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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 · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 · VOL. CXXXV, NO. 58 · yaledailynews.com

INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING

CLOUDY CLEAR

37 40

CROSS CAMPUS

GLOBAL MUSIC YALE DIVERSIFIES CURRICULUM

YALE-NUS

VITA BELLA

TOMLINSON ’14

Singaporean College seeks Yale seniors to serve as dean’s fellows

PROFESSORIAL TRIO DISCUSSES HAPPINESS, CATS

Nationally ranked squash player looks forward to 2013 Championship

PAGE 8–9 CULTURE

PAGE 3 NEWS

PAGE 5 SECTION

PAGE 14 SPORTS

Holder fights city violence

Not Bill Nye, but definitely a science guy. English lecturer

Carl Zimmer ’87 has won this year’s American Association for the Advancement of Sciences’ Kavli Science Journalism Award for three articles he published in The New York Times, one of which discusses the trillions of bacteria that live in our bodies.

Frightening.

BY JANE DARBY MENTON STAFF REPORTER

tem against those who continue to commit violent crime. The program was launched in New Haven on Monday and will soon expand to Hartford and Bridgeport.

“Project Longevity will send a powerful message to those who would commit violent crimes targeting their fellow citizens that such

With finals around the corner, Yale College Dean Mary Miller has recommended faculty not to assign students take-home exams following this summer’s allegations that 125 Harvard students engaged in unauthorized collaboration on a take-home examination.

In a Nov. 19 end-of-term email to the faculty, Miller and Graduate School Dean Thomas Pollard urged professors who use take-home final examinations to consider switching to an in-class examination.

Though the University has traditionally discouraged take-home exams, Miller said, she wanted to re-emphasize other options in light of the recent events at Harvard. Inclass examinations enable students to better balance their finals schedule and maintain a healthier lifestyle during the exam period because on take-home finals, students often take more time than the three hours budgeted for in-class examinations, she said.

“We try to help faculty members think about the zero sum of student time,” Miller said. “Taking a final exam or writing a paper can be a more effective [gauge] of mastery of a wide range of materials than [an] openended take-home exam.”

Professors can offer take-home examinations instead of regularly scheduled finals if they provide students with instructions about timing, collaboration and permitted resources, according to the Yale Faculty Handbook. But a majority of professors interviewed said they have never offered

SEE GUNS PAGE 4

SEE TAKE-HOME FINALS PAGE 4

Strike a pose. Or share

one. Yale’s Office of Public Affairs and Communications is holding a photo contest and asking Yalies to submit pictures of their favorite Yale experiences from 2012. The contest is open to all members of the Yale community and is open until 5 p.m. on Dec. 7.

Team Salovey. Two students

from the Yale School of Management were part of the winning team at Yale’s inaugural Global Health Case Competition, held on Nov. 10. But apart from the case competition, the six-person team also won in the creative name category. Dubbed “Salovey and Sons Consulting Company” after Presidentelect and Provost Peter Salovey, the members won the right to represent Yale at the International Global Health Case Competition in March.

Renovating the arts. After

undergoing $3.8 million in renovations, the New Haven Long Wharf Theatre unveiled its renovated facility on Tuesday, bringing to an end the theater’s largest improvement project in its almost 50-year history. The renovations leave the Long Wharf Theatre with a larger lobby, increased bathroom space, a bigger concessions and box office area and more space between rows.

Leg room for all!

The dream is over. It seems the Petraeus-gate will not be opening for the Tigers.

Princeton University has confirmed that it is not among the four universities that have offered former CIA Director David Petraeus a position on its faculty, The Daily Princetonian reported yesterday.

Schooled. At 21 percent, the disparity between Connecticut’s overall graduation rate and the graduation rate for economically disadvantaged students is the highest reported in the country.

Dirty Dozen. Three

Connecticut companies have been named to the Toxics Action Center’s “Dirty Dozen” list, which calls out what the center deems to be the worst polluters in New England.

This time, the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority, Connecticut Environmental Council and Raymark Superfund Site made the list.

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1961 Four residential colleges and the Art and Drama schools lose electricity after the power dispensing unit breaks down.

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Miller discourages take-home finals

PATRICK CASEY/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder joined city and state officials to unveil a new program to combat gang violence Tuesday.

BY PATRICK CASEY AND CHRISTOPHER PEAK CONTRIBUTING REPORTER AND STAFF REPORTER U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder traveled to New Haven Tuesday to announce a new program that aims to curb gun violence throughout Connecticut.

Holder was joined by Gov. Dannel Malloy, Sen. Richard Blumen-

thal LAW ’73 and city officials to announce Project Longevity, a comprehensive plan centered around collaboration between city and community leaders and law enforcement. The program offers current gang members social services like substance abuse therapy and career counseling as an alternative to a life of crime, but promises to bring the full force of the criminal justice sys-

YCDO hosts alcohol talks

City hears Armory input

BY CYNTHIA HUA STAFF REPORTER By the end of this week, students in all 12 residential colleges will have participated in discussions on administrative alcohol policies with fellows from the Yale College Dean’s Office.

In an effort to foster communication between students and administrators regarding Yale’s policies on alcohol, the YCDO has organized a series of “Alcohol Conversation Dinners or Desserts” for students in each residential college. Eleven discussions, one in each college plus a joint dinner for the Morse and Ezra Stiles colleges, are being held from Nov. 11 to 29. The events aim to allow students to share their experiences with and concerns about Yale’s alcohol culture while also offering suggestions for different approaches to curbing high-risk drinking, said YCDO fellow Hannah Peck DIV ’11.

“The Dean’s Office definitely wants to have an ongoing conversation with students,” Peck said. “These dinners are an experiment to see if this is a good way to have discussion.”

University administrators are searching for new ways to communicate with students, she said, adding that the YCDO plans to hold an increased number of similar events if the new dinner format proves to be productive. Previous means of communication, such as campuswide emails outlining Yale’s new alcohol policies, have not been as effective as administrators had hoped, she said.

The dinner discussions follow a 10-minute information session about dangerous drinkSEE ALCOHOL PAGE 4

SARI LEVY/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

City officials consider uses of the Goffe Street Armory.

BY ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER A combination of New Haven aldermen, city staff and community members gathered Tuesday at City Hall to consider the fate of the vacant Goffe Street Armory.

The forum marked the first effort of the newly formed Goffe Street Armory planning committee of the Board of Aldermen to gather community input regarding the board’s plans for refurbishing the factory

sitting at 290 Goffe St., which has been without use since 2010. The current proposal would transform the former stationing ground for the Connecticut governor’s foot guards into a community center aimed at centralizing services and opportunities for both young people and the elderly.

“The lack of opportunities for young people in this city has reached a state of crisis,” Ward 1 Alderman Sarah Eidelson ’12 told the News after the meeting.

Eidelson, who is the vice-chairwoman of the Armory committee as well as chairwoman of the Board of Aldermen’s youth services committee, said refurbishing the Armory will go a long way in fulfilling the board’s mandate to empower New Haven youth.

“There’s a whole host of resources for young people that the Armory could potentially be home to, whether it’s college prep, arts SEE ARMORY PAGE 6

PAGE 2

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION

.COMMENT “A liberal arts education will teach a person to think critically...with that, yaledailynews.com/opinion

Is Yale all about compliments?

O

n Facebook, students’ news feeds are now bombarded by short bursts of anonymous praise offered through Yale Compliments. Hundreds of compliments are submitted by unnamed students about their classmates to share publicly with hundreds of others.

Why do we do it?

More interestingly, when I ask friends what they think of this strange new Facebook page, I hear almost overwhelmingly positive things.

People seem hesitant to admit that they like it, but they really do. But again, why?

Last night, more than 300 students crammed into LC 101 to hear professors Shelly Kagan, Laurie Santos and Michael Frame discuss happiness, fear and the meaning of life at an event organized by the Vita Bella magazine.

For any event featuring local Yale professors, that is an incredibly high turnout. But for a Tuesday evening during the mad rush leading to finals, that number is particularly remarkable.

Personally, I would skip class to hear Shelly Kagan read from a phone book. And I can certainly imagine that a handful of students feel similarly about these other professors. Yet I hardly think simple cults of personality explain the outpouring of interest. What brought the hordes to LC? The success of Yale Compliments and the turnout for the Vita Bella panel are connected. Together, they tell a story about a strange malady that overtakes most of us during our time here and points in the direction of a cure.

Yale Compliments feels natural because so much of our life here at Yale is about precisely this: compliments.

Few of us here are really attention-seeking automatons, but as much as we deny it, there is a widespread hunger for recognition. Academic prizes and job offers, GPAs and societies, organizational leadership and publications, all create a culture where opportunities for pats on the back are pervasive.

And so we submit nice thoughts about our peers on Facebook. After all, public praise is the currency we know, and so we try to provide it to those we respect.

We have all experienced the thrill that accompanies public recognition, so offered the opportunity, we try to provide that thrill for those we value.

And perhaps with some subconscious belief in karma, we hope someone will return the favor. In the process, we reinforce the same culture that fetishizes praise — but here,

at the top of an academic meritocracy, we know how to do little else.

Too many of us joined this rat YISHAI race years SCHWARTZ ago, and we are unsure Dissentary of how to e s c a p e .

Some set their sights on college early, planning their high school years with Yale in mind. But most of us weren’t so Machiavellian; we took pride in following our passions and blithely disregarding the advice of careerists. But deep down, we had a sense that praise and acceptance would follow. And indeed, it did.

At the moment we arrived at Yale, we entered a world where praise was constant and occasionally blinding.

But the Vita Bella panel shows that we were never fully lost to that strange rat race. Even in the midst of running through our time here, most of us have a vague sense that there are things far more important than the next grade or organizational election. Hundreds of students packed into LC because they were desperate to hear a person in authority say that money and praise will not ultimately make us happy.

And so when professor Kagan decreed “don’t go into consulting,” the room exploded into applause.

We are blessed to attend one of the greatest educational institutions in the world. But along with the phenomenal academic and extracurricular resources that support our interests, studies and passions, there is a danger in an almost overwhelming culture of praise.

Yet Yale Compliments should be a mild amusement, not a representative of culture. In a week or two, its novelty will wear off and we will most likely forget all about it. But as it goes, any nostalgia should be nuanced by the realization that, in part, it speaks to some of the less pleasant aspects of ourselves.

Events like the last night’s panel prove that we are aware of the problem. And more importantly: frequent interactions with personalities like Santos, Kagan and Frame — who remind us of the preeminence of family, love, meaning and kindness — are a major part of the solution.

YISHAI SCHWARTZ is a senior in Branford College. Contact him at yishai.schwartz@yale.edu .

comes the desire to question.”

'PRIAN' ON 'YALE-NUS PANEL MULLS STUDENT LIFE'

A difficult solution I

promised myself I would never write an opinion piece about the Middle East, but I’m about to break my own rule.

In the last few weeks, we have seen the Egyptian president grant himself extra-judicial powers, effectively making himself invulnerable. We have watched as hostilities between Gaza and Israel developed. We have witnessed the Syrian government continue to kill its people.

Part of the tragedy of these unfolding dramas is the fact that we’ve seen them before.

Egyptians overturned their last government because of its autocratic, self-perpetuating policies. Israel and Gaza have dueled before — more than once.

And this is by no means the first massacre of Syrian citizens by their government.

There are many reasons I find these situations appalling — most importantly that people are losing their lives and their rights, or are in danger of losing them, around the region. But my sense of outrage also stems from a feeling of protectiveness and fear.

For two of the last three summers, I worked as a counselor at Seeds of Peace, a summer camp that teaches conflict resolution and coexistence to young people from the Middle East and

South Asia.

For weeks at a time, I lived with — and came to love — hundreds of campers who are now back in ZOE Aviv, Gaza MERCER- Tel and Cairo.

My campers GOLDEN are extraorMeditations dinary teenagers: leaders in their communities who worked relentlessly at camp to understand the perspective of the other side. At camp, it is far easier to be friends with people on the opposing side of the conflict than it is at home.

At the end of the program, putting my campers on the buses that would take them to the airport was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, as I knew how volatile the regions and the cities that I was returning them to are. I worry about them. One of my worst fears is waking up to a message that one of my campers had been hurt or killed. But that is the reality that they face — and we face from a distance — every day: violence, continued hostility, no end to the conflict in sight.

Seeds of Peace has existed for the past 19 summers. The

Israeli-Palestinian conflict in its current iteration has existed for decades more. Egypt and Syria’s problems with autocratic leadership stretch back centuries, and are reinforced by the specter of colonialism that haunts us still. Renewed fighting or violence no longer surprises us: We have come to expect it, to wait for it, and when it unfolds, we can barely bring ourselves to watch.

We are tired of these conflicts, tired of hearing about them. The people in the region are much, much more tired of suffering the consequences of bad leadership and perpetual fighting, political and physical. The next generation of leaders — my campers — are inheriting a mess begetting messes.

The solution is not simple, it’s definitely not easy and it’s only tangentially political.

We can’t expect an end to conflict in a region that continues to be economically underdeveloped and socially divided, where the vast majority of people have limited access to education and health care. Many countries in the region remain crippled by poor infrastructure: bad roads, crumbling buildings, limited access to technology.

And don’t even get me started on the place of women in Middle Eastern society.

In order to ensure an end to conflict in the Middle East, and in order to avoid waking up every morning to bloody headlines, we have to help build a better Middle East: one in which everyone who wants a job has one, all children (including girls) are educated, and all citizens have access to the resources they so desperately need. We’ve known for a long time that the solution to problems in the region isn’t just imposing democratic practices, or forcing two sides to sign a treaty. Treaties can be broken — and we need only look at Egypt to see how fragile democracy is. The solution is enacting social and economic change in the region, and empowering citizens to demand and build a better world for themselves.

Someday, I’d like to send campers home to lives that aren’t clouded and constrained by fear, anger and lack of opportunity. I’d like to put them on a bus confident that I’ll never be woken up in the night by the message I dread — the message, I’m afraid, that is coming, if we can’t promote permanent, sustainable change soon.

ZOE MERCER-GOLDEN is a senior in Davenport College. Her column runs on Wednesdays.

Contact her at zoe.mercer-golden@yale.edu .

GUE ST COLUMNIST LAURA SPEYER

O

The echo chamber on Israel

ver the past few weeks, while we were writing papers and basting turkeys, rockets were falling in Gaza and southern Israel.

I was lucky not to have family or friends in danger, so during this most recent crisis in Gaza, what stood out most was my swamped Facebook news feed. When I refreshed my browser, I was confronted

by Yalies posting the same few phrases over and over: I stand with Israel. Copy-and-pasted paragraphs warning Americans that our media is anti-Israel, or even anti-Semitic. Slogans in Hebrew. The knee-jerk vitriol when we talk about Israel never fails to shock me.

Although some of these responses to the escalation in Gaza might suggest otherwise, the Yale Jewish community is warm and wonderful, and I am proud to serve on the Slifka Center’s student board.

My Jewish friends are brilliant, compassionate intellectuals. They are happy to play devil’s advocate when I’m looking for a debate, even when they agree with me. They can make a nuanced argument on nearly

any subject, from Maimonides to Confucius, and we can happily disagree without harming our friendship. When the board meets every Sunday, we almost always discuss ways to make the building feel more comfortable to everyone who walks through its doors. We pride ourselves on being pluralistic, welcoming and inclusive.

And yet whenever the subject of Israel comes up in the Slifka building, many assume that everybody has the same opinions — opinions that are carefully fostered in Hebrew schools, Jewish day schools and Jewish summer camps around the country. Sometimes it feels like Jews only talk about Israel with other Jews. At the beginning of this year, I heard a good friend tell a freshman that she would “learn who to talk to about Israel.” In other words, this newly arrived Old Campus denizen should only seek out those who agreed with her — other Jews. Many of my friends wrote their pro-Israel statuses in Hebrew, so that only Jews (and the rare Hebrew-speaking non-Jew) could respond or even read the post. “I stand with

Israel” is a standard expression, which perfectly encapsulates the shameful lack of nuanced thinking in our community’s conversations about the recent attacks in Gaza.

How many Yalies would proudly say, “I stand with America,” without any qualifications?

I challenge any thinking person, even the most unabashed American exceptionalist, to stand behind every action this country takes. So how can my friends, who usually weigh both sides of any argument so carefully, make a blanket endorsement of Israel’s actions over the past two weeks?

To be fair, the Jewish community is not the only place where this deeply complicated issue is reduced to black and white. Some Yalies who disapprove of Israel’s actions were just as shameless in their oversimplified pontification about war crimes and child-killers.

As Yalies, we pride ourselves on being open-minded. Let’s try to follow through.

I am not qualified to comment on the difficult political realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I am sure that neither

side can be entirely in the right or entirely in the wrong. Let’s not act as though there’s any way to summarize the situation into a Facebook-ready sound bite. Instead, let’s leave the echo chamber of the Jewish world, or the self-perpetuating blogosphere, and have more difficult conversations. Talk to your suitemates, to your TA and your IM ping-pong team. Talk to someone who disagrees with you — and don’t just wait for him or her to finish speaking before you make your next point. Listen to what they have to say.

Despite last week’s ceasefire, there will almost certainly be a next time — another violent crisis for Israel and the surrounding territories. When that happens, I urge every Yalie to consider the complexity of the issue. Stop trying to boil a tremendously complex problem down to a hackneyed phrase or a quick condemnation. Stand with whomever you like, but do so with a little nuance, and a lot of careful thought.

LAURA SPEYER is a junior in Timothy Dwight College. Contact her at laura.speyer@yale.edu .

GUE ST COLUMNIST ELISABETH SACKS

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O

n Oct. 24, The New York Times travel section featured an article by Freda Moon entitled, “36 Hours in New Haven, Conn.” Moon cited the most profound problem facing New Haven as the “complex and layered” tension between “barbecue shacks … and stylish cocktail lounges,” in a city which she described as marred only by a distant, forgotten memory of crime and crack in the ’80s and ’90s. As members of the community and young medical professionals living in New Haven, we feel that this description fails to represent the reality of our city.

This is a place where our friend, a physician trainee at Yale-New Haven Hospital who, like all of us, works long and often grueling hours in a profession dedicated to serving this city and the surrounding community, was assaulted by a group of adolescents. They struck him in the head with a rock that broke his jaw and knocked out his front teeth. This horrifying incident took place shortly after Moon’s

It’s still that bad article appeared to dismiss violent crime as a current element of New Haven life. And yet the same night, two other Yale-New Haven Hospital residents were separately attacked by a group of adolescents. One was knocked down in the street, and can only recall feeling his face against the concrete sidewalk and hearing, “Don’t hit him again, you might kill him.” This is also a place where an elderly female physician who has lived in this community for decades was nearly strangled to death in her own backyard, suffering serious head injuries. This a city where one senior physician has intervened in an attempted sexual assault at 5 p.m. on a crowded downtown street. As citizens who live and work in New Haven, we’ve had enough.

Violence occurs in other Ivy League towns. New York, Philadelphia, and Providence certainly witness their share of town-gown tensions. However, looking at statistics, it is clear that New Haven is in a league of its own. New Haven shamefully

carries the FBI’s fourth-highest rate of assault in the U.S. in 2010. Living here, we sense constant tension and unsettlement between Yale and our neighboring communities.

It is time for us to come together to discuss what is happening in New Haven. When our friend requested that the police notify the Yale community about the violence committed against him, he was informed that the event took place beyond the “Yale police zone.” His assault took place in the quiet, residential neighborhood of Wooster Square, a 10-minute walk from Yale’s campus and populated by Yale-affiliated graduate students, physicians and other young professionals.

Except for an email from one of the residency administrators, the events would have gone unreported to the hospital staff.

If understanding violence in our community is limited to the “Yale police zone,” then we do not completely understand the city we live in or the poverty of our neighbors, and we perpetu-

ate the deep historical tensions that characterize the relationship between Yale and the New Haven community.

Our proposition is that as a university, we begin to make an effort to become engaged in the greater community we live in.

Meetings between community leaders and Yale administrators already take place, yet very few students or employees are involved in the process, understand what takes place, or have a chance to hear what is said.

We feel that it is time that Yale begins to facilitate participation in these meetings from Yale students and employees, so that we can all gain understanding of what is happening in our community. It is time for New Haven to come together and to have an honest discussion about the factors that continue to lead to devastating violence and crime.

ELISABETH SACKS is a resident at the Yale-New Haven Hospital. Krisda Chaiyachati and Theodore Long '06, also residents, contributed writing.

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 3

NEWS

“I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.” RONALD REAGAN 40TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Looming state deficit could bring cuts GRAPH STATE BUDGET ALLOCATION, 2011

13

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TRANSPORTATION 7%

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6%

NS 13%

AD M OT INIS TRAT HE I VE 2 RS % PE ND I NG 5%

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PENSIO

Facing a rising budget deficit, Connecticut will soon be forced to draft plans for reduced spending.

Last week, the Malloy administration confirmed the state is looking at a $365 million budget deficit this fiscal year. Under Connecticut law, the governor must submit a cost-cutting plan to the legislature whenever a budget deficit exceeds 1 percent of the nearly $20 billion state budget, and the current projected deficit is nearly double that amount. The Malloy administration has said that it will likely submit its proposal sometime in the next few weeks.

The governor faces certain limitations in what he can propose to cut, said Gian-Carl Casa, undersecretary for legislative affairs in the state’s Office of Policy and Management. For example, he cannot cut municipal aid or more than 5 percent of funding on any particular budget line item. Malloy can choose to include legislative items in his plan — such as proposing to cut entire programs — though any legislative item would be decided by a vote during a special session. Adam Joseph, a spokesman for the State Senate Democrats, said that such a session would most likely be held before Christmas.

“The longer we wait, the more money is spent,” Joseph said. “We want to make sure we’re turning off the faucet as soon as we can.”

Malloy has repeatedly stated that he does not plan to include any tax increases in his deficit-reduction plan, as the state raised taxes in its last biannual budget. Joseph declined to speculate whether Senate Democrats would challenge the governor’s stance on taxes, though he said the governor’s position is “clear.”

Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney declined to speculate on specific programs Senate Democrats would support cutting.

“That all remains to be seen,” Looney said. “It would be premature to

speculate what might or might not be cut until we see what the governor’s proposal is.”

In his monthly report released in November, Office of Policy and Management Secretary Ben Barns said the deficit was likely due to overly optimistic tax revenue estimates and higher-than-expected enrollment in Medicaid, the federal health care program for low-income Americans.

Revenues are down about $144.9 million from last month. Casa attributed the shortfall to a “sluggish national economy.”

“We believed the national economy would recover as it had in the past,” Casa said. “If the recovery had occurred at the same rate as the recovery from the 2002-’03 recession, revenue from income taxes would be $650 million higher and sales tax revenue would be $75 million higher.”

According to the legislature’s Office of Fiscal Analysis, the Medicaid shortfall can also be attributed to the growth in caseloads. The Medicaid program for adults has surged by 4,000 clients since June, adding $30 million in expenditures. Overall, $240 million in excess spending results from Medicaid outlays, according to the Office of Fiscal Analysis.

Both the shortfall in tax revenues and the increased client roll on Medicaid can be attributed to the state’s lackluster economy, Casa said. The state’s unemployment rate, which stood at 9 percent in October, tops the national rate by over a percentage point. Additionally, the state created 1,900 jobs in the past year, a figure State Comptroller Kevin Lembo called “scant” in a letter to the governor.

A spokesman for the Senate Republicans could not be reached for comment.

The state legislature will negotiate a new two-year budget plan in its next session, starting in January.

W

BY MICHELLE HACKMAN STAFF REPORTER

Contact MICHELLE HACKMAN at michelle.hackman@yale.edu .

US CENSUS BUREAU

City discusses education initiatives

BY DIANA LI STAFF REPORTER The New Haven Board of Aldermen’s education committee met with the staff of New Haven Public Schools on Tuesday night to discuss city education issues.

New Haven Public Schools staff and the education committee first discussed Parent University, a Nov. 3 daylong event at Gateway Community College with free workshops to help parents support their kids in school. The committee also examined the redistricting of school zones in New Haven and heard recommendations presented by an advisory committee formed to make suggestions to the Board of Education regarding redistricting.

Susan Weisselberg, chief of Wraparound Services of New Haven Public Schools, and Abbe Smith, NHPS communications director, presented their summary and analysis of Parent University to attendees, noting the event was a success with both parents and children.

“We really had a lot of parents that wanted to stay longer, because there were real robust conversations going on about issues that really mattered to parents,” Smith said. “We had to sort of say, ‘Hey — buses are leaving.’ They were saying, ‘We want more.’”

Weisselberg said Gateway Community College agreed to stay on as a Parent University partner and to host a similar event in early April.

He added that Gateway is thinking of joining the event to college fairs for both students and parents so families can learn more about planning for college.

Ward 16 Alderman Migdalia Castro said that she wanted organizers to consider the timing and the date of the next event. Castro was unable to attend the Nov. 3 event because she was busy canvassing before Election Day. Weisselberg said that she hoped neighborhoods would host similar events that could be shorter in length and require less planning. About 250 parents attended the last Parent University, and neighborhoods could gauge the demand for more local workshops and hold their own, she said.

In addition to discussing Parent University, the committee also heard recommendations from an advisory committee regarding redis-

tricting of New Haven public school districts.

Ward 27 Alderman Angela Russell, who was a member of the advisory committee, said the discussion was a “very detailed process” and that parents’ concerns included students’ proximity to their schools and students’ ability to choose the school they wanted to attend.

Ed Linehan, chairman of the redistricting committee, presented the recommendations to board members along with Garth Harries, assistant superintendent of New Haven Public Schools, and Will Clark, chief operating officer of the New Haven Board of Education.

Linehan said some of the committee’s recommendations were made with the intent of ensuring that students could attend a school in a zone that was close to them.

“Do we have enough seats for everybody?

Yes. We have almost 12,000 students and over 12,000 seats,” Linehan said. “But where the seats are and where the children are is where there’s a mismatch.”

For example, for the Ross Woodward Classical Studies Interdistrict Magnet, there are 421 open seats but 1,021 students in the zone, meaning 600 students have to attend schools outside of their zone. Conversely, in the Brennan-Rogers Interdistrict Magnet, there are 292 spots but only 118 students, leaving an excess of 174 seats for those outside of the zone.

Castro said she was concerned that the committee did not account for ongoing construction in her ward that will add 80 new homes by next summer.

Ward 18 Alderman Salvatore DeCola said that he wanted more information about the numbers of students forced to attend a school outside of their zone due to the mismatching that Linehan discussed.

“I get the calls and I get the mothers crying. Why aren’t the numbers in here? If there’s room, why aren’t they being put in here?” DeCola asked. Linehan said they did not have those numbers but that he would try to find that information.

The committee’s recommendations include 12 redistricting and new school recommendations, five planning recommendations and seven other related recommendations.

Contact DIANA LI at diana.li@yale.edu .

Yale-NUS publicizes fellows

BY ALEKSANDRA GJORGIEVSKA STAFF REPORTER Yale-NUS is now accepting applications from Yale seniors interested in becoming dean’s fellows at the college.

The dean’s fellows will serve as student counselors in the Singaporean liberal arts college and live in the Yale-NUS residential colleges along with students.

Yale-NUS Dean of Students Kyle Farley said students with American liberal arts college backgrounds will fill five of the 10 dean’s fellowships, and Singaporeans will fill the remaining five positions. Though Farley said most of the fellowships reserved for students graduating from U.S. institutions will be awarded to Yale alumni, he added that he hopes a few will be filled by alumni of small liberal arts colleges.

“It would be nice to have some Yale graduates for the sake of continuity, so that some of the things we do successfully here at Yale can also be done at YaleNUS,” Yale-NUS President Pericles Lewis said. “For instance, the sense of the residential colleges as a place where students have a lasting community, and the college as one of the hubs of extracurricular life on campus are some aspects we would like to preserve.”

The job advertisement for the position, posted to a Singaporean job search website, lists mentoring and counseling YaleNUS students, organizing extracurricular activities and serving as special assistant to an office at Yale-NUS as the duties of a dean’s fellow. The posting also states that Yale-NUS will prefer candidates with experience in community service, athletics, extracurricular activities or other areas of student affairs.

Lewis and Farley said the dean’s fellows who graduated from Yale will not be hired in order to replicate Yale culture on the Singaporean college’s campus but are rather intended to facilitate the creation of a new campus culture that will share some aspects of Yale’s culture, such as the residential college lifestyle.

Marvin Chun, chair of the Yale-NUS Advisory Committee, said administrators at the college decided to establish the dean’s fellowship in part because of the success of the freshman counselor program at Yale.

It was interesting to hear that there would be more freedom on campus than in Singapore at large.

KIRIE STROMBERG ’13 At an information session about the position in the YaleNUS office on York Street Office Tuesday evening, Chun told an audience of roughly 30 students that the dean’s fellows are going be trained next June following a program similar to that of the freshman counselors. He added that Farley will lead the training program.

Chun stressed that the dean’s fellowship will be a full-time job, unlike the freshman counselor position at Yale.

“The [dean’s fellowship] basically consists of being a freshman counselor half the time and doing very exciting office work the rest,” he said.

Chun said the dean’s fellows, to be hired for a one-year term with the possibility of

an extension, will receive free room and board and a stipend.

Though Chun said he cannot give an estimate for the amount of the stipend yet, the Yale-NUS administration is aiming to make the position “competitive with comparable positions.”

Chun told the News that he expects the application process to be “quite competitive” given student turnout at the information session. Farley said he has already received plenty of applications and letters of interest from current Yale students, recent alumni, Princeton-inAsia alumni and Singaporeans.

During a Q-and-A session following Tuesday night’s presentation, some attendees addressed the controversy surrounding students’ rights on the Yale-NUS campus.

“What is very clear is that freedom of expression is very strongly protected and enhanced by the charter of the institution,” Chun said, adding that students will not be able to form groups that “promote religious strife” or branches of existing political parties in Singapore.

Kirie Stromberg ’13, who was at the session, said she is considering the position in part because “East Asia is the place to be right now.”

“It was interesting to hear that there would be more freedom on campus than in Singapore at large,” she said. “It seems like it will be a special zone.

I don’t know if that would or wouldn’t work, but it’s attractive to me.”

The dean’s fellows will begin their positions on June 1, 2013.

Contact ALEKSANDRA GJORGIEVSKA at aleksandra.gjorgievska@yale.edu .

r e c y c l e re c yc l e r e c y c l e re c yc l e

YOUR

YDN

DAILY

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating.” SOPHOCLES ANCIENT GREEK TRAGEDIAN

Officials announce city violence plan GUNS FROM PAGE 1 acts will not be tolerated and that help is available for all those who wish to break the cycle of violence and gang activity,” Holder said. “Today’s announcement underscores our commitment to working together — across levels of government and jurisdictional boundaries — to protect the American people from the crime that threatens too many neighborhoods and claims far too many innocent lives.”

Last year, the Elm City witnessed one of the worst years of violent crime in recent decades, with 34 homicides and 122 nonfatal shootings. While homicides in New Haven have since fallen significantly, gun violence remains a considerable problem, particularly among young black males, who make up a majority of this year’s 16 homicides. Statewide, nearly three-quarters of all homicides occurred in Connecticut’s three biggest cities — and the major targets of Project Longevity — New Haven, Hartford and Bridgeport.

In New Haven, a group of about 600 residents, most of whom are gang members, are responsible for the vast majority of the city’s violent crime, Malloy said.

Project Longevity targets this group through “focused deterrence,” U.S. Attorney David Fein said, concentrating enforcement within the groups responsible for most violent crime.

Developed by Fein’s office in collaboration with local, state and federal government, Project Longevity is modeled after programs that have reduced gun violence in Boston, Chicago and other cities across the country by pros-

ecuting entire gangs for individual cases of violent crime. While group-related homicides dropped by about half in neighborhoods in Chicago, Cincinnati and Providence, Fein said Project Longevity marks the first time that the strategy will be implemented on a statewide basis, although the program was first launched in New Haven.

“I’m optimistic that it will help address the serious crime issues that are facing our city,” Ward 10 Alderman Justin Elicker said. “I’m happy that the chief of police is looking for creative ways that have been successful in other communities in order to address the problem of violence in the city.”

Project Longevity took effect on Monday when police held two “call-ins” for approximately 25 gang members from the Newhallville and Dwight neighborhoods.

The call-ins, one of the central tactics of the project, lay out the different paths available to gang members.

This week’s groups heard from Adult Education Director for the New Haven Board of Education Alicia Caraballo about losing her 24-year-old son to violent crime. The rest of the presentations offered a proverbial carrot and stick: Outreach workers and community members described available services while police and prosecutors warned that each gang member would be investigated if any shootings occur in the future.

Many community groups, like New Haven Family Alliance and United Way of Greater New Haven, have signed onto Project Longevity as service providers. Yale researchers will continue to analyze crime data and identify

prime candidates for Project Longevity’s targeted deterrence. The Yale Police Department has no plans to change department procedures for the program, Chief Ronnell Higgins said.

Still, the project will not work without backing from the community, Malloy said.

“This means parents, clergy, neighborhood leaders, grandmothers, aunts, uncles — everyone working toward one goal,” he said. “We are working to regain the trust of the African-American and Latino communities.”

Ward 22 Alderman Jeanette Morrison, though, said that the government needs to do more to engage young men tempted by gang life.

“I think we always need to put more money into … youth services. Providing more options for young people, different things to do,” Morrison said. “And over the last 10 or 15 years, that kind of money has begun to dry up. And over the last 10 or 15 years, that’s where you’ve seen a lot of increase in crime.”

Legislators will watch New Haven to gauge the strategy’s success before it will be implemented across the entire state or nation.

“I’m looking forward to the day when Connecticut is cited as the beginning of a national effort,” Blumenthal said at the press conference.

Connecticut saw 129 homicides in 2011, of which 94 occurred in either New Haven, Hartford or Bridgeport.

Contact PATRICK CASEY at patrick.casey@yale.edu . Contact CHRISTOPHER PEAK at christopher.peak@yale.edu .

PATRICK CASEY/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

New Haven Police Department Chief Dean Esserman discussed violence in New Haven.

Professors weigh Harvard cheating TAKE-HOME FINALS FROM PAGE 1 a take-home exam.

German professor Paul North said many upper-level courses in the humanities and social sciences assign final papers in place of examinations. Philip Smith, director for undergraduate studies in sociology, said he felt a “worthwhile” take-home examination would require at least three days to complete, which he thinks is too much to ask of students during finals period.

But biochemistry lecturer Kaury Kucera, who teaches a seminar for non-science majors, said she assigns open-ended takehome finals because she wants to measure students’ ability to synthesize and apply concepts instead of their ability to memorize them. Kucera said she consid-

ered switching to an in-class exam after receiving Miller’s email, but her students voted to keep the current system. She decided to shorten the length of the exam this year to avoid causing students additional stress, she added.

Economics professor Dean Karlan, who has previously used the take-home format, said he was surprised when students raised concerns about cheating last spring. As an undergraduate at the University of Virginia — which has had an academic honor code since 1842 — he took many take-home exams without incident, he added.

“I found it really odd to have huge complaints about the exam being take-home when so much of a grade is determined in a takehome style in papers or projects,” Karlan said. “The students I know

are filled with honor and integrity, so I didn’t really think twice about [cheating] being a problem.”

Still, Karlan said he probably will not assign a take-home exam for his spring course in the future because of negative student response and one reported instance of cheating.

Clark Ross, vice president and dean of faculty at Davidson College — which has a long-established honor code — said all of Davidson’s exams are self-scheduled or take-home. Under the honor code, Davidson trusts its students to maintain standards of academic integrity during examinations, he said, adding that faculty are still concerned that take-home examinations are too time-consuming.

Six out of eight students interviewed said they had never taken a

Dean’s fellows visit residential colleges ALCOHOL FROM PAGE 1 ing in the United States and the alcohol policies of other universities, Peck said. The discussion facilitators do not explicitly address Yale’s alcohol policies in their introduction because the purpose of these dinners are not to inform students of the University’s alcohol policies, she added.

Garrett Fiddler ’11, another YCDO fellow, said members of the Dean’s Office have noticed that students often misunderstand Yale’s changing approach to alcohol — particularly, students worry about a “larger perceived crackdown” than exists in reality.

Administrators are also concerned that students who perceive an increase in alcoholrelated disciplinary action may be deterred from seeking help for incidents related to high-risk drinking, he said. At some dinners, Fiddler added, part of the discussion focused on clarifying Yale’s alcohol policies.

After listening to student input at the dinners that have already occurred, Fiddler said important areas for the University to tackle include helping students understand disciplinary policies and clarifying “what [students] will or won’t actually get in trouble for.” He added that another key concern will be the consistent enforcement of University policies among Yale Security and Yale Police.

During the first week of dinners, attendance was lower than anticipated — roughly

five to 10 students attended each event, Peck said. Because of the low turnout, the dinners have not been successful as a means of mass communication, Fiddler added, but he said the dinners have been highly successful at engaging individual students.

Matthew Breuer ’14, who attended the dinner in Branford College, said he felt the dinner was the “first real time” administrators have engaged the student body about Yale’s approach to alcohol.

“This series of conversations indicates a greater willingness on the University’s part to involve students than [there was] previously,” Breuer said.

Michael Wolner ’14, who will be president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon next semester, attended the Tuesday night dinner for Morse and Stiles and said he thought the conversations were productive because the fellows were willing to be honest about administrators’ approach to Yale’s alcohol culture.

“At times, these [discussions] feel like a sort of lip service before the University just does what it wants to, but I don’t think that’s the case at all with this one,” he said.

The remaining dinners will be held in Berkeley and Trumbull on Wednesday and Davenport, Pierson and Calhoun on Thursday.

Contact CYNTHIA HUA at cynthia.hua@yale.edu .

class with a take-home exam.

Alex Ratner ’14 said he has only taken one take-home exam at Yale, but that he thinks both exam formats include positives and negatives.

“You have so much more time to complete it, so in some ways it’s more laborious,” Ratner said. “But there is also less pressure because you aren’t surrounded by more people and you don’t have only certain amount of time.”

Nikita Tsukanov ’15 said that while he has only taken examinations offered in-class, he would be open to experiencing different formats of assessment.

Final exams will last from Dec. 13 to Dec. 18.

Contact JANE DARBY MENTON at jane.menton@yale.edu .

H A R VA R D C H E A T I N G S C A N D A L In late August, Harvard announced it was investigating 125 students for unauthorized collaboration on their take-home final exam in “Introduction to Congress.”

The final was open-book, open-note and openinternet; however, collaboration was expressly prohibited by the professor. While grading the finals, a teaching fellow noticed unusual similarities between several exams. Harvard’s Administrative Board spent the summer reviewing each of the nearly 300 exams.

Students with suspicious exams were sent before the administrative board individually. Those found guilty of academic dishonesty could be suspended for the next year. Students implicated in this scandal include the co-captains of Harvard’s nationally ranked basketball team.

‘BONES’ FIGHTS GENOCIDE

MARIA ZEPEDA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

ART ACTIVISM TACKLES HUMANITARIAN CRISES A student makes a bone for One Million Bones, an organization that uses art activism to remember the millions of victims and survivors of genocide and humanitarian crises. The exhibit is put on in collaboration with Yale’s Genocide Action Project and features hundreds of hand-made bones and video narratives of genocide survivors. It is on display in Maya’s Room in Silliman College until Nov. 29.

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

NEWS

“The U.S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.” BENJAMIN FRANKLIN FOUNDING FATHER

Hundreds attend happiness panel

BY MATTHEW LLOYD-THOMAS CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Hundreds of students flooded into LC 101 last night to hear a panel of professors discuss happiness.

The talk, hosted by Vita Bella, an on-campus magazine dedicated to happiness and beauty, featured professors Shelley Kagan, Laurie Santos and Michael Frame. Moderated by Vita Bella Editor-in-Chief Shira Telushkin ’14, the talk responded to student questions on topics ranging from relationships to depression. While offering diverse opinions on individual questions, the professors all encouraged students to pursue their passions, help others and avoid fretting about the future.

“Most of the people who have the coolest lives and are the happiest are on completely different paths than they expected,” Santos said, while telling students to not be afraid of trying new things throughout life.

Near the beginning of the talk, the panelists stressed finding balance in the trade-offs students face between socializing and studying, after which they discussed finding happiness at work.

The panelists urged students to avoid careers in consulting, which Kagan said had neither a high degree of autonomy nor genuine meaning — two criteria he said are key to happiness in the

workplace.

“Do you really want to devote your life to making other rich people even richer?” Kagan asked, drawing applause from the audience.

The professors then discussed students’ anxiety about the future, and Santos told students that they should expect everything to work out. But Kagan disagreed, telling students, “Sadly, some of you will screw up.”

Frame, meanwhile, suggested that students “move outward” if they feel depressed and, above all, spend time with cats.

The panelists finished by emphasizing the importance of helping others, which Frame said was “scalable,” and could mean anything from “saying hi to a homeless guy” to spending life teaching students how to solve quadratic equations.

The editors of Vita Bella decided to host the panel as a means of creating more public discourse on issues of happiness, which they said is an aim of their publication.

“We wanted there to be more of a conversation about the things we’re writing about,” former Vita Bella Editor-in-Chief McKay Nield ’13 said.

The large attendance at the talk far exceeded the expectations of organizers Telushkin and Nield. Telushkin said the group had originally anticipated 30 to 50 attendees, but after over 200 students RSVP’d via email,

MARIA ZEPEDA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

From left: Shira Telushkin ’14, professor Shelley Kagan, professor Laurie Santos and professor Michael Frame discussed how to achieve happiness.

Telushkin moved the talk to a larger venue in LC. Thirty minutes before the event, students had already arrived, and by the time the panel started at 7 p.m., the aisles in the lecture hall were packed and students stood in the doorways.

Of six students interviewed, all had largely positive reactions to the panelists.

Though Brandon Li ’14 said he enjoyed the panel, he added that it did not exactly match his expectations.

“I was expecting it to be more

about the meaning of life than specifically happiness,” Brandon Li ’14 said.

James Tan ’14 said the talk could have benefitted from the perspective of someone who had not found their passion in life as the panelists had, adding that

Architect talks creative process

ANNELISA LEINBACH/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Michael Arad reflected on his experience designing the World Trade Center Memorial in a Tuesday Master’s Tea.

BY ASHTON WACKYM CONTRIBUTING REPORTER In a project spanning eight years, Michael Arad designed one of the most important American memorials of the past decade.

Arad, the lead architect of the World Trade Center Memorial, which opened on the 10-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, addressed a crowd of roughly 30 students and faculty at a Saybrook Master’s Tea Tuesday afternoon. The Israeli-American talked about bringing his idea from inception to completion — winning a design competition involving 5,201 participants in 2004 and overcoming challenges with each iteration of design to seeing the memorial’s opening in 2011.

Speaking from his own personal experience, Arad urged the audience of roughly 30 students and faculty to know when to stand up for their ideas and when to compromise.

“Design is not fully formed,” Arad said. “You don’t hand it off to some person and say, ‘Go build it.’ It’s an entire process you go through.”

Despite winning the design competition for the World Trade Center Memorial, Arad said his original design had to undergo numerous substantial revisions before it was finally approved for construction. After Arad’s initial design — which was a multilevel structure with the names of each victim of the terrorist attacks beneath waterfalls — was

rejected, he was forced to modify his plans to ultimately fit the requirements of the memorial jury responsible for the design competition.

Arad said the final product is a hybrid of the ideas he had from the onset and modifications he added based on feedback from the memorial jury.

“Where you once were the only critic of your work, now everyone’s a critic of your work,” Arad said.

Design is not fully formed.

You don’t hand it off to some person and say, “Go build it.”

MICHAEL ARAD Lead architect, World Trade Center Memorial Though Arad spent a significant amount of time revising his initial designs, he said he also struggled for years to decide how to arrange the victims’ names, which would adorn plaques throughout the memorial. He said he did not want to arrange the names alphabetically or by any other arbitrary system, adding that he wanted the names to be “purposefully adjacent.”

Arad eventually gained support from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and families who lost loved ones in the

terrorist attacks were offered the opportunity to request that their lost one’s name be placed next to another’s. Arad said he made sure that all 1,200 requests that were submitted were followed.

He added that he felt it was important to tell each victim’s personal story through the memorial. Arad told the story of a woman whose father was on Flight 11, which crashed into the North Tower, where the woman’s best friend from college worked.

Her father and best friend were placed next to each other on the memorial.

“The more simple things are, the harder you have to work because there is nothing to hide behind,” Arad said.

Four audience members interviewed had all visited the memorial but said that their perception of the project completely changed after hearing Arad describe his creative process.

Jeff Qiu ’16, who went to the memorial several weeks ago, said he was surprised by the meticulous approach Arad took to laying out the victims’ names on the memorial.

“I remember seeing a sign at the memorial talking about the links between the names, but the process they went through was a lot more intricate than I imagined it would be,” Qiu said.

The World Trade Center Memorial spans 16 acres in Manhattan.

Contact ASHTON WACKYM at ashton.wackym@yale.edu .

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there was “not enough diversity.”

Next term, Vita Bella will host a series of events to discuss friendship.

Contact MATTHEW LLOYD-THOMAS at matthew.lloyd-thomas@yale.edu .

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.” ALBERT EINSTEIN THEORETICAL PHYSICIST WHO DEVELOPED THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY

Proposal would transform Armory ARMORY FROM PAGE 1 programs, legal services, English as a Second Language programs or health clinics,” Eidelson said.

“Our goal is to determine priorities based on what residents feel is missing in their communities and to figure out what sort of services are out there that would best make use of the space.”

The Armory committee, which comprises three aldermen in addition to a number of city and community members, heard from four community service providers, who spoke about their organizations’ plans for potential usage of the space and were pressed by committee members to specify how they would cover their costs while expanding services.

Though the committee opted to use the forum largely to gather input and ask the presenters questions, it did move to tentatively grant Artspace, a city arts nonprofit, the right to use the Armory for the organization’s annual arts festival, provided that requisite upkeep is completed in time. Ward 28 Alderwoman and committee chairwoman Claudette Robinson-Thorpe lauded the festival as an opportunity to bring potential donors to the Armory.

In addition to providing for the expansion of current community service providers, the proposed Armory renovation would also be home to a community center that, according to RobinsonThorpe, will serve as a “one-stop shop for needy New Haven residents.”

“Our vision is for this to be a center where people can come to see a doctor or get legal advice,” Robinson-Thorpe said after the forum. “That being said, the primary focus will be on young people. Right now, youth in this city have no place to call their own.

This will be a space where kids can turn when they have nowhere else to go. There will be comput-

ers, basketball hoops and tutoring services.”

The Armory committee’s plans all hinge on the city’s acquisition of funding grants to make the project financially sustainable, said New Haven Chief Administrative Officer and committee member Robert Smuts ’01.

Smuts said the city is currently in negotiations with the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development over three grants, which, combined with a State Historic Preservation Office grant, total $2.8 million. Until the grants are finalized, Smuts emphasized, the city will not even formally accept that it owns the Armory.

“There’s a state statute that says that if the state stops using the Armory for a period of two years, it reverts back to the city for ownership,” said Smuts.

He explained that the state moved out of the armory in 2010 when the governor’s foot guards left, leading to a vacancy period that has resulted in negotiations over the conditions of the Armory’s renovation. A series of damages, including a caved-in roof and an asbestos outbreak, have complicated negotiations, as Smuts said the city seeks to avoid paying for costly repairs.

Beyond the question of financial feasibility, Citywide Youth Coalition Executive Director Rachel Heerema told the News she is concerned about the possible trade-off between the board’s plans and existing programs.

“It’s a mixed bag,” Heerema said. “A youth center is already in existence in New Haven, so will new money for the Armory take away funds from the after-school programs, the summer camps, the tutoring programs and the family services? These programs are competing directly for dollars.”

Though cost is a concern, a combination of philanthropic, city and state money provide a breadth of avenues for funding,

said New Haven Chief of Staff and interim city spokesman Sean Matteson.

Matteson also said that the massive size of the Armory, which spans an entire city block, will allow it to serve multiple purposes, potentially as a warehouse or as office space.

Before the committee adjourned Tuesday evening, its members moved to hold additional communitywide hearings, which will occur in midJanuary and allow city residents with a stake in the Armory’s use to share their opinions. Robinson, who described the prospect of new uses for the Armory as the fulfillment of “a huge dream” of hers, said after the meeting that community input will allow the committee to settle on criteria for choosing services for the Armory.

Capria Marks, a junior at Common Ground High School who attended the forum, said she hopes the Armory will be put to use in uniting New Haven residents.

“What the Armory can do is provide a space where people from different neighborhoods throughout New Haven can get to know each other and unite,” Marks told the News after the committee meeting. “It can teach people that this is not ‘my side of town’ or ‘your side of town.’ Maybe there won’t be such a divided feeling in New Haven anymore. This could become a vibrant center in our community and work to take people off the streets and turn them into role models the next generation of kids.”

The Armory planning committee’s second forum for service providers for the youth and elderly will occur on Dec. 4 at 6 p.m.

Contact ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER at isaac.stanley-becker@yale.edu .

ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The Board of Aldermen is planning to refurbish the Goffe Street Armory, which has been without use since 2010.

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

BULLETIN BOARD

TODAY’S FORECAST

TOMORROW

Mostly sunny, with a high near 42. North wind 7 to 9 mph.

FRIDAY

High of 43, low of 29.

High of 41, low of 28.

WATSON BY JIM HORWITZ

ON CAMPUS 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 5:00 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 venture capital-backed company Daily Secret, 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.

THAT MONKEY TUNE BY MICHAEL KANDALAFT

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30 3:30 PM “Singapore Today — Opposition Perspectives” Panelists include Chee Soon Juan, secretary-general of the Singapore Democratic Party and Kenneth Jeyaretnam, secretarygeneral of the Reform Party of Singapore. Sponsored by the Yale International Relations Association and the Council on Southeast Asia Studies at Yale. Open to the general public. SSS (1 Prospect St.), Room 114.

4:00 PM “Documenting the Voices of Vanishing Worlds” Mark Turin will talk about the challenges faced by small-scale societies whose oral speech forms are increasingly at risk of disappearing without record. Free and open to the general public.

Kline Biology Tower (219 Prospect St.), Study Room South.

SCIENCE HILL BY SPENCER KATZ

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Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

CLASSIFIEDS

CROSSWORD Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Lewis ACROSS 1 Blue toon 6 Stats at Anaheim’s “Big A” 10 Thyme rackmate 14 Garbage can insert 15 Vane point 16 Supermodel Heidi who inspired a 2009 Barbie doll 17 Wonderland wanderer 18 Arctic obstacle 19 Words before a conclusion 20 *Darth Vader, e.g.

23 Educ. support org.

24 Place to see long lines, briefly 25 Copier tray abbr.

28 *City near Sacramento 33 Luciano’s love 35 Common bill 36 Never, in Munich 37 Workplace in many crime shows 38 *Weekly newspaper with three Pulitzers 42 It’s ground in a Southern side dish 43 Desperate letters 44 __ Aviv 45 Calvin of couture 46 *Bottom-feeding fish 49 Weird 50 Developer of the one-named “Jeopardy!” contestant Watson 52 “You don’t say!”

53 Horror video game/film franchise, and a literal feature of the answers to the starred clues 59 Composer Bartók 62 Privy to 63 Pizzeria order 64 Folk singer associated with Dylan 65 As is proper 66 Chromosome components 67 Student’s surprise 68 This, in Havana 69 Bouquets

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11/28/12

By Doug Peterson

DOWN 1 Sound of an angry exit 2 Actor O’Shea 3 Deg. issuer 4 Rachael Ray offering 5 Motel come-on 6 Mtge. paymentlowering option 7 Musket projectile 8 Lover of Tristan 9 Mirror obscurer 10 Shallot covering 11 TV E.T. 12 Mercury Seven astronaut Grissom 13 Mopey music genre 21 For naught 22 Joint tsar with Peter I 25 Nabokov nymphet 26 Actress Gold of “Growing Pains” 27 Rejects authority 28 “Orange, Red, Yellow” painter Mark 29 In phone limbo 30 Came off as 31 Hip-hop’s __ Kim 32 Car shopper’s option

Tuesday’s Puzzle Solved

(c)2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

34 1972 host to Nixon 37 Decorator’s study 39 Final article of the Constitution 40 Navel variety 41 URL ending for many agencies 46 It’s usually barely passing 47 “Time to split!”

48 Aroused the patrolman’s suspicion

SUDOKU DOABLE

11/28/12

51 Hit back?

53 Make fun of 54 Blockhead 55 Gaelic music star 56 Ristorante beverage 57 Éclair finisher 58 Reduced by 59 Jul. 4th party, often 60 __ Claire 61 Ring of blooms

2 6 7 3 9 1 8 4 3 2 5 6 1 5 4 8 8 7 6 4 2 3 7 3 9 2 7 5

5

7 8 1

7 9 5

9 6 7 1

6 1 2 1 4 8

PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

ARTS & CULTURE

“Continue to give yourself to others because that’s the ultimate satisfaction in life — to love, accept, honor and help others.”

FROM SARAH RUHL’S PLAY “EURYDICE”

Music department embraces global music

BY SARAH SWONG STAFF REPORTER With a growing focus on global music, Yale’s Department of Music is continuing its decades-long effort to diversify its curriculum.

Since its founding, the department has boasted a strong Western music curriculum, but compared to its peer institutions, Yale’s program in ethnomusicology — the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in global contexts — has lagged behind, Director of Undergraduate Studies Patrick McCreless said. But this fall, the department began to accept its first graduate students specializing in ethnomusicology, and over the past 14 years has hired ethnomusicologists, increased its offerings in world music and instituted world music requirements.

“The institution of a graduate track represents the end point in a several-yearslong period of expanding the ethnomusicological component of the department,” said Michael Veal, the first ethnomusicology professor who was hired in 1998 and specializes in African, African-American and Caribbean music.

Sarah Weiss, the department’s other ethnomusicology professor who was hired in 2005 and specializes in Southeast Asian and East Asian music, said that although the field has existed formally in United States academia since the 1930s and originated in 19th-century Europe, Yale has lagged behind schools such as Wesleyan University, Harvard University, Columbia University and UCLA since the 1950s, McCreless said.

McCreless explained that Yale’s traditional focus on the Western classical tradition may have been a stumbling block.

“The problem is that you have to have the library to support [ethnomusicology] — infrastructure that will support something other than the Western classical tradition,” McCreless said. “This school has always been a canonical school.”

Before the department hired Veal and Weiss, other faculty members had occasionally taught ethnomusicology on an ad hoc basis, McCreless said. Now, Veal and Weiss regularly offer classes such as “Music of SubSaharan Africa” and “Javanese Gamelan.”

The Indonesian music class allows students to participate in “Gamelan Suprabanggo,” an on-campus Javanese Gamelan ensemble headed by Weiss that plays traditional Indonesian music with instruments including metallophones, gongs, stringed instruments, flutes and drums in addition to vocals.

The Music Department requires students to take one course in world music, McCreless said. “Topics in World Music,” while an introductory course, has a specific focus each year on one region, based on which professor is teaching it. Last semester, Veal taught the class with a focus on Western African and South African music.

Although the department’s ethnomusicology offerings are limited to the regions Veal, Weiss, and occasional visiting professors specialize in, any world music course teaches students a different methodology than what they would gain from a study of only Western classical music. Ethnomusicologists often “talk to real people about real music,” Weiss said, adding an anthropological element to the study of music in addition to a wider range of cultures.

“Music is such an important part of so many people’s lives, so [world music] is a potent vehicle for fostering global awareness,” Veal said.

World music and ethnomusicology also enhances students’ focus on classical music, Weiss said, explaining that without world music, classical music students would not have the perspective needed to understand their own musical interests deeply.

Many of the students in “Javanese Gamelan Suprabanggo” are interested in the fusion between Western and non-Western traditions, Weiss added. The two ethnomusicology students admitted to the graduate program this year are pursuing ethnomusicology as a lens for viewing Western art traditions and theories, she said. Students attracted to Yale’s Music Department have traditionally been interested only in Western classical music and no undergraduates currently focus on world music or ethnomusicology, McCreless said.

But three music majors interviewed said they enjoyed the major’s global requirement.

Two said world music both broadened their cultural perspective and taught them anthropological and sociological methods they would not have learned from other music courses.

Although initially skeptical, Rachel Glodo ’13 said the course was one of her favorites at Yale. The course used African history to explain musical developments and offered hands-on experience with African bells and drums, she said. It even taught her new ways of transcribing music, such as weaving a musical piece into a quilt, she added.

Her final paper on the African origins of the Appalachian banjo tradition in the U.S. explored the “transmission of musical ideas

Unconventional heartbreak

BY PATRICE BOWMAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Terence Nance is a new director whose first feature-length film — “An Oversimplification of Her Beauty” — recently won the “Best Film Not Playing At A Theater Near You” award at the 22nd annual Gotham Independent Film Awards. On Wednesday night, Yale community members will be able to experience Nance’s factual yet experimental tale of unrequited love for a young woman. On Saturday, the News interviewed Nance about the process of creating his latest work. consider yourself an artist, not a QYou filmmaker. Do you think there’s a division between art and film?

A

I think the social and economic infrastructures of the film industry and the contemporary art worlds are almost completely separate. But I think the artists themselves are kind of free to be in both. In the filmmaking culture … there are generally a certain set of expectations. Specifically, that [the film is] going to be a narrative experience.

A

I’m articulating an experience that has happened to a lot of people. But I’m also trying to keep it authentic to my specific experience. But I wanted people to implicate their own experiences in the film.

Q

Did you feel any danger in revealing yourself to audiences through this personal film?

A

I never thought about it, honestly.

The energy of the personal story was encapsulated in the one night that I wrote it. After that, I stopped treating it as a part of my life and started treating it as the movie that I was making.

You wrote the script in one QWow. night?

A

Yeah. I wrote the voice-over in one night. Then I storyboarded it the next day.

Q

I noticed that many of the people both behind and in front of the camera are black. Were there any obstacles in staging an all-black production?

were the obstacles in making a Being black in America, generally, is QWhat film that isn’t driven by a traditional A hard. … But I was lucky to have been narrative?

A

When you’re making something conventional, you have conventions to lean on. But I’ve never worked with convention. I only know what it’s like to do what I’m thinking. The challenges that I had were more around the technical ramifications of making a feature film for the first time. The first time that you do it, you’re flying blind.

did you choose to tell such a QWhy personal story though experimental means?

A

For me, it wasn’t a choice. There was only one film for me to make: the one in my head. I wasn’t making the film in an experimental context; I was just pushing the film towards this predetermined result. So where it seems anti-convention or third-rail compared to what exists, I wasn’t even considering what exists.

story seems like a universal love QYour story — or a not-love story.

raised in a community of artists who value their culture. And I was making the movie on my own for a long time, so there [weren’t] any voices, anyone telling me “yes” or “no.” But I see those problems existing as I enter a kind of commercial space. I don’t mean more commercial work. But I do mean work that deals with other people’s money. I want to do more work that involves more money than what’s in my bank account, which is honestly none. I do realize that in the future, some people’s perspectives will conflict with mine inherently. I’ll have to learn to navigate those conflicts to get done what I have to get done.

the film affected you or your relaQHas tionships?

A

I don’t think that it’s had an effect on me and my relationships. The movie talks about a time of my life that’s so far gone. It’s only a little bit of my life; that shows you just how full of a life it is. Each life is just full of stories.

Contact PATRICE BOWMAN at patrice.bowman@yale.edu .

In ‘Elizabeth,’ a life in letters

BY ANYA GRENIER STAFF REPORTER

YALE UNIVERSITY JAVANESE GAMELAN ENSEMBLE

Students in the “Javanese Gamelan” class participate in the extracurricular “Javanese Gamelan Suprabanggo,” a traditional Indonesian music ensemble. on an individual level,” she said.

“These weren’t high ideas among musicologists or theorists,” Glodo said.

Alex Vourtsanis ’14 said most music majors have grown up with “Western culture in Western households,” so it makes sense that world music classes take a broader cultural and historical approach to make up for students’ lack of knowledge of these cultures.

The department’s world music curricu-

lum has also helped integrate music majors and students of other disciplines, McCreless said. Javanese Gamelan ensembles, for example, has been popular on college campuses since the 1960s because well-trained musicians and non-musicians alike can participate, he said. Veal and Weiss said their classes have students from African Studies, African American Studies and Southeast Asian Studies.

The department will focus on expanding on its current model in the near future — generating more interest in ethnomusicology, hosting lectures on world music and bringing in temporary specialists to teach courses — though it is unlikely to hire more ethnomusicologists in the near future due to budget constraints and the department’s size, McCreless said.

“There is always room for more ethno-

musicology — students should lobby for it,” Weiss said. “I think the department is committed to representing world music.”

The Music Department currently has 36 declared majors.

Contact SARAH SWONG at sarah.swong@yale.edu .

Theater panel examines success

BY YANAN WANG STAFF REPORTER The Yale Dramatic Association kicked off this year’s DRAMATalk series Tuesday night with a panel of three prominent figures in the New York musical theater community.

About 25 undergraduate students gathered in the Theater Studies ballroom for the event, which featured Tony Award-winning director Michael Mayer, composer and lyricist Peter Lerman and Tony Award-nominated producer Amanda Lipitz, all three of whom are currently collaborating on a new musical called “The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company.” Organized by Dramat associate board members Eliana Kwartler ’16 and Henry Tisch ’16, the panel discussion shed light on the process of making a musical while reflecting on the challenges and rewards of working in the theater industry.

“In order to succeed in this business, you have to be hungry for victory,” Lipitz said.

The conversation centered on the trio’s upcoming musical production, which is based on a Brooklyn store of the same name. Lipitz said the first time she entered the store, “it sang to [her],” and she was immediately inspired to create a musical. After she and Mayer crafted a basic story line starring a young clerk working at the store who “desperately” wants to be a superhero, they hired Lerman as the songwriter.

Members of the audience were given a preview of Lerman’s work when he played an audio recording of “The Science of Flight,” one of the first songs he composed for the musical. However, the speakers warned the attendees that what they heard would likely be modified before the final production.

“Things change,” Mayer said. “Musicals are big puzzles — you find the pieces that work and then you work around them.”

He added that the outline for “The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company,” which has been three years in the making, was “hammered out” in one afternoon — a testament to the fluidity of a musical in its early stages.

Mayer’s visit to the University is timely, since Yale undergraduates performed the musical for which he received his Tony Award — “Spring Awakening” — at the Off-Broadway Performance Space this October.

When the floor was opened to questions, one student asked the speakers

about whether they thought a liberal arts education, as opposed to a conservatory program, was adequate preparation for the rigors of a theater career.

Lipitz and Mayer were both trained as actors at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, while Lerman studied as an undergraduate at Columbia University.

Lerman credited his liberal arts degree with teaching him how to collaborate with other people, a skill he said is crucial for theater.

“You’ll graduate with such a wealth of knowledge,” Mayer said, advising students to take advantage of the many extracurricular activities offered by the University.

The panel emphasized the impor-

tance of flexibility, and Mayer and Lipitz both said they began their careers as aspiring actors before realizing that performance was not the only channel for their creative energies — now, all three focus on theater roles outside of acting. Lipitz added that it is necessary to be versatile in order to work on Broadway.

“I just came back from opening and closing a show within a day,” Lipitiz said. “It was a birth and a death in 24 hours, and it really comes down to one night and one guy deciding whether or not a show is good.”

Mayer compared directing to performing a medical operation, calling musicals “organisms hell-bent on selfdestruction.”

JENNIFER CHEUNG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Jefferson Mays, top, plays Robert Lowell, and Mary Beth Fisher plays Elizabeth Bishop in the show’s world premiere.

In “Dear Elizabeth,” a world premiere opening at the Yale Repertory Theatre this Friday, renowned playwright Sarah Ruhl distills over 800 pages of letters between poets Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop into a story for the stage.

The letters portray the two writers’ evolving friendship and love and paint a unique picture of their relationship, which did not fit into the model of “usual romantic love,” Ruhl said. She added that the letters explore everything from the struggles of solitude and alcoholism to the challenges of writing.

Lowell, for instance, describes in one letter how he spent two weeks working on the arrangement of two words.

“We might never again see this kind of representation of lives in letters in this digital age,” Ruhl said.

Jefferson Mays ’87, who plays Robert Lowell, explained that letters lend themselves to the form of a play since, as a form of communication, they naturally fall between thought and speech. The stage directions call for the lines to be “spoken as living thought,” he added.

The play’s basis in letters, however, means that it is very “quiet” and almost “anti-theatrical,” Ruhl said. While every spoken line in the play is drawn directly from the text of the letters, Ruhl had to invent the physical, theatrical motions and the dramatic structure necessary to transform the raw material of the letters. She explained that she created scenes that portray events not necessarily spelled out clearly in the letters, such as a meeting between the two poets on a beach in Maine. In this way, the show departs from the realism of the two poets sitting and writing to each other, instead making use of more imaginative visual elements.

While Bishop and Lowell’s poetry and letters already evoke water themes, water actually floods onto the stage in one of Ruhl’s constructed scenes. Such moments allow the play to explore the emotional subtext of the letters, Mays said.

“It’s a wildly theatrical expression of what’s bubbling beneath the surface of the letters,” Mays said.

Mary Beth Fisher, who plays Elizabeth Bishop, said that interpreting Ruhl’s stage directions has been a challenging experience for the show’s two actors. She added that the stage directions are often “poetic gestures in themselves.” “‘A planet appears, she gets on it’ is a sample stage direction, or something like, ‘They are waist-deep in water,’ and you go, ‘Okay how you do that on stage?’” Fisher said.

Fisher said the play does not follow the Aristotelian structure of having a clear beginning, climax and conclusion, and is not “plot-driven” in a traditional sense. Instead, the show gives the audience a more reflective, emotional experience as it watches Lowell and Bishop’s friendship unfold and deepen onstage.

This loose structure reflects how the letters themselves portray “the ordinary fate of life,” Ruhl said, adding that the play expresses the collision between the ideal form people project onto their lives and the “arbitrary, accidental way things really happen.”

The letters span 30 years in the poets’ lives, and the actors must portray the characters at many small moments over the course of their long relationship, Mays said.

He added that approaching his character in such a “fragmentary way” is unusual, and that the play leaves the audience to fill in some of the resulting gaps.

Since the Rep’s production of “Dear Elizabeth” is a world premiere, the play’s text is not yet set in stone. Director Les Waters, who has collaborated with Ruhl often in the past, said the play underwent many textual changes during the rehearsal process. The group reordered and cut some material, and Ruhl constructed new scenes on-site. Ruhl added that she expects to learn from the show’s run at the Rep and that it will continue to evolve through its first few runs.

After working on “Dear Elizabeth” for over 18 months, Waters said he is excited to see how the audience will react to the world the play creates.

Sarah Ruhl’s play “Eurydice” premiered at the Rep in 2006.

Contact ANYA GRENIER at anna.grenier@yale.edu .

Urban planning democratized

“I’m a surgeon, this thing is on the operating table and I just want to keep the little f----r alive,” he remarked.

One student at the talk, Jessica Hernandez ’16, said she thought the tone of the discussion reflected the camaraderie she has felt as a member of the theater community at Yale.

“There’s really the sense that even though it’s a tough process, everyone does care for everyone else,” Hernandez said. “The panel demonstrated that at the end of the day, it’s about working together to tell a story.”

Mayer won the Tony Award in 2007 for directing “Spring Awakening.”

Contact YANAN WANG at yanan.wang@yale.edu .

SARI LEVY/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Urban planner James Rojas leads students in an interactive urban design workshop.

BY CLINTON WANG STAFF REPORTER

MARIA ZEPEDA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Peter Lerman, Michael Mayer and Amanda Lipitz discussed their career paths in the theater industry at a DRAMATalk Tuesday night.

Though designing cities requires years of training and experience, the future of urban planning may involve local residents armed with little more than toy blocks and Popsicle sticks.

Twelve students gathered in William Harkness Hall Tuesday night for a workshop led by urban planner James Rojas. The event is part of a larger initiative developed by Rojas called PLACE IT!, which has hosted over 250 similar workshops across the world since it began in 2008.

Rojas said he hopes that workshops like these will help transform the urban planning process from remaining highly “technical or bureaucratic” to engaging and serving the public.

“There’s a communication breakdown between the urban planners and the public,” Rojas said.

“The tools that they use to plan a city don’t connect with the public’s experience of the city.”

Rojas said an interactive approach to urban planning has several advantages over the expert-driven modernist approach that currently dominates the field: generating fresh ideas that urban planners may not consider, focusing on the needs and desires of the future consumers

of the space and utilizing the energy and creativity of the public to propel the planning process.

Though the public may generate impractical ideas, Rojas argued that planners need to receive as much feedback as possible from residents before they begin the urban design process so that they can better understand what citizens value in their city.

“You have to study all the options. Even if someone wants to put camels on the street, you want that idea to be heard and considered too,” Rojas said.

To demonstrate this concept, Rojas asked each student at the workshop to build a section of their ideal city with a variety of trinkets including foam blocks and chess pieces. Though the plans included a massive hovercraft docking station and an “industrial dystopia,” others reflected a variety of realistic approaches to urban design. While some focused on the ease of living in the city by making public transportation convenient or designing walkable urban centers, others prioritized the city’s aesthetic experience, creating vast parks or weaving walkways between buildings.

After students described their individual concepts, they collaborated in two groups to discuss and model improvements to the area

surrounding Yale-New Haven Hospital. In this segment of the workshop, students were asked to reconcile the area’s current layout with their contrasting personal visions for how cities should be designed.

The tools that they use to plan a city don’t connect with the public’s experience of the city.

JAMES ROJAS Creator, PLACE IT! Rojas sees these workshops as an educational tool for empowering the public to proactively seek community-driven changes in their urban environment. Though most of the student attendees at his Yale workshop had some course experience with urban planning, Rojas said that many of his most successful workshops have drawn citizens with no previous urban planning experience. Sometimes, PLACE IT! workshops have sparked concrete changes in the community, he said.

In Tijuana, Mexico, for instance, an inspired participant later successfully called upon the city to trans-

form a dry riverbed into a park.

While the art community has supported this interactive approach to urban planning, most city governments are resistant to such “avant-garde” thinking, Rojas said.

Many local governments have prioritized general city development over individual building plans, compromising the public’s convenience and interest. He also cited an anecdote in which an urban planning committee already specified billboards and signage in its plans but failed to consider where schools might be located.

Architecture and political science professor Elihu Rubin ’99, who helped bring the workshop to Yale, said this new urban planning paradigm represents a growing trend, aided by workshops like Rojas’s.

Architecture major Justine Yan ’14 called the workshop a simple and valuable tool for promoting interactive urban planning.

“Some might say this approach is less efficient, but I think it’s really important to engage the public,” Yan added.

Rojas’s larger workshops can span three days, involving up to 200 participants and costing $2000 to run.

Contact CLINTON WANG at clinton.wang@yale.edu .

PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

ARTS & CULTURE

“Continue to give yourself to others because that’s the ultimate satisfaction in life — to love, accept, honor and help others.”

FROM SARAH RUHL’S PLAY “EURYDICE”

Music department embraces global music

BY SARAH SWONG STAFF REPORTER With a growing focus on global music, Yale’s Department of Music is continuing its decades-long effort to diversify its curriculum.

Since its founding, the department has boasted a strong Western music curriculum, but compared to its peer institutions, Yale’s program in ethnomusicology — the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in global contexts — has lagged behind, Director of Undergraduate Studies Patrick McCreless said. But this fall, the department began to accept its first graduate students specializing in ethnomusicology, and over the past 14 years has hired ethnomusicologists, increased its offerings in world music and instituted world music requirements.

“The institution of a graduate track represents the end point in a several-yearslong period of expanding the ethnomusicological component of the department,” said Michael Veal, the first ethnomusicology professor who was hired in 1998 and specializes in African, African-American and Caribbean music.

Sarah Weiss, the department’s other ethnomusicology professor who was hired in 2005 and specializes in Southeast Asian and East Asian music, said that although the field has existed formally in United States academia since the 1930s and originated in 19th-century Europe, Yale has lagged behind schools such as Wesleyan University, Harvard University, Columbia University and UCLA since the 1950s, McCreless said.

McCreless explained that Yale’s traditional focus on the Western classical tradition may have been a stumbling block.

“The problem is that you have to have the library to support [ethnomusicology] — infrastructure that will support something other than the Western classical tradition,” McCreless said. “This school has always been a canonical school.”

Before the department hired Veal and Weiss, other faculty members had occasionally taught ethnomusicology on an ad hoc basis, McCreless said. Now, Veal and Weiss regularly offer classes such as “Music of SubSaharan Africa” and “Javanese Gamelan.”

The Indonesian music class allows students to participate in “Gamelan Suprabanggo,” an on-campus Javanese Gamelan ensemble headed by Weiss that plays traditional Indonesian music with instruments including metallophones, gongs, stringed instruments, flutes and drums in addition to vocals.

The Music Department requires students to take one course in world music, McCreless said. “Topics in World Music,” while an introductory course, has a specific focus each year on one region, based on which professor is teaching it. Last semester, Veal taught the class with a focus on Western African and South African music.

Although the department’s ethnomusicology offerings are limited to the regions Veal, Weiss, and occasional visiting professors specialize in, any world music course teaches students a different methodology than what they would gain from a study of only Western classical music. Ethnomusicologists often “talk to real people about real music,” Weiss said, adding an anthropological element to the study of music in addition to a wider range of cultures.

“Music is such an important part of so many people’s lives, so [world music] is a potent vehicle for fostering global awareness,” Veal said.

World music and ethnomusicology also enhances students’ focus on classical music, Weiss said, explaining that without world music, classical music students would not have the perspective needed to understand their own musical interests deeply.

Many of the students in “Javanese Gamelan Suprabanggo” are interested in the fusion between Western and non-Western traditions, Weiss added. The two ethnomusicology students admitted to the graduate program this year are pursuing ethnomusicology as a lens for viewing Western art traditions and theories, she said. Students attracted to Yale’s Music Department have traditionally been interested only in Western classical music and no undergraduates currently focus on world music or ethnomusicology, McCreless said.

But three music majors interviewed said they enjoyed the major’s global requirement.

Two said world music both broadened their cultural perspective and taught them anthropological and sociological methods they would not have learned from other music courses.

Although initially skeptical, Rachel Glodo ’13 said the course was one of her favorites at Yale. The course used African history to explain musical developments and offered hands-on experience with African bells and drums, she said. It even taught her new ways of transcribing music, such as weaving a musical piece into a quilt, she added.

Her final paper on the African origins of the Appalachian banjo tradition in the U.S. explored the “transmission of musical ideas

Unconventional heartbreak

BY PATRICE BOWMAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Terence Nance is a new director whose first feature-length film — “An Oversimplification of Her Beauty” — recently won the “Best Film Not Playing At A Theater Near You” award at the 22nd annual Gotham Independent Film Awards. On Wednesday night, Yale community members will be able to experience Nance’s factual yet experimental tale of unrequited love for a young woman. On Saturday, the News interviewed Nance about the process of creating his latest work. consider yourself an artist, not a QYou filmmaker. Do you think there’s a division between art and film?

A

I think the social and economic infrastructures of the film industry and the contemporary art worlds are almost completely separate. But I think the artists themselves are kind of free to be in both. In the filmmaking culture … there are generally a certain set of expectations. Specifically, that [the film is] going to be a narrative experience.

A

I’m articulating an experience that has happened to a lot of people. But I’m also trying to keep it authentic to my specific experience. But I wanted people to implicate their own experiences in the film.

Q

Did you feel any danger in revealing yourself to audiences through this personal film?

A

I never thought about it, honestly.

The energy of the personal story was encapsulated in the one night that I wrote it. After that, I stopped treating it as a part of my life and started treating it as the movie that I was making.

You wrote the script in one QWow. night?

A

Yeah. I wrote the voice-over in one night. Then I storyboarded it the next day.

Q

I noticed that many of the people both behind and in front of the camera are black. Were there any obstacles in staging an all-black production?

were the obstacles in making a Being black in America, generally, is QWhat film that isn’t driven by a traditional A hard. … But I was lucky to have been narrative?

A

When you’re making something conventional, you have conventions to lean on. But I’ve never worked with convention. I only know what it’s like to do what I’m thinking. The challenges that I had were more around the technical ramifications of making a feature film for the first time. The first time that you do it, you’re flying blind.

did you choose to tell such a QWhy personal story though experimental means?

A

For me, it wasn’t a choice. There was only one film for me to make: the one in my head. I wasn’t making the film in an experimental context; I was just pushing the film towards this predetermined result. So where it seems anti-convention or third-rail compared to what exists, I wasn’t even considering what exists.

story seems like a universal love QYour story — or a not-love story.

raised in a community of artists who value their culture. And I was making the movie on my own for a long time, so there [weren’t] any voices, anyone telling me “yes” or “no.” But I see those problems existing as I enter a kind of commercial space. I don’t mean more commercial work. But I do mean work that deals with other people’s money. I want to do more work that involves more money than what’s in my bank account, which is honestly none. I do realize that in the future, some people’s perspectives will conflict with mine inherently. I’ll have to learn to navigate those conflicts to get done what I have to get done.

the film affected you or your relaQHas tionships?

A

I don’t think that it’s had an effect on me and my relationships. The movie talks about a time of my life that’s so far gone. It’s only a little bit of my life; that shows you just how full of a life it is. Each life is just full of stories.

Contact PATRICE BOWMAN at patrice.bowman@yale.edu .

In ‘Elizabeth,’ a life in letters

BY ANYA GRENIER STAFF REPORTER

YALE UNIVERSITY JAVANESE GAMELAN ENSEMBLE

Students in the “Javanese Gamelan” class participate in the extracurricular “Javanese Gamelan Suprabanggo,” a traditional Indonesian music ensemble. on an individual level,” she said.

“These weren’t high ideas among musicologists or theorists,” Glodo said.

Alex Vourtsanis ’14 said most music majors have grown up with “Western culture in Western households,” so it makes sense that world music classes take a broader cultural and historical approach to make up for students’ lack of knowledge of these cultures.

The department’s world music curricu-

lum has also helped integrate music majors and students of other disciplines, McCreless said. Javanese Gamelan ensembles, for example, has been popular on college campuses since the 1960s because well-trained musicians and non-musicians alike can participate, he said. Veal and Weiss said their classes have students from African Studies, African American Studies and Southeast Asian Studies.

The department will focus on expanding on its current model in the near future — generating more interest in ethnomusicology, hosting lectures on world music and bringing in temporary specialists to teach courses — though it is unlikely to hire more ethnomusicologists in the near future due to budget constraints and the department’s size, McCreless said.

“There is always room for more ethno-

musicology — students should lobby for it,” Weiss said. “I think the department is committed to representing world music.”

The Music Department currently has 36 declared majors.

Contact SARAH SWONG at sarah.swong@yale.edu .

Theater panel examines success

BY YANAN WANG STAFF REPORTER The Yale Dramatic Association kicked off this year’s DRAMATalk series Tuesday night with a panel of three prominent figures in the New York musical theater community.

About 25 undergraduate students gathered in the Theater Studies ballroom for the event, which featured Tony Award-winning director Michael Mayer, composer and lyricist Peter Lerman and Tony Award-nominated producer Amanda Lipitz, all three of whom are currently collaborating on a new musical called “The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company.” Organized by Dramat associate board members Eliana Kwartler ’16 and Henry Tisch ’16, the panel discussion shed light on the process of making a musical while reflecting on the challenges and rewards of working in the theater industry.

“In order to succeed in this business, you have to be hungry for victory,” Lipitz said.

The conversation centered on the trio’s upcoming musical production, which is based on a Brooklyn store of the same name. Lipitz said the first time she entered the store, “it sang to [her],” and she was immediately inspired to create a musical. After she and Mayer crafted a basic story line starring a young clerk working at the store who “desperately” wants to be a superhero, they hired Lerman as the songwriter.

Members of the audience were given a preview of Lerman’s work when he played an audio recording of “The Science of Flight,” one of the first songs he composed for the musical. However, the speakers warned the attendees that what they heard would likely be modified before the final production.

“Things change,” Mayer said. “Musicals are big puzzles — you find the pieces that work and then you work around them.”

He added that the outline for “The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company,” which has been three years in the making, was “hammered out” in one afternoon — a testament to the fluidity of a musical in its early stages.

Mayer’s visit to the University is timely, since Yale undergraduates performed the musical for which he received his Tony Award — “Spring Awakening” — at the Off-Broadway Performance Space this October.

When the floor was opened to questions, one student asked the speakers

about whether they thought a liberal arts education, as opposed to a conservatory program, was adequate preparation for the rigors of a theater career.

Lipitz and Mayer were both trained as actors at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, while Lerman studied as an undergraduate at Columbia University.

Lerman credited his liberal arts degree with teaching him how to collaborate with other people, a skill he said is crucial for theater.

“You’ll graduate with such a wealth of knowledge,” Mayer said, advising students to take advantage of the many extracurricular activities offered by the University.

The panel emphasized the impor-

tance of flexibility, and Mayer and Lipitz both said they began their careers as aspiring actors before realizing that performance was not the only channel for their creative energies — now, all three focus on theater roles outside of acting. Lipitz added that it is necessary to be versatile in order to work on Broadway.

“I just came back from opening and closing a show within a day,” Lipitiz said. “It was a birth and a death in 24 hours, and it really comes down to one night and one guy deciding whether or not a show is good.”

Mayer compared directing to performing a medical operation, calling musicals “organisms hell-bent on selfdestruction.”

JENNIFER CHEUNG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Jefferson Mays, top, plays Robert Lowell, and Mary Beth Fisher plays Elizabeth Bishop in the show’s world premiere.

In “Dear Elizabeth,” a world premiere opening at the Yale Repertory Theatre this Friday, renowned playwright Sarah Ruhl distills over 800 pages of letters between poets Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop into a story for the stage.

The letters portray the two writers’ evolving friendship and love and paint a unique picture of their relationship, which did not fit into the model of “usual romantic love,” Ruhl said. She added that the letters explore everything from the struggles of solitude and alcoholism to the challenges of writing.

Lowell, for instance, describes in one letter how he spent two weeks working on the arrangement of two words.

“We might never again see this kind of representation of lives in letters in this digital age,” Ruhl said.

Jefferson Mays ’87, who plays Robert Lowell, explained that letters lend themselves to the form of a play since, as a form of communication, they naturally fall between thought and speech. The stage directions call for the lines to be “spoken as living thought,” he added.

The play’s basis in letters, however, means that it is very “quiet” and almost “anti-theatrical,” Ruhl said. While every spoken line in the play is drawn directly from the text of the letters, Ruhl had to invent the physical, theatrical motions and the dramatic structure necessary to transform the raw material of the letters. She explained that she created scenes that portray events not necessarily spelled out clearly in the letters, such as a meeting between the two poets on a beach in Maine. In this way, the show departs from the realism of the two poets sitting and writing to each other, instead making use of more imaginative visual elements.

While Bishop and Lowell’s poetry and letters already evoke water themes, water actually floods onto the stage in one of Ruhl’s constructed scenes. Such moments allow the play to explore the emotional subtext of the letters, Mays said.

“It’s a wildly theatrical expression of what’s bubbling beneath the surface of the letters,” Mays said.

Mary Beth Fisher, who plays Elizabeth Bishop, said that interpreting Ruhl’s stage directions has been a challenging experience for the show’s two actors. She added that the stage directions are often “poetic gestures in themselves.” “‘A planet appears, she gets on it’ is a sample stage direction, or something like, ‘They are waist-deep in water,’ and you go, ‘Okay how you do that on stage?’” Fisher said.

Fisher said the play does not follow the Aristotelian structure of having a clear beginning, climax and conclusion, and is not “plot-driven” in a traditional sense. Instead, the show gives the audience a more reflective, emotional experience as it watches Lowell and Bishop’s friendship unfold and deepen onstage.

This loose structure reflects how the letters themselves portray “the ordinary fate of life,” Ruhl said, adding that the play expresses the collision between the ideal form people project onto their lives and the “arbitrary, accidental way things really happen.”

The letters span 30 years in the poets’ lives, and the actors must portray the characters at many small moments over the course of their long relationship, Mays said.

He added that approaching his character in such a “fragmentary way” is unusual, and that the play leaves the audience to fill in some of the resulting gaps.

Since the Rep’s production of “Dear Elizabeth” is a world premiere, the play’s text is not yet set in stone. Director Les Waters, who has collaborated with Ruhl often in the past, said the play underwent many textual changes during the rehearsal process. The group reordered and cut some material, and Ruhl constructed new scenes on-site. Ruhl added that she expects to learn from the show’s run at the Rep and that it will continue to evolve through its first few runs.

After working on “Dear Elizabeth” for over 18 months, Waters said he is excited to see how the audience will react to the world the play creates.

Sarah Ruhl’s play “Eurydice” premiered at the Rep in 2006.

Contact ANYA GRENIER at anna.grenier@yale.edu .

Urban planning democratized

“I’m a surgeon, this thing is on the operating table and I just want to keep the little f----r alive,” he remarked.

One student at the talk, Jessica Hernandez ’16, said she thought the tone of the discussion reflected the camaraderie she has felt as a member of the theater community at Yale.

“There’s really the sense that even though it’s a tough process, everyone does care for everyone else,” Hernandez said. “The panel demonstrated that at the end of the day, it’s about working together to tell a story.”

Mayer won the Tony Award in 2007 for directing “Spring Awakening.”

Contact YANAN WANG at yanan.wang@yale.edu .

SARI LEVY/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Urban planner James Rojas leads students in an interactive urban design workshop.

BY CLINTON WANG STAFF REPORTER

MARIA ZEPEDA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Peter Lerman, Michael Mayer and Amanda Lipitz discussed their career paths in the theater industry at a DRAMATalk Tuesday night.

Though designing cities requires years of training and experience, the future of urban planning may involve local residents armed with little more than toy blocks and Popsicle sticks.

Twelve students gathered in William Harkness Hall Tuesday night for a workshop led by urban planner James Rojas. The event is part of a larger initiative developed by Rojas called PLACE IT!, which has hosted over 250 similar workshops across the world since it began in 2008.

Rojas said he hopes that workshops like these will help transform the urban planning process from remaining highly “technical or bureaucratic” to engaging and serving the public.

“There’s a communication breakdown between the urban planners and the public,” Rojas said.

“The tools that they use to plan a city don’t connect with the public’s experience of the city.”

Rojas said an interactive approach to urban planning has several advantages over the expert-driven modernist approach that currently dominates the field: generating fresh ideas that urban planners may not consider, focusing on the needs and desires of the future consumers

of the space and utilizing the energy and creativity of the public to propel the planning process.

Though the public may generate impractical ideas, Rojas argued that planners need to receive as much feedback as possible from residents before they begin the urban design process so that they can better understand what citizens value in their city.

“You have to study all the options. Even if someone wants to put camels on the street, you want that idea to be heard and considered too,” Rojas said.

To demonstrate this concept, Rojas asked each student at the workshop to build a section of their ideal city with a variety of trinkets including foam blocks and chess pieces. Though the plans included a massive hovercraft docking station and an “industrial dystopia,” others reflected a variety of realistic approaches to urban design. While some focused on the ease of living in the city by making public transportation convenient or designing walkable urban centers, others prioritized the city’s aesthetic experience, creating vast parks or weaving walkways between buildings.

After students described their individual concepts, they collaborated in two groups to discuss and model improvements to the area

surrounding Yale-New Haven Hospital. In this segment of the workshop, students were asked to reconcile the area’s current layout with their contrasting personal visions for how cities should be designed.

The tools that they use to plan a city don’t connect with the public’s experience of the city.

JAMES ROJAS Creator, PLACE IT! Rojas sees these workshops as an educational tool for empowering the public to proactively seek community-driven changes in their urban environment. Though most of the student attendees at his Yale workshop had some course experience with urban planning, Rojas said that many of his most successful workshops have drawn citizens with no previous urban planning experience. Sometimes, PLACE IT! workshops have sparked concrete changes in the community, he said.

In Tijuana, Mexico, for instance, an inspired participant later successfully called upon the city to trans-

form a dry riverbed into a park.

While the art community has supported this interactive approach to urban planning, most city governments are resistant to such “avant-garde” thinking, Rojas said.

Many local governments have prioritized general city development over individual building plans, compromising the public’s convenience and interest. He also cited an anecdote in which an urban planning committee already specified billboards and signage in its plans but failed to consider where schools might be located.

Architecture and political science professor Elihu Rubin ’99, who helped bring the workshop to Yale, said this new urban planning paradigm represents a growing trend, aided by workshops like Rojas’s.

Architecture major Justine Yan ’14 called the workshop a simple and valuable tool for promoting interactive urban planning.

“Some might say this approach is less efficient, but I think it’s really important to engage the public,” Yan added.

Rojas’s larger workshops can span three days, involving up to 200 participants and costing $2000 to run.

Contact CLINTON WANG at clinton.wang@yale.edu .

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A big disconnect as ‘fiscal cliff’ clock ticks

CAROLYN KASTER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

President Barack Obama acknowledges House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio while hosting a meeting of the bipartisan, bicameral leadership of Congress to discuss the deficit and the economy.

BY ANDREW TAYLOR ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — Republicans’ newfound willingness to consider tax increases to avert the “fiscal cliff� comes with a significant caveat: larger cuts than Democrats seem willing to consider to benefit programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the president’s health care overhaul.

The disconnect on benefit programs, coupled with an impasse between Republicans and the White House over raising tax rates on upper-bracket earners, paints a bleak picture as the clock ticks toward a year-end fiscal debacle of automatic spending increases and harsh cuts to the Pentagon and domestic programs.

Democrats emboldened by the election are moving in the opposite direction from the GOP on curbing spending, refusing to look at cuts that were on the bargaining table just last year. Those include any changes to Social Security, even though President Barack Obama was willing back then to consider cuts in future benefits through lower cost-ofliving increases. Obama also considered raising the eligibility age for Medicare, an idea that most Democrats oppose. “I haven’t seen any sugges-

tions on what they’re going to do on spending,� a frustrated Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Tuesday. “There’s a certain cockiness that I’ve seen that is really astounding to me since we’re basically in the same position we were before.�

Well, says Obama’s most powerful ally on Capitol Hill, the Democrats are willing to tackle spending on entitlement programs if Republicans agree to raise income tax rates on the wealthiest Americans — a nonstarter with Republicans still in control of the House. “We hope that they can agree to the tax revenue that we’re talking about, and that is rate increases, and as the president’s said on a number of occasions, we’ll be happy to deal with entitlements,� Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Tuesday.

But Reid speaks only in the most general terms, wary of publicly embracing specific ideas like boosting Medicare premiums or raising the program’s eligibility age.

At the White House, Obama met with a group of small business owners. Participants described the hour-long meeting as a listening session for Obama, with the business owners urging him to reach an agreement.

“They had one message for the president, which is they need certainty. Please get this deal done as soon as possible. They very much want consumers out there knowing that they’re going to have money in their pockets to spend. That’s why it’s so important to pass the extension of the tax cuts for 98 percent of consumers, 97 percent of all small businesses,� said Small Business Administration head Karen Mills.

[Business owners] had one message for the president, which is they need certainty.

KAREN MILLS Head, Small Business Administration Obama planned to meet Wednesday with more than a dozen leaders from large corporations, including Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Marissa Mayer of Yahoo!, Brian Roberts of Comcast and Arne Sorenson of Marriott.

Obama hits the road on Friday, visiting a Pennsylvania toy factory and broadcasting his case to extend current tax rates for all but

those families making more than $250,000 a year.

Private White House negotiations with top aides to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and others are cloaked in secrecy, with no evidence of headway. “There’s been little progress with the Republicans, which is a disappointment to me,� Reid, a key negotiator, told reporters on Tuesday. “They talked some happy talk about doing revenues, but we only have a couple weeks to get something done. So we have to get away from the happy talk and start talking about specific things.�

Republicans say it’s Obama and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill who are holding back, and they point to a balance of power in official Washington that is little changed by the president’s re-election. Republicans still control the House, despite losing seats in the election. Democrats control the Senate. “Democrats in Congress have downplayed the danger of going over the cliff and continue to rule out sensible spending cuts that must be part of any significant agreement to reduce the deficit,� said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Just last year, Obama and top Democrats were willing during

budget negotiations with Republicans to take politically risky steps such as reducing the annual inflation adjustment to Social Security retirement payments and raising the eligibility age for Medicare, which provides health care coverage to the elderly.

Now, with new leverage from Obama’s election victory and a playing field for negotiations that is more favorable to Democrats than during the talks of the summer of 2011, Democrats are taking a harder line, ruling out any moves on Social Security and all but dismissing ideas like raising the eligibility age for Medicare from 65. “The election spoke very strongly about the fact that the American people don’t want to cut these programs that actually really sustain the middle class in America and allow people to become part of the middle class,� said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. “I think they feel somewhat emboldened by the election,� said GOP Rep. Tom Price of Georgia. “How could you not when your president is re-elected after running four straight years of trillion dollar-plus deficits?�

Indeed, Obama could be in position to blame Republicans if an impasse results in the government going over the fiscal cliff.

Democrats already are portray-

ing GOP lawmakers as hostagetakers willing to let tax rates rise on everyone if lower Bush-era tax rates are not extended for the top 2 percent to 3 percent of earners — those with incomes above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for joint filers. “One thing Republicans have to realize — we’re in much better shape in January,� said Harkin, referring to a time when taxes would have already risen and Democrats would be offering to cut taxes for all but the wealthiest Americans. “Fiscal cliff? I don’t care.�

Obama’s opening position in the negotiations calls for $1.6 trillion in higher taxes over the coming decade, balanced by just $340 billion in cuts to rapidly growing health care programs, generally taken from health care providers instead of beneficiaries. That balance would have to change for Republicans to sign onto any agreement.

Given the crunch of time and the complexity of issues such as tax reform and wringing savings from programs like Medicare, negotiators are working on a two-track process: an initial “down payment� of deficit cuts next month, coupled with work next year on overhauling the tax code and curbing entitlement programs.

Tobacco asked to admit deceit

BY FREDERIC J. FROMMER ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered tobacco companies to publish corrective statements that say they lied about the dangers of smoking and that disclose smoking’s health effects, including the death on average of 1,200 people a day.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler previously had said she wanted the industry to pay for corrective statements in various types of advertisements. But Tuesday’s ruling is the first time she’s laid out what the statements will say.

Each corrective ad is to be prefaced by a statement that a federal court has concluded that the defendant tobacco companies “deliberately deceived the American public about the health effects of smoking.� Among the required statements are that smoking kills more people than murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes and alcohol combined, and that “secondhand smoke kills over 3,000

Americans a year.�

The corrective statements are part of a case the government brought in 1999 under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Kessler ruled in that case in 2006 that the nation’s largest cigarette makers concealed the dangers of smoking for decades, and said she wanted the industry to pay for “corrective statements� in various types of ads, both broadcast and print. The Justice Department proposed corrective statements, which Kessler used as the basis for some of the ones she ordered Tuesday.

Tobacco companies had urged Kessler to reject the government’s proposed industry-financed corrective statements; the companies called them “forced public confessions.� They also said the statements were designed to “shame and humiliate� them. They had argued for statements that include the health effects and addictive qualities of smoking.

Kessler wrote that all of the corrective statements are based on specific findings of fact made

by the court. “This court made a number of explicit findings that the tobacco companies perpetuated fraud and deceived the public regarding the addictiveness of cigarettes and nicotine,� she said.

A spokesman for Altria Group Inc., owner of the nation’s biggest tobacco company, Philip Morris USA, said the company was studying the court’s decision and did not provide any further comment. A spokesman for Reynolds American Inc., parent company of No. 2 cigarette maker, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., said the company was reviewing the ruling and considering its next steps.

The statements Kessler chose included five categories: adverse health effects of smoking; addictiveness of smoking and nicotine; lack of significant health benefit from smoking cigarettes marked as “low tar,� “light,� etc.; manipulation of cigarette design and composition to ensure optimum nicotine delivery; and adverse health effects of exposure to secondhand smoke.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 11

WORLD

“We have to face the reality of climate change.

It is arguably the biggest threat we are facing today.” WILLIAM HAGUE U.K. FOREIGN SECRETARY

Palestinians predict U.N. vote

BY EDITH M. LEDERER ASSOCIATED PRESS UNITED NATIONS — The Palestinians predicted a historic U.N. vote recognizing their statehood this week, praising important new support from France on Tuesday and likely backing from other European nations seen as critical to enhancing their international standing.

The United States and Israel strongly oppose the resolution, and there are fears it could torpedo Palestinian hopes of quickly resuming negotiations with Israel to end their decades-old conflict. Israeli officials have already said they will not return to negotiations after the vote and believe it instead undermines hopes for a peace deal.

The General Assembly vote to raise the Palestinians’ status from a U.N. observer to a nonmember observer state is scheduled for Thursday — the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” — just a week after a cease-fire ended eight days of punishing Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip and intense rocketing of the Jewish state by Gaza’s Hamas rulers that reached Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Unlike the Security Council, there are no vetoes in the General Assembly and the resolution is virtually certain of approval. The 193-member world

body is dominated by countries sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and the resolution only requires a majority vote for approval.

There is a global consensus on the two-state solution. … So we expect a large number of countries to vote in favor.

RIYAD MANSOUR U.N. observer, Palestine The U.N. recognition of their statehood would elevate the Palestinians to the same status as the Vatican, another nonmember observer state. However, a country’s vote to raise the Palestinian status at the U.N. does not imply its individual recognition of a Palestinian state, something that must be done bilaterally. To date, 132 countries — over two-thirds of the U.N. member states — have recognized the state of Palestine.

The U.N. recognition, however, would add weight Palestinian claims for a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005.

The vote is taking place while the

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Palestinians themselves remain bitterly divided: Hamas, which does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, claimed victory in the recent conflict and raised its standing in the Arab world, while the rival Fatah movement of President Mahmoud Abbas, which controls the West Bank, remained sidelined.

Abbas needs a solid vote in the General Assembly to strengthen his domestic position and he is flying to New York to present the case for U.N. recognition of the state of Palestine.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. observer, said the final draft resolution, which was only circulated to U.N. members late Monday, has close to 60 cosponsors and he expects more by the time of the vote.

“I think that the great majority of nations will vote with us because there is a global consensus on the two-state solution” that envisions Palestine and Israel living side-by-side in peace, Mansour said at a news conference.

“So we expect a large number of countries to vote in favor.”

The Palestinians have focused much attention on getting support from European nations because of the clout that their backing would give to Palestinian statehood dream. France came through Tuesday when Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told Parliament in Paris that the country will vote “yes” on the resolution.

Climate scientist: Sandy no coincidence

BY KARL RITTER ASSOCIATED PRESS DOHA, Qatar — Though it’s tricky to link a single weather event to climate change, Hurricane Sandy was “probably not a coincidence” but an example of the extreme weather events that are likely to strike the U.S. more often as the world gets warmer, the U.N. climate panel’s No. 2 scientist said Tuesday.

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the vice chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, predicted that as stronger and more frequent heat waves and storms become part of life, people will stop asking whether global warming played a role.

“The new question should probably progressively become: Is it possible that climate warming has not influenced this particular event?” he told The Associated Press in an interview on the sidelines of U.N. climate negotiations in Qatar.

Ypersele’s remarks come as global warming has re-emerged as an issue in Washington following the devastating superstorm — a rarity for the U.S. Northeast — and an election that led to Democratic gains.

After years of disagreement, climate scientists and hurricane experts have

concluded that as the climate warms, there will be fewer total hurricanes. But those storms that do develop will be stronger and wetter.

It is not correct to say Sandy was caused by global warming, but “the damage caused by Sandy was worse because of sea level rise,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer. He said the sea level in New York City is a foot higher than a century ago because of man-made climate change.

On the second day of a two-week conference in the Qatari capital of Doha, the talks fell back to the bickering between rich and poor countries that has marked the negotiations since they started two decades ago. At the heart of the discord is how to divide the burden of cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases, including carbon dioxide.

Such emissions, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, have increased by 20 percent since 2000, according to a U.N. report released last week.

Van Ypersele (vahn EE-purr-say-luh) said the slow pace of the talks was “frustrating” and that negotiators seem more concerned with protecting national interests than studying the science that prompted the negotiations.

PAGE 12

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

NEWSA conference examining

Whittaker Chambers’ Witness 60 years later

The William F. Buckley Jr. Program at Yale Friday, November 30th LC 101 2:20-3:20 – The History of Witness Lee Edwards, Professor John Gaddis, and M. Stanton Evans Moderated by Professor Danilo Petranovich 3:40-4:40 – Foreign Policy and Chambers: Is Witness’ Message Relevant Today?

Elliott Abrams, Max Boot, and Jay Nordlinger Moderated by Professor Charles Hill 4:50-5:50 – Without anti-Communism: :KDW GHÀQHV FRQVHUYDWLVP" Peter Berkowitz, Norman Podhoretz and Alfred Regnery Moderated by Roger Kimball

To promote intellectual diversity at Yale by providing a home for conservative thought. buckleyprogram.com

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 13

SPORTS

“I’m tired of hearing about money, money, money, money, money. I just want to play the game, drink Pepsi, wear Reebok.” SHAQUILLE O’NEAL AMERICAN RETIRED BASKETBALL PLAYER

Tomlinson ’14 looks to reclaim title WOMEN’S SQUASH FROM PAGE 14

YALE ATHLETICS

Tomlinson swept Penn’s Tan Yan Xin 3–0 in Yale’s 7–2 loss to the Quakers in the Elis second scrimmage of the season.

College sports gone awry COLUMN FROM PAGE 14 donations crowd out academic giving. A study this past summer at the University of Arkansas, which examined 29 FBS schools’ records from 2000–’09 and has received considerable attention, showed that increased athletic success in football and basketball leads to greater athletic donations, but also to fewer academic ones. Of course, there were other economic factors at play from 2000–’09 that might have influenced the results. But the bottom line is clear: Athletic and academic donations are separate entities, and they do not rise and fall concurrently. Thus, having a good football and basketball team has very little to do with enhancing a university’s primary academic goals.

Third, there’s the argument that essentially says, “This is the way things are, we like it, everyone likes it, and college sports are an indispensable part of our culture, so let it be.” At first, this is a difficult argument to rebuke, because even my own mother loves March Madness. And when you’re watching college sports on television in all its grandeur, the student-athletes don’t seem pawns in a malignant chess game; they look happy as can be. But upon consideration, this type of reasoning is deeply flawed, sim-

ilar to that employed in all kinds of defective systems. It’s simply not true that everyone likes the current system or that things must continue as they are. There will always be a place for college sports, and sports-loving alumni will always be able to support their universities on the court and the field. But the current state of college sports is bad for our universities and for our country.

If you agree that the United States is now lagging behind in education then this system must change. It is hypocritical to support our government’s giving more money to universities if that money is flowing more into sports programs than into educating young men and women.

The relentless drive for success in football and basketball, epitomized by the realignment of the Big 10 just last week, is overshadowing the most important parts of our universities, which are falling further and further behind. It’s no secret why, but many remain blissfully oblivious to our universities’ absurd situation, because … you’ll have to excuse me. My friends and I are going to go watch No. 2 Duke and No. 4 Ohio State play each other in basketball tonight. Should be a great game.

Contact JOSEPH ROSENBERG at joseph.rosenberg@yale.edu .

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has accumulated a string of titles and victories, including a 3–0 win over Harvard’s Laura Gemmell for the 2011 Ramsay Cup, which is awarded each year to the winner of the College Squash Association Individual Championship. Prior to Tomlinson, no Yale freshman had ever won the title.

After losing her first match of the season her freshman year, Tomlinson went on to clinch 12 consecutive victories and help the Elis seize the Ivy League and national titles as well as an undefeated 17–0 season. That year, Tomlinson was ranked first in the nation among female collegiate squash players. On March 10, 2011 the Yale Alumni Magazine granted her the title of “Yalie of the Week” in recognition of her athletic ability and contribution to the women’s squash team.

As a sophomore, Tomlinson accumulated a 17–3 record, falling three times to Harvard’s Amanda Sobhy. Her final loss to Sobhy, who Yale head coach David Talbott said is ranked among the top 25 squash players in the world, came in the finals of the 2012 CSA Individual Championships.

“It was great to be able to play someone who is competing on the pro tour and to see how the top professional women are playing,” Tomlinson said. “She seemed a lot physically stronger than many female college players.

This year I am trying to improve my strength so that I will be able to compete on the same level, as well as improving my confidence on the ball.”

Talbott, who believes Tomlinson is “perhaps the stron-

gest player to ever be at Yale,” expressed his confidence in her ability to outmaneuver her competitors in the 2013 CSA Individual Championship this March.

“Millie is now a junior and has continued to improve,” Talbott said. “She is certainly capable at this point … of reversing [her finals loss] this year and regaining the title.”

Tomlinson remains cautious about her chances of winning the 2013 Ramsay Cup, but she plans to “give it her best shot.” After training for three months before the start of the 2012–’13 season, she said she is optimistic about the team’s progress.

It was great to be able to play someone who is competing on the pro tour.

MILLIE TOMLINSON Women’s squash “I have had an amazing two years on the team so far. We had a good year last year, coming in second in the national and Ivy championships, and this year feels even better,” Tomlinson said. “We gained a great freshman class who have brought a lot of energy to the team, and everyone is very motivated towards achieving our goal of winning everything this year.”

The Yale women’s squash team will face off against Franklin and Marshall College this Friday for its opening match of the season.

Contact ROSA NGUYEN at rosa.nguyen@yale.edu .

Lovett leads the Elis SWIMMING FROM PAGE 14 whereas we had a lot of people in the old mindset.

Q A

What have been the team’s strengths?

Q A

When did you start swimming?

Stroke-wise we are really strong. IM breaststrokes. We’ve filled the holes in the past years. Maybe we need more depths, but we are solid. Freestyle swimmers are also really strong. We are strong, and depth is the focus.

I did summer league when I was four.

My babysitter wanted to send the kids somewhere, so that’s how I began.

Then I started doing it seriously since 11 in a year-round swim program. I have also played basketball and soccer before.

Q

Tell me about your high school swimming days. Did it help in any way in preparing you to become a better swimmer at Yale?

A

Definitely yes. My club team coach influenced me a lot in my life. He prepared to me swim at a higher level. I’m not a naturally gifted person, but the hard work that my coach emphasized made me a better swimmer.

Q A

Tell me about your most memorable match or moment.

Personally, my freshman year getting into the final heat of the Ivy conference. In terms of team, beating Columbia last year. We hadn’t beat them since I was here, and last year [we] beat them.

Q

Who was the toughest to play against? Which team do you consider as the Bulldogs’ biggest rival?

A

Columbia is our biggest rival, and Harvard and Princeton are the toughest. They are a lot deeper than us — 12 people recruited whereas Yale only has eight recruits. But I think we are good.

Q

How would you describe the team dynamic between the swimmers and divers? Can you tell me more about how diving score works?

A

Swimming and diving are separate.

Two teams have separate points, and we later combine them. We practice from 4 and the diving team practices before us.

We are really close to them and feel grateful. We also make an effort to hang out together often.

Q

What are some of the team’s big goals for the season? What is your personal goal?

EMILIE FOYER/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

The Elis are coming off of a strong start as they defeated their biggest rival, Columbia, by 170-130.

A

Teamwise, we want to finish top three in Ivies. We’d like to improve our dual record and keep moving in the top. I want to finish the year at the top eight Ivies and finish swimming at a high note.

Q A

What else do you do on campus besides swimming?

Q A

Q A

Most of the matches are away. Will this affect the team at all?

Who do you look up to — a possible role model?

Club coach back home, Bob O’Donnell. He was a really good swimmer back in high school and college, and was also a great athlete. I looked up to him so much and he just taught me so much.

I work at the Rudd Center — I work on food policy and do research there.

I was the club swimming coach last year.

For HYP tri-meet and Penn and Dartmouth, we switch back and forth, but there should be no influence.

Contact JENNIFER YOON at ji.yoon@yale.edu .

IF YOU MISSED IT SCORES

NCAAB 3 Michigan 79 18 NC State 72

NCAAB 1 Indiana 83 14 UNC 59

SPORTS QUICK HITS

NBA Philadelphia 100 Dallas 98

EPL Aston Villa 1 Reading 0

y

STU WILSON ’16 BULLDOG EARNS ECAC HONOR The first-year forward was named ECAC Rookie of the Week following this weekend’s west coast sweep of Denver and Colorado College. Wilson scored a shorthanded goal in the third period against Denver and assisted the game-winner against Colorado College the next night.

IVY LEAGUE FOOTBALL PLAYERS OF THE YEAR FINALISTS ANNOUNCED Harvard’s Colton Chapple, Cornell’s Jeff Matthews, Princeton’s Mike Catapano and Brown’s AJ Cruz were named finalists for the Asa S. Bushnell Cup, which honors the Ivy League Players of the Year. Running back Mike McLeod ’09 last won the award for Yale in 2007.

NCAAW 3 Baylor 89 Rice 49

FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE yaledailynews.com/sports

“Our team wants to finish top three in the Ivies this season.”

JARED LOVETT ’13

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

Lovett confident for the season

Squash star opens season strong

BY ROSA NGUYEN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER As the women’s squash season kicks into gear, the 2012 team’s MVP Millie Tomlinson ’14 continues to dominate on the court.

WOMEN’S SQUASH Ranked the second-strongest female player in the College Squash Association, Tomlinson showed her prowess last week after returning to Derbyshire, U.K. for Thanksgiving break, where she joined her hometown club team in the midst of its unbeaten season in the British Premier Squash League.

Tomlinson helped Benz Bavarian Duffield continue its five-match winning streak as she swept her University of Birmingham opponent Katherine Quarterman, 11–1, 11–3 and 11–2, setting an early lead that helped her team clinch its most recent victory.

At Yale, Tomlinson started this season strong, defeating Penn freshman Tan Yan Xin in the opening scrimmage of the season on Nov. 11.

A 10-year veteran of the game, Tomlinson said she initially chose squash for its fusion of mental and physical agility. Since her first exposure to the sport, she SEE WOMEN’S SQUASH PAGE 13

JARED LOVETT

Captain Jared Lovett ’13 finished 200 yard backstroke in the 20th spot, with a record time of 1:57.02, at the Bucknell Invitational. raced with a new group of people.

BY JENNIFER YOON CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The men’s swimming and diving team notched the Bucknell Invitational title last weekend and took down Ivy rival Columbia on Nov. 10. With a strong early start, the Bulldogs are very optimistic about this season. Team captain Jared Lovett ’13 from Abingdon, Va. sat down with the News to discuss the team’s prospects for the future and his captaincy.

Q

How is the season going so far? How was the Bucknell Invitational last weekend?

A

It was good. The season is good. We beat Columbia. And the Bucknell Invitational was a new experience as we

Q

What is your position exactly? Freestyle, individual medley, backstroke, butterfly?

A Q

I cover all four, but I’d say butterfly and IM.

Q

What is a typical swimming practice like? What are some of the focuses in practice?

A

We have eight practices a week. Two to three lifts. Daily practice is two hourslong. We do warm up, pre-set, main set and cool down

How would you describe your leadership style? Do things feel different as a senior captain?

Q

A

A

I have a bigger role in the team. I have more responsibility and have to show the young guys how to do it, but I haven’t changed much. I am more vocal than in the past.

Is there anything special that the head coach emphasizes? Any specific strategies that he uses during practice?

He came in at a weird situation two years ago. He had to change the mentality of the team and make the players actually come to practice. He shifted the focus to team instead of individual, SEE SWIMMING PAGE 13

YALE ATHLETICS

Millie Tomlinson ’14 finished last season ranked second in the country.

The other ‘Moneyball’ JOSEPH ROSENBERG One of my favorite sports stories in recent memory came on April 5, 2010, when No. 5 seed Butler played mighty Duke in one of the best-ever March Madness finales. Sure, I remember Gordon Hayward’s three-quarter court heave that barely missed at the buzzer. Had it gone in, it would have been the greatest shot in the history of college basketball: David would have taken down Goliath. But that wasn’t the best story of the day. Did you know that the Butler players had gone to class earlier that morning?

One of my least favorite has to be the recent news that the University of Maryland and Rutgers University are joining the Big 10 Conference. The previous easternmost university in the conference was Penn State. There’s

no secret as to why Maryland and Rutgers wanted to join: This is all about money. Even though Maryland must pay $50 million as an exit fee to leave the Atlantic Coast Conference, it will benefit from greater television exposure in the Big 10, leading to more revenue.

Small matter that its studentathletes will have to travel ridiculous distances for conference games.

On Oct. 31, I wrote a column that derided big-time college sports and largely chastised universities that have let their football and basketball programs balloon out of the stratosphere. I wish to extend those ideas here.

First, some say that it is elitist and without basis to diminish athletics at universities. After all, athletics are an extracurricular activity equally important as others, such as the student orchestra and a cappella groups.

Who am I to say what activity is more important? In fact, at many universities, football and basket-

ball teams provide the fulcrum of school spirit.

THIS MISALLOCATION OF RESOURCES MAY PREVENT OUR UNIVERSITY FROM GROWING I am in no position to judge what extracurricular activities are more worthwhile than others. I am in a position to point out that not only are athletics not in danger of being marginalized, but they are, in fact, marginalizing many other equally deserving extracurricular activities, not to mention curricular ones.

In 2010, the Knight Commis-

STAT OF THE DAY 2:00.56

sion on Intercollegiate Athletics, an independent commission whose reports are well-respected within college sports, released an illuminating report. The commission reported that in the 120-member Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly Division I-A, median athletics spending per student-athlete at 97 of the subdivision’s 103 public institutions was north of $90,000.

By contrast, median academic spending per student was less than $13,500. And spending per athlete was rising over twice as fast as academic spending per student over the past five years.

The cold, hard facts are really no better in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), formerly Division I-AA, in which Yale and other similarly oriented universities compete. Sixty-two of the 75 public institutions in the FCS spent a median of $35,220 on athletics per student-athlete, while they coughed up just $11,776 as the median academic spend-

ing per student. Data for private institutions, such as Yale, are more difficult to come by and are not included in the Knight Commission’s report.

But it doesn’t much matter. Even at Yale, there is cause to complain about the resources being diverted towards some athletics. The men’s basketball team here has 16 players listed on its roster. Those 16 players have four coaches. The football team has over 10 coaches, including separate coaches for defensive line, defensive backs and outside linebackers. Meanwhile, the Yale Symphony Orchestra has 91 full-time players. The orchestra has one music director, Toshiyuki Shimada. Shimada is simultaneously the music director of two other orchestras in Connecticut and New York. Let’s also remember that the YSO is plainly one of the best undergraduate orchestras in the United States. Our basketball and football teams generally are not.

This misallocation of resources is preventing many institutions, possibly including our own, from growing. The amount that universities spend on athletics versus the amount they spend on academic and other pursuits already compromises their roles as educational institutions. If spending on athletics continues to outpace spending on academics, those institutions will become more minor league sports factories than academic institutions. It’s disgraceful that universities’ overfunding of sports teams comes at a time when a college education is becoming less and less affordable.

Secondly, many say that having good sports programs helps a university accumulate money from donors. And so, even in concrete terms, bigger sports programs are beneficial for universities. This claim is unfounded. In fact, recent research supports the opposite — namely, that athletic SEE COLUMN PAGE 13

THE TIME MEN’S SWIMMING AND DIVING TEAM CAPTAIN JARED LOVETT ’13 RECORDED IN THE 200-YARD BUTTERFLY AT THE BUCKNELL INVITATIONAL LAST WEEKEND. The Elis won the title with a total of 1,550 points.