NEWS

Graphic memoirist Alison Bechdel to speak at Yale

BY ROSE HOROWITCH AND ENZA JONAS GIUGNI SENIOR REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Alison Bechdel, the graphic artist, autobiographical author and MacArthur Genius, will visit Yale on Thursday to speak about her life and writing.

Bechdel first gained prominence for her weekly comic strip “Dykes to Watch Out For.” Running from 1983 to 2008, the comic was an early representation of lesbians in popular culture. In 2006, Bechdel became a bestseller with the graphic memoir “Fun Home,” which was billed as a “family tragicomic.”

The memoir was later adapted as a Broadway musical and won five Tony Awards. Bechdel published her second graphic memoir, titled “Are You My Mother?”, in 2014. Most recently, in 2021, she released the memoir “The Secret to Superhuman Strength.” Bechdel is well known for her vulnerable and honest depictions of family life, sexuality and gender nonconformity.

Bechdel will address the Whitney Humanities Center at 4 p.m. in an event open to the Yale community.

“I think young people today want something that’s really honest and genuine and this is that,” said Ellen Handler Spitz, lecturer in the humanities. “She’s really somebody who wants to say what she believes.”

“Fun Home” chronicles Bechdel’s childhood in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania, where her family owned and operated a funeral parlor. She writes of her fraught relationships with her parents — particularly with her father — who she discovers is gay, as Bechdel herself is. “Fun Home” follows the years before and after Bechdel’s father’s death, which Bechdel suspects is a suicide.

COURTESY OF YALE DAILY NEWS

Bechdel, who wrote the memoir “Fun Home,” will address the Whitney Humanities Center on Thursday at 4 p.m.

Bechdel came out as a lesbian when she was 19 years old. In a 2015 interview, Bechdel told NPR that she is purposefully open about her sexuality after seeing her father hide his sexuality prior to his death.

“In many ways my life, my professional career has been a reaction to my father’s life, his life of secrecy,” Bechdel said in the interview. “I threw myself into the gay community, into this life as a lesbian cartoonist, deciding I was going to be a professional lesbian. In a way, that was all my way of healing myself.” Handler Spitz and Sterling Professor of French and humanities R. Howard Bloch invited Bechdel to campus. Handler Spitz said she had heard Bechdel speak before and was stunned by her honesty.

“I was astonished by her because she seemed to me to be a person of such incredible honesty, bravery and authenticity,” Handler Spitz said. “She was able to speak about elements of her life and her feelings and her thoughts that most people never dare to bring forward publicly.”

Though Bechdel had a unique childhood, both Handler Spitz and Bloch said that there are elements that everyone can connect to.

Bechdel’s works cover the themes of love and being loved, alienation and family connections.

“Our capacity for empathy is enlarged by these graphic confessions where a moment in someone else’s life revives a buried moment in our own,” Handler Spitz said. “Sometimes painful, sometimes not, sometimes very different from what is on the page itself but connected in feeling, and, when we encounter it, we are chastened and enriched thereby.”

Handler Spitz said the memoirs are meant to be read slowly, as each element is intentional and adds to the experience. She pointed to the depiction of Bechdel and her mother in “Are You My Mother?” While all the other women featured are blonde, Bechdel and her mother have dark hair. They are twinned and connected in a realm outside of language, Handler Spitz said.

The graphic medium of “Fun Home” also allows for nuances that could not be conveyed in words. Handler Spitz provided the example of the first page of “Fun Home,” in which a game between Bechdel and her father is shown from three different perspectives.

Bloch described Fun Home as a “family scrapbook,” in which the drawings appear as candid snapshots of Bechdel’s childhood.

Students who attend the talk should question what in the memoir is not true, Bloch said. They should take a critical perspective to the question of what someone cannot know about themselves. Bechdel is well known for including ambivalence and ambiguity alongside brutal honesty in her works.

“Not knowing everything is sometimes a good thing in a memoir: a mystery or quest is better than laying out all the facts,” Bechdel said in a 2017 interview.

Bechdel is also known for originating the “Bechdel test,” which assesses films by whether two named female characters discuss something other than a man.

The Whitney Humanities Center is located at 53 Wall Street.

Contact ROSE HOROWITCH at rose.horowitch@yale.edu and ENZA JONAS GIUGNI at enza.jonasgiugni@yale.edu.

Yale researchers develop first FDA-approved drug to delay type 1 diabetes

BY CHLOE NIELD AND JAMES STEELE STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Teplizumab, a drug that delays type 1 diabetes, recently became the first drug to delay an autoimmune disease approved by the FDA. A Yale professor played a crucial role in its development.

Kevan Herold, C.N.H. Long Professor of Immunobiology and of Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, led the clinical trials for the drug’s development over the past thirty years. Teplizumab’s approval provides a new frontier regarding the diagnosis and treatment of diabetes and paves the way for future work in disease prevention.

The drug was found to delay the development of type 1 diabetes for a median of 2 years.

“If you’re 8 years old and you are not going to get diabetes for two years [because of teplizumab treatment], that’s a big deal, because now you are going to be 10 years old when you develop diabetes, and hopefully a ten-year-old is a little more mature than an 8-year-old,” Herold said. “Same thing if you are about to go into middle school, you are not going to get diabetes until you are in high school, or even after high school … [diabetes’] absence, even for a day, is a gift.”

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease where your body destroys the cells of the pancreas that secrete insulin. Insulin is a hormone that signals cells to uptake sugar that can be used for energy. When the insulin-secreting cells are destroyed, the sugar in the bloodstream cannot be absorbed. Approximately 1.9 million Americans have type 1 diabetes according to the American Diabetes Association. The treatment is insulin injections, which can be extremely costly.

Teplizumab, sold under the brand name <Tzield>, is a monoclonal antibody, a type of antibody manufactured by cloning a white blood cell that was exposed to a target protein. Teplizumab targets the epsilon chain, which is part of the CD3 receptor protein complex. The CD3 complex is a component of the T-cell membrane responsible for recognizing the respective targets of that T-cell, which is a type of immune cell.

The exact mechanism of the reaction between teplizumab and the epsilon chain is not certain, but Herold and his colleagues expect that teplizumab sends a signal to the T-cell by binding to the eрsilon chain. This signal is thought to partially or wholly deactivate the T-cells responsible for destroying the pancreatic cells that produce insulin in patients with type 1 diabetes.

Even after teplizumab treatment, the effectiveness of the immune system will not be impeded, Herold explained. The signal created when the CD3 complex encounters a viral antigen is much stronger than the signal from teplizumab reception.

“If you look at the long-term safety profile of people [in trials] who have been treated with the drug, there is no evidence of an infectious disease risk,” Herold said.

Herold predicts that the strength of the signal given by teplizumab lies somewhere between that of the antigen signal and the autoimmune signal. This prevents the T-cells from destroying beneficial tissues while allowing them to retain their efficacy in combating viruses.

While the development and approval of teplizumab have been a long process, Herold has been“very interested in using immunotherapies to change the course of autoimmune disease, specifically diabetes” since the beginning.

The median age of participants in the teplizumab trials is 13 to 14; however, many different ages were included in the trials. Participants were not yet diagnosed with diabetes before their participation in the trial and were identified by their familial relationship to someone with type 1 diabetes, Herold explained. They were then screened for typical immune markers of type 1 diabetes, and if it was determined they were at risk for the disease’s development, they were administered teplizumab over the course of two weeks and the progression of the disease was monitored in the years after.

The clinical trials found that, compared to a placebo group, the development of type 1 diabetes was delayed a median of 2 years in participants who received teplizumab. However, some patients had delays significantly longer than that. One patient even experienced an 11-year delay of type 1 diabetes development.

“We are very keen to understand what’s the difference between those [patients] that have long responses and those that have these short responses, and how we convert those short responses to long responses,” Herold said, referencing how this will be a primary focus of future research.

Herold explained that while two years may not seem like a significant delay, this extra time disease-free is valuable.

For example, there would be more time for research in the field of type 1 diabetes treatment to advance. Herold explained that the way we treat and diagnose diabetes now is different compared to how it was just three years ago.

“Dr. Herold and his colleagues have spent years working to understand how a person’s own immune system can destroy the beta (or insulin-producing) cells in the pancreas, leading to type 1 diabetes. That work led to trials of teplizumab, ” Nancy Brown, Dean of the Yale School of Medicine, wrote. “To make discoveries that transform lives and health, that is what faculty at YSM aspire to do.”

On Nov. 17, the FDA approved teplizumab for use as a treatment to delay type 1 diabetes in those aged 8 and older. This approval means that it is appropriate to start screening patients for type 1 diabetes with the intent of administering the teplizumab treatment.

Herold explained that the patients identified to undergo the treatment should eventually extend to the general public, not just those identified on the basis of having relatives with type 1 diabetes. This is especially important, given that most people who develop type 1 diabetes do not have a familial history of the disease, according to Herold.

“That’s a new frontier, screening even in the general population for a disease that you can prevent, not just coming in afterward,” Herold said. “I think that that is a new exciting area of medical investigation.”

Trialnet is an international network of scientists dedicated to type 1 diabetes research. Yale is one of twenty-two Type 1 Diabetes TrialNet International Clinical Centers at the forefront of type 1 diabetes research. Jennifer Sherr, principal investigator of the TrialNet site at Yale and professor of pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine, talked about the importance of teplizumab’s development.

“[The development of teplizumab] opens the door to prioritize development of new therapies for slowing and stopping T1D and moves us one step closer to TrialNet’s ultimate goal: a future without T1D,” Sherr wrote. “While TrialNet does not have any studies of teplizumab currently underway, we will build on the success of the Teplizumab Prevention Study by continuing to find new ways to slow and eventually stop T1D.”

Herold was the third person to hold the position of TrialNet Chair.

Contact CHLOE NIELD at chloe.nield@yale.edu and JAMES STEELE at james.steele@yale.edu .

NEWS

A guide to Yale’s reproductive resources

COURTESY OF XANDER DE VRIES

Yale College Council, Women’s Center and Communication & Consent Educators work to continue strides in accessibility of menstrual and sexual health products on campus.

BY ANIKA SETH, MADELINE CORSON AND GIA-BAO DAM STAFF REPORTER, CONTRIBUTING REPORTER, AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Yale first started offering free pads and tampons in residential facilities three years ago. Now, students and staff are reflecting on the University’s ongoing efforts to promote menstrual equity on campus.

Since 2017, the Yale College Council has explored providing free menstrual products to students. Today, pads, tampons and condoms are primarily available to students in the basement laundry rooms of their residential colleges and in two entryways on Old Campus, with supplies provided by the Office of Gender and Campus Culture. Most recently, the Yale Women’s Center has announced a partnership with the YCC to expand period product accessibility on campus.

“We just want a really directed, concerted effort on the part of the University to make something that increases accessibility on campus, instead of an afterthought,” Theia Chatelle ’25, the political action coordinator for the Yale Women’s Center, said.

Unlike toilet paper, soap, paper towels or other personal hygiene essentials, period products are not commonly offered for free in campus restrooms. Moreover, the inflationary economic climate is exacerbating the cost burden of purchasing period products, inflicting an undue financial burden on people who menstruate.

As of June 9, for example, average pad prices rose 8.3 percent and average tampon prices rose 9.8 percent compared to last year’s prices, straining many budgets. In its 2017 fall survey, the YCC found that “the purchase of menstrual hygiene products posed a financial burden for approximately half of Yale students.”

Pads, tampons and condoms in residential colleges

Presently, Yale’s Communication & Consent Educators, or CCEs, are responsible for stocking residential colleges and Old Campus with menstrual products, including pads, tampons and liners.

There are currently 57 CCEs at Yale, spread across each of Yale’s 14 residential colleges. One CCE from each college is assigned the responsibility of distributing sexual health products in those same locations, such as internal and external condoms, lubricant, dental dams and other supplies.

Ryan Huynh ’23, a project coordinator for the CCE program, explained that the location varies by college, but that supplies are often kept in residential college laundry rooms in small baskets. On Old Campus, they are located in the laundry rooms in the basements of Farnam Entryway B and Bingham Entryway D.

The frequency with which the colleges are restocked with menstrual products is contingent on how often products are used.

“From my experience, supplies are restocked about once every one to two weeks, but this can be adjusted depending on the rate of consumption,” Huynh wrote to the News. “The goal is for these baskets to be stocked at all times.”

According to Huynh, there are other spaces beyond the residential colleges where menstrual products are available.

These include the Yale Women’s Center and Yale Health, who have, according to Huynh, “similar programs and resources with respect to the distribution of free menstrual products on campus.”

Yale College Council partners with Yale Women’s Center

In the Yale College Council’s Oct. 2 meeting, the YCC approved a $500 partnership with the Yale Women’s Center to improve “quality and accessibility of women’s products across campus.”

In an email to the News, YCC President Leleda Beraki explained that the YWC reached out a few weeks into the school year requesting this funding for menstrual and contraception products.

“The YWC sent the YCC an itemized list of products they intended to purchase with the cost totalling to $500,” Beraki wrote. “Whether this is enough to achieve their goals for the year, we can’t really speak to. The YWC has a much better idea of what they need and how often! Our only role in this was to fill a need that was asked of us.”

Per Beraki, the YWC products will be available to both Yalies and New Haven residents, in accordance with the YWC’s timeline of purchasing and providing the products.

Chatelle expressed concern about the lack of accessibility for menstrual products in student restrooms. In particular, Chatelle referred to the current system as a “stopgap approach.” ”No one really uses [the products provided in residential college basements] because it’s in a very awkward place,” Chatelle said. “It sort of creates this further stigma – why are you putting it in the corner of the basement in the laundry room?”

The Yale Women’s Center, located in the basement of Durfee Hall, is “staffed all week by student volunteers, who can offer support, advice, and free dental dams and condoms,” according to the website for the Office of LGBTQ+ Resources. The YWC’s objective in working with the YCC, Chatelle explained, is to provide students with access to higher quality menstrual products than those that are provided in the residential colleges.

In an email to the News, Interim Director of the Office of Gender and Campus Culture, or OGCC, Eilaf Elmileik wrote that the placement of the products was decided in 2018, when the YCC first began working on a program to make menstrual products more available on campus.

“If there are concerns or feedback about this aspect or others, I’d be glad to talk further with anyone interested,” Elmileik wrote. “In my work with OGCC, I meet weekly with two members of the Women’s Center, and I have also let them know that I’m happy to continue this conversation.

Chatelle expressed concerns that the currently available products in residential colleges are not of sufficient quality.

“Condoms [are] what everyone comes to the Women’s Center and tells us that they want,” Chatelle said. “The multicolored condoms, no one uses because you can go to the laundry room and see that they might have been there for eons.”

Chatelle hopes to use the $500 provided by the YCC to make higher-quality products more easily available to students. But the YWC also hopes to expand this work, with YCC support.

Beraki explained that the YCC plans to assist the YWC by supporting proposal writing and presentation to administration, particularly around their goals to make Plan B more widely available and to offer better-quality brands of menstrual and pregnancy resources on campus.

Chatelle compared efforts for accessible sexual health products at Yale to the programs of peer institutions — such as Middlebury and Harvard — who provide products to students in restrooms at no cost.

In 2017, Middlebury College converted 54 tampon dispensers on campus to “free-dispensers.” Additionally, since 2019, a variety of menstrual and sexual health products have been provided in freshman and sophomore dorms at Middlebury. Similarly, at Harvard, in fall 2017, the College Council allocated $1,000 for a pilot program in freshman dorms, which was expanded to four upperclassmen houses by the end of that year.

“Now we’re sort of evaluating different policy proposals [with the YCC],” Chatelle said. “The ultimate goal would be to push the university to provide menstrual products in all of the bathrooms on campus.”

Menstrual products in other campus locations

These ongoing efforts to offer period products in student restrooms are reminiscent of initial proposals promoting menstrual equity – even before the CCEs’ involvement.

“The dispensers in the bathrooms have long been difficult to support,” wrote Melanie Boyd, Yale College Dean of Student Affairs, “and so the YCC chose to focus on the residential colleges and Old Campus instead.”

According to Boyd, the YCC began working on a project to make disposable menstrual products more available in 2018. The program was designed to supply free menstrual products in each residential college and on Old Campus, with the support of former Yale College Dean Marvin Chun and the heads of the colleges.

A pilot run occurred in the spring of 2019, organized by different configurations of students and staff in each college, which resulted in 14 different processes for the YCC to keep track of.

In the fall of 2019, the YCC asked the Office of Gender and Campus Culture if the CCEs could distribute menstrual products along with the condom supplies, to which the CCEs agreed to try out. Over time, the OGCC has taken over the ordering process and made the system simpler.

Beyond the residential colleges, Graduate & Professional Student Senate and the Women Faculty Forum initiated its program to place free period products in Sterling Library restrooms. Rather than rely upon students to restock baskets or bags outside frequently visited spaces, it primarily relies upon period product dispensers installed directly in bathrooms.

Accessibility in Sterling — and around campus — is discrepant. Often, these dispensers are present but unstocked or broken.

The News visited 10 different bathrooms across five campus buildings on Oct. 21. One of the 10 offered menstrual products.

Huynh encouraged students with questions or concerns to contact the CCEs assigned to their residential college.

The Yale Women’s Center is generally open from Sunday to Thursday during the evenings.

Contact ANIKA SETH at anika.seth@yale.edu, MADELINE CORSON at maddy.corson@yale.eduand GIABAO DAM at gia-bao.dam@yale.edu .

Jackson launches five-year B.A.-B.S./M.P.P. program for undergraduates

BY OLIVIA LOMBARDO AND BENJAMIN HERNANDEZ STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Yale’s global studies school will launch a five-year program for undergraduates in the spring, allowing a select few to obtain a Masters in Public Policy in Global Affairs ahead of schedule.

The new B.A.-B.S./M.P.P. program fits squarely in the school’s commitment to global leadership and service, Lorenzo Caliendo, deputy dean of the new Jackson School for Global Affairs, said at an info session to prospective applicants.

Director of Undergraduate Studies for political science David Simon stressed that students will receive significant guidance from Jackson faculty to guide them through their coursework and summer experiences.

“How can we at Jackson help you become the person with a profile that you want to be?” Simon asked. “[The five-year B.A.-B.S./M.P.P. program is] a tremendous opportunity to be able to do that in just one year right out of your college.”

The program exposes undergraduate Yale College students to Jackson’s courses beginning their senior year. Requirements include taking classes in Jackson’s core curriculum, a language class up to L4 and a leadership and ethics workshop, along with an approved summer experience between their fourth and fifth year in the program.

To successfully complete the program, students are required to complete 36 college credits in pursuance of a B.A.-B.S. and 12 graduate-level credits for the M.P.P. For the required Yale College credits, 32 courses must be non-professional.

Simon noted the differences between traditional M.P.P. students and students enrolled in Jackson’s five-year program.

Whereas two-year M.P.P. students are expected to take 16 classes, roughly four credits per term, students enrolled in the new program fulfill 12 credits for the M.P.P. In their senior year at Yale College, the equivalent to their fourth year in the program, students are expected to take four of Jackson’s core credits.

The Jackson School stresses the importance of its intentionally small, tight-knit community, enrolling only 35 students. Admittance to this program is similarly small: an anticipated 3 to 5 undergraduates will be accepted this year, according to Jackson’s Assistant Dean of Graduate Admissions Asha Rangappa LAW ’00.

“We are a new school, and we are in a way bringing all our best resources and our best practices that we know from different schools to create leaders for global affairs,” Caliendo said.

Rangappa said that the school plans to have the special application portal for the program go live on Jan. 1, 2023 and close on Feb. 15, noting that it will require a personal statement about students’ focus area and interests, two letters of recommendation with at least one from a Yale course instructor, a resume and a letter of approval by the student’s residential college dean. Faculty involved in the application review process will recuse themselves from writing letters of recommendation for applicants to this program.

Applications will first be screened by the dean of admissions and assistant dean for undergraduate students at Jackson before a final review committee consisting of the deputy dean, assistant dean for graduate studies and a Jackson faculty member.

Although information about the review committee is public and was shared at the information session, Rangappa noted that it would not be communicated via the Jackson website. In an email to the News, Rangappa wrote that “prospective Yale applicants can reach out and ask about the admissions process, members of the faculty review board, etc.”

While Rangappa said that the program encourages applications from all majors and gives no preference for a particular background, she noted that a demonstrated interest in international relations and global affairs through an applicant’s academic, personal or professional experiences will be taken into account.

“Students interested in this program and who are earlier in their Yale education should take this into account in choosing courses and summer experiences leading up to their junior year,” Rangappa wrote in an email to the News.

Rangappa added that she expects the biggest challenge for the undergraduate students applying to the program will be a lack of work experience, noting that “[Jackson’s] regular applicant pool is coming in after having worked generally for two to five years.”

Eming Shyu ’25, a prospective applicant to the program, said that he looks forward to the opportunity of focusing solely in an area of study that he is particularly interested in.

“My specific interest [in the program is] ... the practical appli-

COURTESY OF KAI NIP

Current Yale College juniors will be eligible to apply for Jackson’s five-year B.A.B.S./M.P.P. program in the spring.

cation of macroeconomics,” Shyu said. “There’s [a] lot of practition-based macroecon classes that don’t interact with history or polisci, which are two disciplines that I am still interested in but not as much as macreconomics. So, the freedom to take classes means that I can laser-focus on my specific interest without being worried too much about fulfilling a matrix of studies.”

Despite his enthusiasm for the program, Shyu expressed confusion about some of its logistics, such as how many credits can be carried over from their undergraduate studies. In particular, he noted that the program only allows students to carry four credits from one semester of their senior year into their graduate studies to fulfill the program’s 12-credit requirement.

Accepted students will receive their financial award at the time of admission. According to Rangappa, the award will only apply to students’ fifth year when they are in residence at Jackson.

“We hope to offer the same level of aid to the 5-year program as we do to the ‘regular’ MPP cohort,” Rangappa wrote. “The current first and second year classes have their tuition fully covered through a Jackson tuition fellowship, outside funding, or a combination of both; we aspire to continue that trend.”

Decisions for admission to the program will be released on April 1, 2023.

Contact OLIVIA LOMBARDO at olivia.lombardo@yale.edu and BENJAMIN HERNANDEZ at ben.hernandez@yale.edu .

SPORTS

“Because we're a young team, we have our own swagger, we have our own style, we have our own way that we play, the way that we connect with each other and you see we did it today.” WESTON MCKINNIE US SOCCER MIDFIELDER

Bulldogs go 2–1 over break Bulldogs ready for NCAAs

Yale will be back at home on Wednesday, Nov. 30 to face Howard.

Yale Athletics

M BASKETBALL FROM PAGE 14

mates,” Mahoney said. “John [Poulakidas] is a great shooter. I’ve got boatloads of confi dence in Bez [Mbeng ’25] shooting the ball. So when my teammates can rely on me to make shots and we’re all shooting the ball well and looking for each other, we’re pretty hard to stop.”

Mbeng knocked down three 3-pointers of his own on his way to a strong 13-point, eight-assist performance. Mbeng was unfazed by Howard’s 2-3 zone defense, demonstrating his vision and passing instincts by constantly finding his teammates behind the arc. On the first possession of the second half, Mbeng caught the ball from well beyond the threepoint line and threw a lob with pinpoint accuracy to forward Isaiah Kelly ’23 for a highlight reel alley-oop.

It was arguably the best performance of the year for the Maryland native, who had made just three of his 21 attempts from deep all season coming into the game.

“It felt pretty good to see one go in,” Mbeng said. “I just try to keep shooting with confidence because I work on those shots all the time, and yeah I was in a little slump so hopefully tonight got me out of it.”

The game was long out of reach by the 15:57 mark in the second half as the Elis went up 59–29 on a layup by forward Matt Knowling ’24. Knowling, who leads Yale in scoring and ranks third in the Ivy League with 18.1 points per game, did not have much to do on the night, scoring eight points on six attempts from the fi eld.

The 46-point victory was the latest in a trend of blowout victories at home. The Blue and White are 4–0 at home this season, winning each matchup by an average of 47 points. The Bulldogs came into last night’s matchup as 13-point favorites.

The wide margins of victory have largely been thanks to Yale’s swarming defense, which has given up just 51.9 points per game this season, the third fewest among all of Division I basketball 352 teams.

“In games, we do a great job,” Jones said. “The guys have stepped up and done a really good job of defending.”

Yale will hope to continue limiting its opponents scoring as the team now heads on a six-game road trip, which includes matchups against tough non-conference opponents such as Butler and Kentucky, a top-20 team in the nation.

The Bulldogs dropped their first game in a 65–62 heartbreaker last Sunday against Colorado, one of three Power Five teams on Yale’s schedule.

Coach Jones remained adamant that despite not having many high-major teams on the schedule, his team does not go into diffi cult matchups unprepared.

“No, no absolutely not,” Jones said. “The defense when you play against teams like Kentucky, Colorado is obviously on a much different level than what we faced tonight. Those guys are better, bigger and longer. But our guys play against those kinds of guys all the time during the summer in scrimmages and that kind of stuff.”

The Elis will look to improve upon their strong start as they head to the shores of Long Island for a Saturday evening matchup against Stony Brook.

Contact BEN RAAB at ben.raab@yale.edu . VOLLEYBALLFROM PAGE 14

won a set since Harvard University lost 3–1 in 2016.

Yale will play the University of Central Florida (27–1, 19–1 AAC) in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

“Making the tourney is kind of like a dream come true,” Cara Shultz ’25 said. “I mean it’s what we’ve spent all season preparing for, and in terms of morale and what this means for the program, it’s huge. Our team is so excited to compete on the largest stage, and it’ll be a blast. I’m so proud of what this team has done so far and I’m excited to continue playing with this team.”

The fifth-seeded Knights are favored to win the game as they enter the matchup on a 15-game winning streak and rank in the top fi ve in the nation in assists per set, hitting percentage and kills per set.

However, the Bulldogs seem to be the perfect foil for UCF, as they allow the fi fth lowest opponent’s hitting percentage in the country. They will also try to pick up some easier points on their serve, as Yale ranks third in the nation in aces per set.

“We’re a good defensive team which makes it hard for people to score against us,” said head coach Erin Appleman. “Maile Somera, our libero, is really good, both of our outsides, Mila Yarich and Cara Shultz, are really talented in the back row.”

Knights head coach Todd Dagenais expressed confi dence in his team’s ability heading into the tournament, as he believes that his team has the ability to make a deep run in their fi fth consecutive tournament appearance.

Ahead of the match, Dagenais explained that he was pleased to see Yale as UCF’s fi rst-round opponent.

“We love this draw,” Dagenais told Nicholson Student Media. “I think it's a great draw, especially in terms of travel, keeping in our own time zone and, you know, teams that we feel like we're really competitive with. So I don't think we could have asked for a better draw as a fi ve-seed.”

If the Bulldogs manage to pull off the upset against the red hot Knights, they would face the winner of UMBC (17–8, 7–3 America East) and Penn State (24–7, 13–7 Big 10).

Yale and UCF will face o at 5:00 p.m. on Friday evening in State College, Penn.

Contact HENRY FRECH at henry.frech@yale.edu .

JULIA SUN/CONTRIBUTING PHOTGRAPHER

If the Bulldogs manage to pull o the upset against the red hot Knights, they would face the winner of UMBC and Penn State.

Women’s Basketball keeps record at .500

YALE ATHLETICS

The Bulldogs will next play in Payne Whitney Gymnasium against Syracuse (5–2, 0–0 ACC) at 12:00 p.m. on Sunday.

W BASKETBALL FROM PAGE 14

ico State, the Bulldogs won 73–65. Clark and Nyla McGill ’25 each scored 11 points while rookie Kiley Capstraw ’26 led the team with 23. This was Capstraw’s second time this season scoring over 20 points.

“It’s great to have a freshman that can contribute in so many different ways,” Egger said. “She’s going to have a great career at Yale and it’s great to see her grow each game.”

In their next game against Houston Christian, Yale could not pull ahead and fell 68–61. Four Huskies scored in double digits and guard Kennedy Wilson, scored her season-high with twenty points. Wilson was not the only player on the court to put together a career game, however, as Yale received a highlight night from Clark. The junior guard led the Bulldogs in points, rebounds and assists with a stat line of 15–8–5 and earned a career high with eight rebounds.

Leaving Denver, Yale played at UMass on Wednesday night and fell 72–57 to the Minutewomen, who have won six straight games since their early season loss to Tennessee. At the time, the Volunteers were ranked No. 5 in the country.

Against Yale, UMass surged ahead early in the game. The Bulldogs fell behind by 14 points at the end of the fi rst half, and despite season highs in assists from McGill and points from Grace Thybulle ’25, the team could not cut the defi cit down in the second half. McGill led the Bulldogs with seven assists and 11 rebounds while Thybulle earned 16 points.

On her season-high performance, Thybulle wrote to the News, “I’ve defi nitely been in a little bit of a rut prior to this game so I’ve been working with Coach [Dalila Eshe] and my position coach to remedy that. We worked a lot on me using my physicality more e ciently and taking more time around the rim.”

The Bulldogs will next play in Payne Whitney Gymnasium against Syracuse (5–2, 0–0 ACC) at 12:00 p.m. on Sunday.

Bulldogs exceed high expectations

W HOCKEY FROM PAGE 14

heights, you know the program has a bright future.”

Less than a minute after DiAntonio’s goal, Emma Harvey ’25 scored to make the final score of the game 2–0. Yale goalie Pia Dukaric ’25 made 26 saves against the Terriers, recording her third shutout of the season.

The game against Minnesota comes as one of the biggest in the team’s history, and Yale stands alone as the only remaining undefeated squad in the country.

In the first period of the game both teams fi lled the nets, with six goals scored between the teams.

In the fi rst two minutes of the game, Rebecca Vanstone ’23 gave the Bulldogs a 1–0 lead as she notched her fi rst goal of the season in her second game back after sitting out for approximately six weeks due to an injury.

“I think it’s huge in any game for the team to score fi rst, as it gives us momentum and confidence, and this was no di erent,” Vanstone said. “We were especially hyped up since it was such a huge game for us, and I think getting the fi rst goal set the tone for the game.”

The teams appeared set to enter the fi rst intermission tied at two goals apiece with under a minute remaining in the period. However, with under 37 seconds remaining in the fi rst, rookie Jordan Ray ’26 scored to put the Bulldogs back in the lead.

Four different underclassmen earned points for Yale against Minnesota, continuing an early season trend of big contributions from young players.

First-year forward Ray leads the Bulldogs in goals and points at fi ve and 10, respectively. First years have folded into the team seamlessly, contributing up and down the lineup.

YALE ATHLETICS

Yale will face Colgate on Saturday, Dec. 3 at 3 p.m. Both games will be live streamed on ESPN+.

“We are building this program into a championship team, and the underclassmen are huge parts of our success,” Elle Hartje ’24 wrote to the News earlier this season. “We keep getting questions about how we are going to respond after last year’s success, and I think that the production from the younger players is proof that we have every intention to be even better this year than last.”

At 3–2 against Minnesota, Yale wasn’t finished. Rather than settling for one goal, Dalton scored 11 seconds later to double the lead going into intermission.

Minnesota scored a power play goal in the second period to narrow Yale’s lead to 4–3. Despite the Gophers outshooting Yale 8–5 in the third period, Dukaric was a brick wall in net and managed to secure the Bulldogs’ victory.

“Beating Minnesota was amazing,” Dalton said. “This will be very important for overall team morale. We have a big weekend coming up against Cornell and Colgate, and we will need to come in confi dent to take down these two talented opponents.”

Yale will return home to Ingalls Rink to compete against ECAC opponents Cornell and Colgate. The puck drops on Friday, Dec. 2 at 6 p.m. as the Bulldogs play the Big Red. Yale will face Colgate on Saturday, Dec. 3 at 3 p.m. Both games will be live streamed on ESPN+.

Contact ROSA BRACERAS at rosie.braceras@yale.edu and SPENCER KING at spencer.king@yale.edu .