards. U.S. Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Julian Castro — as well as U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and celebrities including George Takei, Kenneth Cole and David Hogg — congratulated the protestors via Twitter.

In April 2021, Yale created new principles for divesting from fossil fuels. In September 2021, Harvard announced that it would end all investments in the fossil fuel industry.

The Game went into overtime and culminated in a 50–43 Bulldog victory.

Today

In their last game before Yale-Harvard — this past weekend — Team 149 handed Princeton their first loss of the season, moving the Bulldogs into tie for first place in the Ivy League Conference with the Tigers.

“I’m incredibly proud of Team 149,” Gargiulo said. “It is a group of hardworking, selfless individuals who have relentless pursuit in what we are trying to accomplish. We have a really talented roster.”

This Saturday, the Bulldogs will travel to Cambridge for the first time since 2016 in hopes of securing the Ivy League title in the 138th playing of The Game.

Contact NICOLE RODRIGUEZ at nicole.rodriguez.nr444@yale.edu

ROBBIE SHORT/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Since 1875, Yale and Harvard’s historic rivalry has played out across multiple centuries, stadiums and sports.

COURTESY OF DAVID SCHAMIS

Yale football team has dominated opponents on o ense with the best rushing attacks in the Ivy League, led by a strong group of o ensive linemen.

The Yale-Harvard game for dummies

BY AMELIA LOWER AND BEN RAAB STAFF AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Never watched a Yale football game before? Never watched a football game in the first place? Not even sure what football is?

Don’t fret. This article will prepare you with everything you need to know ahead of the 138th annual game between Yale and Harvard. What is “The Game”?

“The Game” refers to the annual college football match between the Yale Bulldogs — also known as the Blue and White — and the Harvard Crimson. The teams fi rst met in 1875, and have met 137 times since then.

In the all-time series, Yale leads 68–61–8, but Harvard has been gaining ground in recent years. From 2007 to 2015, the Crimson won nine consecutive times.

In last year’s game, Harvard won 34–31 after a fourth quarter comeback. The annual matchup is always played as both teams’ last game of the season and is considered to be one of the biggest matchups in American college football.

How has Yale’s season gone so far?

Yale started o the season with an ugly 38–14 loss against Holy Cross, one of three non-conference games on their schedule. Non-conference games are not against Ivy League schools — these games are good practice but ultimately do not matter in determining the Ivy League standings.

The Elis have since had a strong season. The Bulldogs have gone on to beat every other team on their schedule except for their loss to Penn in a close 20–13 game. After losing to Penn, the Elis bounced back against Columbia with a decisive 41–16 victory and trounced Brown with a winning score of 69–17, with their most points scored in a game since 1929.

Last week, Yale secured a crucial comeback victory against Princeton, who came into the game with a perfect Ivy League record before being beaten by the Bulldogs 24–20.

Winning against Yale would have granted Princeton the Ivy League title, but the Blue and White refused to hand them a victory. The win brought Yale to a 5–1 record in the Ivy League and kept their title hopes alive ahead of the final game of the season.

What is at stake in this game?

Quite a lot. If Yale beats Harvard, which has a 4–2 conference record, the Bulldogs will automatically secure at least a share of the league championship. In the Ivy League, there are no playo s or a final game to determine the winner. The championship is won by whoever finishes the season in first place, and, in the case of a tie, it can be shared by multiple teams.

Whether or not Yale shares the championship, in this case, is determined by the result of another important game happening this weekend. Penn (4–2 Ivy) will face off against Princeton (5–1 Ivy).

If Yale wins against Harvard and Princeton beats Penn, then Yale and Princeton would both finish the season with a 6–1 record and share the Ivy League title. However, if Yale wins and Penn beats Princeton, then Yale would finish the season with more wins than any other team, making the Bulldogs the sole Ivy League champions.

Even if the Bulldogs were to lose against Harvard, it would still be possible for them to finish as a co-champion if Penn were to win against Princeton. In that case, all four teams would finish the season with a conference record of 5–2, meaning the season would end in a four-way tie for first place.

If Harvard beats Yale and Princeton wins their game, then Princeton would win the title, and Yale would

tie with Harvard for second place in the league.

What should you be watching out for?

The Bulldogs are a very “run heavy” team, meaning they move down the field by running the ball on the ground rather than throwing it through the air. Yale averages a whopping 234 rushing yards per game, the most in the Ivy League in that statistic by more than 70 yards. Yale is also the only team in the league that averages more rushing yards per game than passing yards.

The Elis are led on offense by quarterback Nolan Grooms ’24. Typically, the quarterback’s primary role is to throw the ball downfield to the receivers, but Grooms combines playing styles of a typical quarterback and a typical running back, averaging more than 75 rush yards per game.

Grooms is second in all of the Ivy League in total rushing yards with 682, an unusual statistic considering his primary job is to throw the ball.

Following Grooms in Ivy-wide total rushing yards are teammates, Tre Peterson ’24 and Joshua Pitsenberger ’26, with 650 and 585 yards respectively. The two running backs are both heavily relied upon throughout games. Pitsenberger was named to the watch list of the 2022 Stats Perform Jerry Rice Award, which is given to a first year in FCS Division I collegiate football.

With this running back duo and Grooms’ unique play, expect Yale to run the ball a lot on offense this Saturday.

While Yale’s success this season has been primarily a result of their offensive prowess, they have also benefited from strong defensive play.

Linebacker Hamilton Moore ’23 is second on the team in tackles with 57 this season. The linebacker’s role is to lead the defense and call out the plays. Hamilton also has two interceptions on the season,

including

Contact AMELIA LOWER at amelia.lower@yale.edu and BEN RAAB at ben.raab@yale.edu@yale.edu .

SPORTS PREDICTIONS

The Sports Desk at the News is proud to present our predictions for this year’s playing of The Game:

Andrew Cramer: Harvard 34–31

Hamera Shabbir: Yale 32–27

Rosie Braceras: Yale 24–17

Pranava Dhar: Yale 30–24

Henry Frech: Yale 35–28

Spencer King: Yale 31–21

Ben Raab: Yale 23–17

Nicole Rodriguez: Yale 36–29

Paloma Vigil: Yale 40–38

Peter Williams: 31–28

Flirting with the Enemy

BY ELENA UNGER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

“You can set your bags down over there.” You brush your hair out of your face and survey the room around you. It’s small, much smaller than you expected. Then again, this is Harvard. Your expectations were far too high.

“Thank you for letting me stay,” you say to your host, tentatively taking a seat on their sofa. They’re a random Harvard freshman your residential college assigned you to stay with for The Game. You can’t help but feel like an intruder — like you’re a friend their mom has forced them to include.

They shrug. “It’s no big deal. This time next year, I’ll probably be invading your dorm.” You fake a laugh, just to be polite, before an awkward silence fills the dorm. “Hey, um, where’s your bathroom?”

“Just go out the door, then make a right. You’ll see it.”

The couch squeaks a little as you get up. You’re eager for a moment to yourself. Everything about this school feels ancient, you think, grimacing as the residue from the rusty doorknob rubs o on your fingers.

Your phone dings! in your pocket, so you dig it out and look at the screen. Head down, you step into the hallway—

—and run right into a wall of muscle.

“Watch it,” a deep voice grumbles. You look up into a pair of dark brown eyes. “Sorry,” you clip. He’s tall, so you have to take a step back in order to look at him properly.

The guy studies you for a moment before rolling his eyes. “You’re a Yalie. Of course.” You follow his gaze to your white knit sweater and its bold navy “Y” stitched proudly in the center. You dropped one hundred dollars on it just so you could take cute photos at The Game, and it’s the most basic Yale merch you own. It stands in stark contrast to his own polyester t-shirt. The

crimson fabric hugs his Herculean frame, and the words “Harvard Athletics” stretch across his broad chest.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” you ask, defensive.

He shakes his head, and his curly brown hair flops back and forth. “There’s so many of you. It’s like you’re taking over our campus.”

“Someone’s got to liven it up. This place is miserable.”

He lets out a chuckle, and you cross your arms. “You’re just jealous.”

It’s your turn to laugh. “Jealous? Of red brick buildings and shitty parties? I think not.”

“Oh, please.” He leans back against the wall, eyeing you with suspicion. “Let me guess: you didn’t get accepted here, and that’s why you’re at Yale.”

“Let me guess: you’re a pre-law trust fund baby who has never had to work a day in his life,” you shoot back, raising an eyebrow. His mouth parts in surprise, and your lips turn up in a smirk. “Am I wrong?”

“Pre-med,” he stutters. “And I’m not a trust fund baby.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“At least I won’t be rooting for the losing team at The Game,” he tries again.

You can’t help but roll your eyes. “Fat chance. If Harvard wins, I’ll personally take the whole football team out to dinner.”

“I’ll take you up on that,” he replies. He spreads his arms proudly. “You’re looking at the quarterback.”

You blink at him in disbelief. “Are you serious?”

“Why would I joke when there’s a free meal on the line?” He grins mischievously. “Is this an o cial bet?”

“Uhh, I’m broke,” you reply. “I don’t have enough money to take a whole football team out — not that I’ll need to, because Yale’s gonna win, but still.”

“What about one person?” he presses. “If you’re so confident, let’s bet on it. Loser has to buy the other person a meal. Deal?” Is this a date? your brain practically screams. You don’t necessarily want it to be one; it’s not like you’re attracted to this pretentious prick, but your middle school self read a few too many enemies-to-lovers fanfictions to not be excited at the prospect.

You stick out your hand, and he shakes it. “Deal.”

“I’ll give you my number,” he o ers. You try to ignore it, but a stubborn jolt of excitement runs through you as you hand him your phone. “I’ll text you after The Game and tell you where you’re paying for dinner.”

“We’ll see how confident you are when you see the scoreboard tomorrow,” you reply as he hands back your phone.

He gives a little salute before turning on his heel and walking back down the hallway. “May the better team win,” he calls back over his shoulder.

A grin spreads across your face. “Don’t worry, we will.” ***

By the time he pays the check at dinner the next night, the smirk has vanished from his face. “Sore loser?” you quip, fighting a smile.

“It was a close game,” he begrudgingly admits.

“I’d hardly call 49 to 27 a ‘close game,’” you laugh, putting on your coat. You’ve had a surprisingly good time tonight. For a Harvard guy, he’s not half bad.

“You got your dinner,” he reminds you. “There’s no need to gloat.”

“And it was delicious.” You shoot him a smile, a real one. “Thank you. This was great.”

“Where are you o to now?” he asks. You shiver as you push open the door and

SERIES STATS: First meeting: Nov. 13, 1875

Head-to-head results: Yale is 68–61–8 all-time against Harvard National Title count: Yale 27, Harvard 13

Heisman Trophy count: Yale 2, Harvard 0

Hall of Famers: Yale 28, Harvard 20

step into the bitter November air. “I should start packing. My flight home leaves in a few hours.”

He stops walking and turns to face you. You mirror his movements and suddenly, you’re standing nose-to-nose. “Would it be crazy if I asked you to stay?”

You wait for the punchline, but it never comes. You stare back into his brown eyes, and his gaze is so intense that you know he’s not joking. “Stay in Boston?” you clarify, and he nods. Slowly, you start to shake your head. “I can’t—”

The rest of your excuse dies on your lips as he closes the distance between you both. Your lips collide, and though you know it’s wrong, something about it feels so right.

He pulls away and looks at you with a sheepish grin. “Now can you stay?”

No! your brain shouts.

Your voice disobeys. “I guess I can always change my flight.”

***

“What ever happened to that guy from Harvard?”

You glance up at your friend mid-bite. You’re sitting in the Silliman dining hall, debriefing after Thanksgiving break. “Who?”

“You know, the one you changed your flight for.” She takes a bite of her burger and chews it, pensive. “You seemed pretty serious for a few days there. Have you talked to him since?”

You shake your head immediately. “Not really. I wasn’t feeling it.”

“I’m sorry,” your friend frowns. “He sounded nice.”

You shrug. “I guess he was. I don’t know. It was fun for a night.” You lock eyes, and you give her a wink. “Besides, who wants a Harvard man anyway?”

Contact ELENA UNGER at elena.unger@yale.edu .

a one-handed interception with 36 seconds left to seal the game against Dartmouth. Defensive lineman Clay Patterson ’24 leads the Bulldogs with six sacks — which is when a defensive player tackles the quarterback for a loss of yardage — on the season. Last year, he was listed as a watchlist player for the Buchanan National Defensive Player of the Year last year and finished the season as Third-Team All-American, along with being named All-Ivy First Team.

Cornerback Wande Owens ’23 leads the team in tackles with 58 this season. His role on the field is to defend the wide receivers, and he will likely be lined up opposite of Harvard’s best receiver.

Last year, the Bulldogs finished the season fifth in the Ivy League.