Yale Daily News — Week of Nov. 19, 2021

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

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 · VOL. CXLIV, NO. 7 · yaledailynews.com

Yale, city strike 6-year deal

YLS admins sued in Amy Chua case Student plaintiffs allege retaliation

BY EDA AKER AND PHILIP MOUSAVIZADEH STAFF REPORTERS

SYLVAN LEBRUN/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Salovey, Elicker and other officials announced the new agreement at a joint city hall press conference on Wednesday.

Officials promise $52M in new contributions, new ped zone on High St

BY SYLVAN LEBRUN AND SAI RAYALA STAFF REPORTERS Yale and New Haven will launch several initiatives to build up the University’s commitment to the city, including an increase to Yale’s voluntary contribution, the establishment of a new Center for Inclusive Growth and a new expectation that the University will offset city revenue lost on properties it takes off the tax roll.

Officials gathered on Wednesday afternoon to announce the changes, which follow years of advocacy from unions and local organizations.

Yale’s voluntary contribution is slated to rise $52 million over the course of six years, which will bring the total contribution during that time period to $135.4 million. The Center for Inclusive Growth will “seek to identify economic and social development initiatives that will bolster growth throughout our community,” according to a press release. Officials also announced that the stretch of High Street between Elm and

Chapel Streets — which passes between Old Campus and Harkness Tower — will be redeveloped through Yale funding and guidance as a City-owned pedestrian walkway.

The commitment follows recent news that the University’s endowment has increased $11.1 billion to a total value of $42.3 billion in the 2021 fiscal year. At the same time, the city projected a budget deficit of $66 million for fiscal year 2021-22 before it received additional funding from the state and Yale. City officials and advocacy organizations have long called on Yale to increase its voluntary payments to the city, including an ongoing Yale: Respect New Haven campaign that has called on the University to pay the full amount of the tax break it receives for its nonprofit status.

“Yale and New Haven have a bond that has been tested by time and strengthened by shared purpose,” University SEE TOWN-GOWN PAGE 4

Two unnamed Yale Law School students filed a complaint Monday against three Law School administrators and the University for allegedly “blackball[ing]” them from job opportunities after they refused to endorse a statement in the ongoing investigation against law professor Amy Chua.

The students, referred to as Jane and John Doe throughout the lawsuit, are suing the University and Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken, Law School Associate Dean Ellen Cosgrove and Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Yaseen Eldik on the grounds of breach of contract, intentional interference with prospective busi-

ness relationships and defamation, among others. The complaint — a copy of which was obtained by the News — was filed in the United States District Court of Connecticut. The plaintiffs requested punitive damages of at least $75,000 and compensatory damages of at least $75,000, among other monetary rewards.

“Two Yale Law School deans, along with Yale Law School’s Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, worked together in an attempt to blackball two students of color from job opportunities as retaliation for refusing to lie to support the University’s investigation into a professor of color,” the complaint reads.

SEE CHUA PAGE 4

7,313 apply early, 8% down from 2020

YALE DAILY NEWS

The Office of Undergraduate Admissions will read 7,313 applications as officers begin to build the class of 2026.

BY JORDAN FITZGERALD STAFF REPORTER Aspiring members of the class of 2026 sent 7,313 early action applications to Yale this fall, the second largest in Yale’s history.

This year’s pool only fell behind last year, when the Office of Undergraduate Admissions read 7,939 early applications. This year’s application pool is about eight percent smaller than last year’s cohort, and 27 percent larger than 2019. First generation college students, international students and underrepresented racial or ethnic groups bucked this trend, rising in both 2020 and 2021.

Last year, 10.5 percent of early action applicants were admitted into the college, which fell from 13.8 and 13.19 percent acceptance rates for the class of 2024 and the class of 2023, respectively. Early action applicants will find out their application status in December.

“As always, the admissions office is much more interested in the strength and diversity of the pool of students who apply to Yale each year than simply the number of students who apply,” Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan told the News. “The Admissions Committee is currently in the process of con-

sidering early action applicants, and we look forward to sharing some good news with admitted students in the coming weeks.”

According to Mark Dunn, the director of outreach and communications at the admissions office, more students than ever are applying in every demographic category the office tracks. Most subgroups within the application pool followed the same trend as the program overall — applications spiked in 2020 and fell slightly in 2021.

Last year, Dunn said applications from first-generation, internaSEE 2026 PAGE 5

Elicker sets priorities for second term

BY SYLVAN LEBRUN STAFF REPORTER

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The mayor emphasized ongoing economic growth during the pandemic.

CROSS CAMPUS

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1950.

Arnold Wolfers, chairwoman of Yale's Red Cross blood drive, announces an all-time record of 148 pints for the amount of blood collected over one day in New Haven.

Elicker is the 51st mayor of New Haven. After a first term interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Mayor Justin Elicker is heading into his second with plans to introduce infrastructure bills, expand climate programs and increase city funding.

On Election Day earlier this month, Elicker won 84 percent of the vote across New Haven, a margin that he said encourages him that residents are enthusiastic about the work he has done in the city. In the beginning of his second term, a number of projects will be voted on in the Board of Alders and rolled out, including the new agreement with Yale that increases the University’s voluntary contribution to the city by $52 million over the next six years. Affordable housing and infrastructure bills, as well as the allocation of over $100 million in federal American Rescue

INSIDE THE NEWS

Plan funding, are also high on the mayor’s agenda.

Elicker emphasized the ongoing economic growth in New Haven that has continued amid the pandemic, and he said he hopes that his administration will both bolster this development and distribute its benefits equitably.

Path to a Second Term A Connecticut native, Elicker first moved to New Haven 13 years ago to attend graduate school at Yale. He later served four years on the Board of Alders representing Ward 10, before an unsuccessful first mayoral run in 2013. Previously, he had worked as a foreign service officer for the State Department for five years and taught at elementary and high schools.

After defeating incumbent Toni Harp in 2019 with 69 percent of the vote, Elicker had just over two months in office before the pandemic hit New Haven. Looking back, he said that he is proud of not

only the city’s response to COVID19, but of all the other projects that he helped push across the finish line amid the crisis.

“The last two years have been dominated by COVID-19… and we're not out of the woods yet,” Elicker said. “But when you think about the other things that we've accomplished, they are just quite remarkable during a pandemic.

We’ve been able to get many other things done that have been elusive for decades.”

In his first term, Elicker secured increased state funding for the city by fighting for the expansion of the Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILOT, program.

Passed this summer, this new plan will have New Haven receive $90 million from the state this year, more than double the $41 million received in 2020. Elicker listed this as one of his proudest accomplishments, along with the recent Yale agreement and the SEE ELICKER PAGE 5

COUNSELING

YCBA

KHAN

FMR. AACC DIRECTOR MARY LI HSU ’80 DIES AT 63

The School of Medicine’s Student Mental Health and Wellness Program aims to provide students with short-term individual therapy and counseling.

PAGE 9 UNIVERSITY

PAGE 7 SCITECH

PAGE 8 ARTS

PAGE 11 CITY

After the redisplay of the controversial group portrait at the Yale Center for British Art, community members weigh in.

Mariam Khan '24 made history as the youngestever elected member of the Hamden Board of Education.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 2

OPINION G U E ST C O LU M N I ST A RU N I M A S I R CA R

We demand action, A not ambition “I

t is not just words we are conceding, it is our lives, livelihoods and our future”. That is just one example of the many heart-wrenching statements that were heard on the last day at COP26. It is often too easy to get enamored by glamorous world leaders like John Kerry or Nicola Sturgeon speaking to us on a global platform like in Glasgow, but it is hearing the humbling words of those like Lia Nicholson, a negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, or AOSIS, and others including indigenous leaders, youth activists and underrepresented vulnerable communities that are at the forefront of the climate crisis that reminds us that this is an urgent, arduous but worthwhile fight.

For the first time we heard our voices, the youth voices, being heard inside the plenary rooms.

And somehow, it still seemed to only be matched by empty words and empty promises that have long stood undelivered. Being at COP26 has been an entirely humbling, disillusioning and tiring experience — learning the truth that we have made leaps and bounds of progress today that we never could have imagined, but also, we are still failing in the face of real climate change and justice.

But it’s at times like these when the whole world gets a wake-up call that it’s worth remembering, failure is not an option.

Thinking doom and gloom is a slippery slope that we do not have the time for — it’s instead the time for all of us as individuals, communities and institutions to make significant and meaningful change.

Climate change is a social justice issue and, especially in New Haven, one rooted in structural urban inequality. Yale University has a massive role to play within the wider city context. It needs to ramp up its goals, strategies and investment within not just the University’s net- and absolute-zero future, but also in the New Haven community.

Even as individuals, it is our responsibility to be conscious of our choices and be critical of our leaders. And within our capacity as students in one of the world’s largest and wealthiest institutions, Yale University, we have a voice and an obligation to make sure that we are on the right path.

With COP26 revealing some of the most pertinent yet contentious issues, climate finance and loss and damage, it’s time we start thinking about how, even in our own little Yale bubble, we can create systemic and institutional change to address these — would it be something like introducing a degrowth framework to how Yale works, or ideas

of climate reparations or working more closely with the New Haven community to tackle climate justice issues rooted within deep urban injustices like the food apartheid?

BEING AT COP26 HAS BEEN AN ENTIRELY HUMBLING, DISILLUSIONING AND TIRING EXPERIENCE — LEARNING THE TRUTH THAT WE HAVE MADE LEAPS AND BOUNDS OF PROGRESS TODAY THAT WE NEVER COULD HAVE IMAGINED, BUT ALSO, WE ARE STILL FAILING IN THE FACE OF REAL CLIMATE CHANGE AND JUSTICE. With the student-led organizations like Yale Endowment Justice Coalition and Yale Student Environmental Coalition and Yale-affiliated programs like the Urban Resource Initiative working both within Yale and within the wider city context, we have seen many successes in how the students, faculty and community can campaign and work toward effective change. There is an increasing academic imperative for Yale to expand the research and teaching within climate change and related mechanisms of innovation. What we need is a social and infrastructural shift that works with the highest level of possible ambition followed by action to achieve net-negative emissions, climate justice and climate education at Yale and in New Haven.

Our current fight to meet our goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius is a lifeline; this is our moral obligation.

ARUNIMA SIRCAR is a second-year student in the School of the Environment. Contact her at arunima.sircar@yale.edu .

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The wisdom of platitudes

ny good writer knows that the cardinal rule of writing is to eschew platitudes.

Budding writers, from a young age, are trained in the ways of vigilance. We are taught to scrutinize our sentences, looking to root out hackneyed phrases and banal constructions that threaten to eclipse our authentic voice like noxious, overgrown weeds.

As we grow up, our worldview becomes messier, gaining the nuance of an increasingly complex consciousness. We are forced to reconsider convictions, to balance extremes — deontology and teleology, God and modernism — and to develop our own system of ethics. And so, we are lulled by this complexity to think that platitudes have no place in ethics or in art. We find their veneer over-polished, banishing clichés to cheap thrillers and dispossessing them of any applicability to the real world. The notion that time heals all wounds scarcely seems applicable to the amputation of a limb.

Our denunciation of platitudes is undeniably a product of the narrative that each one of us has an exceptional point of view, one that defies the inherent universality of generalizations. Can pithy sayings and clichés contain pearls of wisdom that apply to each of us, even in the face of infinite and infinitesimal complexity?

The central problem is that inspiration breeds wisdom, and inspiration is as elusive as it is subjective. Some find inspiration in Taylor’s version of Red, in her symbolic reclamation of her own musical agency, while others find inspiration in Tolstoy’s self-portraits, as Levin ponders the meaning of his very existence with his whetted scythe. However, in all cases, inspiration seems embedded within grand narratives and magnum opuses. Personal inspi-

ra t i o n a n d transcendent wisdom are contingent on their context — found at the apotheosis of an artist’s lifelong musiPRADZ cal journey or SAPRE at the climax of a character Growing arc. Platitudes are disembodpains ied — the limbs that once connected them to real life have been mutilated by Procrustes. They are fit for a world of forms, not a world of being.

Our resistance to simply, artificially packaged one-liners of wisdom is natural. However, perhaps the problem is not the processing of platitudes but our consumption of them.

Platitudes are thrown at us like panaceas. Hearing statements like “you’ll laugh about this moment in 10 years” is particularly unhelpful to a Yale student who feels like their world is burning in a hellfire of midterms and extracurriculars.

But if aphorisms are abstracted from real life, their value comes from when they are reapplied.

If aphorisms are reductionist, they are a starting point to develop wisdom that we apply to our lives, not wisdom in its ultimate form. Telling me to cherish the small victories — including the simple fact that I am at Yale — rings very different on the first day of the spring when the snow has melted and when Cross Campus comes back to life and in the middle of finals week.

I want to “live in the moment” when I’m surrounded by fall foliage and permanent laughter on retreat with a comedy group, less

so on a Tuesday morning before my 9 a.m.

Aphorisms and clichés are inescapable during our bright college years. The first time you struggle with your identity, you’ll hear a litany of people saying “be yourself because that’s what matters.” The first time you fail you’ll hear proclamations about each failure being a step on the staircase to success. Sometimes these can be reassuring. Other times it can remind us that we were not created by Aesop, and our lives are not fables. Sometimes pithy moral witticisms just don’t help.

What would happen, then, if we decided to build our own aphorisms? Scour your favourite books, movies, poems for lines of inspiration that strike you and let those be the lyrics to your soundtrack. You don’t need to “pray for a window to open when a door closes,” in the words of your least favourite elementary school teacher. You can take Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha as your inspiration instead — relying on the notion that our path is a spiral and we have climbed many steps instead.

Applying aphorisms is submitting to a deterministic fallacy.

Discovering them is glimpsing into the transcendence and universality of our experiences at college. You don’t need to convince yourself that everything happens for a reason. You’ll believe it after your first serendipitous meeting in a classroom, party or coffee shop. Telling yourself to live, laugh and love may be the least effective thing you can do for your own happiness, but reflecting on a life full of laughter and love might just be the key to contentment.

PRADZ SAPRE is a sophomore in Benjamin Franklin College. His column, “Growing pains,” runs biweekly on Monday. Contact him at pradz.sapre@yale.edu .

GUEST COLUMNIST SHI WEN YEO

The triumph of Squid Game This article contains spoilers for the Netflix TV Show Squid Game.

A

ll of the players stand around uneasily, shifting in their blood-stained shoes. The “Squid Game” administrators have just instructed them to, for the next game, pair up. The central question here is — who to team up with? Longformed alliances are broken as players quickly spurn old friendships in favor of teaming up with stronger players. Apologetic glances are exchanged to the old and frail in a scene that exposes the deepest, vilest and most self-interested personalities buried deep within the characters.

In some ways, our life at Yale is also littered with these difficult moments and questions.

Who to team up with for a group project? Who to check problem set answers with? If given a choice, when do I choose to give a presentation?

“Squid Game” is a Korean television show that has, in the last month, morphed into something that less resembles a TV show and more so a cult following. Fans worldwide have seized upon this unexpected Netflix Original’s success and based hundreds of Halloween costumes on it. What could be the reasons for its success?

The show takes place against a backdrop of destitution and poverty, which is what brought the characters to the game to begin with. Through the premise of a dystopian game, the show manages to showcase important societal issues that implicitly run through South Korean society, such as the rapidly expanding and insurmountable socioeconomic divides, youth debt, refugee crises and the mistreatment of foreign workers from South Asia.

The primary reason, however, for its smashing success on small screens worldwide, is the applicability of its trauma. We see ourselves in the shoes of the characters and sympathize with the difficult decisions that they have to make. Albeit writ large,

the essentials of their dilemmas are still very real to us.

“Squid Game” as a show speaks volumes to the essential Yale experience. I say this with a thought to my first year, when the genial and friendly arms of fellow first years was my everyday reality. Towards sophomore and junior year, however, I have witnessed a spike in the number of uncomfortable interactions and toxic behavior in the context of academic pressure. For instance, when choosing group partners for projects, I have on multiple occasions seen some people willfully left out of the running by sheer virtue of their class year or perceived lower standing in class.

In classes with many problem sets, it is too common to see people who want to get answers from others; and yet, they are incredibly reluctant to share their own.

We could even consider how the resurgence of academic dishonesty during the pandemic is very much an artifact of the “everyman-for-himself” mentality.

I am in no way trying to imply that this is the defining experience of every single student at Yale, and am more than sure that there are moments of compassion that occur on campus. What I am trying to say, though, is that there is an undercurrent of self-interest that pervades our communities. People are interested in their own classes, their own extracurriculars, their own friends and far too easily dispense of that which is not utile to them.

For all its fanciful sets and outrageously dramatized scenes, we would do well to think of Squid Game not just as a representation of what is, but as an invitation of what could be. In the context of Yale, this invitation is particularly timely. Despite a system or environment of academic pressures that might create a hostile environment, it is up to us, the individual players, to make compassionate choices. Yes, this might sound simple — how hard could it possibly be to be less self-involved? The truth of the matter is, choosing to prioritize the interests of others over your

own sometimes involves making very difficult choices. Help a friend out on a problem set even if the class is curved. Actually listen when someone is telling you about their day. Miss those office hours to walk a suitemate to Yale Health. It is the sum of these choices that makes or breaks a healthy campus community.

DESPITE A SYSTEM OR ENVIRONMENT OF ACADEMIC PRESSURES THAT MIGHT CREATE A HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT, IT IS UP TO US, THE INDIVIDUAL PLAYERS, TO MAKE COMPASSIONATE CHOICES. By the end of the show, the main character’s outward appearance is a far cry from his original beaming self. His clothes are bloody and tattered, and he has to murder his childhood best friend in order to win the game. But a moment of incredible compassion moves him to stay his hand.

We are too, by the end of four years, hardened and disheveled from trying to get ahead in the rat race that is Yale. But an important lesson that “Squid Game’’ teaches us is that it is up to us to create the college environment we want to see. We could just think of our own interests a little less and perhaps take a second to spare a thought for someone else.

SHI WEN YEO is a junior in Morse College. Contact her at shiwen.yeo@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 3

“Life is too short not to have pasta, steak, and butter.” IMAN SOMALI-AMERICAN FASHION MODEL

Faculty salary gap will take years to close, administrators say

BY ISAAC YU STAFF REPORTER Over the last decade, many of Yale’s professors have made less and less money compared to those holding similar positions at the University’s peer institutions. It might be another decade before that changes.

Last Thursday, Yale Provost Scott Strobel pledged to close the gap between salaries for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yale and those at similar schools. The FAS Senate will soon form a special budgetary committee to advise the financial investments in faculty.

Still, data from the 2018 report from the Committee on the Economic Status of the Faculty, or CESOF — the most recent report the group has released — shows that the gap between faculty salaries at Yale and its peers began opening up more than a decade ago, when faculty pay at Yale last matched that of its peer institutions. The mechanisms that administrators plan to use mean some time will pass before the gap is corrected.

“We are beginning to catch up,” Gendler told the News. “We will close the gap in the amount of time that it took to open the gap and no longer. But we can’t necessarily adjust in a single year what took many years.”

The University has not yet provided details of how much of the budget will be allocated to boosting faculty salaries.

Gendler said that efforts to close the gap began around two years ago.

In January 2020, for example, a large number of structural adjustments were made for certain groups of faculty whose pay had fallen furthest behind peers, including professors who had been internally-promoted and long-serving lecturers. That same month, Gen-

dler also set a new minimum salary for ladder faculty and increased minimum pay for courses taught by instructional faculty.

Still, faculty have continued to sound the alarm about pay disparities. Professor of economics John Geanakoplos, who as chair of the FAS Senate authored several reports about University spending during the pandemic, noted that while the average raise was 0 percent in 2020 and 3.5 percent in 2021, inflation rates in that same two-year span could reach 10 percent, giving faculty members an effective 6.5 percent pay cut in real terms.

Geanakoplos said he hopes that Yale’s policies toward salary during the COVID-19 pandemic don’t mirror tendencies seen during past recessions.

“After each crisis, in the mid 1970s, in 1991, and after 2008, we hired less and paid less than our competitors,” Geanakoplos said.

“I hope the administration now is thinking a little bolder.”

He pointed out that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dartmouth College, both of which also saw unusually large endowment returns, recently announced pay increases or bonuses for faculty and staff.

Professor of chemical engineering Paul Van Tassel said that while Yale faculty may not feel any acute effects of the salary gap, the gap does pose a concern about Yale’s ability to compete against other universities to recruit quality faculty.

“There’s probably a bigger impact on the missed opportunities as to the people who are here,” Van Tassel said. “If we think of ourselves with Stanford and Princeton and Harvard, we should be paid roughly the same as them.”

Van Tassel added that while other universities may have to offset

high costs of living in larger cities like New York or San Francisco with higher salaries than Yale offers, home prices in New Haven have risen in the last two decades. If salaries were to increase to match costs of living, more professors, particularly younger and recently-recruited faculty, might live closer to Yale and vitalize campus culture.

The data Salaries at private colleges are typically kept confidential, making direct comparisons with other universities difficult. While universities share some data among themselves, Dean of Faculty Development Larry Gladney said that administrators often have a sense of how much other universities are paying based on their frequent searches for new faculty.

Additionally, faculty composition often varies; if a university has a higher proportion of faculty in a highly-paid field like computer science or data science, for example, its average salary would likely be higher than its peers.

The 2018 CESOF report used multiple datasets to analyze the gap in faculty salaries, factoring in ranks and weighting by departments. It cites public data from the American Association of University Professors, which includes salaries for professors in the FAS and Yale’s professional schools. The data shows that salaries in 2017 were 12 percent below those of the average of five peer institutions — Stanford, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and the University of Chicago. It also includes a second dataset produced by the Association of American Universities Data Exchange, which reports numbers specific to the FAS. That dataset showed that salaries in 2015 sat five percent below salaries for comparable groups of faculty at a wider set of peer institutions.

CESOF was slated to release another regular report in spring 2021 and presented preliminary findings to the FAS Senate in February, but the committee delayed its full release in part because of the pandemic, Gendler said. The report is now expected to be released later this year.

Raises, raises, raises Faculty raises come in two forms: standard raises based on yearly evaluations by deans and department chairs and structural adjustments that address specific groups of faculty.

Regular yearly raises begin with faculty submitting an activity report around January. Professors are asked to submit their contributions to the University and wider society over the last 12 months, including the publication of research papers and books, roles in public service or advising to graduate and undergraduate students.

Department chairs then give each faculty member a rating of between one and three, with twos being the default and threes reserved for those with particularly outstanding contributions. Full ratings are then submitted to Gendler and Gladney, who translate the ratings into percentage-based raises, which typically average around three percent.

The total allotment for faculty salaries and raises, however, is set by the University provost.

Ranks, too, are factored into each professor’s assigned percent raise, with junior faculty more likely to receive higher percentages than their seniors in order to account for their lower base pay.

Gladney said that outside of regular raises, the FAS Dean’s Office also frequently considers pay adjustments for a particular group of faculty. If one department is found to have an average below that

of another university, all of its faculty members may receive a special percentage increase. Salaries are also corrected to minimize gender pay gaps and to ensure that newly-recruited faculty salaries are not substantially higher than their internally-promoted peers.

Gladney added that faculty members are always welcome to inquire about their salaries. Active faculty members who receive offers for positions at other universities or institutions sometimes negotiate for higher retention packages.

Even with yearly ratings, Gladney stressed that salaries are not formulaic, but consider a professor’s holistic contributions.

The percentage system overall is a partial explanation for the widening gap between Yale and its peers, Gladney said. If the fractional pay increase is even slightly lower in a given year, the effects of the difference are then compounded in the years moving forward.

“We are committed to faculty salaries at Yale that properly acknowledge the excellence of our faculty, for our ladder faculty whose research shapes the world and our instructional and ladder faculty that engage in extraordinary teaching,” Gendler said.

But still, some faculty wonder as to why a school like Yale could be lagging behind its peers. Geanakoplos said that if Yale wants to continue to be competitive with peer institutions, it must provide competitive pay to recruit and retain star faculty members.

“I don’t know why Yale shouldn’t aspire to being the number one college in the country, as we used to be,” Geanakoplos said.

There are 676 members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

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

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“When I feel like the day is great? Pasta. When I feel like I want the day to be great? Pasta. It's just awesome.”

JENNIFER HYMAN CEO OF RENT THE RUNWAY

Two students file complaint against Gerken CHUA FROM PAGE 1 Yet various legal experts expressed questions over the goals and origins of the lawsuit.

They explained that one outcome of the case could be the revelation of private communications between the Law School administrators during the discovery process, and flagged that it was unusual for the plaintiffs to remain anonymous in a case of this nature.

“The lawsuit is legally and factually baseless, and the University will offer a vigorous defense,” University spokesperson Karen Peart wrote in an email to the News.

Law professor Monica Bell LAW ’09 said that she believes the sole point of the lawsuit is to generate press attention. She said that she does not believe the two law students “think they can win” the lawsuit, and that the lawsuit’s purpose is to “make things … look bad.”

David Lat LAW ’99, founding editor of the legal news website Above the Law, noted that the $75,000 in damages is the “bare minimum” for entering into federal court, suggesting that the plaintiffs may have other goals besides monetary rewards, namely seeking an official acknowledgement of wrongdoing on behalf of the University or wanting some sort of redress.

Lat also said that this lawsuit comes at a poor time for Gerken, whose deanship is soon up for review. Bell also noted the timing of Gerken’s upcoming possible reappointment, saying that it is important to keep in mind a “broader context” for the lawsuit. Yale’s deans are reviewed for reappointment every five years, and Gerken was appointed dean in 2017.

“Given that, it's unsurprising that we would see these stories escalate at this particular moment,” Bell said. “But I think the point is really to cause a stir, because the lawsuit frankly is embarrassing for those who filed it.”

Chua told the News that the issue underlying the lawsuit was “absolutely not about me. I am just trying to put this whole horrific nightmare behind me and I wish it would just go away… I don't ever want to speak of it again.”

The Chua investigation Chua and her husband, currently-suspended law professor Jed Rubenfeld, first came under public scrutiny in September 2018 when they reportedly told female law students that they needed to look and dress a certain way to attain clerkships for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh ’87 LAW ’90. In 2020, Rubenfeld was suspended until at least 2022 due to allegations of sexual misconduct. University President Peter Salovey has not released specifics about Rubenfeld’s case.

Chua faced her own allegations of misconduct that she drank heavily with Law School students and remarked inappropriately on both students and faculty, according to a 2019 letter from Gerken that was obtained by the News. The Law School punished her — privately — by mandating that Chua not teach a small group for the 2020-21 academic year, imposing a financial penalty and removing her from the judicial clerkship committee. Chua also agreed “on her own initiative” to stop drinking with her students and socializing with them outside of class and office hours, according to Gerken’s letter.

The Law School’s investigation into Chua’s behavior was first made public in April 2021, when the News reported that she was hosting private gatherings in her New Haven home — despite having agreed to cease such out-of-class interactions in 2019. After Law School administrators were informed of these gatherings, including from a 20-page dossier that was com-

piled by a law student with personal knowledge of the gatherings, the Law School revoked Chua’s ability to lead a first-year small group for the 2021-22 academic year.

The ensuing controversy between Chua and Law School administrators gained national attention and was covered by the New York Times, the New Yorker, The Atlantic and New York Magazine.

The Doe v. Gerken lawsuit According to Monday’s filing, the Jane and John Doe mentioned in the lawsuit were the main subjects of the 20-page dossier of emails and text messages which became central to the Chua investigation, as they were the law students who allegedly went to Chua and Rubenfeld’s private residence.

Chua told the News that she has maintained a “friendly but distant relationship” with the two unnamed students since news of the dossier came to light, and that she has continued to offer herself as a mentor to them only if “there was no one else for them to talk to.”

The two law students claimed in the filing that the dossier placed them at the center of an “ongoing campus-politics feud” between Gerken and Chua. They objected to the dossier’s contents and reported this to the University.

According to the complaint, when the Law School administration became aware of the dossier, Cosgrove and Eldik pressured the two students to substantiate the claims in the dossier by submitting a formal complaint against Chua. The complaint claims that the dossier, and by extension the complaint, would have contained “knowingly and materially false statements.”

The lawsuit further alleges that after the students denied the contents of the dossier and declined to sign onto the statement against Chua, Cosgrove and Eldik called the students on a daily basis during one week in April 2021,

saying that the two had a “moral obligation” to “future generations of students” to make the statement against Chua.

The lawsuit also states that Eldik told Jane Doe that the dossier would likely end up in “every judge’s chamber,” keeping her from receiving job opportunities if she did not comply with the Chua investigation.

“I think this lawsuit does advance the public good because Yale Law School is a powerful institution, and people should know, and Yale Law School administrators should know, that they could be in a position of intimidating students — however privileged and fortunate those students may be to have gotten into the school,” said John Balestriere LAW ’98, who represents the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

After the two students ultimately refused to endorse the statement against Chua, the lawsuit alleges that Gerken and Cosgrove spoke with an “esteemed law professor and expert in constitutional law” who already employed the two students as research assistants, and attempted to dissuade him from hiring the students for the prestigious Coker Fellowship, annually offered to select third-year law students. The lawsuit alleges that Gerken and Cosgrove cited Jane and John Doe’s “lack of candor” regarding the dossier as reason for the professor not to hire them. Neither of the students were ultimately hired as Coker Fellows, according to the lawsuit.

Multiple sources have confirmed that the constitutional law professor in question is Paul Kahn, who could not immediately be reached for comment.

Underlying issues Lat spoke to the News about the intricacies of this suit and said that it is “unusual” for parties in a lawsuit to remain anonymous, explaining that the judge will have to approve the motion for the

plaintiffs to retain anonymity. In certain circumstances, plaintiffs may drop the case entirely if their motion for anonymity is denied by the judge, according to Lat. In this case, Lat explained, the students may be pursuing anonymity in order to avoid this story being tied to their names for years to come. Bell similarly said the students may be worried about attaching their names to “this frivolous lawsuit” — especially given that they are pursuing careers in the legal profession.

“It actually has to do with what I like to call the Google footprint,” Lat said. “They just don't want this to be the thing that pops up for years and years and years when [you] Google their name.”

Lat further added that one possible goal for this lawsuit is what might be produced during the discovery process.

“They want to get documents, they want to subpoena the other side [and] get internal emails between Gerken, Cosgrove and Eldik,” he said. “All of those emails would be… discoverable, meaning that they can be produced and turned over to the plaintiffs. The other thing about discovery is you get to ask questions of the relevant people under oath or deposition.”

He said that, even if the plaintiffs do not win the case, they could still force Law School administrators to reveal some “embarrassing” documents and emails.

Eldik and Cosgrove have already gained national attention this semester, after reports revealed that they had urged a student to send out a pre-drafted apology email after the student sent an invitation to a “trap house”themed party that some students found to be racially insensitive.

TheYale Law School is located at 127 Wall St. Contact EDA AKER at eda.aker@yale.edu and PHILIP MOUSAVIZADEH at philip.mousavizadeh@yale.edu.

Elicker, Salovey announce $140 million four-part town-gown deal

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The deal comes after years of advocacy from unions and organizations, including New Haven Rising and Local 34 and 35.

TOWN-GOWN FROM PAGE 1 President Peter Salovey said in a press release. “As a New Haven anchor institution and the city’s largest employer, the university is proud to do its part in building a community that creates sustained inclusive growth across every neighborhood in the city.

New Haven is poised for accelerated growth with increased funding from the federal government, the state and the university.”

The University currently pays $13 million for its annual voluntary contribution to its home city.

Yale will add $10 million per year to its voluntary contribution for the next five years and $2 million in the sixth year. Salovey said on Wednesday that this commitment will take effect during the current fiscal term, which runs from July 2021 to June 2022. The expected voluntary contribution for this period will be $23.2 million, according to the press release.

According to Henry Fernandez, executive director of the local nonprofit LEAP and head of the city delegation in joint negotiations with the University, “Yale's annual contributions do not have anything close to them” under the new plan. He said that he hopes that this will set a “new standard” for institutions across the country.

“This is an historic moment for the relationship between the City of New Haven and Yale Univer-

sity,” Mayor Justin Elicker said.

“Yale has contributed in many ways to the city, but with today’s announcement, Yale has committed to contribute more financially over the next six years than it has over the last 20 combined.”

Negotiations for the details of this new agreement took more than a year, according to Fernandez. They involved a large team of officials from the city and the University. Elicker said the “real lively dialogue” during the negotiations has helped build trust and understanding of each other's goals and set the stage for future collaborations. He added that while there was no linkage to the new union contract deal, working on the union deal during the pandemic created “a spirit of mutual cooperation” that also helped to conclude the New Haven deal.

In addition to the specifics of the voluntary contribution and Yale’s property tax exemptions, both sides also focused on how to address long-term issues of inequity in the city. Fernandez said the work of the newly-created Center for Inclusive Growth could make progress toward this aim.

The Center will be established through an additional $5 million from Yale in the coming six years. Kerwin Charles, dean of the School of Management, will help manage the Center. Charles’ area of expertise includes wealth inequality and the consequences of housing bubbles.

Although the specific framework and programs for the Center are still under development, Charles shared his hope to engage both Yale affiliates and New Haveners in conversations about how to encourage sustainable economic development in the city. Elicker said that as the city experiences growth and launches new opportunities, the Center will also help guide policy and create opportunities for New Haven residents.

Salovey described the Center as “a collaborative center that will work on the problems and challenges of urban centers like the city of New Haven in the current age.” He said that the Center will also allow Yale students and New Haven students to serve as interns, research assistants and in other positions.

Another initiative of the agreement is that Yale will temporarily increase contributions should it build new property. For years, local organizations and politicians have objected to the University’s tax-exempt status. On Wednesday, officials announced that for properties taken off the tax roll in the next six years, Yale will offset some of the lost tax revenue through additional voluntary payments. The University will also offset the loss for any existing commercial properties that it converts into an academic space.

The new tax offsets will be in addition to the state’s Payment in

Lieu of Taxes Program, or PILOT. Through the program, the state reimburses cities, towns and municipalities for the loss in revenue due to tax-exempt properties. President Salovey said that the reworking of PILOT last year, when the state legislature changed how municipalities receive aid for tax-exempt properties based on a new need-based formula, was “an enabling change.” It allowed the University to step up its contribution since Yale would not be the only player addressing the city’s financial challenges, he said.

Also as part of the agreement, the parties will establish a new public walkway in the center of Yale’s campus, on High Street between Chapel and Elm. The roadway will no longer be open to vehicular traffic other than emergency cars. Instead, that section of the street will be converted into a pedestrian-friendly walkway, similar to Wall Street. Yale will lead the walkway’s design, subject to the approval of the City Plan Commission and New Haven Traffic Authority.

Although Yale will fund the renovations and maintain the public space on High Street, the city will retain property rights. Speakers at the press conference emphasized the importance of welcoming all New Haveners into this new space, which is also intended to promote pedestrian safety in the area. Elicker said that keeping High Street in the public domain “sets the right tone that Yale is a part of our community.”

The four-pronged commitment is subject to a vote by the Board of Alders, for which a date has not yet been set, according to Board President and Ward 23 Alder Tyisha Walker-Myers.

After five years, Yale will pay an additional $2 million, rather than $10 million, to its baseline voluntary contribution.

At Wednesday’s press conference, Fernandez advised the mayor to “start negotiating” before they reach the sixth year of the agreement.

Fernandez called it, “The big red light in year six.” After the event, Salovey added that he expects the city and University to begin a new conversation in year five about what happens after the six-year period.

“The drop in year six is really kind of a reminder that we need to get down to business and do that,” Salovey said. “I fully suspect that will be done in good faith, and you will start hearing about that five years from now.”

Walker-Myers spoke about the importance of ongoing “uncomfortable” conversations between Yale and New Haven about community needs. She said the agreement’s most encouraging implication is that “residents finally have an opportunity to see that Yale actually heard what they were saying.”

“This is historic because we actually had unions, elected officials and community members all working together over a number of years saying, ‘Yale, please hear our cry,’” Walker-Myers said. “Yale stepped up and said ‘we're hearing you, we’re listening’. But a partnership is not over once an agreement is signed. It goes far beyond that.”

Local activist groups — many of whom have spent years pushing for Yale to increase its contribution to the city — celebrated the announcement, but emphasized the importance of continued collaboration.

In a joint statement, Rev. Scott Marks of New Haven Rising and Barbara Vereen of Local 34 UNITE HERE wrote on behalf of a coalition of local unions and advocacy organizations that “this campaign is decades in the making” and called the new initiatives “historic victories.”

“Members of our union and community coalition have marched, rallied, testified, risked arrest in civil disobedience, put signs in our yards, and have enjoyed thousands upon thousands of conversations with our neighbors,” they wrote in their joint statement. “Today’s announcement does not solve all our city’s problems, but it is a significant step in the right direction and a historic recognition that New Haven and Yale University’s fates are inextricably linked.”

In March 2020, 60 percent of New Haven’s grand list was tax-exempt.

Contact SYLVAN LEBRUN at sylvan.lebrun@yale.edu and SAI RAYALA at sai.rayala@yale.edu.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

FROM THE FRONT

"America has been conditioned to think of pasta as the never-ending pasta bowl and Olive Garden."

JOE BASTIANICH AMERICAN RESTAURATEUR

Yale's early applications fall after record-breaking year 2026 FROM PAGE 1 tional and underrepresented students increased at a rate that outpaced the general application pool.

Keith Light, director of international admissions and associate director of undergraduate admissions, called the rise in international applications “remarkable.”

Yale’s increase in international applications defies national trends, with Yale’s international applications growing even though the number of international students in the United States overall dropped during the pandemic after decades of uptick.

“Although my colleagues and I are eager to connect with prospective international students through outreach travel again, we have been so pleased with the enthusiastic ‘virtual’ interactions with students from every corner of the globe, including some remote nooks we hadn’t been able to reach in person before,” Light said.

The admissions office declined to cite a cause for this year’s large applicant pool. Last year, however, the office correlated the overall application increase with virtual outreach and a lack of standardized testing, and both policies are still in place.

For this admissions cycle, Yale remained test-optional. The admissions office suspended standardized test requirements in June 2020 due to the difficulty of taking standardized tests amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an April interview, Quinlan said the test-optional policy expanded the number of applications the University received from under-resourced students. The admissions office has not yet announced whether it will require standardized tests for the class of 2027.

YALE DAILY NEWS

Yale students, administrators and alumni weigh in on the practice of legacy preference in the admissions process.

In terms of virtual outreach, Dunn said that “it is impossible to attribute direct cause and effect relationships between particular outreach strategies to changes in our applicant pool.”

Nevertheless, Dunn referenced current outreach strategies the admissions office has used to connect with prospective students. This year, the admissions office has conducted multi-college virtual information sessions, themed informa-

tion sessions — which focus on certain academic, extracurricular or regional interests — general information sessions, student forums and returned to in-person campus tours.

These sessions have drawn around 95,000 registrants in 2021.

“The admissions office staff has been very pleased with the recent changes we have made to our outreach strategy, both virtual and on-campus,” Dunn wrote in an email to the News.

“I am delighted that prospective students have more options than ever to connect with Yale and to learn about the undergraduate experience directly from current students.”

In an Oct. 14 email to the University, Yale President Peter Salovey also outlined plans to make Yale more accessible for nontraditional applicants.

According to Salovey, over the past five years, Yale has doubled both the number of Eli Whitney students

and the number of participants in First-Year Scholars at Yale, the summer program for low-income, public high school graduates entering Yale.

Salovey also said that Yale would join the Transfer Scholars Network with the hopes of bringing more community college transfer students to New Haven.

Early action applications were due Nov. 1.

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

After decisive victory, mayor makes plans for next two years

TIM TAI/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Mayor Justin Elicker won November's election in a landslide following a contentious primary battle against housing authority director Karen DuBois-Walton.

ELICKER FROM PAGE 1 talked about for decades and not been able to see meaningful change on,” he said.

On Election Day, a number of voters spoke about their approval of Elicker’s response to the pandemic and community needs.

Joyce Hsiang, assistant professor at the Yale School of Architecture, said that he is “present and accessible and keeps you updated,” praising his “transparent way of running city hall.”

In her endorsement of Elicker in August, Rep. Rosa DeLauro called him “a steady hand in uncertain times.

“He rolled up his sleeves,” she said. “He got to work. He made sure no one got left behind.”

Main agenda items “New Haven is clearly growing, and you see that by the number of new apartment buildings being constructed, the number of new businesses that have opened — just the number of ribbon cuttings that

I've attended in the last two years is remarkable,” Elicker said. “We have to make sure that growth benefits everyone in the city and not just a small group of people. And we're working very hard to do that.”

He said that one of his priorities in his next term is to expand opportunities for vocational training, including in traditional areas such as building construction and automotive technical skills. However, this project would also extend to up-and-coming industries in the region “around health care, the digital world, artificial intelligence and robotics.”

As new apartment developments go up across the city, including luxury projects such as The Audubon, Elicker is collaborating with the Board of Alders on a number of policies that would address the affordable housing crisis. There are currently 800 new affordable units in the pipeline, according to Elicker.

His administration has proposed an inclusionary zoning policy that would require all new developments in New Haven to contain a certain proportion of affordable units,

which is moving its way through the Board of Alders.

New Haven’s growth will be supplemented by both an increase in state and federal funding and the additional $52 million from Yale. Along with the increased PILOT payments from the state, the city has also received more than $100 million in federal American Rescue Plan funding, according to Elicker. How to distribute this parcel across city projects is still under debate, but Elicker said that he will recommend to the Board of Alders that a large portion of these funds be directed towards initiatives promoting “inclusive growth,” the first of his two pronged approach to his second term.

He summarized the second part of his agenda as maintaining a “functioning city government.”

“While we have limited resources in the city, and we still face budget challenges, we can … improve our ability to deliver services to residents,” Elicker said. “That touches on many dif-

ferent parts of the city, the nuts and bolts of what people should expect just by being a resident in the city. Safe and clean neighborhoods … and how we respond to housing blight and absentee landlords that are neglecting properties.”

Using funding from the new federal infrastructure bill, Elicker also hopes to expand broadband internet coverage across New Haven, particularly focusing on the lower income areas in the city that are not served by the private market.

Elicker also wants to promote two other infrastructure projects. The first is the “major corridors improvement project,” a redesign of the major roads of New Haven such as Whalley, Whitney and Grand avenues to prioritize pedestrian and bicycle safety. The second is the Hillto-Downtown plan, which will attempt to improve connectivity between the two areas of the city through bridges and new street construction.

Masks, policing and climate Elicker said that although many residents have voiced their dissatisfaction with the city’s mask mandate — a point that his Republican opponent John Carlson also emphasized during their public debate — he refuses to lift them in response to “political pressure,” and will continue to reevaluate the situation based on public health guidance. In the meantime, he encourages New Haveners to get vaccinated, particularly with the recent expansion of eligibility to children over five.

Another central issue during the campaign was crime and policing, particularly in response to this year’s spike in gun violence. Elicker shared his optimism about the Community Crisis Response Team program, which will begin its pilot in January. The initiative will enlist social workers, mental health counselors and other community members to respond to certain 911 calls, with the goal of reducing police interventions in non-violent crisis situations.

A crackdown on gun violence is another aspect of the city’s crime response, he said.

The New Haven Police Department will be focusing on solving homicides and making more gun arrests. Walking and bicycle beats will also increase.

Lastly, Elicker shared his hopes to take more action against climate change through the creation of a new climate office, which will run initiatives to electrify buildings, expand electric vehicle fleets and create more bike and pedestrian-friendly streetscapes. The American Rescue Plan would help finance this office, he said.

Elicker suggested that Yale could also play a role in his climate change agenda.

“Now that we have gotten this agreement across the finish line, it really opens up the door to us having more conversations on collaboration,” Elicker said. “I think there’s a lot of potential on climate. … The expertise of the University, the resources of the University, the interests of both parties are aligned here to potentially do something significant.”

Elicker is the 51st mayor of New Haven.

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

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Yale participants in COP26 reflect on conference, aim for more action in COP27

BY DANTE MOTLEY CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Following the conclusion of the United Nations’ 26th Climate Change Conference, or COP26, Yale affiliates who participated expressed disappointment with the conference’s resolution, yet optimism for future climate talks.

More than 20 Yale affiliates traveled to the two-week COP26 conference held in Glasgow, Scotland to participate in global climate change negotiations. The annual climate summit began on Oct. 31 and culminated with the Glasgow Climate Pact on Nov. 13. Yale undergraduate students, graduate students and professors were involved in various facets of the conference, including participating in panel discussions, advocating for specific climate solutions, covering the negotiations and conducting research for delegations. While some were optimistic about the conference’s results, others criticized the fossil fuel industry’s presence at the conference as well as the degree of commitment that nations promised.

“No goal is too ambitious when we are dealing with a crisis of this magnitude,” Saskia Braden ’25 said.

“We need every group, institution, and nation to raise their ambition and push for carbon neutrality as soon as possible.”

Daniel Esty, Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy, said that one of the “clear signals” coming out of Glasgow is that the world must move toward netzero greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2050. Esty praised Yale as a leader in cutting emissions on campus and pledging to be net-zero by 2035, but noted that the University should take steps to only invest in companies that engage in meaningful sustainability plans.

Last Tuesday, the University announced new steps towards its goal of achieving net-zero actual carbon emissions by 2050, pledging to achieve a 65 percent reduction from 2015 emissions levels by 2035.

In Glasgow, Esty spoke on deep decarbonization — the transition away from fossil fuels towards zero-carbon electricity — while also contributing to the Zero Carbon

Action Plan and attending the World Climate Summit. Esty said that the University serves as a benchmark of climate policy progress for peer institutions as its greenhouse gas emissions pledges place it at “the high end of what has been committed by any entity in the world.”

However, Esty pointed to Yale’s continued commitment to fossil fuel investments as an issue that merits reform.

“My own belief is that the business world has changed and Yale should reflect its investment strategy towards a recognition that it is ethically inappropriate to privatize the gains of a certain economic activity, but to socialize or spill on to society as a whole the burdens or costs,” Esty explained. “It is no longer ethically appropriate for Yale to have holdings in companies with significant greenhouse gas emissions footprints. It is in pursuit of the principle that I think should be the new baseline, which is no un-internalized externalities.”

Last spring, Yale unveiled a set of new policies surrounding its investments in the fossil fuel industry which include publicly naming and divesting from companies that fall short of its standards. In an April interview with the News, chair of Yale’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility Jonathan Macey LAW ’82 expressed the committee’s belief that blanket divestment is “blaming nobody,” and that the new policy allows the University to “name names.”

Some, however, have expressed concerns about the University’s timeline for emissions cuts on campus, particularly with regards to the 2035 and 2050 goals. Former co-president of the Yale Student Environmental Coalition Katie Schlick ’22 and co-founder of the New Haven Climate Movement Youth Action Team Adrian Huq, said that Yale’s climate goals needed to be more ambitious. Yale’s climate action strategy, the details of which were unveiled last week, has only one mention of the 2030 date, despite President Joe Biden and other leaders having dubbed the years leading up to 2030 as the “decisive decade” for climate action.

Esty was one of many professors who attended the conference, although he did not stay for its entirety. Paul T. Anastas, head of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering, participated in a Green Zone public event, while

Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, presented research on the perspective of the American public on climate change.

Graduate students also attended the conference with a variety of organizations. Taina Perez ENV ’22 described the conference as “underwhelming,” and said that it raised concerns about equity, access and justice. Perez attended the first week with an Indigenous network, La Alianza Mesoamericana de Pueblos y Bosques, but found the conference difficult to navigate. According to Perez, some organizations were not given enough passes to account for all of the members in their delegation.

“More must be done to truly drive the efficiency of COP and that means truly bringing everyone to the table,” Perez wrote in an email to the News. “One common thread throughout the conference was the need for more climate financing. It is time for both the private and public sectors to reimagine climate financing and increase their contributions especially towards funding the most vulnerable countries and the communities leading the climate fight –– indigenous populations.”

During the conference, sustainability advocates led various protests that demanded further action from the parties. Kyle Lemle ENV ’22 cited the presence of fossil fuel representatives at the conference as a major block to reform.

Lemle participated in the conference with the Nature Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit, and John Kerry’s World War Zero initiative.

“In the past, at a different COP, someone referred to it as like selling tobacco at a lung cancer summit,” Lemle said. “That’s how it feels, to me, the fact that there are more fossil fuel delegates in any one country’s delegation just proves the amount of sway that they have in our global politics.”

Braden, who participated with the Woodwell Research Center, noted that prior climate pledges have attempted to halt deforestation, a goal that was not met as rates have continued to increase since these agreements. However, she considers a renewed commitment to end deforestation by 2030 as one of the major outcomes of this conference — as it draws awareness towards the issue.

Over 100 nations committed to not only end deforestation by 2030, but to also reverse it, which would increase the extent of the world’s carbon sinks — natural mechanisms that absorb climate-changing carbon dioxide. However, Lemle notes that some in the fossil fuel industry aim to protect carbon sinks as their absorption of carbon provides rationale for maintaining emissions, such as the continued coal usage in many countries negotiated in the last hours of the conference.

The other tangible outcome was countries’ collaborations in making promises to curb global methane emissions, which Esty also noted was a significant inclusion that would impact the dairy and beef industries.

COP27 will take place in Egypt next year.

Contact DANTE MOTLEY at dante.motley@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF ANJALI MAGLA

Yale researchers develop novel antiviral that effectively targets numerous COVID variants

BY VALENTINA SIMON CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The Yale-New Haven Hospital neA new Yale study found that SLR14, a short double-stranded antiviral RNA molecule, can stimulate the body’s defenses and protect mice against all known variants of the COVID-19 coronavirus. The research could offer a new treatment for immunocompromised patients and provide an inexpensive antiviral to countries with limited access to vaccines.

Under the leadership of Akiko Iwasaki, professor of immunology at the Yale School of Medicine, a team of researchers designed an RNA antiviral therapeutic to activate the body’s innate immune response.

The innate immune response — in which interferons, a group of proteins, target universal viral markers — is the body’s first response to infection. Studies have shown that COVID-19 patients who produce high levels of interferons have better outcomes than patients who produce lower levels of interferons during the early days of infection.

“Innate immunity works across all viruses,” Iwasaki said. “It doesn’t even matter if it is an RNA or a DNA virus, as long as you initiate interferon response. Interferon response triggers

thousands of genes to combat a viral infection and so it is indiscriminate of the type of virus you are dealing with and it is also very quick. Adaptive immune responses take a couple weeks to develop.

This innate immune response occurs within minutes to hours.”

The scientists’ research was published on Nov. 10 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. They found the treatment could fight a variety of COVID-19 variants infecting mice — including the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Iota variants — as well as the Delta variant, which is currently the dominant variant in the U.S. “In the context of continued emergence of variants, we really want an antiviral strategy that would confer broadly targeted protective immunity against a wide panel of viral variants and that is the motivation for testing SLR14 against SARS CoV-2 variants, and really to our satisfaction SLR14 was able to hold its efficacy, especially with the Delta variant which has already taken the entire world,” said Tianyang Mao ’22 GRD, a graduate student in Iwasaki’s lab and first author on the recently published paper.

As COVID-19 variants continue to mutate,

the development of non-specific therapeutics is crucial, according to Iwasaki.

Additionally, current preventative treatments, such as vaccines, require the ability to form antibodies against specific COVID-19 proteins through a complex collaboration of T- and B-cells. Immunocompromised patients are unable to create sufficient levels of these cells that produce antibodies and kill viruses. The innate immune system provides an alternative treatment opportunity.

The researchers found the therapy protected mice against severe diseases and death and eradicated the virus from mice with chronic infections.

“SLR14 could potentially be beneficial in patients that are chronically infected with SARS CoV-2,” Mao said.

“Mice that are chronically infected with SARS CoV-2, those that are deficient in Tand B-cells, also derive benefit from SLR14.

SLR14 induces near sterilizing immunity in these mice, meaning that they completely clear the infection from their respiratory tract.”

In practice, SLR14 could also be used as a preventative measure or early post-exposure

SARAH EISENBERG

medication, according to Benjamin Goldman-Israelow, ABIM physician-scientist research pathway resident at the Yale School of Medicine and second author on the study.

The antiviral therapeutic could therefore be particularly valuable for healthcare workers entering areas with a known high viral load.

By activating the interferon alarm system, SLR14 provides an early treatment method for COVID-19, enabling the body to attack the virus before it takes hold. An unusual characteristic of COVID-19

is its ability to enter the body without alerting the innate immune system; the treatment helps overcome this aspect of the virus.

“We have told the immune system, ‘Hey there’s a virus here, go after it!’” Goldman-Israelow said. “Whereas during natural infection, the virus stays silent and avoids being recognized.”

As of Nov. 11, there have been 810,327 cases of the Delta variant in the United States.

Contact VALENTINA SIMON at valentina.simon@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

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BY BRANDON WU CONTRIBUTING REPORTER One month after its launch, the Yale School of Medicine’s Student Mental Health and Wellness Program is aiming to grow and provide enrolled students with short-term individual therapy and counseling.

Since 2015, many students at the School of Medicine have pushed for improved access to high quality mental health care, expressing how critical it is to have access to resources and support. In early October, then-Associate Dean of Student Affairs Nancy Angoff, Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs Sam Ball and Deputy Dean for Education Jessica Illuzzi announced the new pilot program which will be located at 2 Church St. South.

“The program provides more immediate access to mental health care for students with mild-to-moderate symptoms or acute adjustment issues, by having a social worker and a psychologist embedded in the school,” Angoff and Illuzzi wrote in a joint email to the News.

The program offers shortterm individual therapy, including consultation and counseling, in a wellness setting. Structured around a model used by other parts of

the University, including the Law School, School of Drama and Yale College, the program offers up to four individual therapy sessions and assists students with the transition to ongoing care with Yale Health or Magellan Health, an additional mental health service provided by Yale Health.

The Student Mental Health and Wellness Program focuses on providing more immediate mental health care to students with mild-to-moderate symptoms or acute adjustment issues, such as role stress, grief or relationship changes. Additionally, one of its main aims is to develop wellness programming by working with students and student groups to address needs related to time and stress management, coping skills, well-being, resilience and self-care. According to Illuzzi and Angoff, the plan is to facilitate groups and wellness seminars around topics of interest to students.

Yale Health will continue to provide treatment for those students with mental health conditions requiring ongoing cognitive or pharmacologic therapy and those in acute crisis situations. In addition, only providers licensed to prescribe medication may provide pharmacologic therapy to patients; these pro-

viders are accessible at Yale Health by appointment.

Lisa Ho currently serves as the program manager and the sole member. She brings more than eight years of experience working with families and individuals of color and specializes in treating anxiety, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.

“My vision for the Mental Health and Wellness Program is that it will be a welcoming place for students who need support, a program that will be responsive to students’ immediate and non-crisis needs and a stepping-stone for students who may not have engaged in therapy or wellness before and are curious to learn more,” Ho wrote. “My hope is that by utilizing the Program, students will feel supported and less isolated, gain skills to manage anxious thoughts and develop increased resilience in the face of challenges.”

Ho has partnered with several student organizations and regularly meets with the Committee on the Wellbeing of Students, an entity of students from the medical school that advocate for better mental health resources, to understand and tailor the program to students’ needs. She has also planned future meetings with the Yale School of Medicine Office of Diversity, Inclusion,

Community Engagement and Equity, or DICE, and various student affinity groups.

By the end of the year, the Yale School of Medicine hopes to hire two additional parttime staff for the program: a psychologist and a wellness counselor to support students.

“It is hard to predict how many students will use the program’s resources,” Angoff and Illuzzi wrote. “The program is set up as a pilot so that the school can monitor how it is used and then determine if adjustments are needed.”

The Yale School of Medicine is located at 333 Cedar St. Contact BRANDON WU at brandon.wu@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS

Research center directors, Nobel committee members and advisors to the President: Yale STEM faculty in prestigious appointments

BY SELIN NALBANTOGLU CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Over the past several months, Yale faculty in various STEM departments have been appointed to prestigious positions as heads of research centers, advisors to the President of the United States or members of the committee that presents Nobel Prize winners.

Debra Fischer, Eugene Higgins professor of astronomy, is the next director of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Astronomical Sciences. Steven Girvin, Eugene Higgins professor of physics, was the founding director of the Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage, also known as C2QA. John Wettlaufer, A.M. Bateman professor of geophysics, mathematics and physics, was a member of the Nobel Committee for Physics. Jennifer Richeson, Philip R. Allen professor of psychology, is a member of President Biden’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

“Since 1861, when Yale granted the first PhD in science awarded in North America to Arthur Williams Wright, Yale has been a leader in the sciences,” Tamar Gendler, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, wrote to the News. “Two years later — in 1863 –– Yale awarded the first PhD in Engineering in North America, to Josiah Gibbs, who spent the rest of his career at Yale, creating the field of statistical mechanics.

Albert Einstein called Gibbs ‘the greatest mind in American history.’ In the ensuing 160 years, Yale has remained at the forefront of American science, with field-defining contributions across the social, biological, physical and mathematical sciences, both theoretical and applied. Our current faculty carry on this glorious tradition as leaders in their disciplines and in the nation.”

Fischer was appointed director of the NSF’s Astronomical Sciences Division earlier this year and began their tenure on Oct. 12. As director, Fischer is responsible for managing new research projects in astronomy and ensuring that researchers have access to opportunities for new projects.

Every 10 years, researchers in the field of astronomy come together to decide the top priorities in astronomical research for the following 10 years. Over several months, they draft, revise and publish a Decadal Survey, outlining the most important projects in astronomy. Fischer’s appointment is

especially timely, as the most recent Decadal Survey was published on Nov. 4.

Fischer, as Director of the NSF’s Astronomical Sciences Division, will remain on Yale faculty but will no longer teach since the directorship is a full-time appointment.

Girvin, as founding director of the C2QA, oversaw the creation of the center and development of its major initiatives.

According to him, “year ‘zero’” of his directorship was dedicated to creating relationships between 24 different institutions and 88 principal investigators while writing a 950-page funding proposal for submission to the Department of Energy, which ultimately approved it.

According to Girvin, the center has two main goals related to improving research in quantum information science and engineering.

Girvin wrote that the first goal is “to carry out the fundamental research needed to dramatically improve the performance of all the components in today’s rudimentary quantum systems (computer and communication networks) and to invent new components, modules and software design that will permit the US industrial quantum ecosystem ... to someday build quantum systems that offer practical economic and scientific advantage over conventional supercomputers.”

The second goal is to “train the quantum workforce (undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs) needed for the rapidly burgeoning field of quantum information science and engineering,” Girvin wrote to the News.

Girvin explained that the Department of Energy requires directors of research facilities to hold appointments at the primary Department of Energy lab associated with their research centers. For C2QA, the primary research center is Brookhaven National Lab in Long Island, NY. “Yale and Brookhaven negotiated a complex agreement which allowed me to temporarily be 50% employed by Yale and 50%

by Brookhaven.” Girvin wrote to the News. “However I continued to teach full-time at Yale and in fact created and taught a new undergraduate course, PHYS 345 ‘Introduction to Quantum Information Processing and Communication’ last spring while I was director.”

This year, Wettlaufer was appointed a member of the Nobel Committee for Physics. According to Wettlaufer, members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, such as himself, are eligible to become Nobel committee members. On Oct. 5, Wettlaufer gave the scientific presentation at the announcement ceremony for the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics.

As a member of the committee, he was responsible for receiving the detailed reports about recent advancements in physics from the international physics community. Wettlaufer explained that he met with the other members to discuss each of the reports for several months. Then, the members, depending on their areas of expertise, chose specific reports covering subdisciplines in physics in order to contribute to a final report. The final report, with the names of all the Nobel prize nominees, will be released in 50 years, according to Wettlaufer. “[As my] first year on this committee combined with the fact that the award this year fell into my area of responsibility meant that it was an enormous effort for me,” Wettlaufer wrote to the News.

In October, Richeson was appointed as one of 30 experts on President Biden’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. At Yale, Richeson researches the psychological phenomena related to cultural diversity, with a recent focus on the effects of racial injustice and discrimination. The News was unable to reach Richeson for comment.

According to the White House press release detailing the function and composition of this specialized council, Richeson, along with the other expert council members, will be responsible for advising the President on decisions regarding science, technology and innovation.

“The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is the sole body of advisors from outside the federal government charged with making science, technology, and innovation policy recommendations to the President and the White House,” the press release states.

In 2020, Yale College awarded 317 bachelor’s degrees in Physical Sciences & Engineering.

Contact SELIN NALBANTOGLU at selin.nalbantoglu@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

ARTS Renovated Yale Peabody Museum will promote accessibility, embrace the goal of community-building

BY TANIA TSUNIK STAFF REPORTER The Yale Peabody Museum, through its four year long renovation project to be completed in 2024, will strive for more diversity in its collections, bring students and faculty closer to its artifacts and increase accessibility through free admission.

After closing to the public in March 2020, the Yale Peabody Museum is undergoing an extensive renovation project to expand its exhibition space, construct new classrooms and galleries and reimagine the 145-year-old space. By switching to a free admission policy for all visitors, the Peabody administration hopes to advance the museum’s accessibility while bringing the Yale and the greater New Haven community closer together.

“We put together a fundraising plan that would not just build the new museum but also allow us to run it without charging visitors,” said David Skelly, professor of ecology and Director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History. “The museum we planned will have five separate doors. The only way we can use all of them is if we don’t have a traditional single entrance with an admissions desk.”

Despite discussing an ambitious update and expansion for close to two decades, the Peabody’s administration formally began planning for the museum’s renovation in 2016, according to David Heiser, director of student programs at Peabody.

The impetus for renovation came partly from a desire to increase the museum’s exhibition space and increase accessibility to its collections.

After meeting fundraising targets and securing a $160 million lead gift from Edward P. Bass ’68 in August 2018, the University administration included the goal of introducing free admission as one of many innovations targeted at promoting the Peabody museum’s accessibility and connection to the local community.

“We feel like we’re an institution with a lot to give both to Yale and to the larger public,” said Heiser. “We wanted to get rid of any barriers that could limit us from providing knowledge, the sense of wonder and the inspiration of curiosity to anyone interested.

I think we get much closer to that aim with free admission.”

On Nov. 10, the University announced the newly renovated Peabody museum will offer free admission in perpetuity. The change brings the natural history museum in line with other campus museums and galleries that are open free-of-charge to the public, including the University Art Gallery and the Center for British Art. At the time of the Peabody’s founding in 1866, the museum was designed to be a resource for students and a place of research and teaching by Yale faculty.

According to Skelly, the museum’s goal has not wavered in the century-and-a-half since — the Peabody will always strive to be “a place that people want to visit” and are

able to have a valuable experience at.

In recent years, the Peabody’s administration has undertaken initiatives to further the museum’s mission. In 2015, the museum created a Student Programs office to make the space more accessible to Yale faculty for teaching and research and to provide students with more pathways to get involved.

The renovated museum builds on this and will hold “a tremendous new array of resources” for Yale students and the public to allow them to “intersect and interact more,” said Heiser. Aside from a 50 percent increase in gallery space, renovation plans also include the construction of five new museum classrooms, which will bring students closer to the Peabody collections and provide more space for K-12 visits. Additionally, the new museum will include student exhibition gallery space specifically designed for Yale students to present their artworks.

In addition to increasing accessibility, the Peabody administration hopes to boost the diversity of its exhibitions and bring new voices into the space. This includes reaching out to contemporary artists and potential partners from Yale, New Haven and beyond who might be interested in collaborations. According to Associate Director of Exhibitions Kailen Rogers, this could range from local seventh-graders building displays after learning about ancient Mesopotamia in school to a graduate student showcasing 3D-printed models of different shapes of fish scales to an expert Maya

craftsperson creating instruments using traditional techniques.

“We are interested in making sure that we are meaningfully connected to not only Yale but also larger communities, and that people in those communities feel that the Peabody is a place for them,” Rogers said.

“For that, it needs to become a place where they see themselves, which goes from making exhibitions interesting, relevant and diverse to making it easy for them to access the space.”

The switch to free admission goes handin-hand with the Peabody’s ongoing renovations. These efforts to modernize the museum continue serving its goal to spark people’s interest in natural history and human culture.

“Peabody, as it always has been, is a public space and a public resource, where anyone can learn about the world around them,” Skelly said. “I grew up in Connecticut and the Peabody is where I learned, when I was just three or four years old, that enormous dinosaurs had once walked the Earth … and put me on a path to becoming a biologist. Whatever the age of Peabody visitors, we want to offer exhibitions and events that promote curiosity about our planet and an appreciation of its value.”

Prior to the museum’s closure, the museum saw 130,000 to 150,000 visitors a year.

Contact TANIA TSUNIK at tania.tsunik@yale.edu .

Trapped in pigment: Redisplay of Elihu Yale and enslaved child portrait provokes community response

BY TIGERLILY HOPSON CONTRIBUTING REPORTER In a small bay, tucked on the fourth floor of the Yale Center for British Art, a wall-sized group portrait of Elihu Yale and an enslaved child hangs. The child, shrouded in shadow, is confined by an undivestable metal padlocked collar. Visitors wander in and out under the painting’s presence. Some walk past without blinking an eye, others stand and stare. Some look right at the child, others scan and never linger. The room fills with anger, satisfaction, indifference. The child looks onward, trapped and frozen in centuries-old pigment.

In late October, the Yale Center for British Art redisplayed the controversial 18th century group portrait “Elihu Yale with Members of His Family and an Enslaved Child” with a revised name and new wall text, following a year-long investigation into the painting and the child’s identity. Yale and the extended community have now spent nearly a month grappling with the impact of the University’s namesake juxtaposed with a shackled child.

The News spoke to 30 students, professors, New Haven residents, museum visitors and security guards. Overwhelmingly, community members felt the portrait should be on display in order to confront the University’s ties to slavery, but many expressed that displaying the painting, even with the new wall text, was not enough. People yearned for stronger context surrounding the group portrait, a University response and for the child to be “set free.” \When Chakrabarti first saw the group portrait in 2019, she started weeping from anger, frustration and confusion as the visitors around her circulated. She has visited the current display about five times and is still struck by those who do not pause to recognize the significance of the child. She said she has seen visitors taking group photos in front of the painting with their families.

Chakrabarti said she liked when the group portrait was down for a few months in 2021, and in its place was a blank wall with text about the painting and the enslaved child. She believed this was a powerful way to acknowledge the portrait and its history while not perpetrating its violence.

“It’s a painting that has caused distress, and it wouldn’t be put on display unless [we] felt that it was important for us to have this conversation — because if the painting is in storage, this conversation doesn’t happen,” Edward Town, assistant curator of paintings and sculpture at the YCBA and a member of the Elihu Yale Portrait Research Team, told the News.

The group portrait was the museum’s first formal acquisition, gifted to the YCBA in 1970 by the eleventh Duke of Devonshire, and championed by Jules Prown, the founding director. The portrait made a brief appearance in 1981, was part of an exhibit on slavery and portraiture in 2014, and then was displayed again in 2016.

The Elihu Yale Portrait Research Team was formed by YCBA director Courtney Martin after the summer of 2020 in the wake of protests surrounding the police murder of George Floyd. One of the group’s driving aims was to find the identity of the enslaved

child, but so far they have been unsuccessful in that pursuit. The child, according to the Research Team, appears to be 10 years old and most likely served as an enslaved child attendant. Even though chattel slavery was ostensibly unlawful during the time of the painting, it was a common practice for enslaved children under the age of 10 to be brought to Britain to serve families of the upper class.

“The first thing I noticed was the kid in the back because for very obvious reasons that was the person I felt like I had the most in common with,” said Juma Sei ’22, who visited the portrait in 2019. “We spend so much time learning about who [Elihu] Yale was, but in one of the most prominent portraits of him that the University espouses, there is this unnamed black child.”

The wall text at the start of the exhibit titled “New Light on the Group Portrait of Elihu Yale, His Family, and an Enslaved Child,” touches on the Research Team’s dis-

ited the museum with her family. “If you get rid of it, it’s like it never happened.”

Other visitors were unimpressed with the wall text, and observed a lack of creativity in the display. Some wished for a more interactive aspect, such as a wall for people to leave comments on. Those believed that it was important for the piece to be on display, but only if it was better contextualized. Several people felt the language of the wall text skated around the key issues of the portrait.

John Walker ’00, who visited the museum to see the display with his wife and two young daughters, was disappointed by the lack of context and felt the wall text was “not nearly enough.” He, like several others, also wished the painting was more prominently displayed.

“This was handled with kid gloves,” Walker said. “No, less than kid gloves.”

Visitors and students expressed frustration with how the museum display was physically set up. Some felt the child was

TIGERLILY HOPSON

coveries, their continued research and details that Elihu Yale made his fortune from the profits of colonialism and the slave trade.

He privately traded diamonds and precious stones, and was an East India Company representative, overseeing the shipment of enslaved people across the Indian Ocean.

The extent of Yale’s involvement in slavery has not been ascertained because of a lack of accessible records.

Some visitors felt satisfied with the context given in the display, and were grateful that the truth of Elihu Yale’s connection to the slave trade was highlighted. Visitors also noted their appreciation for the title, and specifically how it calls attention to the enslaved child.

Carla Jackson, who visited the portrait and is the audience services manager at the Schwarzman Center, was excited by the wall text. Reading the text, she thought of a phrase used in the Black community: “Tell the story, and tell it plain.” According to Jackson, the wall text is doing exactly that — “telling the story.” At the very least, it is a start to addressing this history and the identity of the enslaved child, she said.

The majority of the people interviewed believed the painting should be displayed.

Some visitors felt that not displaying the painting would be a denial of Yale’s history.

“You can’t stick your head in the ground like an ostridge,” said Debbie Jaccarino, who lives in Bethel, Connecticut and vis-

not sufficiently centered. Currently, “Elihu Yale with Members of His Family and an Enslaved Child” is hung between a portrait of Yale and his nephew, a portrait of a woman previously thought to be Yale’s daughter and a portrait of a woman painted by the uncle of the group portrait’s supposed artist. At the front of the bay, a smaller version of the group portrait painted on copper can be seen.

When the group portrait was originally taken down in 2020, a piece by New Haven-based Black artist Titus Kaphar titled “Enough About You” was installed in its place. In Kaphar’s painting, a physical frame surrounds the enslaved child’s face — eyes daring, body set free — and the figures behind him are crumpled up.

The collar, which according to Town would have been made by the same people who made dog collars and was used to prevent enslaved people from running away, is removed.

At the group portrait’s display, resident of Orange, CT and museum visitor Bill Christmas excitedly showed Jackson, who he was accompanying, Kaphar’s portrait on his phone.

“You have to see this,” he said. As soon as Jackson saw the photo, she shrieked out with joy.

“Look at the defiance, and the chain is gone!” she exclaimed.

Kaphar’s piece was recently returned to its owners — Arthur Lewis and Hau Nguyen — but person after person mentioned Kaphar’s

portrait and expressed how they wished it was in the YCBA space, either alongside or in place of the painting. Many wished for the child to be represented outside of the bondage he suffers in the group portrait.

“Primary sources need to be put in context with secondary sources,” Walker said, explaining that modern artwork can serve to make the meaning of historical art more clear.

Three visitors described the portrait as “beautiful,” one described the child as “happy,” and several others considered it simply a product of its time.

Out of the seven portraits of Elihu Yale — all of which are held by Yale University — three feature Elihu Yale and an enslaved person: the large and small versions of “Elihu Yale with Members of His Family and an Enslaved Child” and a portrait that hung in the Yale Corporation Room from 1910 to 2007. This portrait titled “Elihu Yale with his Servant” featured Elihu Yale next to an enslaved person in a similar collar. The News first reported on the portrait in 1995, publishing a front page story accompanied by a photo of the painting. The portrait belongs to the Yale University Art Gallery.

Chakrabarti argued that this portrait should be put on display next to the group portrait in order to show that Elihu Yale’s desire to be presented alongside enslaved people is not an “anomaly.”

“I do think the other painting should be studied as well,” Town said about the necessity of an investigation into the enslaved person in “Elihu Yale with his Servant.”

Earlier this year, an organization founded in 2015 called Making A Village began an initiative titled #ReclaimTheChild. Posters of the enslaved child, put up by the organizers, can be seen on campus billboards and New Haven lampposts. On the posters is a QR code that guides the viewer to a website calling for artists to “reclaim the child” by creating art in a way that gives the child his own identity.

Two of the project’s leaders, Jadie Meprivert and Eric Gray, said that the responses have been “overwhelming.” They have recieved photos, sculptures, paintings and films. Meprivert and Gray said they support the museum’s efforts in finding the name and identity of the child. They are also aiming to engage in discussions with the YCBA with the hope that a sculpture of the enslaved child, which was sculpted by one of the artists participating in the project, can be put on display.

Meprivert described that for the New Haven residents she has spoken to, it can be “traumatizing” to see the face of the child in the collar on display — a child who could be anyone, or anyone’s. According to Meprivert, residents and community members are using #ReclaimTheChild project to finally give the child personhood. “[Artists are] giving him a voice, a future, a hopeful vision outside of the shackles, outside of that bondage — truly reimagining, reclaiming that child,” Meprivert said.

The Elihu Yale Portrait Research Team said they welcome community members’ and visitor’s thoughts and ideas on the group portrait, which can be shared via an online survey.

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

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

NEWS Mary Li Hsu ’80, who nurtured Asian American life at Yale, dies at 63

BY ISAAC YU STAFF REPORTER Less than five percent of Yale undergraduates identified as Asian American when Mary Li Hsu ’80 first stepped foot on campus.

By the time she ended her seven-year tenure as assistant dean and director of the Asian American Cultural Center in 1999, that figure stood at 15 percent.

As an undergraduate, Hsu was an active member of the Asian American Students Association, known for spearheading the advocacy movement that successfully lobbied for a formalized complaint process for students facing racial or ethnic harassment. She also co-led an informal Bible study that offered a space on campus for Asian American students to grapple with both their racial and religious identities.

Hsu would go on to earn a master’s degree from Hunter College School of Social Work. She entered a life of community service and advocacy with a number of Asian American and faith-based organizations in New York’s Chinatown.

That service continued when Hsu returned to New Haven as the director of the Asian American Cultural Center, which was founded in 1981 in part due to her advocacy as an undergraduate. Hsu was the first AACC director to be appointed as a Yale College assistant dean, allowing her to more forcefully advocate for administrative support of Asian American students on campus.

She is also remembered for her particular attention to students of first-generation backgrounds.

Hsu would once again settle in New York and hold positions at both Borough of Manhattan Community College and Hunter College between 2001 and 2008.

Hsu, 63, passed away in her Manhattan home on Nov. 8 after battling neuroendocrine cancer.

She is survived by four siblings and their spouses and children.

“Dean Hsu was devoted to helping students thrive and feel welcome at Yale,” wrote Yale College Dean Marvin Chun in a statement.

“With their diverse backgrounds, Asian American and Asian international students bring excellence to our campus, and with wisdom and care, Dean Hsu mentored them to be leaders within and beyond the Yale community. Although she left Yale over 20 years ago, we are still benefiting from her contributions, not only to the Asian American Cultural Center but also to Yale.”

Hsu (right) and friend Catherine Yang in the AASA meeting room, spring of 1978. Photo courtesy of Catherine Yang.

Growing up in Seattle as the eldest daughter of a Northern Chinese immigrant family, Hsu was “thoughtfully articulate” even as a young child, said her brother Ron Hsu. “She would correct my English often, and was just so precise in her language,” he recalled.

Hsu’s parents worked various janitorial and cooking jobs before opening a highly-successful restaurant credited with helping to introduce pot stickers and Northern Chinese fare to the Pacific North-

west. Her father refused to let the children learn to cook, hoping that Hsu and her siblings would instead commit to their studies.

Indeed she did. The family’s “gifted” child, Hsu would eventually ask to transfer from a majority-white high school, where she faced discrimination, to the more diverse Franklin High School. Hsu would finish her last two years of high school there, waking up at 5 a.m. each school day to take three buses from her home.

After matriculating to Yale in 1976, when the Asian American population was so small that nearly every Asian American student knew each other, Hsu quickly became involved with Asian American Students Association, holding various positions including education chair.

She was consistently one of the organization’s most active members and participated in the infamous “shoe” protests that would lead administration to agree to establish a new Asian American cultural center.

Hsu was a devoted Christian and attended church services regularly during her time as an undergraduate. She frequently engaged with fellow Christians in campus groups like Black Church at Yale as well as a local New Haven church. She also formed connections with the local Asian American community and established an AASA-sponsored tutoring service for recently-immigrated children.

“Anytime you were on campus and you’d see her, you knew something good was going on and you had to get involved,” said Grant Din ’79, Hsu’s classmate and a fellow AASA member.

During her junior year, Hsu co-led an informal regular Bible study for Asian American students.

Younger students recall the group as having a true sense of family on a campus where Asian Americans were an extremely small minority.

Hsu reading her own poetry at an AASA talent show. Photo courtesy of Catherine Yang.

Outside of the Bible study, Hsu is remembered for doggedly pursuing the answers to large questions, using long discussions with friends to grapple with her Christian and cultural values in tandem. Hsu held a laser focus, classmate Katharine Hsiao ’82 said, on “finding the purest and truest of values that people might hold.”

As a senior, fueled by personal experiences of racial harassment on campus, Hsu worked with Robert Vance Jr. LAW ’82 to press then-University President Bartlett Giamatti to institute a formal complaint process for students facing racial or ethnic harassment.

After completing her degree in social work at Hunter College, Hsu defied her parent’s expectations by working as the youth director of the Chinese Methodist Center Corporation. Living on meager wages in a small Brooklyn apartment, Hsu became entrenched in advocacy and activism in the Chinatown community, acting as a mentor to children of recent immigrants and helping them apply to college.

Her work, friends say, was intertwined with her deep devotion to Christianity. Her email signature for years included the phrase “in His grip.”

COURTESY OF CATHERINE YANG

Hsu served as the first director of the AACC as well as an assistant dean.

In 1992, Hsu returned to New Haven to serve as the director of the Asian American Cultural Center, which officially formed just a year after she graduated. Hsu was also the first AACC director to be simultaneously appointed as a Yale College assistant dean, giving her a seat at administrative tables usually reserved for academics.

For seven years, Hsu steered the Center at 295 Crown St., advising a burgeoning group of students and maintaining the ethnic counselors program. She also deftly navigated the new landscape of student activism on campus, as a crop of Asian American student groups, including Korean American Students at Yale, the Filipino club Kasama and South Asian Society, had been established after her graduation.

When she became Dean, her students recalled, student organizations were grappling with the role and necessity of a pan-Asian advocacy group like AASA. Hsu pointed out that even as students could find communities in smaller organizations, Yale and other institutions would continue to treat Asian Americans as a single category.

“Her message to us was to find strength in [that] unity,” said Deron Quon ’94, former AASA co-chair.

In the spring of 1997, Hsu also taught a Yale College seminar titled “Asian Americans and Political Membership.” After leaving Yale to return to New York, she would take on various administrative roles in higher education,

continuing to advocate for students from first-generation and marginalized backgrounds. Over the next two decades, she would also remain active as an alumna, returning to campus to serve on panels and encouraging alumni to support current students.

This past June, at the celebration of the AACC’s 40th anniversary, Quon and other alum announced a new endowment fund for the center in Hsu’s honor, the Dean Mary Li Hsu Discretionary Fund, which will support AACC activities and academic offerings in Asian American studies. Hsu attended virtually, tearing up at the many messages of gratitude shared by former classmates and mentees.

“Are you doing what you think is important?” Hsu asked current students who attended the event. “Is it going to help the world, even if it is just the little corner in which you live? You honor me by perpetuating this spirit of love and hope for greater justice and equity.”

Hsu’s legacy lives on at the AACC, current director Joliana Yee said, in the center’s mission of student-driven advocacy. Under Hsu’s deanship, Yale College’s Asian American population grew to 15 percent of undergraduates — and currently sits at 25.4 percent.

Hsu (left) with classmate Cyril Nishimoto in New York City Photo courtesy of Cyril Nishimoto.

She was a true New Yorker, her brother said, having lived in apart-

ments in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. Hsu eventually settled at the edge of Manhattan’s Chinatown, where she would comb local establishments for the best fresh vegetables, jiaozi and sponge cakes. Hsu was quoted last year in the New York Times delighting in the silken tofu and chives from a nearby mom and pop grocery store.

Her wish, Hsu told friends before passing, was to be remembered as someone who loved beauty. Living in New York, she would frequent the opera, Henri Matisse exhibits and Shakespeare events at Wave Hill Public Garden.

She tastefully designed her apartment with a garden of lush foliage in her living room and a pair of bright purple vintage couches.

Like her mother, Hsu was a fantastic cook known for crafting simple and healthy Chinese dishes, usually without a recipe and loaded with lots of garlic. She would host single women from her church for weekly meals, and soon the “mother hen” was serving up feasts to more than 30 guests in her apartment.

She was generous and gave all she had, friends recall — except when it came to her affection for dark chocolate.

In lieu of flowers, the Hsu family requests that donations be made to the Dean Mary Li Hsu Discretionary Fund or to the Chinatown Manpower Project.

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

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

M SWIM & DIVE Penn 152 Brown 148

CROSS COUNTRY DELAY SPRINTS TO NATIONALS Kayley DeLay ’22 placed second at the NCAA DI Northeast Regional Championships, punching her ticket to Nationals this weekend. The women’s cross country team took fifth and the men’s squad placed tenth.

VOLLEYBALL Brown 3 Harvard 0

FOOTBALL Dartmouth 41 Cornell 7

W SQUASH Princeton 8 Brown 1

VOLLEYBALL YALE BEATS HARVARD IN FINALE Despite falling narrowly to Dartmouth in a five-set thriller, the Yale volleyball team ended its season on a high note after a successful rematch against Harvard. The Bulldogs finished this season ranked third in the Ivy standings.

M SOCCER Columbia 1 Cornell 1

“The fact that we were able to grind out another overtime win says a lot about our team’s tenacity and grit this season.”

CAMILLA EMSBO ’23 W. BASKETBALL

Yale extends hot streak with victories against Harvard, Dartmouth

BY ROSA BRACERAS CONTRIBUTING REPORTER In its third weekend of ECAC play, the Yale women’s hockey team returned home after sweeping their New York road trip lineup. The Bulldogs continued their winning momentum into this weekend’s homestand, defeating No. 10 Harvard 3–1 and Dartmouth 8–3.

Yale’s (6–2–0, 4–2–0 ECAC) victory against Harvard (5–3– 0, 3–3–0), in conjunction with last weekend’s 4–0 win against then-No. 4 Colgate, marks the first time in program history the Bulldogs beat two nationally-ranked teams back-to-back.

A Saturday beat-down of the Big Green (3–5–0, 2–5–0) completed the weekend sweep for the Elis.

“It was a very successful weekend, getting four points in a tough conference,” Bulldogs head coach Mark Bolding told Yale Athletics after the Dartmouth game. “Great to see offensive contributions from so many people.”

Yale started strong against Harvard with solid puck control, spending the majority of the period in the offensive zone. Six minutes in, Charlotte Welch ’23 received a tape-to-tape pass from captain Greta Skarzynski ’22 in the neutral zone for a three-on-three.

Welch sped past the Crimson into the slot for the shot and beat the Harvard goalie top shelf on the glove side. The goal was on Yale’s second shot on goal.

Toward the end of the second, after Harvard forward Gabi Davidson Adams was sent to the box for checking, the Bulldogs were on the power play. Emma Seitz ’23 lit the lamp for the Elis when she crashed the lower slot for Welch’s pass from below the goal line for a one-timer into the back of the net.

“Both goals were great team plays,” said Welch. “We always play as a unit and as a team, which resulted in those two goals.”

After the first period, Harvard had just three shots on goal.

The Blue and White continued strong into the second frame, creating several scoring opportunities and successfully kill-

ing off Vita Poniatovskaia’s ’25 slashing penalty. The Bulldogs’ high intensity throughout the game kept the packed crowd at the Whale engaged and cheering for more.

With traffic out in front, Kaitlyn Rippon ’23 picked up a rebound and hit one home off of the post as she fell to her knees. The Bulldogs all swarmed to Rippon after the goal, complete with Kiersten Goode ’24 jumping up and down.

The Crimson bounced back to tie the period with five minutes to go after Olivia Muhn ’25 was sent to the box for tripping. Harvard’s Anna Bloomer scored the goal off of a rebound in the slot.

In the third period, Harvard began to play more aggressively with a heightened sense of urgency. Muhn was put in the sin bin for the second time of the night, this time for matching roughing penalties with Harvard’s Paige Lester for two minutes of four-on-four play.

Harvard pulled its goalie with more than a minute left in the game in a final attempt to tie. No luck came for the Crimson, however, and the Elis took the game 3–1.

“We definitely played a solid three periods, every single shift. I thought each line really took it to them,” Skarzynski said. “We did a great job just going out there and proving to not only Harvard but to the ECAC and the NCAA that we are a contender.”

The Bulldogs were able to further prove their dominance in the ECAC with an 8–3 victory over the Big Green.

Saturday’s game against Dartmouth proved momentous. Firstyear Anna Bargman ’25 got her first collegiate assist and goal in the first and second periods, respectively.

Additionally, Skarzynski, the senior captain of the Bulldogs, played in her 100th career game for Yale.

“We’re really emphasizing that it doesn’t matter who we play, no matter if they’re nationally ranked or not, or how they’re doing in the ECAC,” Skarzynski said after Friday night’s game, looking ahead to the next day’s competition. “What matters the most is that we play our

MELANIE HELLER/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Women’s hockey proves its mettle after impressive victories against Ivy rivals Harvard and Dartmouth. game and just continue to come out hard and win every battle, win every shift and win the game.”

Yale scored four times within a 12-minute span during the first period. Tess Dettling ’22 started the Bulldogs off for the night with a tip off of Seitz’s shot from the point. Elle Hartje ’24 followed two minutes later with a quick blocker-side one-timer. Seitz made it 3–0 after capitalizing on an odd man rush opportunity with help from Dalton.

With under two minutes to go in the first period, Poniatovskaia secured a four-goal lead by sinking a rebound off of a shot from Dalton into a wide open net for her first full-strength goal. Claire Dalton ’23 had three assists in the first four goals of the game.

The Bulldogs continued to outperform the Big Green in the second period. Poniatovskaia and Seitz both scored their second goals of the day along with Bargman’s first career goal. Dartmouth finally responded making it 7–1 after 40 minutes of play.

Gianna Meloni ’22 started the game and played the first two periods against Dartmouth, making a total of 17 saves. Freshman goalie Pia Dukaric ’25 stepped between the pipes the last 20 minutes and stopped eight of the 10 shots she faced.

In the third period, Welch, who won 13 of her 14 faceoffs against Dartmouth, rounded out the Bulldogs’ scoring for the day. Welch (1–2–3), Dettling (1–2–3) and Seitz (2–1–3) finished the game with three points each, while Dalton (0–6–6) led the team with a total of six points. For her efforts, Seitz earned ECAC Hockey Player of the Week after ending this weekend with three goals.

“It makes a huge difference hearing the crowd when we’re out there on the bench, just having so much energy in our beautiful rink. It really changes the game for us,” said Welch. “We really are super grateful, very appreciative of everyone for coming out.”

1124 people were in attendance for the Harvard game, and 1002

people were in the stands for the Dartmouth game, both of which were held at Ingalls.

With Yale outscoring its opponents 22–4 in the last four games, the Bulldogs are now ranked No. 9 in the nation, bumping Harvard out of the top 10. This is the first time in program history the Bulldogs have made national rankings.

Yale currently leads the NCAA with a 34.6 power-play percentage — 34.6 percent — and eight shorthanded goals across eight games. With a scoring margin of 29 and 38 total goals, the Elis rank second and fourth in the nation, respectively.

The Yale women’s hockey team will travel to New York this weekend hoping to extend its hot streak against ECAC contenders St. Lawrence University on Friday at 6 p.m. and No. 7 Clarkson University on Saturday at 3 p.m.

Both games will be streamed live on ESPN+.

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

Bulldogs close out season with 1–0 loss to Princeton

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

Men’s soccer fell 1–0 in overtime to Ivy champion Princeton on Saturday night, finishing the season second in the League.

BY DREW BECKMEN AND ALESSA KIM-PANERO STAFF REPORTERS The Yale men’s soccer team played its final game of the season Saturday, falling 1–0 to Princeton in an overtime thriller. Princeton and Yale finished first and second in the Ivy League, respectively.

Although the Tigers (12–5–0, 7–0–0 Ivy) entered Saturday’s contest already having clinched

the Ivy crown, Yale (7–5–4, 4–1–2 Ivy) forced the champs into overtime for their first extra-time contest this season.

The 1–0 result is Yale’s only Ivy loss on the season. Draws against Penn and Harvard, however, left the Elis trailing in the standings to a Princeton team that won every Ivy game outright. The season finale represented the final game for the Bulldogs’ lone senior Enzo Okpoye ’22.

“It was definitely a bittersweet moment as the referee blew the final whistle at Princeton,” Okpoye said. “I had a lot of time during lockdown to reflect and prepare myself for the inevitable, the moment when I’d have to hang up the jersey, but I guess I couldn’t picture the love and appreciation from my teammates.”

In regulation, Princeton outshot Yale 8–6 and had the edge in corner kicks 4–3. The Tigers

finally converted on a chance four minutes into the first overtime period, locking in their undefeated conference record.

Okpoye — who struggled with injuries throughout his Yale career — anchored Yale’s defense during the 2019 championship season.

Even as a defender, Okpoye scored five goals in the campaign. Over his three seasons in the Blue and White, Okpoye played 2,410 minutes for the Bulldogs.

Although the Bulldogs could not pull off a repeat as champions in Okpoye’s final year, they will return all but one player for the 2022 campaign. Captain and goalkeeper Elian Haddock ’23 will return alongside his brother Jeremy Haddock ’23 to anchor the Bulldogs’ back line. Forwards Paolo Carroll ’23 and Kahveh Zahiroleslam ’24 — the team’s leading goalscorers — will look to increase production in the attacking third as well.

One of the Blue and White’s key strengths throughout the season was its defense. The Haddock brothers, Jake Schaffer ’24, TJ Presthus ’25 and Gelbus Lemus ’25 composed the defensive unit that conceded just three goals throughout Ancient Eight play. Saturday’s game against Princeton proved to be another low-scoring defensive battle. Elian Haddock recorded just one save, which came 31 minutes into the contest as Diaz Bonilla fired a shot on target. Neither team put any additional shots on target until the Tigers’ winning golden goal in overtime.

“We were all very disappointed with the result at Princeton,” mid-

fielder Sam Harshe ’25 said. “We’ll have a very good group coming back next season, though, and we’re already looking forward to the opportunity to play several teams, including Princeton, again.”

Princeton’s deciding goal came just over three minutes into overtime. Midfielder Ryan Clare received a ball on the right wing and knocked a left-footed, inswinging cross into the box. The Yale defense failed to clear the ball, and it landed at the feet of Mateo Godoy on the back post. After the ball bounced, Godoy extended his left foot to redirect the ball past Elian Haddock.

The goal sealed Princeton’s perfect conference season, a feat they have not accomplished since 2010. The win also represented Princeton head coach Jim Barlow’s 200th win at the helm of the New Jersey program.

As Ancient Eight champions, Princeton punched its ticket to the NCAA Tournament. The Tigers will face off against St. John’s University in Queens, NY on Nov. 18.

“Considering we only had one senior, who was also battling injuries all year, and 17 new players in their first year competing at this level, it is pretty amazing what the group was able to accomplish this season,” head coach Kylie Stannard said.

In 2019, Princeton finished the season tied for fifth in the Ivy League.

Contact DREW BECKMEN at drew.beckmen@yale.edu and ALESSA KIM-PANERO at alessa.kim-panero@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 11

“Life is too short, and I’m Italian. I’d much rather eat pasta and drink wine than be a size 0.” SOPHIA BUSH AMERICAN ACTRESS

Mariam Khan ’24 makes history in Hamden

BY NATHANIEL ROSENBERG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Being a history maker is nothing new for Mariam Khan ’24.

Khan, who was elected to a four-year term on the Hamden Board of Education this month, is just 19 years old, making her the youngest elected representative in the Board’s history. She is also the first Muslim-American elected to office in Hamden.

“I was, you know, overcome with emotion,” Khan said. “They started to read out [the election results] and my hands were shaking.”

Activism shaped by identity Khan’s first political memory took place in eighth grade, when her class was having a discussion about identity. She remembers speaking about the hardships of growing up Muslim in a post-9/11 world, to which many of her peers related.

“I think this applies to any, you know, marginalized community, when you’re younger, you kind of know that you’re treated differently,” she said.

Later that year, her teacher, impressed by her comments, had her speak to a panel of educators about Islamophobia in classrooms.

Khan credits her passion for “educational equity” to this experience.

When she arrived at Hamden High School, Khan immediately began working to address issues of diversity and racism in the school community. She founded Global Youth Activists, a club with the mission of “amplifying youth voices.”

Imaan Masood, a senior at Hamden High School and president of GYA, said that Khan was a tour de force. When it came to improving the community, Masood said, “I felt like [Mariam] always saw those areas. And she did the best that she could to try to fix them.”

Khan’s first and longest term project with GYA was a collaboration with Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, or IRIS, a New Haven-based refugee organization. She led book and backpack drives, engaging students in helping others in the community.

In 2019, Khan and GYA hosted a mayoral forum for students.

“Students asked questions about [school resource officers], about curriculum, about revising the [academic] calendar,” Khan recalled. She said she was proud that the forum brought student concerns to the forefront of town politics.

Masood credited Khan with building an organization that would last long after her graduation.

“A lot of our people in the club are underclassmen,” Masood said. “They really enjoy the message of the club and being able to do stuff like that affects people in our communities.”

Beyond GYA, Khan founded Connecticut Period — a club focused on combating period poverty — at Hamden High during her time there. She said that she was inspired to start the club because the school charged 25 cents for each menstrual product at the nurses office.

As the head of CT Period, Khan successfully got rid of the require-

ment of payment in Hamden High.

She led students in creating “period packages” — hand-designed bags filled with feminine hygiene products — and coordinated their donations from schools, libraries, restaurants and other businesses throughout Hamden, West Haven and New Haven. Through social media, Khan was also able to promote the club, which held a rally against period poverty on the New Haven Green.

“She never made it feel like a chore,” Farah Najjari, a longtime friend and Khan’s Board of Education campaign manager, said about her experience organizing with Khan. “She never had a negative attitude about anything. It was very much okay, this is what I’m going to do, you guys are going to help and the rest is history.”

Eventually, with Khan as the state lead, CT Period took its campaign to Hartford, testifying at the State House in February of 2020 in support of a bill that required free feminine hygiene products in Connecticut’s school bathrooms.

“Every menstruator deserves access to period products,” Khan wrote to her legislators. “No student should have to choose between school and periods; no woman should have to choose between food and pads; no menstruator should have to choose between their body and humanity.”

(Student) Board of Education Representative Khan’s decision to run for one of two non-voting student representative seats on the Hamden Board of Education was far from premeditated.

When she decided to apply, Khan managed to secure the last interview spot, at the very end of the day.

“I remember, there were a lot of students who came in, you know, full suit and tie,” Khan said. “That day, I only had my gym clothes, and I was like, in my gym clothes.”

Outside of her attire, Khan came prepared. She told Board of Education representatives about her plan for increased board transparency and student involvement.

She got the gig.

Her favorite and most memorable project on the board was making Eid a school holiday.

Darius Cummings, Khan’s co-student representative on the Board of Education, supported the initiative.

“We follow all the other Abrahamic calendar holidays; we have nothing for any Islamic holiday,” Cummings told the News. “She was really [like] hey, if you guys are so interested in diversity and inclusion, why are we not implementing it into the way that we, you know, interact with the curriculum?”

To push for the change in calendar, Khan packed the Board of Education hearing with Muslim families clad in traditional clothing to share the excitement of Eid. Masood said Khan’s leadership around the Eid proposal was special.

“Honestly, I’m also like, a Pakistani Muslim student like how she is,” Masood said. “And so it just shows that like, with the right amount of determination and momentum that I mean, she was able to accomplish so much.”

But Khan’s time on the board was not all triumphs. Hamden Public Schools has not yet made Eid a holiday, and both she and Cummings ran into communication issues with the rest of the board.

“We dealt with a lot on the board that we didn’t necessarily share,” Khan reflected. “And you know, being the two students of color, young students of color, trying to push for a lot, it became really tiring and taxing to have to not have emails answered or to be ignored.”

“Doing the work alongside people, not for people” Khan’s activism did not end at Hamden High School.

Abdul Osamnu, the councilor-elect for Hamden’s third district and longtime friend of Khan’s, recalled that he first met her volunteering in 2017, on a contentious town council campaign in Hamden’s ninth district.

The district had been held by Republicans for several years, and so when the opportunity arose, both Osmanu and Khan interned on the Democratic campaign, phone banking and canvassing to flip the seat. Osmanu remembers Khan as passionate and outgoing, always attempting to meet and connect with the other campaign interns.

The pair became friends quickly, and also met Justin Farmer, the councilor in Hamden’s fifth district, around the same time.

In the spring of 2020, Farmer decided to run for State Senate, and he tapped Khan and Osmanu, then just 18, as his deputy campaign managers.

“I want this campaign to be an organizing opportunity for y’all to learn and grow,” Farmer remembered telling them.

Khan stepped up immediately, taking over the job of volunteer outreach and coordination. She thrived in the role, taking an operation from 10 to nearly 300 people, all committed to door knocking, lit dropping and phone banking.

She was even able to turn shy volunteers into expert campaigners. Khan allowed them to express their support through art, creating draws, posters and even memes to promote Farmer both in the community and online.

“Mariam has always been a person who’s had people gravitate to her,” Farmer marveled. “She’s also very organized, which the irony of most organizers are not organized.”

Unfortunately for the trio of Farmer, Khan and Osmanu, the campaign was unsuccessful.

But to each of them, it had still accomplished many of its goals.

As Osmanu noted, it had filed late, ran into issues with COVID-19, and still “grabbed the attention of people statewide, regionally and even nationally.”

“It wasn’t just about getting elected” Coming off of Farmer’s loss, Khan admitted she was burnt out.

The combination of missing out on an in-person senior year, a long

COURTESY OF FARAH NAJJARI

Sophomore Mariam Khan became Hamden’s youngest elected official when she won a seat on the Board of Education earlier this month. election season and starting Yale virtually in the fall were personally difficult.

Nonetheless, at the urging of Osmanu, Khan became increasingly involved with the Central Connecticut chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

“For me, it’s about what, again, places policy and people first and seeing the legislative victories, seeing that this is probably the only viable framework to empower people,” Khan shared about DSA. “I think that was what was most exciting for me, something that not only counteracted this binary political system, but had a vision of its own.”

In January of 2021, Osmanu told Farmer and Khan that he was planning on running for a seat on the Hamden Town Council in the third district, joining Farmer.

Khan decided to run soon after, and the eponymous JAM slate (Justin, Abdul, Mariam), the first socalist slate elected in Connecticut in 60 years, was born.

Najjari was not surprised about the decision.

“It was just [Khan] identifying there are so many issues and like reflecting on those issues and doing her best to try to support as many students that you could,” Najjari told the News.

Khan ran on a platform of diversifying the educator workforce to match the student body. She also wants increased investment in students’ mental health and a redistribution of PTA wealth, so that a system where “some of them raise over $100,000 and others only can raise a few thousand,” does not persist.

On the campaign trail, Khan knocked doors across Hamden early and often.

Osmanu remembers door knocking in May, before JAM had literature and before any other candidates had begun their operations. “It was kind of just like a listening tour, of sorts,” he said, and it served as the baseline for the rest of the summer.

Najjari remembers canvassing with Khan and talking to a pair of sisters who could not believe that she was a candidate at 19.

“They just kind of looked at her in shock,” Najjari noted. Nevertheless, once they talked to Khan, the sisters were sold, committing to vote for her and putting their sons

in contact with the campaign as potential volunteers.

Farmer had run for office three times before in Hamden, and he thought the pitch for Khan was remarkably easy. Khan, from her time as a representative, had more experience than most of the candidates. She was just recently a student and a leader amongst students. Farmer noted that often, “the people closest to the problems are closest to solutions,” and thought that was true with Khan.

The campaign received a boost in late July, when, at the Democratic Town Convention, Khan was endorsed overwhelmingly by the party. Her candidacy was also bolstered by Central Connecticut and national DSA endorsements in August.

On primary day, Khan was up before sunrise. She pollstood from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., and by the end of the day, exhaustion had set in. She remembers waiting for election results in a hot and stuffy gym, feeling slightly lightheaded.

As results started to stream in from across the town, it became clear that Khan had won, by a huge margin.

“As soon as I read [the results], I couldn’t even register it. I started tearing up and the screen became blurry. And I just started crying right there,” Khan said.

Throughout the campaign, Khan emphasized that her election was neither the beginning nor the end of a process. As a socialist, she treated the campaign as one moment in a much longer struggle.

“I am not a savior,” Khan reflected. “If I’m not inviting people into the work, and pushing for this collective education and this collective mobilization around these issues, I don’t think any real work has been done.”

As for where Khan will go from here, the consensus is the sky’s the limit. “Secretary of State?”

Farmer joked when asked.

“I’d just stay tuned,” Najjari encouraged. “Right now, I think her main focus is focusing on the board of education, really relishing this moment. And giving back to you know, the community that shaped her, obviously, every day, it’s what she does every day.”

Khan was elected on Nov. 2.

Contact NATHANIEL ROSENBERG at nathaniel.rosenberg@yale.edu .

University reevaluates global strategy following Yale-NUS closure

YALE DAILY NEWS

Following the closure of Yale-NUS in August 2021, the University has reassessed the future of its global outreach. Yale currently has no plans for a similar project.

BY PHILIP MOUSAVIZADEH STAFF REPORTER Following the abrupt closure of Yale-NUS by the National University of Singapore in August 2021, the University does not plan on embarking on a similar global partnership in the near future, according to Vice President for Global Strategy Pericles Lewis.

Lewis said that while the University will not dramatically shift its global strategy, it is unlikely to undertake a campus-building program at a

similar scale to Yale-NUS in the near future. He added that the University will maintain its commitment to its various international centers, such as the Yale Center Beijing and the Paul Mellon Center in London, and will continue to engage in cross-border research and faculty collaboration.

“I don’t think we’re going to be opening a big college that’s for thousands of students,” Lewis said. “There are possibilities for sharing education and information, and even some kind of community, through a more diffuse kind of arrangement.”

Lewis noted that the University opened Yale-NUS in a period of increased international collaboration and relative ease of travel, but that the pandemic has made that significantly more challenging.

A new project of a similar nature is therefore unlikely.

While the pandemic may have closed certain doors for international collaboration, Lewis explained that the last two years were also a period of increased online collaboration.

He pointed in particular to the African Women Leaders program, which used to bring female leaders from the region to Yale for one week, but now hosts events throughout the year.

Carol Li Rafferty, the executive director of Yale Center Beijing, said that there are “around 150 faculty-led research collaborations” in China alone. It is this kind of collaboration that the University has been engaged in for years and will continue to do, according to Lewis.

“I think, potentially, the expertise and knowledge and learning that are here at Yale, could be shared without great expense with a very, very large audience,” Lewis said.

Lewis pointed to the wildly successful online classes taught by Lau-

rie Santos, Robert Shiller and Paul Bloom as models for global cooperation, arguing that those classes were able to spread Yale’s expertise and knowledge without significant and costly commitments.

History professor Arne Westad said that more diffuse international collaboration, exemplified by online classes and faculty-led collaborative research, is far more effective than large-scale projects such as Yale-NUS. “Top universities here are better off cooperating with strong institutions abroad, rather than trying in a cooperative way of setting up physical campuses abroad,” he said. “I think one of the lessons that we can draw from this [YaleNUS] is that we are probably better off in the future by trying to do a program by program cooperation.”

But Westad noted that the current tensions between the United States and Chinese governments have made collaboration with Chinese institutions more challenging.

However, he still reaffirmed that the University ought to remain engaged in this kind of work as a way of preserving the U.S.-China relationship as much as possible.

“My belief is that United StatesChina relations are going to go from bad to worse,” Westad said. “Those kinds of [faculty] connections are crucially important. This is something that we learned from the Cold War, that American universities do better in this kind of situation when they are open to the degree possible for cooperation with other institutions, even in states that we have a strong political rivalry with or even competition.”

Rafferty similarly reflected on the role of the university in times of global competition, saying that it is the mission of the university to be at the forefront of research and teaching and attempting to solve global issues.

She said that Yale’s work in the global sphere should not be abated by political issues.

“Yale’s not going to stop training the best and brightest in a part of the world, just because something’s not going as smoothly as before,” Rafferty said.

Yale-NUS was established in 2011.

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

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

THROUGH THE LENS hal·cy·on adjective denoting a period of time in the past that was idyllically happy and peaceful My tennis shoes got slightly wet as I tried to hop from the middle of the street onto the curb in an attempt to avoid the rain puddles. Chipotle had a BOGO offer, and of course, Vanessa and I had to schedule in a burrito run after work.

I think we already knew it would take us forever to make it from our apartment on Edgewood, by Pierson, to the New Haven Green, so most of the walk was spent looking at the sky, debating whether we needed our umbrellas or not and talking about what events we were looking forward to during the fall semester. The sky was a champagne pink and the double rainbow over the Payne Whitney Gymnasium made the scene ever more serene. Life was good. fika noun 1. (in Swedish custom) a break from activity during which people drink coffee, eat cakes or other light snacks and relax with others.

2. a moment to slow down and appreciate the little things in life One of my favorite pastimes this semester is walking around campus during sunset to see the sunlight hit buildings at certain angles. I always seem to be rushing from my dorm to Science Hill or speeding across the crosswalk in front of Woosley Hall before the timer runs out that I never really had an appreciation for just how beautiful the city of New Haven and Yale’s campus is. In fact, I recently picked up a photo assignment for YDN MAG’s piece on Cross Campus where Isa and I just interviewed and took photos of people. It was such a blast making new friends after the very weird year we had, seeing people play pong — with water, of course — being shocked at people dressed up in a cowboy hat and chicken costumes on a Saturday afternoon and interviewing a group of friends chilling on a couch and watching Tom & Jerry on a TV screen outside. Everyone is so busy, but sometimes it is great to slow down and feel the sun shining down at your face.

em·py·re·an adjective related to heaven or the sky No one makes art better than Mother Nature. My favorite photos to take are ones right after sunset when the last rays of sunlight are reflected off the pink wispy clouds. The light yellow-orange of day meshes with the dark grey-blue of night, creating an illusion that you are standing inside some painting hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

um·bra noun the fully shaded inner region of a shadow cast by an opaque object, especially the area on the earth or moon experiencing the total phase of the eclipse.

Not everything is sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes there are good days, other times there are really bad days. Problem sets are hard, exam problems are hard, life is hard. But, it is going to be okay because in the end, grades truly do not define you — even if you are pre-med — and the earth keeps spinning.

SHARON LI reports.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 13

“The only guilty pleasure I have is pasta.” ALLISON JANNEY AMERICAN ACTRESS

JE Head of College Mark Saltzman to step down

BY LUCY HODGMAN STAFF REPORTER In an email accompanied by one of his signature playlists — this one themed around difficult decisions — professor Mark Saltzman announced on Sunday that he will step down as Head of Jonathan Edwards College after six years in the position.

Saltzman announced the departure in his weekly message to the JE community, explaining that his term as Head will end officially on June 30, 2022. Also a professor of biomedical engineering, chemical and environmental engineering and physiology and director of the Saltzman Research Group, Saltzman plans to devote his time to teaching and research.

“I came here to Yale to start the biomedical engineering program and spent the first 15 years at Yale teaching and doing research,” Saltzman said. “I had the good fortune to be invited to be head of college at JE, which has been a tremendously joyful experience for me. But it’s just hard to do all of those things together, so I feel like I need to prioritize my research and teaching over the next few years.”

Saltzman emphasized how difficult his decision had been. He said stepping down as head of college felt “terrible,” but that it was a necessary step for him to continue to teach and do research at the highest level.

Reflecting on his experience as head of college, Saltzman described the meaningful relationships he was able to forge with students while living among them in the college.

“When you have incidental interactions with people at all times of the day and night, you just get to know people and appreciate them better,” Saltz-

man said. “I was used to seeing people come into my classroom and excel, but to see them come into the classroom and excel and also be star gymnasts, or musicians, or writers or whatever other wonderful things they are — it feels very different.”

With restrictions relaxed on in-person gatherings, Saltzman said that he hoped the college could return to hosting some of its traditional events before he departs as head of college.

Before his term ends, Saltzman will oversee two graduation ceremonies for JE students this spring — one for the class of 2022 and one for students who graduated in 2020 but were unable to experience an in-person commencement. Saltzman said that he anticipates the dual graduations being both “fun and exhausting.”

Although Saltzman said that he will not be involved in the process of selecting a new head of college for JE, he noted that it is important for the head to be honest and available to students, and that “students are really good at telling if you’re authentic or not.”

Saltzman’s emphasis on authenticity did not go unnoticed by students in JE. “He told us stories from his life that we could often relate to, and I could tell from the way he spoke about his time in JE with his children that many students who had been around longer than I had begun to love his whole family,” Brook Smith ’25 wrote in an email to the News.

Smith added that Saltzman seemed like one of few “real adults” on campus who took the time to engage with students in a meaningful way.

Sophie Ascheim ’23, a JE college aide, recalled a similar sense of familiarity with Saltzman

and his family, including his two young children.

“It’s really sad to see Head Saltzman and his family go,” Ascheim said. “They have truly been such a bright part of our time in JE. I for one will miss hearing Willa and Noa enjoy their adventures in the courtyard, as well as the many times he has poked his head into the head of college office while I’m on shift, just to say hi.”

Although current first-year students will only have known Saltzman for a year when he departs, Yakeleen Almazan ’25 emphasized the role he played in her transition to college life.

Almazan said Saltzman and JE Dean Christina Ferando helped her feel welcome at Yale, especially at the beginning of the year.

“Head Saltzman made me and other JE first-years feel like we were a puzzle piece within this larger community, which I appreciated,” Almazan said.

All students interviewed recalled fond memories of the playlists which Saltzman made for students: themed lists of songs which he included at the end of his weekly emails to the JE community, aptly named “Spider Bytes.”

Once, Anne Northrup ’22 responded with some song recommendations of her own, and she and Saltzman had “a nice little exchange” about their respective tastes in music.

“From the beginning of the semester, my suitemates and I were infatuated by his music choices: CHVRCHES, Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers… we always said he knew how to give the people what they wanted,” Smith wrote. “In fact, I listened to one of his playlists just this morning; I don’t know how he managed to do it, but he created a collection

YALE NEWS

Head of Jonathan Edwards College Mark Saltzman will step down in June to focus on teaching and research. of indie songs that perfectly sum up the Yale experience.”

Ascheim added that it was fun to “trace his messages” through Saltzman’s playlists, which are often themed.

The email Saltzman sent announcing his departure featured a playlist including The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” My Morning Jacket’s “Big Decisions,” and Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.”

“I don’t have much context for how other heads of college engage with their students,” Smith wrote, “but I think we’re all hoping that our next head of college has half the music taste of Mark Saltzman.”

Saltzman was appointed head of Jonathan Edwards College in May 2016.

Contact LUCY HODGMAN at lucy.hodgman@yale.edu .

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021

WEEKEND THAT FEELING WITH SO MUCH COLOR:

Coffee with New Haven’s Homeless Residents // BY BRIAN ZHANG Going Home.

Sometimes, it’s as straightforward as diving into bed and pulling up our favorite Netflix show, as instinctive as tossing away our jackets the second we walk through the door. It is the cue that we can go ahead and unleash all our inner weirdness, that we can finally be unapologetically ourselves.

When Thanksgiving Break officially begins in a few hours, most of us will be able to do just that. For others, maybe campus is our Home for the next week or so.

Maybe we have to wait until summertime to go back and maybe we have to pirate all nine episodes of Squid Game, but videocalls

with our crazy little brother remind us that Home is still there, waiting for us.

Yet somewhere in this frenzy of planning, buying travel tickets and stuffing our bags, we forget about one last group of people. We forget about my people, to whom going Home meant always falling short of it, no matter how hard we tried or how close it was sitting before us.

Over the years, I found that feeling of falling short in my half-frozen smiles as I sat at the intersection between 8th Ave. and 52nd St., my wet fingers tracing happy faces outside icy shop windows. I found it in those times I circled Sunset Park on my scooter as the rest of New York fell asleep, watching as relatives, friends and strang-

ers slowly pulled away. But above anything else, I found it in Mom’s colorless eyes as she tore herself apart for not doing enough, even after giving it her all.

Eighty-five miles and a three-hour ride on the MetroNorth away in New Haven, the word “Homeless” still means something more than it should. Addiction. Theft. Murder. Something to be criminalized before it ruins the “prestige” of our country, before states “destroy themselves,” as Trump said.

To be Homeless is to make people check their backs every 15 seconds, to have labels that assume priority over whatever other identities we have. In shaggy clothes people somehow see hidden knives, embedded in my coarse eating habits a risk of contracting some contagious disease.

But I am not the exception who managed to wiggle my way out of this system.

I am nowhere near as strong as my Brothers and Sisters, Mothers and Fathers, Family and Friends — people who remain hungry, freezing, bleeding, raped in the unforgiving streets we walk on every day as we leave for the comfort of our dorms. But their stories, they never went away. They are here, hidden beneath New Haven snow and pieces of cardboard — ready to be unearthed: There is nothing that makes 48-year-old Mike Jones smile more than the sight of his two kids playing videogames. It is enough to keep him out on the streets until however Cont. on page B2

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND HOMELESSNESS Cont. from page B1 late every night, until he gets enough money to cook them “something good.”

After years of Homelessness, Jones and his partner recently managed to find a small apartment, but his neurocognitive disorder continues to make finding work a challenge. Paranoia, stuttering and memory loss are not well-received by the public, he said. Disability, compounded by the colder weather and a prevailing stigma that all Homeless people are alcoholics or drug addicts, turns the streets into an unpredictable reality that is difficult to “adapt” to. For Jones, who also lived briefly in Brooklyn, New York and Chicago, these labels stick with him no matter where he moves, barring him from fresh beginnings.

“You say, ‘hey how you’re doing’ and they walk past you like you’re nothing, and it hurts,” Jones said. He emphasized that past mistakes do not define a person, that the last thing that the Homeless need is to have their self-esteem further chipped away.

Nonetheless, he considers himself among the luckier of New Haven’s Homeless residents because of his family’s support, pointing to his partner waiting further down Chapel St. Some people on the streets do not have their family as a net to fall back upon, he said, making it that much harder to be put down and take judgment from others.

As a father, boyfriend and provider, he said that he must overcome any feelings of shame and embarrassment attached to asking for help by stepping out of his comfort zone. “I’m shy … [and] I’m sitting out here looking crazy … holding a cup,” he said.

“But I’m a man.”

Every person who cares, every person who goes up to him, who says “listen, man” and “encourage[s] [him],” makes this arduous journey a little easier to achieve, he said. For this reason, Jones said that he will always keep his faith and prayer as he continues moving forward, doing anything he can for his loved ones. ____________

It’s the things that everyday people don’t think about — what we take for granted, whether it’s big or small. To the rest of the city, for example, that towering Christmas tree at the center of the Green is a beloved holiday landmark — a “good cause [that] … a lot of people will appreciate” — but to the Homeless, it takes up space that could be used for sleeping, according to Randolph.

lation to ensure that everyone is taken care of, with people alerting one another of open food pantries, shelters and local giveaways.

He remembers one particular blizzard when he supported another Homeless friend who was about to give up. They were able to stay safe by stuffing blankets with feet and hand warmers, but Shaw said that the most important part was teaching that friend to not lose himself.

“Y’all come here and y’all got somewhere to stay … [but] ain’t nobody doing nothing,” she said. “Take care of us. Take care of your Home that’s here.”

Shaw is hopeful that his journey will “blaze a trail” for other Homeless people to treat their pain as learning curves, to continue staying strong.

She asks that the students who come here for school, the people who walk past her on their way to work, treat the Homeless as members of the same community, give back to New Haven as much as we have taken away from the city.

Before I left, she proudly showed me her collection of backpacks, including a new one that she just found and another she wanted to give me. The way she described the colorful designs, the flower and pepperoni pizza prints — that smile, I saw a slice of happy return in her. It was still cold outside, and the ground beneath our bums was still only dirt. But somehow, sitting here with a woman I met less than half an hour ago talking about colors, isolated from the rest of the world, I felt so remarkably safe, warm, hopeful, happy and belonged. So full of color.

“Keep a level head and stay with your heart,” she told me. “Don’t worry. I’ll always look out for you.” ____________ The next interviewee wishes to keep his full name and age anonymous because he has family members who are not aware that he is Homeless. Donovan is his first name.

Friends collapsing before you. Children, laughing and chasing each other just a few minutes ago, now lay indistinguishable from the debris they were playing in. These are flashbacks that Donovan has to relive every night. They are the side of serving in the U.S. Navy that the rest of us don’t know about, because where we see a sky of fireflies is a sky that continues to rain exploding bombs on Donovan and thousands others, years after the war is over.

Immediately upon returning from service, he received notice that he was evicted.

The country needs to take better care of its veterans, he said, not only for their service but also because of all the mental challenges they have to confront.

“It’s not hard to be good to people. Come outside with a smile. Take time to smell the flowers,” he said. “Flowers smell good.” ____________ Color is a beautiful whore. He sleeps with everyone but the Homeless, leaving us alone in an awkward shade of gray as we watch the world around us savor all the reds, blues and yellows.

“Don’t be ashamed of asking,” Hyman said. “You gotta adapt to survive.”

Reaching out for help is a two-way street, however. The Homeless should one day pay forward what is given to them, and passersby must learn to not take their privilege for granted, to always remember where they “come from,” he said.

To Hyman, having money and power does not make a person “something else” from the crowd — there was a point in time when we all found ourselves in less-thanideal situations, and he encourages us to look back on these personal histories and challenges when trying to understand others. He emphasized that people who want to change deserve second chances, because change, whether it is grappling with addiction, Homelessness or abuse, should never be a battle fought alone.

Hyman hopes to keep his next steps simple. “My plan for the future is to live life and learn, and analyze the things I did ... and the things I want to do,” he said, packing up his bags as he leaves for the train to Stamford. ____________

There is a double-standard for these challenges. Tweet after tweet and through countless fan letters, we express sympathy for celebrities whenever they announce that they are going through something, but mental health within the Homeless and impoverished communities is somehow viewed as a separate issue, according to Donovan. Post-stress traumatic disorder is a real problem that the public continues to overlook, he said, and it makes keeping a job and living on the streets more difficult than they already are.

“Most of the time, it’s just the innocent [that] get hurt,” he said.

When I first saw Tracy Randolph, 55, a man had his arms all over her face, trying to force her to kiss him. Her expression was blank, and there was no struggle — no color. For Randolph and many other Homeless women, these instances of sexual assault are a living, breathing nightmare on replay. Randolph said that she expects to be “attacked” every day.

“But I’m an advocate,” she said, claiming that Homelessness has only pushed her to think beyond her own needs. Since moving from 125th St. in Harlem, New York, she has taken care of her nephew, who is also on the streets, and made frequent visits to local New Haven offices, demanding public assistance for herself and her friends living at the Green.

Unfortunately, not only did Randolph find many of the conversations fruitless, but the city seems to have done the exact opposite by divesting more resources away from the Homeless into other projects, she said. She pointed to the lights recently put up on a number of public buildings across the street, saying that the money could have been used to install street lights at the Green and give the Homeless some sense of security in otherwise pitch darkness.

Surface attempts to help the Homeless should not be normalized, Donovan said as he pointed to the unheated and stale-tasting “hot dinner” he just got from a local kitchen.

Nonetheless, Donovan emphasized that he is happy and grateful to have served his country in the Navy, remaining optimistic that he will one day be reunited with his three children. ____________ For 51-year-old Victor Hyman, navigating the streets of New Haven starts with saying “hi” and trying to socialize with others. It’s all about being creative, he said, as we left the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen with some chicken and a bag of veggie chips.

even if he didn’t have anything else, the reason why he decided to wrap a freezing man on the streets with some of his own blankets, even as he “lost feeling of [his] own fingertips.”

This is the eighth year that Spencer Shaw, 38, will be living on the streets, but two things never change: New Haven’s bitterly cold winters and his dream of one day publishing his own book.

His motto for conquering both is to keep holding on just a little more. After losing his mother at a young age “rocked his foundation” and nearly caused alcohol to take over his life, he decided to take things one day at a time, turning to his friends for support and learning not to resent the case manager who neglected to help him.

This idea of “networking” was an unfamiliar one when he was growing up. Going from “one [housing] project to another,” there was violence and classism where opportunities should have been, an issue he said could have been resolved if only people had talked things out rather than letting their feelings take control over their lives.

Still, the stigma that Homeless people are unapproachable makes keeping his head up difficult at times. Shaw described current public treatment toward the Homeless community as having a foot on his neck and having all sense of trust being compromised.

He explained that being Homeless should not mean falling short of a community, that oftentimes, this community is right here in front of us, made up of people in the same situation. Born out of this collective struggling is a drive within the Homeless popu-

But to Shaw, the experiences he endured while Homeless are ones he would never give up, he said, because they revived in him a strength — a commitment to others — that he forgot existed. They are the reason why he would always “give away his last dollar”

Today, I’m at Yale, and I live in an apartment with 14 floormates. Thanks to QuestBridge and The New York Times, I no longer have to worry about finding food or having somewhere to stay, but there’s a part of me that never stopped looking back. I still eat pasta with my hands, and I still walk into class in my worn sandals. Not because I don’t have other options, but because I choose not to move on. I refuse to forget New York, because the only thing that hurts more than half-frozen smiles is having them go away and reappear on the faces of people who don’t deserve them. I refuse to forget New York, not when students are debating whether to steal chocolate bars from the Bow Wow as mothers and children lay starving on the streets. Not when the rest of the world pretends that my people don’t exist.

All bubbles have to pop at some point, even if it’s the size of 14 residential colleges or the reputation of being in “the whiter part of town.” It doesn’t matter if we are students or city residents: this idea that a label somehow puts us ahead of the game or makes us more than — it does not exist.

Maybe it’s just too scary to accept that a social brand cannot protect us from slipping, from one day finding ourselves on the streets, too.

All Yale does, all privilege can do, is put us in a better position to serve the world more than it serves us, to turn them into one of us. New Haven isn’t ours to carve up and draw up more divisions, but a picture that needs coloring in between all those lines. If local business owners can remember our favorite orders, if subway singers can momentarily make us forget about that awful bio test and if underpaid workers can pick up litter to keep schools clean for our children, we can love everyone back, especially the Homeless. We can remember the stories of those who got swept under a carpet painted to look like the American flag.

And we can make journalism something that belongs to everyone, not just to globally renowned artists winning their third Pulitzer.

The truth is, we’re all so good at this.

We’re so good at caretaking. We all get that fuzzy feeling from doing it, even if we’re too shy to admit so. I will never forget how people still sat next to the only kid who wore sandals to the convocation. Or the way that the Green flooded with Powwow music and the smell of burning white sage on Indigenous People’s Day. The way that that math groupchat is somehow still alive with memes at four a.m., when the numbers on our problem set start looking like dancing dwarves. The hard part is reminding ourselves that everyone is deserving of our care, even if they can’t pay us back. Our relationship with the community should not be a transactional one, but one where the only expectation is that it lasts forever.

Looking back, I was wrong. Home does not mean always falling short of it, even if we are Homeless. Just because we fell short today, yesterday and all the days before then, it doesn’t mean that we won’t ever find it tomorrow, whether in our beds watching Squid Game or in the people around us who make life worth living and trying for.

To Yale, to New Haven and to the world, let’s take each other somewhere. That feeling with so much color — it awaits us.

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

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND SAD

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GIRL AUTUMN

Sex on the WKND: Exes with Friendship Benefits Welcome back to Sex on the WKND! We’re an anonymous YDN column dedicated to answering your burning questions about sex, love and anything in between.

Last year, we had one writer, but now we are a collective of students, each with our own unique sexual and romantic experiences. We’ve had straight sex, queer sex and long, long periods without sex. We’ve been in long-term relationships, we’ve walked twenty minutes to avoid former hookups on Cross Campus and we’ve done the whole FroCo-group-cest thing. We may be different this year, but we’re still sex-positive, we’re still anti-capitalist, and we sure as hell still support the Green New Deal.

Obsessing over sex is a Yale tradition as old as the Oldest College Daily itself.

Whether you’re fucking your roommate, still yearning for your first kiss, or dealing with an unsettling skin rash, Sex on the WKND is here for you. Nothing is too personal or silly. Ask us anything ;) Submit your anonymous question here: https://bit.ly/sexonthewknd My ex and I broke up towards the beginning of the semester, and we seem to be on fairly peaceful terms so far. We say hi when we see each other, and we sometimes make small talk, but that’s it. I really want to be actual friends with him again, but I’m not sure how to bring up the question, or if it’s even a smart idea in the first place. Should I text him?

Someone once told me a great story about two individuals who were in a longterm relationship, broke up and proceeded to become not only friends, but friends with benefits. Now, you might be asking, “But what’s the difference between that and a relationsh…”— do not ask this, because I do not know. But they were having fun with it! If there is a moral here, it’s that there are infinite permutations of possible relationships between the same two people. Many people will make absolute claims like never be friends with an ex, but I personally believe that any of these messy permutations can theoretically work, as long as both people are honest about their expectations. In practice, though, this can be quite difficult to pull off.

The impulse to be friends with an ex is largely an admirable one. At its core, it’s a desire not to become a stranger to someone with whom you were once emotionally intimate. For the purpose of this response, I’ll leave strictly sexual connections aside, as well as toxic and abusive relationships.

Yet, the desire to remain close to everyone whose life has meaningfully touched yours can also be harmful. I’ve myself done what many in the queer community consider to be a classic breakup move. For this cute little magic trick, you break up with your significant other one day, proceed to talk to them every day for months and then wonder aloud to your friends why you aren’t over them yet.

In hindsight, it’s quite easy to see why that arrangement didn’t make sense for me or my ex. But, at the time, it was the most natural thing in the world. If you loved and cared for someone deeply, and if something resembling friendship formed a significant part of your connection, as it does for most romantic relationships, it’s

normal to wonder why you couldn’t just be friends after your breakup. You’re still the same people, and won’t they at least appreciate the funny tweets you so desperately want to send them?

I think I can say with relative certainty, however, that you should take some space before diving into a friendship with an ex.

Remember that friendship should never be a consolation prize for either party; a true friendship is a commitment just as serious as a romantic relationship, even though it’s fundamentally different. So maybe the real test is whether you actually want to be friends with this person once you’ve gotten over them romantically. Sometimes the frantic desire to befriend your ex postbreakup is just a way to displace the loneliness and grief of losing a significant relationship. With time, they may no longer seem as appealing as a friend— not because you didn’t love them, but rather because it feels too forced to try and transition your past connection into present circumstances.

On the other hand, sometimes you get lucky and friendships with exes do work.

In my humble opinion, this is most likely for one of the following reasons: you didn’t date for very long, you established a strong foundation of friendship before or the breakup was truly mutual and both of your residual feelings have entirely dissolved. As dumb as this advice usually is, you will know that this friendship is working because you will feel it in your gut; you won’t leave agonizing over whether the friendship feels weird. And this is truly great! Together, you can proceed to grab meals, give music recommendations or email your members of Congress about passing the Green New Deal, undoubtedly the most important policy change to

ensure the sustainable future of the human species. Still, tread carefully. A friendship with an ex won’t work long-term if you can’t be frank about your past together, or, conversely, if you can’t stop fixating on it.

Jealousy has to be out of the question, at least any jealousy that is more-than-fleeting. And you’ll have to be proactive about communicating your own needs, while also being considerate of the other person’s feelings.

If all of this is starting to sound a little too emotionally taxing, I get it. After all, there’s a big difference between being truly friends with your ex and all of the following related statuses: remaining concerned about your ex’s well-being, remaining cordial when you see them on the street, remaining part of the same social circle. If you’re looking just to be civil, I’d recommend smiling, waving and walking on. If you run in the same circles, humor can go a long way in dissipating the inherent awkwardness of seeing them at group gatherings. Make a joke like: “isn’t it funny that we once slept together and now we’re both standing by this bag of chips?” Just kidding! Be normal, and avoid mentioning the fact that the two of you once shared the same bed, at all costs!

Above all, though, remember that it’s okay to miss people without an action step. If you truly cared about someone, it’s unlikely that care is going to disappear any time soon. At the risk of sounding cheesy, it’s a beautiful thing to know that you can still value people who are no longer part of your everyday life and that other people are out there in the world, reciprocating that same feeling towards you. Try to celebrate the fact that you’re capable of experiencing that emotion — even when it’s best not to act on it anymore.

ALL 30 TRACKS ON “RED (TAYLOR’S VERSION),” Ranked By How Much They Make Me Want to Renounce Love, Drop Out of College and Become a Sheep Farmer in Iceland, Mongolia or Some Other Place That Has Low Population Density

// BY AUDREY KOLKER Due to some copyright nonsense with Scooter Braun that I did not care to follow and know absolutely nothing about, Taylor Swift re-released her fourth studio album “Red” on Friday, Nov. 12 — a helpful reminder to us all that love is terrible and painful and also that Jake Gyllenhaal should be in prison for murder. After a week of Just Going Through It, I have managed to rank the album’s — very many — tracks by how much they made me want to start a sheep farm in the mountains and speak to no one. Enjoy!

See, This Is Something. I Could Cry to This While Dyeing and Carding My Wool in Complete Darkness Because the Sun Sets at 4:30 Now: “The Last Time,” “The Lucky One,” “The Moment I Knew,” “Come Back...

Be Here,” “Better Man,” “Forever Winter” Finally, Red accomplishes its main goal — which, contrary to popular belief, was not transitioning Swift from country into pop or setting her up for global superstardom but, in fact, making me distraught.

Read The Room: “Begin Again,” “Stay Stay Stay,” “Starlight,” “Everything Has Changed,” “Holy Ground,” “22,” “Message in a Bottle,” “State of Grace,” “Run,” “Treacherous” Great songs — bops! — but far too happy and hopeful. Booo. This is completely antithetical to the Sad Girl Autumn agenda I’m pushing over here. Also: Starlight is a piece of Ethel and Bobby Kennedy fanfiction. Is that...okay?

I Am Going to Throw My Phone into the Atlantic: “Ronan,” “Nothing New,” “I Almost Do,” “Sad Beautiful Tragic” Bad news: I’m starting to think that hand spinning wool will not be a good enough distraction from this pain.

Sad In Theory But Not In Practice: “I Knew You Were Trouble,” “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “Girl At Home,” “I Bet You Think About Me,” “Babe,” “Red,” “The Very First Night,” “State of Grace (Acoustic)” I’m sorry, but if you can dance to it at BD, you cannot listen to it while miserably shearing your sheep, cleaning the fleece and picking the wool.

That Made Me Want To Die: “All Too Well” and “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” I listened to the 10 minute version of “All Too Well” and said, “Oh, okay, this is fine.” And then I listened to it eighty more times in the span of six hours, and then I watched the short film and now there is nothing left for me to do but learn how to knit, make a lot of scarves and never, ever lend them to terrible boyfriends.

Contact AUDREY KOLKER at audrey.kolker@yale.edu . // VALERIE PAVILONIS

WKND Recommends All Too Well (Sad Girl Autumn Version)- Recorded at Long Pond Studios

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND GRATITUDE

What aren’t you grateful for? // BY JACQUELINE KASKEL As Thanksgiving draws near, we are all left to reflect on what we’re grateful for: family, friends, food, freedom, faith and the other wonderful things that incidentally all begin with the letter F. However, in reflecting on the joys of life, we’re prone to stumbling across the not so wonderful things.

These things keep me awake at night staring at the ceiling and keep me from getting out of bed in the morning. They awaken a smoldering fury in my core that only the dining hall tres leches can extinguish. Sometimes I need a nice relaxing jog to East Rock Park just to calm me down, while other times I kickbox in the Branford College gym.

Don’t worry — I’m not actually this angry. I’m not really angry at anything at all this year. There isn’t enough time in the world to share everything that I’m grateful for. I do, however, only need a little time to reflect on a few of my — let’s kindly say — pet peeves.

Most Yale students value a good night’s sleep, though few ever achieve this unattainable goal. The reason? There are many.

But notably it’s the existence of classes that begin before 11:35 in the morning. At first, I thought I had it bad with my 9:25 class in William L. Harkness Hall, but there are some students with classes on Science Hill at 9 a.m. Now, that’s just plain torture. It’s unimaginable to even think about my high school days, when I woke up at 6:45 in the morning. Was I even human? How did I ever function on that little sleep? Now, on a good night, I’ll get seven hours, but any less than that, and I require an afternoon nap. It’s like I’ve aged 50 years in only a few months.

Not only do those students with 9 a.m. classes on Science Hill have to wake up at an ungodly hour, but they also have to walk up Science Hill. Here I was, a humanities student, thinking I’d never have to walk up Science Hill for a class. I am grateful that I don’t have to walk up there early in the morning like many others, but I still hold a grudge. When I trudge to the Yale Divinity School — which lies past Science Hill — I have to block out 30 minutes to walk there from Old Campus, and even then, I have to speed walk. Science Hill is simply too steep for its own good, and many of the buildings up there are just too far away from campus to even be considered part of campus.

And speaking of distance, why must Vanderbilt Hall be the absolute farthest point from anywhere on campus that I need to go? Now, as a Branford sophomore, I’ve made my peace with living on Old Campus.

It’s honestly quite beautiful, and I’m grateful to be having the first-year experience.

Our little Vanderbilt annex is a sophomore safe haven. However, the fact that it takes at least a few minutes to even exit Old Campus from Vanderbilt is beginning to make me late everywhere that I go. Either I’m a very slow walker or just incredibly lazy, but sometimes walking to the Branford dining hall from Vanderbilt is even too much of a trek.

Now that it’s getting pretty chilly, the hike to the library also is becoming a bit of a hassle. I find myself nowadays wanting to study in my suite common room as opposed to wasting time and energy walking all the way to Sterling, especially when I know that it’s going to close at midnight anyways. I always found it irritating that Sterling closes at midnight while Bass closes at 2 a.m. Though I understand the probable logistic reasons behind this decision, I am still peeved by it. I adore the Stacks — I could stay there forever — and I absolutely despise having to transition to Bass at closing. I’ve only been to Bass a few times that late, but each time I went, it was a cesspool.

There were hardly any spots left to study at all and instead of there being silence, there was a cacophony of coughing.

And now, a few quick takes.

Bear with me on this one: the smell of fraternity houses. Just the combination of everything that goes on there never fails to invoke my gag reflex. Never underestimate the smell of nothing, as sometimes, nothing really is a blessing. Let’s just leave it at that.

Something that has always particularly bothered me is the lack of paper towels in the dorm bathrooms. All of my pants now double as hand towels. Who actually wants to carry a hand towel with them to the bathroom or even buy one in the first place?

What’s the solution? A communal towel?

Absolutely not. I’d rather my jeans take the brunt of the water.

And then, there’s the fact that the sun now sets at 4:30 in the afternoon. Being from Florida, this is still a very new concept

// JESSAI FLORES

to me. I knew the darkness was coming. I was expecting it, but when the time change came, I still wasn’t ready. Pretty soon, I’ll be going on my daily runs in the dark, which is far from ideal.

And what’s up with the weather these days? Sometimes, I swear that it’s summer again. Other times, I’m wrapped up in seven layers, a scarf and a coat while sporting boots and gloves. I have to admit that I’m a little excited to return to South Florida for Thanksgiving. The weather might be hot, but at least it’s consistent.

I won’t even get into the sad state of men at Yale.

Despite all of these trivial grievances, though, I am truly beyond grateful to be

here. I’m thankful for suitemates who know way too much about me and who have become my sisters over these last few months. I’m thankful for my friends who check up on me and make even my worst days exponentially brighter. I love my family and the way that they ground me and make me feel safe. Yet, above all this year, I’m incredibly grateful to not be counting down the days until I leave Yale for nine months. I’m eager to spend my Christmas season at Yale with the people who make being here a dream come true.

Contact JACQUELINE KASKEL at jacqueline.kaskel@yale.edu .

Carol Park’s Return to Berkeley

// BY JULIA HORNSTEIN

When Carol Park ‘23 visited Yale on her high school pilgrimage to Northeastern colleges, she snapped a picture of herself in front of Berkeley’s North Courtyard. Park thought about Yale’s floors of books and Harkness Tower on her flight back to Nanjing, her hometown in China. Little did she know Berkeley would one day become her future home — at least, for the next semester; she is a transfer student from Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan.

“It felt like destiny,” Park remembered. But Park is slowly learning that Yale isn’t always the North Courtyard’s yellowing oak trees and Gothic windows.

“Can I say something bad?” Park paused, awaiting my assurance to go ahead. I nodded and raised my phone speaker closer to her voice, scooting closer to Park on Koffee’s corner couch. “The dining hall is a little bit disappointing for me,” Park griped.

I giggled — our newfound friendship filling the coffee fume-laden air.

Then, I asked her to tell me how she really feels.

“I can tell the truth, right?” Park continued. I was silent.

“The chicken breast. Oh my god.

They cook it in all kinds of different ways, but they all taste the same.

It’s terrifying.”

In the other corner of the world, Park goes by Piao Yadi, her Chinese name. Park is a cultural tapestry. Raised by Korean and Chinese parents a three or so hour drive from Shanghai in Nanjing, China, Park learned English in grade school and, back in Japan, studies sociology on the English degree track at Waseda.

But completing her college

degree in just one place wasn’t enough for Park. When she heard about Waseda’s study abroad opportunity, Park didn’t think twice and prayed she’d return to Berkeley’s North Courtyard. And this fall, she found herself knee deep in Yale’s Economics department in her hardest class: Econ 424, “Central Banking,” alongside School of Management students.

“I think the culture here is really different from Japan,” Park remarked.

“More people communicate to strangers — like you can really say hi to anyone you meet on campus here: whether you met them in a class or the library.”

Four flights above the North Courtyard, Park lives with a handful of exchange students from Hong Kong University who she grabs lunch with in Berkeley and treks alongside to “Central Banking.”

“We all share similar cultural backgrounds, and our hometowns are all quite close to each other,” Park said. “When we first came here, nobody fit us beyond ourselves, so I think that situation brought us together.”

The I entryway isn’t the only thing that has brought them together.

Despite not having any prior experience, her suite joined the figure skating club together.

“The most important lesson I’ve learned from training is that you need to get rid of the wall,” Park said.

I asked her if she can spin yet — to which she immediately quipped, “of course not.”

But Park isn’t there for that. Well, maybe learning how to twirl would be nice, she said. But “getting to know Yalies beyond my classrooms,” Park

remarked, is what makes long walks to the Whale worth it.

Park is still learning — learning how to spin to her own rhythm; learning how to find time for budding friendships in between classes and dining hall chicken dinners. We’re all still learning. “I’m not sure how to allocate my time to all these things,” Park said, nearly frustrated with herself. I chimed in that I’m still learning, too.

In Park’s next, and final, semester at Yale, she hopes to check some of the Yale musts off her bucket list — watch a famous East Rock sunrise and meet the storied Handsome Dan — but also has some personal goals: to take a history course and to show off her professional dancing training alongside one of Yale’s dance clubs.

When reflecting on where her first Yale fall is nestled between her disparate identities, Park didn’t hesitate to find greater meaning.

“It’s given me the opportunity to take an insight into all these cultures and to get involved in a new society,” she reflected. “I think I’ll stay abroad for several years [after school] then go back to explore my own cultures all over again.... It’s kinda rare for a person my age to come from a background of both Chinese and Korean family members and then go to another Asian country for university and also go to America,” Park said.

“When you get into another society, you get to know a lot of different kinds of people,” Park said. “Sometimes they shock you, but sometimes they surprise you.”

Contact JULIA HORNSTEIN at julia.hornstein@yale.edu .

College St. Cherry Cocktail: 1/2 of a lemon, cut into wedges 5 cherries, pitted and cut in half or quarters (I like mine cut into smaller pieces) 2 1/2 ounces of bourbon 1 tablespoon of maple syrup ice for serving In the bottom of a shaker or directly in the cup, add the lemon wedges and cherries. Muddle together until you’ve released nearly all of the juice from the lemon

// CAROL PARK

and the cherries are broken up until much smaller pieces.

Add in the bourbon and maple syrup.

If making the cocktail directly in your glass, add ice and stir to combine.

If making it in a shaker, add ice to the shaker and shake about 30 times. Strain into a glass filled with ice (or you can pour it unstrained so that you get all of the chunks of cherry in your drink!)

ENJOY!