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 26, 2013 · VOL. CXXXV, NO. 130 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
SUNNY SUNNY
53 59
WORTH IT? STUDYING ON STIMULANTS
JEFFREY BRENZEL
ELM-IVY
CROSS COUNTRY
A look back at the tenure of Yale’s undergraduate admissions dean
LEVIN, DESTEFANO AWARDED FOR TOWN-GOWN WORK
Senior reporter Max de La Bruyère looks into life as a varsity runner
PAGE B3 WEEKEND
PAGE 5 NEWS
PAGE 7 CITY
PAGE 12 SPORTS
Funding an uncertain future
CROSS CAMPUS
GRAPH YALE’S RISING EXPENSES AND RECOVERING ENDOWMENT
And it’s a wrap. As of 5:30
p.m. today, reading week will begin. Prepare to spend the next few days hiding in your room as you cram for finals and finish off those papers. But remember to breathe easy — after all, Macklemore is coming.
3000000000
$2.8 billion
2500000000
TOTAL OPERATING EXPENSES
Somewhere over the rainbow.
2000000000
The night rainbow continues. Since Wednesday evening, a laser light sculpture projecting the full spectrum of the rainbow has been illuminating the Elm City night sky as part of New Haven’s 375th anniversary celebration. “Global Rainbow New Haven” will continue from dusk until 1 a.m. every night through Saturday. Be sure to check it out — it’s not every day you see laser beams originating from East Rock crisscrossing the night sky.
1500000000
BY CYNTHIA HUA STAFF REPORTER
vost Lloyd Suttle said. “We all knew it couldn’t last.” They were right. The “boom” years, as Yale administrators like to call them, came to an abrupt end in fiscal year 2009 when the worldwide financial crisis robbed
The Yale Health Plan will now cover sexreassignment surgeries for students, joining fellow Ivy League schools Harvard, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania in offering insurance for the procedure. The extended insurance — which was granted to faculty and staff in 2011 and to unionized workers in January — covers expenses related to a medically necessary sex-reassignment surgery “subject to preauthorization based on widely accepted standards of care.” The coverage change will go into effect Aug. 1 and is part of multiple updates to the student plan announced by Yale Health in a Thursday email to the Yale College community. Although the surgery is infrequently used, the extended coverage is a significant signal to potential applicants that Yale is committed to providing equal-access health care, said Grace Zimmerly ’13, an advocate for sex-reassignment surgery coverage. “While Yale was not among the first schools to repeal its coverage exclusion, we hope that this represents a commitment to catch up to our peers in terms of offering transgender students an equitable student life and health care experience,” said Gabriel Murchison ’14, a member of the Resource Alliance for Gender Equity. Each sex-reassignment case will be approved on an individual basis, but Yale Health will use commonly accepted guidelines, which generally require a mental health assessment and a period of hormonal therapy and/or living in the desired gender role, University spokesman Tom Con-
SEE BUDGET PAGE 4
SEE YALE HEALTH PAGE 6
$1.4 billion $991 million
1000000000
ANNUAL ENDOWMENT SPENDING
500000000
“Jim Jim” Jailed. On Thursday,
30-year-old New Haven resident James “Jim Jim” Dickerson was found guilty of cocaine distribution and now faces anywhere from 10 years to life in prison, the Hartford Courant reported. Dickerson worked as part of a larger New Haven-Hamden drug ring, and his conviction came after a 2010 investigation headed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration and local police forces.
Ethical investing. In response to human rights concerns in Congolese mines, a group of students from Yale, Dartmouth and Brown released a joint statement Wednesday urging their respective colleges to reconsider investments in companies whose products use minerals from these mines. According to the statement, these Ivy League schools hold a level of influence over their investors and can inflict significant change by investing in labor-conscious companies or pulling their support from major electronics corporations that allegedly exploit Congolese labor. Malloy speaks. On Friday, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy is expected to announce his support for increasing the state’s minimum wage in increments from $8.25, its current level, to $9 by 2015. Though the state Legislature would endorse indexing the state’s minimum wage to inflation, Malloy is not expected to do so. The Connecticut General Assembly last approved a minimum wage in 2008. THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1995 The Yale Corporation announces the addition of two new trustees: Bishop Victoria Matthews DIV ’79 and John Pepper ’60, chief executive of Procter & Gamble. Both Matthews and Pepper are elected as successor trustees, filling the voids left by Robert Lynn DIV ’52 and Vernon Loucks ’57. As a result of these appointments, the Corporation now consists of 19 trustees, 16 of whom went to Yale. Submit tips to Cross Campus
crosscampus@yaledailynews.com
ONLINE y MORE cc.yaledailynews.com
0
Reassignment surgery coverage approved
$415 million 2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
FISCAL YEARS
A
lmost five years after the onset of the 2008 recession, Yale is still facing a projected annual budget deficit of $40 million. Only about $120 million remain in the University’s rainy-day funds. How will administrators balance the budget and plan for an uncertain future? SOPHIE GOULD reports.
In the early- and mid-2000s, Yale’s piggy bank was overflowing.
UPCLOSE Administrators responded with zeal, expanding the size of the faculty and staff, dramatically increas-
ing financial aid, constructing new buildings, renovating historic ones, and cultivating Yale’s image as a global educational leader. “Frankly, it was growing so fast — not only the value of the endowment, but also the income — that we couldn’t expand fast enough, we didn’t have the space,” Deputy Pro-
In last lecture, Kagan stresses liberal arts BY JIWON LEE STAFF REPORTER All students must study literature, philosophy and history, according to retiring Sterling Professor of classics and history Donald Kagan.
At a Thursday afternoon talk, Kagan gave his last lecture at Yale to roughly 350 students and community members gathered in Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall on the importance of a liberal arts education, marking the end of
his 44-year career at the University. Kagan, who received a standing ovation, said students at a liberal arts institution should learn the value of gaining wisdom from the past and of speaking freely about their views.
GOP to field Ward 1 candidate BY DIANA LI AND ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER STAFF REPORTERS When Ward 1 residents go to the polls in November, they will have an opportunity they have lacked for 20 years — the option to vote for a Republican candidate in the aldermanic election. The Yale College Republicans announced Thursday that they will field Paul Chandler ’14 as a Ward 1 Republican candidate — the first since 1993 and the first official candidate in this fall’s race. Chandler, a Westport, Conn., native and a member of the varsity track and field team, said he will bring a new perspective to debates traditionally dominated by Democrats. Meanwhile, the ward has yet to see a Democratic candidate, and current Ward 1 Alderman Sarah Eidelson ’12 has not announced whether she is going to run for re-election.
“I intend to win, and I’m not here to run a campaign that’s going to lose. I’m here because I think I’m best suited for the job,” Chandler said. “If you looked at the last aldermanic election, a lot of it was just Sarah and [Vinay Nayak ’14] agreeing with each other over and over again, and it was just about who ran the best campaign. But I think that with a Republican running, we can now attack the issues more seriously.” Eidelson told the News in an email that “it would be an honor to continue to lead the Board of Aldermen on the issues that are most important to students” but declined in follow-up interviews to indicate whether she is planning on running or not, saying only that she “[looks] forward to making an announcement soon.”
THE RACE BEGINS
Chandler’s decision to enter
the race officially starts the aldermanic campaign season. Both he and his campaign manager, YCR Political Director Ben Mallet ’16, said that they will assemble a full campaign staff before the end of the school year. Eidelson’s reticence to say whether she will run leaves campus Democrats unsure of the party’s aldermanic prospects. Drew Morrison ’14, a Ward 1 committee member, told the News in February that he was considering a run but that if Eidelson were to seek re-election, he would defer to her. Morrison told the News Thursday, however, that he has decided against running. “I think at this point it has become frustrating that [Eidelson] has not said anything,” Morrison said. “She really needs to let people know: If Democrats are all organizing around her, they can do so, SEE ALDERMAN PAGE 6
“Liberation can only come from [returning] to the belief that we may have something to learn from the past,” he said. Kagan is a world-renowned ancient Greek historian, known among undergraduates for his popular lecture course on the
subject. He said understanding and appreciating traditional values is rare today, with a society increasingly ignorant of the past that acts as if “the whole SEE KAGAN PAGE 6
HODY NEMES IS MR. YALE
BRIANNA LOO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
SAYBROOK TAKES CROWN IN REPEAT The overwhelming fan favorite, Hody Nemes ’13 was crowned Mr. Yale on Thursday night. Nemes threw bagels and yarmulkes at the audience, impersonated President George W. Bush (and an ostrich) and exhibited superb dance moves.
PAGE 2
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
OPINION
.COMMENT “People will die. This is certain.” yaledailynews.com/opinion
HISTORY'
Time present and time past
NEWS’
T
VIEW WARNER TO WOODBRIDGE
Moral leadership As the academic year draws to a close, the class of 2013 will share its final moments on this campus with those of University President Richard Levin in Woodbridge Hall. We all owe Levin our sincere thanks. He has built a stronger Yale — the testament of two decades of hard work and intelligent policy. Over the past semester, we have editorialized on the policy questions that Levin will leave behind. These are long-term decisions of how to make our University more effective and more efficient. But we must consider a different type of decision facing President-elect Peter Salovey — a matter of principle, not policy. Before the guard changes, it is essential to evaluate the work and the worth of the University presidency. Being president of Yale is a tremendous opportunity to lead. President Levin, for instance, has dealt with policy issues masterfully. But he has done so outside the spotlight. At the beginning of his tenure, Yale faced more pressing issues than whether its top administrator represented the University in national conversations. But other University presidents have led vocally. University President Kingman Brewster ’41, a former chairman of the News, used his position in Woodbridge Hall to publicly criticize the Vietnam War, while still ensuring freedom of expression on campus for its proponents. Not every president will face the same issues. But regardless of the times in which we live or the challenges we face, the presidency of Yale demands moral leadership. Yale needs a president
'THEANTIYALE' ON 'ON HIV, DON'T REPEAT
who is more than a chief administrator; a president must be a principled and purposeful voice. Yale has values: among them rigorous academic inquiry, an appreciation of diversity, and a belief in free and open discourse both inside and outside the classroom. Our president must address the pressing questions of our time, and actively defend the values of the University when they are challenged. By virtue of his position at of one of the world’s most prominent universities, Salovey must use the spotlight to his advantage. He must influence national political conversations in which the University and its students have a stake. He should be our advocate, using the power of his pen in publications, panels and speeches to engage with the leaders of our nation. And as colleges and universities confront the changing economics, demographics and purposes of higher education, Salovey can lead conversations amongst fellow university presidents. We cannot meaningfully question a leader if he fails to tell us where he stands. We cannot take pride in a University that does not articulate the morals and values that guide it. To take brave stances is to exemplify the same leadership we are taught to take with us as we leave Yale. On each of the issues we have addressed in this series, we have broached questions not merely of Yale policy, but of Yale principles. It is time to hear where Salovey stands. We have many policymakers at Yale, but only one president. President Salovey, we wish you the best of luck.
he process of saying goodbye begins at hello. Witness the handshake: holding hands and letting go, we enact the trajectory of a nascent relationship. Bonds fray, links break, seams unravel. This is called entropy. It’s a law: Things fall apart. This is a valediction forbidding mourning. John Donne wrote one for the love of his life, but since no one loves me, I guess I have to write my own. So this is for me, from me. But it’s also for Yale — because I love you, Yale. There are two parts to loss: the anticipation, and the actual lack. The anticipation is worse — a cold arrow shooting through the heart, leaving a little scar in its wake. Then, there, at the center of all feeling, is the shard — sharp and still. I remember my arrow: a line of Milton’s, from “Paradise Lost,” referenced in a column like this one. Sitting at the Sterling computer cluster freshman year, I thought of graduation and the Fall. I thought of Adam and Eve, postlapsarian postgrads moaning à la the painting by Massacio. “The world was all before them,” Milton told me, but all I could think of were the gates that closed behind, the “natural tears they shed,” and the Archangel Michael posted at Phelps Gate.
That Miltonic Model — solid as a shard of stained Sterling glass — pierces more Yale experithan MICHELLE ences just mine. So TAYLOR many of us look at our Tell it Slant four fleeting years like a doomsday clock. We think of the Expulsion from the Garden, wondering what grievous offense sent the first Yale grad falling from the Ivory Tower. We panic, and we glut ourselves on the Trees of Knowledge and Experience, constantly worrying that each fruit will be our last. I have spent four years trying to say goodbye to Yale, to force each precious moment into the elusive amber of my memory. Like a nervous last kiss, each time I pull away with nothing but the taste of my own worry on my lips. The pearls have kept of their own accord, and my string of keepsakes is long, if incomplete. And yet I panicked — why? We call Yale paradise, and it’s true: I can’t imagine ever loving a place more than this one. Still, there was something I’d forgotten. Far be it from me to justify
the ways of Milton to man, but wasn’t the Fall supposed to be Fortunate? When Adam and Eve stand at the edge of Eden, the world is all before them. But we get so caught up in what they’ve lost that we neglect the grand adventure they’ve been given. Of course it’s scary — I haven’t cleaned my own bathroom since I moved out of Welch. But moving isn’t just a part of life; it’s how we live. That’s the whole ravishing point — that, as T. S. Eliot writes, “to make an end is to make a beginning.” Little good comes from stasis, and no growth. It is perhaps too simple, as consolation, to assert that we carry Yale in our hearts. Still, we have the shard, a lens through which we might refract some beauty, a scar that makes us feel and think a little more keenly. The shard is a gift in its own right — a tool for seeing and shaping the world beyond Eden. We have so much of that world left to discover. And what is Eden if it lasts forever? Loss gives love dimension, and joy is sweetened by pain. Again, Eliot wrote it best: on the brink of war, on the edge of despair, he knew that: We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our
exploring/ Will be to arrive at where we started / And know the place for the first time. We will know Yale only after we’ve left. Of course we’ll miss each other, and this place. We’ll miss our castles, our libraries and our tulips, our conversations and our classes, and skipping the latter for the former. We’ll miss everything that somehow slipped, like buried treasure, into the shifting sands of our memories. And though science tells us that entropy is law, love has made exceptions before. Love, I am sure, will hold this knot together. And maybe we’ll realize, as the gate closes softly behind us, as we are left only with what our hearts and cameras could capture, that Paradise was not Yale, but how we lived in her. Paradise is being together, exploring, wondering, loving. And we can take that with us. For this is not an end, but a beginning. And lest you should worry, dear readers, know that I — and we — shall not cease. MICHELLE TAYLOR is a senior in Davenport College. This is her last column for the News. Contact her at michelle.a.taylor@yale.edu .
Finish lines I
’ve run in circles since I was a kid, but when I was 18, those loops widened. That’s when I ran my first marathon. I wore tiny green shorts, ate chocolate GU energy bars and spent many miles watching the T-shirt of a bald, heavyset man stick closer to his skin. It read, “Challenge is the Point.” The point or not, challenge was present: By the time I crossed the finish line, my skin was rubbed raw, thighs dense, toenails smashed into a deep shade of purple-black. It was pure pain and pure ecstasy. I couldn’t find my family in the crowd, but strangers hugged me, gave me warm pretzels and wrapped me in a tinselly emergency blanket. I signed up for my second marathon the next year. I trained for a week, got pneumonia for a month, and the morning of the race, decided to run anyway — maybe do the 5K, or the half. As soon as I started I knew there was no stopping. How could I? Races are addicting. So I ran by my parents, finish line after finish line, until I plucked two Advils from my mom’s palm, and dashed away, telling them I’d see them after 26.2. I’ve been fluent in marathonspeak since then. I know how many ounces my sneakers weigh. I know that going downstairs, not up them, is what hurts after the
race. I know that, besides the sculpted bodies at the front, we’re all in it together. I still talk to a few of the then-strangDIANA ers who pulled SAVERIN me through long miles, but For the Birds most of the racers I’ve run near through the years are people whose names I either never knew or have since forgotten. They have kept me returning to the start line. I’ve kept racing — relays, halfmarathons, marathons, ultramarathons. Whenever I’ve tried to explain this growing addiction to races, I’ve plagiarized — citing “collective effervescence” or quoting what others have said about testing my mind and seeing who had guts and forgetting that the rest of the world existed for a few hours. Like most things, I figured it followed the kind of reason that Hume calls “a slave to passion,” instead of the kind I can actually reason out. I’ve been thinking about the appeal of these races much more, recently. I stayed up until 3 a.m. the night of the Boston bombing, refreshing news sites with
sad eyes, feeling guilty about how little I could do and how much it affected me. Why, in a world full of so much pain, did I need a tragedy to be near and relatable to engage with it so obsessively? I couldn’t stop thinking about how moments before the flying debris and puffing black smoke blotted out the finish line, the collective effervescence must have been fizzing on Boylston Street as those nearly finished racers imagined their postrace snack. I realized that one of the many, many reasons that the bombing was so particularly real and horrible to me was because it invaded such an idealistic space. At races, thousands of amateur runners dedicate themselves to a very difficult task with little point. The finish line for a marathon is placed according to the distance a Greek runner over 2,000 years ago ran, and died upon finishing. For many other races, we more overtly make up the finish line. Runners brush sweaty bodies against each other, whispering as they exhale that the other can do it. After months of training, often by ourselves, we come together to run side by side, taking over streets and trails and taking care of each other along the way. The juxtaposition of that idealistic space with a sadder one
made me appreciate the magic that all races, and particularly marathons, have, and just how unlikely the spaces they create are. I’m about to watch most of my friends finish this particular rat race (I took a semester off — I’m just faking this senior thing). We’ve been running in circles together for four years, chasing made-up finish lines, and our loops are about to widen. I’m worried about the moment after the finish line. I want everyone to be OK. These racing spaces — full of unlikely idealism and community — reassure me, though. They have shown me that we can create these pockets of exuberant togetherness if we choose to — if we love hard and laugh hard and remember to pat each other’s sweaty backs when we run hard. Long races defy moderation. They tell us to keep running, no matter the weather, no matter the pain. I want to chase these far-off finish lines — walk, run, dance into spaces with radical idealism all life long, paying immoderate attention, giving out immoderate love, dancing with immoderate joy. DIANA SAVERIN is a senior in Berkeley College. Contact her at diana.saverin@yale.edu .
GUEST COLUMNIST EMMA GOLDBERG
Glad years, green lights
YALE DAILY NEWS PUBLISHING CO., INC. 202 York Street, New Haven, CT 06511 (203) 432-2400 Editorial: (203) 432-2418 editor@yaledailynews.com Business: (203) 432-2424 business@yaledailynews.com
EDITOR IN CHIEF Tapley Stephenson
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Liliana Varman
MANAGING EDITORS Gavan Gideon Mason Kroll
SPORTS Eugena Jung John Sullivan
ONLINE EDITOR Caroline Tan OPINION Marissa Medansky Dan Stein NEWS Madeline McMahon Daniel Sisgoreo CITY Nick Defiesta Ben Prawdzik CULTURE Natasha Thondavadi
ARTS & LIVING Akbar Ahmed Jordi Gassó Jack Linshi Caroline McCullough MULTIMEDIA Raleigh Cavero Lillian Fast Danielle Trubow MAGAZINE Daniel Bethencourt
PRODUCTION & DESIGN Celine Cuevas Ryan Healey Allie Krause Michelle Korte Rebecca Levinsky Rebecca Sylvers Clinton Wang PHOTOGRAPHY Jennifer Cheung Sarah Eckinger Jacob Geiger Maria Zepeda Vivienne Jiao Zhang
PUBLISHER Gabriel Botelho DIR. FINANCE Julie Kim DIR. ADV. Sophia Jia PRINT ADV. MANAGER Julie Leong
ONL. BUSINESS. MANAGER Yume Hoshijima ONL. DEV. MANAGER Vincent Hu MARKETING & COMM. MANAGER Brandon Boyer
BUSINESS DEV. Joyce Xi
ILLUSTRATIONS Karen Tian LEAD WEB DEV. Earl Lee Akshay Nathan
COPY Stephanie Heung Emily Klopfer Isaac Park Flannery Sockwell
THIS ISSUE COPY STAFF: Douglas Plume PRODUCTION STAFF: Jennifer Lu, Mohan Yin
EDITORIALS & ADS
The News’ View represents the opinion of the majority of the members of the Yale Daily News Managing Board of 2014. Other content on this page with bylines represents the opinions of those authors and not necessarily those of the Managing Board. Opinions set forth in ads do not necessarily reflect the views of the Managing Board. We reserve the right to refuse any ad for any reason and to delete or change any copy we consider objectionable, false or in poor taste. We do not verify the contents of any ad. The Yale Daily News Publishing Co., Inc. and its officers, employees and agents disclaim any responsibility for all liabilities, injuries or damages arising from any ad. The Yale Daily News Publishing Co. ISSN 0890-2240
NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT
SUBMISSIONS
All letters submitted for publication must include the author’s name, phone number and description of Yale University affiliation. Please limit letters to 250 words and guest columns to 750. The Yale Daily News reserves the right to edit letters and columns before publication. E-mail is the preferred method of submission. Direct all letters, columns, artwork and inquiries to: Marissa Medansky and Dan Stein Opinion Editors Yale Daily News opinion@yaledailynews.com
COPYRIGHT 2013 — VOL. CXXXV, NO. 130
T
wo days after finals end, I plan to drive to the nearest movie theater and watch the new “Great Gatsby” movie. It stars Leo DiCaprio, who was and still remains my top middle school crush. I know Gatsby well (Leo less so). I’ve read his story under the covers at sleepaway camp, through delirious exhaustion in 11th-grade English, just last week while lying on Old Campus. I used to think it was sort of strange that it’s considered a Great American Novel. It’s really a story of hazy, drunken parties, elegantly dressed New Yorkers and a petty romance. After all, Tom and Nick went to Yale. Fast forward 90 years, and his book could be a tale of freshmen stumbling from frat parties to Toad's in search of their longlost Daisy, that “50 Most” girl from calc section. But even beyond the parties and the romance and the privilege, Fitzgerald’s "Gatsby" is a very Yale sort of story. When I think about Gatsby I picture a man, sepia-toned, standing on a dock gazing at Daisy’s green light and remember-
ing a moment when he was 17 and very much in love. He is “borne back ceaselessly into the past.” His memories may seem petty, but to him they’re the most painful thing in the world. You might say he’s a little stuck. Maybe that’s the point. Yalies understand nostalgia. There’s a culture of happiness here — of breezy days and chicken tenders days and the sort of days filled with three-hour meals. We wish that time would move slower. By Thanksgiving break we reminisce about Camp Yale, and by March we complain the year is ending too quickly. Sophomores start slumping and miss their easy freshman years. Seniors coin the term "SWUG" to describe their nostalgia for their “youth”; oh, to be 18 again, instead of an elderly 22. Some afternoons, or days, or weeks we wonder how the time has gone by so quickly. The Harkness bells ring, and we wonder how it’s already 5 in the evening. And so, we talk about going back to yesterday, or reliving last weekend. Spring Fling can’t come yet, not until we relive that one night in January, that one night with the music playing too loudly and the
costumes a bit overdone. But we plan ahead obsessively. Some part of us knows we’re only 19, or 20, or 22. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it?” Fitzgerald wrote. “I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.” Sometimes I watch for a perfect weather day or a chicken tenders day, but I miss it because I’m stuck in Sterling applying to summer internships. Yale happens sometimes while we’re busy making other plans. As the end of the semester nears, my insecurities pile up in heaps on the floor of my suite. Unread readings, unfinished projects, abandoned trips to the gym. Like Gatsby’s green light, my hopes for each year are always just a bit too far away for me to reach. We’ve all got to-do lists on to-do lists here. I end up in conversations about the work I plan on doing and the sleep I plan on getting and end up accomplishing neither. And fortunately on Monday, we’ll all forget our end-of-the-semester insecurities after one too many beers. Spring Fling may be one step below the
East Egg parties of the Roaring Twenties, but we’re getting there. I guess there’s a reason Gatsby’s been reincarnated so many times — picked apart in literature classes, filmed and refilmed into major motion pictures. We’re all seeking Daisies and watching our own green lights combust. Maybe I only have the luxury of saying this because I’m a freshman, but I feel like we’re all one step ahead of Gatsby because we’re young. Gatsby wasted years trying to slow down time and relive his youth — but our youth has barely begun. Not one of us is even the least bit washed up. After graduation, we’ll move to Paris or Nairobi, and we’ll cure diseases and go on safaris and buy funny hats. We can get nostalgic about our college years, but the fact is that they just aren’t the gladdest years of life. The culture of happiness we’ve created is transportable. Bring it as your carry-on. Ditch the green lights, and make 25, or 47, or 64 your gladdest year yet. EMMA GOLDBERG is a freshman in Saybrook College. Contact her at emma.goldberg@yale.edu .
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 3
FRIDAY FORUM
LANGSTON HUGHES “Life is for the living. / Death is for the dead. / Let life be like music. / And death a note unsaid.”
YALE TALKS GUN VIOLENCE G U E S T C O L U M N I S T V I N A Y N A YA K
GUEST COLUMNIST NAT H A N I E L H U N D T
Demand action on gun violence
Reclaiming the joy in the journey
O
L
ne-hundred thirty-four days ago, Adam Lanza walked into an elementary school and slaughtered 20 children with dreams ahead of them, as well as six teachers who dedicated their lives to keeping their students safe. One-hundred thirty-four days ago, our country reached a simple conclusion: We have to do something about gun violence. But 134 days later, we have done nothing. Last week, the United States Senate voted down the ManchinToomey bill, which would have required background checks for all gun sales. The bill even contained a provision that outlawed a national gun registry, which was the main worry of many conservatives. Only one word can describe their inaction: shameful. Sensible people may disagree on the ways to best combat gun violence in America. We may disagree on whether Manchin-Toomey bill would have prevented the tragedy that took place last December. We may even disagree on whether we should have to wait for another Newtown before we talk about gun violence, when every day our cities are ravaged by urban warfare. But we can agree on many things. We can agree that Americans, as a general rule, have the right to bear arms, enshrined in the Second Amendment. And we can agree that there should be some exceptions to that rule. We can agree that terrorists, the mentally ill and violent offenders should not be given firearms. Even by that standard, our current laws are a joke. On the terrorist watch list? No worries, you can buy an AK-47. Rejected because of a mental illness? Try the gun store down the road. Have a history of violence? Check out ArmsList.com. Virtually anyone can buy deadly weapons with ease. In America, It’s harder to buy a beer than a gun. We don’t know why 45 Democrats and Republicans voted against sensible regulation. But we know that they represent just 37 percent of the US population and that they have received nearly $8 million from the gun lobby. We know that they ignored the 90 percent of Americans who support universal background checks. And we know that if we speak as loudly as those who opposed this bill, they will be forced to listen. Congress didn’t do its job. Now, it’s time for American citizens to do
ours. Some already have. Gabby Giffords — the former Democratic representative from Arizona, and a proud gun owner who was shot in the head almost two and a half years ago — launched a series of ads targeting the politicians who voted against this bill. One of her targets, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., has dropped 15 percent in the polls since she voted against universal background checks
PREVENT ANOTHER NEWTOWN Like Gabby Giffords, we can fight back. We can show our elected officials that one cowardly act won’t silence us. We can pick up our phones and call our senators, then speak our mind at the ballot box in November. Or we can also do what we normally do: nothing. We can refuse to take action as men and women with guns kill in towns and cities every day. Most of us have done nothing. Sure, we talk about gun control in classes and dining halls. Sure, we harangue the Senate and the death of Manchin-Toomey. But we are otherwise silent. We don’t agitate or protest. And so we, with our political apathy, are as much to blame as our senators. If we continue to do nothing, we must ask ourselves: How many times are we going to find ourselves recovering from tragedies? How many times must we comfort grieving mothers and fathers, and bury dozens of caskets — as happens every day in America? How many times will we let people die before we say enough is enough? It’s about time we did more than just talk amongst ourselves. It’s about time we do something. If you want to tell our senators now is the time for courage, join the parents of the 20 Newtown children in sending a message. What we tell our elected officials now will not erase what happened at Sandy Hook. Or bring back the lives lost that day. Or ease Newtown’s ongoing pain. But it will send a message. And in a democracy, messages are important. VINAY NAYAK is a junior in Davenport College. He works for Sandy Hook Promise, an organization that advocates gun responsibility. Contact him at vinay.nayak@yale.edu .
ast week, the Senate voted down a proposed measure to thwart the spread of gun violence by expanding background checks. After a spate of horrific incidents from Tucson to Newtown, it seemed as though the country was finally on the cusp of preventing the senseless tragedies that happen every month in cities like New Haven — or, according to the FBI, once every 25 seconds. Polls showed overwhelming public support for gun-control measures like enhanced background checks, and Colorado and Connecticut demonstrated leadership by taking action at the state level. But the final vote tallies were disappointing. Since we live in a democracy, we can always elect new representatives who will vote our values next time. But we cannot wait for the next election. The next victim does not have this luxury. Furthermore, we know there are things we can do to prevent gun violence even without new legislation. In Chicago, the nonprofit Cure Violence treats the gun epidemic as a disease. To combat violence, they use methods and strategies associated with disease control: identifying individuals involved in transmission, and changing social norms in communities where violence routinely occurs. According to the National Institute of Justice, these methods have effectively reduced violence by as much as 50 percent.
BE TRUE TO YOUR EXPERIENCE This quarter, as a capstone social impact project at the Yale School of Management, I’ve worked with a team to design a fundraising drive on behalf of Cure Violence. Picking this cause was a no-brainer. I had watched the news post-Newtown, and I’ve spent six years in New Haven, where gun violence is all too common. Helping fund this nonprofit seemed like a tangible way to make a difference. But this cause did not become truly personal until one of my teammates shared her own motivation. “In my first few weeks here,” Tiffany had explained, “there was
something I was carrying around that I didn’t tell anyone. I was scared how I’d be viewed.” My other teammates and I looked at each other, bracing ourselves for the worst. “I was woken up by a phone call from my mom one Saturday morning last September. My cousin, Vincent,” she paused. “We called him ‘Mike Mike.’ He was murdered.” Long-overdue tears flooded her face. She placed her fogged glasses on a table, adding that she has felt consumed by guilt since that day. “I didn’t want my classmates to see me, an African-American woman from inner-city Chicago, and have the first thing they learn be the fact that my cousin was murdered. That would have been so cliché.” Her words stung. I felt terrible for Tiffany, but I also felt terrible for our community. If Yalies must hide their struggle, then our community is not nearly as open as it strives to be. In my pre-business school life, I had a boss who had a favorite saying: “The joy is in the journey.” When times were tough, he’d remind junior employees to keep their heads up, appreciate friends and co-workers, and relish the struggle. By comparison, it is often said that we are in a bubble while we are in the midst of our Yale journeys. The ills of life beyond Phelps Gate occasionally pierce this façade — often in the form of email notifications from Yale Police Chief Ronnell Higgins. But Tiffany reminded me of my farsightedness. Gun violence interrupts the lives of so many, and tragedy touches us all. What matters is how we talk about it. This week, I’ve seen the way sharing Tiffany’s story and fundraising for this cause elevates our collective consciousness. This practice, after all, resembles Cure Violence’s own model of direct, person-to-person, conflict resolution-style intervention. I believe that Cure Violence deserves your donation. But I also believe Yale needs your voice. We must push each other to share our stories. When we do so, we help each other find joy and meaning in our collective journeys, even if they are far from perfect. NATHANIEL HUNDT is a 2007 graduate of Davenport College and a student at the School of Management. Contact him at nathaniel.hundt@yale.edu .
GUE ST COLUMNIST IDA TSUTSUMI ACUNA
The difference one gun makes M
y family keeps a collection of anecdotes that always reappear in our conversations. There’s the one about the time Dad fell through the screen door during a family reunion, or the time Mom almost set the house on fire while cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Then there’s that one about the time that Mom and Dad were held at gunpoint during a date. Back in 1997, when Mexico was not as safe as it is today, my parents were getting out of their car on their way to dinner. A black van with its headlights off pulled up and two men with guns jumped out. A third remained in the driver’s seat. One of the men held a gun to my dad’s head and the other pointed a gun straight at my mom. My dad pleaded with them not to hurt her. He pulled out some cash from his pocket and offered it to the men in exchange for their safety. But they didn’t want the cash; they wanted the car. They proceeded to take both before making their escape. Within minutes the men had fled — the guns were gone — and all that remained was the lingering terror that inundated the dark and empty street. Today, Mexico has strict gun laws. Citizens are prohibited from openly carrying firearms or concealed weap-
ons in public. However, Mexico also had 12,394 drug-related killings in the year 2012 alone. In the face of rampant violence, Mexico has taken a proactive step to address violent crime. Recently, a citywide cash-for-guns program was initiated at the Basilica of St. Mary of Guadalupe. According to a recent New York Times article, citizens have been encouraged by Mexico City officials to trade in their weapons with complete anonymity in exchange for cash. Since the start of the buyback program in December, 3,500 guns have been brought in. As Mexico fights the war on drugs, we are struggling here in our own fight against the unnecessary massacres taking place at home. Our fight will be a hard one considering the Senate’s recent failure to pass legislation expanding background checks. But legislative measures are not the only way to win this battle. What about expanding the implementation of buyback programs in the US? It’s an idea that already exists on both sides of the border. Here’s why it works: A chance to make money with a relatively small effort incentivizes citizens to participate. It also provides citizens with a sense of control over a situation that
is largely beyond their capacity to fix. Critics argue that programs like these aren’t far-reaching enough to significantly control the estimated 310 million guns in the United States. However, it isn’t expected for gun buyback programs to single-handedly solve the problem of gun violence. What they can do is create awareness of an issue that is plaguing our country.
CONSIDER GUN BUYBACK PROGRAMS AS A SOLUTION Those participating in gun buyback programs are most likely citizens that pose little threat, maybe citizens who no longer find any use for these weapons. Some of the guns that are exchanged are old and no longer work. But some of these guns may also have had the potential to fall into the wrong hands. There are no safeguards to ensure that the rightful owner maintains possession of a gun. For every gun that is traded in there is one less chance that a child dies of an accidental death, that a suicide is
facilitated or that a criminal breaking into someone’s home gets their hands on a weapon. How many times have you been told that every vote makes a difference? Or every dollar makes a difference? It’s easy to roll your eyes, run through the statistics and come to the conclusion that your vote will never be the one to sway the results of an election, or that your dollar will never be the one responsible for saving someone’s life. But we continue to vote and we continue to donate because there is the hope, the slight chance, that if enough of us do it, we will make a difference. We can bring about necessary change, one buyback at a time. Every gun makes a difference. In my family’s collection of anecdotes, we have the story of the time that Mom and Dad were held at gunpoint and lived. But stories that involve guns rarely have happy endings. This country must continue its fight against violence, because no American family should have to hold on to the pain and the tragedy of an anecdote about a shooting. IDA TSUTSUMI ACUNA is a sophomore in Saybrook College. Contact her at ida.tsutsumiacuna@yale.edu .
GUEST COLUMNIST DREW MORRISON
Elicker for the Elm City I
was born in New Haven. Having moved to D.C. at the age of 3, I was happy to return to my birthplace for college. Since coming back, I have dedicated myself to the Elm City, working with community members and Yale students to make it better. I walked every street in Dixwell, mapping housing, lighting and crime issues. Every month, I canvass homes facing foreclosure across the city to direct them to free resources available through the ROOF Project. Those who have joined me have subjected themselves unwillingly to several hours of New Haven history and politics. From my work in the community, it has become clear to me that Justin Elicker FES ’10 SOM ’10 is the best candidate for mayor of New Haven. He represents a new type of leader for the city, and is the only candidate who has focused on the issues that matter most. He supports sensible development to help grow our tax base, will implement innovative approaches to our biggest challenges, and create a more democratic, open and transparent city government. New Haven’s tax rate is the second highest in the state, which keeps out small businesses and middle-class homeowners. Justin understands, however, that we cannot just cut programs that are crucial to residents of this city to lower our taxes. Instead, Justin wants to grow our tax base by promoting mixed-use and transit-oriented development both in downtown and along the major neighborhood corridors. He wants to make it easier and simpler for small businesses to start up in the city through a simpler zoning code and a better sign and awning ordinance. On some of the biggest issues this city faces, Justin offers new and innovative solutions. He’ll support early childhood education for every child in New Haven, as well as promote character education to instill resilience and perseverance. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter endorsed such programs in his speech on campus earlier this week. Justin supports tackling crime from every angle. The New Haven Police Department uses data to better police the so-called hotspots where crime accumulates. Justin wants every city department to tackle that hotspot from their own vantage point. The Livable City Initiative can make sure landlords comply with housing code, and the Economic Development Office can develop an empty house taken over by drug dealers. By addressing more than just instances of crime themselves, we can build a safer and healthier city. The postmortems on John DeStefano Jr.’s administration all came to roughly the same conclusion: The last 20 years were a time of progressive change bounded by a series of corruption scandals. Justin’s rejection of cronyism is a breath of fresh air and sets him apart from his competitors. Justin believes in participatory budgeting, which gives neighborhoods more control over local capital budget than City Hall. In his campaign, he has embraced public financing through the Democracy Fund, which promotes transparency and limits the size of donations. Many of his competitors have not only failed to take up the promise of clean elections, they have surrounded themselves with members of the old guard of pay-to-play politics. Sal Brancati, kicked out of City Hall for impropriety, is advising Matthew Nemerson’s campaign. Henry Fernandez’s LAW ’94 recent campaign launch was a “who’s who” of city contractors and members of the DeStefano machine. Join me, a native of the Elm City, in supporting Justin Elicker for mayor. Residents of Justin’s ward are so impressed by his commitment to constituent service, they joke that if your light bulb goes out, just call Justin and he will fix it. From a fiscal crisis to education to corruption, Justin is ready to answer the city’s call and work to fix those problems, too. DREW MORRISON is a junior in Branford College. He is the leader of Yale for Elicker. Contact him at drew.morrison@yale.edu .
PAGE 4
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
FROM THE FRONT
“It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.” GEORGE W. BUSH 43RD PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Searching for a sustainable budget model BUDGET FROM PAGE 1 the then-$22.9-billion endowment of nearly a quarter of its value. Suddenly, the University lacked the funds to cover all its newly acquired costs each year. Facing a $350 million budget deficit immediately after the recession, the University laid off more than 250 staff, stalled capital projects, froze faculty hiring, and imposed across-the-board budget cuts on departments and programs. Everyone crossed their fingers, hoping the economy would come roaring back to life. But if administrators expected revenue sources to bounce back quickly, they were sorely mistaken. Almost five years after the start of the recession, experts said, the financial climate for higher education has not recovered: More and more students require financial aid, endowment investment returns are still down, government funding is declining and tuition and fundraising increases are limited by the weak economy. The spending problem facing Yale today is the opposite of what it was before the crash: Unless Provost Benjamin Polak manages to eliminate a projected $40 million annual budget deficit, Yale’s reserve funds will eventually run dry. “The money coming in doesn’t cover the expenses going out,” Polak said. “It came from the collapse of the endowment and the fact we haven’t adjusted fully yet.” University President Richard Levin said he is confident the University will weather the storm, but Polak said changes will be necessary to make that possible — changes that will have negative consequences for Yale. He added that he is not yet sure what those will be. But since part of Yale’s mission is to provide equal or better educational and research opportunities for generations to come, the University has little room to make cuts and must consider long-term finances with every administrative decision. Sooner rather than later, the University must find a financial model that will support its mission and survive the times.
DEPLETED RESERVES
When years of high endowment returns screeched to a halt and the University lost a shocking $6.5 billion with the onset of the recession, the Yale community did not have to suffer the full effects of the crisis. Administrators were able to draw from reserve funds, which are pools of money that the University built up over time as an emergency resource in case of future budget shortfalls. “We managed for the most part to insulate the core part of Yale College from [the recession],” Polak said. “I think most undergraduates would say their education was completely unscathed.” Administrators said the use of reserve funds was only intended to be a temporary solution, but when revenue did not rebound fully, the University continued to tap its emergency money to close budget deficits. Every year since the recession, the University has turned to its reserves to balance the budget. Four years later, the University’s pool of rainy-day funding is coming closer and closer to total depletion. Covering the entirety of next year’s anticipated $40 million budget deficit would consume a third of remaining reserve funds, Polak said. Experts said a long-term solution to Yale’s budget woes would involve either increasing Yale’s revenue, decreasing Yale’s costs or both. But whittling down expenses is no easy task — especially for a University that has already worked to cut costs for four years now. “If there was fat to trim, I think
we largely trimmed it,” said President-elect Peter Salovey, who served as provost from October 2008 until this January. If Yale cannot find a permanent solution to bringing its operating expenses in line with its revenue, the reserve funds will soon be too diminished to save the day. Without a sustainable budget, Yale will not be able to offer the same college experience for future generations of students. “We know we have this hole, and we know the hole is getting worse and not getting better,” said Polak. “Reserve funds can be used, but that’s not fixing the hole, that’s plugging it.” To fix the problem, Yale will have to examine both its costs and its revenue. But external economic pressures will limit the number of viable strategies for reforming the University’s financial model.
EXPENSE AT EVERY TURN
On April 18, students walking into the dining hall for lunch saw a Yale Dining staple: chicken tenders. Like many of Yale’s expenses, the price of this beloved dish is on the rise, and the University must pay more for the chicken, flour, bread crumbs, oil and other food products than it had to last year. Polak cited increases in food prices as an example of the kind of rising cost at Yale that “there’s nothing we can do about.” These costs make a sustainable financial model difficult to formulate. Having purchased its food, Yale must pay for workers to prepare it. Hourly wages, too, become more expensive with every passing year. Under Yale’s current labor union contracts, which will expire in 2016, salaries for technical, clerical and dining hall employees must increase by 3 percent each year. Excluding benefits, nonfaculty salaries cost Yale $689 million in fiscal year 2012, 25 percent of total operating expenses that year. And the students who eat at dining halls daily also run up Yale’s balance sheet. Last year, approximately 57 percent of undergraduates received some form of financial aid, but even the 43 percent who paid the full tuition rate of $52,700 only covered a fraction of the amount that Yale actually spends on each student’s education. Since Yale not only admits undergraduates regardless of their ability to pay the sticker price, but also commits to meeting every admitted student’s full financial need, Yale College’s financial aid costs have quadrupled over the past decade, from about $30 million in 2002 to $120 million in 2012. The University reformed its financial aid policies in early 2008, eliminating the parental contributions of students whose families earn below $60,000 annually and substantially reducing the contributions for other income brackets. Student aid and services for all University students now account for 13 percent of Yale’s total operating expenses. Experts said eliminating needblind financial aid for undergraduates could solve many of Yale’s budget woes, but Yale administrators said doing so would contradict the mission of the University. Slashing financial aid, they said, is not on the table. “We institutionally have made the commitment to the undergraduates in Yale College for full need-based aid,” Suttle said. “We make the cuts elsewhere.” Once outside the confines of the dining hall, students head to labs, studios, lecture halls and seminar classrooms. There, they are taught by world-renowned professors — professors who expect their salaries to increase year after year. Combined, faculty and staff salaries and benefits accounted for 60 percent of all operating expenses,
BY THE NUMBERS YALE’S FINANCES $6.5b $19.3b 4.7% $350m $40m $120m
Amount the endowment lost during 2008–’09 Value of the endowment as of June 30, 2012 The endowment’s return for fiscal year 2012 Original budget gap Yale faced after 2008–’09 Deficit remaining for the 2013–’14 year
Approximate value of remaining University reserve funds
or $1.69 billion, in fiscal year 2012 — more than double the $834 million they cost the University a decade prior. “One of the problems at Yale is that you have a lot of famous faculty,” said Lloyd Armstrong, a professor and former provost at the University of Southern California whose work focuses on financing and improving higher education. “Famous faculty expect that they’re going to make more money next year in real terms than they made this year, otherwise they may go to Harvard or Oxford or somewhere else.” University budgets are made up of a complicated mix of large expenses, Armstrong said, adding that cutting costs is far from straightforward and always controversial. Whatever cuts Yale makes will have consequences, Polak said, because the “painless” cuts have already been made.
THE STRAIN ON REVENUE
To meet rising costs, Yale’s financial model assumes that revenue will grow each year. But many of the University’s traditional sources of revenue — endowment income, tuition, government funding and alumni gifts — cannot keep up with the rising costs of all components of the Yale experience. Yale’s endowment posted a return of 4.7 percent last year, which was a far cry from the roughly 20 percent returns that it enjoyed during the mid-2000s. Since the amount the University planned to spend last year was greater than the endowment’s investment income, the total value of the endowment declined from $19.4 billion to $19.3 billion last year despite the positive investment return. “We can’t just live in hope that the endowment is going to boom up again,” Polak said. “I think it will do better over the next few years — I’m kind of bullish on the American economy. But we shouldn’t be counting on that.” Levin said the primary issue is adjusting expectations to meet the “new normal.” The growth rate of Yale’s revenue will be moderate, he said, but no longer “explosive.” Yale Chief Investment Officer David Swensen, who leads the team that manages the University’s endowment, echoed similar sentiments. He told the News last week that he expects Yale’s investments to see relatively good returns in the next few years, but added that he has “abnormally high concern” about the level of risk in the financial world these days. “There are lots of stresses and imbalances in the global economy that create an unusual level of uncertainty,” he said.
If there was fat to trim, I think we largely trimmed it. PETER SALOVEY President-elect, Yale University Meanwhile, fundraising efforts have thus far failed to close the budget gap. Polak said he had hoped Levin would be able to raise enough donations from alumni to reduce the annual budget deficit significantly. Known as “spend-down” gifts, these donations are not specifically designated for the endowment or for capital projects and can be used for deficit relief. “Rick [Levin] has been raising that kind of gift and has raised a lot,” Polak said. “But not the kind of numbers we’d need to fill the hole, and it’s a hard thing to raise money for.” Other sources of revenue are not looking promising either. While tuition increases are limited by political pressure, stagnating American family incomes and increasing demand for financial aid, the federal government is also cutting back on funding for higher education. “The sequestration situation and more general government situation is putting pressure on the budgets of the agencies that are the main sources for research funds, in particular the [National Institutes of Health],” Salovey said. “Any reduction in grant and contract income is going to primarily hit [researchers], but it also hits the University as a whole.” Federal grant and contract income accounts for about 20 percent of Yale’s operating revenue, and reductions in federal research funding will require Yale to find the money elsewhere or make cuts to
GRAPH BUDGET DEFICIT PROJECTIONS $350 MILLION
$150 MILLION
2008-’09
2009-’10
existing programs. Administrators and higher education economists alike feel Yale and other universities should not have to shoulder such a burden. “[The American government is] worried about long-run deficits, and we should be, because they have a negative effect on the long-run growth rate,” said Catharine Bond Hill, a higher education economist and president of Vassar College. “But it is crazy to cut back on education to do that because we also think education is really important to long-run growth.” Sustainable long-term financial strategy for the University depends, at least in part, on the country’s long-term fiscal policies.
ITCHING TO GROW
At the corner of Prospect and Sachem streets, a plot of land, bulldozed in preparation for the construction of Yale’s two new residential colleges, now lies barren and abandoned — even though the colleges were initially scheduled to open this coming fall. To save money, the University put many construction projects on hold during the recession, including the new colleges that had just been approved by the Yale Corporation the summer before the 2008 downturn. Other projects stalled indefinitely included a new biology building, which Deputy Provost for Science and Technology Steven Girvin said is even more “sorely needed” now than when it was promised to faculty over a decade ago. Sidney Altman, a biology and chemistry professor, said he considers Yale’s refusal to borrow money to finance construction of the biology building a “repeated failure on the part of the administration.” But Polak said many capital projects cannot go ahead yet because Yale does not want to borrow more money until it can pay back its existing debt and increase the size of the endowment. The debt-to-endowment ratio, Polak said, must be reduced because it has grown to “well above our target” in the years since the crisis. Though the University’s debtto-endowment ratio ranged from about 8 percent to 14 percent from 2002 to 2008, the ratio has exceeded 20 percent since fiscal year 2009. A low debt-to-endowment ratio is critical to maintaining a Aaa credit rating, which Polak said Yale wants to keep so it can borrow money at low interest rates and so the University can have access to liquidity, or readily available funds, if there is another crisis. Despite the rationale behind stalling capital projects, some construction work cannot wait much longer. The machinery that closely regulates the temperature, humidity and air circulation in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, for example, is almost 50 years old — and in dire need of renovation. If the University does not approve the project, which will cost between $50 million and $70 million, the library’s collections of medieval manuscripts, personal correspondences and other priceless materials will gradually deteriorate, said E.C. Schroeder, director of the Beinecke. Though they have yet to review the Beinecke project for final approval, members of the Yale Corporation approved $2.4 million in planned funding for the library’s renovation at its April meeting. Still, some projects are finally coming close to being realized, such as the $20 million renova-
$68 MILLION
$67 MILLION
2010-’11
2011-’12
$40 MILLION
2012-’13
G L O S SA RY BUDGET DEFICIT
The amount by which a university’s annual operating expenses exceed its projected operating revenue. REVENUE
Money that an institution receives during a specific period. Yale receives revenue from the endowment, government grants and contracts, gifts, tuition and other sources. ENDOWMENT
An investment fund set up by an institution. Yale plans to spend about 5.25 percent of its endowment each year and assumes that the endowment will make a return above 7 percent each year. ENDOWMENT RETURN
The percent gain or loss of the endowment’s investments in a given year. RESERVE FUNDS
Leftover pools of unspent money around the University that built up in years when Yale’s revenue exceeded its operating expenses.
tion of the exterior of Payne Whitney Gymnasium, which administrators said has become a “safety issue” because the stonework is in danger of falling and injuring passers-by. The Payne Whitney project was approved in April. Meanwhile, in the realm of academic resources, Polak said many departments have “pentup demand” to grow their faculties. Currently, most departments are able to hire new professors in order to fill vacated positions but cannot add new positions. Though four searches for new professors are underway this year in the Electrical Engineering Department, department chair Jung Han told the News last fall that his faculty remains “below critical mass.” Other departments are hoping to add new programs, but there is no room in the budget to allow them to do so. “In order for the teaching of and study of East Asia as a culture to be complete, we should at the very least add two ladder faculty positions … that would focus on Korea,” Edward Kamens, chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, told the News in February. “We currently have none.” With so many sides of the University in dire need of growth and a budget in need of cutting, administrators need to find a solution.
FINDING THE DOUGH
The solution to Yale’s financial woes may lie in a mix of additional fundraising efforts and difficult internal reforms, administrators said. Levin said securing more gifts will be important in the future because he thinks spending money from the endowment will fund existing University operations but will not finance new projects. If Yale wants to grow, administrators will have to raise the extra money to do so through gifts, Levin said. He added that this new reality is not so different from the one he faced during his first eight years as president, before the endowment really took off, when Levin said Yale had to rely on donations to meet its expenses more than in the “boom years.” Throughout his time at Yale, Levin was a successful fundraiser. Between 2006 and 2011, he spearheaded the Yale Tomorrow campaign, which was the most successful fundraising effort in Yale’s
history. Despite coinciding with the recession, the campaign raised almost $3.9 billion. Salovey said the University is also on the lookout for new sources of revenues, but he added that the annual budget deficit “is not going to be solved by selling a few more T-shirts with bulldogs on them.” Though the University will cover the remainder of next year’s budget deficit with reserve funds, Salovey said difficult decisions lie ahead. “If we can’t find other sources of revenues, then we’ll have to make expense cuts, and that’s not easy because it comes on the heels of several years in which cuts have been made,” he said. “We may have to particularly focus on units where fewer cuts were made during the recession.” Polak said he hopes the 14-person Academic Review Committee, which has been meeting since September to discuss how faculty positions are allocated between departments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, will be able to help the University distribute resources more effectively in the next few years. To prevent costs from spiraling out of control, Polak said new initiatives must continue to move more slowly than they ideally would, and departments, already shrunken from the recession, will not be able to hire as many new or replacement professors as they would like. Major capital projects like the new residential colleges must wait for almost full funding from alumni gifts before they can begin, he said. Still, though Polak said he thinks Yale will find ways to resolve its annual budget deficit within the next three years, experts and administrators said the real hope is that the economy will improve and take some of the pressure off Yale’s budget. “You can be too conservative or not conservative enough [with spending],” said Hill, the Vassar president. “It’s not good for your mission to do either of those things. … What really matters is the state of the U.S. economy. If real incomes start to pick up, then a lot of the doom and gloom about higher education is not wellfounded.” Contact SOPHIE GOULD at sophie.gould@yale.edu .
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 5
NEWS
“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.” ROBERT FROST AMERICAN POET
CORRECTIONS THURSDAY, APRIL 25
The article “YEI offers summer Tech Bootcamp” mistakenly included a photo of the Yale Entrepreneurial Society rather than the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute and misidentified YEI as the Yale Entrepreneurship Institute. THURSDAY, APRIL 25
The article “Cross country hopes for future” misspelled the name of Isa Qasim ’15 and mistakenly suggested he placed fifth in the Ivy League at the Heptagonal Championships when in fact he placed fifth for Yale.
Classes on Science Hill renovated BY DAN WEINER STAFF REPORTER Students who trek up to Science Hill in the fall will be greeted by 14 newly renovated classrooms. The summer renovations are the second phase of a two-year, $13 million initiative to modernize lecture halls and small classrooms across several Science Hill buildings, said Associate Provost for Science and Technology Timothy O’Connor. The upcoming renovations will mirror those done last summer to classrooms in Sloane Physics Laboratory, which students and faculty said greatly improved both the teaching and learning experience. “A lot of students experience those lecture halls, and they were by and large in pretty bad shape,” O’Connor said. “The quality of the space did not reflect the quality of the science and the faculty and the students. [Renovation] was an absolute necessity, and it was not difficult to identify those as an institutional priority.” The most noticeable changes will occur in three Science Hill lecture halls, O’Connor said. Two in Sterling Chemistry Laboratory — SCL 110 and SCL 160 — and one in Osborn Memorial Laboratory — OML 202 — will receive numerous upgrades including new, more comfortable seating, modern audiovisual equipment, improved climate controls and acoustic improvements. Across SCL, OML and Gibbs Laboratories, 11 additional classrooms will see smaller changes, ranging from new coats of paint to improvements in audio-video equipment. If the reactions to last summer’s SPL renovations are any indication, students and faculty will benefit greatly from the upcoming changes. Physics professor Sean Barrett, who taught in one of the physics classrooms renovated last year, said the space before renovations was like a “tropical rainforest” in warm weather, adding that the improvements in the ventilation system fixed the issue. Tomas Albergo ’15, who had class in one of the physics lecture halls last year, said the renovations fixed shortcomings in ventilation, seats, desks and projection systems. “It just seemed an improvement to the entire environment,”
he said. Multiple STEM departments have worked to promote active learning in their classes, and O’Connor said the renovations help teachers engage students. Some of the smaller classrooms will feature movable furniture, allowing students to collaborate in different-sized groups. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department Chair Paul Turner said while OML 202 currently only has one projection screen, it will have multiple after the renovation, allowing instructors to display many slides at once.
We are really hoping that [renovations] present the opportunity for faculty to think about innovative ways of teaching. TIMOTHY O’CONNOR Associate provost for science and technology, Yale University The active learning environment sought comes with some nonfinancial costs as well. Installing swiveling chairs in one of the physics lecture halls last summer reduced the room’s seating capacity, posing a “challenge” to the department in the face of rising enrollments, Barrett said in a Wednesday email. “We are really hoping that [renovations] present the opportunity for faculty to think about innovative ways of teaching, and we are trying to design space that will be consistent with that aspiration,” O’Connor said. Once this phase of renovation wraps up in the fall, O’Connor said the greatest needs facing Science Hill will be upgrades to teaching labs and the $250 million Yale Biology Building. The University has begun developing a plan for the labs and is seeking faculty input in their planning, but still lacks funding to move ahead with the biology facility, he said. Last summer, the University spent $16 million renovating 17 Hillhouse Ave., adding six new classrooms as well as research space for the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science. Contact DAN WEINER at daniel.weiner@yale.edu .
Brenzel reflects on career BY AMY WANG STAFF REPORTER If someone had asked Jeffrey Brenzel as a Yale undergraduate in 1975 what the chances were that he would end up as Yale’s dean of admissions in 2013, Brenzel would have laughed and “assigned it the same probability as winning the least likely lottery in the country.” If asked the chances of ending up as both the admissions dean and master of a residential college at the same time, Brenzel would have “not even assigned it a probability.” And yet — nearly 40 years after his time as a student at Yale — here he is. Brenzel, Yale’s dean of admissions for the last eight years, will officially step down from his role at the end of the current academic year. Though he will continue serving as master of Timothy Dwight College, Brenzel will leave the admissions dean position to current Deputy Dean Jeremiah Quinlan and return to a teaching role in the Directed Studies Program in Yale College. “We’ve been incredibly spoiled by Jeff Brenzel, who is, to my mind, a simply extraordinary admissions dean,” said University President Richard Levin in a February interview with the News. Quinlan said Brenzel has bred an “incredible culture of initiative and responsibility” in the Admissions Office, encouraging staff members to think critically about the admissions process. Margit Dahl ’75, director of admissions, said she has seen people in the office “really thrive” under Brenzel’s leadership, adding that many staff members have stayed on longer than they might have expected for the opportunity to grow and learn from Brenzel’s direction. Dahl added that Brenzel’s tendency to dig deeply into moral and ethical issues has led the admissions staff to refer to Brenzel fondly as their “in-house philosopher.” Arriving as a student at Yale from Louisville, Ky., in 1971, Brenzel came from a modest home and immediately found a place in the school’s community, participating in residential college life and performing with the Whiffenpoofs. After pursuing graduate study in philosophy, Brenzel worked in the nonprofit and business world outside of the University before returning to direct the Association of Yale Alumni in 1997. When Levin first asked Brenzel to take charge of the Admissions Office in 2005, Brenzel said he was extremely hesitant. He had no prior admissions experience, and his job at the AYA had never involved the moral implications of admissions work. But Levin — looking specifically for the type of philosophical understanding that Brenzel could bring to the office — persuaded him to take the role, emphasizing that the admissions process truly stood at “the heart and soul of Yale College.” “Was it an unusual choice? Yes,” said Mark Dollhopf ’77, the current AYA director and a friend of Brenzel’s during their undergraduate years. “Was it a brilliant choice? Yes.”
ALLIE KRAUSE/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Dean of Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel will leave his position at the end of the current academic year. San Francisco University High School college counselor Jon Reider — a former Stanford admissions officer and longtime colleague of Brenzel — called him “an unusual guy” among other admissions deans from the start. Whereas admissions deans typically take an internal approach to decision-making, Reider said, Brenzel cast a wide net for the opinions of college counselors and other individuals on the high school side of admissions, thoughtfully weighing their input. Jonathan Edwards College Master Penelope Laurans, who has worked with the Admissions Office in various capacities since the 1970s, said Brenzel has made significant contributions to the national admissions landscape, helping to play down the importance of numerical rankings — a choice that has caused contro-
versy in college admissions — and partnering with organizations such as QuestBridge to boost college access to low-income students. The zero-sum nature of the admissions process leads to “incredible frustration” and is “guaranteed to make you agonize,” Brenzel said, stressing the trade-offs and compromises that every dean has to make. For three of the last eight years, Brenzel has also served as TD master — a dual role that has been “extremely challenging,” he said, sometimes resulting in “collisions in which [he] simply survived, rather than thrived.” But he added that both jobs have been rewarding, especially when they offer him the chance both to select and to guide students in each year’s incoming class. In his wood-paneled study in the TD Master’s House, Brenzel
leaned back in an armchair and reminisced about the course of his career — a meandering path that led him through a number of pursuits, from academia to directing alumni relations in the AYA, to the position of admissions dean from which he will depart in roughly a month. “Things you can never predict play a far larger role in what you end up doing than anything you’ve planned out,” he said. “I think I would share this with Yale grads in general — what you’re going to end up doing is highly unpredictable.” For the foreseeable future, Brenzel will continue to serve as TD master and teach in Yale College. Anything after that, he said with a smile, has yet to be decided. Contact AMY WANG at amy.wang@yale.edu .
With spring fling, short reading week adds stress BY KIRSTEN SCHNACKENBERG STAFF REPORTER This year, reading week will not last a full five days for just the second time since the study period was instated over 30 years ago. Due to the addition of fall break to the 2012–’13 academic calendar, the reading weeks in the fall and spring terms were shortened to three days, compared to five in previous years. John Meeske, dean of student organizations and physical resources and a member of the University Calendar Committee, said the committee did not consider how Spring Fling — which will take place on Monday, the first day of reading week — might further cut into an already shorter reading week, but students said that the combination of Spring Fling and a shorter reading week is creating additional stress. “The shortened reading week has made the last week of classes and finals a lot more stressful,” Maren Hopkins ’14 said. “Now I have to dive right into studying
as soon as my classes are over. It’s especially hard because this year’s Spring Fling is only two days before finals.” Meeske said for future years, it is not possible to lengthen the spring reading week and exam period — which begins on Thursday and lasts six days instead of last year’s eight. Extending the academic year into May would likely make it impossible for the Registrar’s Office to process all grades and prepare diplomas in time for Commencement, he said. He added that Commencement cannot be pushed back because doing so would place Commencement on Memorial Day weekend, when Yale would have to pay employees extra to work over the holiday. Council of Masters Chair Jonathan Holloway said he thinks the shortened reading week will not affect students too much since this year’s academic calendar was first published two years ago. He added that the senior dinner is also held annually during read-
ing week — this year, it will occur on Tuesday, April 30 — and that seniors must take the responsibility to plan their reading week accordingly. The majority of students interviewed said they still plan to attend Spring Fling this year and will adjust their studying to the new reading week schedule. “In theory, a shortened reading week should affect my approach to Spring Fling, but I definitely will still be celebrating with the rest of Yale,” Candice Gurbatri ’14 said. Noah Siegel ’15 said he will not alter his plans for Spring Fling and will instead adjust his schedule so that he can still fully enjoy the day’s events. Felipe Montealegre ’15 said he hopes to finish his written assignments due early next week before Monday so he can attend the concert. Spring semester classes end at 5:30 p.m. on Friday. Contact KIRSTEN SCHNACKENBERG at kirsten.schnackenberg@yale.edu .
FLORIAN KOENIGSBERGER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Due to this year’s shortened reading period, Spring Fling will take place only three days before final exams begin.
PAGE 6
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
FROM THE FRONT
“Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.” PERICLES ATHENIAN STATESMAN AND GENERAL DURING THE GREEK GOLDEN AGE
Republican candidacy shakes up ward 1 race ALDERMAN FROM PAGE 1 but if it’s someone who’s maybe less experienced, they could then have the time over the summer to get to know people in New Haven and get lead time to know the city.” Nicole Hobbs ’14, president of the Yale College Democrats, said it is hard to know how the race will shape up so early in the year. “Literally no one knows what [Eidelson] is going to do right now,” Hobbs said. Still, Ward 1 Co-Chair Nia Holston ’14 said Eidelson deserves the opportunity to make a decision when she is ready. Fellow Co-Chair Ben Crosby ’14 could not be reached for comment Thursday. In February, rumors circulated that Crosby was considering an aldermanic candidacy, but he has refused to comment on his plans. Though former Ward 1 Alderman Mike Jones ’11 said that Eidelson has the “right to take her time,” the lack of an announcement from her means that a Democratic candidate will be unlikely to form a coherent campaign before the school year is over. “If she does decide not to run again, the other candidates would probably need to know so they can prepare over the summer, because they’re going to want to have people there as soon as the freshmen get on campus, which is before everyone else returns,” Jones said. “They need to be able to plan.”
But Mac Herring ’12, Eidelson’s campaign manager, said that Eidelson was able to pull off a campaign despite declaring in August, and that the late start was “not a particularly large setback.”
THE DECISION TO ENTER
According to Mallet, YCR initially heard from six students interested in running for Ward 1 alderman. They then narrowed the pool of viable candidates down to four individuals and chose Chandler after a series of interviews. “We wanted someone who was really passionate about New Haven, someone who has concrete ideas about how they want to improve the city and the relationship between Yale and the city, and ultimately someone who seemed a lot like a people person,” said YCR President Austin Schaefer ’15. “This is absolutely, emphatically not a statement campaign: We think we have a very good shot at this, and we intend to make this a very full and dedicated campaign.” It was also in April when Nayak, who ran against Eidelson in 2011, declared his candidacy and ran unopposed until Eidelson declared her entry in August. Chandler said that his friendship with Nayak first sparked his interest in running for alderman, and that he had been contemplating running for the past several months. Chandler cited his passion for
improving New Haven public education as the primary motivating factor for his entry into the race. After enrolling in a seminar on education reform in New Haven this past fall, he found the issue to be “one of the more important ones” on his mind. Chandler praised Mayor John DeStefano Jr.’s education reform efforts, including a rating system to evaluate teachers, Parent University and the Boost! initiative, a program meant to provide social and emotional support for students and families.
With a Republican running, we can now attack the issues more seriously. PAUL CHANDLER ’14 Republican aldermanic candidate, Ward 1 In addition to education, Chandler said he hopes to focus on youth services and improve public safety in the city. It is unclear exactly who, if anyone, will oppose Chandler this fall. In addition to Morrison, Jon Silverstone ’15, who had previously expressed interest in running, told the News in February he will not run. None of those interviewed in this article volunteered names of people who are interested in joining the race. Sarah Cox ’14, who helps lead the activist group Students Unite
Now, said the group, which campaigned actively for Eidelson in 2011, has not yet considered fielding a candidate. “A lot of us really support Sarah,” Cox said. “It’s not really something that has come up [because] we don’t know whether she is running or not.”
RUNNING AS A REPUBLICAN
Should he win, Chandler would join a Board of Aldermen dominated by the Democratic Party. Currently, all 30 aldermen are registered Democrats. In 2011, not a single Republican even ran in an aldermanic election. Former Yale Dems President Zak Newman ’13 said Chandler will need to define a Republican vision in a city in which registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 24 to 1. “A serious challenge is to articulate what it means to be a Republican on a Board of Aldermen full of Democrats,” Newman said. “How is he going to cooperate with other members of the board?” Chandler said he is not committed to one “dogmatic opinion” or another and will attempt to develop ideas along with other aldermen. He added that defining a role for Republicans on the board is “a matter of conversation among the entire group.” Chandler is currently registered as an independent but said he will make whatever registration changes are necessary in order to run for alderman as a
Kagan to retire this year KAGAN FROM PAGE 1 world was born yesterday.” Studying the core liberal arts fields, such as literature, philosophy and history, should be reinforced so that students can learn from the different worldviews of the past, he said. Liberal arts education should also promote freedom of speech and a learning environment that encourages challenging popular views, Kagan said. Describing his personal experience, he noted that students used to name 10 to 15 professors in total when he asked them to cite professors who seem to have views uncommon among the faculty. This year, the list was down to three. He called on administrators to keep faculty members with a diverse range of opinions. “To defend those [who are] free is the first obligation of anyone who claims to be engaged in liberal education,” he said. Kagan described the history of the liberal arts education and explained that the emphasis within academia has shifted from the study of general knowledge and classical texts to the constant creation of new knowledge through specialization. The recent emphasis on the scientific method has created a “war of methodologies within and between fields,” he said. Although a liberal arts education is still valued as a mark of success, he
Republican. He described himself as “generally pretty moderate,” while Mallet said Chandler “leans more to the left” on social issues and is “more traditionally conservative” on fiscal issues. Chandler might not be the only Republican running for a seat on the Board of Aldermen in November. Republican Town Committee Chairman Richter Elser ’81 said he has already been in contact with “three people who’ve indicated interest in running in various wards.” He declined to provide their names, saying they have not yet formalized their candidacies. Elser added that his goal is to run a total of about six or seven Republican candidates for board seats. Elser said he is optimistic about the potential of a Republican victory in Ward 1, adding that this year’s YCR activity marks a stark contrast from the group’s lack of organizing in the past. “It’s been frustrating working with the campus Republicans in the past because they would go into hibernation for periods of four years until the next bigticket election,” he said. “They need to get in the same cycle as the Yale Democrats of fielding candidates in each election.” Mallet said their aim will be to snag votes from across party lines, which he said depends on emphasizing “vision” and “character.” He added that while the campaign will be an “uphill battle,” he believes people will focus on the issues and think beyond
Retiring Sterling Professor of classics and history Donald Kagan gave the final lecture of his 44-year Yale career on Thursday. added, college education today fails to promote students’ understanding of themselves as free citizens. He said current undergraduates are losing a sense of values and possess “a kind of individualism that is really isolation from the community.” Students interviewed said they found that Kagan spoke about matters of importance for the state of education at Yale. Sarah Arn ’13 said Kagan himself is
“an embodiment of a well-rounded man,” which Kagan emphasized as the goal of a liberal arts education. Gavin Schiffres ’15 said the lecture was so meaningful that it should be “a mandatory introductory lecture” for everyone at Yale. Kagan won the National Humanities Medal in 2002. Contact JIWON LEE at jiwon.lee@yale.edu .
recycleyourydndaily
recycleyourydndaily
Paul Chandler ’14 is the first Republican candidate in the Ward 1 aldermanic election in 20 years. party lines. Jones said he thinks that the lower turnout of Ward 1 races could make it possible for Chandler to take the election with a “coalition of like-minded folks and friends.” The filing deadline for aldermanic candidacies is Aug. 10. Contact DIANA LI at diana.li@yale.edu . Contact ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER at isaac.stanley-becker@yale.edu .
Sex-reassignment now covered by Yale YALE HEALTH FROM PAGE 1
BRIANNA LOO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
JACOB GEIGER/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
roy said. “This additional student coverage follows a period of several years when similar coverage was provided to Yale employees,” Conroy said. “It made sense, after appropriate study, to bring the student coverage in line with Yale’s belief that, in some circumstances, sex-reassignment surgery is medically necessary and appropriate.” Murchison said he considers the coverage “reasonably comprehensive,” but added that students considering the surgery must have access to qualified mental health professionals and not be “coerced” into hormone therapy, a typical requirement for sex-reassignment surgery. In addition to the sex-reassignment change, two revisions to mental health policies will remove a waiting period previously required for inpatient care and will increase mental health coverage for children of students, though outpatient counseling — which includes psychiatry visits, therapy and other services for students not admitted to Yale Health facilities — has not been changed. The modification of inpatient coverage will allow students admitted to Yale Health facilities for mental health or substance abuse to receive 60 days of continuous treatment, said Michael Rigsby MED ’88, medical director of Yale Health. Previously, students still received 60 days of coverage per year but were required to take a 180-day interim period after the first 30 days. The number of covered visits related to mental health for chil-
dren of students enrolled in the Yale Health Plan has also been increased from 16 to 25, Rigsby said. O n e s o p h o m o re , wh o requested to remain anonymous because she has used mental health resources, said the mental health policy revisions will have no effect on the mental health services used by most students. “I think it is a pretty hollow gesture since it is not at all a response to what the real mental health needs are for students,” said the student. “Outpatient care is exclusively what students use.” In another update to the Yale Health Plan, Rigsby said that students no longer have the option of waiving prescription coverage — which includes partial coverage of pharmacy charges as well as psychiatric and substance abuse services for admitted patients — as it will be combined with the hospitalization and specialty coverage insurance that is required for students who do not purchase outside coverage. The decision to package prescription coverage with hospitalization and specialty coverage was made in part to comply with the Affordable Care Act and because students without prescription coverage potentially face “extremely large” out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, he added. While hospitalization and specialty coverage was priced at $810 and prescription coverage at $180 per term this year, the total plan will cost $1,020 per semester next year. Contact CYNTHIA HUA at cynthia.hua@yale.edu .
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 7
NEWS
“A great city is that which has the greatest men and women.” WALT WHITMAN AMERICAN POET, ESSAYIST AND JOURNALIST
11 honored with Elm-Ivy awards Immigration debated in CT BY MONICA DISARE STAFF REPORTER During a celebration of the Elm City’s history — from its founding 375 years ago to the last 20 years of improved relations between New Haven and Yale under the leadership of Mayor John DeStefano Jr. and Yale University President Richard Levin — 11 individuals were honored at a historic Elm-Ivy award ceremony Wednesday afternoon. Established in 1979, the Seton Elm-Ivy ceremonies honor members of the Yale and New Haven communities who have worked to improve the relationship between the University and the city. Among those receiving awards at this year’s ceremony were emergency responders in Yale and New Haven, the executive assistants of both DeStefano and Levin, and a Yale student who runs a dance program in New Haven Public Schools. DeStefano and Levin received special Elm-Ivy Awards for their extended dedication to town-gown relations over their respective careers.
Our collective work to enhance the partnership between Yale and the city of New Haven is creating such incredible positive change for everyone in our community. LEIF MITCHELL Winner, Elm-Ivy Award “Our collective work to enhance the partnership between Yale and the city of New Haven is creating such incredible positive change for everyone in our community,” said Leif Mitchell, an award winner who is the assistant director of the Community Research Core in the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at the Yale School of Public Health. In Levin’s inaugural presidential address in 1993, he out-
lined his goal to have Yale contribute more to the New Haven community. Two decades later — through a partnership with DeStefano, 1,000 new Yale homeowners and 50 new bioscience and other startup companies — Levin was honored for remembering the commitment he made to New Haven at the beginning of his presidency. DeStefano and Levin join an elite group of only 10 other individuals who have received the special Elm-Ivy Award since its founding. Mitchell was among those who received an Ivy Award, which is given to Yale faculty, staff and students. Other recipients of the Ivy Award were Jane Levin, director of undergraduate studies in the Directed Studies Program; Ayana Jordan, a resident in psychiatry at Yale-New Haven Hospital who has helped support a local shelter and mentor New Haven students; and Molly Gibbons ’14, the coordinator of the Yale Co-Op Dance Collaborative. For Jane Levin, the wife of University President Richard Levin, the award is the culmination of over 40 years of work in New Haven. Levin has served as a volunteer and board member at the Neighborhood Music School, and has devoted time to New Haven Free Public Library, the Hopkins School and Amistad Academy public charter school. “Rick and I have lived in New Haven for 43 years, since we came to Yale as graduate students in 1970,” Levin said. “All four of our kids were born and grew up in New Haven, so we were deeply conscious of the importance of the well-being of New Haven.” In contrast to Jane Levin’s 43 years in New Haven, Gibbons has only spent three in the city. In that time, she has become the president of the Yale & Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School Dance Collaborative, which is a group of Yale students that teaches various styles of dance to a group of Co-op students every Friday afternoon. Representing the Elm side of the Elm-Ivy Awards were Rosemarie Lemley, executive assistant to the mayor of New Haven; Rick Fontana, deputy direc-
OPINION. Send submissions to opinion@yaledailynews.com
tor of emergency management for the city of New Haven; and Daisy Abreu, deputy director of the Town Green Special Services District. While emergency management in New Haven has been tested over the past few years with two hurricanes and a powerful blizzard, the team has worked to keep both Yale and the city safe. Fontana called the relationship between Yale and New Haven “stronger than ever.” Since 1979, nearly 400 individuals and organizations have received Elm-Ivy Awards. Contact MONICA DISARE at monica.disare@yale.edu .
ELM-IVY RECEPIENTS The following people received Elm-Ivy awards in 2013 for commitment to town-gown relations. DAISY ABREU Deputy director of the Town Green Special Services District RICK FONTANA Deputy director of city of New Haven’s Office of Management ROSEMARIE LEMLEY Mayor’s executive assistant MARIA BOUFFARD Director of emergency management at Yale JANE LEVIN Volunteer at Neighborhood Music School, Amistad Academy, Hopkins School and New Haven Free Public Library LEIF MITCHELL Assistant director for the Community Research Core in the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at the Yale School of Public Health REGINA STAROLIS University President Richard Levin’s executive assistant MOLLY GIBBONS ’14 Yale student and president of the Yale & Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School Dance Collaborative. AYANA JORDAN Resident in psychiatry who works at a New Haven shelter
BY NICOLE NAREA STAFF REPORTER After Senate Democrats faced the crushing failure of a gun control bill backed by Sen. Chris Murphy and Sen. Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73 earlier this month, immigration reform legislation has come to dominate the national media spotlight and spark statewide debate. The bipartisan bill currently discussed in Congress would provide a 13-year path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants currently residing in the United States. Satisfying Republican requests to strengthen border security and prevent a wave of illegal immigration, the Department of Homeland Security would be required to spend about $6.5 billion in the next decade to bolster enforcement. The legislation also proposes a merit-based point system for obtaining a green card that demonstrates preference to immigrants with job skills, education and family ties to the United States. Blumenthal emphasized that the package is comprehensive — establishing a path to citizenship, securing national borders, holding employers accountable for hiring practices and assuring that the DREAMers, young people who immigrated to the United States before age 18, can find a way to citizenship. But state Democratic legislators criticized the bill’s proposed path to citizenship as punitive. “This is the best we can do?” said State Rep. Roland Lemar, a Democrat who represents New Haven. “Community members I have spoken with can’t imagine waiting another 13 years to be eligible for citizenship, most have already paid numerous fees over the years, and the overwhelming majority of these folks are gainfully employed, send their kids to our schools and are our closest neighbors.” Senate Minority Leader Larry Cafero, a Republican, did not return request for comment. Lemar said the path to citizenship seems to require those who apply to maintain a certain level of income, pay thousands of dollars in fines and re-register every six years. He added that the bill also excludes hundreds of thou-
sands of people who came to the United States after 2011, such as those who have received Temporary Protected Status. Luis Luna, a volunteer for New Haven-based advocacy group Unidad Latina en Accion, agreed that the timeline for obtaining citizenship does not take into account the complexity of family-based immigration and was merely written to satisfy Republicans. Local immigrant advocates and legislators also cautioned distinguishing an elite class of immigrants through the merit-based point system for obtaining a green card. State Rep. Gary HolderWinfield said that while the system seeks to attract more skilled immigrants who can fuel economic growth, it also turns its back on an American tradition of welcoming all immigrants to U.S. shores and allowing them to pursue the American dream. “What happens to the people at the bottom of the totem pole who compete with skilled workers?” Holder-Winfield said. “But how do you design a system that takes into account the value of a human being?” Luna said that many undocumented workers who arrive in New Haven might be marginalized by such a system that does not benefit all immigrants equally. The bill would eliminate reunification green cards for siblings and married children, as well as the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, a green card lottery for immigrants from low-immigration countries. Lemar said that canceling these programs is detrimental for cities like New Haven that have well-established immigrant communities and that are hoping to welcome more family members
and a diverse immigrant pool. Though the bill eliminates green card consideration for siblings and married children, the United States would create up to 120,000 new visas per year for foreign-born entrepreneurs who want to start a business in the United States and an initial 20,000 visas for low-skilled workers who businesses identified as filling a need. “While this might be good for American businesses, and certainly smart of us to not limit entrepreneurs who will likely create numerous jobs in the United States, I don’t think it’s the right strategy to eliminate the other visa programs that often serve to strengthen families or communities here in the United States,” Lemar said. Legislators also identified what they regard as a hole in the bill — it does not address the Secure Communities program, which seeks to deport undocumented immigrants convicted of serious crimes, but has deported individuals guilty of minor crimes such as traffic violations. Holder-Winfield is a sponsor of the state’s Connecticut Trust Act, which seeks to regulate Immigration Customs Enforcement detainments sanctioned under Secure Communities. “I don’t trust the federal government to get its act together on comprehensive reform,” HolderWinfield said. “I don’t know what about 2013 is particularly special.” New Haven has an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 undocumented immigrants, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Contact NICOLE NAREA at nicole.narea@yale.edu .
BY THE NUMBERS IMMIGRATION 11.1m
Undocumented immigrants currently reside in the United States.
71%
Of Americans say there should be a way for people in the United States illegally to remain in this country if they meet certain requirements.
56%
Of undocumented immigrants came to the United States before 2006.
PAGE 8
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
The Yale College Dean’s O∞ce Congratulates the Recipients of the 2013 Yale College Teaching Prizes + The Sidonie Miskimin Clauss ’75 Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities Tamar Gendler, Philosophy and Psychology + The Lex Hixon ’63 Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Social Sciences Deborah Davis, Sociology + The Dylan Hixon ’88 Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Natural Sciences and Mathematics Eric Dufresne, Mechanical Engineering and Physics + The Richard H. Brodhead ’68 Prize for Teaching Excellence by a Non-Ladder Faculty Member John Bryan Starr, Political Science + Sarai Ribicoff ’79 Award for the Encouragement of Teaching at Yale College Kathryn Lofton, Religious Studies and American Studies + The Harwood F. Byrnes /Richard B. Sewall Teaching Prize William Nordhaus, Economics
Faculty and students are invited to attend a reception in their honor. Monday, April 29, 5:00 pm Presidents’ Room, Woolsey Rotunda
recyclerecyclerecyclerecycle
YOUR YDN DAILY
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 9
BULLETIN BOARD
TODAY’S FORECAST Sunny, with a high near 64. Light and variable wind 5 to 7 mph in the morning. Low of 39.
TOMORROW
SUNDAY
High of 66, low of 41.
High of 70, low of 42.
ON VIEW [TRAVEL EDITION] BY ALEXANDRA MORRISON
ON CAMPUS FRIDAY, APRIL 26 12:00 PM Arbor Day Tree Planting A gathering to collectively plant a cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) tree on the grounds of Marsh Botanical Garden. Open to the general public. Marsh Botanical Garden (360 Prospect St.). 5:00 PM “The Human Cost of Iran’s Nuclear Program” Panelists include Khosrow Semnani, author of “The Ayatollah’s Nuclear Gamble,” and Jonathan Schell of the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. The moderator is Abbas Amanat from the Department of History. Sponsored by the Yale Iranian Studies Initiative, Council on Middle East Studies and The MacMillan Center. Open to the general public. Luce Hall (34 Hillhouse Ave.), Auditorium.
THAT MONKEY TUNE BY MICHAEL KANDALAFT
SATURDAY, APRIL 27 1:30 PM “Thinking About Drone Warfare” Debate will bring together policymakers, human rights advocates and anthropology of law specialists to debate the current uses of drone technology, such as the secretive targeted killing program of the U.S. government in the global “war on terrorism.” Refreshments will be served. Free and open to the general public. Sterling Law Buildings (127 Wall St.), Room 128. 8:00 PM 2013 Annual Student Filmmakers’ Showcase Showcasing the best student films from 2013. Food and drink will be served. Hosted by Bulldog Productions. William L. Harkness Hall (100 Wall St.), Room 203.
SUNDAY, APRIL 28 4:00 PM Jamming for Jane Join the Yale Irish Dancers and Pitnacree for a benefit show to support the Richard Family Fund. One of the fatalities of the Boston Marathon bombings last week was an 8-year-old child named Martin Richard. His sister, Jane, is an Irish dancer at the Clifden Academy in Milton, Mass., and lost her leg in the attacks. The Yale Irish Dancers and Pitnacree will be performing in support of Jane and her family, and all donations will go to the Richard Family Fund. Morse College (304 York St.), Crescent Theater.
DOONESBURY BY GARRY TRUDEAU
y SUBMIT YOUR EVENTS ONLINE yaledailynews.com/events/submit To reach us: E-mail editor@yaledailynews.com Advertisements 2-2424 (before 5 p.m.) 2-2400 (after 5 p.m.) Mailing address Yale Daily News P.O. Box 209007 New Haven, CT 06520
Questions or comments about the fairness or accuracy of stories should be directed to Editor in Chief Tapley Stephenson at (203) 432-2418. Bulletin Board is a free service provided to groups of the Yale community for events. Listings should be submitted online at yaledailynews.com/events/ submit. The Yale Daily News reserves the right to edit listings.
To visit us in person 202 York St. New Haven, Conn. (Opposite JE) FOR RELEASE APRIL 26, 2013
Interested in drawing cartoons for the Yale Daily News? CONTACT KAREN TIAN AT karen.tian@yale.edu
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
CLASSIFIEDS
CROSSWORD Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Lewis ACROSS 1 __ squad 5 Sharp fasteners 10 Line of movement 14 In a while 15 Go back to the beginning, in a way 16 Spread unit 17 One lingering in Edinburgh? 20 Hoglike mammals 21 “I could __ horse!” 22 Touch 23 Stravinsky’s “The __ of Spring” 25 DX ÷ V 26 “__ a rip-off!” 27 Some Athenian physicians? 32 Black gold 33 Big Bird buddy 34 DOD subdivision 35 Really feel the heat 37 Plus 39 Carpenter’s tool 43 CD conclusion? 46 Charge carriers 49 Fury 50 Berlin sidewalk writing? 54 Valiant son 55 Heavenly altar 56 Hockey Hall of Famer Mikita 57 Sum (up) 58 Personal time? 60 Some govt. investments 64 Fancy singles event in Stockholm? 67 New coin of 2002 68 One may work with a chair 69 Vivacity 70 Church section 71 Angling banes 72 Oh’s role in “Grey’s Anatomy” DOWN 1 Humongous 2 Worshipper of the Earth goddess Pachamama 3 Condo cousin 4 Complete
CLASSICAL MUSIC 24 Hours a Day. 98.3 FM, and on the web at WMNR.org. “Pledges accepted: 1-800345-1812” Saturday is Big Band night!
Want to place a classified ad? CALL (203) 432-2424 OR E-MAIL BUSINESS@ YALEDAILYNEWS.COM
ADROIT ACADEMICS, an innovative start-up test prep company, is hiring tutors. Offering unique positions with a competitive salary. Apply at www. adroitacademics.com
4/26/13
By Jim Holland
5 British university city 6 Legal issue 7 “Off the Court” author 8 Separate 9 Post 10 Links standard 11 Like citrus fruit 12 They might make cats pause 13 Chef’s array 18 57-Across’s wheels 19 Military surprises 24 First name in humor 27 Tar 28 Sea inlet 29 One who observes a fraternal Hour of Recollection 30 Source of invigoration 31 One leaving a wake 36 Mess up 38 Self-recriminating cries 40 Have a health problem 41 Hindu title 42 Sweetie
SEEKING SPECIAL EGG DONOR. $25,000. Help Caring Ivy League Couple! If you are Yale student, Grad Student or Graduate, athletic, 5’7” to 5’10” tall, German, Eastern European, English or Irish descent (other heritages considered), pretty, athletic, fun, kind, age 21-32, please be our Donor. Medical Procedure really easy and in NYC vicinity. Send picture, résumé and where you can be reached during school year and during summer to: Donors for Kindness, P.O. Box 9, Mt. Kisco, NY 10549
Thursday’s Puzzle Solved
(c)2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
44 Muscat native 45 Some Roman Catholics 47 Babbles 48 Perspective 50 Mature 51 Adds to the database 52 __ Detroit: “Guys and Dolls” role 53 Like some tree trunks
SUDOKU DASTARDLY
4/26/13
54 Having no clue 59 Peel on “The Avengers” 61 King who succeeded 59-Down 62 Swedish model Nordegren in 2004 nuptial news 63 Tough going 65 Buck’s mate 66 Hosp. test
3 1 7 4 5 6 3 6 4 5 1 9 7 2 7 4 8 9
1 5 4 8 5 2 9 3 7 8 1 7 9 5 9 7 5 8 3 7 3 5 9 8 3 6 4
PAGE 10
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
SPORTS
Central Michigan’s Eric Fisher selected first overall in NFL Draft The offensive tackle was picked by the Kansas City Chiefs to open the 2013 NFL Draft, becoming the first player from the Mid-American Conference to be drafted in the number one spot. Luke Joeckel, an offensive tackle from Texas A&M, was selected second by the Jacksonville Jaguars —the first time since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger that offensive tackles were taken No. 1 and No. 2 in the draft.
Yale looks to gain momentum with rivalry win MEN’S LACROSSE FROM PAGE 12 strated they can play with any team in the country. “The loss was disappointing, but we are going to work hard in the coming week and take the rest of the season game by game,” midfielder Michael Bonacci ’16 said. “Harvard is our last regular season game and we are excited to get back out there and hopefully string some wins together.” The Bulldogs’ loss to Maryland broke a five-game winning streak, and the team hopes to piece together a victory over Harvard and then two wins in the Ivy League tournament to ensure their second straight trip to the NCAA tournament. Yale currently ranks No. 11 in RPI, the system by which at-large bids are issued for the NCAA tournament, but the Elis are not guaranteed a spot in the 16-team field. Losing to an under -.500 Harvard team would hurt Yale’s RPI ranking significantly. Though the Crimson lost to top-10 teams No. 7 UMass, No. 12 Duke and No. 12 Cornell, they just missed out on massive upsets, taking each team to the final whistle and losing by a combined total of just five goals. “I don’t think we’re going to overlook Harvard because this is a talented team that is fighting to keep their season alive, not to mention it’s Harvard and that alone makes it one of the biggest games of the season for us,” midfielder Colin Flaherty ’15 said. “We really just want to keep everything we did against Maryland: We played great defense and with urgency on offense which lead to a lot of shots for us. We just need to put more in the back of the net.” To earn the win, the Bulldogs must prioritize fixing their perennial problem of starting slowly in first halves of games. In the past six games, the Bulldogs
had to rely on strong fourthquarter performances. Additionally Yale needs to be careful with its penalties. The Bulldogs have committed more penalties than any other Ivy League team, and while the Eli defense ranks fourth in the conference in penalty-killing, the Crimson rank first in man-advantage goals, scoring on almost 47 percent of their opportunities.
The past four years have been great and this season specifically is one that I’ll never forget. MICHAEL MCCORMACK ‘13 Captain, men’s lacrosse The Bulldogs are anchored by a deep defense that has the second-best goals against average in the Ivy League, with just over eight goals a game. Seniors Michael McCormack ’13 and Peter Johnson ’13 have been staples on defense while Jimmy Craft ’15 and Michael Quinn ’16 have all contributed to helping Eric Natale ’15 post the second best goals against average in the Ivy League. Johnson ranks 13th in the nation in caused turnovers per game with 25 on the year, while McCormack is second on the team with 43 ground balls and leads defenseman with four points on the season. Dylan Levings ’14 leads the team in groundballs with 97, thanks to his superb .620 faceoff percentage that ranks sixth in the nation. His production has helped the starting attack trio of Brandon Mangan ’14, Conrad Oberbeck ’15 and Kirby Zdrill ’13 become one of the most lethal attack corps in the league. Yale needs to use all its offensive weapons against Harvard
FREDERICK FRANK/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
With a victory over Harvard, only two wins would sit between Yale and a second straight trip to the NCAA tournament. goalkeeper Harry Kreiger, who ranks first in the Ivy League in saves per game, while posting the third best save percentage in the conference. Harvard enters its final game of the season playing its best lacrosse. Besides a thrashing by Princeton last weekend, the Crimson have an upset win, blowout victory and two particularly contested losses to top 10 teams. With an Ivy League tournament spot up for grabs, Harvard, already the
Bulldogs sprint toward the finish
DIONIS JAHJAGA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The Elis will take on archrival Harvard in one of the biggest regattas of the season on June 9 in New London, Conn. HEAVYWEIGHT CREW FROM PAGE 12 Championships on May 31, June 1 and June 2. The team will conclude its season by facing off against arch nemesis Harvard in New London on June 9. “We have a very strong crew,” captain Jon Morgan ’13 said. “This year we’ve got the fastest team I have ever seen.” Though the Elis will have a break from competition until May 19 following their meet against Cornell and Princeton — a meet the Bulldogs have not won since 2010 — the squad is trying to not look past the event this weekend. “It’s kind of one of those things where you don’t want to put a label on it and go, ‘Oh yeah, we’re going to beat them this weekend,’” coxswain Oliver Fletcher ’14 said. “We’ll just stick to our thing, do our deal and if it’s fast enough, it’s fast enough, and if it’s not, well we’ve got some time to figure it out.” The Bulldogs will undergo intense workouts during their 21-day break following the meet this weekend, before tapering off in the days leading up to Eastern Sprints. While the IRA National Championship meet is of course the most important meet of the year for the Elis, Fletcher noted that Eastern Sprints also figures to be a very competitive meet because many of the best crews in the country are found on the east coast. “Most of the big rivals are on this coast,
so it’s really a chance to go up against the big guns and see where we match up,” Fletcher said. “At the same time, the IRAs, the National Championship is really where are all the marbles are, so we want to try and peak for that.” This stretch run will be a good test of a team that features many young athletes. Of the 36 athletes listed on the Yale athletics website, 14 are freshmen, and another seven are sophomores, bringing the total number of underclassmen to 21. The inexperience has not seemed to hurt the Elis’ success so far this spring, but the more intense meets left on the schedule will certainly force the team’s youth to prove itself. On the flip side, however, these meets will mark the end of the Yale careers of six seniors. Although Yale College commencement occurs on May 20, the senior rowers will stay with the team through the Harvard regatta. Jon Morgan ’13, the captain, will graduate along with Tom Lynam ’13, Philippe Mastroyannis ’13, Harry Picone ’13, Grant Stegelmann ’13 and Ian Suvak ’13. Morgan said being in the team for the last four years was the most meaningful attempt to be engaged. The heavyweight crew’s competition against Cornell and Princeton will begin this Saturday at 8 a.m. Contact ALEX EPPLER at alexander.eppler@yale.edu .
second-best attended stadium in the league, will face a packed house. For Yale, this game represents the last regular-season game for one of the most successful classes in Yale lacrosse history. The class of 2013 boasted 31 wins coming into the season, the most in Yale history. Their eight wins this season put them fifth in victories by a class in school history. Captain Michael McCormack ’13, as well as his
fellow four-year starter and MLL draft pick Peter Johnson ’13 are Tewaaraton preseason nominees and look to end the season with style. Yale has won its last four Ivy League contests and leads the all-time headto-head matchup with Harvard 58-35, including a 10-8 victory last year. “It’s definitely upsetting that this is my last regular season game, but it’s reassuring to know that we have one more
week left with the Ivy League Tournament,” McCormack said. “The past four years have been great and this season specifically is one that I’ll never forget. This team has been a big part of my college experience and hopefully I can end my career at Yale on a high note.” Yale faces off against Harvard in Boston this Saturday at 2 p.m. Contact FREDERICK FRANK at frederick.frank@yale.edu
Elis to face Brown in finale BASEBALL FROM PAGE 12 At the plate, the Elis will be led by infielder Jacob Hunter ’14. Hunter made the Ivy League honor roll last week after hitting .625 (10–16) in five games with three stolen bases and three runs scored. He also hit two doubles and drove in a run. Hunter has been the Bulldogs’ most consistent hitter this season, leading the team with 37 hits. His .349 batting average is fourth in the Ivy League. “We are a good hitting team and a game like Hunter’s goes to show the talent that we have with the bats,” pitcher David Hickey ’14 said of Hunter’s performance last weekend. “Hitting is vital to the team and I’m proud of the way my teammates, especially the younger guys, have stepped up to the plate.” The Elis are only hitting .239 on the season, but several players have been trying to turn these struggles around at the plate recently. Second baseman David Toups ’15 collected four hits last weekend and shortstop Tom O’Neill ’16 notched three hits in the Dartmouth series to snap a nine-game hitless streak. Third baseman Brent Lawson ’15 had five hits on the weekend and drove in four runs. For Piwinski and outfielders Josh Scharff ’13 and Cam Squires ’13, the series against Dartmouth will be their final time to suit up for the Bulldogs. “It’s definitely a little sad, but I am heading into it just like
I would any other weekend,” Piwinski said. “No reasons to change the routine in any way. There’s no doubt that the last few days I’ve looked back over my career and just remembered all the different memories and guys
I have played with. I’m not trying to think too much about it yet, though, because there are four more games to focus on.” Contact CHARLES CONDRO at charles.condro@yale.edu .
KATHRYN CRANDALL/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Yale will look to rebound from a difficult weekend against Dartmouth with doubleheaders against last-place Brown on Saturday and Sunday.
SCHEDULE FRIDAY APRIL 26 Men’s Golf
@ Owings Mills. Md.
All-day
Ivy League Championship
Baseball (doubleheader)
vs. Brown
1 p.m.
All-Access Audio
Softball (doubleheader)
vs. Brown
2 p.m.
All-Access Audio
Heavyweight Crew
vs. Cornell/Princeton
8 a.m.
Men’s Lacrosse
@ Harvard
2 p.m.
Men’s Tennis
vs. Brown
2 p.m.
@ Bedminster, N.J.
All-day
Continuing from Fri. and Sat.
All-day
Yale Springtime Invitational
SATURDAY APRIL 27
SUNDAY APRIL 28 Women’s Golf Track and Field
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 11
SPORTS
“It definitely sucks ... finishing second. Who wants to finish second?” LEBRON JAMES, ON COMING SECOND IN NBA DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR VOTING
Cross country races against the past CROSS COUNTRY FROM PAGE 12 las ’13, the captain of the track and field team who also competes with cross country. “As a freshman and a sophomore, though of course you hope you’ll have some great performances, you have to look at things and say, ‘I’m shooting for some great races junior, senior year.’ You keep on going at it with the faith that you’re going to get better if you keep working at it over time.”
MEN’S CROSS COUNTRY PART 2 OF 2 That is why Hillas ran through the smog every day in Beijing last summer. That is why Matt Thwaites ’13, eager for success in his last season at Yale, dialed his training up to 110 miles a week — almost 16 miles a day — last summer, often waking up at 5:30 a.m. for the first of two runs before nightfall. That is why Lunn, Jacob Sandry ’15 and sophomores Alec Borsook ’15 and John McGowan ’15 spent last summer together in Boulder, Colo., holding down part-time jobs but focusing on their workouts. As Sandry sees it, that constant training gives him agency in life to improve every day. “With running, every day I have a challenge put in front of me and my life is never stagnant,” he says. “No matter what is going on, if I’m having a rough week or whatever, I can always go run. … And I know that if I run and work hard, I’m going to improve.” That drive to improve can be personal and tied up in the pursuit of increasingly lower times. But those times matter because of what they mean for the runner’s status relative to his competition. Running is ultimately about racing, and racing is ultimately about beating people head-tohead. The idea of the future race is always looming. After the cross country team’s successful performance at the Paul Short Invitational on Sept. 28, that race was an enormous invitational at the University of Wisconsin in which Yale’s top seven would take on some of the best runners in the country. On Oct. 27, two weeks after Wisconsin, Yale would reach the most important race of its year, Ivy League Heptagonal Championships, or Heps, and NCAA regionals fell two weeks after that.
STEADY ACCUMULATION
A runner spends the summer training in order to build up a mileage base that will help power him throughout the school year. When practice with the team starts in late August, he starts adding speed to that base. The easy seven- to 12-mile runs like the one throughout which I gasped for breath on my first day with the team are mostly about recovery and preserving fitness. Improvement comes in the two intense workouts that Harkins puts the team through each week. One Tuesday in October, the week after New England Championships, head coach Paul Harkins marked an 800-meter loop around Yale’s intramural fields for a repeat workout with the bottom half of his team. I quickly fell behind the team, and soon I had been lapped, and then lapped again. After my first few steady seven- and eight-mile runs, I had let myself think that I might be able to keep up with the team. I had joked with my friends about
walking on for real and not just as a reporter. Now I realized just how wide the gulf was between a varsity runner and me. The gears they kicked into on this workout seemed superhuman. The only way to reach their level would be embrace their steady accumulation of miles, day in and day out. These men have scheduled their lives around their runs and have built an ability to run out of six, seven, eight years of summers and early mornings — all while also remaining students and trying to refuse to let running take over their lives.
THE RIGHT YALE BALANCE
Class and cross country conflicted on my second day of running. I had selected my courses for the semester before deciding to run, and so thought nothing of taking two seminars that met after 2:30 p.m. Members of the team, on the other hand, know from the fall of freshman year onward that they cannot enroll in those classes. The bus to practice leaves at 2:45 p.m., year-round. That means members of the team can’t apply to take “Grand Strategy” or a seminar with Harold Bloom. Science majors often have difficulty enrolling in required classes with afternoon lab periods. My cross country experience was inauthentic from the outset because I had the freedom to take any class I wanted and thus missed practice twice a week. Running did not just affect class schedules. For Isa Qasim ’15, a sophomore walk-on from Chicago who is also involved in the Yale Political Union, it is a structure for his entire life on campus. Practice is a consistent requirement every day and a time to shed his identity as a student, leave his cellphone in his locker and clear his mind for three hours. The commitment to being sound in body that his place on the team entails provides a structure for the rest of his life as well. There is no room to stay up until the early hours of the morning working, or to go out late drinking, because of what that lack of sleep would do to his performance.
I don’t care what some kid in my bioethics class thinks about me. I’m worrying about how we stack up against Harvard, Princeton and Columbia. MATTHEW NUSSBAUM ’15 Men’s cross country “I want to establish myself on the team and help out and do what I can,” Qasim said. “And that has informed … how I go about the rest of my life, in that I need to get my work done, I need to go to bed. I don’t really go out and party. I go out occasionally, but that’s not what my life is centered around.” To Thwaites, the structure that running has imposed includes sleeping in an altitude tent nightly in order to make his body create more red blood cells. At 9:30 a.m. on Sunday mornings, while most of their classmates are still sleeping off the previous night, Thwaites and the rest of the team meet for a long run that can stretch as far as 20 miles. Sandry and others are often up hours before class for cross-
training bike rides. I don’t know how they do it. During my first week with the team, I joined Lunn for a morning pool workout. In the ensuing weeks, I regularly set my alarm for 7 a.m. so that I could go again. I did not once wake up in time. My homework began to slip because, after four hours of practice and team dinner, I would be exhausted by the time I arrived at the library. After staring at my work for a couple hours, I was usually asleep by 11 p.m., three hours before my standard bedtime as a nonathlete. My body began to need nine hours of sleep a night in order to make it through practice. First I fell off track with my senior thesis research, then in my Russian class. When I told Nussbaum, who remained the team’s top runner after his performance at Paul Short, about my difficulty with work, he talked about striking the right Yale balance. “You can’t let running take over your life. You can’t let it be more important than family or class,” he said. “But from 2:30–6, none of that stuff is going on. For those hours, running is the most important thing.” My troubles might have been the result of being a newcomer to varsity time management, or to the fact that I didn’t take the team into account in choosing my classes. Still, I began to realize that in some ways I was becoming the negative stereotype that many Yale students have of varsity athletes. I was tired in class and often unprepared. I structured my days around my runs to the point that class became more of a chore than anything else. As members of the team are aware, there is a segment of the University population that sees athletes as second-class citizens without the intellectual firepower of their classmates. In Nussbaum’s telling, that leads to division within the student body and causes athletes to draw further into their teams, which only exacerbates the problem of stereotyping. Some athletes respond by looking down on their nonathlete peers, calling them “Muggles” or “Normies.” Nussbaum avoids that, and shakes off any disdain he feels from other students. “I don’t care what some kid in bioethics class thinks about me,” he said. “I’m worrying about how we stack up against Harvard, Princeton and Columbia.” In addition to that worrying, Nussbaum is a frequent contributor to campus publications and is an assistant editor of the Yale Undergraduate Law Review. The morning after NCAA regional championships, the team’s biggest meet of the season, he filed an analysis of the electoral landscape in Pennsylvania for The Yale Politic. At practice one day in early October, we were almost late to the weight room because Sandry and Nussbaum interrupted their stretching for an argument about whether homosexuality is a modern social construct.
SIXTH PLACE
In one of my first conversations with Harkins, he complained half-jokingly that Yale runners think too much. Getting past the burning cauldron that Laemel said starts bubbling over in the middle of a race means turning off your mind and trusting in your body’s ability. And so Heps is a time of cruel stress. The race is the culmination of months of training. Miles of preparation have gone into each step the runners
MATTHEW NUSSBAUM ’15
KEVIN LUNN ’13
N
W
ussbaum was sick for the first part of his freshman fall, and was not among the 12 Yale runners who toed the starting line at Ivy League championships. One year later, however, he ran with the lead pack throughout the race and paced Yale with a 10th-place overall finish; his time was the fastest Yale 8k in over four years. The New Jersey resident, who organized team viewing parties for each of the presidential debates last fall, ascribes much of his improvement to a change in attitude. “I decided that it was best to relax, to be serious about the serious things and let a lot of other things roll off the old back,” he said.
BRIANNE BOWEN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Matthew Nussbaum ’15 leads a pack at the Yale-Harvard meet. He earned second-team All-Ivy honors this season. will take over the course of eight kilometers through cornfields near the Princeton campus. Heps were held on the same course last year, and so upperclassmen have been thinking about this race since then, sometimes visualizing it as they sweated through their workouts. Once the starting gun goes off, their minds will be focused only on the task at hand. But now, in the last minutes before they assemble at the starting line, the Yale men’s faces have assumed stony expressions. They arrived in New Jersey the day before, early enough for an easy run around the course. Bedtime at the hotel was early, and they went for an easy run as a team that morning. As the race approached each man began his own stretching: Laemel did high knee strides, Michael Cunetta ’14, stationary leg swings, and Nussbaum, karaokes. Demetri Goutos ’13, who is one of the team’s top runners but who had recently been battling foot injuries, sat with his head in his hands until Harkins walked up to him, slapped him on the back and said one word: “Chill.” Goutos nodded and started tightening his laces. The women’s team had already run its race, in front of its biggest crowd so far this season. The sides of the course were bathed in the colors of every Ivy school, and cheering fans ran from straightaway to straightaway to see as much of the field as possible. Lunn and his team thought they were a stronger, deeper team this year than at any point in recent memory. They wanted to prove that the group they fondly call “xYc” is a force to be reckoned with in the Ivy League. They had been looking forward to Heps all year as a chance to put the demons of their past failures to rest. But that desire conflicted with everything the team knows contributes to a good performance. Lunn and Laemel both told me that one of their main goals for Heps was not to talk it up. They have taught themselves to run so well and so fast that doing so is almost like clockwork. They run best when they do their drills, strap on their spikes and let their body take over. It knows best how to run fast. “Our bodies know that once the spikes are on, it’s time to go,” Laemel said before Heps. “It’s a more natural approach to running, instead of trying to create an artificial environment. As long as we stick with what we know works, let our natural abili-
hen a seminar in which he was enrolled traveled to Italy over spring break, Lunn went on training runs through the streets of Rome. Training, he said, balances his work: “My commitment to my team means I know when I have to study, and so I focus more easily than if I were not a studentathlete.” The humanities major from Santa Barbara, Calif., was elected captain after leading Yale in its last three meets of his junior season. Approaching what he calls the “strange void of life after running,” he compares running to a Sisyphean struggle. Except that in this case, Sisyphus is happy.
ties take over, we’ll be fine. A huge part of this meet is just staying calm.” But minutes before the race, as Harkins addressed the team for the last time before the start, Laemel had his face in his hands. He was worried. And it showed in the race. When the starting gun went off, a pack of Harvard, Princeton and Columbia runners surged ahead. Nussbaum and Lunn stuck close to the front but were far off the pace. Goutos, Dooney and Alex Conner ’16 ran behind them. Thwaites, Sandry and Cunetta lagged at the back of the field. Laemel was third from last place. As the race continued, Nussbaum gradually fought his way up to the front. He finished 10th overall out of 89 total athletes, but his was a lonely Yale blue singlet in the lead pack; the rest of the team could not keep up. Conner was second for Yale, at 32nd overall, and Lunn came in 34th. Hillas, at 44th, and Qasim, at 48th, rounded out the scoring for the Elis. Goutos, who had finished second on the team at Wisconsin, Yale’s biggest race before Heps, faded after a strong start to a distant 60th overall. Laemel came in 71st. For the second consecutive year, Yale finished sixth in the Ivy League.
JUSTIFYING
It was a dejected group of men that sat in the grass near the finish line removing their spikes after the race. Lunn knelt and stared into space for almost a minute before shaking his head and bending down to untie his shoes. The team was silent until Harkins walked over, a printout of the race results in hand. This effort, he said forcefully, was beneath the team and its skill level. “You have to give yourselves a chance,” he said. “It’s not that hard. If you quit before the start of the race, it’s over. We had some people do that today. We had some great positives, and this program has a lot of great positives. But I need not just four guys or five guys to buy into it. I need the whole team to buy into the positives of this program going forward. Otherwise we’re going to come back to this goddamn meet next year and be sixth again.” Sitting and kneeling, most of the men looked at the ground or occupied themselves with taking off their spikes. Cheers drifted over from a nearby rugby field. There was one race left in the season: NCAA regional championships, a qualifying event for nationals. But it was Heps that the team had been thinking about all season. Yale had come up short in the one race that mattered most. “If you told me freshman year I would never finish better than 45th at Heps, I wouldn’t do it,” Thwaites told me in an interview two days after the race. “It’s just really hard to justify what we’ve done for the past four years.” After running more miles than anyone on the team since sophomore year, Thwaites expected to turn a corner with his brutal training regimen over the past summer. But after an August injury, the season he envisioned never materialized. His 45th-place finish at Heps came junior year; he slipped to 62nd as a senior. He had spent the past four years with a dream, and to fail both personally and as a team in the pursuit of that dream stung. But as our conversation continued, Thwaites reflected on the positives of his four years. The main takeaway of his experience, he said, would likely be the camaraderie he found in the hours and
hours he had spent with his teammates.
THE PUREST ENDEAVOR
To the members of the team, the experience of running for Yale is not about winning a title. Hosting the Ivy League championship trophy is, of course, a dream. But, Lunn says, the justification for the past four years depends not at all on where the team finishes at Heps. Wearing the Y needs no justification. From the easy runs to the hard workouts, the great performances, the terrible races, the conversations, the injuries, the disappointment, running for Yale is, he says, the “purest endeavor we will ever pursue.” The common pursuit of that endeavor creates a community. The cross country house, on Park Street, is home to almost all the team’s juniors and seniors, a pet rabbit, and the running posters and other accumulated paraphernalia of the years of runners who have passed through it. The house is where the team retreated one night in mid-November when Mory’s closed before they had finished toasting the end of the season. Cups were soon made out of mixing bowls and saucepans, and the stories continued. The friendships that define the house have been forged in hours of conversation on the trails of Maltby. One day, as I ran with Cunetta and Laemel, we spent the second half of our run discussing our romantic lives. Goutos and Thwaites quizzed each other on the material for an upcoming astronomy exam for an entire Monday run while Nussbaum, stuck with them in the group that was going furthest that day, grew increasingly frustrated by the lack of real conversation. Later that week, he spent most of a run breaking down the previous night’s presidential debate. These conversations carry the members of the team through the daily challenge of improving themselves as runners. Running becomes something that they say they cannot imagine living without. Qasim says he has never felt better in his life than at the end of a hard 13-mile run through the pouring rain the day after breaking up with his girlfriend in high school. Sandry says he simply cannot imagine what he would do with his energy if he were not running. “There is just nothing I would rather be doing,” Hillas said over dinner one day, still in his running clothes after staying late at Smilow Field House for an ice bath. This was his first season of cross country after three years at Yale running only middle distance; in the Wisconsin meet five days before this interview, he pushed himself to the point of collapse and was unable to finish. Three weeks before Heps and one week before Wisconsin, on a sunny fall Tuesday, Hillas and Lunn are warming up for a workout. Their route takes them down West Rock Avenue and into Edgewood Park, where a path loops back toward the Yale Bowl. They discuss briefly their upcoming meet in Wisconsin until, somewhere in the trees, conversation breaks off. The two proceed in silence for a dozen meters or so. Then Lunn turns to Hillas and says, “If I were going to die in the next 10 minutes, and I knew I were going to die, all I would want to do is finish this warm-up.” Contact MAX DE LA BRUYÈRE at max.delabruyere@yale.edu .
IF YOU MISSED IT SCORES
QUICK HITS
NBA PLAYOFFS Miami 104 Milwaukee 91
MLB L.A. Dodgers 3 N.Y. Mets 2
MLB Pittsburgh 6 Philadelphia 4
SPORTS
NHL Philadelphia 2 N.Y. Islanders 1
RYAN LAVARNWAY ’09 CALLED UP BY RED SOX The catcher was called up from TripleA Pawtucket on Thursday to join the 25-man roster in Boston after hitting .310 with the PawSox so far in 2013. Lavarnway has played 63 previous games in the MLB and was drafted by the Red Sox in the sixth round in 2008.
JESSE PRITCHARD ’14 AND ERIC CAINE ’14 ELECTED AS TEAM CAPTAINS Pritchard, right, was named captain of the men’s basketball team, getting the nod despite missing 13 games this season due to injury. Caine, a walk-on to the men’s squash team, earned the captaincy after moving from the No. 9 to No. 7 spot this season.
y
NHL N.Y. Rangers 4 Carolina 3
FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE yaledailynews.com/sports
“This year we’ve got the fastest team I have ever seen.” JON MORGAN ’13 CAPTAIN, HWT CREW
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
Yale looks for Out on the trail somewhere Crimson defeat MEN’S CROSS COUNTRY
BY FREDERICK FRANK STAFF REPORTER In its final regular season matchup, the No. 15 men’s lacrosse team will travel to Boston this Saturday to take on archrival Harvard in a battle for a high spot in the Ivy League Tournament.
MEN’S LACROSSE Yale (8-4, 3-2 Ivy) has already secured a No. 2 spot in the tournament, but a win, coupled with a Princeton loss to Cornell, will vault the team into second place and a likely semi-
final matchup against Penn. The Crimson (6-7, 2-3 Ivy) will take the rivalry game all the more seriously as a win on their home turf will knock out Penn, whom they beat in an overtime game earlier this season, and send Harvard to the tournament. The Bulldogs are coming off a controversial 8-7 loss to No. 3 Maryland in which the Elis were denied a last-second gametying goal that appeared to go in the net. While the game will not count in the team’s win column, most of the players said that their performance demonSEE MEN’S LACROSSE PAGE 10
After finishing sixth at Ivy League championships last year, men’s cross country hoped for better this fall. The team races in the second of a two-part series exploring what drives them to compete. MARIA ZEPEDA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Former cross country captain Kevin Lunn ’13, far left, fought off foot troubles in the fall en route to finishing third for Yale at its last four races. BY MAX DE LA BRUYÈRE SENIOR REPORTER The best runners must test the limits because they have no room to pretend. Every time an athlete races around a track, he is subjecting himself to the measurement of the clock and competing, albeit indirectly, against
the entire world. Kevin Lunn ’13 knows exactly how much slower he is than Matthew Nussbaum ’15. Ryan Laemel ’14 knows exactly how much slower he is than Lunn. The clock is always ticking. That is especially true at the distance runners’ practice. There is an obsessive-compulsive nature to their training. A
true distance runner never misses a mile; in order to compete, his training is year-round. He runs through slush and snow, checking off the miles one by one, week by week, in the constant pursuit of lower times. Every day has to be spent in the same manner, give or take a mile or two, for longer than it is easy to imagine. The accumu-
Heavyweight crew enters the home stretch
lation of mileage takes its toll and the tedium wears on the mind. To be a distance runner is to embrace the steady, exhausting, often lonely grind toward the idea of a future race. “You have to maintain a very long-term vision,” said Tim HilSEE CROSS COUNTRY PAGE 11
DIONIS JAHJAGA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
BY ALEX EPPLER STAFF REPORTER After losing its opening regatta of the spring season against Brown, the No. 7 men’s heavyweight crew appears to have hit its stride heading into the home stretch of the season. The squad has won two straight events, including last weekend’s victory at the Blackwell Cup in Philadelphia.
HEAVYWEIGHT CREW But now the team will begin to compete in the events that really matter. After hosting a regatta against Cornell and Princeton this coming weekend, the team will take a short break before competing at the Eastern Sprints on May 19 and then the IRA National SEE HEAVYWEIGHT CREW PAGE 10
STAT OF THE DAY 18
With a Princeton loss, Yale can clinch second place in the Ivy League by beating archrival Harvard.
Elis enter final frame BY CHARLES CONDRO STAFF REPORTER The baseball team is no longer in contention in the Ivy League, but that does not mean the Bulldogs do not have a lot to play for this weekend.
BASEBALL
After winning the Blackwell Cup this past weekend, the Elis will host a regatta against Cornell and Princeton this Saturday.
ALLIE KRAUSE/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Second place in the Red Rolfe division of the Ivy League is on the line this Saturday and Sunday as Yale (9–25, 6–10 Ivy) and Brown (5–28, 3–13) play a home-and-home series. The Elis host the Bears in a doubleheader today, then travel to Providence, R.I. for a twin bill on Saturday to finish out the season. Harvard holds a one-game lead over Yale for second place in the Red Rolfe division, but the Bulldogs still have plenty of opportunity to sneak back into second. “This weekend means a lot,” captain Chris Piwinski ’13 said. “We have a chance to end the season on a strong note and go into the summer feeling pretty good. Also, we could put ourselves in second place on our side and show the potential this team has to be really good in the following years.” The Elis will look to end the season on a winning note against a Brown team that has the worst record in the
Ancient Eight. The Bears rank last among the Ivies with just 99 runs scored this season. On the mound, Brown’s earned run average of 5.83 is second to last in the conference, more than a run and a half higher than Yale’s pitching staff’s 4.16 ERA. Piwinski said the Elis still have to watch out for their own play, rather than focusing on their opponents.
“We are focusing more on what we need to do well rather than the strengths of Brown,” Piwinski said. “We know if we throw strikes and have tough at-bats we will be successful. Definitely need to take advantage when we get runners in scoring position.” SEE BASEBALL PAGE 10
KATHRYN CRANDALL/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Yale will end the season with a pair of doubleheaders against Brown, the team with the worst record in the Ivy League.
NUMBER OF HOME RUNS HIT BY CHRISTY NELSON ’13 DURING HER YALE SOFTBALL CAREER. The mark makes Nelson, who plays third base, the all-time school leader in home runs. Nelson is also fourth in Yale history with 88 RBIs and 33 doubles.