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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2013 · VOL. CXXXVI, NO. 21 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
SUNNY SUNNY
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CROSS CAMPUS Match made in heaven.
Two separate paths crossed at Fenway Park on Sunday when a 16-year-old high school student who had suffered from severe aplastic anemia met his bone marrow donor, Yale senior Philip Gosnell ’14. Gosnell, who signed up through the Mandi Schwartz Bone Marrow Donor Registration Drive as a freshman, met his “blood brother” for the first time on Sunday, next to baseball legend Carl Yastrzemski at an event co-ponsored by the Bone Marrow Donor Registry and Massachusetts General Hospital.
He lives. A friendly squirrel
was spotted sneaking away as it carried a brown, whitestriped tie, tucking away its conquest at the top of a pine tree in the Law School courtyard. Looks like this creature managed to survive the alleged squirrel apocalypse after all. A digital world. In a Tuesday email to the Yale community, Chief Information Officer Len Peters informed students of updates to the University’s technology infrastructure and the results of the 2013 Yale Technology Survey. In addition to launching quarterly newsletters centered on ITS services for students, the office has also expanded Yale’s software library, provided 50 GB of file storage workspace through Box @ Yale and opened the Technology Enabled Active Learning classroom. The greatest race. Yale’s all-
female a cappella group Whim ‘n Rhythm is in the running to win Zipcar’s “Students with Drive” contest, which comes with thousands of dollars in driving credit. As of press time, the all-senior group was in first place for the Arts section, beating out the University of Michigan’s ballroom dance team by a dozen votes.
The Great Debaters. The Yale Political Union announced the winners of the annual Freshman Prize Debate late Tuesday night. Though an email from YPU President Stewart McDonald stated that the four hours of debate were “grueling,” Kar Jin Ong ’17 emerged victorious, snagging first place. Layla TreuhaftAli ’17 and Andrew Weiss ’17 followed in second and third, respectively, and Matthew Massie ’17 and Daniel Judt ’17 were named honorable mentions. THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1961 The Yale Police Department acquires portable transistor radios that can be attached to a belt or carried in a pocket, replacing the preexisting multistep pager system, in which an officer would first have to receive a page by coded signal before running to a telephone to receive instructions from the police office. Submit tips to Cross Campus
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‘STREETCAR’ MANGANIELLO AT THE YALE REP
LANGUAGES
CYCLING
GOOGLE GLASS
Student interest in Korean, Japanese and Chinese on the rise
CITY INSTALLS A BIKE RACK AT COLLEGE, CHAPEL
Quarterback Henry Furman ’14 takes snaps with new technology
PAGES 6-7 CULTURE
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Yale posts 12.5% return GRAPH ENDOWMENT RETURNS ON INVESTMENTS 25% 20%
Family settles lawsuit over DKE crash BY LORENZO LIGATO AND MATTHEW LLOYD-THOMAS STAFF REPORTERS
15%
ground ever since, with the exception of the 2012 fiscal year, when the size of the endowment dipped slightly because the University’s spending outpaced growth. This year’s performance is in
The family of one of four Yale students killed in a 2003 crash on the return trip from a fraternity event has settled a lawsuit against the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Court records show that the lawsuit against both the national organization and the Yale chapter, filed in 2005 by the parents of Nicholas Grass ’05, was settled under undisclosed terms on Sept. 5, bringing an end to years of legal battle between the victim’s family and DKE. Grass was one of nine students returning to campus from a DKE event in New York City when their SUV collided with a tractor-trailer on Interstate 95 at around 5 a.m. on Jan. 17, 2003. The collision killed Grass, Sean Fenton ’04, Andrew Dwyer ’05 and Kyle Burnat ’05 and injured the other five passengers, all of whom were members of DKE. “If you open your door up and say to a friend, hop in and let’s go to New York or wherever, you have to drive carefully, and if you don’t, you’re responsible for your friend’s safety: The same is true for a third person or organization,” Steven Ecker ’84, a lawyer representing the Grass family, told the News in September 2009, after the Connecticut Supreme Court sent the case to a trial by jury.
SEE ENDOWMENT PAGE 4
SEE DKE PAGE 4
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FY 2009
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FY 2011
FY 2012
FY 2013
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BY SOPHIE GOULD STAFF REPORTER Yale earned a 12.5 percent return on its investments during the fiscal year that ended June 30, the University announced Tuesday. The endowment grew over the
latest fiscal period from $19.3 billion to $20.8 billion, its highest mark since it peaked at roughly $22.9 billion in fiscal year 2008. After losing nearly a quarter its value due to the onset of the nationwide economic recession, the endowment has been regaining
Elicker campaign launches Yale fellowship BY MATTHEW LLOYD-THOMAS STAFF REPORTER A large map of New Haven, its wards outlined in different colors based on the priorities of mayoral challenger Justin Elicker’s SOM ’10 FES ’10 campaign, adorns
the wall of Drew Morrison’s ’14 Branford suite. Morrison leads Yale for Elicker, the most visible attempt of a mayoral candidate to curry favor of Yale students registered to vote in the Elm City. In the wake of Elicker’s loss to State
Students turn to interdisciplinary majors BY JANE DARBY MENTON AND LARRY MILSTEIN STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER As some of Yale’s most popular majors including history and English experience declining enrollments, majors that transcend disciplinary boundaries are on the rise. Yale College Dean Mary Miller said interdisciplinary majors — who draw from departments across the University to focus on a particular topic, like American studies or environmental studies — have become increasingly popular over the past decade. Students and faculty involved in the majors said they think interdisciplinary programs allow students to explore the Yale curriculum with more flexibility, but other professors said they believe students benefit from a more traditional disciplinary approach to education. “Majors that tend to be more problem-based than disciplinary-based have long been attractive, and I think, now, we are finding more ways to do this with subjects that are both topical and of keen interest to the millennial generation,” Miller said. “Such majors tend to focus on topic, not discipline, and look from many different lenses in order to gain expertise and
Sen. Toni Harp ARC ’78 in the Sept. 10 Democratic primary and his subsequent decision to run as an independent in the November general election, the group introduced a new initiative Tuesday, dubbed the Elicker Organizing Fellowship, that is aimed at both
denting Harp’s formidable organizational advantage and taking advantage of the large number of independent voters in the city. “The main difference [between the primary and general elections] is numerical — scale,” Morrison said. “There are going
to be a lot more voters.” The majority of Yale students are unaffiliated with a political party, making them ineligible to participate in the Democratic primary. According to Morrison, SEE ELICKER PAGE 5
SOM to offer scholarship to Yale graduates
multidisciplinary training for interdisciplinary exploration.” Though some interdisciplinary programs have their own faculty positions, most draw from other related departments and course listings. The American studies faculty includes professors from departments such as History, African American Studies and Anthropology.
[Interdisciplinary] majors tend to focus on topic, not discipline, and look from many different lenses in order to gain expertise. MARY MILLER Yale College Dean Senior lecturer Amity Doolittle said environmental studies has grown dramatically over the past decade, a trend she attributed both to the relevance of the subject matter and the intellectual freedom of the program. Last year, 28 students earned undergraduate degrees in environmental studies, compared to nine in 2003-’04. “Who doesn’t like to break SEE MAJORS PAGE 4
YUME HOSHIJIMA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The School of Management’s new campus on Whitney Avenue is slated to open in January 2014. BY ALEKSANDRA GJORGIEVSKA STAFF REPORTER Yale graduates now have the option to attend the School of Management for a year at no cost. Each year, SOM admits a group of college seniors to the Silver Scholars Program, a three-year MBA program that allows recent graduates to pursue a business degree immediately after completing their undergraduate education. In its next admissions cycle, the school will waive the approximately $59,000 annual tuition fee for admitted candidates
who graduated from Yale for the first of the program’s three years. SOM senior associate dean for the fulltime MBA program Anjani Jain and SOM director of admissions Bruce DelMonico said the decision is part of the school’s broader effort over the past several years to increase the amount of merit-based aid it awards — scholarship support at SOM has grown from constituting roughly 3 percent of the school’s gross tuition last year to about 9 percent this year. SEE SOM PAGE 5