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 · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2013 · VOL. CXXXVI, NO. 10 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
CLOUDY CLOUDY
71 78
CROSS CAMPUS
BREAKFAST SWEET FOODS BUT MISLEADING ADS
ELECTION
TRAFFIC
OH CAPTAIN!
Updates on aldermanic races in Wards 2 and 22 for today’s primary
ORANGE SIGNS PREVENT YOUR POSSIBLE DEATH
From a family of athletes, Beau Palin ’14 to lead the football team this fall
PAGES 6 – 7 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
PAGE 5 CITY
PAGE 3 CITY
PAGE 12 SPORTS
Primary to test candidates
But where have all the squirrels gone? New Haven’s
particularly aggressive breed of squirrels are typically a common sighting during the first few weeks of school. But this year, it appears that far fewer of these furry creatures have been spotted scurrying across Old Campus — and Yalies have noticed. According to Gawker, students are “in uproar over missing campus squirrels,” and one student expressed concerns that administrators may be responsible for the squirrel “genocide.” When contacted, University spokesman Tom Conroy said he had not heard about the rumor and would ask around. Maybe they’re in Bass? A
petting zoo spontaneously sprang up in the Bass Media Center on Monday night. But unlike most petting zoos, this one didn’t feature friendly goats, baby kittens or even tiny lambs. Instead, it offered small, new pieces of media equipment that students could try out on the spot. Not quite the same thing.
Frankly, that’s disgusting.
In an email to Saybrugians on Monday night, Saybrook Master Paul Hudak warned students of “weird, creepy and (frankly) disgusting things” that have been happening in Saybrook’s laundry room. Though Hudak did not specify what those things were, he said it must “stop immediately.” “I can’t imagine why someone would do those things, but it has got to stop,” Hudak added at the end of his email. Society of scholars. Yale
College Dean Mary Miller reminded students of the importance of academic integrity in a Monday email to the Yale community. Miller outlined general guidelines for ensuring compliance with the University’s undergraduate regulations — such as citing all sources for papers, even when paraphrasing — and encouraged students to peruse the Writing Center website for more information about the proper use of sources. Wenzel in the making. Many Yalies have heard of the “Wenzel,” a legendary latenight sandwich for partygoing Yalies. But few know about “Smithy’s Sub,” named after Ward 2 aldermanic candidate Greg Smith. The sandwich, known more colloquially as “Smithy’s,” is reportedly composed of grilled chicken, cheese, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise on garlic bread. Maybe it’s time to add some variety to that Saturday night diet. THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1979 Police report that a female Yale undergraduate was attacked and raped four days earlier while jogging inside Grove Street cemetery on a Thursday afternoon. The incident marked the second time in less than a week that a Yale student had reported being raped. Submit tips to Cross Campus
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Hausladen, Wood vie for Ward 7 BY MATTHEW LLOYD-THOMAS STAFF REPORTER
KATHRYN CRANDALL/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
From left, Toni Harp, Henry Fernandez, Kermit Carolina and Justin Elicker — the four candidates for the mayor’s office. BY DIANA LI AND CAROLINE WRAY STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
NEW HAVEN POLLING PLACES
A months-long race that has featured eight candidates at different stages has come down to four mayoral hopefuls who will square off at the polls in today’s Democratic primary election. State Sen. Toni Harp ARC ’78, Ward 10 Alderman Justin Elicker FES ’10 SOM ’10, former city economic development director Henry Fernandez LAW ’94 and Hillhouse High School Principal Kermit Carolina are vying to replace retiring Mayor John DeStefano Jr. as SEE MAYOR PAGE 4
Polls will be open from 6:00 AM - 8:00 PM
WARD 1, NEW HAVEN LIBRARY, 133 ELM ST. Branford, Berkeley, Calhoun, Davenport, Jonathan Edwards, Pierson, Saybrook, Trumbull, Old Campus and the east side of High Street between Chapel and Crown WARD 2, TROUP SCHOOL, 259 EDGEWOOD AVE. Off-campus, west of York Street and south of Broadway (e.g. Park, Howe, Dwight, Edgewood) WARD 7, HALL OF RECORDS, 200 ORANGE ST. Off-campus, east of York Street and south of Elm Street (e.g. Chapel, west side of High Street between Chapel and Crown, College, Temple) WARD 22, WEXLER GRANT SCHOOL, 55 FOOTE ST. Ezra Stiles, Morse, Silliman, Timothy Dwight and Swing Space
Of the 10 contested primary races to be decided today, the race in Ward 7 between incumbent Doug Hausladen ’04 and Ella Wood ’15 is one of the most contentious. Ward 7, which includes sections of East Rock and much of New Haven’s downtown, is among the most diverse in the city — bringing young urban dwellers, Yale professors and a significant business community into a single district. Because of the competitiveness of the race and the diversity of the ward, it is a bellwether for the rest of the city. Tuesday night’s outcome is likely to provide an indication as to whether the 2011 election, which swept the city’s unions into power, is a singular occurrence or an ongoing trend. It will also provide a measuring stick for the organizing power of both the unions and a new force in Elm City politics, Take Back New Haven, which aims to maintain a diversity of thought on the board. “I have no data to tell me that I’m going to win this election tomorrow,” Hausladen said. “And because of that I’m not going to sleep until polls close at eight o’clock Tuesday night.” Wood, an Ezra Stiles junior from Albuquerque, N.M., began her candidacy in early August within a week of moving into the ward. Prior to moving into her residence on Humphrey Street, she lived a short distance SEE WARD 7 PAGE 4
Sexual misconduct scenarios released BY CYNTHIA HUA STAFF REPORTER In an effort to clarify confusion regarding the University’s disciplinary procedures on sexual misconduct, administrators released three hypothetical cases involv-
ing potential complaints of nonconsensual sex that would result in expulsion in a campus-wide email Monday night. The scenarios are a response to criticism surrounding Yale’s fourth semi-annual report of sexual misconduct complaints,
Faculty hiring yield spikes BY SOPHIE GOULD STAFF REPORTER In an era of budget shortfalls and cuts, the faculty hiring process this year was a little too successful. Over the past few years, Yale has aimed to hire approximately 30 to 35 professors each year in order to keep the size of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences constant at roughly 700 professors. But this hiring cycle, Provost Benjamin Polak said a greater percentage of professors have accepted job offers made over the past year than was expected: 57 new professors will join Yale, and 13 have yet to respond to their offers. While Polak interpreted the high yield as a “good sign” for Yale’s academic reputation, he said the sudden influx of professors will put additional pressure on an already strained budget, causing the University to slow hiring for next year — almost more than ever before. “It was a good year for hiring — frankly, a better year than we expected — but from a planning point of view with the budget, it causes a few problems,” Polak said. “Every silver lining has a cloud.”
In contrast to the 109 searches for new professors that were conducted during the 2012-’13 academic year, only 38 searches are underway this year, and 36 of those are searches that “rolled over” from last year because a job offer was never made, Polak said. Only two new searches have been approved so far this year in the entire Faculty of Arts and Sciences, he said, adding that that figure is “close to an all-time low of new searches.”
It was a good year for hiring — frankly, a better year than we expected — but … with the budget, it causes a few problems.
which detailed all cases of sexual harassment and assault brought to University officials in the first half of the year. Students and alumni have raised concerns that Yale’s punishments for sexual assault are not severe enough and that language about sexual
misconduct used in the report is ambiguous. Of four cases updated in the most recent sexual misconduct report after the UWC found evidence to confirm undergraduate allegations or reports of nonconsensual sex, one resulted in a two-
semester suspension and none led to expulsion. “We’re thinking these scenarios are really good to educate the community,” said Michael Della Rocca, chair of the UWC. “The SEE SCENARIOS PAGE 8
Latin honor cutoffs inch toward 4.0 GRAPH GPA CUTOFFS FOR LATIN HONORS 4.00
3.95
3.96 Summa Cum Laude 3.88
3.90 Magna Cum Laude 3.85
3.80 3.80
Cum Laude
3.75
BENJAMIN POLAK Provost, Yale University Polak said he wanted to continue the incomplete searches from last year despite budget constraints because he does not SEE FACULTY HIRING PAGE 8
BY ADRIAN RODRIGUES STAFF REPORTER The grade cutoff needed to graduate with Yale’s highest level of academic distinction rose slightly for the fourth straight year.
Since 1988, Yale has awarded three levels of Latin honors to the top 30 percent of each graduating class: summa cum laude for the top 5 percent, magna cum laude for the next 10 percent and cum laude for SEE LATIN HONORS PAGE 8
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
OPINION
.COMMENT “Yale leaders are dishonest and cowardly.” yaledailynews.com/opinion
GUEST COLUMNIST ARMANDO GHINAGLIA
Talking immigration A at home L
ast month, President Peter Salovey issued the University’s first public statement in support of comprehensive immigration reform. In an Aug. 6 statement, he noted that “universities have long struggled with an immigration system that does far too little to encourage talented students and scholars to remain in the United States and contribute to our society,” and wrote that “Yale joins the Association of American Universities in applauding the bipartisan group of 68 senators who voted for the bill.” Even as the University continues to expand its influence abroad, Yale stands proud as an American institution. Over the past three centuries, Yale has educated many of this country’s most important leaders, and our alumni range from successful entrepreneurs to American presidents. But less well-known are the handful of students that Yale admits each year from across the country — students who live in the United States, but have never quite felt like they belonged. For years, Yale has accepted these undocumented applicants in full awareness of the impact that they have made and will make on their own families and communities. Admitting undocumented students is a testament to Yale’s commitment to providing a world-class education for the nation’s most highly qualified young people. It’s an affirmation that a liberal arts education should be offered even to those who can’t work legally in the United States. And it’s a recognition that undocumented students will help lead this country in the future. Yet intentionally or not, Yale has often seemed to urge undocumented students to stay quiet on campus, to keep under the radar — to be grateful for their acceptance and hope that everything will turn out fine. Over the last decade, however, millions of undocumented immigrants nationwide have insisted on coming out of the shadows and into the light. They have asked to be recognized and counted, worked to share their stories, and argued for inclusion and greater opportunities. As a poster on the wall at my summer workplace reminded me, “Nothing good has ever come from our silence.” Their efforts have changed our University. In his freshman address, Salovey emphasized that Yale students should live without shame no matter where they come from. He voiced the conviction many immigrants have
felt since arriving on campus. Undocumented students at Yale have known shame intimately. This very shame has driven them to keep their legal status secret from close friends. Undocumented classmates have crafted elaborate stories to explain why they couldn’t join friends on fancy vacations abroad. Many have kept quiet about the crippling stress facing family members caught up in deportation proceedings back home. Excited talk about internships and study abroad programs can serve as a constant, dreaded reminder for undocumented students that they may never live their college years to the fullest, and that their postgraduate job prospects depend on more than grades or the ability to impress prospective employers. If we want to engage with each other honestly, we have to talk more about these and similar issues. For me, the freshman address and Yale’s statement on immigration reform mark the first step toward a newer, more inclusive campus. They emphasize our bounden duty, both as students and as a University, to engage directly with the major issues of our time, even if such engagement brings disagreement or discomfort. We can keep race, class and immigration in the shadows and hope they go away sooner or later, but these topics are not purely academic interests that we can afford to discuss dispassionately, or worse, ignore. They cut to the heart of how we live. As Yale becomes a more globalized institution, it is critical, perhaps even refreshing, to realize that many of the problems confronting the nation around the world are experienced here in New Haven. In this spirit, Salovey’s statement reminds us that immigration reform is urgent not just for faraway “others” with little connection to our dining halls, extracurricular organizations or seminars. He asks us to recall just how involved immigrants have become within this community as students, scholars, workers and neighbors. They include our roommates and their parents, local G-Heav employees, and Yale construction workers. In taking a lead role in the immigration debate, Salovey draws new attention to issues that truly matter to this University, issues that have long concerned the thousands of immigrants at Yale.
'SAS NO MISE' ON 'ORIENTATIONS
SKIP RECENT SEXUAL MISCONDUCT CONTROVERSY'
Don't write that essay
s seniors finalize their schedules, most are considering adding that 490level class, which denotes their intention to complete a senior essay. For several, this will be a fitting ending to their major: a unique chance to do more or less original scholarship, more or less by themselves, in the field to which they have devoted a good part of the last three years. Still, my own feelings about writing a senior essay — and those of many classmates with whom I’ve spoken — are better characterized by resignation and reluctance than enthusiasm. Few seniors I know are so excited as to have already begun work, or even think precisely about what they want to write. Instead, many students write senior essays because they are required, as is the case in the History Department. Others write them because they otherwise won’t be considered for distinction in their major, as in the Economics Department. Still others may write them not out of such overt coercion, but because of a sense — fostered by Yale College — that without a senior essay, they become academically second-class. None of these reasons are inherently bad; wanting a good grade makes most of us work harder than we might other-
wise, and in that process we hopefully learn more. Maybe the external pressure to write a senior thesis forces HARRY many of us to LARSON do something important in Nothing in our academic development Particular that, without such pressure, we would not have done. But is the senior essay so important to our development that it should be encouraged and coerced out of us? I doubt it. The usual argument for the senior essay revolves around its status as the primary opportunity for an undergraduate to engage in “original scholarship.” Many act as if this alone is sufficient justification. Some, indeed, argue no student should graduate without producing a piece of self-directed academic research. But the senior essay isn’t just a research project; it is a replica in miniature of the same kind (if not caliber) of work graduate students and professors regularly produce. We are frequently told that part of the value of Yale College, or a liberal arts education more generally, is learning for learn-
ing’s sake. Rather than practice particular skills necessary for a particular vocation, we ask questions and seek answers that equip us to be better-rounded people. Given the promise of such a model to eschew vocational training, why should its culminating event be an intensive immersion in academic research, as close as possible to how it is professionally practiced? For that is what the senior essay is really about — more important than any particular topic is the academic research method employed. Of course, some might argue that academia is different from other vocations in that it uniquely prioritizes inquiry for inquiry’s sake. This point is debatable; curiosity exists outside of the academy, and other motivations may drive research within it. Regardless, the rest of our undergraduate education is predicated around the notion that we can pursue inquiry without a specific methodological tool set. In most other Yale courses, when we write an English essay, we’re not really aiming to duplicate English scholarship, much of which deals with the history behind texts. Rather, we seek to engage with the ideas in a text while improving our ability to discuss such ideas in writing. Studying economics and physics in college isn’t about training
to be an economist or physicist so much as it is about understanding the basics of certain mechanisms by which the world works. The senior essay therefore constitutes an anomalous part of the Yale undergraduate experience, one that contradicts its own premises. It has been and continues to be a formative learning experience for some students, but the same might be said of arts projects or business and political experiences or travel or reading that aren’t privileged with a special status by Yale College, but could equally well serve as a capstone to a successful Yale career. In the longer term, Yale should begin a conversation about the sort of work that may conclude four years of undergraduate study; there may be other experiences and projects, beyond writing in the style of an academic journal, that deserve the College’s recognition. In the short term, departments should eliminate requirements that senior essays be submitted in order to complete a major or to gain distinction, as undergraduate success should not revolve around what is essentially an academic apprenticeship. HARRY LARSON is a senior in Jonathan Edwards College. Contact him at harry.larson@yale.edu .
GUEST COLUMNIST WILL KRONICK
Listening to survivors of sexual violence W
e are correct to condemn sexual violence on this campus. It’s something that should have no place at Yale University or any other college nationwide. Nonconsensual sex transforms an act that embodies the highest form of human intimacy into one of human attack. For those subjected to sexual violence, it is a catastrophic, not tragic, event. The only lesson learned by survivors is our species’s ability to hurl cruelty upon its own kind. Before I continue, I must reveal my own bias as a former communication and consent educator. This background certainly colors my view of sexual misconduct and of Yale’s attempt to fight it. But some on this campus believe our problems stem from a lack of transparency in our disciplinary procedures. If a student wants to learn about the membership or the function of the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct, they should visit its website. Communication and consent educators have given the
ARMANDO GHINAGLIA is a senior in Ezra Stiles College. Contact him at armando.ghinaglia@yale.edu .
past two classes of freshmen a pamphlet with the website and information about sexual misconduct resources at Yale. The website explains how a student may file a complaint and what the process will look like. The website is easily available by simply searching “UniversityWide Committee Yale.” The University uses a caseby-case basis not to leave procedures undefined, but rather to give complainants flexibility in the conduct of the report process. An excess of transparency in fact harms the reporting process by making it more difficult for the survivor — possibly preventing them from feeling comfortable in making a report. Transparency, as a greater principle, has limits. The University can only release so much information before it injures the survivors that it is charged to protect. Preferred expulsion, advocated by many and adopted most notably on Duke University’s campus, is another step that might make survivors less likely to come forward.
Preferring expulsion is misguided because it straitjackets the complainant’s options. Barring cases of community danger, the wishes of the complainant ought to be respected. A few friends who talked to me about their experience with sexual violence did not want the expulsion of the attacker. When survivors come forward, they often hope to find the remedy they imagine to be just and fair for their situation. But mandatory responses could force survivors into a potentially unwanted outcome, and therefore could make a survivor less likely to report an instance of sexual violence. Responsiveness to survivor needs and wants, not mandatory punishments, should be the guiding principle in the remedy process. For survivors who wish to have their attacker expelled, Yale should zealously pursue expulsion. But because some complainants want a different remedy, the case-by-case method of disciplinary action must be retained. The report system must be survivor-directed. Survivor-driven response is
essential because it encourages the largest number of people to make reports of sexual violence. We have all heard the facts about sexual misconduct on college campuses. Many more survivors exist than those who report instances of sexual misconduct. Mandatory punishments will only narrow the pool of reports. We also know that deterrence does not work. Prohibition did not end drinking, and expulsion alone will not end rape culture. Instead of attacking our administrators, we must work with them to create a community of mutual respect. We can do this by policing ourselves. When you see a friend too drunk to walk, take him home. When you see someone acting too aggressively, say something. Yale’s administration can only do so much. Students, too, must commit to ending the cruelty we inflict and allow to be inflicted on our brothers and sisters at our beloved University. WILL KRONICK is a senior in Silliman College. Contact him at william.kronick@yale.edu .
GUEST COLUMNIST JOSEF GOODMAN
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COPYRIGHT 2013 — VOL. CXXXVI, NO. 10
N
ew Haven is at a crossroads. Today the Democrats of New Haven will nominate for mayor someone who is not John DeStefano Jr. for the first time in 20 years. This means less to us Yalies, as many of us were registered in other states until recently, and few of us will remain in New Haven for more than four years. But Yale will always be in New Haven. What is good for New Haven is good for Yale — and today, what is good for New Haven is a victory by Toni Harp ARC ’78. She is the only candidate who has the experience, the relationships and the ability to build the coalitions that will move New Haven forward. There are four candidates still in the race. Kermit Carolina’s claim to fame — running Hillhouse High School — is tarnished by the grade-tampering scandal under his administration. Henry Fernandez LAW '94 is New Haven’s former economic development czar, who like the czars of the Romanov dynasty, managed to alienate everyone except his closest cronies. Fernandez’s record is a trail of pay-to-play developments and broken relationships. That leaves Justin Elicker FES
'10 SOM '10 and Harp. Elicker has good ideas. But we need more than ideas. What moves New Haven forward are relationships and trust, not sterile policy imposed from above. An Elicker administration would soon find its ideas dashed on the rocks of reality, as he discovers that the same aldermen with whom he failed miserably to build relationships during his first two terms are now his negotiating partners. Without a substantial record as an alderman, and a campaign that has failed to connect with New Haven voters outside of the affluent East Rock and Westville neighborhoods (with zero donors from Dixwell or the Hill in his latest filing), Elicker is the wrong choice for this city. Vote for Elicker if you think that all a mayor needs to be good is a few good ideas. Vote for Harp if you know that a good mayor needs a lot more than that. Harp is not just about ideas and talk. She’s about results. For the past 20 years, she has been fighting for the people of New Haven, and she has a track record by which voters can judge her. Among her top priorities is public safety — making our streets safe for everyone who
lives in New Haven. As an alderman, Harp introduced community-based policing back in 1989. Unless you’ve taken a few years off, or you’re on the hockey team, or you’re an Eli Whitney student, you probably weren’t even born when Harp pioneered community policy. Now she proposes reemphasizing its original “community-based” element and holding everyone, from the mayor, to the police chief, to the newest police officer, to ordinary neighborhood residents, accountable for helping to implement it. Public safety is only one prong of Harp’s plan to make our city stronger. The other two are education and economic development. Obviously, the three are linked. A high-quality education is a prerequisite for a job in our modern “knowledge-based economy,” and an employed person is much less likely to resort to crime. Harp has already has successes on both fronts — bringing Alexion Pharmaceuticals to New Haven, for example, and preserving afterschool programs. Her proposals for the future are even more exciting. She will turn the currently wasted New Haven waterfront into a major mixed-use develop-
ment. She will ensure early childhood education for all students, combating the achievement gap. She will support minority and female-owned businesses, and bring “mobile city halls” to underserved neighborhoods. The key difference between Harp and the other candidates is not just the quality of her ideas — though her ideas are better and more New Haven-relevant — but the fact that she’ll be able to implement her ideas. Toni will take office this January with 25 years with of strong relationships with figures at every level, from the community activist on the street to Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, including figures at the local, regional and state levels as well. Remember the promise of Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, and the eventual disappointment as so many of his policies have languished in Congress? That will not be Harp’s fate. If you care about the future of Yale or the future of New Haven (hint: they’re the same thing), you should vote for Toni Harp today. JOSEF GOODMAN is a senior in Morse College. Contact him at josef.goodman@yale.edu .
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
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Really, the role of the freshman adviser is to help the freshmen explore and give them permission, maybe, to challenge their perception of themselves. RISA SODI GRD ’95 Director of academic advising, Yale University Shikha Garg ’15 said she only saw her freshman adviser once, to sign her schedule. But Walter Hsiang ’15 said his adviser helped connect him to another faculty member with whom he now works, adding that he met with his advisers multiple times throughout the year. Still, Hsiang acknowledged that students have vastly different experiences with advising. “The structure of advising is really hit-or-miss,” Hsiang said. “You could get someone really dedicated, but they could also be too busy.” Several current freshmen interviewed said they would be more likely to turn to other sources of guidance beyond their freshman advisers, such as freshman counselors and older friends. Emma Fredwall ’17 said her first instinct when she has a question about freshman year is to ask upperclassman friends. “I think it makes more sense to go to talk to those whom you can really relate to, rather than someone who has been assigned to you,” Fredwall said. Contact JANE DARBY MENTON at jane.menton@yale.edu .
Campaign aims to up street safety BR
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WALL ST.
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Students walking out of Old Campus Monday were greeted by fluorescent orange messages spray-painted on the sidewalk at the intersection of Elm and High streets. With all-caps slogans like “Don’t read this. Look up!” and “Look both ways before crossing,” the warning messages sit on the sidewalks of several campus intersections as part of the Pedestrian Safety Campaign launched by the Yale Traffic Safety Committee. Collaborating with the University administration and the city of New Haven to improve pedestrian safety on campus, the committee put up posters and stenciled brightly lettered warnings at six major intersections — Elm and High, Chapel and York, Elm and College, Elm and York, Wall and Temple, and Chapel and College — in an effort to alert distracted pedestrians as they navigate the high-traffic streets around Yale’s central campus. “Up to 25 percent of people crossing the streets in New Haven are texting, talking on the phone or listening to music,” said Kirsten Bechtel, associate professor of pediatrics and chair of the Committee. “These signs are meant to remind people to look up and be vigilant as they cross the street.” The campaign is the result of a campus-wide survey developed by the committee last spring to collect information on areas that are difficult to navigate or in need of repair, Bechtel said. More than 720 members of the Yale community — including undergraduate and graduate students, professors and staff members — responded to the survey, voicing their concerns over aggressive drivers, dangerous pedestrian crossings and unsafe intersections. According to the survey results, areas identified as most concerning were the intersections between Temple and Wall, College and Wall, College and Grove, Elm Street and Cross Campus, and York Street and South Frontage Road. The Yale Traffic Committee used the findings of the survey to launch “a graphic design campaign” to highlight the areas perceived as most troubling by students and professors, Bechtel said. The stencils for the campaign, she added, were designed by Jay Shells, a New York City-based artist who attracted media attention earlier this year after he installed faux street signs emblazoned with hip-hop lyrics at several locations throughout the Big Apple. The signs themselves are expected to wear out within two or three months. Bechtel added that the Yale Traffic Safety Committee collaborated with the city’s Department of Transportation, Traffic and Parking to roll out the campaign, a partnership that originated after a series of fatal traffic accidents hit the Elm City in recent years, including the death of Mila Rainof MED ’08, who was struck and killed by a car while crossing the intersection between South Frontage Road and York Street. Building on the momentum of these high-profile incidents, the city passed an ordinance in September 2010 to create “Street Smarts,” a campaign that aims at promoting traffic awareness and safety among pedestrians, motorists and cyclists. “We recognized that we can’t rebuild every single road in the city,” said Jim
MAP NEW CROSSING SIGNS
COLLEGE ST.
BY DANIEL GIRALDO AND LORENZO LIGATO CONTRIBUTING REPORTER AND STAFF REPORTER
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As shopping period comes to a close, students across campus trek up Science Hill and wander the labyrinthine corridors of the Hall of Graduate Studies to find their academic advisers. But for freshmen, the advising experience can come with far greater hurdles. Before classes start, all freshmen are assigned to academic advisers who are tasked with advising and signing their schedules. Yale College Dean Mary Miller said residential college deans and masters solicit and train these advisers and assign them to small groups of students within each college. Though all advisers have access to a freshman advising website and handbook, disparities among individual residential college advising practices have prompted some students to raise concerns over academic guidance in the freshman year. “How to make advising better in Yale College has remained a longstanding concern,” Miller said. “But at the same time, individual freshman advising by faculty members has long been a process organized inside the residential colleges.” Risa Sodi GRD ’95, who became Yale’s first director of academic advising in August, said residential colleges have anywhere from 30 to 60 designated freshman academic advisers, and advising groups range in size from one student to five. Branford Master Betsy Bradley GRD ’96 said her college has approximately 25 freshman faculty advisers who take on four students each, while Pierson Master Stephen Davis GRD ’98 said his college had over 50 faculty advisers last year, each overseeing only two students. Sodi said she thinks her new position will provide a central resource for the many dispersed advising systems in Yale College. Sodi said that she has spent her first month on the job familiarizing herself with the existing advising structures to identify areas in which the University can improve. “I really want to get to know people better, to do a bit of a listening tour, to take in ideas from advisers and deans, faculty members and freshmen,” Sodi said. “Where do they see us going? What would they like to see happen?” Julia Kim-Cohen, who has served as a freshman faculty adviser in Davenport, said different students expect different levels of involvement from their advisers. Though Kim-Cohen said she meets with all her advi-
sees twice a semester, she said some students seek her out for additional help, while others prefer a more hands-off approach. Sodi, a longtime freshman adviser in Timothy Dwight College, said advisers often come from fields outside students’ expressed area of interest, and provide general guidance and encourage students to spend their freshman year trying new things. “Really, the role of the freshman adviser is to help the freshmen explore and give them permission, maybe, to challenge their perception of themselves,” Sodi said. “We really want to instill a dialogue between a student and adult about that student’s academic career.” Students i n te rv i ewe d expressed mixed opinions about the freshman advising system.
The campaign, launched by the Yale Traffic Safety Committee, is intent on improving pedestrian safety on campus, and the committee has placed several safety signs and slogans on six of New Haven’s major intersections.
YORK ST.
Faculty advising a mixed bag BY JANE DARBY MENTON STAFF REPORTER
Number of intersections involved in the Pedestrian Safety Campaign
MARIA ZEPEDA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Signs such as the one above have been placed on six of New Haven’s major intersections as a part of the Pedestrian Safety Campaign, launched by the Yale Traffic Safety Committee. Travers, director of the city’s Department of Transportation, Traffic and Parking. He praised the Yale Traffic Safety Committee’s efforts to educate and change the mindset of pedestrians, bikers and drivers in the area through the orange warning signs. “We live in a society where we are constantly multitasking,” Travers said. “With this campaign, we’re asking people to slow down, have patience and be safe.” Earlier this summer, members of the Committee stenciled orange warning messages around the Yale School of Medicine, Bechtel said. The signs have been favorably received by members of the medical school, prompting the Traffic Safety Committee to extend the stenciling to other intersections closer to Yale’s central campus. Seven out of 10 students interviewed expressed approval for the campaign, although some had not noticed the signs installed at the six intersections. For Seth McNay ’17, the orange warning messages are a “creative” way to remind pedestrians to remain vigilant as they navigate the campus streets. Lauren Blonde ’16 said she is “a huge fan” of the orange signs spray-painted on the side-
walks, adding that these messages are important not only to generate awareness among pedestrians but also to ignite discussion over traffic safety. “As someone who both walks and drives through downtown New Haven regularly, I think pedestrian traffic control is necessary for both the people walking and the people driving,” Blonde said. “We get easily distracted when we’re walking, and too often I see people get pulled back onto the sidewalk after nearly getting into an accident.” But other students appeared skeptical of the orange signs’ ability to improve pedestrian safety on campus, noting that the fast-paced rhythms of life at Yale override safety concerns. “All I know is I have class in five minutes and I’m still going to jaywalk,” Julien Ham-Ying ’17 said. Every year, approximately 100 New Haven adults are injured after being struck by a car, according to data released by the University’s Traffic Safety Committee. Contact DANIEL GIRALDO at william.giraldo@yale.edu . Contact LORENZO LIGATO at lorenzo.ligato@yale.edu .
Local school to become community arts center BY ERIC XIAO STAFF REPORTER On Grand Avenue in Fair Haven, an unoccupied school building is undergoing a transformation into a new home for New Haven’s local arts scene. The Strong Performing Arts Center, or SPACe, is an initiative led by Lee Cruz of the Chatham Square Neighborhood Association to convert the former Strong School building in Fair Haven into a venue for community arts performances, exhibitions and education. In addition to common spaces that can feature work by any tenant, the building will be occupied by various community arts organizations and businesses. The project has progressed significantly in the past few months, with the most recent development being an environmental study conducted on the building and submitted to the city for review at the end of August. “This is a relatively poor neighborhood in New Haven that is looking to lift itself up by creating an economic engine that also serves the social good,” Cruz said. Cruz explained that SPACe will have a sustainable business model in which revenues
from the building’s occupants will cover its operating costs in addition to paying for a building administrator. He added that the only outside funding the group is applying for will go toward bringing the facility up to certain standards, which necessitate the installation of handicap-accessible ramps and bathrooms among other features. Anika Singh Lemar ’01, a visiting professor at Yale Law School who represents the Chatham Square Neighborhood Association in the project, said the association has conducted a careful analysis of project costs and has shown its viability effectively. Cruz said that in its consideration of whether to grant approval for the project, the Board of Aldermen requires an economically sustainable building plan. “If I said that I needed 80 or 90 percent of the building to be rented out at all times to cover the cost, it would not be considered a reasonable business plan,” Cruz said, explaining that it is standard to expect only 70 percent of the building to be rented out at any given time. Cruz, along with several other members of the Chatham Square Neighborhood Association, first presented the idea for the proj-
ect at an annual association meeting held in January 2012. Since this May, the initiative has begun obtaining approval from the Board of Aldermen and in receiving support from the community. In July, mayoral candidate and Ward 1 Alderman Justin Elicker FES ’10 SOM ’10 expressed his support for the project at an arts forum that hosted a discussion with the five candidates about the New Haven arts scene. In the past few weeks, the Yale Law School Community and Economic Development Clinic have agreed to represent the Chatham Square Neighborhood Association in the project, and the group submitted an environmental study on the building to the city. Cruz said that while he is not familiar with the small details of the study, the report did not identify any obvious problems with the building. “For a building built in 1915, it is in remarkable shape,” Cruz noted. The construction of SPACe may also lead to new possibilities for the arts at Yale. Lisa Kereszi ART ’00, the director of undergraduate studies for Art, said she has always encouraged her photography students to explore the Fair Haven area for its post-industrial architecture
CREATIVE COMMONS
The Strong Performing Arts Center will see its new home in an unoccupied school building in Fair Haven. and multicultural environment. She added that though she cannot officially guarantee the University’s participation to SPACe, she hopes students will be able to rent studios and stage productions at the site in the future. “There has been talk of try-
ing to expand and find alternative space for our shows and for students to work,” Kereszi said. “I could see an art class putting on a show over there … or maybe a theater student could put on a production using actors from the neighborhood.”
The Strong School’s new location is on Orchard Street at the site of the former Vincent Mauro School. Contact ERIC XIAO at eric.xiao@yale.edu .
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
ELECTION
“Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.” PETER DRUCKER AUSTRIAN AUTHOR
Mayoral hopefuls seek DeStefano’s seat MAYOR FROM PAGE 1 he steps down from the seat he held for two decades. With the endorsements of the New Haven Democratic Town Committee, Gov. Dannel Malloy, Sen. Chris Murphy, a majority of the Board of Aldermen and the University’s politically powerful labor unions, Harp is largely seen as Tuesday’s frontrunner. Before DeStefano announced he would step down in January, New Haven’s longest-serving mayor faced two opponents for his potential re-election: plumber Sundiata Keitazulu, who began his campaign in November, and Elicker, who declared a week before DeStefano’s announcement. With DeStefano out of the race, a barrage of new campaigns emerged: Connecticut Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield entered the race in early February, Fernandez at the end of March, President and CEO of Connecticut Technology Council Matthew Nemerson in mid-April and Harp and Carolina in late April. But as the field thickened, some candidates dropped out. Holder-Winfield and Nemerson left the race at the end of June, and Keitazulu decided to do so in early August. All three threw their support behind Harp.
Over the course of almost 20 debates, the candidates have fleshed out their views on a number of issues. The Democracy Fund, New Haven’s public campaign finance program, has emphasized the question of where candidates recieve their funding. Elicker and Carolina opted to use the Fund, which limits their maximum donations to $370 — as opposed to the $1000 limit Harp and Fernandez face — and prohibits them from accepting donations from political action committees and special interest groups. Elicker and Carolina have accused those opting out of the Democracy Fund as participating in “pay-to-play” politics — with lobbyists receiving favors from city government — while Harp has argued that the Fund is a flawed system that misuses city resources. Though Fernandez agrees that the Fund may theoretically be a good idea, he said he knew that the city’s unions would run a candidate who could raise large amounts of money, and he had to opt out of the Fund to combat that candidate. Campaign contributions also highlight the divide in the candidate field: While 22 percent of Harp’s donations and 23 per-
cent of Fernandez’s donations have come from inside the Elm City, Carolina and Elicker have received 74 and 79 percent of their donations from within New Haven, respectively.
[Justin Elicker’s] … the only candidate who has taken his donations from within the city. FISH STARK ’17 Should Elicker, Carolina or Fernandez lose the primary election, all three have collected enough signatures to run in the general election, which they have treated as a runoff election due to the city’s large number of Independent and unaffiliated voters. Harp, though, has bet her candidacy against a victory today — having not filed the necessary paperwork, Harp cannot run again in November should she lose in the primay. All four candidates have largely agreed on a number of priorities for the city, including making New Haven more fiscally responsible, continuing school reform and maintaining the philosophy of community policing.
Each politician has also spoken about the need to give more jobs to New Haven residents and to build upon the partnership between Yale and the city. As the candidates generally agree on where the city should focus its efforts, the race has occasionally devolved into personality clashes as the candidates have attempted to set themselves apart. This past week, Harp accused Elicker of saying he would close the Morris Cove Fire Station, while Elicker responded by saying the accusation was a lie. Harp has prided herself on her decades of service in the state legislature and consistently points to her experience as a reason to prefer her candidacy. “I’ve been in the Senate for the past 20 years and have worked really hard to ensure that we have the resources that we need in our city to make it as successful as possible,” Harp told the News when she announced her candidacy. Carolina often references his education and administrative work at Hillhouse High School, and he has consistently presented himself as the only candidate to have been born and grown up in New Haven. In his attempt to show his independence from special inter-
est groups, Carolina withdrew his name from consideration by Yale’s unions during their endorsement process. “Looking at the contributions, we need to look at those who are interested in doing business in the city and giving large contributions. They’re not just giving them because they’re kind people — I hope we have enough common sense to understand that they want something back,” Carolina said at last week’s mayoral debate. “It’s a quid pro quo approach here.” Like Carolina, Elicker has presented himself as an independent candidate who is not beholden to special interests or PAC money. Elicker has said he is willing to take controversial stances on issues such as renegotiating pension contracts and tax policies. Fernandez, who co-founded LEAP, a youth programming organization, served in the DeStefano administration to help clean up corruption in the anti-blight Livable City Initiative. With the return of Yale students at the end of August, the campaigns have started to focus more of their efforts on getting students behind their candidates. After reviewing the var-
ious candidates’ profiles, Fish Stark ’17 chose to back Elicker, citing Elicker’s platform of government transparency and clean energy. “He’s … the only candidate who has taken his donations from within the city and not reached to big-name donors outside, setting him outside of pay-for-play politics,” said Stark, who spent Monday making last-minute phone calls late into the night and woke up at 5 a.m. this morning to work as a poll-checker. Many freshmen, however, are largely uninformed about the election, having only lived in New Haven for a few weeks. Even though she is not opposed to learning more about New Haven politics, Sara Lee ’17 said she “is just trying to get settled in right now.” Other students h a ve expressed distaste and even frustration toward the vigor of some student campaigners. Michaela Macdonald ’17 called such campaigners “extremely annoying,” and found their work on campus “uninformative.” Polls close at 8 p.m. Contact DIANA LI at diana.li@yale.edu . Contact CAROLINE WRAY at caroline.wray@yale.edu .
Yale student challenges Ward 7 incumbent WARD 7 FROM PAGE 1 away in Ward 2. The 2008 Obama presidential campaign served as Wood’s first experience with politics. After coming to Yale in the fall of 2011, Wood involved herself with Students Unite Now, an affiliate of UNITE HERE, which includes Yale unions Local 34 and Local 35 and is the largest organized labor force in the city. During the past summer, Wood worked at UNITE HERE and advocated for New Haven Works and New Haven Rising, two projects that emerged from the labor-backed coalition of 20 aldermen on the board. The association has led many to tie Wood’s candidacy to UNITE HERE, although both Wood and union leadership deny that she ran at the behest of the unions. Wood initiated her run about six weeks after Hausladen formed Take Back New Haven, a slate of candidates dedicated to countering the labor-backed “supermajority” on the board. “I personally think very highly of her, but nobody in that race got our endorsement,” Local 34 President Laurie Kennington said. The two candidates contrasted their visions for the ward and the city in a debate Thursday night. Attended by about 60 residents of the ward, Hausladen made extensive use of his intricate knowledge of the ward, noting the names of panhandlers in the ward and examples of small but specific improvements he
has brought about in the neighborhoods. Hausladen’s two-year aldermanic record has endeared him to many in the ward, including Ward 7 Co-Chair Alberta Witherspoon. The co-chair cited Hausladen’s leadership in fixing crosswalks along Audobon Street as an example of his commitment to prioritizing Ward 7 constituents. Witherspoon articulated the difference between Hausladen and Wood not as one based on union affiliated, but rather familiarity of the ward.
Doug supports the unions. My co-chair and I support the unions. I used to be in the unions. ALBERTA WITHERSPOON Ward 7 Co-Chair “Doug supports the unions. My co-chair and I support the unions. I used to be in the unions,” Witherspoon said, but went on to emphasize that Wood has at best a cursory knowledge of the ward. “I’ve been here for years and there are things that I’m still learning.” Hausladen said that although the outcome of the race is uncertain, his campaign has identified hundreds of supporters in the ward, all of whom they plan to contact during today’s “get out the vote” effort. Although
ALEX SCHMELING/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Doug Hausladen ’04 and Ella Wood ’15 sat down for a debate Thursday to discuss their campaigns for Ward 7 Alderman. only about 350 Ward 7 residents voted in the last aldermanic election, Hausladen suggested that the mayoral race might bring as many as 800 or 900 to the polls. Wood also said that supporters would knock on the doors of potential voters throughout the day Tuesday, but was unable to say how many volunteers she expected. Despite her union ties, Wood’s campaign staff will be separate from union campaign staff. “We’re going to have a strong
team of people out in the field. I’ll be at the polls the whole day,” Wood said. “We’ll be bringing people in down to the very last minute.” Across the city, nine other wards — 2, 8, 11, 14, 19, 20, 22, 26 and 27 — will have contested aldermanic races on today’s ballots. Three of those races include candidates affiliated with Take Back New Haven: Greg Smith in Ward 2, Peter Webster in Ward 8 and Patty DePalma in Ward 11. Anna Festa, who is running
unopposed in the Ward 10 primary, and Mike Stratton, who is running in Ward 19, were previously part of the group but have since left. In eight of the nine contested races, candidates have filed petitions to run as Independents should they lose in the primary. The practice mirrors that of the three mayoral candidates — Elicker, Fernandez and Carolina — who have vowed to fight on in if they are defeated today. Of the 30 current members of
the board, five chose not to seek re-election, including Ward 10 Alderman Justin Elicker FES ’10 SOM ’10. In addition, Republicans will contest the aldermanic races in wards 1, 6, 8 and 10 during November’s general election. Slightly over 4,500 Elm City residents live in Ward 7, of whom 1,700 are registered democrats. Contact MATTHEW LLOYD-THOMAS at matthew.lloyd-thomas@yale.edu .
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE 5
ELECTION
Alderman The word “alderman” is derived from the Old English word, “ealdorman.” This phrase referred to “elder men” — chief nobles who would preside over shires. An alderman now is a member of a municipal assembly or council who advocates for the interests of his or her district or ward. New Haven’s Board of Aldermen superivse the 30 separate wards that divide the city. It is comprised of one member per ward.
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Ward 2 race hinges on Yale, unions BY DAVID BLUMENTHAL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Even outside Yale-encompassing Ward 1, students will be a crucial voting bloc in today’s Democratic primary, including in neighboring Ward 2. Incumbent Ward 2 Alderman Frank Douglass is facing a challenge from Greg Smith for office in the ward largely comprised of the Dwight neighborhood west of campus and home to many students who live off campus on Park, Lynnwood, Howe and Dwight streets. Yet both candidates’ interest in courting the Yale vote and their views on issues directly and indirectly related to Yale University differ sharply. While Smith has kept a relative distance from the University and its voter base in the ward, Douglass’ ties with Yale run deeper. Douglass has worked at Yale for over 20 years, currently as a maintenance worker and previously as a chef in Trumbull’s dining hall. Bassel Habbab ’14, a Douglass volunteer, said that Douglass’ long-time relationship with Yale is an advantage. “Frank is uniquely situated to represent Ward 2 because he has relationships with Yale and its students,” Habbab said. “At the same time, like the majority of Ward 2 residents, he also works full-time to earn a living in New Haven.” Habbab estimated that 10 to 12 Elis are currently volunteering in some form on Douglass’ campaign. While the number of Yalie’s on Smith’s volunteer staff is not as high, Smith said he had one Yale student — whose name he chose not to reveal due to privacy concerns — working as his campaign manager. Smith sees Douglass’ affiliation with the University in a very different light, suggesting that “to work for Yale and be
in a union there” as an alderman might be “kind of a conflict of interest.” Douglass’ backing of the one-time $3 million sale of High and Wall Streets to Yale was, to Smith, an example of the incumbent alderman’s ties to powerful interests. The challenger also pointed out that 64 percent of New Haven residents had opposed the sale, and that the city could have extracted more money from its largest employer and taxpayer.
Frank is uniquely situated to represent Ward 2 because he has relationships with Yale and its students. BASSEL HABBAB ’14 Frank Douglass campaign volunteer “Those streets are worth a lot more than $3 million, I’m sure,” Smith said. “I believe that that agreement should have been renegotiated. The city is already in dire straits in relation to money.” Last week, Douglass said that the deal was good for the city. “[Yale] paid a few million dollars and they’re going to continue to pay us for it,” he said, although the terms of the deal do not require any additional payments by the University. “It’s not like they’re going to sell it to McDonald’s or something. People should concentrate on the streets that are occupied by drug dealers, not the streets occupied by Yale University.” Yale is not the only local organization that Smith hopes to use as a foil toward a victory. Douglass’ status as a unionbacked alderman, in particular his con-
nection to Yale’s employee unions Locals 34 and 35, has also become a poignant part of Smith’s campaign rhetoric. The slate of four candidates to which Smith belongs, known as “Take Back New Haven,” seeks to neutralize the powerful political force these two employee unions have become in City Hall. But Smith emphasized that he was not anti-union, having been a union member himself in a previous job. “For me, it’s about not having a supermajority of 20 aldermen make all of the decisions for the community,” Smith said. Habbab disagreed that this was an appropriate paradigm for picking New Haven’s future leaders. “Someone who criticizes others for belonging to a union — that says more about the critic than the criticized,” he said. “There is nothing wrong [with belonging to a union].” Regardless of its result, the election may be remembered for its record student involvement and participation. According to Douglass volunteer Nick Levine ’14, 95 students have joined the Ward 2 voting rolls this election cycle — which he said might result in the highest number of Yale students registered in the ward “in recent memory.” Levine also dismissed the prospect of anti-Yale sentiment in Ward 2 heavily influencing the election’s outcome. “The only real anti-Yale sentiment I heard about from people in Ward 2 was from Greg Smith, to be honest,” he said. Ward 2 residents can vote at Troup Magnet School at 259 Edgewood Ave. Polls close at 8 p.m. Contact DAVID BLUMENTHAL at david.blumenthal@yale.edu .
Ward 22 sees 3-way contest BY ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER STAFF REPORTER In an election season rife with competition, the race for the Ward 22 seat on the New Haven Board of Aldermen is no exception. Three candidates are running to represent the ward, which comprises the Dixwell neighborhood and a swath of Yale’s campus, including Swing Space and four of the 12 residential colleges: Ezra Stiles, Morse, Silliman and Timothy Dwight. Central to the task of the Ward 22 alderman is articulating a dual message to constituents, half of whom are undergraduates and half of whom are some of the most economically disadvantaged residents in the city. Incumbent Alderman Jeanette Morrison said she has the vision to unite the ward. One of her principal triumphs in her first term, she said, was provoking Yale students and their neighbors in Dixwell to see their common aims. “One of my main goals is to continue to bridge the gap between the permanent resident side and the student and faculty side of the ward,” Morrison said. “Progress has definitely been made.” She cited Yale students’ attendance at a number of Dixwell cleanup days she held last spring as evidence of collaboration among her diverse constituents. Morrison squares off in today’s Democratic primary against two challengers: Helen Powell and Cordelia Thorpe, both Dixwell residents. Powell is a retired staffer in the New Haven Registrar of Voters and a longtime Dixwell activist. Thorpe, a former state Department of Corrections employee, has run unsuccessfully in every Ward 22 aldermanic election since 2005. Morrison grew up in the adjacent neighborhood of Newhallville but has lived in Dixwell for the past 20 years. She was elected in 2011 as part of a slate of union-backed aldermanic candidates who won all but one of 18 races in which Yale’s Unite Here Locals 34 and 35 had either recruited or backed a candidate. Morrison maintains strong ties with that slate of candidates, including Ward 1 Alderman Sarah Eidelson ’12, and also received the endorsement of the Democratic Town Committee, the city’s arm of the Democratic party, over the summer. Morrison said it is her relationships with other lawmakers on the Board — and with University affiliates — that distinguishes her candidacy. “With good relationships, you’re able to move an agenda,” she said. All three contenders emphasize their deep roots in the Dixwell neighborhood and cite reopening the shuttered Dixwell Community “Q” House as among their top priorities. The Q House shut its doors in 2003 after serving as a hub for
youth services and community gatherings at 179 Dixwell Ave. for over 75 years. Local efforts to reopen the community center, ongoing since 2004, have figured prominently in campaign promises but have gained little traction. Morrison said she was part of a team of aldermen who recently prompted the city to conduct a feasibility study for the building and hire a consultant to consider options for renewed use. Powell said she remembers attending the Q House as a kid growing up in Dixwell. If elected, she said, she also hopes to help foster neighborhood block watches, job training and more youth activity. She said she has never interacted with Morrison and could not speak poorly of her because she is unfamiliar with Morrison’s activities on the Board. Powell said she hopes to involve Yale students more in the surrounding neighborhood by having them “help seniors go grocery shopping or go to the gym with them.” “The Yale students — I have no problem with them,” she said. “We could get a tutoring program going or they could also help the young people read.” At a question-and-answer session at Timothy Dwight College shortly after students returned to campus, Ward 22 cochair Josef Goodman ’14 introduced Morrison as his “friend” and praised her for “reuniting a ward that was very much divided.” “Who cannot be won over by Jeanette Morrison?” he asked. “There’s the warmth, there’s the charm, there’s the hearty laugh.” Speaking to the student audience, Morrison said to call her anytime with concerns about the ward and pitched a sense of commonality among students and their neighbors in Dixwell: “We’re all the same. We all have something to give to one another.” Thorpe connected to students last Friday at a protest on Broadway Avenue condemning Gourmet Heaven, the popular late-night food destination, for allegedly underpaying its workers. Thorpe said her presence at the protest indicates her appreciation for the concerns of her would-be constituents. “Do you see Jeanette here?” she asked, criticizing her opponent for being absent from the day-to-day lives of Yale students. Thorpe said she wants to reduce crime in her neighborhood and encourage Yale to contribute more to its home city. Still, she said she is “not at all confident” in her chances of victory. There are no Republican candidates in Ward 22, making the winner of the Democratic primary the de facto victor. Contact ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER at isaac.stanley-becker@yale.edu .
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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
“They’re magically delicious!” LUCKY THE LEPRECHAUN LUCKY CHARMS MASCOT
The sour side of sugar cereals BY POOJA SALHOTRA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Despite pledges not to mislead children about the benefits of consuming their products, cereal companies market unhealthy foods by exploiting kids’ imaginations and limited cognitive abilities, according to a recent study by the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. Published on July 26 in the online Journal of Health Communication, the study reveals that 91 percent of the high-sugar cereal ads viewed by children ascribe unrealistic powers to the products. Companies are feeding children messages that are deceptive and fantastical, leading children to believe that a cereal can improve their popularity or give them magical powers, study lead author and Rudd Center research associate Megan LoDolce said. According to the Children’s Advertising Review Unit — a selfregulatory program aiming to promote responsible children’s advertising — “advertising should not stimulate children’s unreasonable expectations about product quality or performance.” Both General Mills, Inc and Kellogg Company are listed as CARU Supporters on the program’s website, and these two leading cereal companies are also participants of the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, a program launched in 2006 to limit child-directed advertising of unhealthy foods. By identifying the products, messages, creative techniques and eating behaviors that were presented in 158 different cereal ads, researchers at The Rudd Center found that cereal companies — including General Mills, Inc and Kellogg Company — are not adhering to CARU’s princi-
ples. Researchers found that cereals targeted to children contain 85 percent more sugar than those marketed to adults, and the ads targeted toward children are more likely to endow the products with special powers — such as magically transforming into cartoon characters or increasing a child’s popularity. “The companies are really taking advantage of kids’ imaginations and vulnerability to misleading messages by making these unhealthy foods seem like fun and parts of magical adventures,” study co-author and Rudd Center Director of Marketing Initiatives Jennifer Harris said. Prior research by the Institute of Medicine suggests that advertising can shape a child’s food preferences. Young children in particular do not have the cognitive abilities to distinguish advertising from entertainment, and repeated exposure to high-sugar cereal ads can cause them to normalize unhealthy eating behaviors. Because children are more vulnerable to misleading messages, LoDolce said, it is important that CFBAI and CARU do a better job of ensuring that kids are not exposed to unhealthy products and deceptive messages. Scientific studies at other institutions have also found that self-regulatory pledges of childdirected advertisements are not being implemented. A recent study by the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth found that children’s fast food advertising focused on toy-giveaways or movie tie-ins rather than the actual food product. James Sargent, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School and one of the researchers on this study, said both the Dartmouth and Rudd Center research demonstrate the ineffectiveness of
Protein receptor signals Alzheimer’s breakthrough BY STEPHANIE ROGERS CONTRIBUTING REPORTER A new discovery at the Yale School of Medicine has uncovered a key component to understanding and curing Alzheimer’s disease. The neurofibrillary tangling and degradation of links between neurons characteristic of Alzheimer’s is the result of a long chain of protein interactions that has intrigued researchers for decades. Scientists at the Medical School have recognized a receptor called metabotropic glutamate receptor 5, or mGluR5, as the missing link in the chain of biological processes leading to Alzheimer’s disease. The findings on mGluR5 were published in the journal Neuron on Sept. 4.
Alzheimer’s is one of the few diseases which mortality rates keep increasing because not enough funds … [go] towards research. STEPHEN STRITTMATTER Yale School of Medicine neurology professor
MICHAEL MCHUGH
CARU. “While CARU explicitly states that advertising to children should focus on the product — not tieins, toy premiums or implications that using the product is fun — their self-regulation process fails to weed out ads that clearly violate
the language of their own guidelines,” Sargent said in a Saturday email to the News. The solution to this self-regulation problem has been met with controversy. Public health advocates have attempted to get the government involved in regulating
Understanding star origins
child-directed advertisements, but Harris said the industry has lobbied against it. “It’s still important to keep doing the research and for the advocates to keep focusing on this issue because when you bring attention to what the companies
are doing, it causes the industry to improve,” Harris said. This study was funded by grants from the Rudd Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Contact POOJA SALHOTRA at pooja.salhotra@yale.edu .
The team knew the coupling of amyloid-beta and prion proteins was an influencing factor in the development of Alzheimer’s, but the scientific community was previously unable to discern how the interaction of these proteins — which occurs outside the neuron cell — were able to affect the cell’s inner environment. The study showed that the mGluR5 receptor serves as a binding site for the prion protein, triggering the release of an intracellular protein causing tangling. The receptor not only serves as a link in the chain of events causing
Alzheimer’s — the discovery makes possible the creation of new drugs to treat the actual disease rather than just its symptoms. “The treatments we have as of today for Alzheimer’s perform very little on a day-to-day basis of helping to reduce symptoms and are unable to stop the disease and prevent real damage,” said senior author of the study Stephen Strittmatter, a Yale School of Medicine neurology professor. The researchers had previously conducted research on the mGluR5 receptor in relation to Fragile X Syndrome, a genetic condition causing mental disabilities. Since they knew the mGluR5 receptor is responsible for brain plasticity and learning, they were able to test drugs created to treat Fragile X Syndrome on mice with Alzheimer’s disease who exhibited similar cognitive impairments. These drugs blocked the prion protein from binding to the mGluR5 receptor, therefore preventing the formation of neurofibrillary tangles. A mouse model of Alzheimer’s showed clear signs of restoration in memory, learning and synapse density when the research team employed the drug. “The beauty of mGluR5 is that it is a perfect target for drug treatment,” said study author Erik Gunther, an associate research scientist in neurology. Though the mice trials give the research team hope for the possibility of an Alzheimer’s treatment, they said years of experimental trials are necessary to attain FDA approval. When too much of the drug was administered to the mice, their condition became worse, and when the mice received low dosages, the drug was not helpful, he added. Consequently, the research team is trying to engineer a completely new drug. Strittmatter said creating a successful drug can pose difficulties. “The drugs [treating Fragile X
GRAPH CHANGES IN NUMBER OF DEATHS BETWEEN 2000–2008 66%
Alzheimer’s Disease
HIV
Stroke
GENERATION ALZHEIMER’S: THE DEFINING DISEASE OF THE BABY BOOMERS
Syndrome] now block both the abnormal and normal functions of the mGluR5,” Strittmatter said. “Thus, the correct dosage is necessary because if you were to shut down the whole receptor then you lose the normal biological necessities of the receptor.” Study authors said the discovery of mGluR5 is not the final frontier
in Alzheimer’s research — creating a drug to treat it is. “Alzheimer’s is an incredibly huge health problem,” Strittmatter said. “Alzheimer’s is one of the few diseases which mortality rates keep increasing because not enough funds or attention have been devoted toward research.” The team does have hope but they are disheart-
Physics professor Karsten Heeger, who came to Yale from the University of Wisconsin in July, is the new director of the A. W. Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory. His research focuses on neutrinos: tiny and mysterious subatomic particles that were once thought to be massless but are now believed to be the key to further understanding our universe. Heeger spoke with the News on Monday to discuss neutrinos, their significance and one of his ongoing research projects in China. are neutrinos and why QWhat do they matter?
A
ANNELISA LEINBACH
Recent data from the ALMA telescope may explain the origins of planets and stars. periods — stars do not form in one continuous accretion of materials, but rather gain dusts and gases in alternating fast and slow periods. Since HH 46/47 is a “typical” stellar body, the research team hopes it will shed light on the formation of the solar system from its infant stages. The results also provide some interesting insights into planetary formation. Yale astronomy professor Jeff Kenney said stronger molecular outflows at higher velocities imply that star formation is less efficient than presumed. According to Kenney, dramatically powerful jets at high velocity push out the dust and gas, leaving less to form stars and planets. Though the ALMA telescope — one of the most accurate and powerful in the world — was crucial for the study’s data collection, only a small proportion of the antennae was functioning when the team conducted its research earlier
this year. Once all antennae at ALMA are fully functioning, observation time can be drastically reduced, Mardones said, adding that ALMA will be able to observe molecules in more distant, turbulent clouds in finer details. By using ALMA to analyze imagery of elongated structures around the protostar, one may unveil the mystery of star system formation, he said. “There is no limit as to what we can do next,” Arce said. “We can observe stars at many different evolutionary stages, in order to combine a study to see how the materials around the stars are forming and evolving. The results will be extraordinary, and nothing like we’ve ever seen before.” ALMA was established in 2011 and became fully operational in March. Contact YUPEI GUO at yupei.guo@yale.edu .
Yale School of Medicine neurobiology professor Vincent A. Pieribone has uncovered a new method for mapping brain activity that skeptics once deemed impossible. His finding is the realization of what he called a “career-long dream” — to capture the brain’s electrical activity without using any invasive procedures. Pieribone and his co-authors — Yale medical school professors Michael N. Nitabach and Lawrence B. Cohen — discovered a fluorescent protein, dubbed ArcLight, that releases light of varying intensities to reflect changes in electrical activity within cells. The researchers said the ArcLight protein facilitates the direct measurement of voltage in areas of the brain that were previously inaccessible, allowing researchers to better understand how neural circuits process infor-
goal of revolutionizing our understanding of the human brain. The project has been met with controversy, according to neurosurgery professor Angelique Bordey. “Some people say it’s premature,” she said. “There’s always the fear of the unknown and the fear that we won’t get our money’s worth. The research is a little bit like science-fiction. But I think we just have to be open minded.” Indeed, Pieribone’s goals do not sound so unlike science fiction. His hope is to capture human brain activity in people with locked-in syndrome, the inability to move or communicate due to paralysis from the neck down, and give them the ability to move prosthetic limbs with ease. Pieribone’s lab is funded in part by the U.S. army, an entity which he suspects has some “creative” ideas for the use of this new technology. “The possibilities are endless,” he said. “But the first step is extracting the information from
the human tissue. All the work on computing and robotics is pretty much done. We have algorithms and fast computers, just no way to drive them.” Alan Anticevic, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the medical school, is excited about the prospects of mapping brain activity but careful to explain the difficulties involved in doing so. “There are kilometers of brain connections, kilometers of wiring. You’re essentially talking about the level of complexity of something like the universe,” Anticevic said. “I think the gap between our understanding of the brain and all the complex human behaviors is still very vast. That said, I think [the BRAIN initiative] is an optimistic effort and certainly something that we ought to be doing.” The BRAIN Initiative was announced on April 2. Contact AARON Z. LEWIS at aaron.z.lewis@yale.edu .
ened by the lack of public attention toward such a prevalent health issue in today’s society, he added. Over 5.1 million people in the United States have Alzheimer’s disease, according to the National Institutes of Health. Contact STEPHANIE ROGERS at stephanie.rogers@yale.edu .
Karsten Heeger talks neutrinos
Observing a newborn star, a team of astronomers, led by Yale University associate professor of astronomy Héctor Arce, discovered twin jets of surprisingly forceful “winds” of carbon monoxide, which could help refine the understanding of stars’ origins and how they shape their emerging stellar systems. The results of this research were reported in the Astrophysics Journal on Aug. 20. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope, the scientists have obtained a vivid close-up view of materials streaming away from a young star. By closely scrutinizing the telescope images of a young stellar object named Herbig-Haro 46/47, researchers were able to spot a previously unknown second jet in a new direction, and through analyzing the glow of the star’s carbon monoxide molecules, they discovered that the carbon monoxide jets were much more energetic than previously thought. “With accurate and clear images from ALMA, we realize that the outflows from the protostar are much more powerful than we anticipated them to be,” Arce said. “This is crucial because [protostars] can power outflows that interact with the surrounding cloud, which in turn may affect how long it takes and how much material there can be for the star to form.” Newborn stars grow in mass by drawing in material from the surrounding disk of dust and gas, Arce said. This material passes through the disk surrounding the protostar, or new star, before falling onto the forming star. A portion of this material, however, ends up diverted into the star’s magnetic fields and later spews out as jets from the stars’ two magnetic poles. Since there is a direct relationship between the jets’ velocities and the volume of a star’s accretion disk, studying the jets can shed light on the origins of stars. Arce’s team is the first to observe both an inward and an outward molecular jet in a protostar. The research team was able to spot a second outflow, hidden in very wide-angled winds. University of Chile astronomy professor Diego Mardones, a co-author of the paper, said the outflow impacts the stellar cloud directly, entering from one side and escaping through another. “This makes it an excellent system for studying the impact of the stellar winds on the parent cloud from which the young star is formed,” Mardones added. These new observations also suggest that there have been episodes of outflow followed by quieter, less active
the way to the end.” When Pieribone and his team were conducting their research last year, they were the only scientists in the world working on this approach to mapping brain activity. When his colleagues examined data from ArcLight that seemed to indicate success, many of them thought it was a fluke. Until the lab hired a “naive” research assistant who was willing to repeat the experiment to confirm these results, members of the team team doubted their initial findings. “I was like, ‘Holy cow, this shouldn’t be like this,’” Pieribone said. “Everyone was saying this couldn’t be real. I took a picture on my phone’s camera and [my colleague] still has that photo on the wall of his lab.” The research was part of President Barack Obama’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, or BRAIN, Initiative, which has allocated $100 million toward the
-3%
-29%
BY WESLEY YIIN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
mation. The paper detailing the discovery was published in the Aug. 8 edition of the journal Cell. Scientists have been engineering fluorescent proteins for the past 15 years, but the ArcLight protein is the only one to successfully map activity in the cells of a living animal. ArcLight works because of a mysterious mutation that researchers are still in the process of trying to understand. Cohen said Arclight is superior to existing methods of measuring brain activity. The protein measures neuron activity directly, whereas current optical methods such as fMRI — which measures changes in brain blood flow — have a higher signal to noise ratio. Pieribone said the “unexpected” discovery was one of the most exciting of his career. “Discoveries die a thousand deaths before they finally make it. We thought it wouldn’t work. ArcLight had multiple deaths and revivals,” he said. “Fortunately, we dragged out the ‘aha’ moments all
-8%
Breast Cancer
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BY YUPEI GUO CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
BY AARON Z. LEWIS CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Prostate Cancer
-13%
Protein illuminates path to observing the brain
NASA
Heart Disease
Neutrinos are particles that come out of nuclear reactions. They are elementary particles that move closely to the speed of light. All this time we thought that neutrinos had no mass at all. Neutrinos have been produced since the beginning of the big bang, and they’re still in our universe. We thought they were just like light, but then we found that they do have a tiny mass. This has profound implications [for figuring out] how the universe evolved and the role neutrinos play in our universe. It may turn out that the neutrinos are important for the structure of the universe, for galaxy formation, or they might explain why we live in a universe of matter instead of a universe of anti-matter. At the beginning of time, there was a big bang — a gigantic explosion of sorts. Then, the universe was filled with particles and anti-particles. One of the big questions in cosmology is, “Where did all the antimatter go? Why do we live in a world filled matter and not antimatter?” One interesting thing about neutrinos is that they may be their own antiparticle. Usually particles and antiparticles are very distinct. If you bring them together, they annihilate and produce energy. But neutrinos may be in fact their own antiparticle. If we discover that, it would be a very new way of looking at matter and the universe as a whole.
Q
What results have been discovered recently in the field of neutrino physics?
JENNIFER LU/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Wright Lab Director Karsten Heeger arrived at Yale in July.
A
We’ve studied neutrinos produced in the sun, for example, to figure out what happens inside the sun. There are three different types of neutrinos (called “flavors,” like ice cream) and the sun only emits one type of neutrino: the electron neutrino. About 12 years ago, we found that when we measured the neutrinos that come from the sun with our detector on earth, all three flavors are actually involved. That was a big surprise. This meant that the three flavors of neutrinos — electron, muon and tau — are, in fact, not distinct. They can transform into each other. This phenomenon is known as “neutrino oscillation,” which demonstrates that a quantum mechanical effect is taking place and also shows that neutrinos must have mass, since it is required for this effect to happen. So by looking at the sun and trying to understand how the sun burns and what is happening inside the sun, we learned something very profound about the nature of neutrinos and what happens at a quantum mechanical level. This effect of neutrino oscillation has been studied in many experiments with accelerators, and it has been studied in experiments with neutrino nuclear reactors. I’m involved in another experiment looking at neutrinos coming out of a commercial nuclear reactor. Every one of these experiments confirmed this effect: the three flavors of neutrinos are not fixed in time or space.
you summarize some QCould results of your previous work in China?
A
What we discovered with this experiment is that neu-
trinos can actually oscillate over a distance of a kilometer or two. Previous experiments found that neutrinos can change between the sun and the earth or over a distance of couple hundred kilometers. We found that there is a component of oscillation that is actually faster. Over the distance of just a mile, a neutrino can change flavor. This turnout is an important ingredient to understanding how neutrinos and antineutrinos might behave. The other important fact is that when you look at neutrinos from the sun, you are actually measuring neutrinos. Out of a nuclear power plant, you get antineutrinos. That’s the way the nuclear reaction works. We have made a precise measurement of antineutrino oscillations. Daya Bay experiment QThe conducted in China has over
200 scientists from six different countries or territories working on it. What is it like working with such a large and diverse group?
A
The main issue is that the way we do science is culturally driven. You’d think that physics and the other sciences should be pretty universal, and it is. But the way scientists interact has a cultural component. Whenever you have a big project like this, there is an aspect of sociology and cultural understanding that comes in to making such an experiment work. So besides just getting the science right, to have success in the end, you need to configurate the group. That is, I think the biggest challenge in an international project. Contact WESLEY YIIN at wesley.yiin@yale.edu .
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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
“They’re magically delicious!” LUCKY THE LEPRECHAUN LUCKY CHARMS MASCOT
The sour side of sugar cereals BY POOJA SALHOTRA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Despite pledges not to mislead children about the benefits of consuming their products, cereal companies market unhealthy foods by exploiting kids’ imaginations and limited cognitive abilities, according to a recent study by the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. Published on July 26 in the online Journal of Health Communication, the study reveals that 91 percent of the high-sugar cereal ads viewed by children ascribe unrealistic powers to the products. Companies are feeding children messages that are deceptive and fantastical, leading children to believe that a cereal can improve their popularity or give them magical powers, study lead author and Rudd Center research associate Megan LoDolce said. According to the Children’s Advertising Review Unit — a selfregulatory program aiming to promote responsible children’s advertising — “advertising should not stimulate children’s unreasonable expectations about product quality or performance.” Both General Mills, Inc and Kellogg Company are listed as CARU Supporters on the program’s website, and these two leading cereal companies are also participants of the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, a program launched in 2006 to limit child-directed advertising of unhealthy foods. By identifying the products, messages, creative techniques and eating behaviors that were presented in 158 different cereal ads, researchers at The Rudd Center found that cereal companies — including General Mills, Inc and Kellogg Company — are not adhering to CARU’s princi-
ples. Researchers found that cereals targeted to children contain 85 percent more sugar than those marketed to adults, and the ads targeted toward children are more likely to endow the products with special powers — such as magically transforming into cartoon characters or increasing a child’s popularity. “The companies are really taking advantage of kids’ imaginations and vulnerability to misleading messages by making these unhealthy foods seem like fun and parts of magical adventures,” study co-author and Rudd Center Director of Marketing Initiatives Jennifer Harris said. Prior research by the Institute of Medicine suggests that advertising can shape a child’s food preferences. Young children in particular do not have the cognitive abilities to distinguish advertising from entertainment, and repeated exposure to high-sugar cereal ads can cause them to normalize unhealthy eating behaviors. Because children are more vulnerable to misleading messages, LoDolce said, it is important that CFBAI and CARU do a better job of ensuring that kids are not exposed to unhealthy products and deceptive messages. Scientific studies at other institutions have also found that self-regulatory pledges of childdirected advertisements are not being implemented. A recent study by the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth found that children’s fast food advertising focused on toy-giveaways or movie tie-ins rather than the actual food product. James Sargent, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School and one of the researchers on this study, said both the Dartmouth and Rudd Center research demonstrate the ineffectiveness of
Protein receptor signals Alzheimer’s breakthrough BY STEPHANIE ROGERS CONTRIBUTING REPORTER A new discovery at the Yale School of Medicine has uncovered a key component to understanding and curing Alzheimer’s disease. The neurofibrillary tangling and degradation of links between neurons characteristic of Alzheimer’s is the result of a long chain of protein interactions that has intrigued researchers for decades. Scientists at the Medical School have recognized a receptor called metabotropic glutamate receptor 5, or mGluR5, as the missing link in the chain of biological processes leading to Alzheimer’s disease. The findings on mGluR5 were published in the journal Neuron on Sept. 4.
Alzheimer’s is one of the few diseases which mortality rates keep increasing because not enough funds … [go] towards research. STEPHEN STRITTMATTER Yale School of Medicine neurology professor
MICHAEL MCHUGH
CARU. “While CARU explicitly states that advertising to children should focus on the product — not tieins, toy premiums or implications that using the product is fun — their self-regulation process fails to weed out ads that clearly violate
the language of their own guidelines,” Sargent said in a Saturday email to the News. The solution to this self-regulation problem has been met with controversy. Public health advocates have attempted to get the government involved in regulating
Understanding star origins
child-directed advertisements, but Harris said the industry has lobbied against it. “It’s still important to keep doing the research and for the advocates to keep focusing on this issue because when you bring attention to what the companies
are doing, it causes the industry to improve,” Harris said. This study was funded by grants from the Rudd Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Contact POOJA SALHOTRA at pooja.salhotra@yale.edu .
The team knew the coupling of amyloid-beta and prion proteins was an influencing factor in the development of Alzheimer’s, but the scientific community was previously unable to discern how the interaction of these proteins — which occurs outside the neuron cell — were able to affect the cell’s inner environment. The study showed that the mGluR5 receptor serves as a binding site for the prion protein, triggering the release of an intracellular protein causing tangling. The receptor not only serves as a link in the chain of events causing
Alzheimer’s — the discovery makes possible the creation of new drugs to treat the actual disease rather than just its symptoms. “The treatments we have as of today for Alzheimer’s perform very little on a day-to-day basis of helping to reduce symptoms and are unable to stop the disease and prevent real damage,” said senior author of the study Stephen Strittmatter, a Yale School of Medicine neurology professor. The researchers had previously conducted research on the mGluR5 receptor in relation to Fragile X Syndrome, a genetic condition causing mental disabilities. Since they knew the mGluR5 receptor is responsible for brain plasticity and learning, they were able to test drugs created to treat Fragile X Syndrome on mice with Alzheimer’s disease who exhibited similar cognitive impairments. These drugs blocked the prion protein from binding to the mGluR5 receptor, therefore preventing the formation of neurofibrillary tangles. A mouse model of Alzheimer’s showed clear signs of restoration in memory, learning and synapse density when the research team employed the drug. “The beauty of mGluR5 is that it is a perfect target for drug treatment,” said study author Erik Gunther, an associate research scientist in neurology. Though the mice trials give the research team hope for the possibility of an Alzheimer’s treatment, they said years of experimental trials are necessary to attain FDA approval. When too much of the drug was administered to the mice, their condition became worse, and when the mice received low dosages, the drug was not helpful, he added. Consequently, the research team is trying to engineer a completely new drug. Strittmatter said creating a successful drug can pose difficulties. “The drugs [treating Fragile X
GRAPH CHANGES IN NUMBER OF DEATHS BETWEEN 2000–2008 66%
Alzheimer’s Disease
HIV
Stroke
GENERATION ALZHEIMER’S: THE DEFINING DISEASE OF THE BABY BOOMERS
Syndrome] now block both the abnormal and normal functions of the mGluR5,” Strittmatter said. “Thus, the correct dosage is necessary because if you were to shut down the whole receptor then you lose the normal biological necessities of the receptor.” Study authors said the discovery of mGluR5 is not the final frontier
in Alzheimer’s research — creating a drug to treat it is. “Alzheimer’s is an incredibly huge health problem,” Strittmatter said. “Alzheimer’s is one of the few diseases which mortality rates keep increasing because not enough funds or attention have been devoted toward research.” The team does have hope but they are disheart-
Physics professor Karsten Heeger, who came to Yale from the University of Wisconsin in July, is the new director of the A. W. Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory. His research focuses on neutrinos: tiny and mysterious subatomic particles that were once thought to be massless but are now believed to be the key to further understanding our universe. Heeger spoke with the News on Monday to discuss neutrinos, their significance and one of his ongoing research projects in China. are neutrinos and why QWhat do they matter?
A
ANNELISA LEINBACH
Recent data from the ALMA telescope may explain the origins of planets and stars. periods — stars do not form in one continuous accretion of materials, but rather gain dusts and gases in alternating fast and slow periods. Since HH 46/47 is a “typical” stellar body, the research team hopes it will shed light on the formation of the solar system from its infant stages. The results also provide some interesting insights into planetary formation. Yale astronomy professor Jeff Kenney said stronger molecular outflows at higher velocities imply that star formation is less efficient than presumed. According to Kenney, dramatically powerful jets at high velocity push out the dust and gas, leaving less to form stars and planets. Though the ALMA telescope — one of the most accurate and powerful in the world — was crucial for the study’s data collection, only a small proportion of the antennae was functioning when the team conducted its research earlier
this year. Once all antennae at ALMA are fully functioning, observation time can be drastically reduced, Mardones said, adding that ALMA will be able to observe molecules in more distant, turbulent clouds in finer details. By using ALMA to analyze imagery of elongated structures around the protostar, one may unveil the mystery of star system formation, he said. “There is no limit as to what we can do next,” Arce said. “We can observe stars at many different evolutionary stages, in order to combine a study to see how the materials around the stars are forming and evolving. The results will be extraordinary, and nothing like we’ve ever seen before.” ALMA was established in 2011 and became fully operational in March. Contact YUPEI GUO at yupei.guo@yale.edu .
Yale School of Medicine neurobiology professor Vincent A. Pieribone has uncovered a new method for mapping brain activity that skeptics once deemed impossible. His finding is the realization of what he called a “career-long dream” — to capture the brain’s electrical activity without using any invasive procedures. Pieribone and his co-authors — Yale medical school professors Michael N. Nitabach and Lawrence B. Cohen — discovered a fluorescent protein, dubbed ArcLight, that releases light of varying intensities to reflect changes in electrical activity within cells. The researchers said the ArcLight protein facilitates the direct measurement of voltage in areas of the brain that were previously inaccessible, allowing researchers to better understand how neural circuits process infor-
goal of revolutionizing our understanding of the human brain. The project has been met with controversy, according to neurosurgery professor Angelique Bordey. “Some people say it’s premature,” she said. “There’s always the fear of the unknown and the fear that we won’t get our money’s worth. The research is a little bit like science-fiction. But I think we just have to be open minded.” Indeed, Pieribone’s goals do not sound so unlike science fiction. His hope is to capture human brain activity in people with locked-in syndrome, the inability to move or communicate due to paralysis from the neck down, and give them the ability to move prosthetic limbs with ease. Pieribone’s lab is funded in part by the U.S. army, an entity which he suspects has some “creative” ideas for the use of this new technology. “The possibilities are endless,” he said. “But the first step is extracting the information from
the human tissue. All the work on computing and robotics is pretty much done. We have algorithms and fast computers, just no way to drive them.” Alan Anticevic, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the medical school, is excited about the prospects of mapping brain activity but careful to explain the difficulties involved in doing so. “There are kilometers of brain connections, kilometers of wiring. You’re essentially talking about the level of complexity of something like the universe,” Anticevic said. “I think the gap between our understanding of the brain and all the complex human behaviors is still very vast. That said, I think [the BRAIN initiative] is an optimistic effort and certainly something that we ought to be doing.” The BRAIN Initiative was announced on April 2. Contact AARON Z. LEWIS at aaron.z.lewis@yale.edu .
ened by the lack of public attention toward such a prevalent health issue in today’s society, he added. Over 5.1 million people in the United States have Alzheimer’s disease, according to the National Institutes of Health. Contact STEPHANIE ROGERS at stephanie.rogers@yale.edu .
Karsten Heeger talks neutrinos
Observing a newborn star, a team of astronomers, led by Yale University associate professor of astronomy Héctor Arce, discovered twin jets of surprisingly forceful “winds” of carbon monoxide, which could help refine the understanding of stars’ origins and how they shape their emerging stellar systems. The results of this research were reported in the Astrophysics Journal on Aug. 20. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope, the scientists have obtained a vivid close-up view of materials streaming away from a young star. By closely scrutinizing the telescope images of a young stellar object named Herbig-Haro 46/47, researchers were able to spot a previously unknown second jet in a new direction, and through analyzing the glow of the star’s carbon monoxide molecules, they discovered that the carbon monoxide jets were much more energetic than previously thought. “With accurate and clear images from ALMA, we realize that the outflows from the protostar are much more powerful than we anticipated them to be,” Arce said. “This is crucial because [protostars] can power outflows that interact with the surrounding cloud, which in turn may affect how long it takes and how much material there can be for the star to form.” Newborn stars grow in mass by drawing in material from the surrounding disk of dust and gas, Arce said. This material passes through the disk surrounding the protostar, or new star, before falling onto the forming star. A portion of this material, however, ends up diverted into the star’s magnetic fields and later spews out as jets from the stars’ two magnetic poles. Since there is a direct relationship between the jets’ velocities and the volume of a star’s accretion disk, studying the jets can shed light on the origins of stars. Arce’s team is the first to observe both an inward and an outward molecular jet in a protostar. The research team was able to spot a second outflow, hidden in very wide-angled winds. University of Chile astronomy professor Diego Mardones, a co-author of the paper, said the outflow impacts the stellar cloud directly, entering from one side and escaping through another. “This makes it an excellent system for studying the impact of the stellar winds on the parent cloud from which the young star is formed,” Mardones added. These new observations also suggest that there have been episodes of outflow followed by quieter, less active
the way to the end.” When Pieribone and his team were conducting their research last year, they were the only scientists in the world working on this approach to mapping brain activity. When his colleagues examined data from ArcLight that seemed to indicate success, many of them thought it was a fluke. Until the lab hired a “naive” research assistant who was willing to repeat the experiment to confirm these results, members of the team team doubted their initial findings. “I was like, ‘Holy cow, this shouldn’t be like this,’” Pieribone said. “Everyone was saying this couldn’t be real. I took a picture on my phone’s camera and [my colleague] still has that photo on the wall of his lab.” The research was part of President Barack Obama’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, or BRAIN, Initiative, which has allocated $100 million toward the
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mation. The paper detailing the discovery was published in the Aug. 8 edition of the journal Cell. Scientists have been engineering fluorescent proteins for the past 15 years, but the ArcLight protein is the only one to successfully map activity in the cells of a living animal. ArcLight works because of a mysterious mutation that researchers are still in the process of trying to understand. Cohen said Arclight is superior to existing methods of measuring brain activity. The protein measures neuron activity directly, whereas current optical methods such as fMRI — which measures changes in brain blood flow — have a higher signal to noise ratio. Pieribone said the “unexpected” discovery was one of the most exciting of his career. “Discoveries die a thousand deaths before they finally make it. We thought it wouldn’t work. ArcLight had multiple deaths and revivals,” he said. “Fortunately, we dragged out the ‘aha’ moments all
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Prostate Cancer
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Protein illuminates path to observing the brain
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Heart Disease
Neutrinos are particles that come out of nuclear reactions. They are elementary particles that move closely to the speed of light. All this time we thought that neutrinos had no mass at all. Neutrinos have been produced since the beginning of the big bang, and they’re still in our universe. We thought they were just like light, but then we found that they do have a tiny mass. This has profound implications [for figuring out] how the universe evolved and the role neutrinos play in our universe. It may turn out that the neutrinos are important for the structure of the universe, for galaxy formation, or they might explain why we live in a universe of matter instead of a universe of anti-matter. At the beginning of time, there was a big bang — a gigantic explosion of sorts. Then, the universe was filled with particles and anti-particles. One of the big questions in cosmology is, “Where did all the antimatter go? Why do we live in a world filled matter and not antimatter?” One interesting thing about neutrinos is that they may be their own antiparticle. Usually particles and antiparticles are very distinct. If you bring them together, they annihilate and produce energy. But neutrinos may be in fact their own antiparticle. If we discover that, it would be a very new way of looking at matter and the universe as a whole.
Q
What results have been discovered recently in the field of neutrino physics?
JENNIFER LU/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Wright Lab Director Karsten Heeger arrived at Yale in July.
A
We’ve studied neutrinos produced in the sun, for example, to figure out what happens inside the sun. There are three different types of neutrinos (called “flavors,” like ice cream) and the sun only emits one type of neutrino: the electron neutrino. About 12 years ago, we found that when we measured the neutrinos that come from the sun with our detector on earth, all three flavors are actually involved. That was a big surprise. This meant that the three flavors of neutrinos — electron, muon and tau — are, in fact, not distinct. They can transform into each other. This phenomenon is known as “neutrino oscillation,” which demonstrates that a quantum mechanical effect is taking place and also shows that neutrinos must have mass, since it is required for this effect to happen. So by looking at the sun and trying to understand how the sun burns and what is happening inside the sun, we learned something very profound about the nature of neutrinos and what happens at a quantum mechanical level. This effect of neutrino oscillation has been studied in many experiments with accelerators, and it has been studied in experiments with neutrino nuclear reactors. I’m involved in another experiment looking at neutrinos coming out of a commercial nuclear reactor. Every one of these experiments confirmed this effect: the three flavors of neutrinos are not fixed in time or space.
you summarize some QCould results of your previous work in China?
A
What we discovered with this experiment is that neu-
trinos can actually oscillate over a distance of a kilometer or two. Previous experiments found that neutrinos can change between the sun and the earth or over a distance of couple hundred kilometers. We found that there is a component of oscillation that is actually faster. Over the distance of just a mile, a neutrino can change flavor. This turnout is an important ingredient to understanding how neutrinos and antineutrinos might behave. The other important fact is that when you look at neutrinos from the sun, you are actually measuring neutrinos. Out of a nuclear power plant, you get antineutrinos. That’s the way the nuclear reaction works. We have made a precise measurement of antineutrino oscillations. Daya Bay experiment QThe conducted in China has over
200 scientists from six different countries or territories working on it. What is it like working with such a large and diverse group?
A
The main issue is that the way we do science is culturally driven. You’d think that physics and the other sciences should be pretty universal, and it is. But the way scientists interact has a cultural component. Whenever you have a big project like this, there is an aspect of sociology and cultural understanding that comes in to making such an experiment work. So besides just getting the science right, to have success in the end, you need to configurate the group. That is, I think the biggest challenge in an international project. Contact WESLEY YIIN at wesley.yiin@yale.edu .
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
FROM THE FRONT
Cum Laude. In 1869, Harvard College became the first United States college to award final honors to its graduates. These awards consisted of cum laude and summa cum laude from 1872 to 1879, with magna cum laude being added in 1880. Yale has been offering these awards since 1988.
Cases show expulsion SCENARIOS FROM PAGE 1 UWC has not seen the full range of cases that you see depicted [in the scenarios]. If we saw cases like that, we would expel.” Out of the eight hypothetical scenarios released Monday, three cases that resulted in expulsion involved forced sex. One case involving a student who said “not so fast; I’m not sure” midway through a previously consensual sexual encounter resulted in a punishment that would “likely range from multi-semester suspension to expulsion.” One scenario that involved ambiguous consent resulted in a punishment falling between probation and suspension while another case of ambiguous consent resulted in a “reprimand.” Two cases depicted examples of consensual sex. Deputy Provost Stephanie Spangler said some critics of the report “jumped to conclusions” about the circumstances surrounding the cases of sexual misconduct included in the report. “People were equating our term ‘nonconsensual sex,’ which includes a range of behaviors, with [rape],” she said. Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd ’90 said nonconsensual sex by Yale’s definition is broader than rape and includes any instance of sex — oral, vaginal or anal — that does not include positive, unambiguous, voluntary agreement at each point during the sexual encounter. In the report, the four cases involving allegations of nonconsensual sex ended in confirmed instances of nonconsensual sexual conduct, nonconsensual acts during otherwise consensual sexual activity and one case with no details of the complaint or finding specified. Although the three hypothetical scenarios involving rape all ended in expulsion, Boyd said issuing a statement that Yale’s preferred punishment for rape is expulsion would have been a “shallow and problematic” solution to the issue. Some complainants may not prefer expulsion in the case of rape, and creating a hierarchy between rape and forms of sexual violation that are not rape would have been too simple, she said. Although the UWC does not follow predetermined standards of punishment for various cases, Spangler, Della Rocca and Boyd said they unanimously agreed upon sanctions for each case. Administrators said the UWC’s disciplinary standards were not re-evaluated when the scenarios were created and have remained consistent since the University introduced its most recent definition of consent in 2011. “In each case where a violation of policy is found, the most important factor determining the disciplinary action taken is the nature of the behavior in question,” Spangler said. “The UWC panel is also made aware of relevant precedents in other cases and any prior disciplinary record of the respondent.”
Summa cum laude at 3.96
SAMPLE SEXUAL MISCONDUCT SCENARIOS
LATIN HONORS FROM PAGE 1
SCENARIO
the remaining 15 percent. Last spring, the grade-point average cutoffs for the three levels of distinction were 3.96, 3.88 and 3.80, respectively, while the cutoffs for the class of 2012 were 3.95, 3.89 and 3.80, respectively. GPA cutoffs for the Latin honors have increased by at least three-hundredths of a point since 2010. Of 15 seniors interviewed, only two were aware of the University policies regarding Latin honors. None said the honors or changes in cutoffs were particularly significant. “We’re trying to develop ourselves,” Josef Goodman ’14 said. “No one really talks about this. So few people talk about grades. I don’t know anybody’s GPA. It’s not an emphasis.” Compared to its Ivy League peers in Cambridge, Mass., and Princeton, N.J., Yale has the highest standard for Latin honors. Harvard awards the distinctions to approximately half of its graduating class, while Princeton reserves Latin honors for the top 40 percent of its graduates. Several students criticized the Latin honor system’s sole reliance on GPA as a measure of academic success. Margaret Zhang ’14 said she placed more importance on departmental distinctions and fellowships than on Latin honors awards. “The last time I heard about summa cum laude was in ‘Legally Blonde,’” Zhang said. Ayezan Malik ’14 said he was more concerned with job opportunities than GPA distinctions. Others echoed Malik’s statements, adding that a lack of awareness of the Latin honors system and a feeling of indifference pervade the senior class.
Alexis and Riley are studying together in Riley’s room. During a break in their studying, they rub each other’s shoulders. Alexis then introduces some intimate touching. Riley moves closer and says “Okay, but I don’t want to go too far – we still have a lot of work to do.” Alexis continues to touch Riley in an intimate way. Riley willingly agrees to some contact, but mostly sets boundaries. Alexis jokes that they deserve to have sex as a reward for their hard work studying; Riley laughs. After their studying is done, Alexis suggests again that they should have sex. Riley responds they should probably get some sleep but continues to touch Alexis. After a few more minutes, Alexis asks once more. Riley pauses, then says okay and pulls Alexis closer. They have sex.
CONSEQUENCE
This is consensual sex. Despite initial hesitation, the ultimate agreement to have sex was voluntary and unambiguous. There is no violation of the sexual misconduct policy. The UWC would likely counsel Alexis about the inappropriateness of sexual pressure, and recommend SHARE’s sensitivity training program.
SCENARIO
Sidney and Harper are dating. On several occasions they are physically intimate, but within limits set by Sidney, who is opposed to having sex at this stage of their relationship. One night, when they are being intimate within their mutually agreed upon boundaries, Harper begins to cross them. Sidney expresses concern, but Harper is encouraging, saying “it will be okay just this once.” Sidney replies “we shouldn’t do this,” but continues to touch Harper in an intimate way. As Harper initiates sex, Sidney says “this is a bad idea” and begins to cry, but embraces Harper and the two proceed to have sex.
CONSEQUENCE
Initial consent was followed by ambiguity. Sidney’s acquiescence to sex was accompanied by too much dismay to constitute unambiguous agreement, especially given Sidney’s longstanding prior refusal to engage in sex. The UWC penalty would likely fall in the range of probation to suspension.
SCENARIO
Morgan and Kai are friends who begin dancing and kissing at a party. They are both drunk, although not to the point of incapacitation. Together they decide to go to Kai’s room. They undress each other and begin touching each other. Morgan moves as if to engage in oral sex and looks up at Kai questioningly. Kai nods in agreement and Morgan proceeds. Subsequently, without pausing to check for further agreement, Kai begins to perform oral sex on Morgan. Morgan lies still for a few minutes, then moves away, saying it is late and they should sleep.
CONSEQUENCE
There was initial agreement, but the bounds of that agreement were not clear. Kai may have thought that Morgan had consented to reciprocal oral sex, but took no steps to obtain unambiguous agreement. The UWC penalty would likely be a reprimand.
The complainants are also asked to indicate their desired outcome, Spangler said. Administrators said the recently released scenarios will inform the training for members of the UWC. Emma Goldberg ’16, a founding member of Students Against Sexual Violence at Yale — a group created in August that has lobbied administrators to reform Yale’s sexual misconduct policies — said the scenarios focused too heavily on cases that ended in expulsion because zero cases in the last report ended in expulsion. “The range of scenarios deals almost
entirely here with cases that end in expulsion and only one ends in a written reprimand and all the [reported cases] we took issue with ended with reprimand,” Goldberg said. SASVY member Hannah Slater ’13 SPH ’14 said administrators have not gone far enough in providing clarification on several topics, including the process of determining disciplinary consequences. SASVY is scheduled to meet with administrators next week.
Several seniors said they had never had a conversation about Latin honors before in their Yale careers. Liang Yu ’14 and Zhang added that some seniors place greater value in the Phi Beta Kappa distinction. Because Phi Beta Kappa is first announced during junior year, students are generally more interested in using it on their resumes, said Yu, who was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa as a junior. Latin honors are not given until the end of senior year, and Yu said that few people care about the distinctions as a result.
The only ‘A’ that matters is between the ‘Y’ and the ‘L.’ JOSEF GOODMAN ’14 Overall, seniors said they are more concerned with other aspects of their college experiences than their grades and potential qualifications for Latin honors. “When I look back on my Yale career, and look back at the top 10 memories, my GPA will not make that list,” Goodman said. “The only ‘A’ that matters is between the ‘Y’ and the ‘L.’” Each spring, seniors find out whether or not they will graduate with Latin honors just days before Commencement exercises begin in May. In 2006, GPAs of 3.72, 3.82 and 3.91 were needed to graduate with cum laude, magna cum laude and summa cum laude honors, respectively. Contact ADRIAN RODRIGUES at adrian.rodrigues@yale.edu .
BY THE NUMBERS LATIN HONORS 5 10 15
Percent of seniors awarded summa cum laude. Percent of seniors awarded magna cum laude. Percent of seniors awarded cum laude.
Contact CYNTHIA HUA at cynthia.hua@yale.edu .
FACULTY HIRING FROM PAGE 1
Our searches for junior faculty in the humanities always have a good yield because we’re top-ranked. BENJAMIN POLAK Provost, Yale University
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“Our searches for junior faculty in the humanities always have a good yield because we’re topranked, but for the yield to be this high in the sciences, that is really saying something,” he said. “It’s a good sign. Those departments are working hard.” Department chairs interviewed said they are excited about the new hires. Holly Rushmeier, who chairs the Computer Science Department, said she is glad that her department was able to convince its new professor, Ruzica Piskac, to come to Yale because “competition for top new faculty
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want to penalize departments for holding out for a perfect candidate. The newly hired faculty members span all three divisions — 19 are in humanities departments, 14 are in social science departments and 24 are in the sciences and engineering. Eight of the new professors are senior, tenured faculty while the remaining 49 are junior, tenure-track faculty. Polak said the number of new junior faculty hires in the sciences and engineering is “really spectacular” because it means that young scientists are choosing Yale as the institution at which to build their careers.
is very tough” and the department needed an additional professor with expertise in programming languages to keep up with the expanding field of computer science. Still, Rushmeier said her department urgently wants to hire more faculty. “Interest in computer science continues to build, and our classes are getting much larger,” she said. “We desperately need additional faculty.” While History Department Chair Naomi Lamoreaux said her department is healthy overall, one of its programs — History of Science and Medicine — is struggling. Though the department secured approval to conduct searches for new professors for the program during the past two academic years, the three professors who were given job offers did not accept, she said. Lamoreaux said that “the situation is so serious” that the department is going to try to get approval to continue searching this year despite the restrictions on new searches. Chair of the Electrical Engineering Department Jung Han described Polak’s decision to limit new searches this year as “reasonable and expected” but added that he is concerned about the future of his department, which dropped in size to 10 professors during the 2012-’13 academic year. The department has since hired four junior faculty, which Han said is “a good step in rebuilding the department.” Forty-three of the new hires have already arrived at Yale, while the remaining 14 will begin teaching by next fall.
14 in so
Influx of professors puts pressure on budget
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
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ON CAMPUS TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 8:30 PM Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project: Information Session YHHAP is one of Yale’s highest-impact student service organizations. Fall service projects include Elm City Echo (a street newspaper written and sold by New Haven’s homeless community), Book Exchange (a discount pop-up textbook store to benefit YHHAP) and much more. LinslyChittenden Hall (63 High St.), Room 211.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 6:30 PM Yale Entrepreneurial Institute Kickoff Whether you’re a techie, a budding venture capitalist, or simply curious about the ins and outs of entrepreneurship, all Yalies are invited to attend and learn about YEI’s resources. Find out about YEI’s programs for early-stage ventures and the summer fellowship for ventures on the rise. Learn about YEI’s extensive mentor network, check out the Incubator space, meet the staff and successful alumni entrepreneurs, and get connected with other innovative students on campus. Refreshments will be served. YEI Incubator (55 Whitney Ave.).
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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 3:00 PM Yale-China Open House Meet the staff of the YaleChina Association, learn about Yale-China’s 112-year history of U.S.-China work, and explore fellowship, internship and volunteer opportunities. This is also an opportunity to meet and connect with individuals in the Yale-China community, including U.S.-China experts, Yale-China fellows, overseas Chinese and past program participants. Sign up to receive invitations to Yale-China’s events for the community, and view a new exhibit featuring paintings of Hong Kong by Michael Sloan. John C. Bierwirth Room (442 Temple St.).
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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
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Syria mulls disposing chem weapons BY MATTHEW LEE AND JULIE PACE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — In a rapid and remarkable chain of events, Syria welcomed the idea of turning over all of its chemical weapons for destruction on Monday, and President Barack Obama, though expressing deep skepticism, declared it a “potentially positive development” that could head off the threats of U.S. air strikes that have set the world on edge. The administration pressed ahead in its efforts to persuade Congress to authorize a military strike, and Obama said the day’s developments were doubtless due in part to the “credible possibility” of that action. He stuck to his plan to address the nation Tuesday night, while the Senate Democratic leader postponed a vote on authorization. The sudden developments broke into the open when Russia’s foreign minister, seizing on what appeared at the time to be an off-the-cuff remark by Secretary of State John Kerry, appeared in Moscow alongside his Syrian counterpart and proposed the chemical weapons turnover and destruction. The Syrian quickly embraced the idea, and before long U.N. SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon did, too.
I don’t think that we would have gotten to this point unless we had maintained a credible possibility of a military strike. BARACK OBAMA President, United States Obama, who appeared Monday evening in interviews on six TV networks, said the idea actually had been broached in his 20-minute meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week on the sidelines of an economic summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. Obama said he directed Kerry to have more conversations with the Russians and “run this to ground.”
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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says any move by Syria to surrender its chemical weapons to international control would be an “important step.” The president said he would “absolutely” halt a U.S. military strike if Syria’s stockpiles were successfully secured, though he remained skeptical about Assad’s willingness to carry out the steps needed. “My objective here has always been to deal with a very specific problem,” Obama said in an interview with ABC News. “If we can do that without a military strike, that is overwhelmingly my preference.” He cast Russia’s proposal as a direct result of the pressure being felt by Syria because of the threat of a U.S. strike and warned that he would not allow the idea to be used as a stalling tactic. “I don’t think that we would have gotten to this point unless we had maintained a credible possibility of a military strike, and I don’t think now is the time for us to let up on that,” he said. Still, the White House has had scant success in persuading members of Congress — including Democrats — to support the idea of military action. Senators continued to announce their opposition through the day. The proposal from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov came just hours
after Kerry told reporters in London that Assad could avoid a U.S. attack and resolve the crisis surrounding the use of chemical weapons by surrendering control of “every single bit” of his arsenal to the international community by the end of the week. The State Department sought to tamp down the potential impact of Kerry’s comments by calling them a “rhetorical” response to a hypothetical question and not “a proposal.” But their importance became clearer as the day progressed. Kerry spoke by phone with Lavrov shortly after making his comments in London, and officials familiar with the call said Lavrov had told Kerry that he had seen the remarks and would be issuing a public statement. Kerry told Lavrov that his comments were not a proposal but the U.S. would be willing to review a serious plan, the officials said. They stressed that he made clear that Lavrov could not present the idea as a joint U.S.-Russian proposal. The officials commented only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to describe the information publicly.
MOSCOW — Opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Monday night defused anger over the Moscow mayoral election, telling a vast square of cheering supporters to celebrate his surprisingly strong second-place finish as a victory that gave rise to real political competition in Russia. Navalny has claimed that Sunday’s vote was manipulated to give the Kremlin-appointed incumbent, Sergei Sobyanin, the slim majority he needed to win in the first round and avoid a runoff. Russia’s most respected election monitoring group also questioned the accuracy of the vote. But rather than call for angry street protests like those he led after the fraud-tainted 2011 national parliamentary election, Navalny urged his supporters to keep up the kind of grassroots political activism that helped
him defy all expectations and win 27 percent of the vote. Sunday’s election was in some ways less about Sobyanin, who many agree has brought positive change to Moscow since taking over three years ago, and more about the depth of discontent in the Russian capital with President Vladimir Putin’s rule, especially among the young and middle class. Navalny, 37, attracted thousands of enthusiastic volunteers to help him take his campaign to the streets of Moscow. “During these elections, politics in Russia was finally born,” Navalny told the crowd that filled Bolotnaya Square. The Navalny who took the stage Monday night was a more restrained and mature-sounding version of the fiery protest leader who inspired the mass protests against Putin that stretched through the winter of 2012, some of them held on the same square across the river from the Kremlin.
YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
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SPORTS
PEOPLE IN THE NEWS MIGUEL CABRERA The Detroit Tigers third baseman was ejected for arguing in the middle of his first inning at bat after umpire Brian Gorman ruled that Cabrera swung at a pitch that hit him in the knee. Tigers manager Jim Leyland was also ejected for arguing in Cabrera’s defense.
Bulldogs begin season
New captain embraces responsibility
MEN’S GOLF FROM PAGE 12 country and proved it, playing airtight golf all day,” Will Davenport ’15 said. “We have to tip our caps to them.” The Aggies showed their pedigree early in the 36-round event, as their top four golfers combined for a six-over first round score. The Elis struggled to counter effectively, as they were led by Joe Willis ’16 and Gaudette, who posted scores of threeover and four-over, respectively. The Elis’ top performers improved markedly in the second round of the day. Captain Sam Bernstein ’14 shot a
two-under 70, while Davenport scored a 73. The team overall scored a 299 over the course of the second round of 18. “Across the board, I think most of our players were disappointed with how they played,” Gaudette said. While the impressive scores put up by the Aggie competitors made it a tough day for the Bulldogs, the difficulty of the golf course at The Bridge certainly contributed to the Elis’ struggles. Gaudette noted that the course offered very little respite from its inherent difficulty, as the greens played very fast and
approach shots required a high degree of accuracy. Adding to the challenge was the fact that a strong breeze blew throughout much of the day’s event. “It was definitely a great experience and start to the season,” Davenport said. “We are looking forward to next weekend, where we will again face a strong field.” The Elis will continue their season next weekend at the McLaughlin at the famed Bethpage State Park Golf Courses. The tournament will take place on the Red course. Contact ALEX EPPLER at alexander.eppler@yale.edu .
YDN
The Yale football team will rely on the leadership of captain Beau Palin ’14 this season after struggling through a captainless 2012 season. PALIN FROM PAGE 12 playing sports both with and against his brothers Drew, Tyler and Ian as well as with his sister Holly, whom he says is the best athlete in the family. All four brothers continued their football careers at the college level — older brother Drew Palin ’06 played football for the Bulldogs and older brother Tyler played for Carleton College while younger brother Ian is currently starting at tight end for the University of Dayton. Holly played both field hockey and basketball for Northwestern while father Drew Palin played nose guard for Stanford and his grandfather played for Brown. Despite how competitive Palin is with his siblings, he said it remains playful. “My little brother just got bigger than me and it irritates me,” Palin said. Palin’s father jokes that if younger brother Ian is playing better than Beau, he will be attending Ian’s games. Still, Beau gives his family much of the credit for his success. “My siblings are instrumental to who I am and I look up to them all in different ways. My parents too,” Palin said. While it is easy to see the influence of Palin’s family on his athletic career, their influence on his academics is less obvious.
Yale paces the field in green athletics SUSTAINABILITY FROM PAGE 12 Senior Associate Athletic Director and Bulldog Sustainability’s lead staff liaison Barbara Chesler also noted that student athletes have been the impetus for Yale’s sustainability prowess. “Yale and Yale athletics really took a leadership role in being one of the first athletics programs to push this forward,” Chesler said. “And it’s driven by student-athletes; I think that’s the key. I’m honored for our students and our student-athletes.” The progress that Yale has made in greening has also helped to keep Yale in the black. Sustainable practices and upgrades are projected to save Yale athletics more than $100,000 in 2013, according to Director of Energy Management Julie Paquette in the NRDC report. In addition to the fiscal benefits that Yale gains from its green efforts, Bulldog Sustainability coordinator Diana Madson FES ’13 said that Yale’s inclusion in the report will give other sustainability advocates across Yale’s campus even more legitimacy. “We’re coming from a sustainability angle but not everyone else is,” Madson said. “I think it adds some credibility when we work with higher-ups within Yale.” Henly was already well acquainted with Yale’s sustainable practices before she wrote the report. She was a member of the Bulldog Sustainability team as an undergraduate at Yale, where she majored in political science with a concentration in environmental politics and policy before accepting a job with the NRDC after graduation. “Alice is representative of what students who have a passion for something, in this case sustainability, can go on and do,” Chesler said. “I’m not at all surprised that Alice really was the initiator behind this whole report and the writer. She’s an extraordinary person and when she sets her mind on something, whether it is winning a national championship or championing sustainability, you’re going to see results.” Henly represented Yale as a member of the women’s crew varsity eight-person boat that won national championships in 2007, 2008 and 2010. Contact CHARLES CONDRO at charles.condro@yale.edu
Palin is an ecology and evolutionary biology major. While he says he does not intend to apply to medical school directly after graduating, Palin hopes to become involved with entrepreneurship or leadership development, something that stems from his work as an assistant director for the WarriorScholar Project, a program that helps veterans transition into college life. Palin also cites as inspiration a football leadership program that head coach Tony Reno is working with retired General Stanley McChrystal to develop. He said one of his favorite moments at Yale was on a trip with the program. “Last year we went to Gettysburg and went on an early-morning run through the Gettysburg battlefield as the sun was rising,” Palin said. “[McChrystal] is definitely a huge role model.” Palin likens all of the effort he puts into the team and leaves out on the field to one of his favorite quotations by Theodore Roosevelt: “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” The Bulldogs will open up the 2013 season at Colgate on Saturday, Sept. 21 at 1 p.m. Contact ASHTON WACKYM at ashton.wackym@yale.edu .
MARIA ZEPEDA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
The men’s golf team competed against Texas A&M in a match at The Bridge Golf Course on Saturday.
Elis defeat Pioneers FIELD HOCKEY FROM PAGE 12 of their six goals, outshooting the Pioneers 16-1. Goalkeeper Emily Cain ’14 received the win, making three saves in the first half, and Heather Schlesier ’15 finished off the game, recording a save.
Yale’s six seniors led the way, combining for five of the six goals as well as three assists in the second game of the year. “They have led extremely well since last November,” Stuper said. “Their leadership has been outstanding, their play has been strong and the six of them are a unit that
leads together and that makes us strong.” Freshmen also contributed to the game against Sacred Heart, with midfielder Kelsey Nolan ’17 scoring the sixth goal of the game. “The freshman performed really well in their first collegiate games,” Gogel said. “It’s exciting to have
such a strong freshmen class join our team.” The Elis will be on the road this weekend with games against Albany and Hofstra. Contact ASHLEY WU at ashley.e.wu@yale.edu .
JENNIFER CHEUNG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
This weekend, the Elis will face two New York opponents on the road: Albany and Hofstra.
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SPORTS QUICK HITS
LEXY ADAMS ’13 FORMER ELI RETURNS AS COACH Adams, who is at Yale for a fifth year completing her master of public health, will join the field hockey coaching staff as a volunteer assistant. Adams started all 17 games last season at back and was a member of the class that set a Yale record for most wins in four years.
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MELISSA GAVIN ’15 ELI NAMED IVY PLAYER OF THE WEEK Two game-winning goals and two assists for the women’s soccer team as the Bulldogs opened the season against Stony Brook and UMass Lowell this weekend earned Gavin Player of the Week honors, alongside Tyler Lussi of Princeton.
“It’s easy to create a culture of leadership when there are so many other leaders on the team.” BEAU PALIN ’14 CAPTAIN, FOOTBALL YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2013 · yaledailynews.com
Palin ’14 motivated by captaincy FOOTBALL
Elis unable to beat Texas A&M BY ALEX EPPLER STAFF REPORTER Before this year’s fall season got underway, Sean Gaudette ’14 articulated a goal that many of the Bulldogs players surely have on their minds: to win an Ivy League championship at the end of the spring season. And with most of the core players that made the squad the favorite to win the championship last year returning for this season, expectations certainly remain high for the team.
MEN’S GOLF
empty position for the 2013 season. But wide receiver Chris Smith ’14, who was away from school for the captain-less 2012 campaign, thinks Palin is the right man for the job. “The thing that makes Beau a great captain for our team is that he’s real. He doesn’t try to be someone he’s not,” Smith said. “That makes all the guys respect him and follow the example he sets.” Palin is not the first leader in his family and certainly is not the only athlete. The Wisconsin native grew up in a competitive atmosphere,
Yale wasted no time jumping back into the thick of competition to start this season. The team traveled to Southampton, N.Y., on Saturday to compete against Texas A&M in a match at The Bridge Golf Course. While the Elis fell in the competition, they amassed some valuable experience against one of the top teams in the country. “It felt great to get back out on the course and compete alongside my teammates,” Gaudette said. “And to do it against a nationally recognized powerhouse like Texas A&M on a championship venue made it even more enjoyable.” The event marked the first time that the players had stepped onto the golf course to represent Yale since faltering at the Ivy League championship meet last April. Despite leading Ivies entering their final day, the Bulldogs ended up finishing second to Princeton in an intensely competitive affair. In Texas A&M, the Bulldogs found themselves facing a top opponent to open the season. The Aggies won the national championship in 2009 and finished 23rd in the final NCAA Division I poll last year. “A&M is one of the best programs in the
SEE PALIN PAGE 11
SEE MEN’S GOLF PAGE 11
MARIA ZEPEDA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Captain Beau Palin ’14 comes from a long tradition of college football players, including his grandfather, father and three brothers. BY ASHTON WACKYM STAFF REPORTER It takes a talented athlete to switch sides of the ball halfway through his college football career, but captain Beau Palin ’14 took the challenge during his junior season when he shifted from tight end to defensive end. Palin started every game that year, finishing the 2012 season with 43 tackles and a team-high four sacks. While the statistics speak to Palin’s work ethic, the impression he has left on his teammates speaks louder. “Beau has been blessed with nat-
ural leadership and an unparalleled work ethic,” wide receiver Cameron Sandquist ’14 said. “He cares about this team and it shows. He puts an astounding amount of effort into forming relationships and making sure every single guy on the team knows their role and importance to Yale football. It is exciting to be a part of.” Palin said that only a few players in his class remained on the team since their freshman year, and that the group has bonded through the turmoil and instability that have afflicted the Bulldogs over the past two years.
The Blue and White go green BY CHARLES CONDRO STAFF REPORTER It may not be the Associated Press coaches’ poll, but Yale Athletics was recently ranked alongside sports powerhouses Oregon, Florida and Ohio State University in the National Resources Defense Council’s August report “College Game Changers: How Campus Sport is Going Green.” In the report, Yale was showcased as one of 10 case studies that represented leaders in sustainability among the major athletic conferences. Report author Alice Henly ’10 emphasized the involvement of Yale student-athletes in promoting sustainability. “I think the distinguishing factor is the student-athlete focus and their leadership and ownership of the program,” Henly said. That leadership has been manifested through Bulldog Sustainability, a program that attempts to cultivate environmental and social consciousness within the Yale Athletics Department. Four students were hired by the department and the Office of Sustainability in 2008, and the program has now grown to include 12 graduate and undergraduate students. The students, both varsity and club athletes, design and implement sustainability and green-
ing programs within the athletics department and among individual teams.
Yale and Yale athletics really took a leadership role in being one of the first athletics programs to push this forward. BARBARA CHESLER Senior associateathletic director and lead staff liaison of Bulldog Sustainability One of these programs is the Green Athletics Team Certification, the first such collegiate athletics program in the country. In 2011, Bulldog Sustainability created a checklist to help teams look at making sustainable choices in everything from travel to practice and team events. Teams must complete at least 18 “actions” in order to receive recognition as a Green Athletics-certified team. According to the report, 12 varsity teams comprising a total of 269 student-athletes have received the Green Athletics certification. SEE SUSTAINABILITY PAGE 11
He is motivated by the role and said he looks forward to leading alongside his teammates rather than by just himself. “Being the captain and the leader of the team is really inspiring because you have 100 or more guys depending on you to do it right every day. It’s good. I wouldn’t want to have it any other way,” Palin said. “It’s easy to create a culture of leadership when there are so many other leaders on the team.” After the Bulldogs played without a captain for the first time in the team’s history last year, Palin faced a difficult challenge stepping into the
Bulldogs split first weekend BY ASHLEY WU CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The field hockey team kicked off its season this weekend with two games, losing 6–1 against No. 7 Virginia before bouncing back and shutting out Sacred Heart 6–0.
FIELD HOCKEY On Friday afternoon, the Bulldogs were able to muster only one goal against the nationally ranked Virginia, which scored five unanswered goals within a 30-minute period before forward Gabby Garcia ’14 ended the streak with her first goal of the season at the 44:43 minute mark. “We never got on our heels and played aggressively throughout the game,” head coach Pam Stuper said. “We learned something about ourselves.” This was the first time the team had played on the field since it was resurfaced. As an Ivy League school, Yale (1–1, 0–0 Ivy) started the season one weekend behind other schools, most of which have already played two games. Even though the team suffered a tough loss against Virginia (3–0, 0–0 ACC), midfielder Emily Schuckert ’14 said that the experience will make the team stronger going forward. “I think we are lucky to have the opportunity to play against a highranked team like Virginia. It was great competition and gave us the chance to see what else we need to work on for the rest of this season,” forward Brooke Gogel ’14 said. It was another story against Sacred
TOP ’DOG MELISSA GAVIN ’15
JENNIFER CHEUNG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
The Bulldogs lost 6-1 against Virginia but bounced back and shut out local rival Sacred Heart 6-0. Heart (2–1, 0–0 MAAC). In the beginning, Mary Altepeter, the goalkeeper for Sacred Heart, kept things close, allowing only one goal while making eight saves in the first half. Yale also had 11 penalty corners, seven of which came in the first half, but the team was only able
to score once. The Bulldogs regrouped at half time and began a dominant second half. Hungry to score, the floodgates opened for the Bulldogs as they poured in five SEE FIELD HOCKEY PAGE 11
THE JUNIOR FORWARD ON THE WOMEN’S SOCCER TEAM WAS NAMED IVY LEAGUE PLAYER OF THE WEEK. She scored two goals over the weekend and helped take down Stony Brook and UMass Lowell.