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 · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012 · VOL. CXXXV, NO. 57 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
SNOWY SNOWY
38 38
CROSS CAMPUS
AGING POSITIVE ATTITUDE GOOD FOR HEALTH
ALLEGIANCE
HACKING
O CAPTAIN!
Board of Aldermen tables discussion of requiring Pledge at meetings
U.S. BUSINESSMAN ANALYZES 2011 U.K. SCANDAL
Beau Palin ’14 elected football captain for 2013 season
PAGE 8–9 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
PAGE 3 CITY
PAGE 5 NEWS
PAGE 14 SPORTS
Panel mulls NUS student life
How sweet it is. A new Facebook page dedicated to honoring sauce popped up on Yalies’ newsfeeds yesterday. “Yale Condiments,” a cute play on popular Facebook page “Yale Compliments,” racked up 45 friends as of Monday evening and had already complimented three sauces, including Heinz ketchup, Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce and Yale Dining’s tartar sauce.
BY ALEKSANDRA GJORGIEVSKA STAFF REPORTER
universities across America,” Seo said. “I wanted to go somewhere they were growing. That place turned out to be Singapore.” Lewis began the event by discussing the partnership’s role in bringing a new model of both liberal arts education and residential college life to Asia. The professors on the panel said the task of rethinking their own fields in a crosscultural context was both a challenge and an unprecedented opportunity.
Last month, Rachel Mak SOM ’14 assembled a large display of Styrofoam containers on the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies campus — one example of a broader effort this semester to encourage sustainability among the Environment School, School of Management and Divinity School. The three professional schools, which have been cooperating on sustainability initiatives since 2009, have used their physical proximity to each other to organize joint projects alongside independent ones aimed at increasing environmentally friendly practices on their campuses. Environment School and Divinity School students and administrators interviewed said SOM has led the others in its commitment to sustainability, adding that they hope to follow the lead of SOM. “We have many students who aspire to become leaders in business or society around the globe, and they are very interested in how sustainability efforts should be integrated in their efforts,” said Richard Bascom, director of finance and administration at SOM. Since 2009, SOM has decreased its paper use by 19 percent — a larger number than all other Yale professional schools — through measures that include uploading course materials electronically on Classesv2 and increasing the amount of paperless financial transactions, Bascom said. Each of
SEE YALE NUS PAGE 6
SEE SUSTAINABILITY PAGE 4
Bulldog takes DC. Yalies are climbing the ranks in the nation’s capital. University alumna Elisse Walter ’71 was appointed yesterday by President Barack Obama as the next chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. She graduated from Yale with a degree in mathematics and has previously served as a vice president for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. To infinity and beyond. After
some technical difficulties, economics professor Ray Fair dramatically began his “Intermediate Macroeconomics” lecture yesterday with the “Star Wars” theme song. When he was done, the entire class applauded.
Going digital. The Junior
Class Council has created a campuswide calendar to help Yalies sync Undergraduate Career Services events to their iCal or Google Calendar accounts. Job hunting has never been so easy!
Celebrating faculty. Yale College Dean Mary Miller will hold an annual dinner tonight to celebrate the eight junior faculty members who received the Greer, Heyman and Poorvu Family awards this year. Each prize includes funding for additional research. We’re fifth? Yale came in fifth among U.S. colleges in a new rankings study that tested students according to their cognitive abilities. The study, performed by the website Luminosity — which aims to improve cognitive abilities through online games — gathered data from its 30 million registered members. Difficult times. Propark
America, the company that operates 31 parking garages and lots in New Haven, will lay off 186 workers at its facilities in the Elm City. The layoffs are scheduled to begin next year on Jan. 20, though the company said it does not plan to eliminate any employees.
Pizza party. Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana, the popular New Haven pizza restaurant, is opening a new place in West Hartford, Conn.
JACOB GEIGER/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
A Singaporean student panel, which included Victor Ong GRD ’13 and Rayner Teo ’14, answered questions about life at NUS. BY ANYA GRENIER STAFF REPORTER Students and Yale-NUS professors aimed to dispel misconceptions about student life in Singapore at a panel discussion Monday evening. Yale-NUS faculty and Singaporean students discussed the new school’s goals and curriculum, and addressed questions and concerns about the country’s controversial political climate in an event that took place in Sterling Memorial Library’s International Room. Speak-
Blumenthal eyes gift card reform BY GIOVANNI BACARELLA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Sen. Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73 introduced the Gift Card Consumer Protection Act Friday in an effort to strengthen current federal regulations of gift card expiration dates and non-use fees. Under current gift card regulations detailed in the Credit CARD Act of 2009, gift cards can expire after five years of activation and non-use fees can be charged once a month after 12 months of dormancy. Blumenthal hopes to ban expiration deadlines and non-use fees SEE BLUMENTHAL PAGE 4
ing before an audience of a few students and roughly 25 faculty members — many of whom have been involved in Yale’s partnership with the National University of Singapore — Yale-NUS President Pericles Lewis, Yale-NUS Dean of Faculty Charles Bailyn and Yale-NUS professors Mira Seo and Bernard Bate discussed the liberal arts college’s curriculum and interdisciplinary vision, while the student panel spoke to cultural and political differences between Singapore and the United States. “Humanities are dying at so many
Legislature considers ‘right-to-die’ bill BY MICHELLE HACKMAN AND CLINTON WANG STAFF REPORTERS Connecticut’s legislature may reconsider its ban on physician-assisted suicide if a new bill is introduced in next year’s legislative session. The so-called “rightto-die” bill, modeled after existing statutes in Oregon and Washington, would allow terminally-ill patients to request prescriptions of lethal medication from doctors. Despite a series of failed advocacy efforts over the past two decades to legalize the practice in the state, legislators said this week that the bill may be considered when Connecticut’s legislature reconvenes in January. But even with some legislative support, momentum to promote such a bill has been slow thus far.
in the right to die,” said State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, a vice-chairman of the judiciary committee whose district includes New Haven. “You bring in discussion questions about religious beliefs, and legislative bodies try to stay away from bills that bring in all the more controversial issues.” Oregon and Washington have “death with dignity” laws that formally legalize
physician-assisted suicide, and Montana has legalized it through legal precedent. Holder-Winfield said that he has been contacted about potential legislation but does not know for sure that the issue will be considered during the upcoming legislative session. Pat O’Neil, press secretary for Connecticut House Republican Leader Larry Cafero, said he is unsure how much energy or time any pro-
ponents have devoted to the issue so far. Similar versions of the bill were previously introduced in 1995 and 1997, but the proposals were rejected both times by the legislature. Most recently, it failed to pass the judiciary committee in 2009. A Nov. 6 ballot question in Massachusetts that would have approved right-to-die SEE RIGHT TO DIE PAGE 4
MAP LEGAL STATUS OF PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE
To some degree you’re talking about whether the government should be involved in the right to die.
THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1936 Yalies return after leaving for one night to celebrate Thanksgiving Day with their families. Some complain that Yale should have given Yalies the entire weekend off.
GARY HOLDER-WINFIELD State representative, Connecticut
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SOM leads eco effort
UNITED STATES SENATE
Sen. Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73 seeks to reform gift card regulations.
“Most people don’t want to deal with that subject — to some degree you’re talking about whether the government should be involved
illegal by statutory law illegal by common law legal by statutory law legal by common law undetermined SOURCE: PATIENTS RIGHTS COUNCIL, FEB. 2012
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
OPINION
.COMMENT “Actually the Yale Bowl is an archetypal womb symbol.” yaledailynews.com/opinion
'THEANTIYALE'
ON 'WHAT FOOTBALL CAN DO'
The debts The future of Yale education we carry W G U E S T C O L U M N I S T R O S E WA N G
T
hanksgiving is a fantastic holiday. My uncle makes a mean turkey, and it’s great to unwind by tossing around a football, then retreating inside to eat pie and watch the Patriots do it better. Seriously, three touchdowns in a minute? Good grief. Great television. But much more important than food or football is the opportunity Thanksgiving gives us for self-reflection. We rarely truly consider the things, people and events in our lives that deserve appreciation. What should we be grateful for? Everyone has his own answers, but we share at least one in common. As I wind down my penultimate semester in this wonderful place, I realize more and more how unbelievably lucky I am — almost all of us are — to have studied at Yale. That great fortune should never be taken for granted, because as comforting as narratives that laud the role of our own willpower and effort are, they are false and self-serving. Much of our achievement in life was pre-determined long ago by factors outside our control, and it is important to acknowledge that. And so, I am thankful that I always had adequate nutrition growing up. I never had to pray there wouldn’t be a snow day so school would stay open, because I relied on the free or reduced-price lunch program to eat. I am thankful that I always felt safe in the school hallways; I never had a friend or relative get shot or stabbed. I am thankful that over the summers I could go to summer camp — not top of the line, just whatever my town’s parksand-rec crew was orchestrating. But television was never my babysitter. I am thankful that my parents read to me extensively, that I never had to go to prison to see my father, that I was never neglected by a mother addicted to drugs. In short, I am thankful that my educational path was cleared for me in a million little ways that I never fully appreciated at the time, because I never had to confront or grapple with destitution, racism or even bad teachers, for the most part. Many of you too, probably had these advantages as well. To a large degree, they made you who you are. Cognitive research demonstrates that early learning matters — that the foundations built in our formative years are highly determinative of our future educational outcomes. When we were kids, it was our parents, our teachers, our communities — the very society
around us, in fact — that made us capable of the academic achievement we enjoy today. It was anyMICHAEL not thing we ever MAGDZIK did, and so we should be Making thankful. But being Magic thankful doesn’t simply mean mumbling to yourself before eating turkey around the table once a year. A critical part of being thankful is paying it forward, acknowledging the good deeds that were done to you by doing likewise unto others. President Levin’s last baccalaureate address, which should be required reading for any Yalie, says it well: “Take inspiration … from your own experiences here at Yale, and make your course, and the course of those without the privileges accorded to you, onward and upward.” This argument will be repulsive to the types of people who distorted and rejected President Obama’s “you didn’t build that” claim during the campaign. Individualists would like us to believe that each man is responsible for his own lot in life, that by dint of hard work and persistent effort anyone can reach his goals. Unfortunately, this is a naïve ideal, disproven by scientific research on child development. We need to face the reality that we are condemning kids to poor educational outcomes, which lead to demonstrably unhappier lives, based on the arbitrary circumstances of their birth. To fix that, we need wellinformed executives, legislators, judges, public policy experts and others making good decisions to level unfair playing fields. We need young and enthusiastic students to volunteer in public schools and housing agencies, to work with nonprofits and in think tanks. Thankfulness demands we set aside concerns about our private pursuits of health, wealth and happiness to assist those less fortunate, less blessed by the capricious hand of fate than we were. In the oft-quoted words of the Gospel of Luke: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.” This winter break after finals, take some time off from catching up on your favorite TV shows to show just how thankful you really are. MICHAEL MAGDZIK is a senior in Berkeley College. His column runs on alternate Tuesdays. Contact him at michael.magdzik@yale.edu .
hat do Harvard, Princeton, MIT and Stanford have that Yale doesn’t? MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses. What are MOOCs? They are what the name suggests: free classes offered over the Internet with open enrollment. These classes are generally taught by professors from elite universities and, in principle, can accommodate an unlimited number of students. Some might believe Yale already has its own version of MOOCs: Open Yale Courses (OYC). However, the difference between MOOCs and OYC is like the difference between watching “Friday Night Lights” and football on TV with no commentary and one camera angle. Because OYC videos do not take advantage of the online medium, they are, in a word, boring. Why should Yale be an accomplice in popularizing MOOCs, which are accused of devaluing an elite education? In reality, we need not fear: MOOCs would not water down Yale. After all, the essence of a Yale education isn’t classes. Ask any student and they’ll tell you the best thing about Yale is the people. Classes are either a close second or, depending on the semester, somewhere indiscernibly low on the list. More importantly, most semi-
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we had interactive forums where students could post questions and rate others’ posts, with professors answering the top-rated questions. This method of Q-and-A is much more efficient than clarifying for five students after class, another five during office hours and another 20 over email. The impact of MOOCs on the U.S. and the world could be huge. High schoolers can do an independent study by participating in a course if they max out their high school’s curriculum. More online options can allow serious students to avoid the teachers who don’t teach well. At the college level, smaller universities can offer a greater selection of courses through MOOCs. Internationally, anyone with Internet access benefits from free online courses. We can already tell by the demand from abroad that these courses are valuable because so many have chosen to invest their time in them. Putting lectures online will also lead to better teaching at Yale. We are at a research institution where the faculty has strong incentive to research and research well. Teach? Not so much. They tell us: don’t hate the player, hate the game. Here is our chance to change the game. The promise of Internet “fame,” as well as a new online format, might incentivize them to
experiment with more innovative and engaging teaching methods. In case my previous points come across as a harsh indictment of the teaching at Yale, I will clarify: I’ve loved most of my classes, and I don’t think the instruction is, on average, awful. My personal experience is that smaller classes are better taught than larger ones, though there are many examples of exceptional yet exceptionally massive lectures. These excellent lectures need to be integrated with appropriate technology for the benefit of both Yale students and the general public. Mother Yale is always encouraging us to become leaders. When it comes to online education, she should follow her own advice. Our goal should not to keep up with other universities, it should be to surpass them in areas of noble intent. What area could be more appropriate than education, the mission Yale was founded to fulfill? Globally, a more just world demands that free quality education should be available to all. Nationally, online education has the potential to save our schools. Locally in New Haven, technology integration will enhance our own learning experiences. ROSE WANG is a junior in Saybrook College. Contact her at rose.wang@yale.edu .
G U E ST C O LU M N I ST V I V E CA M O R R I S
Funding a fecal flood J
ulian and Charlotte Savage, who live in my home state of North Carolina, are in deep, deep shit, and you and I are unknowingly paying to put them there. The story of the elderly couple, whose farmland borders a factory farm “sprayfield” designed to absorb the feces of some 50,000 hogs, was first told by reporter Jeff Tietz in Rolling Stone. Julian’s family farmed their land, raising tobacco, corn, wheat, turkeys and chickens, for a century. Now they try not to leave their house. In North Carolina, hogs produce more fecal waste than the state’s 9.6 million people. Yet while human waste must be carefully treated, hog waste is simply poured into pits and sprayed across fields. “Manure” doesn’t do justice to the slew of toxic poisons in hog waste lagoons, which include ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, nitrates, heavy metals, carbon dioxide, hundreds of pathogens such as salmonella and cryptosporidium and an increasing number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The Savages say they have
observed hog waste flow straight into the creek behind their home. The nitrogen in the air keeps the trees in their yard a bright green. Once, during a flood, pig feces 6 inches deep pooled around their house. It took three weeks of digging trenches to get rid of it, but there is still no escaping the smell. Struggling to speak due to his pollution-clogged lungs, Julian cried as he described this to Tietz. Federal and state governments should act to halt this corporate pollution, but instead, they are subsidizing it. Factory hog farms receive of a cornucopia of public subsidies. These include grants, cost-share for capital construction, research funding, tax credits and public money to underwrite the industry’s expansion, often in name of “pollution control,” according to Martha Noble, a policy specialist at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. The Savages represent the thousands of people whose lives, communities and health have been devastated by the pollution caused by these so-called farms. Modern hog farms, known as Confined Area Feeding Operations (CAFOs), consist of giant
warehouses full of tens of thousands of hogs that live in unspeakably miserable conditions. There, the hogs’ excrement is collected through concrete slats and pooled in “manure lagoons” — multiple-acre, open-air trenches. Their pernicious fumes suffocate the lungs of neighbors and their chemicals ooze in to the well water, sickening residents, killing fish and fouling some of America’s most precious lands and rivers. Not only do Americans subsidize these farms, we also pay for their damage control. Taxpayers fork over more than $7 billion annually to bankroll and clean up after CAFOs and $4.1 billion over a series of years to deal with leaking manure lagoons, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Instead of being required to pay for the pollution they inflict, the hog farm industry benefits from what is essentially a “pay the polluter” scheme — a consequence of powerful lobbying industries — in which the bigger the polluter, the more likely they are to receive public funding, writes Noble in her essay in “CAFO: The Tragedy of Indus-
trial Animal Factories.” These animal factories are profitable only because they externalize the costs of controlling waste onto the American public. Smaller, sustainable producers, who alternate crops and livestock to sustain soil nutrients and minimize pollution, have to compete with these governmentsubsidized factory farms for customers. It’s no wonder the handful of ruthless monopolies that dominate the industry, such as Smithfield, just keep expanding. This problem is not restricted to rural areas. The incredible disregard for protecting us that our politicians have shown by kowtowing to industry lobbyists is alarming and a betrayal of our public trust. We don’t all live next to factory farms, but this problem affects us all. When the government eventually passes the next farm bill, which is currently stuck in Congress, it should be a priority to get us out of it. VIVECA MORRIS is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles College. Contact her at viveca.morris@yale.edu .
GUEST COLUMNIST AHRON SINGER
Salovey’s rabbinic legacy
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nars would not adapt well to the Internet — the system works best for large introductory lectures, where there is little studentteacher interaction. And if high school students can get a taste of what Yale has to offer through MOOCs, then these courses can market Yale in places admissions officers rarely recruit. Fear from professors is another concern: students won’t go to class if classes are online. This isn’t true. “Game Theory” lectures, for example, are all online, but students consistently show up. Furthermore, is it Yale’s responsibility to make sure students attend lecture? For those who can learn effectively without lecture, more power to them. It is not Yale’s responsibility to ensure students attend class. However, it is Yale’s responsibility to educate. Education means providing quality resources like good lab facilities for the sciences and travel funding for the humanities. In the age of the Internet, Yale’s mandate to educate should include appropriate online resources. (No, Classesv2 doesn’t count.) When classes have an online component, we learn better. When I lost track of a “Game Theory” lecture, I watched a clip on OYC filmed from a previous year. I wish I could do this for all lectures. Imagine if
I
n 19th-century Europe, a Rabbinic dynasty arose that would change the face of Orthodox Jewry and the face in Woodbridge Hall. The dynasty’s name would become synonymous with both brilliance and leadership — the Soloveitchiks. Since the mid-19th century, each generation of the Soloveitchik family has produced, and continues to produce, distinguished scholars and important spiritual leaders. The family traces its origins to Chaim of Volozhin (1749-1821), founder of the Volozhin Yeshiva, a new and ambitious model in Jewish education, which effectively centralized and internationalized the Jewish academy. The academy endures as a model for present-day ultra-Orthodox institutions. Chaim Soloveitchik, his great-grandson, went on to become one of the greatest Talmudic scholars of the 19th century, renowned for his highly analytical, innovative and strict teaching of Jewish law, known as the Brisker method. His religious philosophy was profoundly insular, thriving in the isolated Jewish communities of Eastern
Europe. The most well-known of these great Rabbis was perhaps Chaim Soloveitchik’s grandson, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the former dean of Yeshiva University. His influence remains so immense that in some circles he continues to be referred to as simply “The Rav” (The Rabbi). He holds a place as the intellectual inspiration of the Modern Orthodox movement for his work on Torah Umadda — the synthesis of traditional Jewish law and secular knowledge. At the turn of the 20th century, the Soloveitchik family fractured into three. One section of the family became leading proponents of ultra-Orthodox Jewry. They rejected modernity and formed Yeshivas in Israel and the United States which attract the sharpest minds of the ultraOrthodox world. Another branch embraced Joseph’s ideology of synthesis — balancing the traditional with the modern. A third branch of the family took a different approach. They embraced modernity and fully involved themselves in secular culture. They Americanized and changed their name — to Salovey.
With Peter Salovey’s ascendancy to the helm of Yale, this third branch of the family has reached its moment. They represent the stream of Jewish Americans who involved themselves in contemporary society, as their traditional Jewish observance waned. However, they also represent the historic, brute force of Soloveitchik brainpower in the academy. As Yale’s Presidentelect, Peter Salovey manifests his part in the familial triad, each branch paving out its fruition in different Jewish approaches to the modern era. The Soloveitchik family represents ultra-Orthodox, modern Orthodox and now, secular intellectual streams. In many ways, the family is a microcosm of the American experience and the conflict between modernity and tradition. Yale also exists in a constant tension between the old and the new — the humanities versus the sciences, elitism versus egalitarianism, national versus international, athletic versus intellectual and well-born versus merit. As he inherits these current issues from President Levin, Salovey must determine where
on the trajectory he will draw the line between tradition and progress. It is certainly no easy task to live up to, filling the shoes of giants like Levin, Brewster, Stiles and Pierson, on the one hand, and Chaim and Joseph Soloveitchik on the other. Salovey represents the confluence of the old and the new, needing to perform a balancing act between heritage and change. As president he can draw upon the Talmudic genius and educational innovation of his namesake, along with an allegiance to the progress of modern psychology and institutional administration. Yale should be proud it will have a president bearing this distinguished heritage and welcome the years to come with open arms. President Salovey should face the issues of our time with the merit of intellectual accomplishment he holds, and by the precedent of tradition and heritage that he bears. AHRON SINGER is a junior in Timothy Dwight College. Contact him at ahron.singer@yale.edu . David Lilienfeld contributed writing.
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 3
NEWS
“We can have no ‘50-50’ allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.” THEODORE ROOSEVELT 26TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
CORRECTIONS MONDAY, NOV. 26
Pledge sparks aldermanic debate
The article “Harvard avoids upset” mistakenly stated that the Yale offensive line sacked Harvard quarterback Colton Chapple ’13 three times. In fact, the Yale defensive line sacked Chapple. FRIDAY, NOV. 16
The article “Early apps rise” quoted Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel as saying “I’d guess a few hundred applications at most” used the option to apply to Yale-NUS. In fact, Brenzel was referring to the number of applications sent between Nov. 1 and Nov. 9 due to Hurricane Sandy.
Roammeo expands to Boston area BY APSARA IYER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Roughly a year and a half after its founding in New Haven, Roammeo is spreading to new cities. After winning the 2011 Yale College Council App Challenge and the 2012 Yale Venture Challenge, the mobile application, which originally allowed users in New Haven to find local events using their smartphones, went on to become a finalist in this summer’s MassChallenge, a nonprofit startup accelerator. With the help of MassChallenge’s office space and startup mentorship, the students expanded the app to service the Boston area and tweaked its current interface to become more customizable. Jessica Cole ’12, Roammeo co-founder and CEO, said the group is continuing to modify the app based on user feedback and currently working to expand its service to either New York or Washington, D.C. “We had the feeling that rather than another really sexy nightlife app, what students needed was actually a complex search engine that would present them with all the events that were going on nearby,” Cole said. The updated app, to be released in the Apple Store by early next week, will contain several new interactive features along with a complete redesign. Though the Map View portion of Roammeo currently allows users to find nearby events, a new Trending View page will rank local events using ratings generated by users. The current Discover feature, which generates random suggestions for events to attend, will gain an Explore View feature that will allow app users to give random events a thumbs-up or thumbsdown to create a sense of “Pandora-style discovery,” said Cole. “Now as you’re browsing [with Explore View] you’re telling us what your tastes are so we can help you better find what you might be interested in the future,” Cole said. Cole said she and the other Roammeo developers hope to further their new emphasis on
“being really responsive to how people interact with the app.” She said the app’s expansion to Boston made the group realize that they needed to focus on presenting relevant information, not just a large volume of events. Later versions of Roammeo may also allow individuals and organizations to upload events to Roammeo directly from mobile devices, not just via the website, Cole said. She added that the group is currently working on launching partnerships with other colleges in Boston. The Roammeo team has expanded from the initial group of Zach Kagin ’11, Harriet OwersBradley ’11 and Kartik Venkatraman ’13 to include three interns. Cole said Roammeo hopes to add more developers and staff as the project continues to grow. Traffic to Yale Roammeo has indicated that as many as twothirds of Yale students currently use the app, according to Cole, and 90 percent of incoming students used the app during Orientation and Bulldog Days. Five of 15 students interviewed said they downloaded the app, and three of the five said they continued to use the app after Orientation and Bulldog Days. Candice Gurbatri ’14 said that she has used the app to find Master’s Teas or events in West Campus in which she is interested. “During Camp Yale, no one really know what’s going on or where things are, so [Roammeo] really helped,” Juli Cho ’15 said. “But I remember I kept running into events I wasn’t interested in, and it seemed like I had to go through a lot of events at the Peabody or off-campus before I found something I wanted. … A more individual approach would definitely help me.” Though the updated app will only be available for iPhones, the old version of Roammeo will continue to be available online and for Androids. Contact APSARA IYER at apsara.iyer@yale.edu .
SARI LEVY/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The Board of Aldermen is currently debating whether to include a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of board meetings. BY DIANA LI STAFF REPORTER Aldermen debated a piece of legislation at City Hall on Monday that would make the Pledge of Allegiance a regular part of their meetings. Proposed by former alderman Nancy Ahern, the agenda item would amend the rules of the board to include the recitation of the pledge at the start of each full board meeting. Five people testified in favor of the item at the Monday Aldermanic Affairs committee meeting, but one resident recommended that the proposal be amended to clarify that aldermen could choose to opt out of the pledge. The committee concluded it did not have enough information to vote and tabled the item. Ahern said she got the idea from Richter Elser ’81, the Republican town chair of New Haven. Elser said that he was part of an email thread in September that was sent to both Democratic and Republican town chairmen. Through the email thread, he realized that only some towns recited the pledge at the beginning of their meetings. “There’s no real consistency across towns. There are some who do it and some who don’t, and it just seems to be haphazard,” Elser said. “The pledge is, at a very simple level, an affirmation that the work you do as a legislative body is part of a larger structure of government that works best when people are participating.” Ahern, who said the proposal makes
a “lot of sense” to her, provided a short history of the Pledge of Allegiance to the committee, including the year it was written and the changes it has undergone. When asked by Ward 8 alderman Michael Smart whether she considered this idea during her tenure as alderman, she said it simply had not occurred to her. But New Haven resident Darryl Brackeen Jr. wanted to make sure that the item would allow for aldermen to opt out and choose not to recite the pledge, arguing that they should have that option if reciting the pledge would be inconsistent with their religious beliefs.
We have young people that have no idea what it means to pledge their allegiance to anything. BRENDA JONES-BARNES Alderwoman, Ward 13 Ward 13 alderman Brenda JonesBarnes, however, did not find his argument convincing. “It’s amazing to me that we’re in 2012 and we have to have a discussion on whether people who are elected by other people should be reciting the Pledge of Allegiance,” she said. “We have young people that have no idea what it means to pledge their allegiance to anything and
don’t know what it means to abide by rules. Can we all just get along and recite the Pledge of Allegiance?” During discussion, the aldermen questioned whether the board had the power to mandate that aldermen recite the Pledge of Allegiance. They raised the question of what the Supreme Court precedent was and agreed that they would need more information about previous court cases in order to vote on the agenda item. Smart said he wanted more research done regarding why this item had not been proposed before, and Ward 12 alderman Mark Stopa said that while he was in favor of what seemed like a “very simple and very patriotic” proposal, he wanted the committee to research the issue fully, including Supreme Court precedent, so that the board would not “run into issues” in the future. Based on this perceived lack of information, the committee decided to table the proposal, meaning they will vote on whether to recommend the item to the full Board of Aldermen at a later date. Stopa said that the committee will have to be very careful about the phrasing of the item. The original public hearing for the Pledge of Allegiance proposal was scheduled for Oct. 29 but was pushed to Monday because of Hurricane Sandy. Contact DIANA LI at diana.li@yale.edu .
State legislators anticipate 2013 legislative session BY JOHN AROUTIOUNIAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Three Connecticut lawmakers met with the Yale College Democrats Monday evening to discuss the upcoming legislative session and push for more student involvement in enacting liberal reforms on the state level. Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, State Rep. Roland Lemar and State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield — all Democrats from New Haven — thanked the College Democrats for being a “great advocacy base” for progressive causes in Hartford. While Holder-Winfield raised the prospect of right-to-die legislation and Lemar called for automatic minimum wage increases on an annual basis, the legislators focused on the upcoming budget to be presented by Gov. Dannel Malloy and the impact it would have on social programs throughout the state. Looney promised that the legislature would take up the governor’s plan to deal with the 2012–’13 budget shortfall as soon as it is released. “It will be harder this year because of the general reluctance to raise more revenues, as we did two years ago,” Looney said. Looney also suggested Monday that lawmakers might look at expanding legalized gambling as a last-ditch measure to increase revenue without raising taxes again. But Lemar said he disagrees with Gov. Malloy’s promise to keep tax
hikes out of the current process, insisting that there is room for compromise. “Connecticut’s competitive advantage is in the fact that we have a lower rate on high-income earners than New York and Rhode Island,” Lemar said, arguing that the state should look at raising the top rate from 6.75 to 7.25 percent. “Instead of this conversation about cuts, we should be talking about raising taxes.” Holder-Winfield agreed with the idea of raising taxes as part of the effort to close the shortfall, but he acknowledged that cuts would have to be a part of the new budget deal and asked students to let legislators know what programs were important to them. “The role of students is to remind Democrats that they ought to be acting as progressives,” he said. “Everything is going to be on the chopping block. If there is a program you care about, start writing those letters now.” Education reform was also stressed as a priority Monday evening, with the legislators saying more attention must be paid to early childhood intervention. The General Assembly passed an education reform bill earlier this year, aiming to assess student performance at an early age and provide tutoring to make sure children do not fall behind. But even with the new programs implemented, they said, much more needs to be done.
“We have far too many school districts in the state that are far too expensive to run,” Looney said, suggesting that regional districts might be a way to save money and maximize efficiency. Holder-Winfield said the Democratic legislators need to be open to hearing proposals from both sides of the aisle, criticizing some of his fellow legislators for ignoring proposals from the right. Dems campus and community coordinator Sterling Johnson ’15 said that the organization plans to work with legislators to make sure that the budget deal does not cut into essential programs in the state. He also said he hopes that the organization would work to help Hartford enact further education reforms and to look into changing statutes within the juvenile justice system. Nicole Hobbs ’14 added that the group has not discussed some of the more hot-button issues currently being debated around the state, including the prospect of right-to-die legislation. “In the past, we’ve been most effective when we’ve taken on specific issues,” Hobbs said. Connecticut legislators are expected to conduct a special session before the end of the year to begin budget negotiations. Contact JOHN AROUTIOUNIAN at john.aroutiounian@yale.edu .
SARA MILLER/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Three Democratic lawmakers from New Haven met with the Yale College Democrats on Monday.
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
FROM THE FRONT
25
The percentage by which Yale aims to reduce its solid waste by 2013. The amount saved would be enough to fill 69 percent of the Commons Rotunda.
Professional schools stay sustainable SUSTAINABILITY FROM PAGE 1 Yale’s schools has pledged to decrease its paper use by 25 percent by the end of the 2012–’13 academic year. Brendan Edgerton SOM ’15, the SOM sustainability strategy planner, said the school has also implemented a “coffee composting program” in its cafeteria in which students compost coffee grinds instead of throwing them away. Last year, the school organized over 20 “zero landfill” events — events at which everything used and consumed is composted or recycled, said Rachel Kagan SOM ’14, a member of the school’s student government and sustainability team. Kagan added that since SOM will move to a new building next year, students are currently discussing ideas for built-in eco-friendly features such as bike parking and student kitchen facilities. Melissa Goodall, assistant director of the Yale Office of Sustainability, said the three schools involved in the sustainability efforts collaborate on initiatives when certain environmental issues apply generally, but each school has developed its own projects to increase environmentally friendly practices. “Yale is more than a community — it is a set of subcultures — so it is natural that each dean has developed a sustainability vision tailored specifically to the priorities of his school,” she said. Edgerton, who is a joint degree student with the Environment School, said SOM and the Environment School are organizing a “Spring Salvage” event next semester, in which students will be able to sell old kitchenware and furniture at low prices instead of throwing them away. Divinity School Assistant Sustainability Coordinator Charles Graves DIV ’15 said the school is stepping up its sustainability efforts by launching a new website that suggests environmentally friendly practices to the Divinity School community. In a new initiative spearheaded by Mak, he said, the school purchased eco-friendly
food containers from SOM’s environmental groups to be resold to members of the Divinity School community in the school’s dining hall. Graves added that the Divinity School dining hall switched from using paper plates and bowls to reusable utensils earlier this month. Meanwhile, students within the Law School have been organizing sustainability projects independently of other professional schools.
Yale is more than a community — it is a set of subcultures — so it is natural that each dean has developed a sustainability vision tailored specifically to the priorities of his school. MELISSA GOODALL Assistant director, Yale Office of Sustainability Halley Epstein LAW ’14, who leads the Yale Environmental Law Association at the Law School, said the association has helped encourage the Law School dining hall to start composting and that it also plans to run an educational campaign to raise awareness about composting options on campus. She added that she thinks the Law School community is open to collaborating with other schools on environmental initiatives. President of the Graduate and Professional Schools Senate Emily Stoops GRD ’13 said the Senate has not addressed sustainable practices specifically but it “might want to address [them] more in the future.” This semester, SOM only has three classes with printed course packets. Contact ALEKSANDRA GJORGIEVSKA at aleksandra.gjorgievska@yale.edu .
Fiscal issues may precede ‘right to die’ RIGHT TO DIE FROM PAGE 1 legislation was rejected by a margin of just 2 percent, which O’Neal said may have given advocates in Connecticut the confidence to pursue the bill. However, the fate of such a bill in the state legislature is still dubious, as the issue has not yet re-entered the realm of public debate. “It’s not an issue that’s been taken up by the Republican caucus and these kind of issues don’t usually have a caucus position,” O’Neal said. “I don’t know what would be the prevailing sentiment for or against this.” Advocacy for the bill may also be overshadowed by more immediate issues. O’Neal said that he has not heard much about a rightto-die bill, adding that the state legislature has been “immersed in discussing the state’s fiscal issues.” Connecticut’s Office of Protection and Advocacy for Persons
with Disabilities has criticized the practice of assisted suicide, arguing that people struggling with disabilities or depression may preemptively opt for suicide. “During such times people may feel like their lives are not worth living — a view that, unfortunately, can find support in a world that values strength, speed, youthful appearance, hard-driving, fast-paced achievement and material success, while unconsciously devaluing those who are not possessed of those characteristics,” OPAPD Executive Director Jim McGaughey said in a 2011 press release. Connecticut and 38 other states prohibit assisted suicide by law, and five other states have banned it by common law. Contact MICHELLE HACKMAN at michelle.hackman@yale.edu . Contact CLINTON WANG at clinton.wang@yale.edu .
SARI LEVY/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The School of Management is spearheading sustainability initiatives in conjunction with the Divinity School and the Environment School.
Non-use fees challenged BLUMENTHAL FROM PAGE 1 altogether under the proposed act and protect consumers from policies that sap gift card value. “This bill would expand and enhance the protections beyond what states now guarantee and would also provide a uniform national standard, which is important because many of these companies are national companies,” Blumenthal said in an interview with the News. He added in a statement that gift card companies charge “absolutely draconian deadlines and abusive fees and charges that unfairly confiscate consumer gift card cash.” The National Retail Federation projects that over 80 percent of shoppers will purchase at least one gift cart this holiday season. In the same survey, 16 percent of consumers said they are less likely to buy gift cards because of concern that the card would expire or have added fees. David Butler, communications director for Consumers Union, said gift cards could end up being the most popular gift this holiday season. “While gift cards do offer a simple quick solution for the hardest-to-buy people on your list, they often come with
OPINION. Send submissions to opinion@yaledailynews.com
a lot of fine print,” Butler said. Linda Sherry, director of Consumer Action, a national nonprofit group that advocates for consumer rights, said the gift card policies that individuals are most concerned about are non-use fees. “To us, gift cards are like cash,” Sherry said. “Your cash shouldn’t just disappear after a certain period of time either through fees or through being sent to an agency that collects unclaimed funds. It puts another hurdle in front of the consumer.” While gift card policy at a federal level permits certain expiration date and nonuse fee policies, some states have chosen to exceed federal jurisdiction. Connecticut, for example, already prohibits these fees. Nonetheless, gift card companies have a workaround to such legislation: Companies may issue their gift cards through a federally charted bank, which cannot be limited by state regulation. The Gift Card Protection Act would eliminate this practice by unifying the ban on gift card expiration dates and fees across all states. The bill would also force companies that file for bankruptcy to stop selling future gift cards and honor cards that
remain unredeemed. “We’re particularly happy to see what the bill would do in reference to companies that declare bankruptcy,” Butler said. “We think that that’s a long-overdue reform. It sends a message that companies that file for bankruptcy will have to step up to ensure that people with gift cards aren’t shortchanged.” Finally, the measure proposes to extend federal protection to loyalty, reward and promotional gift cards, which tend to have much shorter expiration dates. “These cards are promised to have a certain value. In other words, when you use your American Express card and you accumulate miles or points, they should be deemed to have lasting value,” Blumenthal said. Blumenthal has been working to end gift card expiration deadlines and nonuse fees since he was attorney general for Connecticut. The National Retail Federation predicts that total gift card spending this holiday season will reach $28.79 billion. Contact GIOVANNI BACARELLA at giovanni.bacarella@yale.edu .
Interested in illustrating for the Yale Daily News?
CONTACT KAREN TIAN AT karen.tian@yale.edu
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YO U R
YD N
DAILY
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 5
NEWS
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” THOMAS MERTON ANGLO-AMERICAN CATHOLIC WRITER AND MYSTIC
Reuters executive discusses U.K. hacking scandal BY PATRICE BOWMAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER In a talk on Monday afternoon, an American businessman tried to set the record straight about last year’s British hacking scandal. Stuart Karle, Reuters’ news chief operation officer, discussed the legal issues surrounding the infamous hacking scandal in the United Kingdom to a crowd of roughly 20 at the Yale Law School on Monday. In the 2011 debacle, several reporters from the British tabloid News of the World hacked into the voicemails of a murder victim as well as those of celebrities and politicians. Karle said the hacking occurred in part because U.K. laws unintentionally encourage hacking in investigative reporting. “It only mattered that you got the story right,” he said. “How you got it didn’t matter.” Karle said that before joining Reuters, he served as a lawyer in London, where he was exposed to lenient British law relating to investigative journalism. For example, he said, a British journalist can win a liability lawsuit by demonstrating that the information obtained proved true. But reporters do not have to explicitly say how they acquired information, he added. After the 2011 News of the World scandal broke, the British government began a process of thoroughly reviewing its privacy laws, he said, adding that he thinks the United Kingdom will potentially try to regulate the press more extensively following the lawsuit. Still, he said he believes the British government will struggle to regulate the press’s tactics of acquiring information. Karle also suggested that the British press could regulate itself to prevent more illegal activity, but because most press outlets are having difficulty making money, they do not have enough funds to spend on self-regulation. In the United States, jour-
JACOB GEIGER/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Stuart Karle discussed the legal issues surrounding last year’s U.K. hacking scandal in a Monday talk. nalists have weaker incentives to use hacking tactics because the country places a stronger emphasis on honesty as well as fact-based reporting, he said. But even in the United States, he said, newspapers have resorted to hacking to acquire sensitive information. In 1998, two investigative reporters from The Cincinnati Enquirer wrote a story —
using information gathered from hacked voicemails — revealing accounts of abused workers and pollutants on Chiquita plantations. Though one reporter was fired, he said, the government did not effectively re-examine the role hacking played in investigative journalism. Christina Spiesel, a senior research scholar of technology
and law at the Law School, said she thinks press outlets should strike a balance between honest reporting methods and providing information to the public. “We want members of the press to be honorable and not break the law, but to also tell us something interesting or important,” she said. William New, director and edi-
tor in chief of the Switzerlandbased publication Intellectual Property Watch, said he believes Karle spoke from a biased American perspective when he criticized the United Kingdom’s approach to reporting. David Lamb LAW ’13 said that because the United States and the United Kingdom have similar legal systems, changes in U.K.
law resulting from the News of the World scandal will impact the “way the U.S. looks at privacy either academically or legally.” Karle is an adjunct professor at the New York University Law School and a visiting professor at the Colombia Journalism School. Contact PATRICE BOWMAN at patrice.bowman@yale.edu .
Art Trade expands visual arts scene BY JOSEPHINE MASSEY STAFF REPORTER
Send submissions to opinion@yaledailynews.com
OPINION.
Undergraduates bored by the blank walls of their dorm rooms will soon have a new decorating option from Art Trade, Yale’s newest undergraduate art group. Art Trade, which began in September, seeks to involve the student body in Yale’s vibrant art scene, co-president and artist Katie White ’13 said. This weekend, Art Trade will host its debut event, titled Art Rent. A threeday exhibition of student artwork, Art Rent differs from traditional art exhibitions by allowing gallery-goers to take art home with them for a semester, White said. “I felt like there [were] a lot of other students who weren’t necessary involved in the arts, who
wanted a way to be involved in the arts,” said Dana Glaser ’13, co-president of Art Trade. “We wanted it to be about the artists getting their work out and using Art Trade as a forum to reach a wider audience.” In addition to engaging students who are not currently involved in Yale’s visual arts scene, Glaser said she hopes to provide undergraduate artists with a venue to display their work outside of the classroom. White said that while artists and art professors see students’ work in class, students who are not majors rarely witness the full breadth of an art student’s portfolio. Although the School of Art hosts an exhibit of undergraduate work every semester, students are often unable to display as much work as they would like.
Glaser and White said that Art Rent was inspired by Jonathan Edwards College’s annual art rental event, at which JE auctions its art to students who are then able to hang the college’s paintings, posters and prints in their rooms for a small fee. But while JE’s art rental provides professional works of art to students, the Art Trade team solicited requests for artwork from undergraduates, receiving over 50 pieces from 16 different artists. “You can engage with something by going to a normal exhibition, but when you can leave with a piece of art and have it in your room, you’re experiencing it in a much different way,” said Andrew Nelson ’13, the team’s graphic designer. Art Rent will take place over
the course of three days beginning on Friday night. Glaser said 30 pieces will be auctioned on Friday and that anyone who does not win something can return on Saturday or Sunday to select pieces from the remaining 23 works on a “first-come, firstserve” basis. Winners pay only a $10 deposit to keep the artwork until the end of the year in addition to a $5 nonrefundable framing fee. After students return their rented art in May, the artists will take their work back from the organization. Contributing artist Autumn Von Plinsky ’13 said she feels that Art Rent will provide a muchneeded way for undergraduate artists to share their work. While she admitted she is nervous about her art getting damaged, the team has taken measures to protect
work with glass framing and a security deposit.
When you can leave with a piece of art and have it in your room, you’re experiencing it in a much different way. ANDREW NELSON ’13 Graphic designer, Art Trade
“Since it is a new program, we’re not really going to know how it will turn out until after it turns out,” Von Plinksy said. Event organizers said they
expect all 53 pieces to be rented by students and have heard positive feedback around campus since announcing the event Nov. 14. Four students not involved in Art Trade said that although they were aware of Art Rent, going to the auction will not be a priority come Friday. Art Trade hopes to make Art Rent a regular event and to develop a permanent collection of donated works from student artists to rent out each semester, White said, adding that the group also intends on collaborating with other arts organizations on campus. Art Rent will begin on Friday at 7:30 p.m. in Maya’s Room in Silliman College. Contact JOSEPHINE MASSEY at josephine.massey@yale.edu .
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
FROM THE FRONT
“It doesn’t seem to me that anyone has discovered much that’s new since the Iliad or the Odyssey.” RAYMOND QUENEAU FRENCH NOVELIST AND POET
Students discuss NUS politics, culture YALE-NUS FROM PAGE 1
JACOB GEIGER/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
The student panel, which included Singaporean native Victor Ong GRD ’13, discussed their country’s legal system and political climate.
Seo, a classics professor, explained how “great books” courses similar to those offered at Yale through Directed Studies are being adapted at Yale-NUS with a less exclusively Western focus, including Confucius and the Ramayana alongside Plato and the “Odyssey.” “It’s hard to put this in perspective,” Bate said. “It’s an opportunity to start a brandnew college from the ground up, to see how it works from the inside out.” The faculty panel took questions from attendees before being replaced by a student panel made up of NUS student Macey Tan, currently an exchange student at Yale, and Singapore natives Derek Ng GRD ’13, Victor Ong GRD ’13 and Rayner Teo ’14. The students discussed their hopes for the fledgling college and answered questions about the student culture at NUS, speaking about everything from student groups and publications to what Ng described as the country’s “very vibrant online political citizenship.” Ng said that Singapore differs from some authoritarian regimes in having a legal system that is well codified and out in the open — though the laws it enforces might be very different from those in the United States. He added that he does think some of those laws should be relaxed. Tan and the other students said they wished to share their perspectives because foreigners often perceive Singaporeans’ political beliefs to be more homogeneous than they are. The students pointed out that some of the difference between Singapore and the United States is cultural rather than political.
Teo said he does not think the Yale administration should shy away from voicing concerns it may have about Singaporean policies. “Yale has some heft in dealing with the Singaporean government,” he said, explaining that “a liberal arts education cannot be divorced from the context of the life surrounding it.”
A liberal arts education cannot be divorced from the context of the life surrounding it. RAYNER TEO ’14 Member, Singaporean student panel Several attendees were Yale professors interested in or planning to join the Yale-NUS faculty next year. Yale-NUS social science professor Keith Darden said he was drawn to Yale-NUS as a chance to continue his research in a more dynamic part of the world. Leandro Leviste ’15, an international student from the Philippines who attended the talk, said that he is especially excited to see Yale pursuing a more global vision for education. Having a “human face” to speak to how Singapore is characterized in the West was helpful, he said. “Everyone has their fingers crossed,” Leviste said. “A whole new parallel student body is going to happen next year.” Psychology professor and Berkeley College Master Marvin Chun, chair of the Yale-NUS Advisory Committee, moderated the panel. Contact ANYA GRENIER at anya.grenier@yale.edu .
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 7
BULLETIN BOARD
TODAY’S FORECAST
TOMORROW
Snow likely before noon, then rain and snow likely.
THURSDAY
High of 43, low of 27.
High of 42, low of 27.
SCIENCE HILL BY SPENCER KATZ
ON CAMPUS TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27 5:00 PM “Sappho, Lincoln and the Senate: Picturing 19th-Century Female Desire” The speaker will be Simon Goldhill of Cambridge University. Part of the Franke Lectures in the Humanities focusing on “Classicism and Modernity.” Free admission and open to the general public. Whitney Humanities Center (53 Wall St.), Auditorium. 5:30 PM “Our Divided Political Heart and the Election of 2012” E.J. Dionne, columnist for The Washington Post and senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution will give the Sorensen Lecture. A reception will follow in the Sarah Smith Gallery. Free admission and open to the general public. Marquand Chapel (409 Prospect St.).
ZERO LIKE ME BY REUXBEN BARRIENTES
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28 6:10 PM “Baseball in the Time of Cholera” Film screening and discussion with a representative from the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Free admission and open to the general public. Sponsored by the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights. Sterling Law Buildings (127 Wall St.), Room 128.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29 6:10 PM Nikos Kakavoulis on Entrepreneurship and Daily Secret The Yale Hellenic Society and the Yale Entrepreneurial Society are sponsoring a talk and dinner with Nikos Kakavoulis, Greek entrepreneur and self-proclaimed “multitasking aficionado.” Mr. Kakavoulis, a veteran in online startups, will talk about his latest venture Daily Secret, a venture capital-backed company, the challenges and rewards of entrepreneurship in Greece and the U.S., and the greatest ride of his life: fundraising. Some of Mr. Kakavoulis’ past projects have included DailySecret, SocialCaddy and Sweetlifer. William L. Harkness Hall (100 Wall St.), Room 207.
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Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
CLASSIFIEDS
CROSSWORD Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Lewis ACROSS 1 Pennsylvania city of about 100,000 5 Fabled blue ox 9 Tribe also called the Wyandot 14 TV warrior princess 15 LAX postings 16 Prefix with meter 17 Señorita’s love 18 Modernists, for short 19 News anchor Connie 20 Motor City’s state 22 Striped zoo creatures 23 Man, in Milan 24 Chili spice 26 Star footballer 28 Emergency levee component 32 Scottish hillside 33 To the point 35 Where Mandela was pres. 36 Tonsillitis-treating MD 37 London’s province 39 Medit. land 40 “C’est la __” 41 iPod button 42 Down Under greeting 43 Insistent words of affirmation 45 Deal with a bare spot, perhaps 48 Selfless sort 50 French cathedral city 51 Job listing of a sort 54 A cut above, with “to” 58 Two-time loser to Ike 59 Caesar’s 107 60 K thru 12 61 Glowing signs 62 Letters on a phone button 63 Scads 64 With 66-Across, one of five found in this puzzle 65 Caesar’s being 66 See 64-Across
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11/27/12
By Peter A. Collins
DOWN 1 Midterm, e.g. 2 Do followers, scalewise 3 Protects from disease 4 Batting helmet opening 5 Orono, Maine, is a suburb of it 6 Surveyor’s measure 7 Bucking horse 8 Start of summer? 9 Access illegally, as computer files 10 “__ me, you villain!” 11 Agree to another tour 12 Former Atlanta arena 13 Christmas quaffs 21 Holy terror 22 Gulf State resident 25 Loan shark 26 Immortal PGA nickname 27 Thick 29 Control freak in a white dress 30 Syrian leader 31 “CSI: NY” actor Sinise
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6 5
(c)2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
32 Bunch of beauties 34 Andalusian article 37 Rose-colored glasses wearer 38 Wet behind the ears 42 “Who are you kidding?!” 44 Tropical lizard 46 Ewing Oil, e.g. 47 Notice
11/27/12
49 Sends regrets, perhaps 51 Pealed 52 River of central Germany 53 Gin flavoring 55 Direction reversals, in slang 56 “Yeah, what the heck!” 57 Communion, for one 59 Miler Sebastian
9
4 2
7 1 7 3 6 5 1 1 2 4 7 9 8 9 7 1 2 6 8 5 7 1 2 9 4 1 2 3 5 5
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 9
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
“So scared of getting older I’m only good at being young So I play the numbers game to find a way to say that life has just begun.” JOHN MAYER MUSICIAN
Elderly attitude affects aging
Nicotine hurts reading ability
PENIEL DIMBERU
How to build a poor man’s iPhone
BY DAN WEINER STAFF REPORTER New research out of the Yale School of Medicine is the first to link prenatal nicotine exposure with impaired reading skills, the most recent finding in a large body of literature urging mothers not to smoke while pregnant. Study authors analyzed more than 5,000 young children tracked through the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a well-known database of children born in 1991 and 1992 in Bristol, England. After controlling for other factors that affect reading ability, such as socio-economic status and alcohol consumption, the researchers concluded that the more a mother smokes while pregnant, the more likely her child will struggle relative to peers on a broad range of reading tests, including comprehension, accuracy and speed. The paper first appeared online in The Journal of Pediatrics on Nov. 5. The ALSPAC data includes genetic information about every one of its subjects, and Jeffrey Gruen, senior study author and professor of pediatrics and genetics at the Yale School of Medicine, said he initially engaged with the data set to elucidate the genetic underpinnings of dyslexia. The nicotine findings arose as his team identified possible factors that may underlie genetic effects of reading disorders. Gruen said he was “very surprised” to find that heavy maternal smoking of more than a pack a day could decrease reading performance by over 15 percent.
It was such an important finding that we decided to go ahead and publish it all by itself. JEFFREY GRUEN Senior author, study
KAREN TIAN
BY LINDSEY UNIAT STAFF REPORTER A recent study by the Yale School of Public Health has found that elderly patients who embrace positive stereotypes about aging are 44 percent more likely to recover from physical disabilities than those who hold negative beliefs about old people. Yale epidemiology and psychology professor Becca Levy, the study’s lead researcher, said the findings suggest it may be helpful to give elderly patients
recovering from a disability the resources to bolster positive stereotypes about aging. Levy, along with medicine professor and geriatrician Thomas Gill and statisticians Martin Slade SPH ’01 and Terrence Murphy, followed 754 independently living participants at least 70 years of age over the course of 129 months. All participants were free of disability at the beginning of the study, and the researchers collected data from participants every month from 1998 to 2010. This study appeared online in The Journal
of the American Medical Association on Nov. 21. “I’m interested in how we can overcome ageism in medicine, and I wanted to see whether these stereotypes have an impact on patients,” Levy said. During the course of the 12-year study, 598 participants reported experiencing a disability. The researchers considered four different activity indicators of disability: the abilities to walk, to bathe, to dress and to transfer or to move from a chair. Levy said disrup-
Fairness develops early BY JOHN AROUTIOUNIAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER A new study conducted this year by Yale psychology professor Kristina Olson and psychology graduate student Alexander Shaw GRD ’14 has found that children develop an understanding of fairness early in life, but this understanding manifests itself in behavior more frequently when people are looking. The study, entitled “Children develop a veil of fairness,” appeared on “60 Minutes” on Nov. 18 and is currently in publication. In the experiment, an adult gave a child two chocolate bars and put aside two others for someone else. The child, who was on average around 7 years old, was then asked to choose between keeping a fifth chocolate bar, giving it to the other child or throwing it away. In the alternate trial, the adult left the experiment room after placing only one chocolate bar into the subject’s envelope, and a new adult arrived briefly to add the second bar to the envelope. When the first adult returned, the child again had to decide what to do with the fifth bar, knowing that the first experimenter was unaware a second bar had already been placed in the envelope. In the first trial, most children insisted that the fifth bar be thrown away. In the second trial, however, many more responded that they should receive the fifth bar. Olson suspects this phenomenon occurs because competing interests are at work.
“Children have two real tendencies — a tendency to want things to be fair between others and a tendency to want to have more for themselves,” she said. “Different situations such as competition or wanting to look good to an adult might make children display one of these tendencies more than another.”
Many have thought that by the time that children are between 6 and 8 years old, they begin to care about fairness and being fair. But it is really more about appearing fair. ALEXANDER SHAW GRD ’14 Co-author, psychology study
The point of the “sneaky studies” was to demonstrate that these behaviors were essentially adaptive, Olson said. What appears as a child’s desire to be fair may actually only be a desire to appear fair in an effort to get more for oneself, she added. Shaw, who led the research and is conducting follow-ups, said the study changes what scientists know about the development of the understanding of fairness in children. “It is surprising that children care about how they appear at
tion of these basic daily activities is a good predictor of survival rates and of health care utilization. She added that there is a wide range of causes of these disabilities, including falls and illnesses. Of the participants who experienced a disability, those who held positive beliefs about old people were 44 percent more likely to make a recovery transition from severe to mild disability, severe disability to complete recovery or from mild disability to complete recovery. Levy said she determined
whether patients held a negative or positive stereotype of aging by asking them the first five words or phrases that came to mind when thinking about old people. A separate group of researchers then rated each response on a scale of one to five as either positive or negative. While this was her first longitudinal study of age stereotypes in medicine, Levy has previously conducted experimental and cross-cultural research on the topic. Her experimental research found
that elderly patients exposed to a positive aging stereotype tend to have a temporary increase in memory function and a lower cardiovascular response to stress. She has also found that elderly patients in mainland China, where aging is generally perceived as more positive than in the United States, have better memory function. “This is an impressive study in that it has a truly rich, longitudinal data set with very few gaps,” Murphy said. “We think the results are very promising and encouraging and show that
mindset may be associated with recovery in elderly patients.” Murphy said the study was not a randomized trial and that the results cannot be determined as causal. But he added that because of the size of the data set and the rigorous statistical modeling, the results could not be accounted for by random events. The Yale School of Public Health was founded in 1915. Contact LINDSEY UNIAT at lindsey.uniat@yale.edu .
“It was such an important finding that we decided to go ahead and publish it all by itself,” he said. The paper did not investigate the mechanism that translated prenatal exposure to nicotine into impaired reading ability. But Gruen said he suspects multiple factors may be at play, given that nicotine can cross the placenta and interact in complex ways with the developing baby. Nicotine binds easily with nicotinic receptors, which may cause permanent damage to the baby’s developing central nervous system. Alternatively, Gruen said that since nicotine can change the genes of a developing baby, this prenatal exposure may cause epigenetic changes that impact future cognitive function. Study co-author and professor of child and youth studies at Brock University
Jan Frijters said he also suspects nicotine interacts with the child’s genome to affect reading ability years later. “The most tantalizing and suggestive outcome of the paper is to wonder what exactly the mechanism is,” Frijters said. The strength of the paper comes from the size of the ALSPAC data set and the rigorous statistics analysis the authors used, said Shelley Smith, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Nebraska who was not involved in the study. She added that the data set does not sufficiently quantify parental literacy, which prevents the authors from more thor-
oughly controlling for some confounding genetic factors. Frijters said the paper amplifies the call to women to quit smoking cigarettes as soon as they become pregnant. “It’s not a ‘feel bad’ story,” he said. It’s a “‘you can do something to change the outcome’ story.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 13 percent of women smoke during the last trimester of pregnancy. Contact DAN WEINER at daniel.weiner@yale.edu .
Urban planning may benefit health
such a young age,” Shaw said. “Children get upset when they see that others have more than they do beginning at the age of 3. Many have thought that by the time that children are between 6 and 8 years old, they begin to care about fairness and being fair. But it is really more about appearing fair.” Shaw added that children understand others will be upset with them when they have more than someone else does. Their desire to seem fair is a “cost” they are willing to pay instead of receiving additional resources, which is not worth the loss in social standing, he said. While it is unlikely that children think all these social costs through, Shaw suspects humans are empowered with “some kind of system” for acquiring an understanding of the social rules that should not be broken. Psychology professor Paul Bloom, who was not involved in the study, said Shaw and Olson have done “great work.” In the “60 Minutes” piece, he called the children’s demonstrated desire to throw chocolate bars away for the sake of fairness “a gorgeous finding.” Shaw and Olson’s study was conducted with the help of researchers from Harvard University, the University of Copenhagen and the Max Planck Institute of Economics in Germany. Contact JOHN AROUTIOUNIAN at john.aroutiounian@yale.edu .
KAREN TIAN
BY MARGARET NEIL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
GIOVANNI BACARELLA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
UCLA professor Richard Jackson’s argued in Nov. 15 lecture that urban planning can help solve the national chronic disease epidemic.
The solution to chronic depression, obesity and asthma may not lie in medicine or therapy but in redesigning cities. This idea is one of the driving principles behind the work of UCLA environmental health sciences professor and chair Richard Jackson, who delivered this year’s annual Eero Saarinen Lecture on Nov. 15 at the Yale School of Architecture. The Eero Saarinen Lecture is given by a professional outside of the field of architecture whose work is nonetheless relevant. Jackson, who is also the host of the PBS series “Designing Healthy Communities,” said he believes that the key to solving many of America’s health problems lies in rethinking urban planning and design. “For a while, we built our cities very well in America,” Jackson said. The invention of the car changed everything, he said. “We build our cities around the needs of the car, not people.” Jackson pointed to cities like New York, which has established parks, pedestrian areas and ample bike roads, as an example for other American cities to emulate. He added that the average New Yorker is 7 pounds lighter than the average American because the city is easily navigable by foot. Trained as a pediatrician, Jackson is a proponent of the idea that healthy habits such as exercise and access to the outdoors should be endemic to city and building infrastructure. “I look at the epidemic of chronic diseases, like obesity — it has its origins in many ways in how we have built our lives,” Jackson said. “Thinking that medical science will help us deal with the chronic disease epidemic that we
are dealing with today is absurd.” It was during his 1994–’03 tenure as director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention that Jackson began to formulate his hypothesis that American cities are built in a way that undermines public health. He felt that although the public health community paid a lot of attention to environmental factors such as air, water and food, urban design was neglected. Jackson said he was considered “a bit of a crackpot” at first, but that changed as he began to gather more data in his favor. “Buildings’ effect on health hasn’t always been a concern — in 1970, no one was thinking about it,” Dean of the School of Architecture Robert Stern said. Professor of social ecology at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies Stephen Kellert, as well as Jodi Sherman, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Yale School of Medicine, said that the increasing amount of data linking environmental factors and human health has brought attention to the matter. “The important contribution that ties Dr. Jackson’s work to my own is in bringing light to the critical importance of making climate change and pollution prevention top public health priorities,” said Sherman, who studies the adverse effects of the health care industry on the environment. Keller also sees the environment as key to human well-being. His work focuses on “biophilia,” a term Kellert coined to designate the idea that humans’ relationship to nature is part of our evolutionary development and is thus instrumental to human health. Like Sherman, Kellert sees overlap between his work and Jackson’s.
“Dr. Jackson also focuses on how our modern built environment has been detrimental,” Kellert said. Jackson said there is a need for urban design projects like parks, bicycle routes and pedestrian access to everyday places like school, work or the grocery store. Kellert supports this idea because it would increase people’s access to nature.
Thinking that medical science will help us deal with the chronic disease epidemic … is absurd. RICHARD JACKSON Environmental health sciences professor, UCLA For example, placing healing gardens or nature-themed art in hospitals or adding windows — which increase access to natural light — into office buildings and schools can greatly improve well-being. Approximately 40 percent of office workers spend their days in windowless buildings, a factor which contributes to more missed days and increased employee misbehavior, he said. “I’m interested in how we design the urban environment,” Kellert said. “We can bring nature into it in a very positive and beneficial way that is simple.” Jackson was recently named the recipient of one of five Heinz Awards, which grants him an unrestricted cash prize of $250,000. Contact MARGARET NEIL at margaret.neil@yale.edu .
I am cheap. No, wait, I’m frugal. There is a difference. When you’re cheap, you don’t want to pay for anything. When you’re frugal, you are willing to pay for things that are worth it. Ask anyone who really knows me and they will confirm this. I wear multiple layers of clothing at home and put plastic on my windows so I can keep my heat turned off for much of the winter. I use Relay Rides to rent out my car to people in the community since I mostly walk or bike around town. (Quick, shameless plug: if you are looking for a hot set of wheels on an hourly or daily basis, look me up!) I try to vacation in places where it’s the off-season so everything is heavily discounted. I went to Iceland last winter. OK, you get the point. As I grow bolder with each cost-cutting success, I’ve decided that nothing is off the table. I often like to say that despite my political leanings, I take the Republican approach with my personal budget: cuts, cuts and more cuts. So while looking for ways to save money, I thought that paying $60 a month for cell phone service was too much. Reviewing my voice, text and data usage for the previous year confirmed it. I had to find an alternative. Now, my only dilemma was that I really wanted an iPhone — mainly because of all the useful apps, but also because iPhones are just cool. My Palm phone (yes, the company that used to make the Palm Pilot) was very limited in the apps department simply because developers weren’t interested in making them for the wacky webOS operating system. Plus, Sprint charges an extra $10 premium data fee for the iPhone. So what would a frugal guy do? Well, after learning about several apps that allow you to use Google Voice as a phone, he’d come up with a plan to build what I call the “poor man’s iPhone.” Did I mention it’s completely free? I bought an iPod Touch (used, of course) since it’s basically an iPhone minus the phone and ditched my real phone altogether. Now, after several months of testing in the real world, I’m ready to share my experience with all of you. First, if it wasn’t already apparent, using an iPod Touch as a phone requires a Wi-Fi connection and a hands-free set if you don’t want to be on speakerphone constantly. Whenever I’m on campus or at home, Wi-Fi isn’t an issue. The calls are clear and texting is easy. As I mentioned above, you also need a Google Voice account. It’s free and you can either get a new number with any area code you want or you can use an existing number. I would suggest creating a new account for this, though, rather than simply adding Google Voice to your regular Gmail account. This way, you avoid your email account being inundated with messages about every single call, text and voice mail you make or receive. OK, so how about the apps? Well, they all work basically the same. You sign into Google Voice through the app and it routes all your communication to the iPod. But that is where the similarities end. I was initially using an app called Talkatone, but I quickly grew weary of it. Talkatone is slow to load, crashes much too often and has a weird lag when you are talking to someone. This lag results in an awkward silence that the other person tries to fill while I’m in the middle of replying. As you can imagine, it was very annoying. Now I use Mo+ GV Phone, and it is fantastic! The user interface is superb and all the features are very intuitive. Most importantly, there is no lag when you’re on a voice call, so it works just like a real phone. There are other apps too, including one made by Google, but this is by far the best I’ve tried. The many glowing reviews at the App Store confirm its superiority. Finally, you may be asking what I do when I’m not on a Wi-Fi network. I figure there are two main options besides moving to a place with free and almost ubiquitous Wi-Fi. You can get a cheap prepaid cellphone (which I currently have) or get one of those mobile Wi-Fi devices so you have Wi-Fi anywhere you go. To test the latter option, I briefly tried Virgin Mobile, but the service was spotty. I’ve heard a similar complaint from a friend using T-Mobile. From my experience, the only network that would be worth it is Verizon because it is simply the best and fastest — and the most expensive unless you share a plan with one or more people. So, anybody want to tag team a Verizon data plan with me? PENIEL DIMBERU is a sixth-year immunobiology student at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Contact him at peniel.dimberu@ yale.edu .
PAGE 8
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 9
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
“So scared of getting older I’m only good at being young So I play the numbers game to find a way to say that life has just begun.” JOHN MAYER MUSICIAN
Elderly attitude affects aging
Nicotine hurts reading ability
PENIEL DIMBERU
How to build a poor man’s iPhone
BY DAN WEINER STAFF REPORTER New research out of the Yale School of Medicine is the first to link prenatal nicotine exposure with impaired reading skills, the most recent finding in a large body of literature urging mothers not to smoke while pregnant. Study authors analyzed more than 5,000 young children tracked through the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a well-known database of children born in 1991 and 1992 in Bristol, England. After controlling for other factors that affect reading ability, such as socio-economic status and alcohol consumption, the researchers concluded that the more a mother smokes while pregnant, the more likely her child will struggle relative to peers on a broad range of reading tests, including comprehension, accuracy and speed. The paper first appeared online in The Journal of Pediatrics on Nov. 5. The ALSPAC data includes genetic information about every one of its subjects, and Jeffrey Gruen, senior study author and professor of pediatrics and genetics at the Yale School of Medicine, said he initially engaged with the data set to elucidate the genetic underpinnings of dyslexia. The nicotine findings arose as his team identified possible factors that may underlie genetic effects of reading disorders. Gruen said he was “very surprised” to find that heavy maternal smoking of more than a pack a day could decrease reading performance by over 15 percent.
It was such an important finding that we decided to go ahead and publish it all by itself. JEFFREY GRUEN Senior author, study
KAREN TIAN
BY LINDSEY UNIAT STAFF REPORTER A recent study by the Yale School of Public Health has found that elderly patients who embrace positive stereotypes about aging are 44 percent more likely to recover from physical disabilities than those who hold negative beliefs about old people. Yale epidemiology and psychology professor Becca Levy, the study’s lead researcher, said the findings suggest it may be helpful to give elderly patients
recovering from a disability the resources to bolster positive stereotypes about aging. Levy, along with medicine professor and geriatrician Thomas Gill and statisticians Martin Slade SPH ’01 and Terrence Murphy, followed 754 independently living participants at least 70 years of age over the course of 129 months. All participants were free of disability at the beginning of the study, and the researchers collected data from participants every month from 1998 to 2010. This study appeared online in The Journal
of the American Medical Association on Nov. 21. “I’m interested in how we can overcome ageism in medicine, and I wanted to see whether these stereotypes have an impact on patients,” Levy said. During the course of the 12-year study, 598 participants reported experiencing a disability. The researchers considered four different activity indicators of disability: the abilities to walk, to bathe, to dress and to transfer or to move from a chair. Levy said disrup-
Fairness develops early BY JOHN AROUTIOUNIAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER A new study conducted this year by Yale psychology professor Kristina Olson and psychology graduate student Alexander Shaw GRD ’14 has found that children develop an understanding of fairness early in life, but this understanding manifests itself in behavior more frequently when people are looking. The study, entitled “Children develop a veil of fairness,” appeared on “60 Minutes” on Nov. 18 and is currently in publication. In the experiment, an adult gave a child two chocolate bars and put aside two others for someone else. The child, who was on average around 7 years old, was then asked to choose between keeping a fifth chocolate bar, giving it to the other child or throwing it away. In the alternate trial, the adult left the experiment room after placing only one chocolate bar into the subject’s envelope, and a new adult arrived briefly to add the second bar to the envelope. When the first adult returned, the child again had to decide what to do with the fifth bar, knowing that the first experimenter was unaware a second bar had already been placed in the envelope. In the first trial, most children insisted that the fifth bar be thrown away. In the second trial, however, many more responded that they should receive the fifth bar. Olson suspects this phenomenon occurs because competing interests are at work.
“Children have two real tendencies — a tendency to want things to be fair between others and a tendency to want to have more for themselves,” she said. “Different situations such as competition or wanting to look good to an adult might make children display one of these tendencies more than another.”
Many have thought that by the time that children are between 6 and 8 years old, they begin to care about fairness and being fair. But it is really more about appearing fair. ALEXANDER SHAW GRD ’14 Co-author, psychology study
The point of the “sneaky studies” was to demonstrate that these behaviors were essentially adaptive, Olson said. What appears as a child’s desire to be fair may actually only be a desire to appear fair in an effort to get more for oneself, she added. Shaw, who led the research and is conducting follow-ups, said the study changes what scientists know about the development of the understanding of fairness in children. “It is surprising that children care about how they appear at
tion of these basic daily activities is a good predictor of survival rates and of health care utilization. She added that there is a wide range of causes of these disabilities, including falls and illnesses. Of the participants who experienced a disability, those who held positive beliefs about old people were 44 percent more likely to make a recovery transition from severe to mild disability, severe disability to complete recovery or from mild disability to complete recovery. Levy said she determined
whether patients held a negative or positive stereotype of aging by asking them the first five words or phrases that came to mind when thinking about old people. A separate group of researchers then rated each response on a scale of one to five as either positive or negative. While this was her first longitudinal study of age stereotypes in medicine, Levy has previously conducted experimental and cross-cultural research on the topic. Her experimental research found
that elderly patients exposed to a positive aging stereotype tend to have a temporary increase in memory function and a lower cardiovascular response to stress. She has also found that elderly patients in mainland China, where aging is generally perceived as more positive than in the United States, have better memory function. “This is an impressive study in that it has a truly rich, longitudinal data set with very few gaps,” Murphy said. “We think the results are very promising and encouraging and show that
mindset may be associated with recovery in elderly patients.” Murphy said the study was not a randomized trial and that the results cannot be determined as causal. But he added that because of the size of the data set and the rigorous statistical modeling, the results could not be accounted for by random events. The Yale School of Public Health was founded in 1915. Contact LINDSEY UNIAT at lindsey.uniat@yale.edu .
“It was such an important finding that we decided to go ahead and publish it all by itself,” he said. The paper did not investigate the mechanism that translated prenatal exposure to nicotine into impaired reading ability. But Gruen said he suspects multiple factors may be at play, given that nicotine can cross the placenta and interact in complex ways with the developing baby. Nicotine binds easily with nicotinic receptors, which may cause permanent damage to the baby’s developing central nervous system. Alternatively, Gruen said that since nicotine can change the genes of a developing baby, this prenatal exposure may cause epigenetic changes that impact future cognitive function. Study co-author and professor of child and youth studies at Brock University
Jan Frijters said he also suspects nicotine interacts with the child’s genome to affect reading ability years later. “The most tantalizing and suggestive outcome of the paper is to wonder what exactly the mechanism is,” Frijters said. The strength of the paper comes from the size of the ALSPAC data set and the rigorous statistics analysis the authors used, said Shelley Smith, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Nebraska who was not involved in the study. She added that the data set does not sufficiently quantify parental literacy, which prevents the authors from more thor-
oughly controlling for some confounding genetic factors. Frijters said the paper amplifies the call to women to quit smoking cigarettes as soon as they become pregnant. “It’s not a ‘feel bad’ story,” he said. It’s a “‘you can do something to change the outcome’ story.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 13 percent of women smoke during the last trimester of pregnancy. Contact DAN WEINER at daniel.weiner@yale.edu .
Urban planning may benefit health
such a young age,” Shaw said. “Children get upset when they see that others have more than they do beginning at the age of 3. Many have thought that by the time that children are between 6 and 8 years old, they begin to care about fairness and being fair. But it is really more about appearing fair.” Shaw added that children understand others will be upset with them when they have more than someone else does. Their desire to seem fair is a “cost” they are willing to pay instead of receiving additional resources, which is not worth the loss in social standing, he said. While it is unlikely that children think all these social costs through, Shaw suspects humans are empowered with “some kind of system” for acquiring an understanding of the social rules that should not be broken. Psychology professor Paul Bloom, who was not involved in the study, said Shaw and Olson have done “great work.” In the “60 Minutes” piece, he called the children’s demonstrated desire to throw chocolate bars away for the sake of fairness “a gorgeous finding.” Shaw and Olson’s study was conducted with the help of researchers from Harvard University, the University of Copenhagen and the Max Planck Institute of Economics in Germany. Contact JOHN AROUTIOUNIAN at john.aroutiounian@yale.edu .
KAREN TIAN
BY MARGARET NEIL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
GIOVANNI BACARELLA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
UCLA professor Richard Jackson’s argued in Nov. 15 lecture that urban planning can help solve the national chronic disease epidemic.
The solution to chronic depression, obesity and asthma may not lie in medicine or therapy but in redesigning cities. This idea is one of the driving principles behind the work of UCLA environmental health sciences professor and chair Richard Jackson, who delivered this year’s annual Eero Saarinen Lecture on Nov. 15 at the Yale School of Architecture. The Eero Saarinen Lecture is given by a professional outside of the field of architecture whose work is nonetheless relevant. Jackson, who is also the host of the PBS series “Designing Healthy Communities,” said he believes that the key to solving many of America’s health problems lies in rethinking urban planning and design. “For a while, we built our cities very well in America,” Jackson said. The invention of the car changed everything, he said. “We build our cities around the needs of the car, not people.” Jackson pointed to cities like New York, which has established parks, pedestrian areas and ample bike roads, as an example for other American cities to emulate. He added that the average New Yorker is 7 pounds lighter than the average American because the city is easily navigable by foot. Trained as a pediatrician, Jackson is a proponent of the idea that healthy habits such as exercise and access to the outdoors should be endemic to city and building infrastructure. “I look at the epidemic of chronic diseases, like obesity — it has its origins in many ways in how we have built our lives,” Jackson said. “Thinking that medical science will help us deal with the chronic disease epidemic that we
are dealing with today is absurd.” It was during his 1994–’03 tenure as director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention that Jackson began to formulate his hypothesis that American cities are built in a way that undermines public health. He felt that although the public health community paid a lot of attention to environmental factors such as air, water and food, urban design was neglected. Jackson said he was considered “a bit of a crackpot” at first, but that changed as he began to gather more data in his favor. “Buildings’ effect on health hasn’t always been a concern — in 1970, no one was thinking about it,” Dean of the School of Architecture Robert Stern said. Professor of social ecology at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies Stephen Kellert, as well as Jodi Sherman, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Yale School of Medicine, said that the increasing amount of data linking environmental factors and human health has brought attention to the matter. “The important contribution that ties Dr. Jackson’s work to my own is in bringing light to the critical importance of making climate change and pollution prevention top public health priorities,” said Sherman, who studies the adverse effects of the health care industry on the environment. Keller also sees the environment as key to human well-being. His work focuses on “biophilia,” a term Kellert coined to designate the idea that humans’ relationship to nature is part of our evolutionary development and is thus instrumental to human health. Like Sherman, Kellert sees overlap between his work and Jackson’s.
“Dr. Jackson also focuses on how our modern built environment has been detrimental,” Kellert said. Jackson said there is a need for urban design projects like parks, bicycle routes and pedestrian access to everyday places like school, work or the grocery store. Kellert supports this idea because it would increase people’s access to nature.
Thinking that medical science will help us deal with the chronic disease epidemic … is absurd. RICHARD JACKSON Environmental health sciences professor, UCLA For example, placing healing gardens or nature-themed art in hospitals or adding windows — which increase access to natural light — into office buildings and schools can greatly improve well-being. Approximately 40 percent of office workers spend their days in windowless buildings, a factor which contributes to more missed days and increased employee misbehavior, he said. “I’m interested in how we design the urban environment,” Kellert said. “We can bring nature into it in a very positive and beneficial way that is simple.” Jackson was recently named the recipient of one of five Heinz Awards, which grants him an unrestricted cash prize of $250,000. Contact MARGARET NEIL at margaret.neil@yale.edu .
I am cheap. No, wait, I’m frugal. There is a difference. When you’re cheap, you don’t want to pay for anything. When you’re frugal, you are willing to pay for things that are worth it. Ask anyone who really knows me and they will confirm this. I wear multiple layers of clothing at home and put plastic on my windows so I can keep my heat turned off for much of the winter. I use Relay Rides to rent out my car to people in the community since I mostly walk or bike around town. (Quick, shameless plug: if you are looking for a hot set of wheels on an hourly or daily basis, look me up!) I try to vacation in places where it’s the off-season so everything is heavily discounted. I went to Iceland last winter. OK, you get the point. As I grow bolder with each cost-cutting success, I’ve decided that nothing is off the table. I often like to say that despite my political leanings, I take the Republican approach with my personal budget: cuts, cuts and more cuts. So while looking for ways to save money, I thought that paying $60 a month for cell phone service was too much. Reviewing my voice, text and data usage for the previous year confirmed it. I had to find an alternative. Now, my only dilemma was that I really wanted an iPhone — mainly because of all the useful apps, but also because iPhones are just cool. My Palm phone (yes, the company that used to make the Palm Pilot) was very limited in the apps department simply because developers weren’t interested in making them for the wacky webOS operating system. Plus, Sprint charges an extra $10 premium data fee for the iPhone. So what would a frugal guy do? Well, after learning about several apps that allow you to use Google Voice as a phone, he’d come up with a plan to build what I call the “poor man’s iPhone.” Did I mention it’s completely free? I bought an iPod Touch (used, of course) since it’s basically an iPhone minus the phone and ditched my real phone altogether. Now, after several months of testing in the real world, I’m ready to share my experience with all of you. First, if it wasn’t already apparent, using an iPod Touch as a phone requires a Wi-Fi connection and a hands-free set if you don’t want to be on speakerphone constantly. Whenever I’m on campus or at home, Wi-Fi isn’t an issue. The calls are clear and texting is easy. As I mentioned above, you also need a Google Voice account. It’s free and you can either get a new number with any area code you want or you can use an existing number. I would suggest creating a new account for this, though, rather than simply adding Google Voice to your regular Gmail account. This way, you avoid your email account being inundated with messages about every single call, text and voice mail you make or receive. OK, so how about the apps? Well, they all work basically the same. You sign into Google Voice through the app and it routes all your communication to the iPod. But that is where the similarities end. I was initially using an app called Talkatone, but I quickly grew weary of it. Talkatone is slow to load, crashes much too often and has a weird lag when you are talking to someone. This lag results in an awkward silence that the other person tries to fill while I’m in the middle of replying. As you can imagine, it was very annoying. Now I use Mo+ GV Phone, and it is fantastic! The user interface is superb and all the features are very intuitive. Most importantly, there is no lag when you’re on a voice call, so it works just like a real phone. There are other apps too, including one made by Google, but this is by far the best I’ve tried. The many glowing reviews at the App Store confirm its superiority. Finally, you may be asking what I do when I’m not on a Wi-Fi network. I figure there are two main options besides moving to a place with free and almost ubiquitous Wi-Fi. You can get a cheap prepaid cellphone (which I currently have) or get one of those mobile Wi-Fi devices so you have Wi-Fi anywhere you go. To test the latter option, I briefly tried Virgin Mobile, but the service was spotty. I’ve heard a similar complaint from a friend using T-Mobile. From my experience, the only network that would be worth it is Verizon because it is simply the best and fastest — and the most expensive unless you share a plan with one or more people. So, anybody want to tag team a Verizon data plan with me? PENIEL DIMBERU is a sixth-year immunobiology student at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Contact him at peniel.dimberu@ yale.edu .
PAGE 10
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
S
NATION
T Dow Jones 12,967.37, -0.33% S NASDAQ 2,976.78, +0.33%
T 10-yr. Bond 1.66%, -0.03
S Oil $87.96, +0.25%
T Euro $1.30, -0.09
Sandy cost NY $32B in damage BY MICHAEL GORMLEY ASSOCIATED PRESS ALBANY, N.Y. — Top political leaders in New York put their heads together Monday on big requests for federal disaster aid as Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that Superstorm Sandy ran up a bill of $32 billion in the state and the nation’s largest city. The cost does not include more than $32 billion for repairs and restoration and an additional accounting of over $9 billion to head off damage in the next disastrous storm, including steps to protect the power grid and cellphone network. “It’s common sense; it’s intelligent,” Cuomo said. “Why don’t you spend some money now to save money in the future? And that’s what prevention and mitigation is.” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had announced earlier in the day that Sandy caused $19 billion in losses in New York City — part of the $30 billion estimate Cuomo used. New York taxpayers, Cuomo said, can’t foot the bill. “It would incapacitate the state. … Tax increases are always a last, last, last resort.” Cuomo met with New York’s congressional delegation to discuss the new figures and present “less than a wish list.” The delegation, Cuomo and Bloomberg will now draw up a request for federal disaster aid. States typically get 75 percent reimbursement for the cost of governments to restore mass transit and other services after
S&P 500 1,406.29, -0.20%
Despite talk, fiscal deal elusive BY JIM KUHNHENN ASSOCIATED PRESS
JOHN MINCHILLO/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Seawater floods the entrance to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel in New York in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. a disaster. The most basic recovery costs for roads, water systems, schools, parks, individual assistance and more total $15 billion in New York City; $7 billion for state agencies; $6.6 billion in Nassau County and $1.7 billion in Suffolk County, both on suburban Long Island; and $527 million in Westchester County and $143 million in Rockland County, both north of New York City, according to a state document used in the private briefing of the delegation and
obtained by The Associated Press. Hard times were already facing the state and city governments that were staring at deficits of more than $1 billion before Sandy hit in late October. State tax receipts have also missed projections, showing a continued slow recovery from a recession that could hit taxpayers in the governments’ budgets this spring. And there’s the looming fiscal cliff, the combination of expiring federal tax cuts and major spending cuts that could rattle the economy.
WASHINGTON — Talk of compromise on a broad budget deal greeted returning lawmakers Monday, but agreement still seemed distant as the White House and congressional Republicans ceded little ground on a key sticking point: whether to raise revenue through higher tax rates or by limiting tax breaks and deductions. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, pressed his case for revenue derived by reducing tax loopholes rather than raising tax rates on wealthy taxpayers, as President Barack Obama insists. Boehner, voicing the Republican stance, said: “The American people support an approach that involves both major spending cuts and additional revenue via tax reform with lower tax rates.” At the White House, Obama spokesman Jay Carney reiterated the president’s pledge not to sign legislation that extends current tax rates to the top 2 percent of income earners. “That is a firm position,” Carney said. Congress and Obama have until the end of the year to avoid across-
the-board tax increases that would do away with rates set during the administration of President George W. Bush and restore higher tax rates in place during President Bill Clinton’s administration when the economy was robust and the federal government had a budget surplus. White House and congressional leadership aides said Obama spoke separately with House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid over the weekend. The aides would not reveal details of the conversations. Obama last met with the bipartisan congressional leadership to discuss the fiscal cliff on Nov. 16. No new meetings have been announced. Boehner and other GOP leaders planned to meet Wednesday with members of a bipartisan coalition of former members of Congress and business leaders that has advocated cuts in spending in major health care programs as well as changes in the tax code to raise more money but also to lower rates. Obama met with some members of that same coalition earlier this month. Top officials from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and from the Business Roundtable met with senior White House aides on Monday.
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 11
WORLD
“Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.” NOAM CHOMSKY AMERICAN LINGUIST, PHILOSOPHER AND COGNITIVE SCIENTIST
EU reaches deal to reduce Greek debt BY DON MELVIN ASSOCIATED PRESS BRUSSELS — A European Union official tells The Associated Press that a deal has been reached under which Greece’s debt would be reduced to 124 percent of GDP by 2020. The original goal had been 120 percent of GDP. The agreement would pave the way for indebted Greece to receive the next installment of its much-needed bailout loans. Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, welcomed the agreement. “It will certainly reduce the uncertainty and strengthen confidence in Europe and in Greece,” Draghi said. Finance ministers from the 17 European Union countries that use the euro were trying to hammer out a deal late Monday on the next installment of bailout money for struggling Greece.
I want to encourage [all parties] to go the last mile to find an agreement — in fact to go to the last centimeter, because we are so close. OLLI REHN Top financial official, European Union
The ministers have failed twice in the last two weeks to reach an agreement to release some 44 billion euro ($56.8 billion) for the cash-strapped country. Greece is living on borrowed time — it still owes money it was supposed to repay last week. Olli Rehn, the EU’s top financial offi-
cial, said it was important for the ministers and the International Monetary Fund to agree on a deal. Distributing the next batch of loans was essential, he said, “in order to end the uncertainty that’s still hanging over Greece. It’s important for Greece, important for Europe.” “I want to encourage all the euro area member states and the IMF to go the last mile to find an agreement — in fact to go the last centimeter, because we are so close,” Rehn said. “Greece has delivered. Now it is the delivery time for the eurogroup and the IMF.” Even though several officials said the remaining differences were small, negotiations dragged well into the evening. The so-called troika of the European Central Bank, IMF and the European Commission, which is the 27-country EU’s executive arm, have twice agreed to bail out Greece, pledging a total of 240 billion euro in rescue loans — of which the country has received about 150 billion euro so far. In return for its bailout loans, Greece has had to impose several rounds of austerity measures and submit its economy to scrutiny. Greece’s fortunes are inextricably tied to the rest of the eurozone. Without the bailout funds that have been keeping it afloat since May 2010, the country would default and could end up having to leave the eurozone. This could have a domino effect on other financially troubled eurozone nations. Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras said action needed to be taken. “Greece has fully delivered its part to the agreement, so we expect our partners to deliver their part, too, and I am sure we will find a mutually beneficial solution,” he said. But the prospect of yet another batch of bailout money left some ordinary Greeks unimpressed.
Morsi stands strong
AHMED GOMAAR/ASSOCIATED PRESS
An Egyptian protester runs during clashes with security forces near Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt. BY HAMZA HENDAWI ASSOCIATED PRESS CAIRO — Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi struck an uncompromising stand Monday over his seizure of near absolute powers, refusing in a meeting with top judicial authorities to rescind a package of constitutional amendments that placed his edicts above oversight by the courts. Morsi’s supporters, meanwhile, canceled a massive rally planned for Tuesday to compete with a demonstration by his opponents, citing the need to “defuse tension” at a time when anger over the president’s moves is mounting, according to a spokesman for the president’s Muslim Brotherhood. The opposition rally was going ahead as scheduled at Cairo’s Tahrir square, birthplace of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak’s regime nearly two years ago.
Ehud Barak quits Israeli politics BY ARON HELLER ASSOCIATED PRESS JERUSALEM — Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak abruptly quit politics Monday, potentially robbing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of a key ally who enabled his hard-line government to present a moderate face to the world. Netanyahu’s party picked a young, more hawkish list of candidates in its primary election on Monday. Barring another comeback by the mercurial former general, Barak’s departure marked an end to a distinguished and tumultuous career that spanned half a century. It began on a communal farm, led to military greatness and business success and a mixed record in politics that was highlighted by failed peacemaking efforts during a brief term as prime minister. Despite polls showing his small centrist Independence Party gaining momentum following the eight-day Israeli offensive in Gaza that he steered, Barak said he would not run again for office in the Jan. 22 elections. “I feel I have exhausted my political activity, which had never been a special object of desire for me,” Barak, 70, said in a surprise announcement in Tel Aviv. “There are many ways for me to serve the country and society, not just through politics.” Barak will remain as defense minister until a new government is sworn in after the elections.
I feel I have exhausted my political activity, which had never been a special object of desire for me. EHUD BARAK Defense minister, Israel Still, analysts predicted that Israel’s most prominent warrior-statesman of his generation had yet to say the last word and was perhaps still angling to keep his job after the election as a special appointment of Netanyahu, who is expected to be re-elected. In recent polls, Barak’s party had
ODED BALILTY/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced Monday that he is quitting politics and will not run in general elections in January. been struggling to nudge above the electoral threshold needed to get into parliament. “In his position, he did the smartest thing one could do,” said Shlomo Avineri, a political science professor at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. “He’s not as popular as an electoral candidate as he is a minister of defense. He’s not going to say no if he’s asked to be the next minister of defense. And he probably will.” Over the past four years, Barak gave Netanyahu’s governing coalition a well-known face to deal with the international community and Netanyahu himself a loyal and seasoned partner. The two men have been close since the 1970s, when Barak was Netanyahu’s commander in the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit. As prime minister, Netanyahu awarded Barak great influence in decision-making and made him his informal point man to the United States. The Obama administration embraced him as a moderating influence on Netanyahu’s hardline policies toward the Arab world and Iran’s nuclear program. Barak was scheduled to depart Tuesday for meetings with U.S. officials in Washington. His departure from politics
comes at an uncertain time for Israel, with Islamist political parties rising around the Jewish state and a decision looming on whether to strike Iran’s nuclear program. The Netanyahu-Barak alliance had its strains over this issue — with the prime minister reportedly objecting to Barak’s newly moderate position that Israel should defer to the U.S. in deciding whether to attack Iran should sanctions fail to deter Tehran from attaining a nuclear bomb. In its primary election Monday, Netanyahu’s Likud Party elected hard-line politicians to lead its list of candidates for the Jan. 22 election. Unofficial results, confirmed after midnight by Likud officials, showed veteran moderates pushed off the list, while younger hawks made gains. With opinion polls forecasting an even more hawkish government taking power after the January election, Netanyahu may face increasing heat from President Barack Obama in his second term without the moderating effect of Barak. Netanyahu’s hawkish vice premier, Moshe Yaalon, is expected to become defense minister if Barak remains on the sidelines.
The meeting between Morsi and members of the Supreme Judiciary Council was a bid to resolve a four-day crisis that has plunged the country into a new round of turmoil, with clashes between the two sides that have left one protester dead and hundreds wounded. Morsi, according to a presidential statement, told the judges that while the constitutional declaration he announced Thursday grants him immunity from any oversight, he intended to restrict that to what it described as “sovereignty issues.” The vaguely worded statement did not define those issues, but they were widely interpreted to cover declaration of war, imposition of martial law, breaking diplomatic relations with a foreign nation or dismissing a Cabinet. The statement did not touch on the protection from oversight Morsi has extended to two bodies dominated by his Brotherhood and other Islamists:
The 100-member panel tasked with drafting a new constitution and parliament’s mostly toothless lower chamber, or the Shura council. The Shura Council does not have lawmaking authorities but, in the absence of the more powerful lower chamber, the People’s Assembly, it is the only popularly elected body where the Brotherhood and other Islamists have a majority. The People’s Assembly was dissolved by a court ruling in June. The judiciary has pushed back, calling the decrees a power grab and an “assault” on the branch’s independence. Judges and prosecutors stayed away from many courts in Cairo and elsewhere on Sunday and Monday. A spokesman, Yasser Ali, said Morsi told the judges that he acted within his rights as the nation’s sole source of legislation, assuring them that the decrees were temporary and did not in any way infringe on the judiciary.
PAGE 12
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
AROUND THE IVIES
“I would like to be the first ambassador to the United States from the United States.” BARBARA MIKULSKI LONGEST-SERVING WOMAN IN THE HISTORY OF THE U.S. CONGRESS
T H E C O L U M B I A D A I LY S P E C TAT O R
Former Pakistan ambassador returns to academia BY JEREMY BUDD STAFF WRITER
TIANYUE SUN/COLUMBIA DAILY SPECTATOR
Cameron Munter served as the United States’ ambassador to Pakistan for 21 months. Now he’s holding a visiting professorship in the law school.
T H E D A I L Y P E N N S Y L VA N I A N
International scholars add depth BY BECKI STEINBERG STAFF WRITER Though he has been rowing for years, Vaclav Graf is a bit out of his element when he climbs into his boat on the Wharton Crew as a non-MBA student on the university’s sole graduate rowing team. Yet since the Fulbright visiting scholar came to pursue research at the Law School in August as an international scholar, rowing crew has allowed him not only to forge bonds with his colleagues at Penn, but also to feel connected to his home by the river in the Czech Republic. Graf is one of a slate of international guests who join Penn Law as researchers and instructors for weeks or months at a time, according to Penn Law’s Associate Dean and Executive Director for International Programs Amy Gadsden. In addition to a visiting scholar program, Penn Law offers the Bok Visiting International Professors Program, which brings seniorlevel legal practitioners to the school.
The law is no longer a noble profession, it’s a global profession. AMY GADSDEN Associate dean and executive director for international programs, Penn Law Over the years, Graf has worn many different hats since earning advanced degrees in economics and public administration. He has also worked as a tour guide in the capital of his native country. “In Prague there are a lot of boats with tourists in them on the river,” he said, “but the Schuylkill is amazing for rowing, too.” When he’s not on the water with his team, Graf spends most of his time at Penn in the library, researching the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs as he pursues a Ph.D. in economics and public administration. He will continue to refine his dissertation at the university until the spring, under the supervision of Penn Law professor Cary Coglianese, an expert on regulation and the director of Penn Program on Regulation. As part of his stay, Graf is also attending two of Coglianese’s weekly courses, one of which he hopes to replicate at his home University of Economics in Prague. “He has a lot of insight to offer about the differences … between the U.S. and the Czech Republic,” said Alisa Melekhina, a second-year law student currently enrolled in another course that
PENN
G ra f is auditing. “This comparative perspective is important for re-evaluating our own sys-
tem.” Visiting Chinese scholar Yan Lin is also infusing Penn Law with a similarly comparative perspective. A professor of Chinese constitutional law, comparative constitutional law and legislation at one of China’s most prestigious universities, Lin moved with his wife and son from Shanghai to Philadelphia this year. Throughout his time here, he’ll continue to research Chinese congressional oversight, collaborate with other international professors, co-teach courses and participate in symposia. Last month, Lin partook in a Center for the Study of Contemporary China symposium on China and the law, where he met Penn students who were particularly interested in his field of study. Next semester, Lin will also be co-teaching a contemporary Chinese law course, which he hopes will allow him to connect to students even more. With new communications forms, Lin noted, it is easier for international scholars to collaborate virtually, “but the physical presence in a foreign university is still irreplaceable,” he said. “You can not only sense the culture, but move things ahead with very close relationships that you can only build by close communication and cooperation.” At the same time, he added, the university’s — and the country’s — attitude toward diversity has been eye-opening. “Culturally, it was a shock. China is a highly homogeneous society … [in the U.S.] you have to respect other people and understand how they’re thinking about an issue that’s quite different from your perspective,” he said. In addition to Penn Law’s visiting scholar program, the school’s Bok professors teach intensive mini-courses that typically tackle cutting-edge legal questions, essentially becoming part of Penn Law’s faculty. Professor Fabrizio Cafaggi, an expert on comparative law and European lawmaking, visited Penn as a Bok professor from the end of August to October from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Cafaggi’s time at Penn offered him the opportunity to engage with international colleagues and students in his “The Making of European Law” mini-course about the current European crisis and its impact on the legal education system, he explained.
Cameron Munter, America’s former ambassador to Pakistan, didn’t spend his life thinking that he would become a diplomat. Trained as a European historian, Munter completed a nearly three-decade career in the U.S. foreign service in July. He has now accepted a two-month visiting professorship at Columbia Law School to offer his knowledge of real-life applications of law to students. Munter said he decided to return to teaching after originally leaving the profession because of the difficult job market. “One way to say it is that I realized there is no future in the past,” he said. Munter said that he sees himself more as a “professor of practice” than as a traditional tenure-track scholar. “What I’m hoping to do is give some real-world perspective and some illustration of the principles and the issues that the law
experts and p ro fe sso rs are teachi n g ,” he said. “When you come in from the COLUMBIA field, you’re acting on the things about which the legal experts are thinking — coming to grips with that has been really fascinating.” Munter is mostly known for his work in the Middle East, but his foreign service career started in Poland. It was not until the Iraq War that Munter decided to enter Middle Eastern diplomacy. As he advised younger officers to serve in Iraq, Munter said he came to realize that “I ought to practice what I preach and do it myself,” he said. “There was a little bit of solidarity, a little bit of guilt, but also the belief that no matter how you felt about the Iraq War, it’s our war.” Law professor Sarah Cleveland, who teaches a seminar about international lawyering for governments with Munter,
said that in addition to his knowledge from the field, Munter’s background in scholarship would benefit students.
What I’m hoping to do is give some real-world perspective … of the issues that the law experts and professors are teaching. CAMERON MUNTER Former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan “The ambassador’s background as a historian also makes him very comfortable and effective in an academic setting,” she said in an email. “Ambassador Munter can help our law students understand the client’s perspectives on these issues, and the client’s needs and concerns in receiving legal assistance.” Law School Dean David Schizer said in a statement
that “Columbia Law School is honored to have Ambassador Cameron Munter join us this semester. He is a distinguished public servant whose expertise will complement our superb program in national security law.” Cleveland said that Munter would provide meaningful insight for students based on his experiences with “Pakistan’s arrest of U.S. CIA contractor Raymond Davis, the Bin Laden operation, the U.S.-led NATO strike that killed roughly two dozen Pakistani soldiers, and various human rights issues such as religious freedom.” “He therefore can help students understand the legal, political and diplomatic context in which these problems arose, how U.S. lawyers and diplomats worked together to address the legal issues they created, how they engaged with Pakistani and other government authorities to try to resolve them, and the domestic, legal and other considerations for both countries that influenced the outcome,” she said.
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 13
SPORTS
“There is no harm in dreaming of becoming the world’s best player. It is all about trying to be the best. I will keep working hard to achieve it but it is within my capabilities.” CRISTIANO RONALDO FOOTBALLER
Bulldogs place in Texas SAILING FROM PAGE 14 just one win. “The key to our success was that we were able to practice with some very experienced match racers before the event, including Yale sailing alumnus Dave Perry,” skipper Max Nickbarg ’14 said. Finally, as the Bulldogs advanced to the final round, Tufts — the team Yale swept in the New England Sloop championship to qualify for the ICSA Match Racing National Championships — remained the only team between Yale and a firstplace finish. The Bulldogs quickly won the first race, but issues in positioning before the start of the next two races left Yale in the dust as Tufts picked up the next two victories and the Cornelius Shields Sr. Trophy. “Some of the finishes were very close, within a foot or two of the other boat and unfortunately Tufts defeated us in the last two races,” Nickbarg said. Nickbarg added that because the Elis are used to sailing in Northeastern climate, there was bound to be a difference in con-
Sharpshooter leads Elis
ditions when they travelled to Texas. “I think we were relatively strong in all conditions which allowed us to ‘out-boat-handle’ most of the other teams there,” Nickbarg said. Mountains surround Eagle Mountain Lake, which makes wind more erratic according to Landy. This inconsistency brought slower winds during round robin competition, but the wind picked up and the Elis proceeded to sail in normal conditions for the knockout rounds. Landy said the team is content with its second-place finish overall. “The whole team was a little fatigued near the end of the season,” Landy said. “But we were certainly pleased with our performance. It isn’t often that Yale qualifies for this event.” The sailing team now will take a break from competition and focus on off-the-water training in preparation for the spring season, which will begin in February. Contact ASHTON WACKYM at ashton.wackym@yale.edu .
MORGAN FROM PAGE 14 opposed to a more on the ball approach you may have had in high school?
A
Well, your game always evolves as your competition increases. But yeah, I used to play on the ball a bit more in high school, but coming to Yale, coach puts me in the best positions to succeed and it’s been a great time.
graduated leading scorer and QYale rebounder Greg Mangano ’12 last. How will the team and you personally act to mitigate this loss?
A
Well, obviously losing Mangano and Reggie Willhite ’12 was a big loss for us, but we’re doing it through teamwork. We’re still finding roles on our team and everybody’s contributing. I think we’ll replace those guys through the majority.
is coming off a double overtime win QYale against Army, in which you led the team
ZEENAT MANSOOR/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Yale raced in J/22 boats, a 22-foot-long racer, and came out with a 4–5 record.
Captain elected after season-long void PALIN FROM PAGE 14 both sides of the ball. Recruited as a tight end, he played that position through his sophomore year until moving to defense this year out of consideration for “what was best for the team,” Wilmot said. Despite being new to defense, the 6-foot-3inch, 247-pound Wisconsin native tied for the team lead with 4 sacks and led Yale defensive ends with 43 tackles. Asked what the Bulldogs were looking for in a captain after a trying season, Wilmot said the position required “the ability not only to work hard yourself but to galvanize your teammates … to be a teammate, a friend, a brother if necessary.” “If you’re going to lead, you have to care about the people you’re leading, and Beau cares about the game — he cares about his teammates,” Wilmot said. Defensive back Max Napolitano ’14 said Palin has the utmost respect of his teammates and is a reassuring presence in the locker room. He cited Palin’s decision to attend and direct voluntary summer workouts as evidence of his dedication to the team, also noting the benefits of having a captain who has succeeded at multiple positions. Palin’s would-be predecessor, linebacker Will McHale ’13, was
lined up to assume the captaincy this season until the fallout from a fight at Toad’s led to the suspension of his captaincy on Aug. 4. No replacement was chosen, and the Bulldogs played the 2012 season without a captain for the first time in the history of Yale football. Each week a senior “team leader” was elected by the players to give a pre-game speech and represent Yale at the coin toss, duties traditionally performed by the captain. Palin, Wilmot and Napolitano all declined to speak on the subject, deferring to head coach Tony Reno, who could not be reached for comment. Wilmot, though, expressed satisfaction at Palin’s election. “We’re excited to get back to the
way Yale football has traditionally been,” Wilmot said. Palin, Yale’s 136th football captain, remains optimistic about the future of the program. “From the outside looking in, last year was a forgettable season,”
A
Yeah, we’re still growing together as a team and we have a few guys coming off injuries. We just have to get used to each other and gain experience on the court, and hopefully we’ll improve with time.
QWhat are the team’s strengths?
A
Shooting, I think, is big for us. Just providing an outside threat and creating situations to score for each other.
had a few games already and a few QYou’ve close losses. How do you see the season going? What are your expectations?
A
Yeah, it’s been a little tough. We’ve had some growing pains. But I think we’ll continue to get better and hopefully this adversity at the beginning of the season will help us later on.
you think the freshmen on the team QDo will be able to contribute this year, or will it take time to integrate them?
A
I think they’re all very talented and they all have a lot of great skills. If you’re ready, [the] coach will let you contribute. There really are no class distinctions. Maybe the seniors get a little preferential treatment, but everybody has the same opportunities.
If you’re going to lead, you have to care about the people you’re leading. DWAYNE WILMOT Defensive line coach, football
with 19 points. The team has shown some troubles when it comes to rebounding, however. Is this a concern moving forward? Are there others?
will you look to serve in a leadership QHow capacity along with the other seniors on the team?
ZOE GORMAN/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER
Following its first season without a captain, the football team elected Beau Palin ’13 captain for the 2013 season before the Game. he said. “But within the team, that’s absolutely not true. We are not OK with a 2–8 season, but we feel that the future is bright.” Like the rest of Yale’s rising seniors, Palin has only one opportunity remaining to beat Harvard
during his career. Yet he declined to discuss the Elis’ chances. “We’re just going to take every game one at a time,” Palin said.
A
No specific goals like that, but you always want to set a good example for the younger players on the team and give them direction whenever you can. Obviously Sam Martin’s a great captain and Mike Grace is obviously a great leader, too, so the three of us share the duties. I think it will pay dividends for us in the long run, having three different voices on the team.
Contact DAVID WHIPPLE at david.whipple@yale.edu .
Contact DIONIS JAHJAGA at dionis.jahjaga@yale.edu .
Yale reaches finals of Nutmeg Classic before falling to BC WOMEN’S HOCKEY FROM PAGE 14 Stephanie Raithby and Michela Cava to take an early 2–0 lead. Defender Kate Martini ’16 answered early in the second period, but a power-play goal from the Huskies with 17:10 left in the second period put the Elis down 3–1. Captain Alyssa Zupon ’13 started the Bulldog comeback in the third period by corralling the rebound from defender Madi Murray’s ’15 shot and slotting it into the net. Forward Paige Decker ’14 deflected a shot from Martini to tie the game for her first career goal. “It was great to get a goal in such a close game,” Decker said. Goaltender Jaimie Leonoff ’15 kept UConn scoreless all the way through Martini’s game-winner, a long-range slap shot with 2:45 left in overtime. “We had a tough draw of games since the start of the season, and it was definitely a great win for team confidence and morale,” Leonoff said. Shot disparity has been a thorn in Yale’s side this year — opponents have outshot the Elis 482–216 — but the Bulldogs matched the Huskies shotfor-shot in the third period. “We kept it positive, and in between periods we talked about staying focused and playing hard,” Decker said.
Yale lost the Nutmeg Classic Championship to Boston College despite Leonoff’s season-high 50 saves. The Eagles (8–3–2, 5–2–1 WHEA) have the third-highest scoring offense in the country and Yale surrendered 55 shots in the loss. A week before, the Bulldogs played a pair of games against No. 4 Mercyhurst on Nov. 16 and Nov. 17 and lost both 4–0. Defender Aurora Kennedy ’14, who missed the entire 2011–’12 season due to injuries, made her season debut in the matchups against the Lakers. “Aurora is a really talented defenseman,” Leonoff said. “We’ve had several injuries to our defensemen this year, so having someone as talented as Aurora will really make a difference in our game.” Team members said the squad needs to keep playing smart hockey to maintain the team’s momentum. “We need to keep our confidence high and believe in each other,” Decker said. The Elis do not play this weekend, but they will return to the ice for games on the road against Union and RPI on Dec. 7 and Dec. 8. Contact GRANT BRONSDON at grant.bronsdon@yale.edu .
JACOB GEIGER/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
The Elis have now faced five of the top six teams in the country through 12 games this season.
IF YOU MISSED IT SCORES
NFL Carolina 30 Philadelphia 22
NBA Brooklyn 96 New York 89
SPORTS QUICK HITS
NBA Memphis 84 Cleveland 78
NBA San Antonio 118 Washington 92
y
INGALLS RINK TO HOST PROFESSIONAL WOMEN’S HOCKEY GAME The Boston Blades and Brampton HC of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League will face off at 6:30 p.m. at Ingalls Rink on Friday. The Blades’ roster features Yale assistant coach Jessica Koizumi as well as 10 Olympians from the silvermedal-winning 2010 U.S. Olympic team.
NYASHA SARJU ’16 ELI NAMED IVY ROOKIE OF WEEK Sarju earned her first career Ivy League honor after averaging 13.5 points and 3 rebounds in Yale’s losses to DePaul and Northwestern this week. She is averaging 11.2 points per game and shooting 50 percent from beyond the threepoint line this season.
NCAA BBALL Kansas 70 San Jose State 57
FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE yaledailynews.com/sports
“I’m excited to take the next step with this team.” BEAU PALIN ’14 CAPTAIN, FOOTBALL YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
Palin ’14 elected football captain
Sailing finishes second
FOOTBALL
BY ASHTON WACKYM CONTRIBUTING REPORTER While most Yale students were at The Game in Cambridge, the Yale sailing team was yet again contending for national recognition.
SAILING
to an ugly chapter in the Bulldogs’ captaincy, one that began with 2012 captain-elect Will McHale’s arrest following a brawl at Toad’s Place this past spring. Palin, a defensive end this season, has played at multiple positions on
From Nov. 16 through Nov. 18, the Yale coed sailing team competed at Eagle Mountain Lake in Fort Worth, Texas for the ICSA Match Racing National Championships and Cornelius Shields Sr. Trophy. The Bulldogs raced in J/22 boats, a 22-foot-long racer, and came out with a 4–5 record. Yale persevered and focused for the bracket sailing, winning a second-place finish. “We were able to keep our composure and recognized we were getting better as the event went on,” skipper Graham Landy ’15 said. The Elis struggled to produce the form that has earned them a No. 3 national ranking this year, but after tuning up during the round robin, the Bulldogs advanced along with five other schools — down from the original 10 — to the knockout rounds. In the quarterfinals, the Bulldogs were ranked as the fourth seed and took down the third seed University of South Florida in a best-of-three series. The semifinals put the Elis in a familiar situation, but with a twist. The Bulldogs now were facing Saint Mary’s College of Maryland, the number one seed, in a headto-head showdown. At the ICSA National Championships, the Bulldogs were no longer racing in the familiar fleet style they have sailed so many times — they were racing one-on-one. But the change did not confuse the Bulldogs as they slid past Saint Mary’s, giving up
SEE PALIN PAGE 13
SEE SAILING PAGE 13
ZOE GORMAN/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER
Defensive end Beau Palin ’13, who was recently elected captain for the 2013 season, tied for the team lead in sacks this year with four. BY DAVID WHIPPLE CONTRIBUTING REPORTER After a disappointing 2–8 season culminating in a heartbreaking loss to Harvard, Yale football is already preparing for next year. In an election held Friday before The Game, the Bulldogs elected
Beau Palin ’14 captain for the 2013 season. The results of the voting were announced at the annual football banquet the following Monday. “I am honored, humbled and very excited,” Palin said. “It will be a tremendous challenge if I do it right. I have great teammates who are also huge leaders, so I know I’m not
going to be the only leader on this team. I’m excited to take the next step with this team.” Defensive line coach Dwayne Wilmot praised the selection. “He will be a great ambassador for Yale football for years to come,” Wilmot said. Palin’s election brings an end
Morgan talks men’s basketball BY DIONIS JAHJAGA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
So, I guess it rubbed off on me and I’m able to take advantage.
Recruited from Reno High School in Nevada, guard Austin Morgan ’13 has finished in the top 10 in multiple categories in the Ivy League conference during his three years at Yale. Last year he finished ninth in the Ivy League in scoring, fifth in three-point field goal percentage and sixth in three-point field goals made, as well as fifth in the nation in free throw percentage. The News sat down with Morgan to discuss his growing role on the team and his views on the season.
you have any sort of free throw QDo routine?
someone who’s never seen you QFor play, describe your game and your role on the team.
A
I’m primarily a three-point shooter, but I try to be more of a versatile player and a playmaker to set my teammates up to succeed on the court.
up on that shooting abilQFollowing ity, how did you get that good at shooting? How many shots a day do you take?
A
I try to get in at least 100, 150 shots a day. As for free throws, I’ve been shooting them since I was in elementary school. I’ve always worked on it, and I’ve had coaches in high school and middle school stress their importance.
Bulldogs rally past Huskies
A
Yes, I always dribble it two times and then spin it and shoot.
grandfather played with NBA QYour Hall of Famers Jerry Lucas and
John Havlicek and Hall of Fame NCAA coach Bob Knight. Did your grandfather impact your development at all?
A
I’ve grown up around basketball and that certainly helps. Obviously he’s way better than me, but you learn a lot from someone like that.
JENNIFER CHEUNG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
has your game evolved and QHow adapted since high school?
The Elis won their second game of the season 4–3 in overtime against the University of Connecticut in the semifinals of the Nutmeg Classic on Friday.
A
I think the biggest improvement for me is being able to run off screens and get my shot off against bigger players because obviously in high school the players aren’t as big as in college. I think that was an adjustment, just being so much shorter, learning how to finish in the lane and make smart decisions — just becoming a more mature player overall.
you have to adapt to playQDid ing more off the ball in college, as SEE MORGAN PAGE 13
BY GRANT BRONSDON CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The Yale women’s hockey team was able to eke out its second win of the season in exciting fashion, defeating the University of Connecticut 4–3 in overtime at Ingalls Rink on Friday. BLAIR SEIDEMAN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Guard Austin Morgan ’13 finished fifth in the nation in free throw percentage and ninth in the Ivy League in scoring last year.
STAT OF THE DAY 155
WOMEN’S HOCKEY The Bulldogs (2–10–0, 1–5–0 ECAC) faced off against the Hus-
kies (2–12–2, 1–5–0 WHEA) in the semifinals of the Nutmeg Classic, overcoming a 2–0 deficit, before succumbing to No. 5 Boston College 5–0 in the tournament finals. The win over UConn was Yale’s first victory in a game in which the Elis trailed by two goals in over five years. The first period was one all too familiar to the Bulldogs, as Connecticut picked up goals from SEE WOMEN’S HOCKEY PAGE 13
THE NUMBER OF GAMES SINCE YALE WOMEN’S HOCKEY OVERCAME A TWO-GOAL DEFICIT. The Elis fell behind 2–0 to the University of Connecticut and later trailed 3–1 at Ingalls Rink on Saturday before roaring back to tie the game and prevailing 4–3 in overtime.