Yale Daily News -- Week of Dec 9, 2022

Intl. students face housing shortage

Internationals forced o campus amid housing shortage

BY WILL PORAYOUW AND SARAH COOK STAFF REPORTERS

The residential college system is framed by the University as “the cornerstone of Yale College’s mission.” But international exchange students have not been living in Yale’s undergraduate housing this semester as promised, frustrating students and putting future exchange programs into question.

Undergraduates who are a part of the Yale Visiting International Student Program, or Y-VISP, have not been residing in Yale’s residential colleges in the fall of 2022. Instead, they are living in a mix of Albertus Magnus College dormitories, the Omni Hotel and graduate student housing. The Y-VISP website states that students granted admission into the program were to “live alongside Yale students in one of fourteen residential colleges.”

The reasoning, according to the University, is a current housing shortage — which makes it unlikely that the program will continue to accept applicants through the 2023-24 academic year.

“It was advertised — at least the impression I got — was that [Y-VISP] was like getting the Yale experience for one year,” Patrick Cho, an exchange student from Hong Kong University, said.

But Cho said that in terms of housing, that has not been the case for him. He told

Cox case renews medical Miranda bill

Would require police to call for medical assistance

BY NATHANIEL ROSENBERG STAFF REPORTER

Police officers in Connecticut may soon be required to call for emergency medical care when in contact with a per-

son who requests care or is experiencing an emergency medical condition.

This reform is the crux of the Medical Civil Rights Act, a piece of legislation that was proposed in March by State Senator Martin Looney with the backing of the Medical Civil Rights Initiative — a group that advocates for the passage of medical civil rights bills across the country. While the bill passed the Senate unanimously, it died in the State House. Senator Looney plans to reintroduce the bill for the 2023 session, especially in the wake of Randy

Cox’s paralyzation at the hands of New Haven Police Department.

“If we had passed [the Medical Civil Rights Act], at the point that he said, ‘I can’t move’… they would have had a duty to immediately request EMS,” Leonore Dluhy, the director of the Medical Civil Rights Initiative, told the News. “They would not have continued with the transport with him.”

Cox sustained spine and neck injuries — leaving him paralyzed — while being

Ivy League financial aid changes

Ivies could soon o er merit, athletic

scholarships

BY ANIKA SETH AND NICOLE RODRIGUEZ STAFF REPORTERS

Marked by selective admissions rates and worldwide prestige, the eight private universities that compose the Ivy League are known as elite hubs of academic excellence. But these characterizations often fail to recognize how the League first developed: as a Division I athletic conference.

The Ivies do not o er merit scholarships of any kind. This also applies to athletic awards, making Yale and its peers the only eight of the 350 total Division I schools to not o er financial awards to exceptional student athletes.

But now, the question of merit scholarships — including athletic and academic awards — is back up in the air after an exemption in the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 expired at the end of September. This expiration follows on the heels of a related financial aid lawsuit against 17 of the nation’s most prestigious schools, including six of the eight Ivies.

Now, Ivy League schools cannot jointly decide to withhold merit scholarships from students, including student athletes, without risking legal repercussions.

“I am always in favor of reducing costs of tuition, in any way and as much as possible,” Sophia Kanga ’25 said. “So generally, I support the idea of merit-based aid. But I would never want merit aid to impede the availability of need-based aid.”

The 568 Presidents Group Though Yale was founded in 1701, the Ivy League did not o cially form until 1954.

Longtime crew coach to retire

BY MEGAN VAZ AND WILLIAM PORAYOUW STAFF REPORTERS

The University aims for at least 20 percent of workers on its construction projects to be New Haven residents — but how does it ensure this goal is met?

In 2019, Yale and its two recognized unions of campus workers, Local 35 and Local 34, signed an agreement stating that the University would ensure that general contractors on its construction projects hire the set proportion of residents.

When asked whether the University had reached this benchmark on current construction projects — several of which were detailed in an October email sent by University Provost Scott Strobel — both University President Peter Salovey and interim Vice President for Communications Karen Peart referred the News to J. Mike Bellamy, who became vice president for facilities and campus development on Oct 3.

Bellamy told the News that the University’s standard contract agreement states that construction managers should afford preference to New Haven residents. He added that 20 percent of new hires should come from the city in the event that a subcontractor increases its workforce for a project. Bellamy did not respond to multiple requests for

BY NICOLE RODRIGUEZ STAFF REPORTER

After capping o a 13-year coaching career at Yale, men’s heavyweight crew head coach Steve Gladstone will retire at the culmination of the 2022-23 season.

Gladstone began his illustrious tenure at Yale in 2010 after previously coaching at Princeton, Harvard, University of California, Berkeley, Brown, the U.S. National Team and the California Rowing Club. At the onset of his career with the Bulldogs, Gladstone had coached 37 lightweight and heavyweight boats to different championships and national titles. Since Gladstone came to New Haven, Yale heavyweights have captured three national championships, six EARC titles and for the first time in 26 years, swept the river at the Yale-Harvard Regatta.

“I consider it an honor and a privilege to work closely with Steve, a proven coaching legend and inspiring leader,” Director of Athletics Vicky Chun told Yale Athletics in a press release. “He has brought Yale’s Heavyweight Crew program and every program under him to national and global success and has been instrumental in the growth of the sport. In his career, Steve has

After fruitful careerer, Gladstone will retire in 2023

IN YALE HISTORY, 1915. Sophomore, junior, and senior students vote on proposal of a full Student Council to replace the exisiting Senior Council. They will lead class elections, social and academic events on campus.

SEE CONSTRUCTION PAGE 4 According to administrators, Yale constantly communicates with its contractors / Tim Tai, Photography Editor

Visiting students noted feeling distant from their residential colleges / Yale Daily News

“If his neck is broke don’t take it as a joke”

On Juneteenth, a day meant to memorialize the freedom of enslaved people in the United States, Randy Cox, a Black New Havener, was paralyzed in police custody. His paralysis has sparked a city-wide conversation on policing as well as pleas of accountability and justice from Cox’s family. The five cops involved are facing up to 18 months in prison while the city and cops involved might also be on the hook for up to $100 million in a civil settlement.

Photos and words by Yash Roy Staff Reporter

Christmas, culture, capitalism and Christ

The recent column, “An atheist’s ode to Christmas,” concludes, in part, this way: “Christmas was never entirely a Christian holiday. At its best, it is an exercise in tolerance, multiculturalism and the ability to lay down our di erences and bridge the no man’s land that sometimes seems to stretch out between us.” So much in the article is true and valid — the day of Christmas’s celebration based in pagan Roman beliefs, its current celebration informed by Germanic traditions, among other points. I don’t disagree with the author’s understanding of Christmas in the first sense as a shallow and temporarily powerful unifying force in our culture, a gaudy and tinsel-wrapped thing — but Christmas is not, at its best and at its core, a celebration of cultures and a way to avoid conflict until January. I have two points of disagreement with the writer. Christmas is important to many practicing Christians. And an attachment to religion is not inherently divisive.

The season brings people together, it does promote good cheer, and in a trivial way can motivate people to lay down their arguments for a while and enjoy time with their loved ones. But the celebration of Christ’s birth itself is truly the “reason for the season,” for many people — despite becoming something di erent entirely on a societal level, and even though he probably wasn’t born on Dec. 25.

Christmas is sacred to Christians, not only because they believe that Jesus is God but also because it identifies Jesus with humanity. Quaint Nativity scenes aside, the Christmas story is as follows: Jesus was born to a very young and terrifi ed woman with her worried husband, in a fi lthy stable, in a violent time period under an oppressive Roman regime and yet another threatening ruler — Herod the Great. That is a rough summary of The Gospel of Matthew, 1:18-2:23 and Luke 2. Christians believe he is the Son of God, and his birth into a broken world sends a hopeful message: Jesus desires to be in the midst of broken people – ultimately for the salvation of all people. This season is a time for Christians to remember that — and worship God for it. The uniting element of Christmas is the fact that humanity has one representative to God through Jesus, not merely the trappings of a festive time. There’s a deep hope in God that inspires the joy of this season. Christmas, at its core, is simply not about multiculturalism. The unspoken and spoken values of the Christmas season aren’t broadly concerned with high-

lighting other religious or cultural celebrations like Hanukkah or Kwanzaa — it’s about capitalism more than anything. The American Christmas culture cares more about selling stu than promoting global citizenship and cultural awareness. Isn’t that true across the board in America, outside of the Christmas season?

Nearly everything America gets its hands on turns into a “multicultural capitalist extravaganza,” and is molded and adapted to the cultural moment. Apart from contemporary religious and cultural traditions outside of Christianity, people simply don’t take this time to emphasize Christmas’s roots in the pagan worship of Saturn or Germanic tradition. Those are certainly interesting, but not at all central. Moreover, the author themself champions a multicultural and tolerant emphasis — then goes on to discount Christianity, with its 2,000 years of spiritual and intellectual traditions, as a legitimate reason to celebrate Christmas.

In addition, I understand that the author doesn’t care for the Christian message and wants to engage in the super-fun and comforting season of Christmas without acknowledging its namesake. There’s nothing wrong with that on an individual level. To talk about the essence of the holiday itself as though it were empty of that meaning for everyone, however, is wrong, as is the suggestion that recognizing the birth of Christ during Christmas strips the season of its joy and inspires conflict. For Christians, the unifying force of Christmas is built on the celebration of Christ as the divine representative for everyone, of all backgrounds. Christianity, more in core teaching than its current widespread practice, is all about unity.

Christmas as a cultural practice isn’t about Jesus. Christmas as a religious practice is about Jesus. The fact that the holiday is equally celebrated in a nonreligious manner does not subtract from its meaning to Christians on a theological level. Moreover, it doesn’t impose on non-Christians by simply existing.

Like the author, I also want peace, harmony and cooperation in what feels like a no-man’s-land of opinions — but I think there is a unity stronger and deeper than a temporary ceasefire.

MITCHELL TYLER is a junior in Grace Hopper College. He can be reached at mitchell.tyler@yale.edu .

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Who Benefits from AntiLGBTQ Hate?

On Tuesday, the News published a letter by Je Cieslikowski ’22, dismissing the Editorial Board’s still-unanswered demand that Yale stop providing campus platforms to anti-LGBTQ hate groups and adopt a “strong and clear stance” in defense of its queer students. Cieslikowski tells us that refusing hate groups a campus platform will “perpetuate anti-LGBT hate,” backfiring against the interests of queer students. If not confronted with hateful propaganda at Yale events, Cieslikowski suggests, queer students will avoid this vital opportunity to develop counterarguments and personal resilience.

Everyone has the right to speak their mind in the public square. But a commitment to free speech does not require every discredited or hateful idea to be endlessly litigated in Yale’s halls. Not everyone has a right to a speaking platform at an Ivy League university. Black students don’t need Yale events hosting the Ku Klux Klan to learn “the ability to refute hateful rhetoric.” Jewish students’ intellectual pursuits don’t call for Yale to platform neo-Nazis. As Yale’s Office of LGBTQ

Resources detailed on Tuesday, our queer students already face an ever-rising onslaught of “anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, misinformation, and incidents of hate bias.” The claim that these students are edified when Yale gives anti-LGBTQ hate groups a megaphone for their “violent ideological beliefs” is dangerous, and dangerously false.

Cieslikowski attempts to deflect our negative attitudes away from anti-LGBTQ hate groups, and onto queer students, whom he presents as emotionally fragile censors needing to toughen up. We should ask who benefits, not only from platforming the groups propagating antiLGBTQ hate, but also from this rhetorical move. Cieslikowski’s blame-shifting strategy is not novel. In the 19th century, anti-abolitionists like Yale alumnus John Calhoun argued that freeing enslaved Blacks would make them “deaf and dumb, blind, idiots, and insane.”

In the 20th century, misogynists declared that allowing women into higher education would destroy their bodies and marriages. Now, in the 21st century, anti-trans activists — such as Florida governor Ron DeSan-

tis ’01 — describe life saving health care for transgender youth as “chemical castration.” Today, we are watching the violent outcomes of this and similar genocidal speech unfold in real time.

Yale cannot have it both ways. A commitment to protecting the basic human rights of Yale’s queer students is incompatible with continuing to give groups like Alliance Defending Freedom a platform to spread hate. This hate is especially loud in the face of Yale’s strategic communication silence when asked to explicitly defend LGBTQ rights and oppose anti-LGBTQ violence. The administration’s silence does not uphold free speech, but rather signals complicity with organized political campaigns to devalue and destroy queer lives.

YARROW DUNHAM isAssociate Professor of Psychology

ROBIN DEMBROFF is Assistant Professor of Philosophy

BEN GLASER is Associate Professor of English

YARROW DUNHAM is Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Censorship only perpetuates anti-LGBT hate.

Late last Tuesday night, the News Editorial Board rightfully published a piece condemning anti-LGBT hate in the wake of the Club Q shooting in Colorado. Unfortunately, the Board severely erred with its suggested remedy: censorship.

The Board called on Yale to censor divisive speakers by refusing them a platform on campus, going so far as to say the University has an “ethical responsibility” to do so. “What message is Yale sending to its students, especially its queer students,” the Board asks, “when it amplifies and creates spaces for individuals who foster hate, division and violence?” As a gay alumnus of 2022 and advocate for civil liberties, I fervently disagree with the Board.

I work at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) –– an organization dedicated to defending the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought. Still, I admit that arguments to deplatform hateful speakers are appealing and continue to give me pause on occasion. Nonetheless, I believe these arguments are mistaken. Below, I present some of the most compelling defenses of deplatforming and explain why they are misguided.

“Nothing is to gain from hosting a controversial speaker, but everything is to lose”

A Yale lecture hall will never be the most effective platform for manipulative hate mongers–Not that “hate” is clearly identifiable, nor that the speakers coming to campus are obviously “hateful” according to any consensus; “hate” might merely be ideas the Board doesn’t like. Students attend Yale to learn how to think critically and defend their ideas. Unless students believe their views against “conversion therapy, the criminalization of homosexuality, the mandatory sterilization of transgender people, and the … links of homosexuality to pedophilia” cannot withstand rigorous debate, they should allow controversial speakers on campus and subsequently rebut them. I happen to believe each one of these views is easy to refute.

Furthermore, the ability to refute hateful rhetoric is an absolutely paramount skill for activists. While the Board strives to eradicate hate from Yale through censorship, its members will find their censorious attitudes quite unpro-

ductive outside Yale, where the First Amendment bars censorship.

Finally, the attention garnered from shouting down or deplatforming speakers, far from silencing unfavorable views, gives those views a far bigger platform than the scheduled talk would have provided. Sometimes, the best protest against hateful rhetoric is to ignore it.

“Hateful speech victimizes minority students”

That is the whole idea of it, right? Indeed, antagonizing minorities is often the goal of hateful speakers. Yet, hateful rhetoric often has the opposite effect. Despite a momentary shock or feeling of hurt upon hearing an incendiary message, I imagine very few Yalies would retreat for long. No, Yalies get pissed off. We march and outnumber the hateful. We don’t lose our “personhood” as the Board suggests; we espouse pride in our identities. To put it another way, calling me the f-slur is the worst thing a homophobe could do for his cause.

What I describe is the theory of antifragility: Just as a person’s immune system grows stronger by exposure to pathogens, a student grows by responding to stressors such as inflammatory rhetoric. Certainly, too strong an attack can wreak havoc on any antifragile system. Accordingly, perhaps the strongest counter to my antifragile argument is the fact LGBT people attempt suicide at a far higher rate than the general population. Speech that makes LGBT people question their worth undoubtedly increases suicidal ideation. Despite the pernicious tendency of such speech, however, its ultimate impact depends largely on the listener’s attitude.

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For my first few years at Yale, I accepted the idea that any idea which challenged my life as a gay man victimized me. In doing so, I let it. My attitude created a self-fulfilling prophecy: I was miserable and clinically depressed. I finally overcame that depression, in large part, by realizing that I was not a victim –– at least, I didn’t need to act like one. Although hateful speech certainly does victimize minorities in some tangible way, the extent to which it affects us is primarily up to us. By calling to remove controversial speakers from campus, the Board furthers the notion that LGBT people are victims and ought to act like victims. Advocating that LGBT people should live like victims helps the bigot

succeed at antagonizing us.

“Harmful tendency”

“The logic is simple,” the Editorial Board writes. “[T]he more negative light is shown upon the LGBTQ community, the more likely queer folk are to suffer from violent transgressions.” Although the Board makes a bit of a jump in logic here, I embrace the fact that even words that do not call for violence can influence those who commit violence. As former ACLU president Nadine Strossen writes, “We cherish speech precisely because of its unique capacity to influence us, both positively and negatively.”

Certainly, far fewer people would believe in “groomer” conspiracy theories if politicians never talked about them; and the more people that buy into unsubstantiated theories about queer people, the more likely a misguided person will commit an act of violence. However, the suppression of those views by a handful of elite universities would not lead to the Board’s desired outcome. These viewpoints will promulgate whether Yale provides a stage or not.

In fact, the refutation that Yale students provide to these speakers’ arguments is perhaps the greatest check on that speech: in the same way a thesis is strengthened by refuting counterarguments, a social justice cause is furthered not by ignoring contrary views and pretending they don’t exist, but by refuting them forcefully. It is human tendency to want the forbidden fruit; but no one wants a demonstrably rotten apple.

I fear that in calling for censorship of speech it does not like the Editorial Board inadvertently enhances the rise of anti-LGBT hate in our country. Deplatforming disfavored speakers usually provides their views with more attention, and their ostracism lets them play the victim.

Much more than censorship, the efficacious strategy to eradicate anti-LGBT sentiments is to use the exact same stage as the speaker –– the one that, according to the Editorial Board, is so symbolically powerful –– to prove those views wrong.

JEFF CIESLIKOWSKI ‘22 graduated from Franklin College this past May with a B.S. in Political Science and Physics. Since graduating, he has worked as a Research Associate at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression in Washington, DC. Contact him at je .cieslikowski@yale.edu .

Understanding Yale’s hiring goals for New Haven residents

comment on whether the News had regularly met this goal.

“When you’re in a certain area … you want to make sure that you know, that that local community gets benefit from that you know, that’s just part of being a good neighbor, good citizen,” Bellamy said. “And so we were very clear in contracts. You know, the … certain percentages of diverse vendors or local vendors of whatever, we typically put that in our contract.”

The University’s contractors, which manage campus projects, are responsible for hiring their own construction workers. Currently, contractors on major Yale construction projects include the Turner Construction Company and Gilbane Company.

Neither contractor responded to multiple requests for comment on their direct and subcontractor-based hiring practices for New Haven residents, as well as a request to provide the percentage of New Haven hires.

Yale’s 2019 agreement stemmed from intense scrutiny from the two unions, New Haven Rising and other community members who expressed dissatisfaction with earlier unmet hiring goals for campus and construction jobs. Four years earlier, the University told the New Haven Independent that its goal was to hire 25 percent New Haven residents to work on the then-ongoing construction of Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray colleges; after the completion of the projects, the News

reported that only about 12 percent of workers came from the Elm City.

“Yale’s large construction projects should generate more opportunities for New Haven’s low-income neighborhoods, and hitting local hiring goals for construction projects is vital to transforming Yale’s development into opportunities for the city,” Abby Feldman, an organizer with the social justice advocacy group New Haven Rising, told the News.

Ernest Pagan, Council Representative for the Carpenters Local 326 union, said that a 25 percent New Havener hiring goal was included in the union’s project labor agreement with the Turner Construction Company for the current 100 College St. construction project, which will create a new home for the The Faculty of Arts and Science’s Department of Psychology, the School of Medicine’s Department of Neuroscience and the Wu Tsai Institute.

“We are able to give a lot of young men and women in New Haven Career opportunities with this agreement in place,” Pagan wrote to the News. “It would be catastrophic if we didn’t have that partnership going forward.”

According to administrators, Yale constantly communicates with its contractors to ensure they follow through with the University’s hiring goals.

“We are committed to working with contractors and companies that hire diversely and hire from the New Haven community,” Salovey wrote in an email to the News. “We are in regular contact

with contractors and companies to make sure they understand this commitment.”

Following its failure to meet the 2015 hiring goal during the construction of Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray colleges, the University cited the need for a variety of workers with specialized construction skills as a source of challenge. Yale, in the 2019 agreement, promised to work with Local 35 to create a licensed mechanical and electrical trade training program for residents to address the skills gap. In November 2021, Yale reported that eleven people were apprentices in the training program and set to graduate from it in 2024.

Additionally, Yale works extensively with New Haven Works, a local organization that connects residents with employment opportunities, to find new hires within the city. The organization has created a “Construction Pipeline” initiative to provide residents with jobs under contractors. It is also engaged in a partnership agreement to prioritize hiring residents from the Dwight and Hill neighborhoods to work on the renovation of 101 College Street., which the University is involved in.

Still, Yale’s continued silence on whether it has truly made progress toward meeting the 20 percent goal has frustrated some activists. Feldman emphasized that the University must follow through with its promises and goals to truly build an equitable relationship with the city, especially after New Haven has his -

torically suffered from decades of “segregated development” worsened by Yale’s exemption from paying property taxes.

“Yale is our city’s largest employer and it has a role to play in helping New Haven overcome this unjust history,” Feldman wrote. “While the University has recently made small steps in the right direction, it could be doing much more and should act with more urgency. Instead, we are still stuck in a situation where the University has failed on major hiring commitments, and the city

is still subsidizing the University through a massive tax break.”

Yale’s hiring goal for its privately-managed projects attempts to echo principles of the project labor agreements built into construction projects funded by the city, which require that New Haven residents comprise at least 25 percent of the workforce.

New Haven Works was founded in 2013.

Contact MEGAN VAZ at megan.vaz@yale.edu and WILL PORAYOUW at will.porayouw@yale.edu .

Merit scholarship soon possible for Ivy League

ADMISSIONS FROM PAGE 1

In 1945 — nine years before the league was founded — the presidents of the eight Ivy League schools signed the first Ivy Group agreement, in which they decided to collectively not offer any athletic scholarships.

“The members of the Group reaffirm their prohibition of athletic scholarships,” the presidents of the eight schools wrote of their football teams, as part of the first Ivy Group Agreement in 1945. “Athletes shall be admitted as students and awarded financial aid only on the basis of the same academic standards and economic need as are applied to all other students.”

Since 1954, the university presidents extended the agreement — which held that athletic proficiency would not affect admissions decisions — to all sports. Under this standard, student athletes must demonstrate the same academic qualifications as all other admitted students.

In the late 1950s, The Overlap Group — which included the eight Ivy Leagues along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — jointly agreed that they would not attempt to outbid each other for talented students. They determined a special formula to calculate financial aid offers, different from Congressionally-derived standards that most universities employed at the time.

In 1991, the Department of Justice brought an antitrust suit against The Overlap Group. The Ivies all settled, and MIT followed suit after a district court ruled in the DOJ’s favor.

In 1992, Congress carved out a temporary exemption in antitrust law. Per the exemption, schools were allowed to coordinate financial aid policies if they admitted all students on a “need-blind” basis — which means none of them could consider an applicant’s financial need in their admissions decisions.

In 1994, Congress passed the Improving America’s Schools Act. Section 568 of the act extended and broadened the temporary exemption. Congress has consistently renewed the exemption for the past 28 years. On Sept. 30, however, it expired.

The 568 Presidents Group, initially a collective of 28 universities that now includes 17, developed in the exemption’s name. Following the tradition of The Overlap Group, the 568 Presidents Group members share the same “consensus methodology” to calculate financial aid packages.

In January, legal firms representing five students who attended several schools in the 568 Presidents Group filed a lawsuit arguing that members of the group — which the suit calls the “568 Cartel” — are not

truly need-blind. Only nine of the schools, excluding Yale, were initially named as directly practicing need-conscious admissions. Then in an amended complaint from February, all 17 schools were accused of factoring familial financial circumstances into admissions decisions by considering donor gifts in standard admissions as well as financial means in waitlist and transfer admissions.

“Yale’s financial aid policy is 100% compliant with all applicable laws,” wrote Karen Peart, the University’s interim vice president of communications. Peart offered the News the same comment on Jan. 10, when the lawsuit was initially filed.

Scholarship policies

The plaintiffs essentially accuse the universities of price-fixing. The lawsuit alleges that the Presidents Group colluded to limit competition by offering the same level of financial aid, therefore maintaining artificially high prices. Under this argument, students pay more than they would without university collaboration.

The expiration of the antitrust exemption in section 568 means that the Ivy League can no longer make a group decision on merit aid. Collectively withholding merit scholarships from students — including from student athletes — could lead to legal repercussions.

Speaking of the University’s broader policy not to offer merit-based aid, Peart called the choice to award financial aid based on financial need “the simplest and most egalitarian way” to support undergraduate students.

She added that the Yale Office of Undergraduate Financial Aid remains “committed to its mission of making a Yale College education affordable, for everyone,” and emphasized the University’s core values of affordability, equity and access.

“Yale is proud to be one of only a small handful of American institutions that guarantee to meet the full demonstrated financial need of all students, regardless of citizenship or immigration status,” Peart wrote.

Under the current Yale policy, Peart said Yale is “proud” to meet demonstrated financial aid of all students.

Though Yale meets 100 percent of students’ demonstrated financial need, that calculation is based on collaborative financial aid formulas among the Presidents Group. For some students, potential academic, athletic or other merit scholarships at other schools may offer them more money — and, thus, a lower financial burden — than the Yale-ascribed evaluation of financial need.

When Kanga was going through the college admissions process, she

applied to seven schools. She submitted her Yale application through the University’s early action program, as she already knew Yale was her topchoice school.

Kanga received merit scholarships to the value of a couple of thousand dollars from several state schools she had applied to. Nevertheless, for her, Yale remained the ideal choice. The decision was not predicated on the “slight cost reduction” she would have received in merit aid, but instead, about whether to go to a considerably cheaper in-state public school or a more expensive outof-state private school.

“If I were looking at two comparable schools, and one was giving a few extra thousand, that incentive could make a difference,” Kanga said. “But the difference between Yale and the schools that were offering merit was considerable enough that the smaller scholarships I had received didn’t matter very much in the decision that my family and I made.”

Other undergraduate programs ranked in the top 20 of the U.S. News Rankings, such as at Vanderbilt University and Rice University, offer full merit scholarships. For some students, the comparable level of prestige among Yale and other top-20 schools can mean that the merit scholarships make all the difference.

Kanga described herself as “wholly supportive” of all efforts to reduce tuition, so she is in favor of Yale offering any additional financial aid, including merit scholarships. She expressed reservations, however, regarding how the University would decide who to disseminate merit awards to as well as the possibility that opening up merit offerings would reduce existing needbased awards.

“When the application process is so rigorous, how do you figure out who deserves merit and who doesn’t? And if they have a set amount of aid they’re willing to offer, I wouldn’t want merit-based assistance to reduce the need-based assistance that they offer,” Kanga said. “But even aside from the conversation of merit-based aid, let’s just reduce tuition altogether.”

With need-based financial aid, the final cost of attendance increases in concurrence with a family’s annual income. For some students, this can mean that Yale ends up cheaper than their in-state school. For others, like Kanga, this is not necessarily the case.

At Yale, families in the $200,000 to $250,000 annual income range have a median net cost of $42,964, based on financial aid data for the class of 2023.

“[Yale is] extremely fortunate to attract students with exceptional talents and abilities — along with great academic strength — without needing to add additional enticements in

the form of athletic or merit scholarships,” Peart wrote.

Peart noted that all students admitted to Yale College add “meaningful contributions” to Yale and its surrounding communities.

While no hearing was held in advance of the exemption’s September expiry, Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Mike Lee (R-UT) publicly spoke out against the exemption.

“As a result of the Exemption, anticompetitive agreements, often between Ivy League universities, have impeded hundreds of thousands of students’ ability to receive competitive financial awards while faced with skyrocketing education costs,” Rubio and Lee wrote in an August letter.

While the Ivies now cannot make a collective decision, the schools may still individually decide to continue withholding merit or athletic scholarships from students.

A closer look at athletic scholarships

The competition argument also applies to athletes. Some Ivy league student athletes noted that the inflation in costs of attendance harms low- and middle-income athletes in particular.

The eight Ivy League universities are the only schools of the 350 in NCAA’s Division I to not offer athletic scholarships. All other Division I and Division II schools offer athletic awards.

A new league-wide decision on athletic scholarships could mirror the NCAA Division 1 policies, according to lawyers Alan Cotler and Robert Litan LAW ’77 GRD ’87, who wrote a July 2021 article addressing the future of the League. At the moment, Division I allocates athletic awards differently based on sports. For headcount sports, a set number of athletes receive full athletic scholarships, while for equivalency sports, coaches distribute available funds among players.

The National College Players Association declared a victory for college athletes after the “unjust exemption” expired in a Sept. 30 press release. In the press release, four Ivy League athletes underscored the importance of athletic awards, with some disclosing the financial burden they faced, despite receiving financial aid from their university.

Brandon Sherrod ’16, a former Yale basketball player, spoke to the News about the potential of athletic awards at the Ivy League and the benefits it would offer current student-athletes.

“I think access to an Ivy League education should be provided to anyone who has the capability of attending,” Sherrod said. “I feel like the cost — however much or however little — can be prohibitive at

times, and there certainly is enough money between Yale’s endowment, donors, boosters, societies and alumni to have scholarship opportunities for athletes who fit the bill.”

Sherrod explained that even though he did not suffer financial hardships during his time at Yale, he would have appreciated graduating without any debt. This would have been the case if he had attended a university with athletic awards.

Given Yale’s generous financial aid policies, Sherrod added that one of the only disadvantages of playing in the Ivy League is the “lack of specialized support,” which is usually provided at Division I schools.

“A lot of the time, paying for school is a deterrent because people don’t have the money to pay or would rather have a clean slate when they are done with school and have it for free.” Sherrod said. “ In some cases, for really good players there are incentives — where boosters or other folks might want to help support either you or your family — based on your athletic ability.”

While, for some student athletes — as with other students, like Kanga — total costs can exceed their financial aid awards, these students often value the academic opportunities offered at Ivy League schools and factor them into their ultimate decision to commit.

“There is a certain uniqueness in the education here at Yale that the fact that there was a lack of an athletic scholarship didn’t really influence my decision during my recruitment process,” fencer Helen Tan ’25 and Ivy League representative for the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee told the News. “Therefore, I valued committing to a University that could provide both academic and athletic opportunities that aligned with my aspirations as a student-athlete — a factor that, in my mind at the time, was above all else.”

In an email to the News, women’s golfer Ashley Au ’24 and communications director for the SAAC echoed Tan’s sentiments. Au wrote the lack of athletic award was a “factor” of consideration during her recruiting process, but ultimately she “knew that [being] a student-athlete at Yale was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up, even if I couldn’t get an athletic scholarship to attend.”

Yale Athletics Administration directed requests for comment to Peart. Yale’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions declined due to ongoing litigation. The Ivy League did not respond to requests for comment.

Contact ANIKA SETH at anika.seth@yale.edu and NICOLE RODRIGUEZ at nicole.rodriguez.nr444@yale.edu .

“In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” ALBERT CAMUS FRENCH PHILOSOPHER

The University’s contractors, which manage campus projects, are responsible for hiring their own construction workers./ Tim Tai, Photography Editor

Advocates renew push for a Medical Civil Rights Act in Connecticut

driven to a police station in a van without seat belts after being arrested for weapons charges that prosecutors later dropped.

The injuries occurred when the NHPD officer behind the wheel stopped abruptly to avoid a car crash while speeding. Instead of calling for an ambulance, as the law would have dictated, the o cer drove Cox to the police detention center. Ocers then dragged Cox out of the van, processed him in a wheelchair and put him into a holding cell — all without providing or requesting medical care. When Cox repeatedly told the o cers that he could not move, one o cer responded by telling Cox he “just drank too much.”

“We felt that it was something that might have helped Randy in this situation,” Jack O’Donnell, one of Cox’s attorneys said. “After he was slammed against the front wall, and began to say that he can’t move, he thinks his neck is broken. There are a lot more subtle encounters that the police are going to have to be sensitive to. This was as blatant as blatant can be.”

What is the Medical Civil Rights Act?

The Medical Civil Rights Act first grants people an a rmative right to medical care, meaning that police are required to call for EMS when someone is experiencing an emergency medical condition and requests care. Second, it requires police to call for EMS when they see someone experiencing an emergency medical condi-

tion, regardless of whether the person requests it.

Dluhy recalled crafting the legislation of the MCRA with her since-deceased father, Robert Dluhy, after watching footage of Freddie Gray’s arrest by Baltimore Police in 2015.

Gray died in police custody after sustaining injuries while in a police transport vehicle, sparking nationwide protests.

“We had watched the footage of Freddie Gray being dragged to the police wagon. And my father made a comment, which, you know, was very typical of him,” Dluhy said. “He said, ‘He doesn’t need a lawyer. He needed a physician.’ And we contemplated that for a moment.”

After conducting research into what rights to medical care Gray had while being taken into custody, the Dluhys learned that those who came into “police contact” — a term encompassing all interactions with the police, ranging from a tra c stop to arrests — had no a rmative right to request medical care.

The MCRA attempts to remedy that gap.

Such legislation has often been referred to as a “medical Miranda,” a reference to a person’s Miranda rights. Dluhy described the analogy as apt, noting that while someone has right to counsel during a custodial interrogation, they have no parallel right to a clinician.

Julie Ingelfinger, a member of the medical civil rights committee for MCRI, as well as a pediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of pediatrics at Harvard

Medical School, stressed that the legislation could have a significant impact on the ability to provide care for those in police custody.

“For acute trauma that occurs, for example, if someone is thrown against a wall by a police o cer, and is injured and has a spinal cord injury, minutes will make a huge di erence,” Ingelfinger said.

Ingelfinger also listed diabetic ketoacidosis and strokes as instances where the lack of a rapid medical response, with delays of as little as 20 minutes, could lead to fatalities.

Another important part of the legislation, which was highlighted by James Bhandary-Alexander, the legal director of the Medical Legal Partnership at the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School, was that it used the standard of a “prudent layperson” to determine what an emergency medical condition was.

“Oftentimes, when we’re judging police o cer actions we’re looking at the issue of qualified immunity … which tips the scales heavily in favor of police o cers not being held responsible for things like, for example, a reckless disregard of a person’s health emergency,” Bhandary-Alexander told the News. “As a police ocer responding to this, you’re gonna be judged to understand the situation the way anyone else would. And to me, that’s very positive.”

Bhandary-Alexander said that he thought the legislation, if passed, would help alter police mentality from focusing on how to use force to how to best protect the health of the person they were encountering.

Medical civil rights in the Randy Cox case In the case of Randy Cox, had this legislation been in place and followed, he would never have been taken to the detention center for processing. Instead, Cox would have received medical care as soon as he was paralyzed by the sudden stop of the o cer driving the transport van.

“From all I know about Mr. Cox, I think his treatment was delayed,” Ingelfinger said. “It could have made a huge di erence for Mr. Cox.”

Bhandary-Alexander agreed that the proposed legislation seemed applicable in this situation, especially as it focused police attention on the health of the people they’re in contact with. He was also quick to emphasize that the incident that paralyzed Cox was still very much a crime, even without this particular legislation.

NHPD Chief Karl Jacobson told the News that they had added medical Miranda procedures to officer policy and training, following other policy changes the department had made in response to paralyzing Cox.

“I’m totally on board with it, ” Jacobson said. “It’s something that you wouldn’t think that you have put in there, but it’s in light of what’s happened.”

Jacobson also said that he “1000 percent” supported Looney’s plan to pass the Medical Civil Rights Act next year.

Next steps for the Medical Civil Rights Act Looney hopes that the second time will be the charm for shep-

herding the legislation through the General Assembly.

“I certainly intend to introduce that again this year,” Looney said. “The Randy Cox case exactly points out why it’s necessary.”

O’Donnell also expressed hope that the legislation would pass and speculated that either Cox or his family might testify in support of the bill. He also mentioned conversations he had about naming the bill after Cox.

Dluhy and MCRI hope Connecticut is just the first step in expanding this type of legislation to cover people nationwide. A similar bill has also been introduced in Massachusetts, and Dluhy expressed optimism that after passing such laws in a few states, they could pursue a Medical Civil Rights Act on the federal level.

“It’s staggering when you consider how many lives would have been saved by a very clear statutory duty to provide immediate emergency medical care,” Dluhy said. “So even though it seems like a very simple bill, and it’s a couple paragraphs, it will be a landmark change.”

Nationwide, Dluhy estimated that such legislation could save hundreds of lives, noting how over 1,000 people are fatally shot by police every year, and that most data on police violence is incomplete and does not consider non-fatal incidents or incidents that are not immediately fatal.

According to the Department of Justice, 61.5 million people had at least one contact with police in 2018.

NATHANIEL ROSENBERG at nathaniel.rosenberg@yale.edu .

Head Coach Steve Gladstone set to retire in 2023

achieved more success than most could dream of having in a lifetime. He is truly the Most Interesting Man in the World.”

Gladstone’s 50-year coaching career boasts 14 Intercollegiate Rowing Association National Championships — an accomplishment achieved by only one other collegiate coach. Additionally, he has received the US Rowing Medal and earned several Coach of the Year honors from the IRA, Ivy League and the EARC. Gladstone has served on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Amateur Oarsmen, as a US. Olympic team selector and member of the Men’s Olympic Rowing Committee.

Along with the accolades, Gladstone has forged meaningful relationships, which he describes to be “at the absolute core of the

work.” To him, the most rewarding aspect of coaching has been “contributing to the transformation of human beings.”

“It’s been an honor and a pleasure to work under him and learn what it takes to be at the top level of anything,” Harry Keenan ’24, the first varsity coxswain said.

“He has this quote: ‘You don’t pretend to row, and I don’t pretend to coach.’ I think what separates him [from other coaches] is his ability to be honest. He is a phenomenal leader … the way he can inspire people is unparalleled in my eyes.”

Keenan, who has coxed the Australian national rowing team, added that though he has been blessed with great coaches throughout his career, he would “not even compare [Gladstone] to them.” Keenan said that many rowers ultimately come to Yale to get the opportunity to work with Gladstone.

Current associate head coach Mike Gennaro, who has been at Yale since 2016, will succeed Gladstone.

Keenan noted that even though Gladstone is retiring, Gennaro is “unbelievable,” he will do a “fantastic job” and “nothing will change.”

“I feel extraordinarily blessed to have found this work,” Gladstone said in a Yale Athletics farewell montage. “I feel incredibly fortunate that I was given certain capabilities that allow me to do it and do it e ectively. I did not consciously study the art of coaching — and it is an art. It came to me. For that, I feel very blessed. I feel incredibly grateful. And I’m not going to stop coaching.”

Gladstone began his rowing career in high school in 1960 and continued throughout his time at Syracuse University.

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

International exchange students pushed o campus amid housing shortage

the News that he was residing in a dormitory hall alongside students from Albertus Magnus College, one of the three institutional options o ered to students.

Those who requested to stay at the Omni Hotel are required to pay an extra $1,270 for room and board if they are staying for one semester, and $5,960 for a full academic year. Other students who won a housing lottery were able to stay at Harkness Hall, which serves as graduate student housing.

According to an email sent to Y-VISP students which was obtained by the News, students were informed about the housing shortage on July 6 — only one month before the semester began.

“We know that this is a lot to deal with, but we believe that these options will work well, and of course you will all be a liated with a residential college,” the email read.

Yale-NUS student Billy Tran, who is staying at the University for the fall semester, told the News that, while students were provided with the option of declining to participate in the program following the new housing circumstances, by that time, many had already applied for visas and registered for courses — and as such, “everyone just had to accept the fact that it wasn’t on campus.”

While Cho was assigned to Davenport College, he feels that it is “di cult to be a part of” his residential college since he does not live on campus. He said that he personally does not attend any of its events.

However, that has not stopped him from taking on “extra work” to try to integrate himself within the Yale and New Haven bubble, including by getting involved at the Yale Herald and St. Thomas More’s Church.

“I feel more a nity towards the other organizations I’m in than the residential college,” Cho said. “Like, I’m lucky I can feel a nity towards at least something here. But Davenport is probably just not one of them.”

Cho is not alone. Other visiting students noted feeling distant from their residential colleges.

Mary Yao, who hails from the University of Hong Kong and is part of Timothy Dwight College, similarly told the News that she felt no “special connection” to her residential college, except that she has swipe access to its facilities. She also lives in the Albertus Magnus dorms.

Tran agreed with her sentiment, saying that it’s been “tough” to join those spaces.

“It’s been a mess,” Yao said. “It’s not only us. I know it’s been a mess even for [Yale] students. I’ve heard things from people saying that

juniors or seniors can’t live in some colleges … so I think it’s just in general that it’s a mess.”

Yao’s major concern is the distance. As a science-oriented student, she often takes the shuttle to Science Hill, but says that they can often be unreliable. Walking from her Albertus Magnus dorm, Yao said, takes thirty minutes, so she often rides her bike.

After contacting a dean, Yao said that she was able to figure out housing arrangements in her residential college next semester — but that not all students were likely to be able to do the same.

According to administrators, the housing shortage is only a bump in the road.

Nilanjana Pal, who serves as director of the Centre for International & Professional Experience at Yale-NUS College, one of the universities involved in the program, told the News that Yale-NUS was working with the University to manage exchange students’ housing logistics.

“Our students at Yale have been housed in a mix of on and o campus housing,” Pal wrote in an email to the News. “We have been working with our colleagues at Yale to ensure that our students have safe and suitable housing options during their time at Yale.”

But in spite of the dissolution of the Yale-NUS partnership, the exchange student program isn’t

ending anytime soon. Pal told the News that Yale-NUS would continue to work with the University on Y-VISP.

“We expect to send students from Yale-NUS to Yale every semester and look forward to continuing this programme for all of our cohorts,” Pal told the News.

Last year, Yale-NUS President Joanne Roberts promised to expand spots in the study abroad program for Yale-NUS students to study for a semester in the United States, from 16 to 30.

But according to the Y-VISP website, the housing shortage makes it “unlikely” that the program will be able to accept applicants through the 2023-2024 school year.

Dean of Yale College Pericles Lewis told the News that the abnormally large sophomore class this year has led to increased housing demand this year, as sophomores are required to live on campus. This, he said, has led students from Yale-NUS, along with students on other international exchanges, visiting on exchange for the fall semester to have to be housed in three to four locations including graduate student housing, rented apartments o campus and the Omni Hotel. At one point, Lewis said, the University hoped to use Arnold Hall as housing for visiting students, but it was instead allocated as isolation housing.

However, Lewis said there are a lot of students graduating in December, likely leading to more housing available in the spring semester. Senior Associate Dean of Strategic Initiatives and Communications Paul McKinley said that there is generally more availability in the spring anyways given that many juniors travel abroad.

Those exchange students from other international universities, who stay for a full year through the Y-VISP program, will keep their housing from the fall in the spring, Lewis said.

“For what it’s worth, some of the Yale-NUS students seem to be enjoying living in an apartment o campus which is not an option in Singapore,” Lewis said.

In the past system, which Lewis said he hopes to return to, some visiting students from Yale-NUS stayed in the residential colleges, where many of them fill vacancies left by students who study abroad.

Students from The University of Hong Kong, Technológico de Monterrey, Waseda University, Yale-NUS College, Ashoka University, ShanghaiTech and The Chinese University of Hong Kong at Shenzhen are eligible to apply to Y-VISP.

Contact WILL PORAYOUW at will.porayouw@yale.edu and SARAH COOK at sarah.cook@yale.edu .

Contact

“Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.”

SINCLAIR LEWIS AMERICAN WRITER

Gladstone’s 50-year coaching career boasts 14 Intercollegiate Rowing Association National Championships — an accomplishment achieved by only one other collegiate coach / Courtesy of Yale Athletics

Yale researchers establish link between plant evolution and drought resistance SCITECH

BY SELIN NALBANTOGLU STAFF REPORTER

Plants with more complex water transport structures are more resistant to drought conditions, making them more likely to survive and pass this characteristic on to their offspring.

That’s the conclusion Yale researchers have reached after poring over the fossil records of ancient plants that span tens of millions of years.

Earlier this month, a group of University affiliates working with faculty from Bates College, the University of Maine and Haverford College, among other institutions, published a paper on identifying the impact of droughts and drought resistance in determining plant structure over time.

“This study is an excellent example of how a collaborative, multidisciplinary approach can yield novel insights into evolutionary questions,” Jonathan Wilson, an associate professor of environmental studies at Haverford College and an author on the paper, wrote in an email to the News. “Bringing together modeling, physiology and paleontology and integrating their data and methods shed a great deal of light on this period in plant evolution.”

Lead author Martin Bouda GRD ’17, a researcher at the Institute of Botany at the Czech Academy of Sciences, studies the network properties of plant parts such as root systems and how these systems affect water intake of plants. In this paper, he was responsible for conceptualizing the water transport within the plants and building computational models to analyze these hydraulic processes. Craig Brodersen, a professor of plant physiological ecology at the Yale School of the Environment, was the principal investigator for the paper.

According to Brodersen, this new research stems from his team’s previous work on drought tolerance in plants such as grapevines. Previously, they have used new imaging techniques to study the vascular systems of various plants

and the effects of different vascular organization on plant survival in droughts.

Brodersen explained that during extreme drought conditions, plants may accumulate air bubbles in their vascular systems.

“These bubbles block the flow of water from the roots to the leaves,” Brodersen wrote in an email to the News. “One air bubble among the many hundreds to thousands of vessels in a plant might not cause too much harm initially, but these bubbles can spread between vessels wherever there is a connection to an adjacent one. Understanding how the vessel network of a plant is connected can then tell us something about how air bubbles spread, which becomes a greater problem during prolonged drought.”

The researchers used this framework as a guiding question to study the evolution of vascular plants over millions of years, according to Brodersen.

When conducting this research, the team of scientists referenced a collection of images put together over the past century by various paleobotanists. The images depicted xylems, a specialized tissue responsible for transporting water and nutrients, of extinct plants. The fossil record, which spanned approximately 50 million years, gave the researchers an understanding of the arrangement of various vascular systems in plants.

“In this particular case, some of our previous work on the very fine structure of a vessel network got me thinking of the big picture instead: our living plants almost all have a gap in the middle of the network, whereas in the earliest land plants, the network occupied a solid cylinder of tissue,” Bouda wrote in an email to the News. “I built a little simulation to see if embolism spread differently on the two different cross-sections. The results were encouraging and fit in well with Craig’s ongoing work on seedless vascular plants.”

While Brodersen produced the actual microscope images of the networks within the plants the

researchers were studying, Bouda constructed idealized, possible networks to use as comparison cases for the observed networks.

Then, Bouda added, the researchers worked with Wilson to study fossil plants and realized that the fossil plants’ networks were more vulnerable to droughts than those of present-day plants.

“[T]here’s a clear pattern of xylem network shapes starting out with simple forms and becoming more complex,” Brodersen wrote. “Using the arrangement of the conduits within those vessel networks we were able to map out the possble pathways that air bubbles could spread from conduit to conduit. We then compared networks from extinct plants to living relatives today such as ferns and lycophytes.”

Using a computer model, the researchers were able to simulate drought conditions and study the effects of those conditions on various xylem configurations. The results suggested that the xylems of the earliest plants, which were also

the simplest in arrangement, were the most vulnerable to air bubbles during a drought. Plants with a more complicated vascular system outperformed other species during the drought, according to Brodersen.

This paper is the result of interdisciplinary collaboration of experts in mathematical modeling, plant anatomy and paleobotany. The researchers applied current plant water transport theory and experimental work to their own inquiry. Brodersen explained that the team at Yale, including Bouda, developed the computer model and anatomical observations used to test their hypothesis. He added that Wilson served as the paleobotanist who helped “guide the species selection from the fossil record.”

Brodersen explained that this research stems from his laboratory’s collaboration with the plant breeding community. The findings could potentially inform the development of more drought-resistant varieties of plants.

According to Bouda, this paper helps elucidate “something funda-

mental about the structure and function of vascular plants that has been overlooked for a long time.” While the practical applications of the research are not immediately apparent, Bouda hopes that the findings might help diminish the tradeoff between crop yield and drought resistance, which has traditionally been a problem in agriculture.

“I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the paleobotanical fossil record,” Bouda wrote. “A lot of this was completely new to me, and I daresay both Craig and I got pretty excited discovering the variety of vascular forms that evolution had tried out over 400 million or so years. In the end, we found that we had taken a roundabout way to broadly reconstruct the dataset used by F. O. Bower a hundred years ago to show that vascular complexity depends on plant size, and that’s when the final piece of the puzzle snapped into place.”

Xylem comes from the Greek word xylon, meaning wood.

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

Yale undergraduates develop award-winning strategy to prevent gun violence

BY ABEL GELETA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Three Yale undergraduates developed a multi-pronged approach to address the gun violence epidemic in the United States through various community resources and entity synergies, winning the Tulane Health Policy Case Competition and highlighting the potential for combining a youth mentorship program and firearm safety training to mitigate gun violence.

Abe Baker-Butler ’25, Patryk Dabek ’25 and Allie Dettelbach ’25 had the winning plan for reducing firearm homicides among the 41 teams from 22 universities that participated in the THPPC. After analyzing the status quo of gun violence in Opelousas, Louisiana, they created a plan — called Operation Healthy Homefront, or OHH — that integrated an after-school mentoring program and firearms safety instruction led by veterans in these communities.

“Gun violence is such a pressing issue, and it is so under-addressed,” Baker-Butler said. “There are so many common sense solutions attracting broad-based support. We’re happy knowing that we’ve been able to make at least some addition to the policy discussion around gun safety with our proposal, but we’re not done yet.”

The idea focuses on involving at-risk youth and veterans in the strategic development of a viable solution for communities with a high incidence of deaths or injuries from a firearm, while also serving as a mutually beneficial program aimed at providing essential skills and opportunities to youth and employment opportunities for veterans.

Baker-Butler described how his earlier experience with public health work tackling substance abuse in his high school and trying to provide accessible healthcare to low-income senior citizens inspired him to compete in this event. All team members

combined their interests in policy-making, public health and healthcare to produce a novel solution to a pervasive problem in the United States.

The strong collaboration between the three teammates in this competition allowed them to capitalize on each other’s skills and use the competition to gain new knowledge and create something of long-lasting impact.

Dettelbach noted how the team “wanted to think about how [they] could address that problem from a public health angle but also an angle of political feasibility.” This case competition allowed participants to analyze the multiple levels of government to devise solutions that would withstand the political obstacles to reducing gun violence in the United States.

He argued that numerous stakeholders must collaborate to commit enough resources and efforts toward reasonable, effective and sustainable attempts to mitigate the issues diverse populations face.

“We all learned about the policy-making bodies at each of those levels and the organizations that exist at those levels that we can harness to come to this final proposal,” said Dettelbach.

Dabek, along with Butler-Baker. initially brought up the idea to enter this competition with Dettelbach after hearing about it from Howard Foreman, Professor of Diagnostic Radiology, Economics, and Public Health. Dabek spent his summer delivering healthcare as an EMT and establishing a non-profit to improve health conditions in war-ravaged Ukraine. In light of his summer

experiences, he evaluated the public health issues plaguing the United States and accepted the opportunity to participate in this competition.

To comprehend how to advocate for social justice and health equity effectively, Dabek emphasized the importance of policy formation in implementing health equity in diverse communities.

Beyond policy proposal and implementation, all team members highlighted the need to collaborate closely with those communities they look to serve with this plan. Dabek said this proposal was only one step in developing the muchneeded solution to gun violence.

“We don’t forget about the people that we’re actually serving and the issues they’re dealing with, and we want to ensure we are in contact with the commu -

nity and see what the community has to say,” said Dabek.

Baker-Butler recognized that the team is grateful to have won and received recognition from the judges. Still, he said, the solution to the gun violence epidemic requires numerous people to continue thinking and coming up with potential ideas to solve this problem.

Foreman encouraged his students in his Health Economics and Policy course to participate in this competition because the THPCC “was perfectly aligned with the mission of the class” which aims to “prepare students to critically think about actual challenges in society.”

In many cases, Foreman stated, individuals might propose policy solutions and ideas that are “juvenile and naive” and make various suggestions and solutions that are not feasible in implementation.

Foreman highlighted the thoughtful and detailed nature of this team’s proposal.

“Every measure [for judging] that I’d look at … either passed or far exceeded my expectations,” said Foreman. “My expectation for a proposal of this type is to see something that agrees with the law; It’s not basically imagining a world where certain laws don’t exist … It’s not going to demand such enormous resources to be out of the scope of the problem.”

Foreman expressed his desire to witness this proposal be piloted on a small scale, improved and then scaled further to accommodate and assist vulnerable populations. In many ways, these are how programs are kick-started and implemented nationally.

Foreman believes that the students’ passion for this issue, coupled with the ability to gain enough attention and support, could be the catalyst for this proposal to be implemented effectively.

The presentation the winners presented to judges can be viewed at this link.

Contact ABEL GELETA at abel.geleta@yale.edu .

“The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended-and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.”

ROBERT FROST AMERICAN POET

TIM TAI/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Yale faculty has helped in publication of a paper detailing plant structure in determining outcomes during drought conditions.

COURTESY OF SAM RIFKIND-BROWN

Yale students place first for their proposal for reducing gun violence in communities at the Tulane Health Policy Case Competition.

Yale researchers explore potential benefits and risks of telehealth

BY JUAN VELASCO CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

In 2021, about 37 percent of adults in the United States had used telehealth in the prior 12 months, according to the National Center of Health Statistics.

In a paper published on Nov. 30, an assistant Yale professor and two associate Yale professors analyzed the potential opportunities and pitfalls of telehealth, and also provided suggestions for promoting high-quality, equitable and ethical use of it. The study analyzed three ethical considerations: distributive justice, unintended consequences, and autonomy versus beneficence. Among the benefits highlighted by the authors was the increased availability of options for patients.

However, it was also emphasized that there is a risk that telehealth could undermine the quality of care for patients with certain conditions such as valvular disease, among others.

“Cognitive bias may lead many of us to view technological advances as inherently good or positive,” Sarah C. Hull, one of the study’s authors said. “While the intent of telehealth to provide greater convenience and access to patients is certainly laudable, it is important to interrogate the potential impacts of inferior quality or unintended consequences, particularly with respect to vulnerable populations.”

Hull, a Yale assistant professor of cardiology, wrote the study alongside Joyce Oen-Hsiao, associate professor of clinical medicine and director of Cardiac Rehabilitation Services at the Yale-New Haven Hospital Heart & Vascular Center, and Erica S. Spatz, Yale associate professor of cardiology.

It has been documented by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that the use of telehealth is correlated with the degree of urbanization. The authors noted in the paper that telehealth could increase disparities in populations with limited digital access.

To improve the use of telehealth, the authors provided some recommendations, such as incorporat-

ing remote digital diagnostic devices and training patients how to use them. Additionally, it was suggested that the use of this method to deliver health-related services could be used as a complement to, rather than a replacement for, face-to-face visits.

Harlan Krumholz — Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Medicine, Professor in the Institute for Social and Policy Studies of Investigative Medicine and of Public Health, and director of the Yale New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation — agreed.

“The potential of telehealth is immense, as we configure a system

that more fully delivers care when and where the patient prefers, and obviates the inconveniences of the traditional approach,” Krumholz said. “As we embark on this new era, we need to be attentive to how to do telehealth well, cognizant that we do not have the many advantages of seeing a patient in person and employing strategies that minimize the chances that something important has been missed.”

According to Makoto Mori, an Integrated Cardiothoracic Surgery Resident at Yale, the potential of telehealth has been realized in clinical encounters, such as outpatient visits and postoperative follow-up,

especially with patients who live far from the hospital. Regarding physiologic monitoring through the uses of telehealth, he explained that “remote physiologic monitoring (vitals, activity level, etc) has a lot of potential in improving post-acute phase of care but the benefit has not been largely realized outside of the research context.”

Mori also noted a potential risk of telehealth. “It does take away the in-person face-to-face encounters that are often central to physician-patient relationships,” Mori said. “So it needs to be used judiciously. Important conversations like pre-surgical counseling and visits for

patients who are struggling in their clinical course are something that telehealth should not replace.”

According to Hull, the team aims for this study to help foster the evaluation of the benefits and drawbacks of telehealth. She hopes “that our ethical analysis will encourage further research to elucidate both the advantages and limitations of telehealth such that it can be deployed in a thoughtful and evidence-based framework.”

The study was featured in the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.

Contact JUAN VELASCO at juan.velasco@yale.edu .

Study on northern treeshrews reveals e ects of climate change

BY JAMES STEELE CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Research findings on the evolution of northern treeshrews, a small species of mammal, contradict two of the most widely tested and accepted ecogeographical rules.

A study published on Nov. 29 analyzed the northern treeshrew’s evolution over the past 130 years, looking at what it reveals about two major ecogeographical rules: the island rule and Bergmann’s rule.

The island rule describes the tendency for small mammal species to evolve larger body sizes and for large mammal species to evolve smaller body sizes as they migrate to islands. Bergmann’s rule examines the e ects of temperature on body size, stating that animals in environments of higher latitudes with lower temperatures will evolve to have larger than average body sizes relative to other members of their species. Conversely, species in lower latitudes and warmer climates will evolve smaller body sizes.

“This, to my knowledge, is the first time that [a study] shows a change, not just in a slope or strength of [the island rule or Bergmann’s rule], but in a direction,” Virginie Millien said.

Millien, an associate professor at McGill University, was one of the co-authors of the paper. The paper was written by lead author Maya Juman ’20, with co-authors Eric J. Sargis, professor of anthropology, archaeological studies, ecology and evolutionary biology at the School of the Environment; Link E. Olson, a curatorial affiliate in mammalogy at the Yale Peabody Museum and associate professor in the Department of Biology and Wildlife at the University of Alaska; and Millien.

According to Juman, finding cases in which a particular species breaks these ecogeographical rules is not new.

However, discovering the breakage of a rule over time has never been done before. The results of this study show not

just a simple breakage of ecogeographical rules, but a trend towards rule reversal over time.

“What’s unique about [our study] is that we show that same opposite pattern, but we also include time as an element,” Juman said.

The researchers examined 839 different specimens collected over the span of 130 years. The study found that the evolutionary behavior of the northern treeshrew directly contradicted Bergmann’s rule, with treeshrew body sizes decreasing in colder climates farther away from the equator.

In addition, island-dwelling treeshrews were found to adhere to Bergmann’s rule while mainland treeshrews did not. As a result, the team determined that the island rule is maintained at higher altitudes but is broken in latitudes closer to the equator.

“Frankly, I think rules are never always true, but I think this is casting more doubt on them,” Juman said.

According to Juman, for treeshrews, it is possible for a measurable change in body size to form over the course of just 130 years. Juman noted that this is because treeshrew generations form in about one year.

This short time between generations allows for much faster natural selection and adaptation to occur.

Additionally, the research team’s method of body measurement aided their ability to discern change in size. Only the treeshrews’ skeletons and skins were available to survey, so the researchers used the size of the treeshrew skulls as a proxy for the true body size of the animal.

Juman also noted how these findings may be attributable to climate change. According to Juman, climate change is affecting scientists’ understanding of the island rule and Bergmann’s rule because climate change impacts temperature and affects different latitudes in different ways. Over time, the ability to generalize the evolutionary trends of species with these

rules may degrade, and scientists’ “reliance on these rules” might need to be “revisited over time as climate change ramps up,” Juman said.

“What else [other than global warming] could have triggered the reversal [of ecogeographical rules]? … It’s the most sensible explanation,” Millien said.

Though the researchers did not explicitly prove that climate change caused the reversal of these two ecogeographical rules, the data found in the study

regarding the body size changes also correlates with a rise in the effects of global warming.

According to Millien, the rate at which Bergmann’s rule was reversed noticeably increased after the Industrial Revolution. The rate has accelerated even more sharply over the past couple decades.

The researchers also highlighted how crucial museum collections were towards their research. The data set they analyzed included specimens from sixteen different muse-

ums. Without such collections, the researchers recognized that the scientific research would be severely stifled.

“This particular species happens to be the best represented in museum collections … We were lucky to have such an extensive series, both temporally and spatially,” Olson wrote.

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Contact JAMES STEELE at james.steele@yale.edu .

“Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.” OPRAH WINFREY AMERICAN TALK SHOW HOST

CATE ROSER/STAFF ILLUSTRATOR

Yale cardiologists analyzed the practical and ethical considerations of telehealth.

JOY LIAN/CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

A recently published study details the evolutionary breakage of ecogeographical rules as climate change progresses.

NEWS Writer and cartoonist Alison Bechdel visits Yale

BY AVA SAYLOR STAFF REPORTER

Students packed the 53 Wall St. auditorium on Thursday afternoon to hear a talk from Alison Bechdel, the graphic artist and namesake of the Bechdel test.

Bechdel delivered a talk that focused on generational differences through her work using 20th-century poet Adrienne Rich as a touchstone. While on campus, she also participated in a seminar where she spoke about the evolution of her art, the complexities of writing a coming out story and the transmission of cultural history through literature.

“There’s sort of a retrospective understanding that my story has become a node of transmission of a certain branch of queer history, which is kind of cool,” Bechdel told the News. “But you know, that makes me a little nervous. Like, did I get it right? What’s my responsibility here? But I guess anyone writing anything has to grapple with that.”

Professors Ellen Handler Spitz and R. Howard Bloch, who co-teach the Humanities seminar “Love, Marriage, Family: A Psychological Study Through the Arts” — the seminar Bechdel visited — invited Bechdel to campus. The Yale Humanities Program; English department; women’s, gender and sexuality studies program; the History of Art department and the Whitney Humanities Center co-sponsored the event.

Bechdel rose to prominence with the publication of her 2006 graphic-memoir, “Fun Home.” The book centers around Bechdel’s relationship with her father, the events leading up to his death and Bechdel reconciling her own queerness with her father’s closeted sexuality. “Fun

Home” was later adapted into a Tony-winning musical.

Maia Decker ’24 — who, like Bechdel, is a queer writer — attended the event with friends from her creative writing class. She was most excited to hear about Bechdel’s writing process and relationship to her work.

“I was inspired by the manner in which Bechdel transverses the academic and popular world — a task especially difficult for writers,” Decker wrote to the News. “I’m so grateful that we were all able to learn from such a talented writer and a queer elder, the latter of which is not to be taken for granted.”

Bechdel was introduced by Kathryn Lofton, who will serve as acting dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences beginning in January. Lofton spoke about the current censorship of queer literature and Bechdel’s profound influence on queer writers — and also joked about Bechdel’s rejection from Yale.

Lofton detailed a recent personal encounter with the cultural weight of Bechdel’s work. After speaking at Colorado College, she traveled with members of the college’s LGBTQ+ alliance to Club Q, the LGBTQ+ nightclub where a shooter killed 5 people and injured 17 others in November.

On the drive back from the club, one of the students revealed that she was in the process of storyboarding a graphic novel. When Lofton asked whether the student liked Bechdel, the student responded, “Yes, she is everything.”

Everyone in the car, including their previously-silent driver, nodded reverently in agreement.

“For us, the work is never to forget how powerful a thing it is to speak truth at the highest level of its

expression,” Lofton said. “How truly dangerous it is to speak that truth. When it is done, it can break open the world.”

Bechdel’s talk spanned across her 40-year career, using her ongoing connection to 20th-century poet and feminist theorist Adrienne Rich as a touchstone throughout. She described Rich, whose “radical lesbian poetry” shaped Bechdel’s political perspective and aesthetic mission, as one of her greatest influences.

The audience collectively gasped when Bechdel described a personalized rejection letter she got from Rich after submitting a short memoir piece to a lesbian, feminist journal early in her career. Though discouraged, Bechdel continued to write, calling Rich’s letter a “gift.”

Projecting photos of her cartoons onto the auditorium screen, Bechdel recounted her first forays into professional cartooning. She first described her dissatisfaction with the 1980s representation of queer women, which she strived to correct with her comic strip, “Dykes to Watch Out For.” The strip ran for 25 years.

Bechdel then spoke about her graphic memoirs “Fun Home” and “Are You My Mother?,” which focus on her father and mother, respectively. She said she continued to take inspiration from Rich as she used writing to process her life story and understand her parents in a historical context.

“Sometimes the only way to really untie this complicated, traumatic knot would be to not just feel it but to to think it through,” Bechdel said. “When I was younger, I pretty much wrote my parents off as being hopelessly damaged from the repressive era they had grown up in, but as I

wrote about them, I began to gain an appreciation for the extent to which they managed to keep themselves intact in spite of those forces.”

When Bechdel began writing her latest book, “The Secret to Superhuman Strength,” she drew inspiration from a quote, “To study Buddhism is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to be with others.”

Bechdel claimed that her connection to Adrienne Rich had lapsed by this time. However, during a period of writer’s block, she suddenly thought of the phrase “Transcendental Etude” — the title of a poem by rich. The poem’s title was eventually included in the final chapter of “The Secret to Superhuman Strength.”

“The poem brought me back to the days of my youth, of my political and sexual awakening and the clar-

ity of that vision of the world, which did not get muddied by experience,” Bechdel said.

At the event’s conclusion, students were given the opportunity to ask questions and get their books signed.

Bechdel was hesitant to give advice to future generations of writers, but she eventually turned to Rich once more.

“I just think I hate giving advice to people because I don’t like getting advice,” she told the News. “But it makes me think of my rejection letter from Adrienne Rich. It said, ‘Writing is a very long, demanding training. More hard work than luck.’ I think that’s really awesome advice.”

“The Secret to Superhuman Strength” was published in 2021.

Contact AVA SAYLOR at ava.saylor@yale.edu .

Davenport formal canceled mid-event after alcohol smuggling

BY BRIAN ZHANG STAFF REPORTER

Gnomecoming, Davenport College’s annual formal dance, came to an abrupt halt on Friday evening following the discovery of prohibited alcoholic beverages and underage drinking at the venue.

This year’s Gnomecoming, which took place at the 80 Proof

American Kitchen & Bar, divided attendees into two cohorts. First years and sophomores were invited to stay from 10 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. and juniors and seniors were asked to attend between 11:30 p.m. and 1:00 a.m.

The first cohort arrived on time, donning feather boas and 1920s dresses in keeping with the formal’s “Moulin Rouge” theme. But at 11:32

p.m., Davenport students received an email from Co-President of the Davenport College Council Patrick Chappel ’24. In the email, which has been obtained by the News, Chappel asked juniors and seniors to “hold off” on coming to the venue at their designated slot time.

Nine minutes later, Chappel sent another email, with the subject line, “This one hurts.”

“It is with literally the greatest regret that I let you know that Gnomecoming is canceled,” Chappel wrote in the two-sentence email. “To the individuals who snuck alcohol in and exhibited the most ungnomelike behavior… that was so not a slay.”

Meanwhile, first years and sophomores were ushered out by the DCC and venue staff. No upperclassmen were allowed inside afterwards.

Warrington said there “was a lot of screaming and commotion” as staff cleared students from the venue, adding that it would have been helpful for someone to confirm that the event’s cancellation had not been a joke.

“The whole situation could have been managed better… the instructions could have been clearer,” said Sunniva Warrington ’25.

The process for gaining alcoholic drinks at the formal was as follows: students showed their IDs at the entrance and then were given different wristbands. Students over 21 years of age received two drink tickets that could be exchanged at the bar for alcoholic drinks.

Friday night reflected an “irresponsibility” on various fronts, according to both Warrington and Kayla Wong ’25. They emphasized the importance of “trust” when it comes to alcohol consumption at campus events — both among students and between students and the event hosts. They added that they hope that the same mistake does not repeat itself for future recreational events hosted by the University.

Warrington added that it might have been more productive to remove only the individuals involved in the alleged alcohol smuggling, though she understood that the venue could have demanded

the cancellation.

Wong said she felt “disappoint[ed]” and “frustrat[ed]” that many students, especially juniors and seniors, were not able to enjoy their night as planned, adding that she looks forward to receiving a refund or a replacement formal. She called for greater transparency in communication between Davenport leadership and formal attendees.

“DCC has been working to plan this [Gnomecoming] since August, and we were all looking forward to this event,” read a statement that Ella Martinez ‘25, another organizer of the event, wrote on behalf of DCC. “We are incredibly upset that the behavior exhibited at Gnomecoming by certain individuals led to the venue canceling. We are disappointed on behalf of juniors and seniors who missed out on this event, and we are committed to making it up to them in the spring.”

The 80 Proof American Kitchen & Bar is located at 196 Crown St.

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

“The Criminal Mind” course caps enrollment, drops over 200 students

BY TRISTAN HERNANDEZ CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

The last time Arielle Baskin-Sommers taught “The Criminal Mind,” enrollment for the course was just under 400 students. This year, the number of students attempting to register shot up to over 700.

“The Criminal Mind” is the most popular course the psychology department is offering in the spring 2023 semester, with 513 students currently registered according to Course Demand Statistics. But, this number fell from initial enrollment after over 200 students were forced to drop the class because of lecture hall size restrictions, leaving many disappointed.

“I know there were many people who worked their schedule around that class, and it’s frankly unfair that such a last minute decision was made to drop these students so close to the end of registration period,” William Miller ’26 said. “Since it’s such a popular class, I can understand why so many people registered, and the priority may have gone to upper-

classmen. Yet, overcapacity is an issue that should have been sorted out beforehand.”

When Baskin-Sommers — who is currently serving as interim Head of Silliman College — saw she had 725 students who had added the course on their Canvas worksheets, she contacted the University Registrar’s Office and was informed that all courses must now be capped at 450 students.

The largest classroom on campus is O.C. Marsh Lecture Hall in the Yale Science Building, with a maximum capacity of 483 people.

On the Registrar’s Office’s suggestion, Baskin-Sommers said, those who enrolled first in the class were able to remain. Since registration changes to the spring 2023 semester made the opening of course enrollment staggered by class year, seniors and juniors — who saw registration open earlier than sophomores and first years — were less likely to be affected by the removal.

Removal from the class roster did cause some issues for some students who planned their schedules around the lecture.

Sushant Kunwar ’26 was one of these students. He was hoping to use the class as his social science distributional requirement since it fit into his schedule.

“Being kicked out of the class was troublesome,” Kunwar said. “I removed my backup classes from my registration worksheet so I was scrambling to fill out my registration worksheet before the deadline.”

Baskin-Sommers expressed support for teaching the class again in the future, and Kunwar said he hopes to take the course when it is offered again.

Yale’s most popular course ever, “Psychology and the Good Life,” taught by Laurie Santos — who is currently on leave from both her teaching post and her role as Head of Silliman College — saw enrollment surpassing 1,200 students in 2018. The course was originally split between Battell Chapel and live streams in other auditoriums before moving to Woolsey Hall.

“The Criminal Mind” was last taught in 2020, and it had an overall rating of 4.6 on CourseTable.

Baskin-Sommers attributed the class’s popularity to the multidisciplinary content covered, the introductory nature of the class and the lack of discussion sections or labs that make the workload “relatively manageable.”

“My main goals in this course are to get students excited about psychology and neuroscience and to help address myths that many people believe about criminal behavior by helping students understand the rich scientific literature on the topic,” Baskin-Sommers wrote to the News.

The course goes over the role of the environment, the role of mental illnesses and underlying patterns of thinking and feeling that contribute to chronic criminal behavior. It also uses scientific understanding to consider potential changes in legal policy and intervention.

Some students, like Miller, attributed some of the course’s popularity to its offering every two years, which he said makes students more eager to take it as it may be their only chance.

“I mainly chose this course because I was told it was one of the most interesting courses at Yale,” Miller said. “Since I’m in Silliman, my head of college is also teaching the class so I have some sort of connection with the professor as well. I’ve also never been particularly interested in psychology, so I want this to be the class that sparks my interest.”

The classes of 2024 and 2025 set record numbers for enrollment, with the current sophomore class’ population of 1,786 about 240 students larger than the previously typical incoming class. In 2021, administrators told the News the increased student population created larger demand for courses. This is the first time “The Criminal Mind” has been offered for this larger student body.

Baskin-Sommers said she was not sure if larger Yale class sizes impact the record enrollment for her course.

O.C. Marsh Lecture Hall is located at 260 Whitney Ave.

Contact TRISTAN HERNANDEZ at tristan.hernandez@yale.edu .

“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.” RAINER MARIA RILKE AUSTRIAN POET AND NOVELIST

RYAN CHIAO/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

This year’s Davenport College formal was canceled after the discovery of prohibited alcohol and underage drinking.

MIRANDA JEYARETNAM/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER Bechdel, the author of acclaimed graphic novel “Fun Home,” addressed craft and queerness in her talk to the Yale community.

With 900 open staff positions, admin says retention will return to normal

bers will return to normal levels as the University prepares for a post-pandemic age.

“I’m not sure I’d call what’s happened here at Yale ‘the Great Resignation’,” University Senior Vice President for Operations Jack Callahan ’80 said. “But we’ve definitely seen a step up in our turnover.”

University President Peter Salovey told the News that he believed that this is largely due to two factors: the COVID-19 pandemic and a robust job market.

According to Salovey, the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed people to reflect on their lives and convinced them that they either want to retire or “do something different.” Second, Salovey said, a strong economy “at least up until now” has provided opportunities for people to get a job elsewhere that they might prefer.

Callahan also attributed a dynamic job market and new remote work offerings as options which make it easier for some people to change jobs in the short term.

John Whelan, vice president of human resources at Yale, told the News that staff turnover has increased by approximately three percent since pre-pandemic years. He added that, regardless of the uptick in Yale’s turnover numbers, he believes the University is in a “better situation” than other companies and organizations across the country.

The number of vacant staff positions has “remained high” according to Whelan, with around 900 open spots as of now. Yet the administration seems to be making headway — in the last fiscal year, Whelan said that the University has filled more than 2,500 open staff positions, and they expect employee retention to return to pre-pandemic levels soon.

turnover trend is beginning to slow, and that it is not “unusual” to have a high number of open staff positions.

“I’m not concerned at all,” Whelan said. “I don’t see any red flags at the University.”

While staff turnover has had impacts on University operations, the range of such challenges varies across departments. Administrative officials don’t view recruiting and turnover as an “average issue” across all of the University’s units, Callahan said.

At Yale Hospitality, Senior Manager of Marketing and Communications Christelle Ramos told the News last month that shortages in staff numbers have affected services at dining locations.

“The unique staffing shortage is not news to our team members, hospitality workers in general, and throughout the nation,” Ramos previously wrote in an email to the News. “They continue to be on the front line of this situation and the shortage is visible and tangible when they come to work each day.”

Ramos directed the News to Whelan for further comment.

On the other hand, Vice President for Information Technology John Barden told the News that he doesn’t see “any major challenges” in his department in terms of delivering on projects, but that the pace by which such projects can be completed can be impacted by whether the department is “fully staffed” across all projects.

“How we manage the [department’s] priorities and staffing can get challenging when there’s lots of vacancies,” Barden said.

WILLIAM PORAYOUW STAFF REPORTER

Employers around the nation are facing heightened turnover and retention issues, and Yale has not been exempt.

According to vice president for human resources John Whelan, the University currently has around 900 open staff positions across over a dozen operations, including information technology, facilities and hos -

pitality. These turnover trends fall in line with economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw low retention rates in most major industries. But in spite of this pattern, administrators are confident that num -

Whelan also noted that the University introduced “meaningful benefits” for staff during the “uncertainty” of the pandemic, which included new retirement incentives and an annual childcare subsidy program. He noted that these incentives “partially contributed” to an increase in staff turnover.

Both Whelan and Callahan also stressed that the current

Barden also expressed hope that changing dynamics in the hiring market as well as economic measures would mean that uncertainty would slow down in the coming days — particularly in the IT market.

The most significant expenses of Yale’s spending budget are salaries and benefits for faculty and staff, which account for $3.19 billion for the 2023 fiscal year and is almost two thirds of the University’s budgeted expenses.

Contact WILLIAM PORAYOUW at william.porayouw@yale.edu .

EJC meets with CT AG’s office to discuss Uni. legal complaint

BY EVAN GORELICK STAFF REPORTER

The Yale Endowment Justice Coalition met with the Connecticut Attorney General’s office on Nov. 21 to discuss the EJC’s legal complaint against the University.

In February, the EJC filed a complaint against Yale for its continued investment in fossil fuels, alleging that these investments violate state law. The complaint, which has over 1,200 co-signatories, hinges on a provision of a 2009 Connecticut state law called the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, which requires tax-exempt nonprofit entities, including universities, to invest with charitable interests in mind.

At the meeting, participants discussed the arguments brought forth in the complaint. According to an EJC press release, the conversation centered on the financial prudence of fossil fuel investments, the climate implications of the UPMIFA and the lack of transparency in the University’s decision-making processes. The complaint signatories also suggested legal pathways for enforcing the UPMIFA.

“This meeting provoked a startling feeling of uneasiness within me,” EJC organizer and meeting attendee Garrett Frye-Mason ’23 told the News. “It forced me to articulate in front of a legal entity that I struggle to understand what it means for me to graduate from an institution that touts a grand mission and justifies its non-profit status all the while existing within a system and legacy of staggering wealth hoarding, unethical investments, and austerity. What does it mean for me to attend what is func -

tionally a hedge fund with a university attached?”

The EJC acted alongside divestment campaigns at Princeton University, Stanford University, Vanderbilt University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Students from the schools, working collectively as the “Fossil Free 5,” filed complaints with their states’ attorney general in partnership with lawyers from the Climate Defense Project, an organization that aims to support climate activists with legal counsel. The UPMIFA has been passed in every state except Pennsylvania.

Representatives from Connecticut Attorney General William Tong’s office declined to comment on the meeting, writing in an email to the News that the office is “reviewing the questions raised in the [complaint].”

In addition to Frye-Mason, representing the complaint signatories were UPMIFA scholar and former SEC Commissioner Bevis Longstreth, Climate Defense Project attorneys Alex Marquardt and Ted Hamilton GRD ’22, global energy transition researcher Daniel Cohn, Ward 14 Alder Sarah Miller ’03, director and Climate Museum founder Miranda Massie GRD ’92, Yale Forward co-founder Scott Gigante GRD ’21, New Haven Rising leader Elias Estabrook ’16, architecture professor Keller Easterling and EJC organizers Molly Weiner ’25 and Josie Steuer Ingall ’24.

Members of Attorney General Tong’s executive staff and assistant attorney generals from the Charities Unit represented the Attorney General’s office. Tong himself did not appear at the meeting.

The UPMIFA states that Yale must invest with “prudence,” “loyalty” and with consideration for broader “charitable purposes.”

The EJC claims in their press release and complaint that these fiduciary mandates are “undermined by the continued embrace of an industry misleading the public, masking financial and ecological peril, [and] attacking scholars (including Yale’s own).” The EJC holds that Yale is also acting in a manner contrary to its public mission statement: “Yale is committed to improving the world today and for future generations …”

When asked to comment on the complaint, University spokesperson Karen Peart directed the News toward Yale’s Fossil Fuel Investment Principles, a list of fossil fuel producers no longer eligible for University investment, new carbon reduction targets and former CIO David Swensen’s 2020 update on climate change.

“The property tax exemption Yale is entitled to as a nonprofit leaves New Haven residents on the

hook for millions of dollars in lost revenue every year,” Steuer Ingall said in the press release. “The University shouldn’t be able to turn around and invest that money in an industry that’s rapidly making life on our planet unlivable.”

Steuer Ingall also underscored the importance of the EJC’s alliance with New Haven Rising, a progressive community organization “of residents committed to winning economic, racial, and social justice through collective action.”

New Haven Rising submitted an auxiliary report to the EJC’s legal complaint on March 11.

“We see ourselves as part of a larger movement against the financialization of academia,” a representative from New Haven Rising wrote in the EJC’s press release. “The Yale Model, which is a hugely influential, highly corporate paradigm for elite universities, was born here. We see Yale’s fossil fuel investments as a particularly

egregious example of a larger pattern of bad faith behavior, prioritizing profit over mission.”

The Yale Model, developed by Swensen, is a framework for institutional investing that favors broad diversification of assets and allocates less capital to traditional U.S. equities and bonds and more to alternative investments like private equity, venture capital, hedge funds and real estate.

Yale’s investment strategy depends heavily on alternative investments, and, as of 2019, they made up about 60 percent of Yale’s portfolio. The EJC argues that “these non-traditional asset classes are linked to things like fossil fuels and Puerto Rican debt.”

The Yale Endowment Justice Coalition led a game-delaying divestment protest during the 2019 Yale-Harvard football game.

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

TIM TAI/PHOTO EDITOR

Senior administrators noted high turnover for staff during pandemic years, but they predict an imminent return to normalcy.

“I love the scents of winter! For me, it’s all about the feeling you get when you smell pumpkin spice, cinnamon, nutmeg, gingerbread and spruce.” TAYLOR SWIFT AMERICAN SINGER-SONGWRITER

YALE DAILY NEWS

The State will review the questions raised by the complaint, which alleges that the University’s fossil fuel investments violate state law.

the U.S., feel a strong sense of connection to cultures and nationalities outside of America.

“I feel like the World Cup is a celebration of diversity,” said Brazilian Joao Pedro Ferreira Denys ’25. “It is the one time every four years where very different countries that can never play together do, and they can share customs, culture and pretty much everything that matters to them — not only by players but also the people who support them. From every corner of the world, people manifest their national pride.”

However, since this World Cup is not running in the summer, students find themselves in a hard position when it comes to finding balance between watching their beloved competition and academics — especially as the semester comes to a close.

“I just can't study before 4 p.m.,” Denys said. “I understand that there are more important things, but it’s such a big thing culturally that it actually distracts me from class — especially at the knockout stages.”

The November tournament date has also generated controversy because of the disruption it posed to professional players’ schedules. The date was moved from summer because of concerns around heat and humidity in Qatar.

All World Cup matches have taken place from 5:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET due to the time difference. This means they fall directly during most course hours.

Many students told the News that they were acutely aware of their distance from home while watching the World Cup at school. Students described a feeling of homesickness as they saw their friends at home participating in the fanfare via social media.

Noah Millard ’25, initially from Melbourne, Australia, described feeling isolated while seeing his friends celebrate Australia’s performance in the group stage, even though the Socceroos did not end up progressing beyond the Round of 16.

“I see all the highlights of my friends back home in Melbourne in their city, watching it and lighting flares and having a great time while I'm here in New Haven studying for exams,” Millard said.

However, some students still felt a connection to home despite

the distance.

Millard told the News that getting to watch the games with fellow Australian students had been “really uniting,” and that it had brought him closer to the international community at Yale.

Unity was a common theme felt by students, regardless of their country’s performance in the Cup.

Giacoman, originally from Monterrey, Mexico, told the News that she found herself mourning Mexico’s loss to Argentina while surrounded by fellow Mexican friends.

“I thought I was going to be by myself, so it didn’t feel as bad. It was like solidarity,” Giacoman said.

Lila Alloula ’25, originally from Paris, France, told the News that she was never particularly interested in watching the tournament at home. However, she explained that at Yale, she found herself keeping up with the tournament, as cheering for the French National Team was a key way to feel connected to friends and family still in France.

In addition to feeling closer with their respective national communities at Yale, many students felt as though the World Cup allowed them to connect with new people, as the tournament was so widely watched.

The World Cup has historically been the most widely watched sporting event in the world. FIFA recently announced that the 2022 Cup has generated record-breaking viewership internationally.

“I just feel like everyone from all over the world has something that is exactly the same to talk about and it's super nice,” said Joe Long ’25, originally from the United Kingdom. “We can all sit down and spend two hours together watching a game, and it's just super fun.”

Beyond watching matches, many students have found themselves distressed with the results, and have found little leniency from the Yale faculty.

Patricio Perez Elorza Arce ’25, originally from Mexico City, told the News that he had asked for a problem set extension from a professor after Mexico lost against Argentina in the knockout round, but that his professor had been unreceptive to the request.

“My professor didn't understand the cultural hurt that I felt after a country didn't make it out of the group stage,” Arce said. “He told me

Women's Hockey ties Cornell, loses to Colgate

to do my homework.”

Intl. Yalies reflect on World Cup Yale falls to UCF breaking streak

This year’s tournament has been marked by many unanticipated outcomes: an Argentine loss to Saudi Arabia in the group stage, a Japanese victory over Germany, and a 7–0 score in Spain’s first game of the tournament to name just a few. Students whose countries performed much worse or better than expected described their ensuing disappointment or excitement.

Delpuppo Messari told the News that she felt an overwhelming sense of pride for her national identity after watching Morocco perform so well – to the surprise of many commentators – in the World Cup. After topping second-seeded Belgium in the group stages, Morocco went on to upset seventh-ranked Spain in the Round of 16. Delpuppo Messari additionally commented on the significance of the Morocco-Spain outcome, which was determined during penalty kicks, given the colonial history between the two countries.

“The World Cup is something I've been watching since I was very little, and it is the most meaningful sporting event in the world for me,” Delpuppo Messari said. “Nothing compares to cheering for your country, wearing your jersey, strategizing what the next steps are and hoping to become champions.”

Christian Oestergaard ’25, who hails from Denmark, described feeling a strong sense of disappointment after Denmark lost to both Australia and Tunisia in the group stage. Denmark currently holds the 10th spot in FIFA’s men’s national teams rankings.

While this World Cup has marked disappointment for many in terms of their team’s performance, the pride students carry with them during the tournament transcends the athletic performance of their country’s athletes.

“The World Cup to me symbolizes passion, love, sporting excellence, conflict, resolution, tactics, performance, success, failure and everything in between,” Nick Stanger ’24, originally from the United Kingdom, said. “And I’m supporting England because it’s coming home.”

The World Cup will conclude on Dec. 18.

Contact INES CHOMNALEZ at ines.chomnalez@yale.edu and TOIA CONDE RODRIGUES DA CUNHA at toia.conderodriguesdacunha@yale.

proud of our efforts. I think UCF is a pretty good team and so that's one of the reasons we weren't victorious, but we felt that we fought hard.”

Audrey Leak ’24 started off the first set with a kill before UCF responded with a kill of their own. After the teams exchanged points, Yale fell behind 3–4 and could not win back the lead for the rest of the set. The Bulldogs trailed by as many as six points but then clawed back to a two point deficit before UCF scored the winning point. The first set score was 25–22.

UCF started the second set off with a three point run and rode its momentum to a 25–15 victory. The Knights’ offense maintained their form in the third set as they started it with a five point run and closed out the match with a 25–17 score in the last frame.

UCF star McKenna Melville, who won her second player of the year award in the American Athletic Conference, led the Knights with 14 kills and 15 digs.

“McKenna, as well as the rest of their team really, is a very talented player and it was fun to play against her,” said Cara Shultz ’25. “Our team came out and we fought and at the end of the day we gave it our all.”

Leak and Cara Shultz each landed 10 kills while Maile Somera ’24 had 13

digs. Carly Diehl ’25 earned 36 assists, and Fatima Samb ’25 and Mila Yarich ’25 both had two blocks.

Appleman explained that even though she would have liked to see the Bulldogs advance to the NCAA, she feels that the team “did everything [they] possibly could and represented Yale and the Ivy League well.”

Appleman emphasized that the team has a series of goals throughout the season. First and foremost, the Bulldogs aim to win the Ivy League Championship. After that, the Bulldogs want to enter the NCAA tournament and win.

“Looking back on everything we have accomplished this fall, I couldn't be more proud of this team” said captain Renee Shultz ’23. “We have worked so hard day in and day out, and we've seen our hard work pay off with the regular season Ivy championship, the Ivy League Tournament championship, and making it to the NCAA tournament to represent Yale. It's been a great run and such a memorable season.”

Appleman has served as head coach of the Yale volleyball team since 2003 and led the team to 11 championships.

Contact NICOLE RODRIGUEZ at nicole.rodriguez.nr444@yale.edu and HENRY FRECH at henry.frech@yale.edu .

Slow start dooms Elis in Indiana

played them even, but we've got to start as strong as we finish to win big games like these.”

The second half was a much closer contest, as Yale threatened to come back on multiple occasions while refusing to let Butler pull away.

Yale managed to cut the lead down to five on multiple occasions, but Butler continually responded with a bucket of their own.

In particular, the 6’11” Bates seemed to be an automatic source of offense for Butler as he punished Yale’s small-ball lineup with a deep bag of tricks in the low post. He finished with 22 points on 9–15 shooting from the field.

Jarvis, who was tasked with guarding Bates for most of the night, gave a candid assessment of his defensive performance after the game.

The “good looks” Fargo saw his team getting are not a regular occurance for teams facing the Bulldogs this year. Entering the weekend, the highest number of goals opponents had scored against Yale was three, yet that total was exceeded in both games.

Despite losing their perfect record, the Bulldogs remain one of the best teams in the nation with their blend of experienced veterans and exciting underclassmen.

Atop the Yale leaders in points sits Elle Hartje ’24, who scored or assisted on all three goals against Colgate, and rookie Jordan Ray ’26, who had at least a point in each of the first nine games for the Bulldogs.

While Hartje was a standout player entering the season, she also believes that the younger players on the roster like Ray

will be crucial to the Elis success this year.

“We are building this program into a championship team, and the underclassmen are huge parts of our success,” Hartje said. “Our coaches work super hard to recruit the right kids that will fit in with and better our team as a whole. 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.”

The Bulldogs will look to get back in the win column next weekend when they host RPI and Union at Ingalls in their final two games before the winter break.

Contact SPENCER KING at spencer.king@yale.edu

“Any time a guy plays 40 minutes a night, you know there's a pretty good reason for it, but I think I did a good job for most of the game,” Jarvis said. “The ref was saying I had to keep my hands off so it made it a lot harder to guard. He made some tough shots and got some easy ones too, and at the end of the day you just have to live with it and come back better next time.”

With 4:13 remaining in the game and the Blue and White down by 12, forward Matt Knowling ’24 and guard Bez Mbeng ’25 made consecutive baskets to start a final push, but Butler’s Simas Lukosius silenced any chance of a comeback with back-toback threes, bringing his team to a comfortable 71–61 win.

Knowling, who leads Yale in scoring with 16.1 points per game on the season, scored just six points on 3–10 shooting.

“I was not frustrated with the looks we were getting,” Knowling said. “I thought we all had some good looks that didn’t fall. I think getting to the free throw line would

help us a lot. I think we only shot five free throws compared to their 20, so getting to the line would help slow the game down and help us get a bit of a rhythm.”

The Elis had attempted just one free throw all game until the final minute, while Butler had 20 attempts from the line. In their matchup at the University of Colorado earlier this season, Yale shot just one free throw all game to Colorado’s 16. Head coach James Jones kept his thoughts brief when asked about his team’s free throw attempts this time around.

“Not much to say, felt we should have gotten to the line more,” he told the News.

Despite the 10-point loss, Butler head coach Thad Matta had praise for his fellow Bulldog team after the game.

“I will say this: we beat a really really good basketball team tonight,” Matta said. “I kept telling these guys in the second half, [Yale] won’t go away, they just keep on running their stuff, but I thought we did a really good job of guarding all their actions.”

Matta also emphasized the importance of keeping Knowling to just six points, calling him a “nightmare to prepare for.” Yale’s second-leading scorer, guard John Poulakidas ’25, was also held to just five points on a difficult 1–9 shooting night.

Yale will hope to build off of the promising second half as they prepare for the upcoming matchup away against No. 16 Kentucky, by far their most difficult matchup of the season.

“A road game at Rupp [Arena] is going to be a tough environment to play in,” Jarvis said. “We’re aware of the challenge we're going to face but prepared for it. We’re going into the game locked in and ready to compete. We deserve to be on a Power 5 court, and we’re not scared.”

Yale’s game at Kentucky will tip off at 1 p.m. Saturday and will air on the SEC Network, with the option to stream on the ESPN app.

Contact BEN RAAB at ben.raab@yale.edu

YALE ATHLETICS

On their way to 23 wins, Yale won a record 17 games in a row and claimed an Ivy League championship.

VOLLEYBALL FROM PAGE 14

YALE ATHLETICS

The Bulldogs will look to get back in the win column next weekend when they host RPI and Union at Ingalls in their final two games before the winter break.

“Cristiano [Ronaldo] as our captain did what he always does. He helped us, he encouraged — not just me, but also my colleagues.”

GONÇALO RAMOS PORTUGAL STRIKER M

YALE ATHLETICS

Wednesday's game against Butler will begin at 6:30 p.m and will be televised on Fox Sports 1.

Cox’s suit against city moves forward with possible settlement discussions

BY NATHANIEL ROSENBERG AND SOPHIE SONNENFELD STAFF REPORTERS

Randy Cox’s civil case is moving forward, with all parties indicating they wish to seek a settlement.

On Friday, attorneys representing Cox, the city of New Haven and the New Haven Police Department officers involved in his case filed a Proposed Case Management Plan in his lawsuit over a June altercation with NHPD that left Cox permanently paralyzed. The plan mostly lays out agreed upon parameters for discovery if the case goes to trial, though both sides indicated in the filing a desire to settle the case.

“This agreement reflects the City’s ongoing desire to reach an early, reasonable settlement with Randy, and to engage in good faith settlement discussions as soon as both parties have sufficient information for them to begin,” wrote New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker in a press release.

Cox sustained spine and neck injuries — leaving him paralyzed — while being driven to a police station in a van without seat belts after being arrested for weapons charges that prosecutors later dropped.

The injuries occurred when the NHPD officer behind the wheel stopped abruptly to avoid a car crash while speeding. Instead of waiting for an ambulance, the officer drove Cox to the police detention center. Officers then dragged Cox out of the van, processed him in a wheelchair and put him into a holding cell — all without providing medical care. When Cox repeatedly told the officers that he could not move, one officer responded by telling Cox he “just drank too much.”

In late September, Cox’s attorneys filed a lawsuit against the city of New Haven for $100 million, claiming the NHPD violated his fourth and fourteenth amendment rights. At the time, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said the city was open to a settlement. The suit

was also filed against the five officers involved in the incident.

Those five officers remain on paid administrative leave and were arrested last week on misdemeanor charges brought by the state’s attorney office. Four of the five officers have since attempted to invoke qualified immunity in the civil case. The city has also responded to the lawsuit, claiming governmental immunity and contributory negligence as a defense, which has drawn the ire of Cox’s lawyers.

In a press conference held outside City Hall last week, Cox’s attorneys called on Elicker to support Cox’s recovery, but stopped short of asking directly for a settlement.

“We will listen objectively to anything the City says on Randy’s behalf. But what we won’t do is let them devalue him any further,” said Cox’s lawyer Ben Crump, a nationally renowned civil rights attorney.

The joint filing released on Friday includes language indicating that all parties are willing to discuss a settlement, and requests an early settlement conference between the parties.

That conference, which would be held with a magistrate judge, is not a guarantee of settlement, Connecticut American Civil Liberties Union Legal Director Dan Barrett told the News.

“Sometimes, even when the two sides are talking, once you add that structure of a judge helping you out and pushing you, you get closer to an agreement,” Barrett explained. “Nobody’s saying, ‘I definitely want to settle.’ They’re just saying, ‘I’m open to talking about settling.’”

Jack O’Donnell, one of Cox’s attorneys, echoed Barrett’s sentiment that the filing was nothing out of the ordinary. “We’ve just agreed to talk,” he said.

The filing also contains details of what both parties would be seeking in discovery, which is where the parties may request documents

from each other and depose witnesses. Both the plaintiff, Cox, and the defendants, the city and the police officers, anticipate taking depositions from 10-12 witnesses, as well as calling expert witnesses at any potential trial.

Elicker emphasized that he saw the filing as a way for the city to remain

prepared in any potential litigation.

“It also provides for long-term contingency planning, that each side has agreed upon, should this case go to trial,” he said. “I am encouraged by this progress and am confident we all will continue to work in a collaborative manner to ensure that justice is ultimately served.”

Contact NATHANIEL ROSENBERG at nathaniel.rosenberg@yale.edu and SOPHIE SONNENFELD at sophie.sonnenfeld@yale.edu .

Buyback event transforms discarded firearms into gardening tools

According to Rentkowicz, upwards of 40 guns were bought back by the NHPD at this weekend’s Guns to Gardens event, which took place at the New Haven Police Training Academy. These guns included a mix of assault rifles and handguns.

In addition to exchanging unwanted firearms for cash, residents can also access free gun locks at buyback events.

After their purchase, Rentkowicz explained, these guns will be thoroughly vetted by the police department to make sure that they had not been previously used in criminal activity. Then, the discarded firearms will be sent off to the Swords to Plowshares Northeast team, who will begin the process of converting them into gardening tools.

“Typically, weapons that are surrendered would be destroyed,” Rentkowicz said. “But with Swords to Plowshares, instead of just scrapping them, they make something useful out of them. So they use the metal to make gardening tools, and it’s symbolic that something that could be violent is being turned into something that is useful and happy.”

Bishop Jim Curry — co-founder of Swords to Plowshares Northeast — explained that after the discarded firearms are re-fabricated into garden tools, they are given back to the New Haven community. The garden tools are donated to schools, community gardens, church groups, youth empowerment groups and violence interruption programs across the city.

Violano said that 10 percent of people who have turned in firearms at buyback events this year have used that particular weapon to attempt suicide. She added that attendees of the events often travel up to 70 miles to exchange old guns.

This year’s Guns to Gardens event is of special significance, Violano said, because it marks the 10-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

“We’ve kind of come full circle now,” Violano said. “Looking at all of the bad things that have happened because of guns, especially in our own state. It’s a true transformation.”

At most buyback events, Curry and Violano explained, there is also a demonstration of how the guns are transformed. Attendees are invited to take part in the demonstration, too. They can work with the Swords to Plowshares team to use the forge and pound the recycled metal into gardening tools.

“We especially invite people who have been victims of or traumatized by gun violence to come to the forge and to take power and pound these weapons into gardening tools,” Curry said. “We also make jewelry, and we invite people to make heart shaped charms whenever we have a public demonstration.”

Swords to Plowshares is a part of a larger umbrella group called Guns to Gardens, Curry said. Guns to Gardens is a national movement focused on transforming guns collected at buybacks across the country. So far, the initiative has reached 30 states, with buybacks happening recently in Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio, California, Massachusetts and Wisconsin.

BY MOLLY REINMANN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Partners at the New Haven Police Department and Swords to Plowshares Northeast began the process of transforming unwanted guns from “life taking to life making” at a Saturday event.

In honor of National Gun Buyback Day, the two organizations hosted the Elm City’s biannual

Guns to Gardens gun buyback event. At the event, gun owners could dispose of unwanted firearms safely and anonymously in exchange for cash. After being vetted by the NHPD, the weapons were then given to the Swords to Plowshares team, who will repurpose them into gardening tools and donate them to agricultural groups and organizations in the city.

“The gun buyback is a method of collecting guns from members of the public who wish to surrender them,” said NHPD Lieutenant Jason Rentkowicz. “A lot of times, even if there’s no criminal intent, guns can still fall into the wrong hands, and there can still be accidents, there can still be suicides. This is an easy way to safely get rid of firearms, and it’s no questions asked and it’s anonymous.”

The partnership between the New Haven Police Department and Swords to Plowshares Northeast began in 2017. For the past five years, the two groups have worked together to host biannual gun buybacks in the city.

“We’re really just about encouraging people to be responsible gun owners,” said Pina Violano, co-founder of Swords to Plowshares. “If you no longer need [your gun] or you no longer can secure it, we have a safe venue for you to deliver it or access tools to store it safely.”

Ultimately, Violano said, the events are about promoting safe gun ownership and creating something productive with weapons.

“With these buybacks we hope to tell a story,” he said. “We want to share a statement of hope that weapons of harm can be changed into tools of nurture, peace and growth.”

In 2021, firearms caused roughly 47,286 homicide and suicide deaths in the United States.

Contact MOLLY REINMANN at molly.reinmann@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF JIM CURRY

The New Haven Police Department partnered with Swords to Plowshares Northeast to host the biannual gun buyback event.

The five NHPD officers charged are set to appear in the Elm Street state courthouse Thursday morning.

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”

EDITH SITWELL BRITISH POET AND CRITIC

SOPHIE SONNENFELD/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The city and plaintiff, Randy Cox who is suing New Haven in a civil case of police brutality, set rules for their settlement discussions.

Pan faces evidence in court for murder of Yale grad student

BY SOPHIE SONNENFELD STAFF REPORTER

On Monday morning, family and friends of the late Kevin Jiang ENV ’22 squeezed into courtroom benches for the probable cause hearing they have been anticipating for months.

Just feet in front of them sat Qinxuan Pan – a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher charged with murdering Jiang in February 2021. The hearing took place before State Superior Court Judge Jon Alander LAW ’78 in the Chapel Street courthouse. In probable cause hearings this week, the state aims to convince Alander that there is sufficient evidence linking Pan to the murder. If Alander agrees, prosecutors can proceed with the criminal case.

Attorneys called on witnesses who recounted the murder and their interactions with Pan that night, including a neighbor who witnessed the murder, responding officers, a scrap metal yard security guard and a tow truck driver.

“I hope to see justice soon,” Jiang’s mother Linda Liu told the News after the hearing concluded for the day. “Not for money or fame but for the truth.”

Monday’s hearing marks Pan’s first lengthy appearance in court as his attorneys delayed the case for months. After Pan’s arrest, judges granted Pan and his attorney multiple extensions to review evidence. Pan’s lawyer claimed that Pan was having difficulty reading through documents related to the case because Pan had limited access to the prison library.

In September, Pan’s attorney asked Alander to order a “competency exam,” saying Pan was a “communicative challenge” and that he could not obtain “a straight answer” from him. Ultimately, with results from the exam Alander granted, Pan was deemed fit for trial in early November.

In the courtroom, the witness accounts wove a narrative of events surrounding the murder, from East Rock’s Lawrence Street, to a North Haven scrap metal yard, to snow-covered railroad tracks, Arby’s and a Best Western hotel. Prosecutors presented evidence including video footage of the shooting as captured from a neighbor’s outward-facing living room security camera, Jiang’s autopsy report and various photographs of the murder scene.

Lawrence Street, East Rock, New Haven. February 6, 8:35 p.m.

The first piece of witness testimony came from a neighbor, identified as Nicole, who saw the shooting outside her window. After she saw a man firing shots at Jiang, she said she saw the shooter enter the driver’s side of an SUV with tinted windows.

“It replays in my head almost every day,” she said Monday morning.

Pan’s attorney, Kevin Smith, asked Nicole if there was another person in the car to which she replied that she saw only one person get into the vehicle.

NHPD Officer Casey O’Brien testified next, recalling how he had been working overtime on his second shift as a patrol officer in New Haven’s East Rock neighborhood that night. By the time he got to the scene of the murder, the New Haven Fire Department and a medical response team were already there.

Jiang was deceased and bleeding heavily, O’Brien said. About 30 feet away from Jiang’s body, a silver Toyota Prius was parked in the middle of the street with its hazard lights on. O’Brien secured the crime scene with tape and blocked off the area. When he was done, he ran the Toyota’s plates and determined that it belonged to Kevin Jiang.

O’Brien conducted a neighborhood canvas and said he spoke with three people including one neighbor who had an outward-facing camera in his living room window. The man showed O’Brien partial footage of the murder which O’Brien recorded on his cell phone.

As prosecutors played the video in court, Pan leaned in to watch intently. The video shows a dark SUV pulling up behind the parked Toyota, with a loud bang indicating that the cars had collided. Jiang turns on his hazard lights and exits the car. Then gunshots are heard — two or three followed by a succession of faster shots.

Then, according to Nicole’s account and the footage, the dark SUV pulled away.

Sims Scrap Metal Yard, North Haven. February 6, 9 p.m.

Joseph Cusano works as a security guard at Sims Metal Management just off Exit 9 along I-91 in North Haven. Most nights, Cusano’s main role is to make sure there are no trespassers and no fires in the scrap metal yard.

On Feb. 6, 2021, he was working a 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift and estimated there were about six other people working at the yard that night.

Cusano told the court that he saw a dark SUV pull into the lot just before 9 p.m. At first, Cusano said he thought it was a food delivery person since a similar vehicle had come delivering food a few days before. Inside this vehicle, he saw an Asian male in the driver’s seat and did not see anyone else in the vehicle. Typically, Cusano said he keeps the gate halfway closed, but the man drove right through the gate.

Cusano said he saw the car speeding off toward the back of the lot. That area, Cusano said, is “just piles of metal” so Cusano drove after him, following him to the back. Cusano rolled down his window when the driver turned his vehicle around to face him, but said the man ignored him and sped away.

The driver drove off towards the gate, the only entrance or exit in the five-acre fenced-in yard. But just before the exit, the driver veered off to the right into what Cusano described as a “cubby hole.” To escape the dead end of scrap dumpsters, the driver made a six-point turn.

Cusano again attempted to make contact with the driver, gesturing in the direction out of the lot.

The driver attempted to speed off again, this time turning a sharp left directly into another dead end. At this point, Cusano and the drivers’ windshields were directly facing each other, just feet apart. Then, according to Cusano, the driver firmly swept his hand in one motion across his throat.

“I took it to mean: stop following me,” Cusano told the court.

Despite repeated attempts to redirect the man, he would not make eye contact with Cusano, maintaining what Cusano referred to as a “ghost-like” expression on his face.

“It made me feel very nervous,” Cusano said. “There was no reason for him to be back there –- he was just running from me.”

Smith, Pan’s attorney, asked whether it was possible the man was not gesturing a threat but was simply adjusting something around his neck. Cusano responded no. To him, it was clear what the motion meant.

The driver maneuvered around Cusano’s vehicle, zooming off to the back of the lot and cutting straight through an opening in the fence. In that direction, Cusano said there was just a dirt access road. Cusano followed and said he saw the driver attempt to drive across railroad tracks behind the yard. But the car got stuck, wheels lodged in the second set of tracks.

At this point Cusano decided to call the police and returned to the main gate to meet North Haven Police, who arrived on the scene within five to ten minutes.

As with Nicole, Smith pressed Cusano on if it was possible for there to have been other people in the vehicle that entered the lot.

“Unless someone was laying down or materialized out of thin air there was no one else,” Cusano said.

North Haven Police Department Sgt. Jeffery James Mills was one of two North Haven officers who arrived at the scrap metal yard. Mills said he was not aware of the murder in New Haven that had occurred earlier that same night.

Cusano directed Mills to the back of the lot where Mills drove up to the railroad tracks, approaching the dark blue GMC SUV. The driver, identified as Pan when he presented Mills with his Massachusetts driver’s license, told Mills he got lost.

Initially, Mills said Pan told him the car was his. When Mills ran the car plates, the system indicated that it was a stolen, lost or missing plate. Mills asked for Pan’s registration at which point Pan changed his answer,

claiming it was a rental. Mills asked Pan for the rental agreement and Pan could not provide it. Mills later asked a tow truck driver to take off the stolen plates but did not mention asking Pan any further questions.

In court, prosecutors showed Mills’ body camera footage as he encountered Pan on the tracks and as he peered in the SUV’s tinted backseat windows with his flashlight. Although unseen in the body camera footage, Mills said he was able to see a soft leather briefcase and a blue retail-style bag with a logo for Malden, Massachusetts on the floor behind the driver’s seat.

Mills said he did not take inventory of the belongings inside the vehicle and saw no blood, damage or gunshot residue inside the vehicle.

In Mills’ testimony and as seen in the footage, Pan was wearing a knit winter hat and a New England Patriots neck gaiter pulled up around his face. Mills said Pan was also holding a yellow jacket in his hands.

“The only thing I can do is call you a tow truck,” Mills told Pan in the footage. To get the car towed, Mills said Pan would have to pay in cash and recommended that Pan stay in a hotel for the night.

Tow truck ride, North Haven. Nicholas Johnson has worked as a recovery driver and mechanic with Nelcon Towing & Recovery for seven years. He responded to the call to tow the SUV that Pan drove that night.

“He was polite but overly polite,” Johnson said, recounting his encounter with Pan.

According to Johnson, the SUV was stuck sideways across the railroad tracks with the front two tires flat. He said he noticed damage on the vehicle’s front bumper.

Johnson informed Pan he would have to take the vehicle to the impound lot. The SUV was already on the tow truck bed, so Johnson told Pan he would have to retrieve Pan’s belongings because it would be a liability for Pan to climb on the bed. Pan did not listen and repeatedly climbed up on the bed to get his bags. Eventually, Johnson said he had to grab Pan by the back of his shirt and pull Pan down off the tow truck.

“He was fixated on getting his stuff out of the car,” Johnson testified.

Johnson reached to grab what he said were two to three bags that “had some weight to them.”

At the end of the ride, Johnson dropped Pan off at a Best Western hotel on Washington Avenue in North Haven.

Arby’s, North Haven. 267 Washington Avenue. Feb. 7, 11 a.m.

The next morning,. Mills was dispatched to yet another site in North Haven.

At the Arby’s on Washington Avenue, just down the street from the Best Western hotel, employees had found bags on the restaurant’s driveway with a .45 caliber firearm and boxes of ammunition among other items.

The employees spread the items from the bags out across a table. One of the items caught Mills’ eye.

“It instantly hit me,” he said. “These were the bags in the back of the truck.”

Mills recognized the blue retail bag and the soft leather briefcase. Mixed in with the items he also noticed the same knit winter hat and yellow jacket that Pan wore the night before.

“A lightbulb went off,” Mills told the court.

Mills said that morning he was aware of the homicide in New Haven but was not sure if the firearm found was the same weapon.

North Haven officers tagged and transferred the evidence to the NHPD.

Best Western, North Haven. 201 Washington Avenue.

Mills rushed off to the Best Western down the street to locate Pan.

Someone at the front desk told Mills that Pan had checked in the night before but had not checked out. When Mills got to Pan’s room, it was empty and untouched. One employee told Mills that when she checked the room to clean it earlier that morning, it appeared as if no one had stayed there overnight. Pan was gone.

With the five witness testimonies and fragments of evidence submitted, the court adjourned for the day with plans to continue the probable cause hearing back in court Tuesday morning.

Contact SOPHIE SONNENFELD at sophie.sonnenfeld@yale.edu

“With luck, it might even snow for us.” HARUKI MURAKAMI JAPANESE WRITER

COURTESY OF TOM BREEN

State prosecutors presented evidence and testimony from five witnesses in a long-delayed probable cause hearing against Qinxuan Pan.

GIOVANNA TRUONG LU is a senior in Pauli Murray College. Contact her at giovanna.truong@yale.edu .

CLARISSA TAN is a first-year in Jonathan Edwards College. Contact her at clarissa.tan@yale.edu .

“Four for you Glen

Coco, You go Glen Coco.”

FOOTBALL

Team

SQUASH BULLDOGS SWEEP WILLIAMS

Both the men’s and women’s squash teams coasted by Williams 9–o last Friday. On Saturday, while the men stomped Drexel 7–2 to remain undefeated, the women fell in a nail biting 5–4 matchup.

The 2022 World Cup in the eyes of Yale students

VOLLEYBALL: Bulldog record streak snapped

BY NICOLE RODRIGUEZ AND HENRY FRECH STAFF AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS

The Yale volleyball team (23–3, 13–1 Ivy) closed out a record-breaking season after the Bulldogs lost in Friday’s first round of the NCAA tournament.

On their way to 23 wins, the Bulldogs won a school-record 17 games in a row, claimed an Ivy League championship and clinched the program’s eighth NCAA tournament berth. Yale traveled to State College, Pennsylvania to face o fifth-seed University of Central Florida in the first round of the tournament. The match culminated in a 3–0 Yale loss.

are a very gritty team and it was just a pleasure to coach them. I am super proud of them.”

Yale and UCF entered the match as leaders in national statistics. On one hand, Yale was in the top five nationally in terms of opponent hitting percentage and aces per set.

On the other hand, UCF ranked top five in the nation in hitting percentage, assists per set and kills per set.

Appleman told the News that the team approached the game differently given the skillset present at the NCAA level. She noted that the tournament compiles 64 of the best teams in the nation, but she thought that Yale “handled the pressure really well and did a good job.”

BY INES CHOMNALEZ AND TOIA CONDE RODRIGUES DA CUNHA STAFF REPORTER

The 2022 FIFA World Cup carries broad significance for students across the Yale community: a chance to watch renowned athletes compete at their highest level, connect with their home countries, celebrate diversity and entertain the bitterest of rivalries with their closest peers.

The News spoke with international students studying at Yale about their experiences watching the World Cup away from their native countries. While many described feeling isolated — underscoring their distance from home — others described it as an opportunity to cherish and share their cultural pride with friends.

“Once your team gets eliminated, you just start to root for whoever your friends are rooting for,” Maria Giacoman ’25, who is from Mexico, told the News. “You become a part of their community too. Like I was Brazilian last Friday, and I’m gonna be Brazilian tomorrow, too.”

The World Cup, hosted every four years in a di erent country, provides 32 qualifying national teams with an opportunity to represent their respective countries. This World Cup — hosted in Qatar — is the first one being hosted in the Middle East since the initial tournament in 1930.

“People often hold prejudices and misconceptions against the Middle East and hosting the World Cup in the region opens it up to tourism and for people to learn what this part of the world is like,” Moroccan student Laila Delpuppo Messari ’25 told the News.

“It allows many preconceptions to be deconstructed.”

While playing host to the event o ers Qatar with a great opportunity to demonstrate its growth, the event has not been without controversy.

According to The Guardian, around 6,500 migrant workers died in the process of constructing stadiums and infrastructure for the event.

Moreover, homosexuality is illegal in the host nation, and some discourse has centered around teams’ protests of their hosts’ legal codes.

M BASKETBALL: Yale falls to Butler in “Battle of the Bulldogs”

During the tournament, international fans have been told they can’t wear rainbow shirts and teams have faced punishment for “One Love” armbands. Khalid Salman, Qatar FIFA World Cup ambassador, said homosexuality is “damage in the mind,” in an interview with German television broadcaster ZDF.

“I think that there are also many human rights violations that occurred in the making of this World Cup and I sometimes struggle with the criticism, between it being justified and between it being overly harsh because of prejudices against the region,” Delpuppo Messari said.

On Saturday, the South Asian Society hosted a teach-in to address the World Cup controversies, especially the exploitation of workers.

At Yale, 22 percent of all University students – including Yale College and all Graduate Schools – are international, and a total of 115 countries are represented at large. Still many more students, though born and raised in

“This was one of my favorite teams to be a part of,” head coach Erin Appleman said. “The team was just all in all the time and really played hard all season long. They

“I thought our team played really tough,” said Appleman. “It was a battle and I was really

W HOCKEY: No. 3 Bulldogs winless on weekend

BY SPENCER KING STAFF REPORTER

The Yale women’s hockey team (8–1–1, 4–1–1 ECAC) broke their undefeated streak in a disappointing weekend during an otherwise victorious season.

The No. 3 ranked Bulldogs faced o with two highly ranked Eastern College Athletic Conference rivals following their victory in the Henderson Collegiate Hockey Showcase last week. The Blue and White tied 4–4 against No. 10 Cornell University (7–3–2, 5–2–1 ECAC) on Friday before falling 5–3 to No. 6 Colgate University (15–2–1, 6–1–0 ECAC) on Saturday.

The ECAC stands out as one of the best leagues in the coun-

try, with six of the top 15 ranked teams in the country, four of which are in the top 10. But still the Bulldogs have been prepared for the strong field since the start of the season.

“Every single ECAC weekend is a grind, and to finish near the top of the league we will have to be dialed in every single Friday and Saturday night, whether it's the fi rst weekend of the season or the last,” defenseman Emma Seitz ’23 said.

Friday night against Cornell at Ingalls proved to be a frustrating one for the Bulldogs. After holding a 4–1 lead in the second period, Yale was forced to settle for a 4–4 tie.

The result was worse on Saturday afternoon when Colgate ended the Elis’ undefeated streak in a 5–3 game. The loss means that no undefeated teams remain in all of Division I. Colgate was able to exact some revenge after their last season came to an end in a 2–1 loss to Yale in the NCAA tournament regional final.

“I was pleased with our team's focus from the start of the game tonight and their willingness to play the right way from beginning to end,” Raiders head coach Greg Fargo said to Colgate Athletics. “We got some good looks o ensively and took advantage of them.”

BY BEN RAAB CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

It was a “battle of the Bulldogs” Tuesday night at Butler University’s Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Yale (8–2, 0–0 Ivy) came in looking to test their mettle against the Bulldogs of Butler University (7–3, 0–0 Big East), but came up short, losing 71–61.

The Elis, coming o of two comfortable wins, looked shaky to start the game against just their second high-major opponent all season. On the opening tip, a defensive miscommunication led to an easy layup for center Manny Bates, putting Butler up 2–0 in the first five seconds.

Forward EJ Jarvis ’23 and guard August Mahoney ’24 got Yale on the board with a dunk and then a three

to make it 6–5 at the 16:29 mark, but Butler pulled away after that, going on a 16–2 run to put the Bulldogs down 22–7 with 10:00 to go in the first half.

Jarvis and Mahoney continued to be a driving force on the team, with Jarvis finishing with 14 points on 6–12 from the field, and Mahoney adding 9 points on 3–5 from three.

The Blue and White cut the deficit to 37–28 going into the half, which seemed like a fortunate position to be in given the nine first-half turnovers they committed.

“Our first 10 minutes could've been better,” Jarvis told the News. “They made some adjustments in the fi rst timeout and went on a big run. We played much better in the second half. We kept fi ghting and

“As soon as [Klara Aastroem ’24] comes in you know she’s gonna make an impact. That’s why we put the ball in her hands at the end of the game,”

JENNA CLARK ’24 WOMEN'S BASKETBALL GUARD

TEAM CELEBRATES 2022 SEASON

149 celebrated an Ivy League championship, All-Ivy players, team awards and their seniors at a banquet last weekend. In addition, cornerback Wande Owens ’24 was named captain for the 2023 season.

MATT KNOWLING ’24 HAS MADE 73 FIELD GOALS THIS YEAR,

RHETT LEWIS

Watching the World Cup away from home for the first time has been di cult for many international students at Yale.

YALE ATHLETICS

SEE

VOLLEYBALL

A sloppy first-half, which included nine turnovers, put Yale in a first-half deficit that was

too much to come back from.

W

HOCKEY

WEEKEND

// BY HANNAH KURCZESKI

Christmas,

home

“I’ll

Carrie Rogers glared at her car radio, where Michael Buble’s crooning voice was emanating from the speaker. She smacked the ‘o ’ button, and her car was plunged into sudden silence. She was supposed to be home for Christmas an hour ago, snuggled under a woolen blanket with a mug of her mother’s peppermint cocoa in hand.

Instead, she was sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic along Interstate 71.

The red truck in front of her inched forward, and she gently eased her foot on the gas. “Finally,” she muttered, only to come to a halt again. Somewhere behind her a car honked, and she sighed as she put her foot on the brake.

Except it wasn’t the brake.

Carrie’s car lurched forward, catching her off-guard. Her seatbelt tugged against her chest, drawing an involuntary gasp from her lips. Time seemed to slow down as metal crunched against metal, until finally her foot found the brake once more.

“Shit,” she cursed, straightening in her seat to peer over the steering wheel at the damage. The truck turned on its right turn signal and started to inch out of line, to the shoulder of the highway. Carrie followed suit, muscles tensed until she pulled over and put the car in park.

She heard a door “thud,” and seconds later, a shadow fell over her seat. Carrie sighed and pushed open the car door, an apology already tumbling out of her mouth. “I’m so sorry for the damage,” she started, standing up. “I’m sure my insurance will cover—”

She stopped as she took in the man before her. He was dressed in jeans and a red flannel button down, which was thrown over a gray hoodie. Classic man, Carrie thought, as her gaze traveled up to his face. She was surprised to see something almost familiar in the set of his jaw and the gentle swoop of his black hair.

And those eyes, brown with flecks of gold, were so striking that she was sure she’d seen them somewhere before.

The man ran a hand through his hair, surveying the scene. “I’d be more worried about your car than mine, to be quite frank. Big trucks don’t crumple as easily, but your hood… it’s gonna be hard to fix.” He turned back to face her and stuck out his hand, as if introducing himself was an afterthought. “Hi. I’m Ryan.”

At the sound of his name, a memory resurfaced: Carrie was 15, laughing along at a birthday party for her best friend, Faith. She watched eagerly as Faith turned to the freckled boy sitting next to her. “Okay, Ryan: truth or dare?”

“Dare,” he said confidently. Faith grinned, looking between Carrie and Ryan. “Okay, I dare you to kiss Carrie.”

Carrie could feel the heat rush into her cheeks, red with both embarrassment and anticipation. She’d liked Ryan since the fifth grade, and Faith knew that.

Ryan paused for a moment, then wrinkled his nose. “I changed my mind. Can I get a truth?”

All of the energy seemed to fl ood out of Carrie as Faith looked apologetically between her and Ryan. Carrie’s cheeks fl ushed a deeper shade of red. She tried to pay attention to the rest of the game, but her thoughts were a scratched record, playing “he doesn’t like me, he doesn’t like me” on a never-ending loop. It got so bad that she finally excused herself, teary-eyed, and hid in Faith’s bathroom for the rest of the party.

Home for the Holidays: A Hallmark Parody

be

for

You can plan on me…”

“Ryan Goldman?” Carrie clarified, shaking herself out of the memory and taking the man’s hand. He nodded, perplexed. She tugged her hand away, and when she spoke again, there was a new edge to her tone. “We’ve met before.”

“We have?”

She wasn’t sure if she should be o ended that he had forgotten her. It had been almost four years since they’d last seen each other, after all, but she decided to be petty anyway. “I’m Carrie Rogers.”

Confusion flashed across his face for a split second before his expression morphed into one of recognition. “Oh my gosh, Carrie! From Mr. Buckley’s class?” She nodded once, and he grinned. “Woah, it’s been, like, what — three years?”

“Four,” she corrected him.

“That’s crazy. And now here you are, running into my truck.”

“It’s not my fault,” she hu ed, annoyed. “It’s this stupid holiday tra c, you were going too slow—”

“So your solution was to rear-end me?” Ryan laughed good-naturedly, and Carrie felt her cheeks grow warm despite the frigid temperature.

“Can we just call a towing company and be done with this?” she asked pointedly. “I’m already an hour late for Christmas dinner.”

His smile faded at that. “Yeah, me too. Let’s … let’s get out of here.” ***

An hour later, they were standing in a repair shop, watching the snow fall silently outside the window. “I’m sorry, I just have to deal with this,” Ryan was saying into his phone. “I’ll be home soon. Yup. Love you, too.”

They hadn’t spoken about anything other than the accident for the past hour that they’d been at the shop. They were sitting in stiff plastic chairs and waiting for the mechanic’s appraisal of the damage. Carrie didn’t want to be the one to break the silence, but curiosity got the best of her. “Who was that? Your girlfriend?”

“The person on the phone?” Ryan raised his eyebrows, then chuckled. “No, that was my mom. I don’t have a girlfriend, in case you were wondering.”

Carrie’s face flushed yet again. “I wasn’t.”

Just then, the mechanic came out of the garage with spots of grease streaked across his face and clothes. “Do you kids want the good news or the bad news first?”

“The bad,” Carrie answered, just as Ryan replied “the good.” She glared at him, and he o ered her an apologetic smile.

The mechanic looked between them, bewildered, before speaking again. “The good news is that both vehicles are fixable,” he told them. They both nodded along like puppets on a string.

“The bad news is that it’s going to take a while — maybe all night. And it’s Christmas, so that’ll cost you extra.” The mechanic grinned at the mention of money.

“I need to get home,” Carrie told him. “Like, now. There’s no way I can drive out of here tonight?”

“Not unless you Uber,” Ryan suggested. Carrie ignored him.

The mechanic shook his head. “You’re not likely to find an Uber around here, not on Christmas. Besides, with that snow? Neither of you are going anywhere.”

Carrie and Ryan both turned to glance

out the window, where the snow was falling hard and fast.

“But … but I have to leave,” Carrie insisted.

“The roads aren’t safe,” Ryan interjected.

Carrie rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Mr. Weatherman.”

“I’m afraid he’s right,” the mechanic conceded. “You two are snowed in for the night.”

“For the night?” they echoed in unison.

The mechanic threw his hands up, exasperated. “Where else are you gonna go?”

Carrie opened her mouth to reply, but no words came out.

“Gosh, this must be the most snow Ohio has gotten in years,” Ryan remarked, gazing back outside.

It took all of Carrie’s willpower not to roll her eyes again. “Where are we supposed to sleep?” she asked.

The mechanic reached up to scratch his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never had customers stranded in my shop before, to be honest,” he chuckled. “I live alone in an apartment upstairs. I’d be happy to bring down a few blankets, if you want to sleep on the chairs in the waiting room.” He gestured, and Carrie followed his gaze to the cold plastic chairs she’d been sitting in an hour earlier when she first arrived. There was nothing she loathed more than the idea of sleeping on those chairs — except maybe sleeping next to Ryan.

“Seems like we don’t have much of a choice,” Ryan remarked. Carrie wished she could disagree, but he was right.

They were stuck.

***

Carrie watched Ryan out of the side of her eye as he spread out a blanket on the floor, then added another on top of it. The mechanic had retreated to his apartment a while ago, leaving the two of them alone in his empty shop. “You can sleep here,” Ryan said, gesturing to his newly-made sleep mat. “I’ll take one of the chairs so you don’t have to.”

“I could take a chair, too,” she clipped, irritated by his kindness. Who was this thoughtful guy, and what had he done to the Ryan who had humiliated her in ninth grade? Even though it had been years and Carrie was sure he had changed since high school — or at least, she hoped he had — there was still that 15-year-oldgirl inside of her who was crying because the boy she liked wouldn’t kiss her in Truth or Dare.

“It’s fine, really,” he insisted. “You kept complaining about how uncomfortable they were earlier, and they don’t really bother me as much. Besides, I know this isn’t exactly how you pictured spending your Christmas.” He gestured to the vacant store, where shelves of auto parts lined the walls. A sign above the counter read “Franklin’s Auto Body Shop” in bright red letters that shimmered in the starlight. The moon shone through the window and reflected o the top of the snowdrifts that were newly piled outside, making the entire shop seem brighter than usual.

He took o his pu y winter jacket and tossed it to her. She caught it by the hood, head cocked in puzzlement. “Merry Christmas,” he smirked. “You can use it as a pillow, if you want.”

She threw it back at him. “I can use my own, thank you.”

Carrie laid down on the blankets on the floor, not checking to see if he had caught it. She closed her eyes, praying that sleep would swiftly find her.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Her eyes shot open.

“Hmm?” Carrie mumbled, not bothering to turn around and look at him.

“Why do you hate me?”

“I don’t hate you,” she answered immediately.

Somewhere behind her, he scoffed. “Really? You’ve been hostile to me ever since the accident this afternoon — which is funny, because you’re the one who hit me, so really it should be the other way around.”

She sighed, fi nally rolling over to face him. Her eyes found his brown gaze, and she forced herself not to look away like she had done the entire rest of the day. “I don’t hate you,” she repeated slowly. “I don’t know enough about the adult ‘you’ to hate you. It’s been four years.”

Ryan kept staring at her, as if sensing there was something more. “But .. ?”

“But the ‘you’ four years ago wasn’t that nice to me, that’s all.”

The words rolled right o the tip of Carrie’s tongue, — like they’d been waiting these past four years to be let out. She pursed her lips, bracing herself for his reaction. To her surprise, he burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” she asked after a few seconds.

His laughter started to die. “Wait, you’re… you’re serious? The reason you’ve been so stando sh all day is because I wasn’t nice to you three years ago?”

“Four,” she corrected him before she could stop herself. She hoped the darkness hid the blush that was creeping into her cheeks. “It sounds silly, now that you say it,” she acquiesced, “but you absolutely broke my 15-year-old heart.”

“Me? You broke mine!” he replied, incredulous.

Carrie raised her eyebrows. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I had been in love with you since, like, eighth grade,” Ryan laughed. “Ah, grade school crushes. Those were the days, huh?”

Carrie blinked back her shock. “I– really?” she stuttered. He nodded. “Because I had been in love with you since fifth grade.”

His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “No way.”

It was her turn to gape at him in shock. “You didn’t know?” she asked. “I thought it was pretty obvious.”

“I’ve always been a bit oblivious,” he admitted, sheepish. He paused to shake his head, running a hand through his hair and smoothing it back.

“Then why didn’t you kiss me?” she blurted out. The second the words left her mouth she wanted to take them back, to force them back inside her lips and wipe both of their minds.

But that was impossible. “Kiss you?” Ryan repeated, seeming thoroughly confused.

“At that party, playing Truth or Dare …” He shook his head, genuinely clueless. Carrie stared at him in disbelief. “You really don’t remember?”

“I mean … maybe?” He shrugged. “It might not have seemed like it, but I was super shy in high school. I liked you, sure, but I never, ever would’ve acted on it. Especially not for some silly dare.”

Carrie just sat there, at a loss for words. It’s not that big of a deal, she told herself, but it was. She’d spent the past four years believing that there was something wrong with her that made her fundamentally unkissable. Even though she was a sophomore in college, she’d never even had her first kiss. It’s not that she hadn’t liked other guys since then, she had just never had the confidence to pursue them.

Ryan chuckled, still stunned by the realization. “Wow. Imagine what could’ve been, if only we’d known.”

“Yeah, that’s… wow.”

AN ODE TO LANYARDS (WHERE ARE THEY)

// BY ELIZABETH WATSON

Someone please tell me. I’m literally begging you. To all those in the class of 2025, I remember our first week on campus quite well. Mostly because we all jingled from place to place in horrible unison with our IDs, room keys and miscellaneous objects of importance attached to our Yale-patterned lanyards. But times change and I guess lanyards do too. Mine acquired a funky fresh galaxy print, and all of yours turned invisible.

What sorcery is this? Sure, you can carry your ID on an iPhone wallet attachment or a rubber ID holder, but do you bring your phone with you everywhere? Oh who am I kidding, of course you do! Onto a greater concern then: how do you get the ID out of the holder once you put it in? I tried once and it was nearly impossible to get the card out because of the friction from the rubber. And when Murphy’s Law smites you for hubris once, you usually don’t make a habit of challenging it again.

See, I understand the basic philosophy

is to tap your ID on the scanners without removing it, but I’d rather not engage in a small wrestling match with my phone every time the dining hall scanner decides that I don’t exist, which happens far more often than you’d think. I don’t have the energy to partake in this daily challenge. Plus, I don’t want to swap out my phone case for a wallet attachment. It’s got an astronaut on it! How can I replace the astronaut? The lanyard is infinitely more convenient, not only for my ID but also my room key.

Speaking of room keys, what exactly are all of you doing with yours? Do you carry them with you? Is it some unspoken secret that all Yale students have their suite and dorm room doors taped, and have transcended the mortal trappings of keys altogether? Is it a rite of passage to learn to materialize your key from the ether through sheer willpower alone? I can’t answer these questions, but you probably can, dear reader.

Someone please tell me. People keep mistaking me for a first year — I’m a sophomore — and the jingling announces my

presence to everyone in a 30-mile radius when I go outside. This would be fine if I were one of the bells in Harkness Tower, but as we have established, I am a sophomore.

Maybe the experience of wearing my lanyard will endow me with greater stealthiness than the average student — which would be highly beneficial to stealth checks during my party’s Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Besides that, by virtue of constantly jingling, I automatically get to be more festive than anyone else when the holidays roll around. But perhaps there

They sat there in silence for a few moments more until — to Carrie’s surprise — Ryan was the one who broke it. “So how’s life been these past four years? I would’ve asked earlier, but we were kind of … you know.” He gestured to the shop around them.

Carrie gave him a genuine smile for the first time. “Life’s been good,” she told him. “I got into fashion school, so I’m currently working on getting my bachelors in fashion design.”

“I’m impressed,” Ryan whistled. “But then again, I’m not surprised. You were always making your own clothing, you had the coolest outfits. Didn’t you make your own homecoming dress one year?”

Carrie laughed at the memory. “Oh, god, that dress was horrendous. It was the first full piece I’d ever made, and it was a total disaster.”

“I thought it was pretty cool,” Ryan admitted.

Carrie’s face turned pink, and she could’ve sworn Ryan’s did, too.

***

Neither of them got any sleep that night. They unintentionally pulled an all-nighter, talking until dawn about the trajectory their lives had taken since they’d last spoken. Carrie learned that Ryan went to trade school to become an electrician, and was currently in the middle of starting his own company. “It’s not as exciting as design school, but I enjoy it,” he joked.

The mechanic came downstairs the next morning to find Carrie and Ryan huddled together under a blanket, laughing like old friends. “Did the two of you get any sleep?” he mused aloud, but neither of them took notice.

He cleared his throat, and only then did Carrie turn to look at him. “They cleared the roads overnight,” he informed them. “You both should be good to leave now.”

“Oh, thank you.” Carrie found herself forcing a smile onto her face, surprised by the sinking feeling in her stomach. The auto shop had been their safe haven, a welcome escape from reality. Now, her and Ryan had to step o memory lane and step into the real world.

The mechanic gave Carrie and Ryan back the keys to their respective cars. They both stared at them for a moment before looking back up at each other.

“Do you still live in town?” Ryan asked her.

Carrie nodded. “My parents do, yeah.”

“I’m not far. If you’re free while you’re home on break, maybe I could pay a visit?”

A smile sparked across her face. “I’d like that.”

They turned to walk out the door. Just before they stepped into the cold air, they heard a whistle behind them. “Mistletoe, lovebirds,” the mechanic hollered.

They both looked up, and sure enough, a bright green sprig of mistletoe was hanging over their heads.

“This wasn’t here yesterday,” Carrie protested. The mechanic just smiled mysteriously and disappeared into his stockroom.

Ryan gave her a wry smile. “Guess we have no choice but to follow the rules.” He leaned forward, cupping her face in his hands, and tenderly kissed her on the lips. She kissed him back instinctively, their lips interlocking like long-lost puzzle pieces.

Ryan pulled away, grinning widely. “Merry Christmas, Carrie Rogers.”

Carrie smiled back. “Merry Christmas, Ryan Goldman.”

is also something to be said about sticking to your instincts no matter what, however noisy or chaotic a fate they bring down upon your head.

To all my fellow lanyard-wearers, I see — and hear — you. Never change.

Contact ELIZABETH WATSON at elizabeth.watson@yale.edu .

Contact HANNAH KURCZESKI at

// JESSAI FLORES

The Pete Davidson Effect

BY MIRANDA WOLLEN

With his gangly arms and dark undereye bags, Pete Davidson looks like he’s spent too much time at computer science office hours. He also bagged Kim Kardashian last spring, and now? Now? He and Emily Ratajkowski are somehow a thing. Riddle me this, people: how does a guy who always looks at the camera like he’s slyly letting out a fart date two of the great MILFs of our generation?

Maybe, it’s just because he’s not a dick. I’d be remiss not to compare Petey to Kim’s previous beaux, whose recent — and rampant — antisemitism has been repeatedly broadcasted to his over 32 million Twitter followers and whoever the fuck is still listening to Alex Jones.

Davidson, on the other hand, has –through some combination of genuine vulnerability and great PR – put forth a persona of the kind of sincerity and downto-earthness that makes him hard to dislike. He’s not aggressively cocky or arrogant, he has no (known) affiliation to neofascism or Scientology, and he’s never been accused of groping anyone. That’s kind of the bar at this point.

There’s something else, too: a phenomenon Urban Dictionary has conveniently coined “the Pete Davidson Effect,” whereby public and peer influence determines attractiveness. It also might tie into a zeitgeisty pluralistic ignorance, a social psychology term for the belief that one’s personal opinion doesn’t line up with that of the majority and the subsequent agreement to go along with the perceived majority opinion.

It’s just like any other viral phenomenon: “Pete Davidson is actually so sexy” reaches the Twitterverse, kitschy outlets like BuzzFeed and Cosmo grasp onto a “controversial” opinion that won’t mean any real trouble for them if they’ve misread the room. It becomes temporarily entrenched in a cultural climate that won’t stay still for more than a few months anymore.

there on out, the world is Pete’s oyster (if oysters had boobs).

The Pete Davidson E ect isn’t so di cult to understand, and it’s kind of nice to imagine a world where the supercelebs of the day can proudly tout their self-proclaimed “butthole eyes.” But our fixation with Pete is a bit of a paradox: in our obsession with his normalness, we’ve deified him. He’s become the God of Average-Looking Men with Great Personalities, a fi gurehead of the “female gaze” trope (and here I must remind again that he’s not the Hunchback of Notre Dame: he’s 6’3 and a multimillionaire.)

It’s freaky if you think about it: our celebrity culture has become so untenable that we’re now sexualizing perceived normalcy. There was the whole “Ugly-Hot/Hot-Ugly” debacle of last year, of which Pete Davidson was a pioneer – because he doesn’t look like a generic movie-star, and he gets with women who do.

This metric is, of course, just a new way for us to judge famous people’s validity based on their perceived attractiveness levels. It is also a harbinger of a movement gone mainstream – and awry.

To reject typical Western beauty standards in men – think Henry Cavill, Ryan Reynolds, the eight-pack white-bread stars of any movie involving big explosions and oily muscles – is subversive. To reject it in favor of a “new” (slightly altered) beauty standard based on concepts of “abnormal” attractiveness (having a Big Nose) is to miss the fundamental purpose of the endeavor.

Placing a new kind of Hot Guy at the top of the totem pole does nothing to get rid of the totem pole itself, nor to challenge the underlying societal functionings that lead us to need one in the first place.

But I digress. For Science Reasons, I asked nine friends if they would smooch Pete. Seven said they would. You do the math – call that the Pete Davidson Effect.

Contact MIRANDA WOLLEN at miranda.wollen@yale.edu .

// BY JESSICA SÁNCHEZ

Orange is my new favorite color.

Not the neon orange of a giant puffer jacket, definitely not the toxic orange of a bad spray tan, not even the pastel orange of a delicately-blended eyeshadow look.

It’s the orange of the New Haven Green at 4:09 pm as the sun descends toward the western horizon, painting the tops of City Hall, the Chase building and United Church on the Green in the warmest hue I could dream up. It’s this glowing orange that greets us as we walk up to the Christmas tree in front of New Haven’s Holiday Village.

Over a dozen greenhouse-like structures, the village’s “houses,” line the Green’s criss-crossing paths, inviting New Haveners in to peruse ceramics, candles, fur-lined shawls, jewelry and hot cider donuts. As we browse, local musicians take to the stage, and the mellifluous pairing of voice and guitar flows through the frigid air.

Our first “house” belongs to JinSu’s ceramics. JinSu welcomes us with a bright smile, and as we appreciate her striking, red-glazed dishes and lovingly handmolded spoons, she asks us whether we’re students and then what our majors are. When she was in school, she was an art history major who’d considered anthropology at first. Today, she only sells her work once a year at the Holiday Village. She doesn’t create with the purpose to profit; she enjoys challenging herself through her art and finding beauty in her mistakes.

When we compliment her spoons, she describes why she is drawn to crafting them. Spoons, to her, represent one’s ability to scoop their own blessings. To take,

with gratitude, what life has to offer. She also describes their form as representative of safety; many of her spoons rest inside small cave-like ceramics from which she draws a metaphor for creating a comforting space where you can truly be yourself.

We talk with JinSu about our lives at college, our families. One of my friends even FaceTimes her brother to introduce him to Jinsu — they’re both Leo signs. We meet her two daughters, one considering culinary school in Switzerland. We learn about her brother, an artist like her and the creator of a new form of physical exercise that combines pilates, yoga and dance.

We leave JinSu’s Holiday Village house half an hour later with a few pairs of ceramic earrings for our mothers and friends and the widest smiles on our faces. Despite the freezing cold darkness that envelops us out on the Green’s path now that the sun has long since disappeared, we feel warm with the giddiness that only exists after forming a beautiful new connection.

We step into a few more houses, admiring golden embroidered swirls on scarves and raised textures on pottery. We arrive back at where we started our night, pausing under the Christmas tree’s bright glow against the ink-black sky.

As we walk back toward campus with our bags swinging at our sides, we see a food truck on the corner of Elm and College. Under its awning hangs a multicolored garland spelling out “RAMEN.” I turn to the group, eyes wide with excitement. I stop by to ask when they’re open; I’d never seen a food truck on this street and assumed it’d be a sort of limited-time,

pop-up truck. A couple greets us with kind smiles, answering my question by saying that they’ve been open for only three days.

Instead of eating in a dining hall, we order bowls, feeling good about all the beautiful things coming across our path this evening. Unexpected, exhilarating.

The music fades into the background as we walk down Elm. The smell of fresh ramen hangs around us. We’re giddy, light. This evening is a state of flow. There’s no pressure on and no expectations for this evening. We’re gliding through the core of a city none of us are from but have come, over the past year and a half, to call home. And although there’s great beauty in the orange of the setting sun, the curve of a ceramic spoon and the scent of a food truck, what grants us our flow most of all are the people we journey with.

I used to have a very difficult time calling New Haven home. The four-letter word would get caught in the back of my throat, shoved back by homesickness and loneliness. I feel neither on this evening. Instead, “home” twinkles in bright string lights in my brain, making me so lightheaded I can barely keep from floating.

Even without the sun, I find that perfect orange in the crinkle of my friends’ eyes when they smile, in their laughs, in the stories we bounce back and forth as our journey finds a new segment back on campus. We find that perfect orange as we continue to explore what makes this place home.

Contact JESSICA SÁNCHEZ at jessica.sanchez.jms469@yale .edu .

Really, there’s nothing all that unattractive about Pete Davidson. He kind of

just looks like someone I could’ve gone to Jewish summer camp with (Exhibit A.)

All it takes is one tiny hot woman making googly eyes at him in a perfectly-timed

paparazzi flick to make everyone think, “I guess people think he’s cute.” And from

// ARIANE DE GENNARO

// JESSAI FLORES

Perspectives on Quitting Social Media

BY ANABEL MOORE AND ROSE QUITSLUND

Anabel Moore:

My junior year of high school, I wrote a mock TEDx talk not about quitting social media, but about being angry with my peers for being addicted to it. In the talk — which I never gave — I expressed frustration at conversations cut short by Snapchat notifications, petty teenage drama unfolding in disappearing groupchats and the gnawing fear that I was missing out on something everyone else knew about. I determined the singular root of my tween existential angst to be social media. The underlying loneliness I — and, I now suspect, many of my developing peers – felt as a result of our time of life was compounded by the fact that at any moment, precious attention could be snatched away by a notification.The people that were in, were in, co-opted into a digital social circle that was equally awkward and daunting to enter.

In the talk, I expressed a righteous indignation that social media was bad and that staying o it was inherently good. I find it ironic — and perhaps indicative of just how addictive these platforms are — that a few short months later I would find myself taking a di erent stance, pleading with my staunch anti-social media parents to let me create and curate a new digital presence. Today, I write with significantly less righteousness. I know how integral these digital platforms are to modern social and professional life, especially following the pandemic, but I carry an intense weariness about the role monetized and addictive platforms have on social relationships and self-awareness.

I stayed away from social media throughout much of high school. Always leery of the oddly specific Facebook ads I would see following dinner conversation my mom asked me to hold o as long as possible, to my vehement chagrin. I threw out every argument possible: that I was being left out, that I was missing out on school events, that I wasn’t able to keep up with friends who lived far away.

Adding in a new social media platform was only on the table when absolutely necessary: first came GroupMe, because it was what my high school soccer team used, then it was Snapchat, because I had made some international friends and “WhatsApp was weird,” and finally it was Instagram, prompted by my acceptance to Yale and the thought that there was simply no way for me to meet my new classmates beyond having a robust profile. I was thrilled I was finally able to wield a worthy justification for joining the platforms. In reality, I just wanted to be “in.”

I charged forward with each new app, wanting both to make up for lost time and cement my place in the social matrix I now had access to. It was as if I was finally able to find the address to the party, and now I just needed my friends to open the door.

Looking back, it is incredible the rapidity with which I became addicted. I found a small amount of contentment in reading the profiles of all the newly admitted Yalies on the Yale ‘25 Instagram page — but man alive, everyone used a lot of exclamation points. I could also see how my earlier frustration at social media had put me on an island: I was now receiving the hundreds of daily inputs that all my peers were, and these inputs were exhausting. I considered the old me that had written the TEDx talk woefully ignorant of all the good things social media and screens had to o er.

When I arrived at Yale, I continued my religious devotion to Snapchat and Instagram. The minute details of long nights both out and in came to be recorded in 4K quality, many of which I now regret. I would post near-daily updates to private and public stories, documenting my new, exciting and exclusive surroundings with a sickening regularity. My screen time was exponentially high, compounded by the hours I now spent on my laptop. In fact, there are several notable photos from firstyear fall where as my friends smile for the camera, I stand o to

the side, head bowed, about to send a Snap. Even surrounded by all the things I came looking for in college, I was hunched under the weight of my attention being stolen from myself.

By January, I was exhausted at the prospect of a new semester. My “memories” bank in Snapchat was less a raucous reminder of all the fun I had but of several instances of poor decision-making that made my academic and emotional life at Yale significantly more di cult. I had no desire to see many of the people I messaged regularly in-person, and yet I could not bear the thought of leaving their messages unopened, red dots glaring angrily at my synapses. I started to read the ubiquitous magazine editorials of tech writers locking their phones in boxes, changing their devices to grayscale and deactivating their social media accounts. Almost every publication — The Atlantic, Wired, and Time — had devoted significant print space to the idea of unplugging.

I remember waking up one Saturday in the first weeks of my first-year spring semester and Googling how to deactivate Snapchat. I don’t remember exactly why — there was no real catalyst. Snapchat makes it quite di cult to delete an account. I had to go through several pages of external sites to confirm that yes, I did want to deactivate my account, and yes, I had saved all I wanted to save from the app. In examining my “memories,” — which weren’t really memories at all, just random videos from unimportant parts of my day — I realized that the photos I cared about had all been taken with my camera app. The photos I cared about were actual memories, not just random moments in time when an app told my brain to take a picture.

It took thirty days to fully delete Snapchat, and in the same time I erased almost all of my presence on Instagram. I knew I couldn’t fully delete Instagram — I did, after all, use the platform to stay up to date with campus happenings and faraway family I missed — but I felt this intense pull towards privacy following months of ultra-sharing. I no longer wanted to run my social life in 1s and 0s. I went dark, almost exactly a year after pushing my parents so wholeheartedly to let me lurch into the online digital world.

At the beginning of this summer, my mom, grandmother, and I all read “Stolen Focus” by Johann Hari, a book about a writer leaving his digital life behind to write a novel. I was fully anticipating it to be in the same vein of James Clear’s “Atomic Habits”: a book widely adopted by young people in an attempt to “fix” the attention spans that have rapidly been ripped from our own grasp, yet largely made popular by social media itself. Yet, it was my 87-year-old grandmother recommending it to me, a woman who lacks Wi-fi, a computer, and a cell phone.

“This,” she told us, “really gets at why it’s so hard to talk to one another these days.” Even living in a small town in Minnesota surrounded by lifelong friends and family, she too had picked up on the exhausting e ects of attention surrender to digital behemoths.

A year later, and Snapchat is still not on my phone. I briefly recreated an account for communication with an extracurricular group but then deleted it, realizing that anyone who really needed to get in touch with me could just text me. It wasn’t any more complicated than that.

Many of my friends now describe someone’s dependence on Snapchat as something that “gives them the ick,” used more by middle schoolers than a generation of mature young adults looking to form real relationships. Perhaps Snapchat is now “cheugy” — but then I realize that “cheugy” is an equally digitized word.

I know that every generation following ours will have its own Snapchats, Instagrams, TikToks and Twitters — our professional and personal lives are too irrevocably digitized to avoid them altogether. But regardless of ubiquity, there is great joy in moderation. In a phase of life best known for exploration of self

and other, it is worthwhile to examine which parts of ourselves are fully our own — attention included.

Rose Quitslund:

I’m so tired of social media. I’ve deleted the Instagram app from my phone twice in the past 24 hours. Yesterday, I deleted it to give myself a tolerance break — to reset my social endorphins. But then I woke up to the text: “go comment on my post” “why? i’m not in it?”

“so that it looks like i have friends”

“ok”

So, being a good friend I redownloaded the app, searched their name, found the post in question, commented and then deleted the app again. Why? I guess maybe I’m susceptible to peer pressure. But I have such a love-hate relationship with social media — it’s kind of like that toxic ex that you know is bad news but whose texts you respond to anyway. The attention is nice. Love to hate it; hate to love it.

Truthfully, I could live without social media. When I first got Instagram and Snapchat, I was mesmerized with the ability to see what other people were doing at every moment of the day. And years later, during the pandemic, the rise of TikTok brought on a new honeymoon phase. “Hold up! You’ve been scrolling for way too long now” —familiar words if you’ve ever spent more than a few minutes scrolling through the FYP.

Social media is great for the most alluring pastime: people watching. There’s no threat of your subjects returning the gaze… except to turn it upon your own, curated posts. It’s exciting to be able to get a look at other people’s lives without the threat of them looking back at you; to be the removed watcher. Capable of seeing, but not to be seen from behind the protection of a screen. It’s the 21st-century equivalent to cutting eye holes in your newspaper. But you want to be watched too.

The FOMO-inducing nature of quitting social media kicks in. It’s so tangible you could reach out into the metaverse and touch it. The apps are so enticing, so easy. It’s satisfying to create this idealized version of yourself that you show to the world. There’s something exciting about knowing that people have their eyes on you; scrolling through your posts and watching your stories. But you are the one in control of what they see. That feeling is addicting. Tune into the social network for your daily dose of dopamine, brought to you by Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok. Pick your poison.

For the past few years now, it’s been this back and forth for me. Social media or no social media? Will they, won’t they? To be or not to be? And I don’t think there’s really a way to figure out the right balance. There’s no formula for how to get a grip on social media.

It’s like the casual exchange of “hey how’s it going,” “good, and you?” “good” passing in the dining hall. It’s having the same conversation over and over again. We go through the ritual without giving it a second thought, and it doesn’t really amount to anything. But does that mean I’m going to stop doing it? No.

So I’ll be here, social media-less for the next few days… until someone else tells me to like their post, and I redownload the apps and the cycle begins again.

Contact ANABEL MOORE at anabel.moore@yale.edu and ROSE QUITSLUND at rose.quitslund@yale.edu .

The holiday season is upon us. The New Haven tree is lit, and finals loom like the Grinch waiting to steal Christmas. Students trudge through their last assignments, eagerly awaiting the holiday season at home. As a first year bringing my first semester to a close, some reflection is in order; I will do so in style — and in the holiday spirit. Without further ado, here are my thoughts on Yale’s Naughty and Nice list:

Nice

Naughty

• 9:25 classes: I really thought this would be easy after high school… boy, was I wrong.

• 5 days a week of language classes at 9:25: yes, it gets worse.

// BY ABBY ASMUTH

• TD: does this really need an explanation? The dining hall is bad enough, let alone the lice.

• Laundry fees: so Yale can bring in John Legend, no problem, but can’t pay for laundry?

• Printing fees: my high school could pay for free printing, but Yale can’t?

• Rainy and 50-degree weather in December: as both a lover of Christmas and a Wisconsinite, this weather is blasphemous. Where is the snow?

• Harvard parties: would be on the naughty list, if they actually existed.

• The new, new, new registration system: I’ve heard about at least five friends getting kicked out of “Criminal Minds.”

• “We open later for students at other colleges”: Silliman, Branford and Morse/Stiles need to get over their superiority complexes.

• When someone takes your laundry out: just when you paid $1.50 to clean your clothes, someone gets them dirty again.

• “I’m going to change the consulting industry from the inside”: sure, sure, everyone definitely believes you.

• Handsome Dan: seeing his adorably, ugly face always brings me joy.

• Handsome Dan’s handler: the Instagram is fantastic.

• JE: “a great dining experience” say the students of JE, and this author includes without bias.

• My first-year seminar professor: the open note, “open computer” quizzes were a blessing I never knew I needed.

• Chicken Tender Thursday: truly a highlight of the week.

• Cinnamon Toast Squares: Yale’s best offbrand cereal.

• BD: great playlists, every time.

• Yale men memes: they never fail to give me a good laugh.

• Buttery and Acorn workers: we appreciate you.

• Dining hall staff: thank you for fueling this campus.

• Bass Library: love it or hate it, Bass will always be there for you at 2 a.m.

• My bed: always there for me at 2:15 when I finally get home from Bass.

• My friends: from movie nights to coffee runs to late night talks — all wonderfully intellectual, yet amusingly unproductive — thank you for making this the craziest, most exciting, best semester of my life.

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

// ARIANE DE GENNARO

// JESSAI FLORES

WEEKEND

// BY HANNAH KURCZESKI

Christmas,

home

“I’ll

Carrie Rogers glared at her car radio, where Michael Buble’s crooning voice was emanating from the speaker. She smacked the ‘o ’ button, and her car was plunged into sudden silence. She was supposed to be home for Christmas an hour ago, snuggled under a woolen blanket with a mug of her mother’s peppermint cocoa in hand.

Instead, she was sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic along Interstate 71.

The red truck in front of her inched forward, and she gently eased her foot on the gas. “Finally,” she muttered, only to come to a halt again. Somewhere behind her a car honked, and she sighed as she put her foot on the brake.

Except it wasn’t the brake.

Carrie’s car lurched forward, catching her off-guard. Her seatbelt tugged against her chest, drawing an involuntary gasp from her lips. Time seemed to slow down as metal crunched against metal, until finally her foot found the brake once more.

“Shit,” she cursed, straightening in her seat to peer over the steering wheel at the damage. The truck turned on its right turn signal and started to inch out of line, to the shoulder of the highway. Carrie followed suit, muscles tensed until she pulled over and put the car in park.

She heard a door “thud,” and seconds later, a shadow fell over her seat. Carrie sighed and pushed open the car door, an apology already tumbling out of her mouth. “I’m so sorry for the damage,” she started, standing up. “I’m sure my insurance will cover—”

She stopped as she took in the man before her. He was dressed in jeans and a red flannel button down, which was thrown over a gray hoodie. Classic man, Carrie thought, as her gaze traveled up to his face. She was surprised to see something almost familiar in the set of his jaw and the gentle swoop of his black hair.

And those eyes, brown with flecks of gold, were so striking that she was sure she’d seen them somewhere before.

The man ran a hand through his hair, surveying the scene. “I’d be more worried about your car than mine, to be quite frank. Big trucks don’t crumple as easily, but your hood… it’s gonna be hard to fix.” He turned back to face her and stuck out his hand, as if introducing himself was an afterthought. “Hi. I’m Ryan.”

At the sound of his name, a memory resurfaced: Carrie was 15, laughing along at a birthday party for her best friend, Faith. She watched eagerly as Faith turned to the freckled boy sitting next to her. “Okay, Ryan: truth or dare?”

“Dare,” he said confidently. Faith grinned, looking between Carrie and Ryan. “Okay, I dare you to kiss Carrie.”

Carrie could feel the heat rush into her cheeks, red with both embarrassment and anticipation. She’d liked Ryan since the fifth grade, and Faith knew that.

Ryan paused for a moment, then wrinkled his nose. “I changed my mind. Can I get a truth?”

All of the energy seemed to fl ood out of Carrie as Faith looked apologetically between her and Ryan. Carrie’s cheeks fl ushed a deeper shade of red. She tried to pay attention to the rest of the game, but her thoughts were a scratched record, playing “he doesn’t like me, he doesn’t like me” on a never-ending loop. It got so bad that she finally excused herself, teary-eyed, and hid in Faith’s bathroom for the rest of the party.

Home for the Holidays: A Hallmark Parody

be

for

You can plan on me…”

“Ryan Goldman?” Carrie clarified, shaking herself out of the memory and taking the man’s hand. He nodded, perplexed. She tugged her hand away, and when she spoke again, there was a new edge to her tone.

“We’ve met before.”

“We have?”

She wasn’t sure if she should be offended that he had forgotten her. It had been almost four years since they’d last seen each other, after all, but she decided to be petty anyway. “I’m Carrie Rogers.”

Confusion flashed across his face for a split second before his expression morphed into one of recognition. “Oh my gosh, Carrie! From Mr. Buckley’s class?” She nodded once, and he grinned. “Woah, it’s been, like, what — three years?”

“Four,” she corrected him.

“That’s crazy. And now here you are, running into my truck.”

“It’s not my fault,” she huffed, annoyed. “It’s this stupid holiday traffic, you were going too slow—”

“So your solution was to rear-end me?” Ryan laughed good-naturedly, and Carrie felt her cheeks grow warm despite the frigid temperature.

“Can we just call a towing company and be done with this?” she asked pointedly. “I’m already an hour late for Christmas dinner.”

His smile faded at that. “Yeah, me too. Let’s … let’s get out of here.” ***

An hour later, they were standing in a repair shop, watching the snow fall silently outside the window. “I’m sorry, I just have to deal with this,” Ryan was saying into his phone. “I’ll be home soon. Yup. Love you, too.”

They hadn’t spoken about anything other than the accident for the past hour that they’d been at the shop. They were sitting in stiff plastic chairs and waiting for the mechanic’s appraisal of the damage. Carrie didn’t want to be the one to break the silence, but curiosity got the best of her. “Who was that? Your girlfriend?”

“The person on the phone?” Ryan raised his eyebrows, then chuckled. “No, that was my mom. I don’t have a girlfriend, in case you were wondering.”

Carrie’s face flushed yet again. “I wasn’t.”

Just then, the mechanic came out of the garage with spots of grease streaked across his face and clothes. “Do you kids want the good news or the bad news first?”

“The bad,” Carrie answered, just as Ryan replied “the good.” She glared at him, and he offered her an apologetic smile.

The mechanic looked between them, bewildered, before speaking again. “The good news is that both vehicles are fixable,” he told them. They both nodded along like puppets on a string.

“The bad news is that it’s going to take a while — maybe all night. And it’s Christmas, so that’ll cost you extra.” The mechanic grinned at the mention of money.

“I need to get home,” Carrie told him. “Like, now. There’s no way I can drive out of here tonight?”

“Not unless you Uber,” Ryan suggested. Carrie ignored him.

The mechanic shook his head. “You’re not likely to find an Uber around here, not on Christmas. Besides, with that snow? Neither of you are going anywhere.”

Carrie and Ryan both turned to glance

out the window, where the snow was falling hard and fast.

“But … but I have to leave,” Carrie insisted.

“The roads aren’t safe,” Ryan interjected.

Carrie rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Mr. Weatherman.”

“I’m afraid he’s right,” the mechanic conceded. “You two are snowed in for the night.”

“For the night?” they echoed in unison.

The mechanic threw his hands up, exasperated. “Where else are you gonna go?”

Carrie opened her mouth to reply, but no words came out.

“Gosh, this must be the most snow Ohio has gotten in years,” Ryan remarked, gazing back outside.

It took all of Carrie’s willpower not to roll her eyes again. “Where are we supposed to sleep?” she asked.

The mechanic reached up to scratch his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never had customers stranded in my shop before, to be honest,” he chuckled. “I live alone in an apartment upstairs. I’d be happy to bring down a few blankets, if you want to sleep on the chairs in the waiting room.” He gestured, and Carrie followed his gaze to the cold plastic chairs she’d been sitting in an hour earlier when she first arrived. There was nothing she loathed more than the idea of sleeping on those chairs — except maybe sleeping next to Ryan.

“Seems like we don’t have much of a choice,” Ryan remarked. Carrie wished she could disagree, but he was right.

They were stuck.

***

Carrie watched Ryan out of the side of her eye as he spread out a blanket on the floor, then added another on top of it. The mechanic had retreated to his apartment a while ago, leaving the two of them alone in his empty shop. “You can sleep here,” Ryan said, gesturing to his newly-made sleep mat. “I’ll take one of the chairs so you don’t have to.”

“I could take a chair, too,” she clipped, irritated by his kindness. Who was this thoughtful guy, and what had he done to the Ryan who had humiliated her in ninth grade? Even though it had been years and Carrie was sure he had changed since high school — or at least, she hoped he had — there was still that 15-year-oldgirl inside of her who was crying because the boy she liked wouldn’t kiss her in Truth or Dare.

“It’s fine, really,” he insisted. “You kept complaining about how uncomfortable they were earlier, and they don’t really bother me as much. Besides, I know this isn’t exactly how you pictured spending your Christmas.” He gestured to the vacant store, where shelves of auto parts lined the walls. A sign above the counter read “Franklin’s Auto Body Shop” in bright red letters that shimmered in the starlight. The moon shone through the window and reflected off the top of the snowdrifts that were newly piled outside, making the entire shop seem brighter than usual.

He took off his puffy winter jacket and tossed it to her. She caught it by the hood, head cocked in puzzlement. “Merry Christmas,” he smirked. “You can use it as a pillow, if you want.”

She threw it back at him. “I can use my own, thank you.”

Carrie laid down on the blankets on the floor, not checking to see if he had caught it. She closed her eyes, praying that sleep would swiftly find her.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Her eyes shot open.

“Hmm?” Carrie mumbled, not bothering to turn around and look at him.

“Why do you hate me?”

“I don’t hate you,” she answered immediately.

Somewhere behind her, he scoffed. “Really? You’ve been hostile to me ever since the accident this afternoon — which is funny, because you’re the one who hit me, so really it should be the other way around.”

She sighed, finally rolling over to face him. Her eyes found his brown gaze, and she forced herself not to look away like she had done the entire rest of the day. “I don’t hate you,” she repeated slowly. “I don’t know enough about the adult ‘you’ to hate you. It’s been four years.”

Ryan kept staring at her, as if sensing there was something more. “But .. ?”

“But the ‘you’ four years ago wasn’t that nice to me, that’s all.”

The words rolled right off the tip of Carrie’s tongue, — like they’d been waiting these past four years to be let out. She pursed her lips, bracing herself for his reaction. To her surprise, he burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” she asked after a few seconds.

His laughter started to die. “Wait, you’re… you’re serious? The reason you’ve been so standoffish all day is because I wasn’t nice to you three years ago?”

“Four,” she corrected him before she could stop herself. She hoped the darkness hid the blush that was creeping into her cheeks. “It sounds silly, now that you say it,” she acquiesced, “but you absolutely broke my 15-year-old heart.”

“Me? You broke mine!” he replied, incredulous.

Carrie raised her eyebrows. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I had been in love with you since, like, eighth grade,” Ryan laughed. “Ah, grade school crushes. Those were the days, huh?”

Carrie blinked back her shock. “I– really?” she stuttered. He nodded. “Because I had been in love with you since fifth grade.”

His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “No way.”

It was her turn to gape at him in shock. “You didn’t know?” she asked. “I thought it was pretty obvious.”

“I’ve always been a bit oblivious,” he admitted, sheepish. He paused to shake his head, running a hand through his hair and smoothing it back.

“Then why didn’t you kiss me?” she blurted out. The second the words left her mouth she wanted to take them back, to force them back inside her lips and wipe both of their minds.

But that was impossible. “Kiss you?” Ryan repeated, seeming thoroughly confused.

“At that party, playing Truth or Dare …” He shook his head, genuinely clueless. Carrie stared at him in disbelief. “You really don’t remember?”

“I mean … maybe?” He shrugged. “It might not have seemed like it, but I was super shy in high school. I liked you, sure, but I never, ever would’ve acted on it. Especially not for some silly dare.”

Carrie just sat there, at a loss for words. It’s not that big of a deal, she told herself, but it was. She’d spent the past four years believing that there was something wrong with her that made her fundamentally unkissable. Even though she was a sophomore in college, she’d never even had her first kiss. It’s not that she hadn’t liked other guys since then, she had just never had the confidence to pursue them.

Ryan chuckled, still stunned by the realization. “Wow. Imagine what could’ve been, if only we’d known.”

“Yeah, that’s… wow.”

They sat there in silence for a few moments more until — to Carrie’s surprise — Ryan was the one who broke it. “So how’s life been these past four years? I would’ve asked earlier, but we were kind of … you know.” He gestured to the shop around them.

Carrie gave him a genuine smile for the first time. “Life’s been good,” she told him. “I got into fashion school, so I’m currently working on getting my bachelors in fashion design.”

“I’m impressed,” Ryan whistled. “But then again, I’m not surprised. You were always making your own clothing, you had the coolest outfits. Didn’t you make your own homecoming dress one year?”

Carrie laughed at the memory. “Oh, god, that dress was horrendous. It was the first full piece I’d ever made, and it was a total disaster.”

“I thought it was pretty cool,” Ryan admitted.

Carrie’s face turned pink, and she could’ve sworn Ryan’s did, too.

***

Neither of them got any sleep that night. They unintentionally pulled an all-nighter, talking until dawn about the trajectory their lives had taken since they’d last spoken. Carrie learned that Ryan went to trade school to become an electrician, and was currently in the middle of starting his own company. “It’s not as exciting as design school, but I enjoy it,” he joked.

The mechanic came downstairs the next morning to find Carrie and Ryan huddled together under a blanket, laughing like old friends. “Did the two of you get any sleep?” he mused aloud, but neither of them took notice.

He cleared his throat, and only then did Carrie turn to look at him. “They cleared the roads overnight,” he informed them. “You both should be good to leave now.”

“Oh, thank you.” Carrie found herself forcing a smile onto her face, surprised by the sinking feeling in her stomach. The auto shop had been their safe haven, a welcome escape from reality. Now, her and Ryan had to step off memory lane and step into the real world.

The mechanic gave Carrie and Ryan back the keys to their respective cars. They both stared at them for a moment before looking back up at each other.

“Do you still live in town?” Ryan asked her.

Carrie nodded. “My parents do, yeah.”

“I’m not far. If you’re free while you’re home on break, maybe I could pay a visit?”

A smile sparked across her face. “I’d like that.”

They turned to walk out the door. Just before they stepped into the cold air, they heard a whistle behind them. “Mistletoe, lovebirds,” the mechanic hollered.

They both looked up, and sure enough, a bright green sprig of mistletoe was hanging over their heads.

“This wasn’t here yesterday,” Carrie protested. The mechanic just smiled mysteriously and disappeared into his stockroom.

Ryan gave her a wry smile. “Guess we have no choice but to follow the rules.” He leaned forward, cupping her face in his hands, and tenderly kissed her on the lips. She kissed him back instinctively, their lips interlocking like long-lost puzzle pieces.

Ryan pulled away, grinning widely. “Merry Christmas, Carrie Rogers.”

Carrie smiled back. “Merry Christmas, Ryan Goldman.”

Contact HANNAH KURCZESKI at hannah.kurczeski@yale.edu .

AN ODE TO LANYARDS (WHERE ARE THEY)

// BY ELIZABETH WATSON

Someone please tell me. I’m literally begging you. To all those in the class of 2025, I remember our first week on campus quite well. Mostly because we all jingled from place to place in horrible unison with our IDs, room keys and miscellaneous objects of importance attached to our Yale-patterned lanyards. But times change and I guess lanyards do too. Mine acquired a funky fresh galaxy print, and all of yours turned invisible.

What sorcery is this? Sure, you can carry your ID on an iPhone wallet attachment or a rubber ID holder, but do you bring your phone with you everywhere? Oh who am I kidding, of course you do! Onto a greater concern

then: how do you get the ID out of the holder once you put it in? I tried once and it was nearly impossible to get the card out because of the friction from the rubber. And when Murphy’s Law smites you for hubris once, you usually don’t make a habit of challenging it again.

See, I understand the basic philosophy is to tap your ID on the scanners without removing it, but I’d rather not engage in a small wrestling match with my phone every time the dining hall scanner decides that I don’t exist, which happens far more often than you’d think. I don’t have the energy to partake in this daily challenge. Plus, I don’t want to swap out my phone case for a wallet attachment. It’s got an astronaut on it! How can I replace the astronaut? The lanyard is infinitely

more convenient, not only for my ID but also my room key.

Speaking of room keys, what exactly are all of you doing with yours? Do you carry them with you? Is it some unspoken secret that all Yale students have their suite and dorm room doors taped, and have transcended the mortal trappings of keys altogether? Is it a rite of passage to learn to materialize your key from the ether through sheer willpower alone? I can’t answer these questions, but you probably can, dear reader.

Someone please tell me. People keep mistaking me for a first year — I’m a sophomore —, and the jingling announces my presence to everyone in a 30-mile radius when I go outside. This would be fine if I were one of the bells in Harkness Tower, but as we

have established, I am a sophomore. Maybe the experience of wearing my lanyard will endow me with greater stealthiness than the average student — which would be highly beneficial to stealth checks during my party’s Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Besides that, by virtue of constantly jingling, I automatically get to be more festive than anyone else when the holidays roll around. But perhaps there is also something to be said about sticking to your instincts no matter what, however noisy or chaotic a fate they bring down upon your head.

To all my fellow lanyard-wearers, I see — and hear — you. Never change.

Contact ELIZABETH WATSON at elizabeth.watson@yale.edu .