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

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 2013 · VOL. CXXXV, NO. 108 · yaledailynews.com

INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING

SUNNY CLOUDY

48 37

CROSS CAMPUS

ABYSS CLASSICAL MUSIC GIVEN NEW LIFE

YALE CORPORATION

NEW HAVEN SCHOOLS

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Vassar president and film producer nominated to serve as alumni fellow

ALDERMEN DISCUSS IMPROVEMENTS TO DISTRICT SAFETY

Without conference tournament, slow start condemned the Bulldogs

PAGES 8–9 CULTURE

PAGE 3 NEWS

PAGE 5 CITY

PAGE 14 SPORTS

Open forum tackles alcohol

Campus crime. In addition to the acts of vandalism that hit Jonathan Edwards and Berkeley colleges earlier this week, Davenport has also faced its fair share of thefts and graffiti. According to an email from Davenport Operations Manager Carolyn Haller to the Dport community, the college doesn’t need “no stinkin’ thieves or vandals!”

BY MONICA DISARE AND NICOLE NAREA STAFF REPORTERS

informed opinions,” Yale College Council President John Gonzalez ’14 said. “It’s hard to emphasize to students how important this group is.”

Gonzalez said he thinks the majority of the student body may not have read the emails sent by Yale College Dean Mary Miller and Vice President for Student Life Kimberly Goff-Crews ’83 LAW ’86 on the formation of the University Council Committee. Still, he said he hopes students understand the importance of speaking with the commit-

After Richter’s Cafe closed its Chapel Street location following three decades as a prominent institution in the downtown bar scene, the site is slated to reopen in approximately two weeks as Ordinary — the latest brainchild of local restaurateurs including the owners of New Haven’s highly popular Caseus Fromagerie & Bistro.

Clashing with the modern decor of nearby Shake Shack, Ordinary will pay tribute to the history of the Elm City as a classic bar. The location — which predates Prohibition and has housed President Abraham Lincoln, President George Washington and Babe Ruth — will keep its original woodwork, including the original bar top that dates back to at least 1912, and will serve old-style cocktails. While an official date has not been set, the bar is expected to open in approximately two weeks.

“I think it’s important just the fact that it’s being reopened. People argue that [Richter’s] and Anchor are the oldest [bars] in New Haven,” said Tom Sobocinski, one of the co-owners of the restaurant. “We wanted … the nostalgic character of the place to live on.”

The name of the bar may be Ordinary, but the food and drink that will be served at 990 Chapel St. promise to be anything but. There will be no shots, no flavored Absolut vodka and not even a regular soda dispenser. Instead, Ordinary will serve imported craft beer and traditional cocktails like the Manhattan. With their drinks, guests will have the option to order food like meat pies, chocolate and, of course, cheese.

The bar’s storied history began in 1858 when it was founded as part of the New Haven House Hotel. It continued to operate as a speakeasy during Prohibition. More recently, the bar was opened by a Yale grad, Richter Elser ’81, and then, after chang-

SEE ALCOHOL FORUM PAGE 6

SEE ORDINARY BAR PAGE 4

Getting a facelift. SigEp has a new website, and it’s looking pretty trendy. With an enormous photo of SigEp’s front door splashed across the home page and headshots of each fraternity brother, it seems like SigEp may have discovered its most effective recruiting tool yet.

Thoughts on grading? The Yale College Council will be holding an open forum on grading at 7 p.m. tonight to gauge student opinion on proposed changes to Yale’s grading system before the faculty vote on April 4.

On guns. Connecticut Sens.

Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73 and Chris Murphy offered harsh words to the National Rifle Association in a Monday letter to the organization’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre. The letter, which requested the NRA cease automated calls pushing its pro-gun policies to Newtown, Conn., residents, called the organization’s behavior “inappropriate” and its agenda “extreme.”

Fly no more. The control tower at Tweed New Haven Regional Airport will close May 5 due to sequestrationrelated cuts, according to the official timetable of the Federal Aviation Administration. Tweed is on the final list of 149 contract towers that the FAA will be forced to close to comply with the mandatory budget cuts.

Cookie fever. Two Yale students are opening a pop-up cookie shop to sell everybody’s favorite snack: Girl Scout cookies. The miniature store, which will open at 97 Audubon St. today and tomorrow, will offer Thin Mints, Samoas and Tagalongs.

So dieters, beware.

Sharing is caring. The

surplus of supplies donated to Sandy Hook Elementary School after the shooting will be donated to Milford, Conn., schools, the New Haven Register reported. The supplies include crayons, markers, notebooks and other school materials.

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1929 The League of Nations Model Assembly plans to meet in the Trumbull common room tonight to discuss international affairs and diplomacy.

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Richter’s bar set to reopen

KATHRYN CRANDALL/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The University Council Committee on Alcohol discussed campus drinking culture with students in a Wednesday panel.

BY CYNTHIA HUA STAFF REPORTER The number of students in attendance at last night’s Yale College Council Open Forum on Alcohol barely exceeded the number of panelists.

Eight administrators and experts in high-risk drinking prevention flown in from institutions across the country such as Stanford and Brown sat down with nine students in the Branford common room Tuesday night. The panelists are members of the University Council Commit-

tee on Alcohol, which was formed in December and is tasked with advising Yale’s president on alcohol policies. Council members took turns asking attendees about campus drinking culture and student perceptions of alcohol policies.

Although the forum was poorly attended, the committee is meeting with a wide cross-section of campus through small group discussions during a visit this week, said Eve Rice ’73, a psychiatrist who chairs the committee.

“I don’t expect a ton of people — I just hope for a couple of well-

Workplace morale slow to recover

BY SOPHIE GOULD AND JULIA ZORTHIAN STAFF REPORTERS The results of the 2012 workplace survey for Yale employees released this month show that worker morale has not fully rebounded from its decline during the financial downturn, according to Michael Peel, vice president for human resources and administration.

The biennial survey, to which 77 percent of staff members responded, found that the percentage of employees who said they were satisfied with their jobs increased to 83 percent from the last survey conducted in 2010, but staff members gave less positive ratings to questions about levels of morale and opportunities for career development within their units. Peel said the University aims to use the results of the latest workplace survey to assess issues important to staff members so administrators can improve working conditions within individual departments.

“I was pleasantly surprised at how the scores [in the] Commitment, Leadership and Rewards [categories] improved from 2010,” Peel said in a Tuesday email to the News. He added that the scores for these categories had declined in previous surveys because of the financial down-

turn.

In the 2012 survey, Peel said, respondents were asked to give each of 54 statements about Yale’s workplace environment a rating from 1 to 5, depending on how strongly they agreed or disagreed with the statement. Ratings of 4 and 5 were considered favorable, while 3 was considered neutral and 1 and 2 were considered unfavorable, he said.

Fifty percent of survey respondents rated the statement “The overall morale in my unit is high” either a 4 or 5, while the other 50 percent gave neutral or negative responses. Peel said he hopes to see the average favorable score for morale rise above 50 percent, adding that the score is an average for nearly 300 Yale units, some of which reported close to 100 percent favorable responses and some of which scored “very low” or somewhere in between.

University President Richard Levin said the overall survey responses were considerably more positive than the results of the 2010 workplace survey, which was administered when Yale was “in the middle of cutting budgets and laying people off” due to the recession.

Staff members interviewed agreed that a disparity in morale level is present between units.

SEE WORK SURVEY PAGE 6

With DeStefano exit, city clerk race contested

BY ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER STAFF REPORTER The race for the office of New Haven city clerk has rarely been hotly contested.

Traditionally, candidates for city clerk run unopposed in the Democratic primary, tapped to run alongside the mayor to balance the racial composition of the ticket. But with Mayor John DeStefano Jr.’s planned exit after 20 years in office, incumbent city clerk Ron Smith will likely have to run unattached to a mayoral candidate — and he will be given a run for his money by Ward 26 Alderman Sergio Rodriguez. Rodriguez indicated at the end of February that he was eyeing the position of city clerk following DeStefano’s retirement announcement, and nearly a month later, he said he wants the job.

Rodriguez brought his candidacy out of the “exploratory” phase over the weekend, hitting the campaign trail with the first in a series of walking-and-driving tours of the Elm City to tell voters about his candidacy and to shed light on the responsibilities that come with the position. After making the rounds Saturday through Fair Haven’s C-Town Supermarket, Grand Avenue businesses and back to his own neighborhood of Westville, Rodriguez said he will go on three more of what he called “taking it to the street” tours, the next one planned for this Thursday.

A five-term alderman sitting on the Human Services, Tax Abatement and Aldermanic Affairs committees, Rodriguez currently serves as president of Hispanic Elected Local Officials, a constituency group of the National League of Cities. He said he sees the city clerk’s office

as the logical next step in a “series of leadership roles.”

Rodriguez said he aims to modernize the city clerk position by fostering a closer relationship with community members and making public information more accessible.

“People are not aware of what the office does,” he added. “We’re trying to change that.”

Jack Keyes, a probate court judge and former city clerk who has all but indicated he will run for mayor, said the position can seem “mundane” but involves duties that, if handled improperly, can have “catastrophic consequences.”

People are not aware of what the [city clerk’s] office does. We’re trying to change that.

SERGIO RODRIGUEZ Candidate, New Haven city clerk Officially called the city/town clerk, the position involves handling all public documents, including claims and suits against the city, business licenses, land records, and liquor permits; compiling and overseeing Board of Aldermen legislation; and distributing absentee ballots for city elections.

Smith, who has served for 10 years in the 20-hours-a-week position, was out of the office all day Tuesday and could not be SEE CITY CLERK PAGE 4

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YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION

.COMMENT “Gender is not an artificial barrier." yaledailynews.com/opinion

Ethics, Politics and Peter Singer T

here is always something a bit off-putting to a column that culminates in the phrase, “I call on Yale to do X.” Such certitude brings to mind a 20-something in a back table at Blue State, slamming down his macchiato with a harrumph, satisfied that he has successfully pointed out that ever-so-subtle bias to which the rest of us have been oh-so-blind. Or perhaps my reaction is due to memories of the times I have fallen into these declarative pitfalls myself.

For the few at Yale choosing to write from a conservative orientation, the temptation to “stand athwart history and yell stop” is particularly alluring. But it is a difficult dance, one that needs to balance principle, and as a Yale undergraduate, due respect for institutional values.

There are times, though, where homogeneity can breed serious irresponsibility. There are times when errors have to be met — not with lofty commands or selfishly ostentatious protests — but with someone, anyone, at least throwing their hands up in the air, yelling, “Wait!”

One of those moments is happening now, with the decision of the Ethics, Politics and Economics Program to invite professor Peter Singer for its Castle Lecture Series.

Singer’s worldview, at root, is a radically adherent utilitarianism. He holds that human life is indistinguishable from animal life (thus putting a fetus or disabled child on a lower plane than a well-developed pig), and champions an understanding that “killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living.”

These considerations on life are just the tip of the iceberg that is Singer’s philosophical career, which includes moral justifications for forcible euthanasia, quasi-eugenics (“killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person”), infanticide and bestiality. Even for those sympathetic to Singer, there is an inescapable radicalism to him.

But, isn’t this what college is for? Isn’t this the root of academic freedom?

This question of academic freedom is an important one, but one that we need to finally be honest about with ourselves. We should realize that Yale employs value judgments and moral hierarchies all the time in choosing faculty and speakers. We would never tenure a Klansman or racial supremacist, and for good reason. I doubt, though, that the administration would censor a student organization in making the same woeful choice. Here, a critical distinction arises.

A department is subject to a higher standard of scrutiny by the very fact that it is inexorably linked to Yale’s brand. Such sponsorship, while not needing to explicitly endorse the substance of an idea, immediately lends an elite imprimatur to the

argument’s intellectual legitimacy.

Moreover, as a brief addendum, if academic freedom is a genuine corHARRY nerstone of GRAVER the University, it should Gravely be treated as such and not Mistaken a convenient justification for simply wanting to bring certain people. There is a basic insincerity to upholding intellectual diversity with one hand, while plucking worldviews exclusively from a single intellectual trajectory with the other.

But the larger point remains: What does Yale expect of herself? What are the marketplace of ideas and the expectations of intellectualism we hope to fashion?

Here, a figure like Singer adds a further complication. Last year, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, President Levin called upon both students and faculty to be wary of an “absolute certainty about what is right from wrong.” Within this statement is the assertion that extremism, in any form, runs affront to our dispositional goal of intellectual humility.

In honoring Singer with this invitation, such a decision provokes deep considerations not of left versus right, but rather regarding the fundamental notion of whether or not we are willing, through some basic sense of moral intuition, to productively regulate our marketplace of ideas.

On one path, we can strive to be an intellectual community that embraces the balance of resolute principles and mindful toleration, unwilling to conflate moral absolutism as synonymous with fundamentalism.

Such a University does not freely wield censorship, but also recognizes the vital place of discerning guidance. Here, a thinker like Singer is inimical to a University seeking to institutionalize values, purpose and a grounded disposition.

On the other, we can take the view that all manifestations of reason are created equal, and that our skepticism of value judgments must be so exhaustively devout that moral presupposition has no place at all. Here, the floodgates of academia open.

The mission statement of the Castle Lecture Series is “to promote an awareness of and sensitivity to ethical issues facing individuals in modern American society.” If the EP&E Program endorses a view of modernity wherein Singer speaks to its matters of sensitivity and ethical relevancy, it is one that I hope Yale does not recognize.

A troubling announcement O

n March 12, YaleNews posted an online release announcing a decrease in the financial aid budget for next year. The announcement assured the Yale community that parents of aid recipients would not be expected to contribute any additional funds to their child’s aid packages. Students will be covering the difference by earning $100 more a year at their term-time jobs.

Over a year, $100 may not seem significant. But we need to look into how this announcement was made, and the greater trend it reveals.

It was posted online during spring break, a time when an immediate student response was impossible. There was no student-wide email. YaleNews’ email that day instead reserved space for articles like “The Vikings: Yale historian looks at the myths vs. the history.”

The semester has been filled with discussion of the difficulties faced by low-income, firstgeneration students. Yale even announced a summer bridge program to help students from disadvantaged high school backgrounds transition. But next year’s budget will force those same students to spend more time working, leaving less time to transition to life at Yale.

What’s especially disturbing

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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

omists have argued that endowments as gigantic as Yale’s provide an unnecessarily large financial security blanket.

And of course, the decision lacked student involvement.

At Princeton, a committee that includes four undergraduate students advises the president on the institution’s budget. Yale should follow a similar policy. A pattern of decision-making without student input has revealed itself this year, and it needs to end.

Yale provides some of the best financial aid in the entire world, but that doesn’t mean that students should accept an $800 increase in the term-time job expectation over such a short period of time.

Where will the increases stop?

Harvard and Princeton’s termtime job contributions are $3,000 and $2,900 respectively, and their summer income contributions are only slightly more than half of ours. It does not make sense that Yale cannot provide an equally competitive financial aid package for its students.

We should find a way to ease our budget deficit without increasing the term-time job component for financial aid recipients, and we should include students in making those decisions.

DIANA ROSEN is a freshman in Pierson College. Contact her at diana.rosen@yale.edu .

Saving humans T

he other day, a friend offered me part of his bacon, egg and cheese sandwich — a staple of the late-night college diet. I shrugged it off, reminding him that I’ve been a vegetarian for most of my college career.

“I always forget,” he responded between bites. “You’re not like those other vegetarians.”

Those other vegetarians. Popular perception conjures up images of aggressive PETA activists picketing fast-food restaurants or bombarding fur-clad women with red paint. But it’s time to end the misconception that vegetarians are sanctimonious moralists looking down from leafy pedestals at a nation of merciless murderers.

To do so, we must first challenge the notion that vegetarianism is solely motivated by a concern for animal welfare. Saving animals — while certainly a boon — need not be the primary motivation for forgoing meat. For me, environmental, economic and health concerns all provide stronger reasons to embrace plant-based fare.

On the environmental front, eating an omnivorous diet contributes to pollution, deforestation, water scarcity and climate change. In the United States, meat consumption — each American eats an average of 270 pounds of meat a year — exacerbates the

global oil crisis. Given the massive quantities of oil it takes to raise a 1,250-pound steer, this statistic means the U.S. uses approximately 350 million barrels of oil per year just on animal products.

Additionally, Michigan State University researchers found that as many as 2.5 million gallons of water may be needed to raise a single cow. Producing that same amount of food in grain, on the other hand, requires only 1 percent of that amount. According to the 2006 United Nations Human Development Report, more than 1 million people have inadequate access to water — numbers that might otherwise change were society to reduce its meat consumption.

These environmental impacts mean we cannot claim “speciesism” as a defense for eating meat.

Our actions do not only affect animals; they harm our fellow human beings as well.

Polluted water resulting from excess manure also poses a threat to many Americans. In the Chesapeake Bay — now tainted by runoff from the 64 million chickens living on the Delmarva Peninsula — one-third of underground aquifers have alarmingly high nitrate levels. In recent years, an increasing amount of the public water supply has been deemed contam-

inated and rendered unsafe for humans to drink.

As compelling as these reasons may be, I know my meat-eating friends are not easily “converted” by ecological arguments. Environmental consequences are difficult to visualize because in many cases their impacts are distant (while the mouthwatering benefits of a sandwich, they claim, are directly in front of them).

From talking to meat-eaters, I know health concerns can provide a much more pressing impetus.

Vegetarian diets confer benefits like reduced risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, cancer and high blood pressure when compared to omnivorous ones. A longitudinal study of almost 100,000 SeventhDay Adventists even found that vegetarian men live 9.5 years longer than their meat-eating counterparts, while vegetarian women live six years longer. Moreover, in the United States, noncommunicable diseases that may be spurred on by excessive meat consumption are many of the leading causes of death, accounting for an estimated $50 billion in health care costs — money that may come out of taxpayers’ pockets through the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

To my friends, I wonder: Is meat still as appetizing when it’s simultaneously cutting short your life

and dipping into your wallet? Part of the reason some continue to say “yes” is that vegetarianism retains a certain stigma. It is linked with its most vocal supporters — people who argue that any consumption of animals is murder. But if we are to seriously reduce our meat consumption, we cannot demand an “abstinence-only” approach. Just as comprehensive sex education programs try to reduce the possible negative consequences of sex, emphasizing a “less-meat” rather than “no-meat” diet for Americans would at least turn us in the right direction.

So here’s what I proposed to my friend that night — and what I propose now to every college student who won’t give up his Saturday night bacon, egg and cheese: Go halfway. Eat meat occasionally — not excessively. Skimp on beef to lower your family’s economic burden. Reduce your poultry intake to prevent children from going hungry or thirsty. Pass on an additional hot dog to reduce your risk of heart disease. Put an end to “abstinence-only” nutrition; eating less meat does not have to be as radical a change as we make it out to be.

ERICA LEH is a sophomore in Morse College. Contact her at erica.leh@yale.edu .

GUEST COLUMNIST CHLOE DRIMAL

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EDITORIALS & ADS

advantaged students?

Unfortunately, the cost of attending Yale is increasing. Parents of students not on financial aid will have to pay about $2,000 more. But what’s important is the difference between a parental and a student contribution — as the latter directly affects the way that a student is able to take advantage of their Yale experience.

Yale supposedly needs the funds from the contribution. Presidentelect Peter Salovey explained at his forum that Yale faces a $40 million budget deficit. Yet in 2009, Yale faced a $350 million budget deficit. Our current situation appears much better than the one we were in four years ago. There are simply other places where we can save money. Financial aid should be our first priority — especially at a time when a recent New York Times article shows that high-achieving, low-income students often see elite universities as out of their reach.

Yale Tomorrow, a five-year fundraising program that ended in 2011, raised $3.8 billion dollars. Why not institute a more permanent version of this program to raise money specifically for financial aid? A more controversial option is for our University to use a small amount of its endowment — a policy that Yale has stood firmly against for the last several decades. Some econ-

G U E ST C O LU M N I ST E R I CA L E H

Newest diet: Facebook cleanse

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is the trend we’ve witnessed, as the term-time job contribution has steadily increased over the last five years. In the DIANA 2008–'09 ROSEN school year it was only Looking Left $2,500. Next year it will be $3,300 ($2,900 for freshmen).

Accounting for differences in minimum wage, students in 2008 worked 221 hours for their termtime jobs, but students next year will work 275 hours, (233 for freshmen). If the University wishes to ease the transition for low-income students, they should not be asking them to work 54 hours more than before.

Many students support the idea of working to put money towards one’s education and find it difficult to complain even when the contribution has increased by $800 in five years. The argument is persuasive, to a certain extent. Where it falls short is here: Why does being randomly born into a family with an income of over $200,000 eliminate the expectation that you should work for your education? If working is so important to character development, then why is it only expected of less economically

HARRY GRAVER is a junior in Davenport College. Contact him at harry.graver@yale.edu .

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COPYRIGHT 2013 — VOL. CXXXV, NO. 108

O

n Sunday night, my friend came over and we burned our anxieties. We sat on my couch with a ceramic bowl on my coffee table and burned written notes and pictures depicting our anxieties. We burned a picture of José Cuervo, a note that read "10-Page Paper" in Sharpie and my personal favorite — Mark Zuckerberg.

Now, I have nothing against Mark as a person (other than the fact he went to Harvard) — he’s probably a nice guy. My major qualm with Mark is that he invented Facebook, and Facebook gives me more anxiety than my looming senior thesis or job search ever could.

Three weeks ago, I went AWOL and deactivated my Facebook.

Not because I was trying to be hipster (I’m not that hip), or because someone was stalking me (I’m not that cute). No, I simply wanted motivation to finish my senior thesis, and told myself I would sign back on once I turned in my rough draft.

Well, I hand-delivered my rough draft to my adviser Monday morning, and I don’t plan on say-

ing hello to my minifeed any time soon.

After just a week without Facebook, I began to realize that prior to my cleanse, I wasn’t able to open my laptop without also logging on. I realized that my addiction caused all sorts of artificial emotions. I got giddy counting my “likes,” but anxious when I was tagged in some picture with a girl I didn’t remember seeing the night before.

But mostly, I realized that those lost hours I spent looking at pictures of friends and friends of friends was giving me FOMO — that my fear of missing out was becoming something so incurable that my friend actually joked about taking me to Yale-New Haven Hospital.

In a way, maybe Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook code invented the term FOMO. Maybe if we weren’t so sucked into what everyone else was doing, we might be perfectly content doing exactly what we are doing, even if that’s writing a paper.

There is such a thing as being too connected to people. By being hyperaware of the lives of thou-

sands of “friends,” we lose connection with our own, adding more clutter to our already chaotic thoughts.

And maybe we need to take a step back and think about how this little website is affecting our lives. Maybe we are so lost in the minifeeds and profile pictures that we aren’t engaged in our own presents, in the beauty tangled in the simplicity of real life.

These past three weeks, when I have gotten bored, I have read a magazine, watched that movie I’d been meaning to see or climbed a roof just because I found a ladder.

When I have gotten lonely, I have called a friend, or even better, I’ve walked to a friend’s apartment just to hang, just to laugh about nothing.

And by doing this, I’ve felt more connected to myself without feeling disconnected from those around me.

I can’t say Facebook is all bad; it’s not. It’s a huge part of our generation. But I couldn’t handle it, and like an addiction to a drug, sometimes the only way to heal is to go stone-cold sober. I’m not someone that’s good with the

term "casual." I’m an extremist: I don’t get tipsy; I get drunk. I don’t go on a diet; I go on a juice cleanse.

But for those of you that can handle it, or think you can, I beg you to remember that the friends we care about, our true small circle of friends, are usually just a phone call away. And listening about their trip to Europe or party at ADPhi will forever be more fulfilling than stalking them on Facebook and creating our own stories about their lives.

At the end of the day it’s about human connection: that laugh with a friend, even if it is over a glass of cheap wine on a Sunday night, burning a picture of Mark Zuckerberg. It’s that laugh and eye contact that makes us happy.

It makes us forget about our anxieties and want to live in the present, no matter how bizarre it might seem to the outside world.

Hey, it’s not like we’re putting it on Facebook.

I can’t promise you about Instagram, though.

CHLOE DRIMAL is a senior in Calhoun College. Contact her at chloe.drimal@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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NEWS

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CORRECTION TUESDAY, MARCH 26

Percent of Americans admit to not having a personal budget.

In addition, the 2012 Financial Literacy Survey found that two in five Americans gave themselves a C, D or F on their knowledge of personal finance.

New NHPD boots on the ground

The article “Chi Psi fraternity returns to campus” misidentified the founder of Time Inc. Henry Luce II ’20 as an alumnus of the Yale chapter of Chi Psi. In fact, Henry Luce III ’45, a former publisher of Time, was in Chi Psi.

Alumni fellow up for election

BY JULIA ZORTHIAN STAFF REPORTER The polls opened yesterday for Yale alumni to cast their votes to determine the new alumni fellow to the Yale Corporation.

All alumni who received their first Yale degree at least five years ago can participate in a voting process to elect either movie producer Bruce Cohen ’83 or Vassar College President Catharine Bond Hill GRD ’85 to the 19-person Yale Corporation, Yale’s highest governing body, Secretary and Vice President for Student Life Kimberly Goff-Crews ’83 LAW ’86 announced in a Tuesday email to alumni. The newly appointed trustee will fill the position of Alumni Fellow Mimi Gates GRD ’81, whose six-year term expires this spring.

University President Richard Levin declined to speak about the individual strengths of each candidate, but said he admired their involvement with the University.

“I think we have two excellent candidates who are outstanding representatives to the institution,” Levin said.

Goff-Crews wrote that the Alumni Fellow Nominating Committee sifted through recommendations for more than 700 alumni leaders with various connections to the University before deciding on Cohen and Hill as the two finalists.

Cohen leads Bruce Cohen

Productions, where he has produced films such as “American Beauty,” “Milk” and “Big Fish.”

His recent film “Silver Linings Playbook” received a nomination for best picture at this year’s Academy Awards.

Cohen has also left his mark on campus by donating to the University to establish the Bruce L. Cohen Fund — a research grant in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies Department that supports travel or on-campus events. He serves as the president of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, an organization that helped fund the Proposition 8 court challenge, which the Supreme Court considered on Tuesday.

Cohen could not be reached for comment Tuesday night, though a staff member at Bruce Cohen Productions said he was in Washington, D.C., for the Supreme Court hearing.

Hill received a doctorate in economics from Yale and currently serves on the Governing Board of Yale-NUS — the 10-person equivalent of the Yale Corporation for the new liberal arts college in Singapore. She became the president of Vassar in 2006 and has overseen Vassar’s adoption of needblind admission policies since assuming her position.

The polls will stay open until May 19.

Contact JULIA ZORTHIAN at julia.zorthian@yale.edu .

CATHARINE BOND HILL GRD ’85 VASSAR COLLEGE PRESIDENT

H

ill received a doctorate in economics from Yale and currently serves on the 10-person Governing Board of Yale-NUS. She became president of Vassar in 2006, after holding positions at the World Bank, the Fiscal Analysis Division of the U.S. Congressional Budget Office and Williams College.

BRUCE L. COHEN ’83 FILM PRODUCER

of Yale College, Cohen leads Agraduate Bruce Cohen Productions, where he has

produced films such as “American Beauty,” “Milk” and “Silver Linings Playbook.” He serves as the president of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, an organization that helped fund the Proposition 8 court challenge, which the Supreme Court considered on Tuesday.

LORENZO LIGATO/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Mayor John DeStefano Jr. described the increase in police presence as a “major budgetary commitment” at Monday’s press conference.

BY LORENZO LIGATO STAFF REPORTER Forty new police officers will soon hit the streets of New Haven.

As part of an ongoing effort to increase police presence in all of the city’s neighborhoods, the New Haven Police Department introduced its newest hires to the public during a Monday afternoon press conference at its 1 Union Ave. headquarters. The 40 police officers — all of whom have graduated from the New Haven Police Academy — are completing a three-month field-training program after which they will be deployed to walking beats throughout the city, according to NHPD Chief Dean Esserman.

“My marching orders were clear. Bring violence down in this city and bring community policing back to every neighborhood in this city,” Esserman said. “What you see behind me is a promise this city has kept

to the community.”

The extension of the city’s police department was first announced at a press conference in January, when Esserman and Mayor John DeStefano Jr discussed their plans for 2013 following the 50 percent drop in homicides from 2011 to 2012. Two months later, the city has followed through on its promises: By next week, each of New Haven’s 10 policing districts will be assigned four new officers charged with building relations with community members and businesses in their district, Esserman said. He added that he made the decision for all new hires to begin their career with the NHPD on walking beats, in keeping with his commitment to a more community-based policing strategy.

“We are not strangers in New Haven — we belong to the people of New Haven,” Esserman said. “We will be what we promised: a neighborhood-

based, community-based department.”

At Monday’s conference, DeStefano praised the work of the police department, adding that the city has allocated approximately $2 million to ramp up the number of police officers. DeStefano described this increase in police presence throughout the city as a “major budgetary committment.”

We are not strangers in New Haven — we belong to the people of New Haven.

DEAN ESSERMAN Chief, New Haven Police Department “Folks have been very clear with me, with the department, with their local legislators, the alderman, that they want

to see police in the neighborhood,” DeStefano said.

The Board of Alderman’s public safety chairman Brian Wingate and Ward 7 alderman Doug Hausladen were also in attendance at the Monday announcement. Both Wingate and Hausladen applauded Esserman’s community policing philosophy.

In addition to the 40 new policemen announced this Monday, 27 cadets will graduate from the police academy later this year, bringing the NHPD headcount to a total of 422 officers, Esserman said.

Despite budget constraints, he added that the police department will be bolstered again through a second recruitment drive in May and June of this year.

According to Esserman, the NHPD will hire a total of 107 new officers by the end of this year.

Contact LORENZO LIGATO at lorenzo.ligato@yale.edu .

Alum supports financial literacy

BY AMY WANG STAFF REPORTER With Commencement looming two months away, the Financial Aid Office and Undergraduate Career Services are racing to prepare Yale seniors for life after graduation, especially in the sometimes daunting realm of personal finance. But the University’s current offerings may not be enough.

Though the Financial Aid Office launched an initiative last month to promote knowledge among students about basic financial matters such as banking and credit debt, students are also turning to outside sources for information.

In an effort to help seniors organize their postgraduation finances, Stephen Blum ’74, director of strategic initiatives for the Association of Yale Alumni, plans to hold informal Q-and-A finance sessions starting in April in the residential colleges and in the Graduate School, sponsored by the AYA and Students and Alumni of Yale, or STAY. Titled “Financial Life After Yale,” the sessions will touch on topics such as budgeting, taxes, rent and insurance.

“It’s sort of a grassroots counterpart to the very good thing the folks at the Financial Aid Office are doing,” said Blum, who worked as an accountant for more than 40 years. “There’s a hunger [among students] for basic information.”

Blum first introduced the idea of the sessions to Branford College Master Elizabeth Bradley, who was enthusiastic about the meetings because students had approached her before to ask for a program on financial planning, she said. Bradley added that the sessions tar-

get seniors because those students are the most concerned with how to “remain independent next year, when out of college.”

Though the topic of college students’ financial literacy has gained national traction in recent years, Yale only began pushing for increased financial preparedness this semester. Financial Aid Director Caesar Storlazzi said his office plans to hold several literacy sessions in the upcoming semesters. Undergraduate Career Services Director Jeanine Dames said UCS, which offers a financial literacy discussion each year as part of its “Life After Yale” series, will invite a financial expert to talk about insurance and taxes this year, in response to student requests.

There’s a hunger [among students] for basic information.

STEPHEN BLUM ’74 Director of strategic initiatives, Association of Yale Alumni Blum said his sessions will be less structured than the ones planned by the Financial Aid Office and UCS, in order to address students’ specific questions rather than simply provide general information.

The sessions also have the potential to expand beyond a Q-and-A format. Blum said he may partner on the financial literacy front with prominent author Keith Ferrazzi ’88, who focuses on financial education. Brannack McLain, manager of Ferrazzi’s Greenlight Giving College

Connect program, which helps students develop professional skills, said the future curriculum may include a “series of missions” to increase financial literacy.

For instance, one “mission” invites participants to pay only in cash for one week, to make them more aware of the flow of cash in their lives.

“The best way for people to learn something is to experience stuff handson and get the support of a peer group in that process,” McLain said. “People don’t learn by reading or talking or writing — they learn by actually getting out there and doing something.”

If expanded, Ferrazzi’s full program could begin next semester.

Both Dames and AYA Director Mark Dollhopf said financial literacy is a relevant topic for students, especially those who are close to leaving Yale and will need to have immediate financial knowledge.

“There are so many nuances when talking about finances,” Dames said.

“There are some things students haven’t had to deal with before.”

Blum said the “choices of how to invest, save and so forth have exploded” in recent years, causing personal finance also to become more complicated. Additionally, as debt levels and living costs skyrocket, Blum said teaching financial literacy to students is more important than ever before.

Blum’s first “Financial Life After Yale” session will be held in Branford on April 2, followed by two more in Jonathan Edwards and Ezra Stiles on April 14.

Contact AMY WANG at amy.wang@yale.edu .

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT Ordinary bar, unique legacy

“I go from stool to stool in single bars hoping to get lucky, but there’s never any gum under any of them.” EMO PHILIPS COMEDIAN

Rodriguez set to challenge Smith CITY CLERK FROM PAGE 1 reached for comment. City Hall spokeswoman Anna Mariotti said the mayor could not, “under any circumstances,” comment on election matters or endorse a candidate. The mayor’s office did not return request for comment on Smith’s performance as city clerk.

Deputy City Clerk Sally Brown, who served as city clerk from 1986 to 1993, also declined to endorse her boss, saying her handling of elections issues requires her to be neutral in the race. Brown said various administrative positions in the city, including city treasurer and tax collector, used to run alongside the mayor to “balance the ticket.” Although those positions have been done away with, she said, the city clerk candidate is still largely picked by the Democratic Town Committee to run alongside the Democratic mayoral candidate in the general election.

If you have a white mayor, of course you would go get somebody black to run with you.

SALLY BROWN Deputy city clerk, New Haven

PHILIPP ARNDT/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Ordinary bar is scheduled to open in approximately two weeks at 990 Chapel St., the former location of the historic Richter’s Cafe.

ORDINARY BAR FROM PAGE 1 ing management, was closed on June 25, 2011. The new owners of the bar will be Jason Sobocinski, the owner of Caseus Fromagerie & Bistro; Mike Farber, the owner of Mikro Beer Bar in Hamden; Timothy Cabral, the manager at Caseus; and Tom Sobocinski, who is Jason’s brother.

We wanted … the nostalgic character of the place to live on.

TOM SOBOCINSKI Co-owner, Ordinary bar Tom Sobocinski said the owners’ upbringings in New Haven give even more meaning to the renovation of the

space.

“We were all born in and around New Haven,” he said. “We were all very familiar with that space while we were growing up.”

The name for the new bar was chosen in part because, dating back to the 1600s, an “ordinary” was the person at a hotel who would check in guests and offer them a drink, Sobocinski said.

The bar is also meant to be an “ordinary neighborhood hangout,” he added.

Since the owners hope to create a relaxed atmosphere and keep prices down, Jenna Ciotti ’14 said Ordinary’s diverse menu and proximity to Yale could make for a compelling new spot and pleasant change of scenery. But several students questioned whether the upscale food would be accessible to them on strapped budgets. Angus Ledingham GRD ’18 said that if the bar lives up to the standards of Caseus and offers a wide

beer selection, he anticipates becoming a frequent patron. He added that Ordinary may be taking on too much to master any one area of its menu.

“A special occasion thing? Maybe, depends what kind of job I get,” said Nathan Prillaman ’13. “It might be a nooccasion kind of thing. It all depends on price.”

Tom Sobocinski also said that Yale undergraduates are not the restaurant’s target customers. Rather, the owners envision graduate students and New Haven residents will make up the majority of the crowd at Ordinary.

Ordinary will have standard bar hours, opening around 3 or 4 p.m., Sobocinski said.

Contact MONICA DISARE at monica.disare@yale.edu .

Contact NICOLE NAREA at nicole.narea@yale.edu .

Keyes said he can only recall four contested primaries for the clerk’s office in the last 35 to 40 years. He added that he ran alongside the late Ben DiLieto, who served as mayor of New Haven from 1980 to 1989.

“It’s like picking a vice pres-

ident,” Keyes added, although Rodriguez said he was looking forward to running “more of an independent campaign.”

Brown, who noted that there have been only three city clerks of minority race in New Haven history, said the effort to strike a racial balance arises from a larger desire to foster a diversity of support for the Democratic ticket.

“If you have a white mayor, of course you would go get somebody black to run with you,” she said. “It’s a given that they keep a black person in there.”

The call for diverse representation in the city extends to Hispanic influence as well. Joining Rodriguez on his Saturday tour of the city were Ernie Santiago and Santiago Berrios-Bones, two of Rodriguez’s fellow Fair Haven aldermen who say they are supporting their colleague in the election. Berrios-Bones, who won a special election in Ward 14 earlier this year with the backing of prominent Hispanic leaders in the city, told the New Haven Independent he prefers Rodriguez to Smith primarily because Rodriguez speaks Spanish.

Also on the tour was Rodriguez’s campaign manager, Ben Young, a staffer on DeStefano’s 2011 re-election campaign who served as campaign manager for Berrios-Bones’ aldermanic run.

Rodriguez has also hired a social media point person and is in the process of scouting locations for a campaign headquarters.

Rodriguez and Smith will square off in the Democratic primary on Sept. 10.

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

Read and be read.

Daily.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

NEWS

“Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY ENGLISH NOVELIST OF THE 19TH CENTURY

Aldermen talk school safety

BY ROSA NGUYEN STAFF REPORTER In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, Elm City officials are increasing efforts to prevent and eradicate school violence.

The Board of Aldermen and New Haven Public School officials convened Tuesday to discuss possible improvements to the city’s safety procedures.

Proposed changes included increased security guard training and police involvement as well the installation of alarms and signaling systems in district schools. Having inspected six schools prior to the meeting, aldermen voiced dissatisfaction with what they found to be an inadequate security guard presence and insufficient safety equipment.

“We have suggestions and want to hear what improvements the Board of Education wants to put into place,” said Alfreda Edwards, chair of the education committee and Ward 19 alderman.

Ward 16 alderman Migdalia Castro said at the meeting that she noticed that some schools, including Clinton Avenue School, had no cameras installed. After visiting four high schools, Ward 18 alderman Salvatore DeCola suggested installing panic buttons — allowing direct contact with the police department — as well as doors that would give signals to security guards when opened.

William Clark, chief operating officer of NHPS’s Business and Finance Department, said that newer schools already have panic buttons in place, keycard entry systems, security cameras and alarm systems that give the schools “the highest security we’ve ever had.” He plans to eventually retrofit older schools with these newer state-of-theart security systems, a process

that he estimates would cost over $1 million.

Aldermen also requested routine tests of locking mechanisms. Currently, the school department limits lock inspections to occasional drills and operates on a work-order system in which locking systems are checked only if teachers file a complaint.

The need for more updated safety equipment was not the board’s only concern. Visiting L.W. Beecher Museum School of Arts and Sciences, a school with one security staff member, alderman Brian Wingate commented that entry into the school appeared dangerously easy. “[Beecher] is a large school for one security guard to monitor all those kids,” Wingate said.

“If there was a situation where something totally went wrong, it wouldn’t be enough.”

Dean Esserman, New Haven Police Department chief and founder of Elm City’s School Resource Officer Program, proposed putting security guards through an updated active shooter training class, for which they would attend a one-day program. Additionally, school staff and administrators would receive training in how to act in an emergency situation.

While eight interviewed New Haven public school students said their schools have a system of security guards, the New Haven Police Department has a team of only seven school resource officers — trained police officers assigned to a school full time. Esserman hopes to increase this number to over 16. In addition to the school resource officers, all 500 members of the NHPD are trained in a postColumbine regimen called the Active Shooter Threat Training Program, in which officers learn how to handle armed attackers.

“We have the most wonder-

ful [security] staff you can find,” said Dwight Ware, director of security for NHPS, who also commended the partnership between security, the principals and the police department.

Five out of the eight New Haven public school students interviewed do not share Ware’s optimism. Thomas Jordan, a student at James Hillhouse High School, said he thinks his school has flaws in its security procedures.

“Anyone can get in those [front] doors,” Jordan said.

“Security doesn’t check all the time. It’s not safe because people can go through other doors and have anything in their bookbag.”

Other Hillhouse students reported that gang members sneak knives and guns into school property, an occurrence one student said has “happened a lot.” However, most fights only involve fists and occur in hidden areas such as secluded corners or bathrooms, he added.

“On Friday there were four fights, and the teachers didn’t know anything about it,” Jordan said.

But in spite of these fights, estimated by one student to occur about three times a week, three out of eight students said they feel safe overall.

“Kids definitely do mess with each other, but there is a support system here,” said high school student Nakpangi Ali. “If people found out someone was having an issue, they would defend them.”

Ali admitted that her school’s metal detector checks could be more thorough, but commended the security guards for becoming “a lot more strict.”

The state is considering a proposal that would award $15 million in grant money to upgrade school security.

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

Camp Kesem may come to Yale

BY J.R. REED STAFF REPORTER Camp Kesem, a universitybased weeklong summer camp program for kids with parents affected by cancer, may come to campus during summer 2014.

Amanda Murray ’14 and Danna Moustafa ’14 have spearheaded a campaign to establish a Yale chapter of the camp, which began at Stanford University 13 years ago and has since been extended to 41 camps in 24 states. The camp hosts over 2,000 children each year nationwide, and Murray and Moustafa said they hope the Yale chapter will benefit campers while also giving Yale students — who would work as counselors — a deeper sense of perspective.

“First, the goal is to give these kids a chance to be kids and give them a chance to relate to others about the same types of things they went through,” said Murray, whose sister was the cochair of Kesem at Stanford.

“The second [goal] is to give students leadership positions where they can really benefit these kids.”

Roughly 20 undergraduates are helping to bring Kesem to Yale and many of those involved in the initiative have had a family member with cancer or have worked with individuals suffering from the disease, Murray said. She added that she believes students have been motivated to join the effort to help others cope with the same difficulties they have faced.

This year, the Livestrong Foundation will help fund 12 more Camp Kesem locations — one from each of five designated regions in the United States and seven additional sites. At the beginning of

March, Murray and Moustafa applied for funding from Livestrong and applied to be considered in the first round.

The pair submitted a list of interested students, a personal essay and three letters of recommendation.

After successfully passing the first round, the group is now competing in a public online voting contest on the Livestrong website with 23 other schools. Voting ends on Thursday and Yale is currently in second place in its region. If the Yale students receive the most votes within their region, they will be provided with the funds, materials and training necessary to host Camp Kesem. If the Yale students do not win the voting contest within their region, they could still be designated one of the seven additonal sites.

One of the great things about camp is that it’s a form of social support.

These children probably find it hard to find that support on a normal basis.

DANNA MOUSTAFA ’14 Leader, Camp Kesem campaign The camp would likely take place at a campground in the New Haven area to simulate an overnight camp for kids who may not be able to afford traditional summer camp. The camp would be capped at 50 students, who would participate in typical summer camp activities — such as hiking

and swimming — to bond with one another. Moustafa said the camp allows students to feel comfortable with others who are going through a similar experience with cancerstricken parents.

“One of the great things about camp is that it’s a form of social support,” Moustafa said. “These children probably find it hard to find that support on a normal basis.”

Moustafa said she was initially drawn to the project because of her personal experiences working at a cancer center in high school, where she observed how kids were emotionally impacted by having a close relation with a cancer patient.

She added that because a large number of Yale students are interested in community service, she thinks that many would be excited about getting involved with a Camp Kesem chapter on campus.

“In general, Yale students are so excited about things,” Moustafa said. “I think an opportunity like this would be great way to use that passion, and we’ve already gotten so much enthusiasm about the program.”

Seyi Adeyinka ’15, who is helping with the initiative, said she decided to become involved because she is particularly interested in health issues in urban areas and has family friends that have had cancer.

“I think this can definitely help kids be in an environment where they feel like it [is] normal to have a parent with this disease” Adeyinka said.

Since its founding, Camp Kesem has hosted 8,489 campers across the country.

Contact J.R. REED at jonathan.t.reed@yale.edu .

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“I’m very serious about no alcohol, no drugs.

Life is too beautiful.”

JIM CARREY CANADIAN-AMERICAN ACTOR, COMEDIAN AND PRODUCER

Worker satisfaction high, but problems remain WORK SURVEY FROM PAGE 1 One residential college staff member, who asked to remain anonymous because she had been instructed to direct all reporters to the Office of Public Affairs and Communications, said morale among employees often depends on the amount of funding a unit receives.

A dining hall worker who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution said morale can vary between dining hall workers in each residential college because of differences in management. A recent change in management has caused morale in at least two residential colleges to decline, the worker said.

“You used to see me smiling,” the worker said. “I’m not smiling now.”

Most workers interviewed reported high job satisfaction, adding that they feel appreciated and respected in their workplace, but that they know of certain units within Yale where workers are less content.

The survey results indicate that neutral or low morale is “not a University-wide problem,” Peel said, and must therefore be approached on a department-bydepartment basis.

Peel said he has been disappointed that managers in some departments did not effectively use the results of the 2010 workplace survey to improve their departments.

When asked, only 42 percent said the [2010] workplace survey ‘was followed up on.’

MICHAEL PEEL Vice president, Human Resources and Administration, Yale University “The fact that when asked, only 42 percent said the workplace survey ‘was followed up on’ means that managers in a number of University departments either didn’t review their survey results with their departmental teams [or] didn’t create plans to improve their work cultures,” Peel said.

He added that he hopes to have a much more favorable rating for this question in the next workplace survey in 2014.

Staff are least positive about their career development prospects, with only 31 percent of

respondents affirming their job had a development plan. Staff interviewed were split on the subject — while some indicated they had no trouble receiving promotions, others did not agree. “[Career development at the University] absolutely sucks: It’s really hard to move up at Yale,” said the residential college staff member, adding that a large pool of overqualified applicants and the use of personal connections to get jobs have made the hiring process more complicated.

In response to the relatively lower responses concerning career development, Levin said the University is partway through a plan to roll out a series of annual activities and opportunities for staff to learn about developing their own careers.

“By the end of this calendar year, a very large fraction of our employees will have had the opportunity to engage in career planning sessions,” he added.

Seventy-eight percent of respondents indicated that they would recommend Yale as a good place to work.

Contact SOPHIE GOULD at sophie.gould@yale.edu.

Contact JULIA ZORTHIAN at julia.zorthian@yale.edu .

BY THE NUMBERS 2012 WORKPLACE SURVEY Survey respondents were asked to rate the following statements on a scale between 1 (strongly disagree) and 5 (strongly agree). The percentages below indicate favorable responses of 4 (agree) or 5 (strongly agree).

Yale University is changing for the better.

55%

The overall morale in my unit is high.

50%

I am proud to work for Yale University.

85%

I have confidence in the decisions made by the senior leadership of the University.

62%

University policies and programs help employees balance work and personal life responsibilities.

79%

Offensive behavior (i.e., sexual harassment, discrimination, insensitive remarks, etc.) is not tolerated in my unit.

80%

Few attend forum ALCOHOL FORUM FROM PAGE 1 tee because he believes its suggestions will play a large role in shaping future alcohol policy, more so than the recommendations of the University Task Force on Alcohol, which was also created in December and will concentrate on alcohol-related education and programs.

The campus visit is the second of three campus visits planned for the University Council Committee. The forums in January were “really packed” in comparison to Tuesday night’s forum, GoffCrews said.

“The conversations from the [January open forum] to this one had a good amount of overlap,” Rice said. “Because it was bigger group [in January], we probably heard more bigger pieces than this particular group.”

The committee asked for student opinions via email in the

announcements of the open forum, which were sent out by the YCC, but has not received many emails so far, Rice said.

It’s hard to emphasize to students how important this group is.

JOHN GONZALEZ ’14 President, Yale College Council Rice said the committee is emphasizing student interactions in focus groups on this trip, compared to the emphasis on meeting with masters and administrators in the January visit.

Bob Saltz, a committee member, said speaking with students has allowed him to learn about aspects of the social culture on campus that are unique to Yale,

including how students approach the fraternity rush process and the attendance of off-campus parties. After a day of meetings with campus groups such as freshmen, fraternity leaders and leaders of student organizations, committee members came into the forum already recognizing some themes in student concerns (such as alcohol-related safety), Rice added.

Freshman Class Council member Lily Vanderbloemen ’16 said she noticed during the open forum Tuesday evening that the committee understood student perceptions of alcohol policy more than they did earlier in the day, when they met with freshmen.

The committee will hold its final meeting over the summer.

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

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YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

BULLETIN BOARD

TODAY’S FORECAST

THURSDAY

Partly cloudy with rain showers in the afternoon. High of 50. Winds from the NW at 10 to 15 mph.

FRIDAY

High of 54, low of 34

High of 52, low of 34

ANTIMALS BY ALEX SODI

ON CAMPUS WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27 5:00 PM “Roma Minority: Exclusion or Integration?” A panel with Alec Stone Sweet, Leitner Professor of international law; Mona Nicoara, film director of “Our School”; and David Cameron, professor of political science and director of the European Union Studies Program. A screening of “Our School” will take place at 5 p.m., and the panel will take place at 7 p.m. Saybrook College (242 Elm St.), Underbrook.

6:00 PM “An Evening with Senator Blumenthal” In conjunction with the Sierra Club, the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies will welcome Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Yale Project on Climate Change Communications Director Anthony Leiserowitz and Yale assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry Nadine Unger for a panel discussion on climate change communication, clean energy policy and climate science. The panel will be moderated by School of Forestry & Environmental Studies Associate Dean David Skelly. Seating begins at 5:30 p.m. Free and open to the general public. Kroon Hall (195 Prospect St.), Burke Auditorium.

THAT MONKEY TUNE BY MICHAEL KANDALAFT

THURSDAY, MARCH 28 4:30 PM “Can Money Bring You Happiness? What if the Answer is Yes?” Join Yale Flourish and InspireYale for a lecture

by Michael Norton, associate professor at Harvard Business School and co-author of “Happy Money, The Science Of Smarter Spending.” Free and open to the general public. William L. Harkness Hall (100 Wall St.), Room 207.

SCIENCE HILL BY SPENCER KATZ

FRIDAY, MARCH 29 7:00 PM “Cajun Breakdown: The Emergence of an Americanmade Music” This dynamic presentation incorporates historic images, sound recordings and live musical examples provided by the Grammy-nominated Lost Bayou Ramblers. Free and open to the general public. Davenport College (248 York St.), Common Room.

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31 Like grizzlies 32 Tack on 33 Solo 34 Pitch in 37 Flunk out 38 Año beginner 40 Slurpee cousin 43 PennySaver ad subjects 46 Big times 47 Black-box analyzers: Abbr.

51 Takes for a spin

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52 Pass 54 Theater program item 56 Chafes 58 Little one 59 Tack on 60 Accessorizing wrap 61 Below-average grade 62 Parking place 63 Stat for R.A. Dickey

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YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

ARTS & CULTURE

“That’s ok. She’s tough. We do a lot of piratethemed sexual role play. I’m a parrot.”

JACK DONAGHY “30 ROCK” CHARACTER

In ‘Abyss,’ an ‘Odyssey’ of sight and sound

Levine celebrates Pope John Paul II

BY VANESSA YUAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Yesterday, conductor Sir Gilbert Levine GRD ’72 spoke with the News about his recent work, a PBS concert titled “Out of Many, One — A Musical Offering from Chicago — In the Spirit of John Paul” that will be televised at Yale on Thursday. Levine has conducted concerts in both Europe and the United States, and has also led multiple concerts for Pope John Paul II. In the last 25 years, he has been acclaimed for bringing classical music to a wider audience through PBS concert broadcasts. Levine will also speak at a Trumbull Master’s Tea on Thursday, prior to the screening. have PBS concert broadcasts changed QHow classical music production?

A

BY ANYA GRENIER AND SARAH SWONG STAFF REPORTERS A new show this weekend asks audiences to imagine the end of the world as part of a journey through classical music.

Stephen Feigenbaum ’12 MUS ’13, who created the concept for “Abyss,” said he wants the show to turn classical music into a theatrical experience that excites a broad audience. While classical music on its own can be inaccessible, music with visuals can more directly communicate a message to audiences, he explained. Feigenbaum, who also founded the alternative classical music group SIC InC, said he sees “Abyss” — which blends classical music, storytelling, dance, acting and circus performance into an apocalyptic narrative — as similar to Disney’s “Fantasia,” Blue Man Group and Cirque du Soleil.

“Classical music is creating this entire world,” Feigenbaum said. “The music is driving this live story into something that gets you excited and is entertaining.”

“Abyss” has no dialogue and only a general plot in order to emphasize the music, Feigenbaum added. Instead of serving as accompaniment, the music advances the plot, and musicians play

alongside actors and dancers on stage, he said. For example, a tuba player who represents a military figure will play the instrument at times when dialogue is expected, he said.

Matthew George ’11, who developed the show’s plot after listening to Feigenbaum’s compositions repeatedly, said he was inspired by traditional epics, including the “Aeneid” and the “Odyssey,” which he reread while brainstorming. The resulting story is heavily influenced by the idea of the archetypal hero going on a journey.

“Before the process, I thought characters always had to be super nuanced and complex. … But if you hear a soaring piece of music that sounds like something you’ve heard before, that doesn’t make it any less soaring,” George said.

“With Odysseus, it’s like a motif coming up over and over again.”

“Abyss” tells the story of a young man, played by Gabe Greenspan ’14, whose wife is kidnapped, forcing him to go on a journey to retrieve her. Director Charlie Polinger ’13 said he wanted the show to have a fairly loose narrative in the same way as a ballet does — the story serves as a focal point for the music and movement.

Gracie White ’16, a dancer and choreographer for “Abyss,” said the entire

cast was involved in the creative process, as Polinger often wanted the performers to interpret a general theme or scene on their own. Polinger said he approached directing differently from usual, since “Abyss” did not come directly from a script and is far less plot- and character-driven than most pieces of theater he has worked on.

“I’m the outside eye shaping it, making final decisions,” Polinger said. “It’s finding the thing that feels most right.”

Each choreographed movement tells a part of the story, White explained. In the opening scene, for example, two characters dance in a duet that includes movements like brushing teeth and turning off a light bulb.

White, who has experience as a circus performer, incorporated circus choreography into the show, including acrobatics, contortion and aerial silks performance, in which dancers wrap themselves in silks hanging from the ceiling and move through various poses.

“Abyss” received $10,000 from the University’s Arts Discretionary Fund and $15,000 through a Kickstarter campaign, Feigenbaum said. Polinger said the group also received various other arts grants. To gather local support, some musicians held a fundraising concert at 116 Crown in December

Television can bring out aspects of classical music performance that are hidden from the live concertgoer. You can get right into the faces of the orchestra members and be guided as a viewer in a way that highlights the structure of the music, and therefore the meaning of the work as the composer meant it to be heard.

and reached out to arts organizations in New Haven.

Part of the project’s goal has always been to attract more than “an insular Yale audience,” Polinger said, which influenced the decision not to stage the production in a Yale theater. While students could begin reserving tickets through the Yale Drama Coalition site beginning Sunday night, Polinger said the group had already opened ticketing separately to members of the New Haven community through a separate website.

Polinger added that he had originally hoped to create a site-specific work that could be devised entirely in the performance space, an unused storefront at 278 Park St. owned by University Properties. But producer Kathleen Addison ’14 explained that paperwork and various logistical challenges prevented the team from moving into the space until just before spring break.

Addison said the project ended up working much more closely with the University than they had originally

anticipated, adding that a close relationship with Yale led to both benefits and restrictions. Since the production team was able to use the space for free, Addison said the group spent the majority of the show’s considerable budget on design and on installing elements such as lighting, as well as the equipment necessary for aerial work.

“We’re kind of walking a weird line in working a lot with [the] Undergraduate Production [office] because [“Abyss”] is getting money from Yale — and Undergraduate Production is super helpful — but also trying to be more independent than your typical Yale show,” Addison said.

Polinger said he wanted the show to have a very professional design team, so he brought in Brian Dudkiewicz DRA ’14, with whom he had previously collaborated on “Independents,” to design the set. The show features other design work by both undergraduate and School of Drama students, as well as lighting by local lighting designer Jamie Burnett of Luminous Environments LLC.

A still-modern major musical

BY HELEN ROUNER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER For our generation, the ambiguity of “pilot” and “pirate” in British pronunciation might spark an Internet meme; for W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, it’s the beginning of an opera.

“The Pirates of Penzance,” the Yale Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s spring mainstage, will open Thursday night at the Off-Broadway Theater. Austin Kase ’11, a School of Music staff member who plays Major General Stanley, explained that the dry humor of modern shows like “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” find their roots in the comic operas of the 19th-century writing duo, making the classic show exciting for contemporary audiences.

Musical Director John Masko ’14 said Gilbert and Sullivan have been a Yale tradition for the better part of a century, and the Society stages

one of the duo’s three best-known operas — “The Pirates of Penzance,” “The Mikado” and “H.M.S. Pinafore” — in addition to at least one less well-known show each year.

This year, the Society staged a reading of “Ruddigore” first semester.

‘Pirates’ has a satirical witticism shared by modern journalism.

NICHOLAS BLEISCH ’13 Director, ‘The Pirates of Penzance’ While the Society stages “Pirates” regularly, cast members describe director Nicholas Bleisch ’13 as a “Gilbert and Sullivan purist” who has kept the production traditional.

Bleisch said the lightheartedness of “Pirates” makes it one of Gilbert

and Sullivan’s most popular operas.

“Pirates is the least bounded in reality, but some of the characters are actually some of the most believable,” Bleisch said.

“The Pirates of Penzance” tells the story of Frederic, a young aristocrat who is released from his indenture to a band of pirates when he turns 21, explained Peter Minnig ’13, who plays Frederic. Frederic then falls in love with Mabel, the daughter of Major General Stanley, only to discover that his indenture ends not in his 21st year but on his 21st birthday. Frederic, having been born on Feb. 29, has had only five birthdays, forcing him to obey his sense of duty and return to the pirates.

Kase explained that “Pirates” is an accessible and timelessly funny show, warning potential audiences not to be misled by the British accents and classical-sounding music.

“Gilbert and Sullivan is all about mocking the social mores of the

British upper class,” Kase said, adding that the show’s primary objective is to be ludicrous.

Masko also praised the show’s silliness, explaining that Yale students tend to take matters too seriously and thus relate especially well to Gilbert and Sullivan’s humor.

The social and political satire of “Pirates” is also enduringly funny, Kase said. The character of the Major General, whom Kase described as a historical icon in pop culture, is incredibly well-educated in everything but actually doing battle. He sings that he can “quote in elegaics all the crimes of Heliogabalus” and so is the “very model of a modern Major General,” except in that he does not how to wield a sword. “‘Pirates’ has a satirical witticism shared by modern journalism,” Bleisch said.

Yale students’ Anglophilia also makes “Pirates” a perpetual hit on campus, Masko said. Kase cited

Q

How would you describe your relationship with Pope John Paul II?

SAMANTHA GARDNER/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

“Abyss” seeks to enliven the audience’s experience of classical music through storytelling, dance, acting and circus performance.

“Oftentimes design gets thrown onto a show last minute, including for shows I’ve worked on,” Polinger said. “But it was totally necessary for this show — half of the staging is interacting with the design. It’s still an evolving element.”

Polinger said that from the beginning, the show’s design has had a very “gritty, industrial” feel that is juxtaposed with both the beauty of the music and the classical storyline. Dudkiewicz said his challenge was to take the long, narrow open space of the storefront and make viewers feel “that [this space] was meant for this show, and the show was meant for this space.”

For example, Polinger said the set was designed around a giant silver pipe

that cuts through the space. Dudkiewicz said he wanted to incorporate the show’s emphasis on music into the design as well, by visually differentiating the musicians from the other performers.

“I wanted the musicians to feel that they were part of the scene world and not inside the world,” Dudkiewicz said.

“The actors and the performers are the people in this world, whereas the musicians are this world.”

“Abyss” will run from Thursday to Sunday with 10 performances in total.

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

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

A

Working with His Holiness was like having a Renaissance royal patron, someone who came to understand the value of my art in realizing the goals of his pontificate. And he came to trust me to create concerts that would do just that, especially in his life-long quest to bring the believers of all the great faiths together in peace. The Pope’s support and his trust were essential elements in our creative relationship, which lasted more than 17 years.

did you decide to include the footage QWhy of Chicago’s major cultural and religious landmarks in “Out of Many, One?”

A

It encompasses the musical, the artistic and the spiritual elements of Chicago.

The [musical pieces] we performed are universal works, and yet their meaning is deepened by the associations our program makes with these diverse facets of this great American city. I was especially moved by the Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, Polish and Black immigrant experiences that make this quint-

essentially Middle-American [city] so multiculturally rich. But John Paul plays a role here also. He was beloved by so many Chicagoans across so many divides. Again, it was his spirit that inspired us, using music and spirit to bring all its people together. concert features a composition of QThe Edward T. Cone, who you previously stud-

ied with. What makes his composition unique?

A

He taught me the link between analysis and performance in a way I have never encountered before. His work as a composer has a voice all its own. It is mid-century American — mellifluous yet original. That’s another terrific aspect of television: the ability to get the word out about someone very few people have heard of, but whose work deserves a broad audience.

QWhat does this concert mean to you?

A

I have never before had the opportunity to bring an American city musically and culturally alive on PBS like I have with Chicago. This was the first time that the Chicago Symphony Chorus and the Lyric Opera of Chicago Orchestra had ever performed together. It was the first time that the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the Polish Museum of America had ever collaborated.

And for me it was special because I began my career as assistant to Sir Georg Solti, the great music director of the Chicago Symphony — my first job after getting my Yale degree.

U.S. CONSULATE GENERAL KRAKÓW/CREATIVE COMMONS

Conductor Sir Gilbert Levine GRD ’72 sought to popularize classical music through his PBS concert broadcasts.

you describe your time in Eastern QCould Europe during the Cold War?

poser Krzysztof Penderecki — at a table in Naples Pizza [now Wall Street Pizza & Restaurant]! It was Penderecki who invited me to become the music director of the Krakow Philharmonic, from where I set off on my further journey into the world of Pope John Paul.

But most of all, at Yale, I encountered excellence, both in performance and academics — a truly rare combination!

A

would your advice be for an aspirQWhat ing conductor?

When I first went to Poland in 1987 as the music director of the Krakow Philharmonic, my concertmaster told me that his grandchildren would surely live under communism. I was privileged to see the great courage of the Polish people in winning their own freedom. I also saw first-hand how Pope John Paul played an essential role in that dramatic transition. I have never valued a free society, as we have here in America, more than I did when I had to live under totalitarian tyranny in the Poland of 1987.

would you describe your graduate QHow school experience at Yale?

A

The first experience I remember was conducting the Yale Philharmonia. Yale is also where I first met the great Polish com-

A

Be as complete a human being as you can. Learn as much as you can — not just about the scores you are conducting, but the wider works of the composer who wrote them. And about the society he or she lived or lives in. You are as an artist nothing more — and nothing less — than all that you are as a person. You will be the best composer’s advocate if you are your own best, fullest advocate as well. In short, there are no shortcuts. Take your time. Your Brahms, your Beethoven, your Kernis will all be better for all of it.

Contact VANESSA YUAN at vanessa.yuan@yale.edu .

Filmmaker puts New Haven on screen

a comic bit in which characters mistake the words “orphan” and “often,” which sound remarkably similar in British pronunciation.

“I can’t see that ever getting unfunny,” Kase said.

Masko, who has worked on two previous Gilbert and Sullivan shows and a number of other opera theater productions at Yale, said Gilbert and Sullivan is logistically difficult to rehearse and perform because of the ensemble work and unusual combinations of choruses it involves.

Masko added that he recruited an 18-member orchestra for the show, though incorporating that large of an orchestra is unusual for Yale productions.

“The Pirates of Penzance” is playing at the Off-Broadway Theater on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., as well as on Saturday at 2 p.m.

Contact HELEN ROUNER at helen.rouner@yale.edu .

MBJ PRODUCTIONS

As part of the psychological thriller film “My Brother Jack,” actress Liv Chelsea poses in the studio of New Haven-based sculptor Silas Finch.

BY ERIC XIAO STAFF REPORTER

HENRY EHRENBERG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Yale Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s production of “The Pirates of Penzance” stars Peter Minnig ’13 as Frederic, a young aristocrat who is released from his indenture to pirates.

Though his work has been shown at many film festivals around the world, filmmaker Stephen Dest kept his cameras focused on the buildings and streets of New Haven to produce his latest project.

“My Brother Jack,” a psychological thriller film written and directed by Dest, will be screened at Best Video in Hamden this Thursday. The movie opens with two brothers named Jack and Vincent, who witness the murder of their parents as small children. Twenty years later, the man who com-

mitted the murder is released from prison and is killed on that night. As the mentally ill Vincent becomes a suspect in the murder, the brothers begin a search for the truth behind their parents’ death.

Dest said that though the film has a dark plot, its setting and characters are meant to pay tribute to the favorable characteristics of New Haven.

“This is a film about the beauty, the inspiring and enlightening aspect of the city,” Dest said. “This is a great community because even though tragedies occur, it is amazing how the city recovers from all of these unfortunate events.”

Dest used many of the characters in the film to represent the unique personalities of New Haven residents. Dest said the character Paul, who is a detective in “My Brother Jack,” reflects the police and security guards in New Haven. Having been inspired by detective characters in films from the 1930s and 1940s, Dest said these detectives, much like the security forces in New Haven, were not larger-than-life superheroes, but rather normal people trying to make a difference in their city.

“I went back to what I was influenced by, which is the average Joe,” Dest said.

Dest said the film does not

contain any blatant references to New Haven, but that those who are familiar with the city will recognize many of the objects and locations he used.

He said the title character Jack is a found-object artist — an artist who uses functional, everyday objects for material — and all of the scenes depicting him working were filmed in the studio of New Haven-based sculptor Silas Finch. Finch said he personally trained Malcolm Madera, the actor who played Jack, in dismantling and reassembling his sculptures in preparation for the role.

Dest said the physical, laborintensive nature of Finch’s

found-object work reflects the gritty, blue-collar aspects of New Haven life.

“There is definitely an intellectual side to the city, like the University and such, but you can’t be afraid to get your hands dirty,” Dest said.

Dest added that Jonny Rodgers, a New Haven-based composer and musician who wrote and performed most of the music in the film, also reflects these themes in his trademark use of tuned water glasses in his music. Dest said he believes Rodgers is the musical equivalent of a found-object artist, explaining that he could imagine Rodgers walking into a depart-

ment store’s kitchen section and looking for glasses with which to make music.

The theme of murder in the storyline, Dest noted, is not by any means the main focus of the film, though the film must acknowledge it in order to be an accurate portrait of the city and the characters’ lives.

“In New Haven, for all its riches and beautiful things, we have dark and twisted crime in this city,” Dest said. “I love this city and I hate this part of it, but as a storyteller, you’re not being a real storyteller if you leave this part out.”

Dest was the recipient of a 2012 Arts Council of Greater

New Haven Arts Award for “My Brother Jack.” Arts Council Director Cindy Clair said she selected the jury members who gave the award to Dest and was present during their discussions.

“The fact that New Haven was the setting of the film appealed to the jury,” Clair said.

She added that Dest’s incorporation of local artwork also contributed to his winning the award.

“My Brother Jack” had its world premiere at the 2012 Bahamas International Film Festival.

Contact ERIC XIAO at eric.xiao@yale.edu .

PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

ARTS & CULTURE

“That’s ok. She’s tough. We do a lot of piratethemed sexual role play. I’m a parrot.”

JACK DONAGHY “30 ROCK” CHARACTER

In ‘Abyss,’ an ‘Odyssey’ of sight and sound

Levine celebrates Pope John Paul II

BY VANESSA YUAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Yesterday, conductor Sir Gilbert Levine GRD ’72 spoke with the News about his recent work, a PBS concert titled “Out of Many, One — A Musical Offering from Chicago — In the Spirit of John Paul” that will be televised at Yale on Thursday. Levine has conducted concerts in both Europe and the United States, and has also led multiple concerts for Pope John Paul II. In the last 25 years, he has been acclaimed for bringing classical music to a wider audience through PBS concert broadcasts. Levine will also speak at a Trumbull Master’s Tea on Thursday, prior to the screening. have PBS concert broadcasts changed QHow classical music production?

A

BY ANYA GRENIER AND SARAH SWONG STAFF REPORTERS A new show this weekend asks audiences to imagine the end of the world as part of a journey through classical music.

Stephen Feigenbaum ’12 MUS ’13, who created the concept for “Abyss,” said he wants the show to turn classical music into a theatrical experience that excites a broad audience. While classical music on its own can be inaccessible, music with visuals can more directly communicate a message to audiences, he explained. Feigenbaum, who also founded the alternative classical music group SIC InC, said he sees “Abyss” — which blends classical music, storytelling, dance, acting and circus performance into an apocalyptic narrative — as similar to Disney’s “Fantasia,” Blue Man Group and Cirque du Soleil.

“Classical music is creating this entire world,” Feigenbaum said. “The music is driving this live story into something that gets you excited and is entertaining.”

“Abyss” has no dialogue and only a general plot in order to emphasize the music, Feigenbaum added. Instead of serving as accompaniment, the music advances the plot, and musicians play

alongside actors and dancers on stage, he said. For example, a tuba player who represents a military figure will play the instrument at times when dialogue is expected, he said.

Matthew George ’11, who developed the show’s plot after listening to Feigenbaum’s compositions repeatedly, said he was inspired by traditional epics, including the “Aeneid” and the “Odyssey,” which he reread while brainstorming. The resulting story is heavily influenced by the idea of the archetypal hero going on a journey.

“Before the process, I thought characters always had to be super nuanced and complex. … But if you hear a soaring piece of music that sounds like something you’ve heard before, that doesn’t make it any less soaring,” George said.

“With Odysseus, it’s like a motif coming up over and over again.”

“Abyss” tells the story of a young man, played by Gabe Greenspan ’14, whose wife is kidnapped, forcing him to go on a journey to retrieve her. Director Charlie Polinger ’13 said he wanted the show to have a fairly loose narrative in the same way as a ballet does — the story serves as a focal point for the music and movement.

Gracie White ’16, a dancer and choreographer for “Abyss,” said the entire

cast was involved in the creative process, as Polinger often wanted the performers to interpret a general theme or scene on their own. Polinger said he approached directing differently from usual, since “Abyss” did not come directly from a script and is far less plot- and character-driven than most pieces of theater he has worked on.

“I’m the outside eye shaping it, making final decisions,” Polinger said. “It’s finding the thing that feels most right.”

Each choreographed movement tells a part of the story, White explained. In the opening scene, for example, two characters dance in a duet that includes movements like brushing teeth and turning off a light bulb.

White, who has experience as a circus performer, incorporated circus choreography into the show, including acrobatics, contortion and aerial silks performance, in which dancers wrap themselves in silks hanging from the ceiling and move through various poses.

“Abyss” received $10,000 from the University’s Arts Discretionary Fund and $15,000 through a Kickstarter campaign, Feigenbaum said. Polinger said the group also received various other arts grants. To gather local support, some musicians held a fundraising concert at 116 Crown in December

Television can bring out aspects of classical music performance that are hidden from the live concertgoer. You can get right into the faces of the orchestra members and be guided as a viewer in a way that highlights the structure of the music, and therefore the meaning of the work as the composer meant it to be heard.

and reached out to arts organizations in New Haven.

Part of the project’s goal has always been to attract more than “an insular Yale audience,” Polinger said, which influenced the decision not to stage the production in a Yale theater. While students could begin reserving tickets through the Yale Drama Coalition site beginning Sunday night, Polinger said the group had already opened ticketing separately to members of the New Haven community through a separate website.

Polinger added that he had originally hoped to create a site-specific work that could be devised entirely in the performance space, an unused storefront at 278 Park St. owned by University Properties. But producer Kathleen Addison ’14 explained that paperwork and various logistical challenges prevented the team from moving into the space until just before spring break.

Addison said the project ended up working much more closely with the University than they had originally

anticipated, adding that a close relationship with Yale led to both benefits and restrictions. Since the production team was able to use the space for free, Addison said the group spent the majority of the show’s considerable budget on design and on installing elements such as lighting, as well as the equipment necessary for aerial work.

“We’re kind of walking a weird line in working a lot with [the] Undergraduate Production [office] because [“Abyss”] is getting money from Yale — and Undergraduate Production is super helpful — but also trying to be more independent than your typical Yale show,” Addison said.

Polinger said he wanted the show to have a very professional design team, so he brought in Brian Dudkiewicz DRA ’14, with whom he had previously collaborated on “Independents,” to design the set. The show features other design work by both undergraduate and School of Drama students, as well as lighting by local lighting designer Jamie Burnett of Luminous Environments LLC.

A still-modern major musical

BY HELEN ROUNER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER For our generation, the ambiguity of “pilot” and “pirate” in British pronunciation might spark an Internet meme; for W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, it’s the beginning of an opera.

“The Pirates of Penzance,” the Yale Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s spring mainstage, will open Thursday night at the Off-Broadway Theater. Austin Kase ’11, a School of Music staff member who plays Major General Stanley, explained that the dry humor of modern shows like “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” find their roots in the comic operas of the 19th-century writing duo, making the classic show exciting for contemporary audiences.

Musical Director John Masko ’14 said Gilbert and Sullivan have been a Yale tradition for the better part of a century, and the Society stages

one of the duo’s three best-known operas — “The Pirates of Penzance,” “The Mikado” and “H.M.S. Pinafore” — in addition to at least one less well-known show each year.

This year, the Society staged a reading of “Ruddigore” first semester.

‘Pirates’ has a satirical witticism shared by modern journalism.

NICHOLAS BLEISCH ’13 Director, ‘The Pirates of Penzance’ While the Society stages “Pirates” regularly, cast members describe director Nicholas Bleisch ’13 as a “Gilbert and Sullivan purist” who has kept the production traditional.

Bleisch said the lightheartedness of “Pirates” makes it one of Gilbert

and Sullivan’s most popular operas.

“Pirates is the least bounded in reality, but some of the characters are actually some of the most believable,” Bleisch said.

“The Pirates of Penzance” tells the story of Frederic, a young aristocrat who is released from his indenture to a band of pirates when he turns 21, explained Peter Minnig ’13, who plays Frederic. Frederic then falls in love with Mabel, the daughter of Major General Stanley, only to discover that his indenture ends not in his 21st year but on his 21st birthday. Frederic, having been born on Feb. 29, has had only five birthdays, forcing him to obey his sense of duty and return to the pirates.

Kase explained that “Pirates” is an accessible and timelessly funny show, warning potential audiences not to be misled by the British accents and classical-sounding music.

“Gilbert and Sullivan is all about mocking the social mores of the

British upper class,” Kase said, adding that the show’s primary objective is to be ludicrous.

Masko also praised the show’s silliness, explaining that Yale students tend to take matters too seriously and thus relate especially well to Gilbert and Sullivan’s humor.

The social and political satire of “Pirates” is also enduringly funny, Kase said. The character of the Major General, whom Kase described as a historical icon in pop culture, is incredibly well-educated in everything but actually doing battle. He sings that he can “quote in elegaics all the crimes of Heliogabalus” and so is the “very model of a modern Major General,” except in that he does not how to wield a sword. “‘Pirates’ has a satirical witticism shared by modern journalism,” Bleisch said.

Yale students’ Anglophilia also makes “Pirates” a perpetual hit on campus, Masko said. Kase cited

Q

How would you describe your relationship with Pope John Paul II?

SAMANTHA GARDNER/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

“Abyss” seeks to enliven the audience’s experience of classical music through storytelling, dance, acting and circus performance.

“Oftentimes design gets thrown onto a show last minute, including for shows I’ve worked on,” Polinger said. “But it was totally necessary for this show — half of the staging is interacting with the design. It’s still an evolving element.”

Polinger said that from the beginning, the show’s design has had a very “gritty, industrial” feel that is juxtaposed with both the beauty of the music and the classical storyline. Dudkiewicz said his challenge was to take the long, narrow open space of the storefront and make viewers feel “that [this space] was meant for this show, and the show was meant for this space.”

For example, Polinger said the set was designed around a giant silver pipe

that cuts through the space. Dudkiewicz said he wanted to incorporate the show’s emphasis on music into the design as well, by visually differentiating the musicians from the other performers.

“I wanted the musicians to feel that they were part of the scene world and not inside the world,” Dudkiewicz said.

“The actors and the performers are the people in this world, whereas the musicians are this world.”

“Abyss” will run from Thursday to Sunday with 10 performances in total.

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

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

A

Working with His Holiness was like having a Renaissance royal patron, someone who came to understand the value of my art in realizing the goals of his pontificate. And he came to trust me to create concerts that would do just that, especially in his life-long quest to bring the believers of all the great faiths together in peace. The Pope’s support and his trust were essential elements in our creative relationship, which lasted more than 17 years.

did you decide to include the footage QWhy of Chicago’s major cultural and religious landmarks in “Out of Many, One?”

A

It encompasses the musical, the artistic and the spiritual elements of Chicago.

The [musical pieces] we performed are universal works, and yet their meaning is deepened by the associations our program makes with these diverse facets of this great American city. I was especially moved by the Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, Polish and Black immigrant experiences that make this quint-

essentially Middle-American [city] so multiculturally rich. But John Paul plays a role here also. He was beloved by so many Chicagoans across so many divides. Again, it was his spirit that inspired us, using music and spirit to bring all its people together. concert features a composition of QThe Edward T. Cone, who you previously stud-

ied with. What makes his composition unique?

A

He taught me the link between analysis and performance in a way I have never encountered before. His work as a composer has a voice all its own. It is mid-century American — mellifluous yet original. That’s another terrific aspect of television: the ability to get the word out about someone very few people have heard of, but whose work deserves a broad audience.

QWhat does this concert mean to you?

A

I have never before had the opportunity to bring an American city musically and culturally alive on PBS like I have with Chicago. This was the first time that the Chicago Symphony Chorus and the Lyric Opera of Chicago Orchestra had ever performed together. It was the first time that the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the Polish Museum of America had ever collaborated.

And for me it was special because I began my career as assistant to Sir Georg Solti, the great music director of the Chicago Symphony — my first job after getting my Yale degree.

U.S. CONSULATE GENERAL KRAKÓW/CREATIVE COMMONS

Conductor Sir Gilbert Levine GRD ’72 sought to popularize classical music through his PBS concert broadcasts.

you describe your time in Eastern QCould Europe during the Cold War?

poser Krzysztof Penderecki — at a table in Naples Pizza [now Wall Street Pizza & Restaurant]! It was Penderecki who invited me to become the music director of the Krakow Philharmonic, from where I set off on my further journey into the world of Pope John Paul.

But most of all, at Yale, I encountered excellence, both in performance and academics — a truly rare combination!

A

would your advice be for an aspirQWhat ing conductor?

When I first went to Poland in 1987 as the music director of the Krakow Philharmonic, my concertmaster told me that his grandchildren would surely live under communism. I was privileged to see the great courage of the Polish people in winning their own freedom. I also saw first-hand how Pope John Paul played an essential role in that dramatic transition. I have never valued a free society, as we have here in America, more than I did when I had to live under totalitarian tyranny in the Poland of 1987.

would you describe your graduate QHow school experience at Yale?

A

The first experience I remember was conducting the Yale Philharmonia. Yale is also where I first met the great Polish com-

A

Be as complete a human being as you can. Learn as much as you can — not just about the scores you are conducting, but the wider works of the composer who wrote them. And about the society he or she lived or lives in. You are as an artist nothing more — and nothing less — than all that you are as a person. You will be the best composer’s advocate if you are your own best, fullest advocate as well. In short, there are no shortcuts. Take your time. Your Brahms, your Beethoven, your Kernis will all be better for all of it.

Contact VANESSA YUAN at vanessa.yuan@yale.edu .

Filmmaker puts New Haven on screen

a comic bit in which characters mistake the words “orphan” and “often,” which sound remarkably similar in British pronunciation.

“I can’t see that ever getting unfunny,” Kase said.

Masko, who has worked on two previous Gilbert and Sullivan shows and a number of other opera theater productions at Yale, said Gilbert and Sullivan is logistically difficult to rehearse and perform because of the ensemble work and unusual combinations of choruses it involves.

Masko added that he recruited an 18-member orchestra for the show, though incorporating that large of an orchestra is unusual for Yale productions.

“The Pirates of Penzance” is playing at the Off-Broadway Theater on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., as well as on Saturday at 2 p.m.

Contact HELEN ROUNER at helen.rouner@yale.edu .

MBJ PRODUCTIONS

As part of the psychological thriller film “My Brother Jack,” actress Liv Chelsea poses in the studio of New Haven-based sculptor Silas Finch.

BY ERIC XIAO STAFF REPORTER

HENRY EHRENBERG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Yale Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s production of “The Pirates of Penzance” stars Peter Minnig ’13 as Frederic, a young aristocrat who is released from his indenture to pirates.

Though his work has been shown at many film festivals around the world, filmmaker Stephen Dest kept his cameras focused on the buildings and streets of New Haven to produce his latest project.

“My Brother Jack,” a psychological thriller film written and directed by Dest, will be screened at Best Video in Hamden this Thursday. The movie opens with two brothers named Jack and Vincent, who witness the murder of their parents as small children. Twenty years later, the man who com-

mitted the murder is released from prison and is killed on that night. As the mentally ill Vincent becomes a suspect in the murder, the brothers begin a search for the truth behind their parents’ death.

Dest said that though the film has a dark plot, its setting and characters are meant to pay tribute to the favorable characteristics of New Haven.

“This is a film about the beauty, the inspiring and enlightening aspect of the city,” Dest said. “This is a great community because even though tragedies occur, it is amazing how the city recovers from all of these unfortunate events.”

Dest used many of the characters in the film to represent the unique personalities of New Haven residents. Dest said the character Paul, who is a detective in “My Brother Jack,” reflects the police and security guards in New Haven. Having been inspired by detective characters in films from the 1930s and 1940s, Dest said these detectives, much like the security forces in New Haven, were not larger-than-life superheroes, but rather normal people trying to make a difference in their city.

“I went back to what I was influenced by, which is the average Joe,” Dest said.

Dest said the film does not

contain any blatant references to New Haven, but that those who are familiar with the city will recognize many of the objects and locations he used.

He said the title character Jack is a found-object artist — an artist who uses functional, everyday objects for material — and all of the scenes depicting him working were filmed in the studio of New Haven-based sculptor Silas Finch. Finch said he personally trained Malcolm Madera, the actor who played Jack, in dismantling and reassembling his sculptures in preparation for the role.

Dest said the physical, laborintensive nature of Finch’s

found-object work reflects the gritty, blue-collar aspects of New Haven life.

“There is definitely an intellectual side to the city, like the University and such, but you can’t be afraid to get your hands dirty,” Dest said.

Dest added that Jonny Rodgers, a New Haven-based composer and musician who wrote and performed most of the music in the film, also reflects these themes in his trademark use of tuned water glasses in his music. Dest said he believes Rodgers is the musical equivalent of a found-object artist, explaining that he could imagine Rodgers walking into a depart-

ment store’s kitchen section and looking for glasses with which to make music.

The theme of murder in the storyline, Dest noted, is not by any means the main focus of the film, though the film must acknowledge it in order to be an accurate portrait of the city and the characters’ lives.

“In New Haven, for all its riches and beautiful things, we have dark and twisted crime in this city,” Dest said. “I love this city and I hate this part of it, but as a storyteller, you’re not being a real storyteller if you leave this part out.”

Dest was the recipient of a 2012 Arts Council of Greater

New Haven Arts Award for “My Brother Jack.” Arts Council Director Cindy Clair said she selected the jury members who gave the award to Dest and was present during their discussions.

“The fact that New Haven was the setting of the film appealed to the jury,” Clair said.

She added that Dest’s incorporation of local artwork also contributed to his winning the award.

“My Brother Jack” had its world premiere at the 2012 Bahamas International Film Festival.

Contact ERIC XIAO at eric.xiao@yale.edu .

PAGE 10

NEWS

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PAGE 11

NATION

T

Dow Jones 14,559.65, +0.77%

S NASDAQ 3,252.48, +0.53% S

Court debates gay marriage

Oil $96.17, -0.18%

S S&P 500 1,563.77, +0.78% T 10-yr. Bond 1.91%, -0.01 T Euro $1.29, -0.04%

Health overhaul to raise claims cost

BY RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR ASSOCIATED PRESS

PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Demonstrators chant outside the Supreme Court during arguments on Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

BY MARK SHERMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court dove into a historic debate on gay rights Tuesday that could soon lead to resumption of same-sex marriage in California, but the justices signaled they may not be ready for a major national ruling on whether America’s gays and lesbians have a right to marry.

The court’s first major examination of gay rights in 10 years continues Wednesday, when the justices will consider the federal law that prevents legally married gay couples from receiving a range of benefits afforded straight married people.

The issue before the court on Tuesday was more fundamental: Does the Constitution require that people be allowed to marry whom they choose, regardless of either partner’s gender? The fact that the question was in front of the Supreme Court at all was startling, given that no state recognized same-sex unions before 2003 and 40 states still don’t allow them.

There is no questioning the emotions the issue stirs. Demonstrators on both sides crowded the grounds outside the court, waving signs, sometimes chanting their feelings.

Inside, a skeptical Justice Samuel Alito cautioned against a broad ruling in favor of gay marriage precisely because the issue is so new.

“You want us to step in and render a decision based on an assessment of the effects of this institution which is newer than cellphones or the Internet? I mean, we do not have the ability to see the future,” Alito said.

Indeed, it was clear from the start of the 80-minute argument in a packed courtroom, that the justices, including some liberals who seemed open to gay marriage, had doubts about whether they should even be hearing the challenge to California’s Proposition 8, the state’s voterapproved gay marriage ban.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the potentially decisive vote on a closely divided court, suggested the justices could dismiss the case with no ruling at all.

Such an outcome would almost certainly allow gay marriages to resume in California but would have no impact elsewhere.

There was no majority apparent for any particular outcome, and many doubts were expressed by justices about the arguments advanced by lawyers for the opponents of gay marriage in California, by the supporters and by the Obama administration, which is in favor of same-sex marriage rights. The administration’s entry into the case followed President Barack Obama’s declaration of support for gay marriage.

The voice of those children is important in this case, don’t you think?

ANTHONY KENNEDY Justice, Supreme Court On the one hand, Kennedy acknowledged the recentness of same-sex unions, a point stressed repeatedly by Charles Cooper, the lawyer for the defenders of Proposition 8. Cooper said the court should uphold the ban as a valid expression of the people’s will and let the vigorous political debate over gay marriage continue.

But Kennedy pressed him also to address the interests of the estimated 40,000 children in California who have same-sex parents.

“They want their parents to have full recognition and full status. The voice of those children is important in this case, don’t you think?” Kennedy said.

Yet when Theodore Olson, the lawyer for two same-sex couples,

urged the court to support such marriage rights everywhere, Kennedy feared such a ruling would push the court into “uncharted waters.”

Olson said that the court similarly ventured into the unknown in 1967 when it struck down bans on interracial marriage in 16 states.

Kennedy challenged the accuracy of that comment, noting that other countries had had interracial marriages for hundreds of years.

The justice, whose vote usually decides the closest cases, also made clear he did not like the rationale of the federal appeals court that struck down Proposition 8, even though it cited earlier opinions in favor of gay rights that Kennedy had written.

That appeals court ruling applied only to California, where same-sex couples briefly had the right to marry before the state’s voters in November 2008 adopted Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Several members of the court also were troubled by the Obama administration’s main contention that when states offer same-sex couples civil union rights of marriage, as California and eight other states do, they also must allow marriage. The other states are: Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island.

“So a state that has made considerable progress has to go all the way, but at least the government’s position is, if the state has done absolutely nothing at all, then it can do as it will,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.

Chief Justice John Roberts questioned whether gay marriage proponents were arguing over a mere label.

“Same-sex couples have every other right. It’s just about the label,” Roberts said.

In the California case, if the court wants to find an exit without making a decision about gay marriage, it has two basic options.

WASHINGTON — Insurance companies will have to pay out an average of 32 percent more for medical claims on individual health policies under President Barack Obama’s overhaul, the nation’s leading group of financial risk analysts has estimated.

That’s likely to increase premiums for at least some Americans buying individual plans.

The report by the Society of Actuaries could turn into a big headache for the Obama administration at a time when many parts of the country remain skeptical about the Affordable Care Act. While some states will see medical claims costs per person decline, the report concluded the overwhelming majority will see double-digit increases in their individual health insurance markets, where people purchase coverage directly from insurers.

The disparities are striking. By 2017, the estimated increase would be 62 percent for California, about 80 percent for Ohio, more than 20 percent for Florida and 67 percent for Maryland. Much of the reason for the higher claims costs is that sicker people are expected to join the pool, the report said.

The report did not make similar estimates for employer plans, the mainstay for workers and their families. That’s because the primary impact of Obama’s law is on people who don’t have coverage through their jobs.

The administration questions the design of the study, saying it focused only on one piece of the puzzle and ignored cost-relief strategies in the law such as tax credits to help people afford premiums and special payments to insurers who attract an outsize share of the sick. The study also doesn’t take into account the potential price-cutting effect of competition in new state insurance markets that will go live on Oct. 1, administration officials said.

At a White House briefing on Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said some of what passes for health insurance today is so skimpy it can’t be compared to the comprehensive coverage available under the law. “Some of these folks have very high catastrophic plans that

don’t pay for anything unless you get hit by a bus,” she said. “They’re really mortgage protection, not health insurance.”

A prominent national expert, recently retired Medicare chief actuary Rick Foster, said the report does “a credible job” of estimating potential enrollment and costs under the law, “without trying to tilt the answers in any particular direction.”

“Having said that,” Foster added, “actuaries tend to be financially conservative, so the various assumptions might be more inclined to consider what might go wrong than to anticipate that everything will work beautifully.” Actuaries use statistics and economic theory to make long-range cost projections for insurance and pension programs sponsored by businesses and government. The society is headquartered near Chicago.

Some of these folks have very high catastrophic [health insurance] plans that don’t pay for anything unless you get hit by a bus.

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services Kristi Bohn, an actuary who worked on the study, acknowledged it did not attempt to estimate the effect of subsidies, insurer competition and other factors that could mitigate cost increases. She said the goal was to look at the underlying cost of medical care.

“Claims cost is the most important driver of health care premiums,” she said.

“We don’t see ourselves as a political organization,” Bohn added. “We are trying to figure out what the situation at hand is.”

On the plus side, the report found the law will cover more than 32 million currently uninsured Americans when fully phased in. And some states — including New York and Massachusetts — will see double-digit declines in costs for claims in the individual market.

J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

President Barack Obama signs the health care bill in the East Room of the White House in Washington.

PAGE 12

NEWS

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PAGE 13

SPORTS Genuine moments

FIFA dismisses Costa Rican protest

Soccer’s international governing body rejected on Tuesday a protest from the Costa Rican national team because team captain Bryan Ruiz did not complain to the referee during the match, as required by 2014 World Cup regulations. Costa Rica complained that a snowstorm during the game, held in Denver, Colo., compromised the physical integrity of players and officials and made ball movement impossible.

Yale takes aim at Gophers

COLUMN FROM PAGE 14 Did you know that FGCU’s coach, Andy Enfield, is married to a supermodel and was an early employee of and investor in a software startup that was valued at around $100 million before he opted out in 2006. By any measure, those are two pretty cool and impressive achievements for a young college basketball coach (especially the first). And there was also the distinctly endearing scene of the team’s best player, Sherwood Brown, with a smile plastered across his face, reaching across the scorer’s table and shaking the hands of announcers Len Elmore and Reggie Miller as the upset was in the bag. It was as if he were introducing himself to them as the happiest college kid in the world.

And there have already been so many other charming moments like that one which made us remember that this is a distinctly collegiate tournament, with 64 quite unique teams in it.

If you kept watching after No. 9-seeded Wichita State upset No.1-seeded Gonzaga, you saw several of them. Wichita State head coach Gregg Marshall gave perhaps the most genuine and heartwarming postgame interview I’ve seen.

After praising the selflessness and team spirit of his players (and entirely deflecting credit away from himself), he said how excited he and his team were to go to Los Angeles for the Sweet 16.

And then, two unexpected visitors joined him on the court: his teenaged son and daughter. He introduced them to the camera, kissed them and went to go join the dance circle his players had begun on the court. In the nearly empty EnergySolutions Arena in Salt Lake City, the entire Wichita State Shockers team was breaking it down. Loudly.

I have even done a semi-U-turn on a player I thought was my least favorite in the tournament, Mississippi’s Marshall Henderson. Henderson comports himself on the court roughly, as would a 10-year-old boy, including excessively demonstrative air punching, chest-slapping, wide-eyed glaring and shooting every time he touches the ball. I generally despise players like that, preferring the silent assassins, so to speak, such as Roger Federer and Mariano Rivera. Henderson has also already been to three different universities and one junior college, searching for a place to ply his trade. He’s also been in trouble with drugs in the past, having served 25 days in jail earlier in 2012 after violating his probation by testing positive for cocaine.

But then I looked Henderson up on YouTube to see if he was as insane as he seemed. And he really isn’t. He views his own antagonism in a delightful manner, laughing it off and acknowledging that it is a manifestation of his passion.

He takes it in with a laugh, in the spirit of sport.

And even if I don’t love watching him jack up 11 3-pointers a game and then celebrate like he won the NBA finals when one of them goes in, at least I know that the NBA scouts don’t either.

He’s going crazy and doing all that he can because he wants to win, and after all, it is only a game.

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

BRIANNE BOWEN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Bulldogs will take on the top-ranked Minnesota offense when they travel to Grand Rapids, Mich., this weekend for the first round of the NCAA tournament.

MEN’S HOCKEY FROM PAGE 14 earlier in the season — when they played at Denver and Colorado College in September — but head coach Keith Allain thinks the plane ride to Grand Rapids will build up some extra excitement as opposed to the standard bus trip.

“It’s a little more big-time than getting on a bus,” Allain said.

“We’re looking forward to it.”

Jeff Malcolm ’13 has been solid in net for the Elis in the postseason, boasting a 0.902 save percentage. The Elis were able to hold cross-town rival and NCAA tournament No. 1 seed Quinnipiac to just three goals in the ECAC third place game, boding well for the

Elis fall short at ECACs GYMNASTICS FROM PAGE 14 ships.”

Although Yale could not triumph as a team, several Eli gymnasts impressed at the meet. Brittney Sooksengdao’s ’16 was particularly noteworthy, as the freshman took the ECAC title in the balance beam with a score of 9.850.

Goldstein characterized Sooksengdao’s routine as “amazing,” adding that the freshman had worked on the advanced sequence all year.

“I definitely wasn’t expecting to come away with an ECAC title,” Sooksengdao said.

The Bulldogs recorded top-five finishes in every event of the day. Tara Feld ’13 placed third in the vault, .225 points off of first place, and the senior also tied for fourth in the floor exercise with a score of 9.800. Feld was the highest-place finisher for the Elis in the individual all-around, nabbing fifth place with an overall score of 38.400.

Another strong Bulldog performance came in the uneven bars. Joyce Li ’15 took fifth place with a score of 9.750. Li also finished seventh in the individual all-around.

“I thought [the meet] went really well,” Sooksengdao said. “We all came away from the meet with no regrets.”

Although the ECAC championship meet was the last time that the Eli gymnasts will compete as a team this season, several Yale athletes have qualified for further meets this year. As an alternate to attend NCAA Regionals on April 6, Li will compete in the meet if one of five other athletes is unable to perform. Additionally, a number of Eli athletes have qualified for the USAG National Collegiate meet the following weekend, which will be held in Shreveport, La. Contact ALEX EPPLER at alexander.eppler@yale.edu .

Bulldog defense heading into the Minnesota matchup. Yale also had two goals waved off after review in that game, and the three-goal final margin was not fully indicative of the Bulldogs’ performance.

The Elis have played a fastpaced and physical style all season, wearing their opponents down until the Bulldogs’ superior condition has allowed them to take control. As the game against the Gophers approaches, Root said the Bulldogs will be fighting fire with fire.

“The are a skilled team with a ton of speed,” Root said. “It should be a good challenge and we’re looking forward to it.”

But while the Bulldogs are

The Elis had no falls counted in their overall score for one of the first times this year in their last competition as a team.

of ECAC playoffs last season, Laganiere put away a hat trick to lift the Bulldogs over the Princeton Tigers.

Yale will have to look to all members of the team if it wants to overcome such a strong defense, however. Forward Stu Wilson ’16 has two game-winning goals this season — both in overtime — and could play a crucial role if the Bulldogs are to make a deep playoff run.

“It’s do or die for everyone,” Miller said.

The Elis will head to Van Andel Arena poised to take on Minnesota on Friday, March 29.

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

Late run requires tourney MEN’S BASKETBALL FROM PAGE 14

KATHRYN CRANDALL/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

poised to defend against the topranked offense in the country, they will have to return to the offensive form they showed earlier in the postseason as they outscored St. Lawrence 10–1 in the second round of the ECAC tournament if they want to advance past Minnesota’s No. 3 team defense.

Linemates Kenny Agostino ’14 and Miller are both ranked in the top 50 scorers in the country and have developed strong chemistry over the season with Root, leading to Miller’s first-team all-ECAC selection and Agostino’s selection to the all-ECAC second-team.

Forward Antoine Laganiere ’13 can also help propel the Eli attack.

In the final series of the first round

season.

“If you have a tournament at the end of the year and you have one fluke game, then a team’s whole body of work doesn’t matter, and I always thought that was unfair,” Martin said.

But this year, the Elis caught fire at the end of the season, knocking Princeton out of a first-place tie with Harvard a week after the Tigers topped the Crimson.

“We weren’t the best team in the league at the beginning of the year, but I thought we kept improving throughout the year to the point where at the end of the year we had the longest winning streak in the league at three games,” the senior added. “So I thought you could’ve made the argument that we were the best team at that time, and I think a tournament would’ve given us the opportunity to show that. … I would’ve liked to keep playing.”

Forwards Brandon Sherrod ’15 and Justin Sears ’16 also said that they would like to see a conference tournament in the Ivy League. Sears said that he felt it would make the league more competitive because more teams would have a chance to win the NCAA bid later in the season.

Sherrod added that a tournament could make each individual game in the regular season matter more because it would have a more direct effect on the automatic bid.

Sherrod and Sears disagreed on whether the addition of a conference tournament would affect recruiting.

While Sherrod said that the academic opportunities were reason enough to play for an Ivy League school, Sears offered a different opinion.

“The lack of a conference tournament made me wary of attending an Ivy League school since I wanted to make sure to always be able to com-

pete for a title,” Sears said. “I think the addition of a conference tournament would give a boost on the recruiting front for the league.”

Sears added that the addition of a conference tournament could leave open the possibility of a “Cinderella run” for a team from lower down in the standings.

Citing the example of the Liberty University team that lost 20 regular season games but won the Big South tournament, Sherrod said that conference tournaments deciding automatic bids would make the regular season less important.

Yale (14–17, 8–6 Ivy) finished third in the Ivy League behind the Harvard Crimson (20–10, 11–3 Ivy) and the Princeton Tigers (17–11, 10–4 Ivy).

The Crimson defeated the University of New Mexico 68–62 in the Round of 64 to register the school’s first NCAA tournament victory. That would be all for the Cantabs, however, as the University of Arizona blew out Harvard, 74–51, in the Round of 32.

Contact CHARLES CONDRO at charles.condro@yale.edu .

Alex Eppler contributed reporting.

MARIA ZEPEDA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

An Ivy League tournament would have given the Bulldogs a chance to build on their late-season momentum and earn a trip to the NCAA tournament.

IF YOU MISSED IT SCORES

NBA New York 100 Boston 85

NBA Minnesota 105 Detroit 82

SPORTS QUICK HITS

JENNA BLOCK ’10 AND SARA GREENBERG ’09 ELIS HEADED TO WORLD CUP Two former Yale women’s lacrosse players have been selected by the Israeli national team to compete in the World Cup at the Oshawa Civic Centre near Toronto, Canada, from July 11–20.

This year will mark Israel’s first appearance in the tournament.

NCAAW 1 Baylor 85 8 FSU 47

NCAAW 2 Duke 68 7 OKST 59

y

KENNETH CHAN ’13 AND HYWEL ROBINSON ’13 SQUASH EARNS ALL-IVY PICKS The two seniors were named to the AllIvy first team for the 12–5 Bulldogs, who finished fourth at the College Squash Association team championships this year. It was the fourth first-team selection for Chan, who has played at the No. 1 spot for the Elis for most of the season.

NCAAW 5 Louisville 76 4 Purdue 63

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

“We all came away from the meet with no regrets.”

BRITTNEY SOOKSENGDAO ’16 GYMNASTICS

YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

Elis tournament-bound

JOSEPH ROSENBERG

MEN’S HOCKEY

Embrace the madness I have to be honest: I don’t watch much television, but I was basically glued to the couch for the first four days of March Madness.

What makes this event just about the best thing ever? Why was it the only event all year that was allowed to play on the television in the lobby of my high school during the school day?

After all these years, I think I’ve figured it out: Even the seemingly negative aspects of the tournament have endearing qualities about them.

For example, take the Florida Gulf Coast University storyline. For those who don’t know, FGCU is a state university in Florida that began hosting classes in 1997 and entered competitive Division I athletics just two years ago. In the first round this year, the No. 15-seeded Eagles upset the No. 2-seeded Georgetown Hoyas. The Eagles went on to win their next game against San Diego State to reach the Sweet 16.

Usually, I root for the no-name underdog, just like everyone else. But as FGCU was about to defeat the Hoyas, I felt upset. I knew nothing about FGCU, and what the announcers said about it was enraging. They explained that FGCU had been founded with the initial purpose of supporting a basketball team, and that the basketball arena had been the first building constructed on campus. In fact, Reggie Miller said something along the lines of, “And who said you can’t build a university around a basketball team?” This pushed my buttons.

And so I was rooting for Georgetown, a terrific university with a basketball team that generally does things right. Its coach is the son of a former Hoyas coach, its best player is an unassuming, future NBA lottery pick who dominates games without your even noticing that he’s on the court, and its style of basketball is unflashy and traditional.

But now I’m not so sure I’m upset that FGCU pulled off the upset. I don’t purport to know much about FGCU even now, but from a very cursory examination, there are a bunch of things to like about it.

SEE COLUMN PAGE 13

BRIANNE BOWEN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale lost to the eventual champions in the second round of the 2010 and 2011 NCAA tournaments. The No. 15 Bulldogs will take on No. 2 Minnesota on Friday.

BY ASHTON WACKYM STAFF REPORTER For the fourth time in the past five years, the men’s hockey team will pursue the national championship in the NCAA tournament.

MEN’S HOCKEY On Friday at 2 p.m., the 15thseeded Bulldogs will face off against the No. 2 Minnesota Golden Gophers in Grand Rapids, Mich. The teams

will play in the West Regional bracket, and the victor will move on to play the winner of the North Dakota-Niagara contest in the tournament’s second round. While the Bulldogs (18–12–3, 12–9–1 ECAC) had a difficult weekend in the ECAC semi-finals and third-place game, falling decisively to Union and Quinnipiac, they hope to leave those games in the past and look forward to the challenge ahead.

“I think [the losses] will fuel us to be even more focused and more

No Ivy tournament on horizon

BY CHARLES CONDRO STAFF REPORTER Plagued by a 1–3 start to its conference season, the men’s basketball team spent the rest of the year fighting an uphill battle towardsIvy League title contention. Although the team caught fire and won seven of their next 10 games, by midway through the season the Elis had lost out on a chance to receive the Ancient Eight’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament because the Ivy League sends its regular season champion.

MEN’S BASKETBALL Of the 31 Division I conferences that receive an automatic bid to the tournament, only the Ivy League awards that bid to its regular season champion. The other 30 determine the recipient of their automatic bids with postseason conference tournaments. Although many coaches and players in the Ancient Eight strongly support the addition of a

conference tournament, no plan will be implemented in the near future. Last year, the athletic directors of the Ivy League denied a proposal from the conference’s head coaches to introduce a postseason tournament among the top four teams from the regular season standings.

“After careful consideration of these proposals, the athletics directors decided that our current method of determining the Ivy League Champion and our automatic bid recipient to the NCAA Championship is the best model moving forward,” Robin Harris, the Ivy League executive director, said in a statement released last year. “The current format awards the automatic bid to the team with the best record in the 14-game Ivy League season.”

Captain Sam Martin ’13, who just completed his final season in a Bulldogs uniform, said that he had been opposed to the idea of a conference tournament until this SEE MEN’S BASKETBALL PAGE 13

determined heading into the tournament,” forward Jesse Root ’14 said. “Obviously we are excited but our goal hasn’t changed, and that is to make it to the Frozen Four. We’ll be doing everything we can to make that a reality.”

Yale participated in three straight tournaments from 2009–’11, and while they did not make it to the Frozen Four during that span, in both 2010 and 2011, the Elis fell in the second round to the eventual NCAA champions. If the Bulldogs

While most Yale students spent spring break relaxing with friends and family, the gymnastics team remained hard at work preparing for its biggest competition of the year, hoping to win its first season meet and upset the field at Saturday’s ECAC championships.

GYMNASTICS

Yale won its final three conference games and finished the regular season as the hottest team in the Ivy League.

STAT OF THE DAY 192.100 10

SEE MEN’S HOCKEY PAGE 13

Sooksengdao ’16 takes beam title

BY ALEX EPPLER STAFF REPORTER

EMILIE FOYER/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

make it past the first two rounds this year, they will advance to the Frozen Four in Root’s hometown of Pittsburgh, Penn. This weekend’s games, however, will be played in captain Andrew Miller’s ’13 home state of Michigan, where he has not played a game since early 2007.

“It’s your senior year and it’s your last opportunity to win a national championship,” Miller said.

The Bulldogs have flown to games

Facing off against five other schools at the meet held in Ithaca, N.Y., the Bulldogs were unable to capture the league title on Saturday. The team finished fifth among the six teams competing with a score of 192.100, its second-best score of the season. The Elis finished in front of Brown, this year’s Ivy League champion, which placed last with a tally of 191.500 points.

Penn recorded 193.725 points to

win its second ECAC title in as many years.

“I think we were maybe expecting to face a little higher,” team captain Stephanie Goldstein ’13 said. “But to be completely honest, that’s the highest finish we’ve had in my four years here.”

While the team may have had higher hopes for the meet, the Elis put forth a day full of solid routines. According to Goldstein, no falls were counted in the overall score for one of the first times this year. Furthermore, the team just barely missed out on fourth place, trailing Temple by just .075 points.

“Overall, the team put forth some really good routines at the meet,” Goldstein said. “I really couldn’t have asked any more of my teammates than to do that when we came to championSEE GYMNASTICS PAGE 13

THE GYMNASTICS TEAM POSTED ITS SECOND-HIGHEST SCORE OF THE SEASON AT THE ECAC CHAMPIONSHIPS ON SATURDAY. The Bulldogs topped Ivy League champion Brown, but finished fifth in the field of six.