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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 · FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2013 · VOL. CXXXV, NO. 115 · yaledailynews.com

INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING

RAINY SUNNY

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2013

Yale’s Big Break Seventy alums dish on the trials and triumphs of life in show business. By CYNTHIA HUA. Page 3

44 56

CROSS CAMPUS A friendly reminder. Today is

the last day to convert a class from Credit/D/Fail to a letter grade. Don’t forget! The News cares about your grades.

Spotted. A dancing figure

dressed as George Washington complete with powdered wig was spotted at the Yale Law School yesterday afternoon holding a poster that read “Team H.” It remains unclear what the Founding Father was doing in the 21st century.

The real world. Not sure

SHOWTIME WEEKEND GOES TO HOLLYWOOD

PIERSON MASTER

BRAIN

MEN’S HOCKEY

After Master Goldblatt’s departure, Stephen Davis will assume leadership

YALE MAY BE LINKED TO OBAMA’S NEW RESEARCH PROJECT

North Dakota has been unable to defeat the Bulldogs for a decade

PAGE B3 WEEKEND

PAGE 3 NEWS

PAGE 5 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

PAGE 12 SPORTS

Faculty postpone grading overhaul vote

BY JANE DARBY MENTON STAFF REPORTER As students protested outside Thursday evening’s Yale College faculty meeting, professors voted to table a proposal to change Yale’s grading system until next fall.

At the meeting, which was held in Davies Auditorium, roughly

150 professors voted on proposals of the Yale College ad-hoc committee on grading, including the adoption of a 100-point grading scale and a suggested rubric of grade distributions. Though the faculty chose to adopt measures to increase grade transparency in Yale College — such as releasing grade statistics internally to departments — Miller said con-

cerns about lack of student input and the potential ramifications of a new grading policy on Yale’s academic and extracurricular culture led professors to send proposals that would fundamentally change the grading system back to the committee for further consideration.

Miller said she will appoint student representatives to the

committee in the fall, and the new committee will present its recommendations at next November’s faculty meeting.

“There was the feeling that we needed more time to consider this,” Miller said. “There was the desire to have more student engagement before such a major change would be voted on by the faculty and the desire to digest

BY MICHELLE HACKMAN STAFF REPORTER

Celeb lifestyle. Looking to hobknob with the entertainment elite of Los Angeles? Do you miss James Franco, formerly GRD ’16?

There is still hope. Students in the English major received an email on Thursday about a writing opportunity at a start-up founded by Hollywood hearthrob and former “That ’70s Show” star Ashton Kutcher. Hopefully we’re not being punk’d.

Real talk. In a Thursday interview on The Today Show, Suzy Lee Weiss, the high school senior who made headlines with her controversial Wall Street Journal piece on college rejections, revealed that she had been denied admission from Princeton, Vanderbilt, UPenn and Yale. Looks like Yale wasn’t interested in someone who didn’t “start a fake charity” or collect “donations for the underprivileged chimpanzees of the Congo.” Tough luck.

Loud and proud. The Yale College Democrats have signed on to a national statement endorsing samesex marriage that is being passed around by the leaders of 50 college Democrats and college Republicans organizations across the country. The Columbia University Republicans and college Democrat chapters of Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell and Princeton have also signed the statement.

Long live the 90s. Still

upset that ’N Sync broke up? Crushes & Chaperones, Branford’s annual 90s dance, will be held in Commons tonight. Tickets will not be sold at the door but are available online. RIP Safety Dance.

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1911 Five fraternities, including Delta Kappa Epsilon and Zeta Psi, each elect four new members.

PHILIPP ARNDT/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

President-elect Peter Salovey, pictured with the volleyball team, has yet to decide on athletic recruitment policies.

BY CHARLES CONDRO AND JULIA ZORTHIAN STAFF REPORTERS As President-elect Peter Salovey continues to pack his days with meetings and speeches, he regularly takes time off to cheer on the Bulldogs from the bleachers. And student-athletes have noticed.

Salovey said he has not yet decided on any policies pertaining to the athletics program, including changes

ONLINE y MORE cc.yaledailynews.com

to campus life or recruitment, adding that making any decisions before he has taken office would be premature. Still, he said he has met with a number of alumni representatives and athletic staff, including Director of Athletics Thomas Beckett, to gather information on the athletic program and assess the needs of its community. With the University preparing for a changing of the guard in Woodbridge Hall, the transition has

sparked conversations about possible changes to athletic policy on a campus where many student-athletes said they do not feel supported.

Much of the discussion focuses on raising Yale’s recruitment numbers to match those of other schools in the Ivy League, a policy which may dispel some athletes’ resentment toward the University. After implementing a

Democracy Fund’s future in doubt

B

etween constitutional decisions, legislative attacks and other challenges, public finance programs across the nation are struggling to find their place in politics. How will New Haven’s relatively young Democracy Fund fare? DIANA LI reports in the third of a three part series.

BY DIANA LI STAFF REPORTER PHOENIX — The first time John McComish ran for a seat in the Arizona House, he had no idea what he was doing.

DEMOCRACY FUND PART 3 OF 3

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crosscampus@yaledailynews.com

SEE GRADING PAGE 8

Malloy signs gun bill

Under Salovey, new athletics policies?

what to do after graduation?

You could take the route of Colin Grussing ’07, a recent Yale alumnus who will appear on “Shark Tank,” a reality television show where budding entrepreneurs pitch their proposals to a panel of investors on air. Grussing is the founder of RootSuit — a website that sells different types of bodysocks — and Nola Sidecars, which sells sidecars for motorcycles and scooters.

and continue to think about the consequences.”

Miller convened the grading committee in the fall to examine grading trends across the University. In its preliminary report presented at February’s faculty meeting, the committee revealed that 62 percent of grades awarded

It was 2002 and McComish, who is now the Arizona State Senate majority leader, chose to use Arizona’s public campaign finance system to fund his election. Though he lost the election, when running again two years later, he decided once more to use

public finance. That year, he received over three times the amount he had received in 2002 and won the election.

It would be the last time the candidate would run for office with public financing.

Seven years after his first election win, McComish was the named plaintiff in a Supreme Court case after the Goldwater Institute asked if he wanted to help take Arizona’s public finance program, Clean Elections, to the highest court in the nation. The Supreme Court decided McComish v. Bennett in 2011 and ruled that a major provision of Arizona’s public campaign finance program — the one McComish himself had used — was SEE DEMOCRACY FUND PAGE 6

Surrounded by the families of Sandy Hook’s victims, Gov. Dannel Malloy signed one of the nation’s most comprehensive gun control packages into law at noon on Thursday.

The signing took place just 10 hours after the bill passed through the legislature early Thursday morning with strong bipartisan support. The new law — a long-awaited legislative response to the massacre that befell Newtown on Dec. 14 — tightens gun restrictions and contains provisions to strengthen the state’s mental healthcare system and school security apparatus. The bill’s passage also became a national symbol of unusual bipartisan cooperation on a bitterly partisan issue, a feat that the federal government has not yet been able to achieve.

“This is a profoundly emotional day, I think, for everyone in this room,” Malloy said.

“We have come together in a way that relatively few places in our nation have demonstrated an ability to do.”

Immediately upon Malloy’s signature, the sale of over 100 types of assault-style weapons and magazines holding more than 10 bullets became illegal in Connecticut. Anyone seeking to purchase a gun must now undergo a universal background check as well.

Other controvertial provisions of the law will take effect later in the year. On July 1, Connecticut residents will be required to

SEE ATHLETICS PAGE 8

SEE GUN BILL PAGE 6

YCC postpones election deadline

BY KIRSTEN SCHNACKENBERG STAFF REPORTER The deadline to declare candidacy for the Yale College Council executive board elections has been postponed 48 hours, the council announced to its candidates on Thursday night.

Candidates were initially asked to turn in their candidacy statements and 100 signatures of support by Thursday at 4 p.m. But at a Thursday night candidates’ meeting, YCC President John Gonzalez ’14 told students they may now enter the elections until Saturday at 4 p.m. The YCC elections committee and current executive board decided to postpone the deadline to declare candidacy because the races for “some” of the six executive board positions were uncontested as of Thursday afternoon, according to a campus-wide email sent on Thursday by the YCC. Gonzalez said he thinks several of the races are uncontested because the candidates who filed candidacy prior to Thursday’s official deadline — before which candidates cannot technically campaign — have established significant support among students.

“People really like the candi-

dates that are running,” he said, “and they’ve already been able to galvanize support.”

Gonzalez added he is not sure whether the extended deadline will prompt more students to enter the races.

People really like the candidates that are running and they’ve already been able to galvanize support.

JOHN GONZALEZ ’14 President, Yale College Council Elizabeth Henry ’14, chair of the YCC Elections Committee, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Two candidates present at the mandatory candidates’ meeting on Thursday night said they were told “technical issues” related to submission of statements on Yale StaSEE YCC PAGE 8

PAGE 2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION

.COMMENT “Religion is powerful because of capitalism” yaledailynews.com/opinion

W

e need to address a serious problem in our culture. Now. Rape culture refers to complex belief system that tolerates — and sometimes even encourages — male sexual aggression and violence against women.

The norm of victim blaming needs to change. Instead of asking what the victim could have done differently, ask instead what the assaulter and bystanders could have, and should have, done differently.

A prominent example of rape culture today can be found in the Steubenville rape case. The facts of the case revolved around a party thrown in August of last year in Steubenville, Ohio. One of the attendees, a sixteen-year old girl, became heavily intoxicated and passed out. Instead of helping her, her peers carried her into a bedroom by her hands and feet and raped her.

The two men put on trial were Trent Mays, 17, and Ma’lik Richmond, 16, football players at the local high school. Eventually, it came out that this was not an isolated incident; this girl had been targeted, drugged and raped at multiple parties throughout the summer.

When the guilty verdict was announced, some mainstream media outlets became active participants in furthering our victim-blaming rape culture.

Probably the most sickening news coverage came from CNN, where anchor Candy Crowley lamented that the “young men … had such promising futures, [were] star football players, very good students.” Registering as sex offenders would “haunt them for the rest of their lives.”

Instead of focusing on the atrocity of rape, Crowley focused on how the perpetrators’ lives would never be the same again. This mentality is highly upsetting, because it demonstrates that women can fuel this twisted victim-blaming, sympathizing with the rapists. But the victim will have to cope with what those rapists did to her for the rest of her life.

Besides the media, individual people propagated institutional tolerance of this terrible crime. Reno Saccocia, the defendants’ football coach, told the principal and school superintendent that because his players didn’t believe they had done anything wrong, he shouldn’t pursue further punishment.

Hold on — because these rapists didn’t think they had done anything wrong, they believed they should be free from any punishment, an insolent belief their coach supported. They felt neither guilt nor shame for their crimes, and somehow believed they had privi-

lege that entitled them to “conquer” a “dead girl” who could not defend herself. The accused should be held accountable. It was their actions, their decisions, that brought this on themselves.

Even the blogger who exposed incriminating tweets about the Steubenville crime, Alexandria Goddard, faced harassment. Not only did she receive death threats, but the family of Cody Saltsman, a bystander during the assault, sued her for “defamation of character.” When she called attention to a crime that needed investigation, Goddard suffered social backlash.

These examples demonstrate the extent of rape culture in our society. Far too many individuals defer to victimblaming attitudes — attempting to protect the assaulters and justify their crimes.

Sexual assault is the only crime I can think of where the victim wears the shame; the victim is the one left feeling dirty and stripped of human dignity. Some victims can’t even bring themselves to talk about their assault, let alone come forward and report.

I don’t blame victims who are unable to speak up. Many victims are too traumatized.

Many feel reporting the crime would put them through more hell. Statistically speaking, most assaults aren’t reported, and most of the assailants that do get reported aren’t prosecuted and convicted.

We need to examine how we think about sexual assault.

Instead of questioning whether the victim was intoxicated or dressed provocatively, we should question how we can hold perpetrators accountable.

These defendants are responsible for their own actions.

But how do rapists like the Steubenville defendants justify their actions? Some of our sympathies should lie with perpetrators — not because they are innocent, but because they, too, subscribe to rape culture.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. We must realize how terribly wrong rape culture is. This is why freshmen attend consent and communication workshops, and why this year, sophomores attended bystander intervention training. The blame doesn’t lie only with the rapists. The blame falls partially on the environment that the rapists are nurtured in, on the bystanders who turn a blind eye to the crimes going on in front of them and on the people and institutions who try to cover up these crimes.

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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

I

don’t know about you, but I love hate-reading. My favorite person to hate-read is Wordsworth, probably because it’s so easy. In my opinion, anyone who calls himself “Nature’s Chosen Son” is basically asking for it. And it gives me a thrill, letting that self-centered prig have it — it concentrates my negative capabilities, you might say.

Bad references to Keats aside, you balk at my use of the word hate, I’m sure: we live in a culture in which negative emotion is stigmatized; we go to a school in which we often feel pressured to feign happiness. Hate has a lot of negative connotations, I’m not denying. Like anything else, hate can go too far. It causes grief. It causes pain.

But like many dirty words, the “hate” of our everyday lexicon has become boring, uncomplicated. We have forced it to convey every shade and flavor of detestation; we have bleached it of meaning. “I hate midterms!” cries the friend too busy to communicate her distress. Why? One wants to ask. What horrendous thing did a midterm do to you? Did it steal your lunch money, and call you a poophead? Or do you just have a traumatic history with scantron machines?

The little monosyllable has been stretched too thin, dulled and deprived of sense. It is in this

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COPYRIGHT 2013 — VOL. CXXXV, NO. 115

lack of sense, I think, that people refer to “hate-watching” or “hatereading.” Like sitting selfcontentedly in MICHELLE the vapors of one’s own fart, TAYLOR we — “hating” — become Tell It Slant passive, paralyzed in clouds of dissipating toxicity. Just as we secretly glory in the perversity of our own noxious odors, hatewatching a bad TV show is the only mode through which we can engage with what in all other contexts our culture of positivity has deemed disgusting.

Yet this hate — like, yes, a fart — is an ephemeral substitute for something more truly taboo, more solid, more permanent. Rarely does it possess us. This “hate” has no discourse with the mind, causes no spasms of the heart; it rests heavy like a doughnut in the gut. What we call “hate” decays into gluttony — a luxurious binge on an imagined sense of superiority and “taste.”

But I believe that, like anything else, antipathy can be cultivated.

After three robust years, I like to think of my hatred as a finely aging cheddar. It grows sharper all the time, and goes well with a

full-bodied red.

It is hard today to think of hate as a valuable emotion — I know.

But I insist on hate, dear reader, because hate shares a slender coin’s edge with love.

True hatred is as essential as love, and as rare. Like love, true hatred develops slowly, and lives in the mind and the heart. Both can become obsessive, overwhelming — but the certainty of such passion can be affirming. Hate, like love, can also be grounding. You cannot love without knowing what you love — just so, hate requires understanding. It demands, and provokes, thought. In this way, what we hate defines us. And often, what we hate leads us to what we love.

If you feel, for example, that you hate the music of Katy Perry, consider why “California Gurls” are so unfortunately “unforgettable.” It might be the way her voice consistently cracks like a particularly ugly boy going through puberty, or maybe you’re just terrified by the idea of someone “melting your popsicle.” Either way, you develop a sense of your own aesthetic. In meditating on Katy Perry, you come closer to realizing the platonic anti-Katy Perry. (By which, of course, I mean Ke$ha.)

We fear hate because it runs a higher risk than love. Hate, in action, is destructive. Hate sent

Salman Rushdie — who visited campus last Tuesday — into hiding for almost a decade. Even though I really dislike his poetry, I would not do the same to Wordsworth. Some people find Wordsworth’s poetry beautiful: others think his “egotistical” outweighs his “sublime.” But without Wordsworth, how would good poets know what to avoid? The place for my hatred is to show those poets what I see in him, and to respect my peers who get off on freeverse ekphrasis.

Hate, unlike love, must be contained by our regard for other humans. Love can be enacted into the world in a respectful way, because love creates. Hate, to quote Dante, is il foco che gli affina. It is “that fire which refines them” — that purgatorial fire: redemptive, but only when enacted on the self.

If you have ever felt remorse over an action, you will understand the apophasis by which hate builds love. You have discovered a thing that you hate: now you hold both sides of the coin firmly in your hand. The paradox collapses in on itself. Catullus wrote it first: odi et amo. I hate and I love.

MICHELLE TAYLOR is a senior in Davenport College. Her column runs on Fridays. Contact her at michelle.taylor@yale.edu .

Chasing sight W

hen I got glasses at age three, I apparently raved about “all the colors.”

With them, I could see noses and eyes, instead of just faces; leaves and branches, instead of just trees.

The colors and details were new.

Over the course of the past 19 years, though, I’ve gotten used to these sights, and I’m scared I have stopped seeing them at all. These days, I am trying to go back to the wonder I felt when my landscape looked new. I hunger for better vision. I squint and stare. I chase sight.

Really seeing isn’t easy. Lately, I’ve turned to some old transcendentalists for tips. They chased sight for years. Ralph Waldo Emerson claims to have become “a transparent eyeball” who became nothing and saw all; Henry David Thoreau waded through muck and apparently spent a day staring at a bullfrog in Walden Pond; John Muir once climbed to the top of a 100-foot tall Douglas fir during a storm in the Sierras to feel the wild sway of its branches and take in the view.

I want to see what they saw. I’ve puzzled, though, with little success, over how to become a transparent eyeball. I haven’t been able to sit still for minutes, let alone

WINNIE WANG is a sophomore in Branford College. Contact her at winnie.wang@yale.edu.

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POWER GOES OUT'

Rage — Goddess, sing

G U E S T C O L U M N I S T W I N N I E WA N G

Examining rape culture

'YALEMARXIST' ON 'WHEN THE

hours, let alone a full day. I’ve also never climbed a 100foot tree.

Annie Dillard tries to see better by reading DIANA about how the SAVERIN newly sighted described For the Birds the world: shadows as dark marks, landscapes as color patches. When Dillard tries to see like the formerly blind, though, she writes that she can’t “unpeach the peaches.” She can’t see with as little meaning and as much wonder. She can’t see the world as new.

Finally, after a summer of chasing sight, she sees a vision one little girl described in a garden: “the tree with the lights in it.”

Again, I am jealous. I want to see with less meaning and more wonder — anything to remind me of how new all I’m seeing is. I go after some new sights I’ve heard about — reindeer lichen on rocks and trees, that owl on Old Campus. It’s too hard to see what I am not looking for, especially when what I’m seeing looks familiar. This weekend, someone tried to tell me you

couldn’t see the moon from New Haven.

While all this chasing helps, I know I’m still missing a lot. It worries me.

Camping as a kid, I would often forget my glasses. I would keep my contacts in as late as I could bear, staring at the sky from my sleeping bag with all the vision I could muster as my tired eyes dried and itched. The alternative without contacts was worse. Fuzzy-eyed, I would strain my sight while other campers gushed and pointed, agonizing about which wish to use on the streaks of light apparently gliding across what looked to me like a blank, black canvas.

I’m afraid I’m walking around this city and seeing a blank, black canvas. What line of silver light might be gliding by unnoticed?

What bright moon might be clouded by my socked-in sight?

Thoreau writes, “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”

If I crawl through the grass, muddying my knees and sniffing the earth, can I see what I’ve missed, maybe some heaven in New Haven?

Seeing better is loving better.

Whenever I’ve looked a little closer at this place, I’ve fallen hard for it.

Too often, though, I don’t keep

looking closer. As soon as I’m used to a sight, I trick myself into thinking I’ve seen it and I’ve known it and I’m done. Images freeze in my mind, no longer refreshing every time I blink.

But here’s a secret we already know: nothing is static. Nothing and no one I’ve ever seen is still the same. The chase doesn’t end. If we want to see this place — really see it, maybe fall for it — we have to keep opening our eyes. We have to keep seeing colors as new. We have to keep paying attention.

The other night I ran to East Rock. It was misty and dark. Running down Orange Street with an empty mind, I finally saw it: the tree with the lights in it. I stopped, stunned. The burrs at the outer tips of the tree’s branches were encased in globes of shine. Rusty light from a nearby lamp hit each, filling the spheres with brightness.

When I finally took a step toward the tree, the glow was gone. But I skipped and danced down the next block, howling at a moon I couldn’t see, tasting the sweet air of light rain. I could, for a brief moment, believe my eyes.

DIANA SAVERIN is a senior in Berkeley College. Contact her at diana.saverin@yale.edu .

G U E S T C O L U M N I S T V I N A Y N A YA K

Honesty from Washington O

ne week after the Supreme Court heard arguments about same-sex marriage in Hollingsworth v. Perry and U.S. v. Winsdor, we have reached a milestone previously unheard of in American politics: A working majority of the United States Senate now supports marriage equality. This is what Vice President Biden would call a BFD. 11 U.S. Senators have recently announced their change of heart, including Republican Senator Rob Portman, R-Ohio.

Sen. Portman should be commended for his reconsideration of this issue after he learned that his son, Will Portman ’14, is gay.

As should always be the case, Portman was willing to change his mind in light of personal experience. We should applaud his decision and encourage others to follow his lead. Instead, many progressives have been critical of Portman’s announcement, arguing that his decision is a selfish one.

Here’s the problem: The same liberals who revile Rob Portman for recently announcing his support of marriage equality laud Democratic Senators for doing the same.

We should be much more

troubled by Democrats' politically expedient dishonesty on this issue over the last few years than by Rob Portman’s politically harmful honesty.

Unlike Portman, nine Democratic senators announced their support for marriage equality long after they appeared to have changed their minds on the issue.

They didn’t change their minds this week based on personal experience. They didn’t change their minds this week in response to Ted Olson’s eloquence before the Supreme Court or out of deference to Rob Portman. They didn’t change their minds this week at all.

Instead, they decided to disclose their long-standing views in the wake of new polling, by CBS and others, that shows 53% of Americans and 63% of Democrats now support marriage equality.

Some have argued that this polling justifies Democrats’ dishonesty on this issue. After all, politicians are supposed to follow public opinion. But the fact is, we elect our leaders to do just that: to lead. Since President Obama announced his support for marriage equality, public opinion has followed, jump-

ing 13 percentage points. More importantly, LGBT Americans now know their President supports their right to marry whomever they love.

Even the President, who shocked many of us with his announcement in May of last year, was not entirely forthcoming with the American people on this issue. A notoriously careful politician, Obama would not have characterized his view as “evolving” unless it had already changed. Finally, his hand forced by loose-lipped Biden, Obama announced: “It is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”

Translation: I’ve thought this for a while, but I’m going to say it now.

Make no mistake — President Obama and Democrats in Congress have done great things for LGBT rights while most Republicans have been closed-minded on this issue. As someone who spent last semester staffing President Obama's re-election campaign in his Chicago headquarters, I believe that he and other Democrats are on the right side of history. But that’s no excuse for dishonesty.

Our elected officials shouldn’t take their cues from changing electorates, favorable public opinion polls or their Facebook news feeds.

As citizens and voters, we have to make a decision on how to respond to these Democrats.

We can say that this is just the nature of politics, and, in the process, we’ll reinforce this kind of craven, self-serving behavior.

Or, we can decide that we deserve better and we can demand honesty from our leaders in Washington, even if it means criticizing folks on our side of the aisle.

We can take a victory lap now that the tide has started to turn in our favor. Or we can try to make the long trek toward progress a little shorter in the future.

This isn’t the first time we’ve moved forward as a nation on a once-unpopular political issue, and it won’t be the last. The next time we do, we’ll need more Rob Portmans and fewer cowardly politicians sitting on the sidelines until it becomes politically convenient to enter the fray.

VINAY NAYAK is a junior in Davenport College. Contact him at vinay.nayak@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 3

FRIDAY FORUM

MARK TWAIN "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

YALE TALKS GRADES G U E ST I L LU ST R AT O R M O H A N Y I N

GUEST COLUMNIST HARSHA MISHRA

War and grades

Grading by numbers A

We are the 79 percent T

here’s just something about Yale — that spirit of cooperation, that warmth, that genuine interest in other people. It was exactly that Yale feeling that I worried would be destroyed yesterday.

Yesterday, at a 4:00 p.m. meeting, the faculty voted on a proposal to radically alter Yale’s grading system. This proposal — to change the grading system to a 100-point scale and limit the number of “A”s and “A–”s that professors can give out — was postponed until November.

Inside, the meeting was heated.

Outside, we protested.

Outside, we made signs. Outside, we handed leaflets to the faculty. A group of students and I thought we would chant, but we ended up usually just talking with professors. It was gratifying whenever a professor would actually ask for our opinion. It was rare.

Some professors, though, seemed genuinely excited by our presence. Some looked a little scared, rushing ahead, eyes cast down, mumbling in response to our entreaties. President Levin took one of our leaflets and thanked us warmly. Dean Marichal Gentry greeted us with a huge smile and words of encouragement. Dean Mary Miller seemed to be in a little bit of a hurry and declined our leaflet,

citing environmental concerns, but she too was pleasant.

It was a remarkable experience to actually SCOTT talk to facSTERN ulty members, even if most of A Stern them lingered Perspective only briefly.

What is sad is that this was the first time many members of the faculty had ever heard the student perspective on the proposal in any detail. Apart from the Yale College Council Open Forum on Grading held a week ago, this protest was remarkably the only time students were able to voice concerns to professors.

One week ago, I emailed people I knew in various political and social justice organizations on campus, asking if anyone was planning to organize to demonstrate that students were against the proposal. When the answer came back a resounding “no one,” I felt that someone should be doing something. The day before, the YCC had released its survey results, showing that 79 percent of students were opposed to the proposal. Using the slogan, “We are the 79 percent,” I emailed the

Yale student body and called for a protest.

Over the next week, a number of student and professional journalists and activists called me, all asking about our “organization” and what we had planned. I felt a little sheepish explaining that we didn’t exactly know what we were going to do, and our organization mostly consisted of me and a few other dedicated activists, frantically running to Stop & Shop for markers and posterboard.

Yet students came through.

Yesterday, the day of the vote, some 60 or 70 students showed to up to voice their concerns. For the first time, many of us were able to talk to faculty members, even if that just meant talking past them as they hurried by or desperately trying to stuff a leaflet into their hands.

While we stood around, chanted and plotted outside, the faculty battled inside. Professors told me afterward that the meeting was intense. The Ad Hoc Committee strode in extremely confident that they were going to win. Committee members repeatedly said they were about to create a new regime in grading — that was the actual phrase they used, a “new regime.”

But many professors struck back. They stood up and passionately defended the rights of

students and their own grading practices. A number of professors apparently said that they came in thinking they would support the proposal, but ended up not because they felt students and other faculty members had not been adequately consulted before the vote. As the tide began to turn, Ad Hoc Committee members became defensive.

In the end, the faculty tabled the vote until November.

The point of this column is not to rehash the debate. (There will be plenty of time for that in the future, trust me.) The point is to demand that our voices be heard.

Yale, we need to petition to gain student-elected, not appointed, student representatives on the Ad Hoc Committee. We need to demand a greater voice in making decisions that will have a profound effect on our lives and the school we all love. We cannot allow the summer to destroy our momentum. We just witnessed a very close call — a small minority of professors hoped to hastily push through a proposal opposed by nearly all those it would have affected. This time, we cannot, and we will not, be silent.

Come November, we’ve still got the protest signs. We’re ready.

SCOTT STERN is a sophomore in Branford College. Contact him at scott.stern@yale.edu .

s a junior, I don’t have much of a standing to sue over any decision to change the grading system — the proposed changes would only go into effect after my graduation. However, the proposed system has merits that are overlooked by the 79 percent of the student body against numerical grading. I do not intend to advocate one system over another, but I want to add balance to the debate about grading policy based on my experience with the proposed scale in high school.

Grades serve two main practical functions. They hold us accountable for learning material presented in class and signal the degree that we have learned course material. In high school, the 59-100 scale pushed me to be more diligent.

Each small detail of a subject could represent a couple of points on a test. Since getting to college, however, I sometimes find myself completing just enough work to pass the minimum threshold to get an A. The current system enables such behavior. Our current grading system does not reward someone for taking any initiative on the micro level.

Consider most large economics lecture courses: Around 37 percent of the class receives an A- or A, and the top 15% of the class gets an A. Because of our current grading system, a student in the top 35 percent of the class gets the same grade as a student in the top 17. So why work to be at the top of your class? When initiative is not rewarded, we are not always inclined to take extra academic initiative.

This example ties well into the second practical use for grades: signaling accomplishment in a course both to the student and external parties.

An A in a seminar where 7 other students received an A is not equivalent to an A in a higher level math class where maybe 5 of 30 students get an A. Relative standing is more informative than absolute standing.

Why not change to a system that allows students to differentiate themselves on a pointby-point level?

Moreover, the 59-100 scale gives students a better idea of their relative standing in a class, helping them more easily predict their final grade. I have taken a few final exams in college completely unsure of what my final grade in the class could be. The proposed scale would increase the transparency of this process. Students would know what to expect as a final grade, since their grades throughout the semester

would be indexed on the same 59-100 scale.

The major critique of the proposed system is it will make Yale too cutthroat. Based on my experience in high school, I respectfully disagree. The nature of the 4.0 scale lends itself to more intense competition. Students compete with one another to perform better than around 80 percent of the class to get an A. In other words, you need to remember material that 80 percent of the class does not know. That’s more competitive than a system with more nuanced distinctions.

OUR DISCUSSION OF GRADING POLICY NEEDS BALANCE BASED ON REAL EXAMPLES I never felt like was in a rat race in high school when it came to grades. The effort I put into a class matched the numerical grade I received. Some students worry that small differences in GPA will alter how external parties, like employers or graduate programs, evaluate their academic performance.

But my high school classmates and I went through the college admissions process with grades on a 59-100 scale, and friends with higher and lower GPAs than I had all now attend great schools. I don’t see an employer denying a student a job solely because she has a 93.4 GPA as opposed to a 94.3.

Implementing the new grading scale would be an administrative and cultural challenge, but those issues should only be discussed if the new system is implemented. Ultimately, from my experience in high school, a numerical grading scale induces a greater depth of learning. Numerical grades allow for accurate differentiation among students without significantly increasing the stress level on campus.

Nevertheless, regardless of our grading scale, we still all attend one of the greatest universities in the world. As my residential college dean so aptly put it, sometimes “the only ‘A’ that matters is the ‘A’ in Yale.”

HARSHA MISHRA is a junior in Timothy Dwight College. Contact him at harsha.mishra@yale.edu .

G U E ST C O LU M N I ST CA R O L I N E SY D N EY

Grade expectations W

rite a seminar paper on “The Scarlett Letter.”

This was the assignment. I knew that it had to be one full page. I knew it had to be single-spaced with one-inch margins in a 12-point font. I had no idea what to put onto that page of seminar paper, but I held fast to the fact that I knew I was a Good Writer — otherwise I wouldn’t have been in that high school honors English classroom in the first place. So, I met with my teacher to discuss potential topics and I wrote and edited and wrote and edited and turned in my paper. I didn’t feel especially good about the product, but I didn’t feel as though I’d done spectacularly poorly, either.

Until I got it back.

C-. Not a “you should work harder, but here’s some optimism” C+; not a solidly disappointing but reassuringly average C. Rather, a “did you even try?” borderline D, C-. And the thing was, I had tried. I had tried in all the ways they tell you try — I’d read and reread the passage and met with my teacher and not procrastinated and generally done all the things that you also probably did when you wrote papers in high school. But this time, at the moment my teacher handed back that sheet of paper, these efforts seemed to have been for naught.

As grading policy dominates campus discussion, the conver-

sation has focused on grades B+ and above — the grades Yalies tend to receive, perhaps because of grade inflation and compression. But it’s important to consider the role of the grades you don’t see as often.

WE SHOULD NOT TREAT OUR BAD GRADES LIKE THEY'RE SCARLET LETTERS

Some people think that the value of a letter based system lies in its ability to motivate students to aspire to — and ultimately produce — better, A-range work.

Personally, I am not one especially motivated by grades in this way. Rather, I appreciate the ways they quickly highlight my weaknesses. In contrast to a gentle B suggesting an array of smaller fixes, that C- had a profound alarm clock effect on me.

For the first time in many assignments, maybe even the first time ever, I looked critically not at any one particular element, but at my writing as a whole. I demolished the entire process and rebuilt it on a single page of a Word document. I didn’t skim my teacher’s

comments; I read them over and over, mining them for any advice applicable to the next seminar paper.

And yes, I received As on future seminar papers but in my academic memory, those grades had less value and were less noteworthy than that first C- because they did not force me to evaluate my work to the same extent.

The primary effect of that grade was not its impact on my GPA — rather, it had everything to do with the grade’s ability to serve as a call to action. Whatever new grading policy might be implemented, I hope that it speaks to this need for grading to drive perseverance and experimentation.

A job well done should receive recognition — I’m not arguing that Yale professors should give artificially low grades. But it’s unfortunate that we’re so scared of receiving them. There’s so much to be learned from trying hard and failing hard.

It’s unfortunate that it takes a truly bad grade to convince us to look closely and critically at an assignment, to force us to take drastically new approaches.

As the debate over grading progresses, consider this sidelined but related issue: We shouldn’t treat bad grades as scarlet letters.

CAROLINE SYDNEY is a freshman in Silliman College. Contact her at caroline.sydney@yale.edu .

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

“What can I tell you? The audience just loves Shayla’s personal story. Did you know that both her mothers are serial killers? That’s America.” JACK DONAGHY “30 ROCK” CHARACTER

Yale-NUS reports on curriculum

BY ALEKSANDRA GJORGIEVSKA STAFF REPORTER In a 90-page report released Thursday, the Yale-NUS Curriculum Committee unveiled the specific details of the Singaporean college’s curriculum and outlined the process of creating a liberal arts education from scratch.

Committee members said the report, which Yale-NUS faculty have been working on since December 2012 and which is the first comprehensive review of the college’s curriculum, aims to address the challenges that faculty have faced while drafting the curriculum’s current version, such as offering a core curriculum as well as individual majors and balancing general and specialized education. Committee Chair Bryan Garsten and committee member Charles Bailyn, who is also the Yale-NUS dean of faculty, said they hope the report will serve as a point of reference to others looking to experiment with the liberal arts in Asia and also spark conversations about curricular innovation in the United States and elsewhere.

“I am sure some scholars will disagree strongly with parts of the report, but I absolutely hope that people will consider some of these curricular innovations in the Yale context,” Bailyn said. “I don’t expect that Yale will adopt some of the more significant innovations — nor it necessarily should — and some people might hate the report and some people might like it, but some of our pedagogical initiatives can certainly prove useful for colleagues here.”

The report stresses the importance of preserving the traditional liberal arts model in a world where knowledge can be disseminated more easily than it could when liberal arts colleges first emerged. Garsten said an extensive explanation of Yale-NUS’s general approach to the liberal arts was crucial to understanding the logic behind its curriculum and the motives behind building the college itself.

“In one way it is a strange thing to build a new college at the very moment when journalists of higher education are proclaiming the end of the residential fouryear college,” Garsten said. “So alongside outlining the details of the curriculum, we wanted to answer the question: Why would we build a new brick and mortar college in Singapore today?”

The report provides details about Yale-NUS’s common curriculum, a set of 12 core courses that all students must take throughout their four years. Students will also take classes for their majors — each major cannot consist of more than 10 courses — but will not be required to fulfill any distributional requirements after completing the common curriculum. Garsten added that the cap placed on the number of courses within each major serves to give students the freedom to experiment with their course choices after completing the core requirements.

While well-established institutions such as Yale tend to be

Davis named Pierson’s master

resistant to change, Yale-NUS faculty have received “a blank slate,” Yale-NUS President Pericles Lewis said. Yale-NUS has the option to incorporate only the most effective elements of existing educational models and its faculty will be free to experiment with new teaching and learning methods, Bailyn said, which will be reviewed on a regular basis.

Though the Yale-NUS community is shaping the new college from scratch, the report said, the Singaporean college is learning from other educational partnerships in Asia — both successful and unsuccessful ones. Garsten said some Yale-NUS faculty are in contact with representatives from successful peer institutions such as Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, and several faculty members have been tasked with researching unsuccessful branches of universities’ campuses in Singapore such as New York University’s Tisch Asia School of the Arts, which in November 2012 announced that it would not be admitting new students.

I absolutely hope that people will consider some of these curricular innovations in the Yale context.

CHARLES BAILYN Dean of faculty, Yale-NUS Academic freedom is a fundamental cornerstone of the new college, which aims to prepare its students to listen and read critically “as civil society in Singapore and elsewhere continues to grow more vibrant online and on the ground,” the report said.

“I don’t think there is going to be any trouble with the fact that students will take what they learn at Yale-NUS and use it to ask questions about all kinds of matters including justice and political systems in Singapore,” Lewis said. “I think Singapore is eager for that kind of robust conversation, and that it has already started such conversations.”

Former Dean of Yale Law School and Sterling professor of law Anthony Kronman, who served as co-chair of the initial Curriculum Committee on Yale-NUS and has reviewed the report, said he thinks it takes a first step toward explaining how a liberal arts education model can be implemented in a 21st century multicultural society. Kronman said he hopes the report will spark debate about curricular innovation in New Haven, adding that he thinks many observers will track the progress of the new college.

“For better or worse, we will be able to watch what happens from a distance,” he said.

Yale-NUS will offer 14 majors.

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

EMILIE FOYER/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Stephen Davis GRD ’98, the director of undergraduate studies in the Religious Studies Department, will be Pierson College’s next master.

BY MATTHEW LLOYD-THOMAS STAFF REPORTER Before a Pierson dining hall brimming with students and alumni, Presidentelect Peter Salovey introduced Stephen Davis GRD ’98 as the next master of Pierson College.

Davis, the director of undergraduate studies in the Religious Studies Department and a fellow in Pierson, will replace outgoing Master Harvey Goldblatt on July 1. Goldblatt, affectionately referred to as “Master G” by Pierson students, has held his post for 19 years, the longest of any current master. In his first brief remarks to the college, Davis highlighted Goldblatt’s legacy and said he looked forward to getting to know “each and every one” of the students in Pierson.

“I have a steep learning curve ahead of me,” Davis said to those assembled. “I look forward to learning from you.”

Davis graduated from Princeton in 1988 before moving on to Duke Divinity School and eventually Yale, where he received three graduate degrees between 1992 and 1998. The author of seven books, Davis speaks six ancient and four modern languages and is also the executive director of the Yale Monastic Archaeology Project.

Goldblatt said he expects Davis to continue conveying the “humanistic values” that he has upheld as master.

Reactions to Davis’ appointment were largely positive, though students interviewed said they were not yet familiar enough with the new master to make a

JENNIFER CHEUNG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

When you spend 19 years devoted to something, it’s a way of life.

[That’s] the only way to do this.

HARVEY GOLDBLATT Master, Pierson College

“As seniors it will be hard because we won’t be able to have very strong relationships with our master,” Clarissa Marzán ’14 said.

Davis said he has not yet determined the steps he will take to integrate himself into Pierson College life. As he prepares to take over the mastership on July 1, he plans to reach out across Pierson and the University in an effort to learn more about students, the college and his new

job. He added that he will consult with as many college and administrative officials as possible.

Thursday’s announcement came nearly three years after rumors circulated that the University administration had forced Goldblatt to accept a shorter-than usual three-year extension to his term as master. Goldblatt and the administration had reportedly locked horns on residential college funding, with Goldblatt fighting to preserve special programs and funds for Pierson students.

Nevertheless, University President Richard Levin announced at the ceremony that the mastership of Pierson will be renamed in Goldblatt’s honor. Levin said donations from Pierson alumni made the renaming possible.

Goldblatt’s mastership has focused on connecting current Pierson students to alumni.

Although he said leaving his position would be difficult, Goldblatt added that the formal announcement of his successor was not as tough as expected.

“When you spend 19 years devoted to something, it’s a way of life,” Goldblatt said. “The only way to do this is to have it as a way of life.”

Aside from Goldblatt, who received a standing ovation, the loudest applause of the evening came when Salovey announced that Davis has two dogs, a beagle and a mutt.

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

City sees two murders in five days

BY LORENZO LIGATO STAFF REPORTER

Yale-NUS President Pericles Lewis said faculty at the Singaporean liberal arts college have received “a blank slate” in designing curriculum.

full judgment. Many also emphasized the large role Goldblatt plays in the college, adding that his presence will be difficult to replace.

“Master Davis shows enthusiasm,” Ric Best ’14 said. “That’s the first step in following the big shoes of Master G.” Still, some students were disappointed. Janie Greenberg ’14 said she hoped the new master would be a professor in a STEM-related field.

Several juniors also expressed their displeasure that they would not have enough time before graduating to get to know Davis well.

Just four days after New Haven saw its first homicide since Jan. 23, another murder hit the city Wednesday afternoon.

The New Haven Police Department responded to reports of gunfire on Walcott Street around 6:10 p.m. on Wednesday, said department spokesman David Hartman. When officers arrived on the scene, they found Asdrubal Bernier lying with multiple gunshot wounds in front of 145 Walcott at the intersection with Lloyd Street. Bernier, a 32-yearold New Haven resident, was rushed by ambulance to Yale-New Haven hospital, where he died as a result of his wounds shortly afterward.

While investigations into Wednesday’s murder are still ongoing, officers at the crime scene learned from witnesses that the shooter might have fled in a black pickup truck, leaving Bernier on the ground, Hartman said. He added that the city’s police department has deployed a large number of officers to search for the perpetrator and the suspect vehicle.

According to several witnesses, the suspect is an African-America male, between 25 and 35 years old, Hartman said. At the time of the shooting, witnesses say the suspect was wearing a dark-colored jacket over a white shirt.

Wednesday’s shooting broke out in

the heart of the Fair Haven section of the city, a largely Hispanic and AfricanAmerican neighborhood just a 10-minute drive east from Yale’s central campus.

Traditionally plagued by crime, poverty and drug problems, Fair Haven was home to 10 homicides between 2011 and 2013 — almost a fifth of the total homicide count in the Elm City over the past two years, according to police department data.

People … might not talk to the 911 operator, but it’s amazing how they reach out to their police officers.

DEAN ESSERMAN Chief, New Haven Police Department Wednesday’s murder follows the March 30 shooting in Newhallville that led to the death of Eric Forbes, 33 — the first murder to hit the city in 65 days. Just a few minutes before being shot, Forbes had left the Taurus Café, a nightclub at 520 Winchester Ave., where he was seen having an altercation with two unknown men, Hartman said.

Detectives are still completing their investigations into this weekend’s murder, Hartman said, adding that the case is receiving much attention from the

police department’s Investigative Services Division — the division typically charged with investigating violent crimes.

Meanwhile, the two recent homicides have lifted the New Haven’s murder tally this year to a total of four, double the number of murders at this time in 2012 but still down from the 10-homicide high in the first trimester of 2011.

Earlier this year, at a Jan. 9 press conference in City Hall, New Haven officials reported a 50 percent drop in the number of homicides from 2011 to 2012 — a fall that Mayor John DeStefano Jr. has largely attributed to city policies aimed at supporting youth programs, preventing recidivism and strengthening the police force.

Many of these initiatives worked in conjunction with NHPD Chief Dean Esserman’s commitment to a model of community policing — a strategy that moves officers away from their desks and puts them on walking patrols throughout the city to build relationships with the public.

“People talk to us: They might not talk to the 911 operator, but it’s amazing how they reach out to their police officers,” Esserman said earlier this year.

At this time last year, the city had recorded two murders, en route to a three-year low of 17 homicides.

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

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

NEWS

“If only Mozart had lived on the Upper East Side. But you can keep your magic flute, Amadeus. All this queen wants is a golden ticket to Yale.” GOSSIP GIRL “GOSSIP GIRL” CHARACTER

Yale scientists prepared to help build ‘BRAIN’

BY DAN WEINER STAFF REPORTER Yale researchers are poised to contribute to the national decade-long effort to map the human brain.

On Tuesday morning, Obama unveiled the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, or BRAIN, project that aims to reach a deeper understanding of neurological diseases ranging from Parkinson’s to epilepsy. While calls for grant proposals will not come for months, researchers at the Yale School of Medicine — the University’s neuroscience research hub — said the school has a history of inter-department collaboration, partnerships that would help meet the initiative’s goal of developing a new brain imaging technique that can monitor the activity of billions of neurons.

BRAIN will receive approximately $100 million in Obama’s 2014 fiscal year budget, expected to be unveiled next week.

“Exactly how this will play out, I think it’s too early to say,” neurology professor Stephen Strittmatter said. “But Yale is exactly the kind of fertile ground for this program and for new approaches for understanding the brain to develop.”

[Yale is] fertile ground for … new approaches for understanding the brain to develop.

STEPHEN STRITTMATTER Professor, Yale University Strittmatter said inquiry in the BRAIN initiative will have to integrate insights from multiple disciplines. The Medical School’s Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program is an asset for Yale in the research endeavor because of its collaborative approach to neuroscience research, he said.

The University’s neuroscience research has a long-standing tradition of analyzing the whole brain in addition to individual

CHARLES DHARAPAK/ASSOCIATED PRESS

President Barack Obama discussed the BRAIN initiative, which aims to reach a deeper understanding of diseases like Parkinson’s and epilepsy, on Tuesday. neurons and circuits, said neuroscience professor Pasko Rakic, director of the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience at Yale.

The original idea behind the BRAIN project came from a 2011 meeting of the Kavli Foundation, which supports science research in astrophysics, nanoscience, neuroscience and theoretical physics, said neurobiology professor David McCormick, vice director of the Kavli Institute at Yale. Yale is one of four Kavli Institute hubs worldwide focusing on neuroscience, he

Aldermen review budget proposals

BY PATRICK CASEY STAFF REPORTER The Board of Aldermen’s finance committee met Thursday evening in City Hall to begin reviewing budget proposals from each city department for the coming fiscal year.

The 6:00 p.m. meeting was the first of four such workshops that will all occur in April. In the workshops, the finance committee is tasked with examining the budget proposals of each of the city’s 36 departments, eight of which testified about their proposed budgets at Tuesday’s meeting.

New Haven’s charter requires the city government pass a budget for fiscal year 2014 by June 1 of this year. In March, the mayor’s office released its budget plan for fiscal year 2014, which begins July 1, and the finance committee is responsible for reviewing and potentially amending that plan before passing it along to the full Board of Aldermen for approval.

Because the Connecticut state government is considering reducing its grants to New Haven by tens of millions of dollars next year, the mayor’s budget proposal offers three different contingency plans in case of a shortfall, all of which include tax increases. The option based on the most optimistic assumptions about state funding calls for property tax hikes of 5.38 percent. Under the most pessimistic scenario, the mayor’s proposal would increase property taxes by 18.9 percent.

In March, Board of Aldermen president and finance committee member Jorge Perez said that any tax increases would be unacceptable.

“I think wherever possible we’re going to look for ways to save. That being said, it’s an

uphill battle,” finance committee member Jessica Holmes said.

Holmes called the potential state budget cuts “devastating.”

“It’s going to be a difficult year for budgeting for municipalities around Connecticut,” she added.

I think wherever possible we’re going to look for ways to save. That being said, it’s an uphill battle.

JESSICA HOLMES Member, Board of Aldermen finance committee The city finance department, which reports regularly to the finance committee and is responsible for managing the city’s funds, was one of the departments that testified on Tuesday.

Members of the finance department discussed not only their own budgetary needs but also the cost of servicing the city’s debt.

In a finance committee briefing about the budget circulated at the meeting, the finance department explained its goal to maintain the current 98 percent tax collection rate in the city while increasing delinquincy payments, which would help shore up revenues.

Finance committee chair and Ward 4 Alderman Andrea Jackson-Brooks said that the departments reviewed at Thursday’s workshop “are by far the easiest.”

The next finance committee workshop to examine proposed departmental budgets will be on April 10.

Contact PATRICK CASEY at patrick.casey@yale.edu .

added. The Kavil Foundation has pledged roughly $40 million for the BRAIN project over the next decade.

“We have a direct line to the Kavli foundation,” McCormick said. “They come and visit us twice a year or once a year, and we meet with them and talk with them, so we have a bit of an advantage in that we have a dialogue going on with them directly.

That doesn’t mean they are going to give us money for sure. That just means we have a little bit of an advantage over someone not in

that situation.”

At the 2011 meeting of the Kavli Foundation, a handful of neuroscientists and nanoscientists envisioned developing new technology to measure brain activity at a much higher resolution than previously possible. If the federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health end up seeking this nanoscience-based approach, Yale may be at a disadvantage — McCormick said he does not think Yale has nanoscientists specializing in neuroscience research and therefore other institutions may

have a “leg up” when competing for certain grants.

While Yale may contribute significant intellectual capital to the project, the amount of funding Yale could receive is relatively small in the scope of the University’s research endeavors — National Science Foundation and NIH grants to the University totaled approximately $491 million in the year ending June 30, 2012. Neurology professor Hal Blumenfeld said while he applauds the BRAIN program, he hopes the project receives more

funding than currently anticipated.

“The whole one year of $100 million dollars of funding is less than what our country spends on one F-35 fighter plane,” he said.

“I hope that Congress and private donors will recognize the importance of this and bolster the effort.”

A finalized report of the BRAIN initiative’s goals will be released in June 2014.

Contact DAN WEINER at daniel.weiner@yale.edu .

The power of seduction in ‘Richard III’

BY ERIC XIAO STAFF REPORTER Though Shakespearean plays often depict the concept of power through military and political conflicts, students in theater studies and English professor Joseph Roach’s seminar are aiming to emphasize the power of seduction in their upcoming performance.

All students in Roach’s production seminar will participate in their own production of Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” which opens tonight at the Whitney Humanities Center. The play focuses on Richard’s violent ascension to the throne of England and his subsequent manipulation of those around him as he persuades them to fulfill his wishes.

“This production is a display of what happens when you submit to a powerseeking individual,” said Cambrian Thomas-Adams ’13, who plays Richard.

Thomas-Adams added that the class’s production aims to bring out different manifestations of power in the play, emphasizing the sexual power that Richard acquires through his seductive abilities. Clio Contogenis ’14, who plays Lady Anne Neville, called the entire play “a seduction,” and Otis Blum ’15, who plays the Duke of Clarence, explained that the sexual elements in the production are oftentimes used to represent the dominance and submission involved in other themes, such as the struggle for political power.

This production is a display of what happens when you submit to a power-seeking individual.

CAMBRIAN THOMAS-ADAMS ’13 Richard, “Richard III” Blum added that in the plot, Richard has Clarence arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London because he is ahead of Richard in the royal line of succession. In one scene, Clarence is presented wearing a ball gag and chains, which are used for political purposes despite being overtly sexual objects, Blum said. “[This production] is different in that it puts the struggle — sexual struggle —

BRIANNA LOO/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

All 23 students in professor Joseph Roach’s seminar will participate in a production of “Richard III,” opening tonight at the Whitney Humanities Center. between Richard and other women in the forefront of play,” Roach said.

Five students involved with the production said its BDSM component has given greater significance to the play’s female roles, particularly when compared to most other productions of “Richard III.” Contogenis said that although other productions tend to cut every female role except for Anne, shortening even her part by half, Roach’s production does not omit any of these roles.

Thomas-Adams explained that aside from Richard and the Duke of Clarence, the female characters are by far the most interesting ones in the production. Citing a literary paper that deems the consensual exchange of power a source of arousal, Contogenis described a scene in which Anne initially hates Richard for killing her husband and father-in-law, but ultimately consents to marrying him after he deliberately gives her the option of killing him.

“Richard has abused Anna as much as he possibly could, and yet she still comes back to him,” Thomas-Adams said.

Charles Margossian ’15, who plays the Earl of Richmond, said this weekend’s pro-

duction also emphasizes women’s strength in fighting against tragedy, noting that the play’s female characters are much stronger than expected. He pointed to the character Margaret, who was widowed when Richard killed her husband, and how the fulfillment of the prophecies she makes renders Richard unable to defeat her. Contogenis added that Margaret is the only character that Richard never fully conquers.

“Physically, she is powerless and left alive to suffer, but she still has a sort of power through her words, her curses and her prophecies,” Margossian said.

Three cast members interviewed declined to reveal their interpretation of the play’s ending, but said it will highlight the timeless nature of Richard’s personality traits.

“What’s scary is that he’s not that different from people we know,” ThomasAdams said. “You can see qualities of Richard in everyone.”

The last performance of “Richard III” will be on April 13.

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

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“And whomsoever is elected Spring Fling King and Queen automatically becomes head of the Student Activities Committee.”

DAMIEN “MEAN GIRLS” CHARACTER

Constitutional decisions endanger Democracy Fund

CONSTITUTIONAL DECISIONS

McComish said his experience in his third election turned him against Arizona’s Clean Elections fund.

Arizona’s Clean Elections program would match the difference if a candidate participating in the public finance program was outspent by a candidate who opted out, McComish said.

“I ran in a primary against three people, and the three of them all ran clean [using Arizona’s public campaign finance program] and I did not. I spent money beyond the cap, and all three of them got matched [the same amount],” McComish said.

“So if I spent $5,000 beyond the cap, it was $15,000 being spent against me.”

These “triggers” were meant to protect participating candidates from big spenders who opted out of the program, said Todd Lang, the executive director of the Clean Elections Commission in Arizona. But McComish said that this was unfair.

The McComish v. Bennett decision struck down this provision on the grounds of the First Amendment. But while the Supreme Court case originated in Arizona, the impact was felt in New Haven.

The Democracy Fund originally promised to provide partic-

SAME ELECTION, DIFFERENT

RULES

Choosing to opt into the Democracy Fund does not simply mean receiving public funding. With public money come a number of restrictions about how they can spend their public dollars.

One particular restriction is that no donation the candidate accepts can be higher than $370.

The limit set by the state for traditional candidates, however, is $1,000.

“When DeStefano opted out of the program, he didn’t get public funds, but he also opted out of a voluntary contribution limit of $370. Whatever he might have said about the Democracy Fund, he was clearly interested in raising $1,000 checks from donors,” said Caleb Kleppner, one of the original members of the inaugural Democracy Fund board.

“We should have the same contribution limit for candidates who participate as for those who don’t, and $370 is a much more reasonable limit than $1000.”

While the Fund is helpful for candidates who may not have the ability to raise money without the program, people like the Fund’s administrator, Krayeske, say that the Fund hopes that in the future, all candidates will participate in the program.

Mayoral candidate and State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, however, explained that the difference in caps explains why some, such as DeStefano in 2011, would choose to opt out of the Fund. The $25 matching provision of the Democracy Fund may seem insignificant to candidates compared to $630 extra a candidate can get from each donation if they opt out, he said.

Public finance supporters in Arizona have also discovered, to their displeasure, that raising expenditure ceilings for non-participating candidates can drastically change the candidates’ decision to use public financing.

Arizona State Rep. J.D. Mesnard, who opposes Clean Elections, is the author of a bill that would raise the amount individuals can donate in Arizona legislative campaigns from $488 to $2,500. He argues thatincreasing the amount individuals can contribute will enable people to be transparent instead of donating through PACs. But Lang believes the increase will directly undermine Clean Elections by making participation in the program less attractive.

“I’d be handed money from the public system even if I were a KKK member but qualified for [Clean Elections],” Mesnard said.

“That means other people would have paid into a system that gives a voice to some KKK member.

They don’t even have a choice in the matter.”

Here in New Haven, Krayeske thinks that the overall ceiling for mayoral candidates — $370,000 — is more than high enough, calling it an “almost statistical impossibility” that someone

NEW HAVEN DEMOCRACY FUND: MAYOR 200 contributions between $10 and $370

FLAT GRANT

$19,000 guaranteed after qualification

+

MATCHING FUNDS

200 contributions of $5

FLAT GRANT

FLAT GRANT

$15,253 for primary election

$22,880 for general election

The fund matches the first $25 of each donation twice

EXPENDITURE CEILING = $340,000 will raise more than that using the Fund. But without the Fund, campaigns can grow increasingly expensive. In 2001, DeStefano and Sen. Martin Looney raised over $1 million combined in their race for mayor.

EXPANDING THE DEMOCRACY FUND

ARIZONA CLEAN ELECTIONS: STATE LEGISLATURE TO QUALIFY

unconstitutional.

“I never really liked the idea of public funding as a concept,” McComish said.

With recent years bringing landmark court decisions about election financing like McComish v. Bennett and Citizens United v.

Federal Elections Commission — a 2008 decision that denied the government the ability to restrict independent political expenditures by corporations — the future of public campaign finance is uncertain.

New Haven’s public finance program, the Democracy Fund, is still being tested. It has yet to establish itself as a potent force: The only person who has won using the system is Mayor John DeStefano Jr., who was the incumbent both times he used the Fund in 2007 and 2009. In 2011, DeStefano turned away from the system, claiming the Citizens United decision had “neutered” the Fund.

Across the nation, public finance programs implemented in places like Portland, Oregon, New Jersey and Massachusetts have been repealed. Arizona’s Clean Elections program is now facing the same danger.

With three of four declared mayoral candidates this year pledging to use the Fund, this fall’s election will be the toughest test yet of the program’s capabilities. The jury is still out about the long-term viability and ultimate success of programs like the Democracy Fund and the Clean Elections system from which it drew inspiration.

ipating candidates another grant if they spend 85 percent of their $340,000 cap and non-participating opponents exceeded the cap. Participating candidates in this situation could choose to take a $25,000 grant or exceed the $340,000 expenditure ceiling that limits the spending of candidates using the Fund.

But similar to Arizona’s provision, the Democracy Fund “trigger” was rendered unconstitutional by the Supreme Court’s decision in McComish v Bennett in 2011.

“The Arizona case neuters some aspects of the Democracy Fund. The Supreme Court knocked out [the trigger provision], so when someone else comes in and just spend a lot of money, there’s nothing the candidate can do about it,” said Ken Krayeske, the Fund’s administrator.

Still, the New Haven model is unlike any other municipal public financing system in the country.

Even after the trigger provision was struck down, New Haven’s system remains the only program utilizing both a flat $19,000 grant and a matching program that matches donations candidates receive: the program doubles up to the first $25 of each donation, meaning a $10 donation turns into $30 and $25 becomes $75.

Kim Hynes, senior organizer at Common Cause, a group that promotes good governance, explained that instead of limiting candidates to one single flat grant, New Haven’s system allowed candidates to continue raising money when necessary.

But sometimes matching funds may not prove sufficient. In the 2011 mayoral election, mayoral candidate Jeffrey Kerekes’ raised $53,000 through the Democracy Fund. DeStefano raised $750,000 without it.

Combined with the Citizens United decision, McComish v.

Bennett has altered the decision calculus candidates are using regarding whether to use the Fund. Probate judge Jack Keyes, who has expressed interest in running for mayor, has said he is unsure whether he will participate in the Democracy Fund. He explained he was “bitterly disappointed” by the Citizens United decision and that he is unsure if the Democracy Fund is still effective following the decision.

During a presentation about the Fund’s rules by Krayeske to the Board of Aldermen in March, Ward 22 Alderman Jeanette Morrison expressed disappointment that the Fund can only encourage but not mandate that candidates participate.

“Say [Alderman] Brenda [Foskey-Cyrus] ran and she participated in the Democracy Fund and she got that $19,000, but I have $1 million personally to just spend. She’s not going to have a chance in this race,” Morrison said. “It really does become survival of the fittest.”

TO QUALIFY

DEMOCRACY FUND FROM PAGE 1

Though the Democracy Fund has been in existence for almost seven years, it has yet to propel a non-incumbent candidate to the Elm City’s top seat. The two times the Fund was used successfully were by DeStefano, and even when he opted out of the fund in 2011, DeStefano won regardless.

Still, the 2011 election was inspiring for some, such as Robert Wechsler, the previous administrator of the Fund, because it showed that a relatively new candidate in New Haven could still run a competitive campaign against an 18-year incumbent. The close margin of the election — under 10 percentage points — showed the potential the Democracy Fund could have in New Haven politics.

“DeStefano opting out actually looked good for the program in a way,” Wechsler said. “Here was a candidate [Kerekes] who used the Democracy Fund that nobody thought had a chance, and he got a huge percentage of the vote against someone like [DeSteano].

He did much better than anyone expected because of the program, and without the program, he wouldn’t have.”

Though the Democracy Fund may not have enabled a challenger to win using public financing, it did accomplish its overarching goal, Wechsler said: to

EXPENDITURE CEILING = NO FUNDRAISING AFTER QUALIFYING AND RECEIVING GRANT(S)

help a candidate with support spread his message and ideas during a competitive race against a well-financed candidate in a way he may not have without the program.

The early successes of the Fund have sparked questions about what the Fund will look like years from now. Ward 7 Alderman Doug Hausladen ’04, a vocal supporter of the Fund, wants to expand it beyond the mayoral race to the Board of Aldermen.

In 2011, a slate of union-backed candidates took a number of seats from long-time incumbents, including former Board of Aldermen President Carl Goldfield.

“Just because a ward is small, does not mean it’s above the influence,” Hausladen said. “I think it’s no secret that there is a very large influential group that takes a lot of money per race.

There was over $10,000 in some [aldermanic] races, and that’s the same thing to me as the mayor going and getting $1,000 checks from donors and developers.”

Many argue that a move to support aldermanic races would be too expensive. In March, Krayeske predicted that offering public financing for aldermanic elections would cost $648,000.

Mayoral candidate and Ward 10 Alderman Justin Elicker FES ’10 SOM ’10,said he thinks that while having public financing for all elections would be “ideal,” the program would still be too expensive to be realistic. It is unclear whether New Haven — a city with a particularly tight budget — can expand itself to cover more than the single race it currently funds.

With over a decade of experience with its public financing

system, Arizona may soon see the dismantling of Clean Elections, as a bill that would allow voters to take away funding from the program is currently passing through the state legislature. Down the road, the same fate could befall the Democracy Fund.

Still, with this year’s mayoral election in close contention, many say the possibility of expanding the program will largely depend on how the Fund performs this coming fall, the first instance the system will be utilized in a competitive election.

With three out of four declared candidates pledging to use the Fund and one potential candidate — Hillhouse High School Principal Kermit Carolina — pledging to use the Fund if he runs, this year’s election may become the first in which the norm is clearly to opt into the program.

This year, the question of whether a candidate will use the Democracy Fund has become a standard for those interested in the race for Elm City’s highest office. The Fund has become a campaign issue in and of itself, and this fall’s election will help determine whether using the Fund will become expected — or impractical.

“I think this coming election will be a real test for public financing, especially if someone enters the race and doesn’t participate in [the Democracy Fund],” Elicker said. “If someone doesn’t participate and they end up losing, it really will show that participating in public financing can even the playing field.”

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

Anticipating signing, gun rights advocates pack gun stores GUN BILL FROM PAGE 1 possess a permit in order to buy long rifles and ammunition. A gun offender registry, which will be accessible solely to law enforcement officials, will be established

by October 1. To the disappointment of many gun-control advocates, the final deal also contains a “grandfather” clause that will allow current gun owners to keep newly banned weapons and magazines as long as they are registered.

Before the governor signed the bill into law, Nicole Hockley, who lost her son Dylan during the Sandy Hook shooting, stood to commemorate the moment.

“While I am greatful for the progress being made, I wish more than anything that I could just be home, waiting for Dylan and Jesse to both come home,” Hockley said.

Hockley said that before Sandy Hook, she never felt engaged in politics. She has since met the president and worked with Connecticut’s two senators to advocate for new gun control measures; next week, she will travel to Washington to make her appeal on a national scale.

Hockley is not alone. Thursday’s audience was studded with gun control advocates, many of whom only became advocates after the shooting in December.

But the new law has already gained significant opposition as well. In anticipation of Thursday’s signing, customers packed gun shops across the state

to stock up on weapons that were soon to be banned. The National Shooting Sports Foundation threatened to bring a legal challenge to the law in a statement released after the signing.

While I am grateful for the progress being made, I wish more than anything that I could just be home.

NICOLE HOCKLEY Mother of a Sandy Hook victim Many of the Republicans who voted for the bill have been ensnared by the ire of the gun lobby. Senate Minority Leader John McKinney ’86 and House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero — both architects of the bipartisan compromise — found themselves targets of attack from gun rights groups throughout the dealmaking process. Cafero did not attend the bill signing ceremony, and McKinney arrived near the end, citing personal matters.

As of Thursday, Malloy has signed four bills into law so far this legislative session.

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

KATHRYN CRANDALL/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The new gun law — one of the most restrictive in the country — requires a permit for long rifles and ammunition.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

NEWS

PEOPLE IN THE NEWS ELIZABETH ESTY LAW ’85 Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty is a Democratic representative for Connecticut’s fifth congressional district. She was raised in Minnesota and graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School. This is her first term in Congress.

Jazz fest promotes genre at Yale

BY DANA SCHNEIDER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER This week marks Yale’s first jazz festival.

The three-day long event, beginning Friday afternoon, was organized by the Yale undergraduate Jazz Collective and will feature performances and lectures as part of an ongoing initiative to stimulate the jazz culture at Yale. Last year, undergraduate Jazz Collective President Sam Frampton ’15 revamped the group to provide structure for the scattered jazz offerings on campus.

At the time, administrators were skeptical of the extent of students’ interest in jazz, and the group hopes to bring together students interested in jazz through events like this weekend’s festival, said Julian Reid ’13, vice-president of the undergraduate Jazz Collective.

“We hope the festival will serve as clear empirical evidence that people here are hungry for Jazz” Reid said. “This will serve as the backdrop for a conversation between students and the administration on how to help jazz thrive at Yale.”

Even people who don’t understand jazz can learn from its naturalness, the spontaneity of it.

PAUL HUDAK Master, Saybrook College The festival will feature groups composed of students, professors and prominent figures in the national jazz community. Events will take place both on- and offcampus to encourage members of the local community to attend.

The Vijay Iyer Trio, featuring prominent alumnus and Grammy nominee Vijay Iyer ’92, will give the headline concert on Saturday. Another well-known name at the festival will be Jack Renner, a trumpeter and recording engineer who created the first symphonic digital recording in the United States. The Yale Jazz Ensemble, which is led by music professor Thomas Duffy and serves as the institutional representation of jazz at Yale, will also perform on Sunday.

The festival will open with a talk by two of Yale’s most eminent jazz professors, Brian Kane and Willie Ruff, followed by a performance by Kane with other student musicians including Reid, a guitarist.

“To play with one of my professors, who is an amazing player, adds a whole new conception to the student-teacher dynamic,” Reid said.

Reid hopes the festival will help jumpstart the movement for jazz at Yale.

“I was hesitant to come [to Yale] because of the lack of a jazz culture,” Frampton said. “I hope students will see this festival and grow the jazz scene.”

The Yale Jazz Ensemble, which is led by Duffy and serves as the institutional representation of jazz at Yale, will also perform on Sunday. The Jazz Ensemble, a group of 18 students, performs primarily big band music, Duffy said, so students who are interested in playing other forms of jazz in smaller groups must look elsewhere. Frampton pointed to Paul Hudak, the master of Saybrook College, as an administrator who has been instrumental in facilitating student jazz groups on campus. Hudak said he hopes to give students as many opportunities as possible to make jazz events happen.

“Even people who don’t understand jazz can learn from it’s naturalness, the spontaneity of it,” Hudak said.

Last year, Associate Dean of the Arts Susan Cahan and Oliver Hill ’12, a member of the folk band Plume Giant, created the Saybrook Underbrook Coffeehouse to promote smaller jazz groups with Hudak’s help. Every other Saturday night, the Saybrook Underbrook Coffeehouse hosts jams sessions with a Yale student group and a professional group from New Haven, New York or elsewhere. Each session also features a student creative writer and a visual artist who present their work throughout the course of the evening.

This week, the Coffeehouse Coda, a late-night jam session, will begin after the regular coffeehouse ends. It will feature Matt Dwonszyk and the RGD Trio.

Jazz has also become more popular as an area of university study in the past 20 years. While the Music Department offers jazz courses, taught by ethnomusicologist Michael Veal and music theorist Kane, the courses are not held every year.

“I usually have to send people away,” Kane said of his “Jazz Harmony” course, which will be held again next fall.

To date, there are no jazz performance classes at Yale, and the administration has not yet been involved in expanding the jazz scene. Kane said the Music Department is interested in having more jazz courses based on student demand. Hudak said he is interested in having a college seminar on jazz performance.

A full schedule of events, which are free and open to the public, can be found online.

Contact DANA SCHNEIDER at dana.schneider@yale.edu .

Esty calls for diversity in politics

JI WON LEE/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty LAW ’85 stressed a broader representation of diverse interests in Congress in a Thursday lecture.

BY JIWON LEE CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Newly elected Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty LAW ’85 came to campus Thursday to urge students to make their voices heard in politics.

Esty, who was elected to represent Connecticut’s fifth congressional district last November, addressed roughly 30 students as part of a lecture series called “Women in Politics” at the Law School. Previously having served in the Connecticut House of Representatives, Esty argued in support of the importance of local accountability and a broader representation of diverse interests in Congress.

“Write to your members of the Congress, write to your senators,” Esty said.

“You cannot believe that it actually matters, but it matters.”

Esty advocated for an increased number of citizens getting involved in politics in order to make democracy function. In 2005, Esty decided to run for the Cheshire Town Council when her 15-year-old daughter reminded her of one of her favorite lessons — when a problem arises, “you should fix it yourself.”

People who want to serve in Congress should first have a background in

local politics and experience interacting directly with the people, Esty said.

She added that previous positions in local offices have helped her to put her work into perspective and to hold herself accountable to the local people.

Write to your members of the Congress, write to your senators.

You cannot believe that it actually matters, but it matters.

ELIZABETH ESTY LAW ’85 U.S. representative, Connecticut “If I set the tax rate, it was my property tax and my neighbor’s, and the veteran’s across the street,” she said.

But she said she did not believe a politician should always advocate for the popular position, but should stay true to his or her convictions even if it costs him or her a seat in office. When the Connecticut state legislature was considering abolishing the death penalty in 2010, she chose to vote for the bill despite knowing that she would lose her seat in the legislature for her decision.

Women face a barrier to holding high positions in Congress because the culture of the insitution values seniority, and an increased number of women have been elected to office only recently, Esty said. Women represent only 20 percent of the Senate, she said, calling for a Congress that represents a broader range of people.

Jessica Samuels LAW ’15, chair of Yale Law Women, the organization that hosted the event, said Esty is in a unique position to speak to the campus “as someone who has campaigned in both local and federal races, and as someone who is from the local Connecticut community.”

Celia Rhoads LAW ’14 said she particularly liked when Esty discussed why a democracy needs a diverse set of “voices” in order to function properly.

Lisa Wang LAW ’14 said she found Esty’s argument for remaining engaged with the political system compelling.

“Esty made a powerful argument that although the political system has been broken for decades, it is still worthwhile to run for office,” she said.

Women currently hold 18.1 percent of 535 seats in the 113th U.S. Congress.

Contact JIWON LEE at jiwon.lee@yale.edu .

r e c y c l e recycler e c y c l e recycle

YOUR

YDN

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“Regina’s spine healed, and her therapist taught her to channel all her rage into sports.

It was perfect because the jock girls weren’t afraid of her.” CADY HERON “MEAN GIRLS” CHARACTER

Grading meeting pushed to Nov. GRADING FROM PAGE 1 in Yale College last spring fell within the A-range and noted that grades have been steadily rising over the past 40 years. The report also noted severe discrepancies across departments, with STEM majors having a lower average GPA than students in the humanities and social sciences.

Based on the data, the committee, chaired by economics professor Ray Fair, drafted a set of proposals to minimize the “cliffs” that exaggerate the difference between a B-plus and A-minus and to curb potential grade inflation. The report recommended the college adopt a numerical grading scale and suggested a set of guidelines that would allot 35 percent of grades for the 90 to 100 range, 40 percent for the 80 to 89 range, 20 percent for the 70 to 79 range, 4 to 5 percent for the 60 to 69 range and less than 1 percent at 59.

“If you’re going to change the system at Yale from what we now have with respect to the clustering of A’s and A-minuses, you’re probably going to have to change the units of currency,” Fair said.

Miller said the conversation at the fac-

ulty meeting was lively. Though she said she thought action to address grade-compression trends drew substantive support from faculty, she added that several professors were concerned with the committee’s approach.

Faculty interviewed expressed mixed views about the committee’s report, and many said they were concerned that the proposed grading changes would negatively impact Yale’s academic culture.

English professor Leslie Brisman said numerical grades would be detrimental for departments and courses in which papers are the primary assignments.

“What they are trying to do is quantify things that can’t be quantified,” Brisman said. “The effect is to degrade the enterprise. It turns something which ought to be about ideas into something which is about a checklist of items.”

The faculty meeting attracted student attention as well. On Monday, the Yale College Council circulated an official response to the committee’s proposal, calling for the faculty to reject or postpone proposed changes to the grading system.

Earlier this week Josh Kalla ’14 and Bao-

bao Zhang ’13, a former multimedia editor for the News, circulated a petition to the student body protesting the proposal, which drew approximately 1,300 signatures. Outside the faculty meeting, Scott Stern ’15, who is a columnist for the News, organized a protest that attracted approximately 60 students, holding signs and handing out leaflets to faculty members as they entered.

Miller said she thinks the faculty was impressed by the strength of student opinion, adding that there will be more student input in the committee’s decision going forward. She added that she looks forward to seeing campus discussion on grading continue.

“One of the things that is always so very good about having the sort of truly robust conversation that we had was that people learn from one another over the course of the meeting,” Miller said.

Of the eight Ivy League universities, Princeton is the only one to enforce grade distributions.

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

JENNIFER CHEUNG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Yale College Dean Mary Miller walks past students protesting proposed changes to grading outside Thursday’s faculty meeting.

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Athletes hopeful for policy changes ATHLETICS FROM PAGE 1 broad sweep of renovations to athletic facilities, University President Richard Levin cut the number of recruitment slots from the 230 allowed for Yale by the Ivy League to 180 eight years ago.

Until Salovey attends his first Ivy League meeting, which sets leaguewide regulations for athletic programs, he said he will not feel comfortable planning any changes to recruitment or funding policies. Beckett said the two have not even discussed the topic of recruitment yet, though they will at “an appropriate time.” But Salovey did say he is open to changing policies related to student-athlete life on campus.

“I would say the single most frequently raised issue has been, how do we promote better integration between student-athletes and other students?”

Salovey said, “And how do we combat the reality or the perception that somehow the athletic community is separate?”

Though some students said they already want to hear that Salovey plans to increase recruitment, his decision to postpone any formal planning has precedent. When he stepped into the presidency in 1993, Levin said he did not have views on recruitment, instead focusing on improving athletic facilities and leadership by hiring Beckett.

Salovey pointed to the policy Head Football Coach Tony Reno announced late last semester — that members of the football team are encouraged to live within their residential colleges through at least their junior years — as a positive example of how to improve integration between athletes and nonathletes. He said he wants to support policies like Reno’s, adding that living in the residential colleges often provides a healthier environment for students.

Beckett said Salovey has also met with a number of coaches and members of the Yale Sports Federation, a newly formed group consisting of the chairs of various teams’ Alumni Sports Associations. Salovey has yet to meet with the Captain’s Council or StudentAthlete Action Committee, so students interviewed from both groups said they are not sure of the future president’s plans. Still, the students hope his show of support at games is an indicator of support for the program in the future.

Salovey attended a viewing event in Payne Whitney Gymnasium last weekend for the NCAA hockey hame between Yale and North Dakota.

These groups are all calling for similar things: a more supportive environment on-campus and the resources to keep Yale’s teams competitive within the Ivy League.

There just needs to be more conversation between the president and the athletic community.

ADELE JACKSON-GIBSON ’13 President, Student-Athlete Action Committee SAAC president Adele Jackson-Gibson ’13 said she hopes student-athletes and the President’s Office will communicate more under Salovey. Under Levin, she said student-athletes have often been confused about their place on campus.

“I don’t think [Levin] made efforts to reach out to a large part of the community that’s felt neglected for a long time,” Jackson-Gibson said. “There just needs to be more conversation between the president and the athletic community.”

In February, Andrew Sobotka ’15 compiled the athletics section of the Yale College Council Report to President Salovey, which the council has not yet released to students. Sobotka said students who responded to a YCC survey brought up concerns about campus unity and recruitment as well, but they seemed optimistic about the future of Yale athletics. He added that Salovey’s attendance at games is a small gesture, though he said student-athletes to whom he has spoken appreciate the support.

“I think there are high hopes,” Sobotka said.

The Ivy League sports conference was created in 1954 and includes seven other institutions.

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

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

Elections to occur April 11, 12 YCC FROM PAGE 1

campaign activity.

tion caused the postponement.

According to the YCC email, candidates must submit their candidacy statements on Yale Station before the elections’ deadline, as outlined in the elections packet.

The YCC executive board elections will take place on April 11 and 12, so the new deadline will shorten the campaigning period by two days because candidates cannot officially begin campaigning until all candidates have declared that they are running.

But four YCC members interviewed said they do not think the shorter time frame will affect

I hope that the shorter campaigning period next week encourages students to participate more.

BEN ACKERMAN ’16 Member, Yale College Council YCC member Ben Ackerman ’16 said he hopes students running for a position will heighten their efforts to reach out to stu-

dents in the condensed campaign period.

“I hope that the shorter campaigning period next week encourages students to participate more,” Ackerman said. “The shorter campaigning period might result in more concise and fresher versions of people’s campaigns.”

The six YCC executive board positions up for election are president, vice president, treasurer, secretary, events director and Undergraduate Organizations Committee chair.

Contact KIRSTEN SCHNACKENBERG at kirsten.schnackenberg@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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1 4/5/13

By Ned White

8 Subject of the 2005 book “Conspiracy of Fools” 9 Snapped 10 Driveway improvement 11 Flier’s request 12 Illicit affair 13 Hotel amenities 18 They’re all for it 22 Nail 24 Casserole veggies 25 River near Karachi 27 Buckskin source 29 1970s-’80s selfimprovement course 30 Bar supply 31 “Coney Island” documentarian Burns 33 Bk. before Philippians 34 Gimlet spec 36 Snare 37 Bar supply 38 Ring decision 40 Southeast natives 41 Barnum’s Fiji mermaid, for one

Thursday’s Puzzle Solved

(c)2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

42 Hosp. readout 47 Cross-country need, perhaps 48 Lithe 50 Similar things 51 Act of love, or hostility 52 Veil material 53 Epic with more than 15,000 lines 54 Respond to a charge

4/5/13

55 Salon choices 57 Franco finale?

58 Designer’s concern 59 Schindler of “Schindler’s List” 61 Treads the boards 64 R&B artist Des’__ 65 Designer monogram

8

5 7

6 4 2

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

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

NATION & WORLD N. Korean threats escalate

T

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Movie critic Roger Ebert dies at 70

BY CARYN ROUSSEAU ASSOCIATED PRESS

GAO HAORONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS

North Korea vowed Tuesday to restart a nuclear reactor that can make one bomb’s worth of plutonium a year.

BY SAM KIM AND HYUNG-JIN KIM ASSOCIATED PRESS SEOUL, South Korea — After a series of escalating threats, North Korea has moved a missile with “considerable range” to its east coast, South Korea’s defense minister said Thursday. But he emphasized that the missile was not capable of reaching the United States and that there are no signs that the North is preparing for a full-scale conflict.

North Korea has been railing against U.S.-South Korean military exercises that began in March and are to continue until the end of this month. The allies insist the exercises in South Korea are routine, but the North calls them rehearsals for an invasion and says it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself. The North has also expressed anger over tightened U.N. sanctions for its February nuclear test.

Analysts say the ominous warnings in recent weeks are

probably efforts to provoke softer policies from South Korea, to win diplomatic talks with Washington and solidify the image of young North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Many of the threats come in the middle of the night in Asia — daytime for the U.S. audience.

The report of the movement of the missile came hours after North Korea’s military warned that it has been authorized to attack the U.S. using “smaller, lighter and diversified” nuclear weapons. The reference to smaller weapons could be a claim that North Korea has improved its nuclear technology, or a bluff.

The North is not believed to have mastered the technology needed to miniaturize nuclear bombs enough to mount them on long-range missiles. Nor has it demonstrated that those missiles, if it has them at all, are accurate. It also could be years before the country completes the laborious process of creating

enough weaponized fuel to back up its nuclear threats.

South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin said he did not know the reasons behind the North’s missile movement, and that it “could be for testing or drills.”

He dismissed reports in Japanese media that the missile could be a KN-08, which is believed to be a long-range missile that if operable could hit the United States.

Kim told lawmakers at a parliamentary committee meeting that the missile has “considerable range” but not enough to hit the U.S. mainland.

The range he described could refer to a mobile North Korean missile known as the Musudan, believed to have a range of 3,000 kilometers (1,800 miles). That would make Japan and South Korea potential targets — along with U.S. bases in both countries — but there are doubts about the missile’s accuracy.

CHICAGO — Roger Ebert had the mostwatched thumb in Hollywood.

With a twist of his wrist, the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic could render a decision that influenced a nation of moviegoers and could sometimes make or break a film.

The heavy-set writer in the horn-rimmed glasses teamed up on TV with Gene Siskel to create a format for criticism that proved enormously appealing in its simplicity: uncomplicated reviews that were both intelligent and accessible and didn’t talk down to ordinary movie fans.

Ebert, film critic for the Chicago SunTimes since 1967, died Thursday at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, two days after announcing on his blog that he was undergoing radiation treatment for a recurrence of cancer. He was 70.

“So on this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me.

I’ll see you at the movies.” Ebert wrote Tuesday on his blog.

Despite this influence, Ebert considered himself “beneath everything else a fan.”

“I have seen untold numbers of movies and forgotten most of them, I hope, but I remember those worth remembering, and they are all on the same shelf in my mind,” Ebert wrote in his 2011 memoir titled “Life Itself.”

After cancer surgeries in 2006, Ebert lost portions of his jaw and the ability to speak, eat and drink. But he went back to writing full time and eventually even returned to television. In addition to his work for the Sun-Times, he became a prolific user of social media, connecting with fans on Facebook and Twitter.

Ebert’s thumb — pointing up or down — was his trademark. It was the main logo of the long-running TV shows Ebert cohosted, first with Siskel of the rival Chicago Tribune and — after Siskel’s death in 1999 — with Sun-Times colleague Richard Roeper. A “two thumbs-up” accolade was sure to find its way into the advertising for the movie in question.

The nation’s best-known movie reviewer “wrote with passion through a real knowl-

MATT SAYLES/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The late film critic and author Roger Ebert died two days after announcing he was undergoing radiation treatment for cancer recurrence. edge of film and film history, and in doing so, helped many movies find their audiences,” director Steven Spielberg said. His death is “virtually the end of an era, and now the balcony is closed forever.”

In early 2011, Ebert launched a new show, “Ebert Presents At the Movies.” The show had new hosts and featured Ebert in his own segment, “Roger’s Office.” He used a chin prosthesis and enlisted voice-over guests or his computer to read his reviews.

Fans admired his courage, but Ebert told The Associated Press that bravery had “little to do with it.”

“You play the cards you’re dealt,” Ebert wrote in an email in January 2011. “What’s your choice? I have no pain. I enjoy life, and why should I complain?”

Scott Jordan Harris, a British man who wrote for Ebert’s website, said he was moved that the critic lost his voice but “never let that make him silent.”

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 11

SPORTS

Rutgers basketball fallout continues One day after Rutgers men’s basketball head coach Mike Rice was fired after video emerged of Rice physically assaulting his players and using homophobic slurs at practice, assistant coach Jimmy Martelli announced his resignation from the program. In the video obtained by ESPN, Martelli performs many of the same actions as Rice, including shoving and throwing balls directly at players.

Elis look to Alumnae Day Yale dominant against WCHA W. LACROSSE FROM PAGE 12 Ivy League, going 0-3 in those contests. Yale’s offense ranks fourth in the Ivy League with 11.50 goals per game and 25.80 shots per game.

Captain Devon Rhodes ’13 leads the offense with 36 points; she is ranked fourth in the Ivy League in assists with 13, while her teammate, attacker Jen DeVito ’14, ranks fifth in the league with 12. Freshman midfielder Nicole Daniggelis ’16, recently named co-Ivy League Player of the week, has scored in all eight games she has played this season, racking up 22 goals, which puts her third in the conference in goals per game with 2.75. She has also been prolific on draw controls, securing 46 and breaking the school record of 44 set back in 2004.

“We work really well together as an offense, and a lot of times I’m just in the right place at the right time because of my teammates,” Daniggelis said.

Many other Bulldogs are close to their single season records including Rhodes, who is four goals away from her career high, and Cathryn Avallone ’15 and Kerri Fleishhacker ’15, who are both three goals away from breaking their own records. Devito has already broken her assist record this season and is three goals away from breaking her goal record.

Although it is a special day, we all recognize that we need to stay focused and play hard for 60 minutes.

ERIN MCMULLAN ’14 Goalkeeper, women’s lacrosse “I think we recently crossed a threshold — things are finally began to click,” Rhodes said.

“We are finally playing as a cohesive unit and every person on the offense is producing which is something that we didn’t necessarily have in years past.”

This year, Yale struggled with defense. The Elis rank sixth in the Ivy League in goals

BRIANNE BOWEN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Bulldogs held North Dakota to zero power play goals, forcing the NoDaks to go 0-for-4 back in 2010 and 0-for-3 last Saturday.

MEN’S HOCKEY FROM PAGE 12 JENNIFER CHEUNG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Devon Rhodes ’13 leads the offense with 36 points and is ranked fourth in the Ivy with 13 assists. allowed per game and have usually struggled with turnovers and fouls this season. However, McMullan is having a good year in the net, ranking second in the Ivy League in saves per game with a 7.00 average.

She is on pace to break her save record this season, in addition to having already broken her win record.

“We are proud of our 6-4 record, but are by no means satisfied,” McMullan said. “We play to win every game, and have high hopes for the remainder of the season. We plan to take it one game at a time, starting with Princeton on Saturday.”

Princeton comes to Reese Stadium as the second-highest scoring team in the Ivy League with the third-stingiest defense and third fewest caused turnovers per game. However, the Tigers have committed the most turnovers in the league per game and are dead last in the conference on ground balls,

so the Elis will look to capitalize in these categories. The Tigers are led by last year’s Ivy League rookie of the year, sophomore attacker Erin McMunn, who ranks first in the Ivy League for points per game with 40 on the season. Junior midfielder Sarah Lloyd has been a duel threat for Princeton this season with 10 assists and eight goals thus far.

While Saturday’s home game will not be the last for Yale’s two seniors, Rhodes and defender Adrianna Amendola ’13, it will be the last alumnae game they will experience.

“Though it’s bittersweet that it is the last alumnae game that where I will be playing, it definitely won’t be my last that I attend,” Rhodes said. “I can’t wait to come back next year to support the girls.”

Yale will take on Princeton at 12:00 p.m. at Reese Stadium on Saturday.

Contact FREDERICK FRANK at frederick.frank@yale.edu .

This season, the Bulldogs were held scoreless for the majority of the game, trailing 1–0 for over 52 minutes before an ebullient eight-minute offensive burst lifted the Bulldogs to a 4–1 victory and a trip to the Frozen Four.

Despite the polar opposite scoring patterns against North Dakota, the Bulldogs were able to take down the NoDaks through an explosive attack that knocks opposing defenses back on their heels.

“In 2010 the game was similar — a fast high-skilled game where both teams were going back and forth,” Miller said. “This year we weren’t up on the scoreboard, but during the second and third we showed that we could outplay them.”

Success in the playoffs and against other national powerhouses is not due only to on-ice performance — it is also the result of effective strategy and intelligent coaching. Head coach Keith

Allain ’80 pushes a fast-paced style of play that wears down opponents and opens up doors for scoring opportunities.

I wasn’t on the team back in 2010, but I can attest to the way Coach Allain wants us to play.

JESSE ROOT ’14 Forward, men’s hockey The strategy is dependent on excellent conditioning, which the Elis have demonstrated time and again this season, going undefeated in overtime and coming from behind to win five times.

“I wasn’t on the team back in 2010, but I can attest to the way Coach Allain wants us to play,” NCAA West Regional MVP and forward Jesse Root ’14 said. “He wants to play an up tempo, puck

control game, and I think we did that this past weekend.”

For teams like Minnesota and North Dakota that try to slow the game down and systematically set up their attacks, Yale’s inyour-face pressure is an effective neutralizer.

The Bulldogs were able to hold North Dakota to zero power play goals in both contests, forcing the NoDaks to go 0-for-4 in 2010 and 0-for-3 in 2013.

“I think the real dynamics for us are our work ethic and our compete level,” Allain said. “And you compound that with a team game, which is what we try to play, and I think it makes us a formidable opponent.”

The Bulldogs are 4–0 against WCHA opponents this season, including two back-to-back overtime victories against Denver and Colorado College in November, when the Elis traveled to Denver, Colo.

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

Busy weekend for baseball BASEBALL FROM PAGE 12

Bulldog spring season starts

had just four defensive miscues in the last six games. Lanham attributed the improvement to more attention to fielding in practice.

“I don’t think much has changed about the team’s defense, but as we’ve been getting more repetitions it’s been running more smoothly,” Lanham said. “We just need to make improvements on a day-to-day basis and focus on the process and the Ivy League games will take care of themselves.”

Yale’s offense has also come alive recently, scoring 24 runs during the three-game win streak. Centerfielder Green Campbell has led the way offensively, going seven for 12 at the plate during the streak. His .405 average is good for second place in the Ancient Eight.

First pitch on Saturday is scheduled for 12:00 p.m.

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

GRAHAM HARBOE/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Centerfielder Green Campbell ’15, left, is batting second in the Ivies with a .405 average.

SCHEDULE MARIA ZEPEDA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The Elis boast an experienced squad, including captain Bradley Kushner ’13, Sam Bernstein ’14, William Davenport ’15 and Joe Willis ’16.

MEN’S GOLF FROM PAGE 12 The meet will be the fourth for the Elis in 2013, after finishing 14th at the Tiger Invitational, losing a duel meet to Georgia and winning a duel meet against Bradley. That last meet took place in the middle of March, however, and the Yale Spring Opener represents the start of a long stretch for the Bulldogs, a run in which they will play every weekend until the Ivy League Championships the weekend of April 26.

“The team is in great spirits as they prepare for the coming four consecutive weekends of tournament play,” head coach Colin Sheehan ’97 said in an email to the News. “It is a very

grueling yet exhilarating dash that lasts a mere 22 days from the Spring Opener to the final round of the Ivy Championship.”

Despite finishing sixth at last year’s spring Ivy League Championships and fourth at the fall’s Ivy Matchplay tournament, both Sheehen and Bernstein emphasized that the team’s focus this season is on capturing the Ivy League title.

During the fall season, the Elis certainly showed improvement—at the three events in which they competed both this season and last season, the Elis posted the same or better results this year.

The Elis boast an experienced squad that lost only one

golfer, Jeffrey Hatten ’12, to graduation last year. Led by captain Bradley Kushner ’13, other Elis to keep an eye on this season are Bernstein, William Davenport ’15 and Joe Willis ’16.

“As always, our goal is to contend for victory in every event. If we play well, we feel capable of winning any one of them,” Sheehan said. “We hope to use each week as a building block for the following week as we prepare the Ivy Championship, the most important tournament of the year.”

Action will get underway this Saturday at 8:30 a.m. at the Yale Golf Course.

Contact ALEXANDER EPPLER at alexander.eppler@yale.edu .

FRIDAY APRIL 5 Women’s Tennis

@ Princeton

2 p.m.

Softball

vs. Penn

2 & 4 p.m.

Women’s Lacrosse

vs. Princeton

12 p.m.

Baseball

vs. Columbia

12 & 2:30 p.m.

Men’s Tennis

vs. Princeton

2 p.m.

Men’s Lacrosse

vs. Dartmouth

2:30 p.m.

Women’s Tennis

@ Penn

2 p.m.

Men’s Golf

vs. Yale Spring Opener

8:30 a.m.

Softball

vs. Columbia

12:30 & 2:30 p.m.

Women’s Crew

vs. Cornell

9 a.m.

Women’s Sailing

at President’s Trophy @ Boston University

9:30 a.m.

Baseball

vs. Penn

12 & 2:30 p.m.

Men’s Tennis

vs. Penn

2 p.m.

Women’s Sailing

at President’s Trophy @ Boston University

9:30 a.m.

SATURDAY APRIL 6

SUNDAY APRIL 7

Yale All-Access

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IF YOU MISSED IT SCORES

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MLB Cincinnati 5 L.A. Angels 4

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SPORTS FROZEN FOUR TICKETS QUICKLY DISAPPEARING TICKETS ON SALE TO PUBLIC FRI. The New Haven Register reports that both Yale and Quinnipiac are experiencing brisk sales of their 600 alloted Frozen Four tickets. 100 of Yale’s tickets were available to students at $200 each. If any tickets are unsold, they will go on sale to the public on Friday.

NHL Boston 1 New Jersey 0

KEITH ALLAIN ’80 NOMINATED FOR PENROSE AWARD In the midst of his team’s Frozen Four run, Allain was named on Thursday as a finalist for the Spencer Penrose Award, which is awarded to the national college hockey coach of the year. Quinnipiac’s Rand Pecknold is also among the nominees for the honor.

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“[Allain] wants to play an up tempo, puck control game and I think we did that [last] weekend.”

JESSE ROOT ’14 FORWARD, MEN’S HOCKEY

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

NoDaks have no answer for Elis

Bulldogs look to impress alumnae

MEN’S HOCKEY

BY FREDERICK FRANK CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

opportunity to see old Saturday, 12:00 p.m. t e a m m a t e s and other vs. former players who have put on a Yale jersey,” goalPrinceton keeper Erin McMullan ’14 said. “Although it is a special day, we all recognize that we need to stay focused and play hard for 60 minutes.”

While the Bulldogs (6-4, 0-3 Ivy) do have experience playing ranked teams, as Dartmouth was No. 12 at the time of their matchup on March 2, the team has not been successful in the

Women’s Lacrosse

Coming off two weekend wins against California and Lehigh, the women’s lacrosse team will look to extend its win streak versus No. 18 Princeton on Alumnae Day.

WOMEN’S LACROSSE The Tigers (6-3, 3-0 Ivy) are undefeated in the Ivy League this season and riding their own three-game win streak, most recently beating No. 14 Cornell. This Saturday, Elis from past years will return to Reese Stadium to watch the Bulldogs attempt to keep its streak alive.

“Alumnae Day is a great

SEE W. LACROSSE PAGE 11

BRIANNE BOWEN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Elis remained scoreless throughout their Saturday game against North Dakota, before an ebullient offense lifted the Bulldogs to a 4–1 victory in an eight-minute span.

BY ASHTON WACKYM STAFF REPORTER The North Dakota men’s hockey team has had some success over the years. The NoDaks have won 10 Western Collegiate Hockey Association Tournament championships, 15 WCHA regular season titles and seven NCAA Divisional championships.

But the NoDaks have not beat Yale for a decade.

In 2010, the Elis upset North Dakota 3–2 to advance to the Northeastern regional championship game in the NCAA tournament, but fell to the eventual national champions, Boston College. The Bulldogs ran into the NoDaks a game later this year in the West Regional final and com-

pleted their second monumental upset over the WCHA powerhouse, this time by a score of 4–1.

“We have a good team and so do they, so going into the game we are just playing another good college hockey team, not the ‘giant’ that they are often described as,” captain Andrew Miller ’13 said.

While the Elis took both the

Men’s golf set to host Yale Opener

2010 game and this season’s most recent contest against North Dakota, each game was played very differently.

In 2010, Yale jumped out to a shocking 3–0 lead before allowing two goals early in the third period, but the team held off the NoDaks until the final buzzer sounded.

SEE MEN’S HOCKEY PAGE 11

BY CHARLES CONDRO STAFF REPORTER

BASEBALL

The men’s golf team will host the Yale Spring Opener on Saturday.

BY ALEXANDER EPPLER STAFF REPORTER As spring slowly begins to dawn in New Haven, students have begun making their way outside to enjoy the weather. And after competing in three meets in the middle of March, the men’s golf spring season officially gets underway this weekend. Yet the Elis will not have to travel far to meet their competition.

MEN’S GOLF The Bulldogs will host this Saturday’s Yale Spring Opener, a one-day event, at the Yale Golf Course. The meet will be sure to serve as a solid litmus test

for the team as all of its Ivy League competitors except will Harvard will be in attendance.

“The team this spring looks good and our goal as it is every spring is to win the Ivy League championship at the end of April,” Sam Bernstein ’14 said. “This weekend our goal as a team and individually is just to keep getting better, improve our game and enjoy ourselves out on the golf course.”

The Elis seem to have an advantage this weekend as the competition takes place at the team’s home course. The Bulldogs won the tournament held at the course during the fall season, the Macdonald Cup. SEE MEN’S GOLF PAGE 11

STAT OF THE DAY 5

The women’s lacrosse team will face the Princeton Tigers, who are coming off a three-game win streak.

Baseball takes on Ivy foes Riding their first winning streak of the season, the Bulldogs will look to continue their recent success when they open their Ivy League home slate this weekend.

MARIA ZEPEDA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

JENNIFER CHEUNG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Yale (5–15, 2–2 Ivy) will play two games against Columbia (9–15, 2–2 Ivy) at Yale Field on Saturday before hosting Penn (16–9, 3–1 Ivy) for a doubleheader on Sunday. Pitcher Michael Coleman ’14 said that the Elis will attempt to continue last weekend’s impressive trend against Princeton and Cornell.

“We will look to limit walks and free bases while pitching to contact,” Coleman said. “We have faith in our fielders behind us to make the plays.

We have also been focusing on limiting the running game by varying our rhythm on the mound and being quick to the plate to give our catchers a chance.”

While Columbia is batting a respectable .231 through 24 games this season, Penn’s bats have been on fire. The Quakers are second in the Ivies with a .289 batting average. The two teams are also tied for third in the Ancient Eight with eight home runs apiece.

Both Columbia and Penn create scoring opportunities with high onbase percentages. The two squads rank in the top half of the Ivy League in that category, with Penn (.364) in sec-

Baseball Saturday, 12 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. vs.

Columbia Sunday, 12 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. vs.

Penn

ond and Columbia (.327) in fourth.

Pitcher Chris Lanham ’16 said that the Elis will have to hold these baser u n n e rs c l ose to give the Yale catchers a chance to throw out basestealers.

“Both of our catchers have very strong throwing arms so the pitchers need to keep the runners close and be quick to the plate,” Lan-

ham said. “If we do this, our catchers will shut down the opposing running game.”

Yale’s catchers will be tested by the speed of both the Lions and the Quakers. Penn ranks second behind Cornell (48 steals) in the Ancient Eight with 46 thefts, while Columbia sits just behind them with 31 stolen bases.

Backstops Chris Piwinski ’13 and Robert Baldwin ’15 have combined to gun down 27 percent of would-be basestealers on the season.

Yale’s work behind the plate has not been Yale’s only strength on defense lately. After committing 32 errors through their first 14 contests, Yale has SEE MEN’S LACROSSE PAGE 11

GRAHAM HARBOE/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Elis are riding a three-game winning streak heading into the weekend.

NUMBER OF NATIONALLY RANKED OPPONENTS FACED BY THE MEN’S LACROSSE TEAM IN ITS FIRST EIGHT GAMES. The Bulldogs were challenged by Albany, Fairfield, Penn, Princeton and Cornell.

Despite the tough schedule, the Elis are ranked No. 16 nationally with a 5–3 record.