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

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012 · VOL. CXXXV, NO. 47 · yaledailynews.com

INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING

SUNNY SUNNY

38 42

CROSS CAMPUS

BIRDS SPECIES ROOST UNDER SAME TREE

DIVERSITY

GRAD SCHOOL

WOMEN’S TENNIS

The Divinity School looks for greater diversity amongst its students

STUDENTS TAKE PROFESSORS OUT FOR TEA

Bulldogs win 31 matches, claiming singles and doubles champions

PAGE 8-9 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

PAGE 5 NEWS

PAGE 5 NEWS

PAGE 14 SPORTS

Election Day sees tight races NEW HAVEN POLLING PLACES

Rock the vote! After millions of dollars, thousands of advertisements and months of campaigning, the day of reckoning is here. Thousands of people across the country will turn out in droves today to cast their votes for the next President of the United States.

If you’re registered to vote in Connecticut, make sure to stop by the New Haven Free Public Library, Troup School or Wexler Grant School today to cast your ballot.

Polls will be open from 6:00 AM - 8:00 PM. NEW HAVEN LIBRARY, 133 ELM ST. Branford, Berkeley, Calhoun, Jonathan Edwards, Silliman, Saybrook, Trumbull, Timothy Dwight or Old Campus.

WEXLER GRANT SCHOOL, 55 FOOTE ST. Davenport, Ezra Stiles, Pierson, Morse or Swing Space. There will be rides to the polls every hour leaving from in front of Davenport and Pierson and from in front of Payne-Whitney Gymnasium.

Bookstore will be giving away free loaves of bread to voters sporting an “I Voted” sticker today. Bread options include Ancient Grains Demi Ciabatta, Wheat & Olive Oil Demi Ciabatta or Whole Grain Demi Baguette. Yalies, take this chance to grab a taste of democracy.

registration in New Haven topped 70,000 for the first time in 15 years, according to the New Haven Register. As of Nov. 1, there were 71,371 registered voters in the Elm City. More than 200,000 new voters had registered in Connecticut since Jan. 2012.

Shakin’ out votes. Shake Shack gave out coupons for a free cup or cone of custard to all customers who filled out a “Pledge to Vote” card Tuesday night. The coupon expires at the end of December this year.

It remains to be seen whether the cold weather will stop Yalies from venturing out and redeeming their “Skull and Cones.”

Going to The Game? The Yale College Council and Yale’s Associated Student Agencies are offering $22 oneway tickets to Boston for the Yale-Harvard game on Nov. 17. Students interested can purchase tickets online.

Double trouble. Children

across New Haven are gearing up to celebrate Halloween tonight, one week after the mayors of New Haven, West Haven and East Haven encouraged parents to keep their children indoors on Oct. 31 due to ongoing hurricane repair efforts. As voters tune in to hear the results of the presidential election, they should be aware of little monsters, Prince Charmings and superheroes running down the streets.

Calling for action. A

whiteboard placed on Cross Campus Tuesday afternoon asked students whether they were satisfied with the Yale Corporation’s efforts to solicit student input in the search for Yale’s next president, and encouraged passersby to write down the qualities they’d like to see in the University’s next leader.

ers, help students get absentee ballots and sway undecided voters. Today, they will turn to getting out the vote for their respective candidates across the Yale campus.

“We’ll be working on voter turnout of both registered Republicans and unaffiliated registered voters in Ward 1,” Yale College Republicans chairSEE ELECTION PAGE 6

SEE VOTING PAGE 6

HALL OF RECORDS, 200 ORANGE ST. Off campus, east of York Street and south of Elm Street (e.g. Chapel, High, College, Temple)

JACOB GEIGER/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Election Day commences at 6 a.m. with candidates vying for votes in the presidential, Senate and U.S. House of Representatives races.

BY ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER As Connecticut voters head to the polls, President Barack Obama’s sizable polling lead in the state has led voter turnout efforts to focus on the state’s U.S. Senate race.

In an election that could decide which party wins the Senate majority, Democrat Chris Murphy and Republican Linda

McMahon are vying for the seat that will be vacated by Joseph Lieberman ’64 LAW ’67, with the latest polling giving Murphy a slight edge. Yale students will also choose between Democratic incumbent Rosa DeLauro and Republican challenger Wayne Winsley in the U.S. House contest for Connecticut’s third congressional district.

Campus political organizations have been working for months to register vot-

PRESIDENTIAL SEARCH

Amid presidential search, students apathetic

BY JULIA ZORTHIAN STAFF REPORTER Dressed in a blue sweater and khaki pants, University President Richard Levin stood at the door of the President’s House at 43 Hillhouse Ave. last Wednes-

day, greeting costume-clad undergraduates who entered the residence for his annual Halloween party.

It was clear from his emails that Levin — who announced on Aug. 30 that he will step down at the end of the academic year

after serving 20 years as president — wanted students to attend the party. The invitation came shortly after 2 p.m. on Oct. 30. Levin followed with a reminder around 11 a.m. the next day, and a second reminder came five hours later, at 4 p.m.

Saybrook expands dining

BY KIRSTEN SCHNACKENBERG STAFF REPORTER The fruit smoothies available in the Saybrook dining hall Monday night kicked off a year of expanded food options in the college.

Saybrook Monday Madness — a Yale Dining initiative that pro-

vides additional food options in only Saybrook College each Monday night — began this week to increase traffic in the Saybrook dining hall. The new program will include additional food choices such as crepes and an omelet station. Administrators hope the program will attract students who would typically eat in

Berkeley College dining hall, after administrators introduced new restrictions that closed Berkeley to transfer students two Mondays per month starting on Oct. 15, Director of Residential Dining and Saybrook Associate Master Cathy Van Dyke SOM ’86 said.

SEE SAYBROOK DINING PAGE 4

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1947 A robbery at Delta Kappa Epsilon’s fraternity house leaves DKE three whiskey bottles and $80 short.

Submit tips to Cross Campus

crosscampus@yaledailynews.com

ONLINE y MORE cc.yaledailynews.com

BY JOHN AROUTIOUNIAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER More than 100,000 Connecticut residents have sent in their voter registration forms in the past six weeks, but the state’s new processing system has struggled to keep up with the influx.

The new Connecticut voter registration system, known as CVRS2, was deployed this year under the directive of Gov. Dannel Malloy to save costs and streamline information sharing. But Av Harris, communications director for Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, said the new system has faced technical difficulties because of state computer network capacity constraint. Unlike the state’s old registration system, which did not require transmitting voter registration information aross the Internet, the new system sends an enormous amount of data across the state’s network. Officials said the increase in transmitted information has overwhelemed the computer hardware on several instances over the past few weeks.

“The pipeline wasn’t wide

TROUP SCHOOL, 259 EDGEWOOD AVE. Off campus, west of York Street and south of Broadway (e.g. Park, Howe, Dwight, Edgewood).

Let them eat bread. Atticus

Power by numbers. Voter

New state voter system struggles

HENRY EHRENBERG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Saybrook now offers special dining options on Monday evenings as part of “Saybrook Monday Madness.”

The emails did their job: Levin and his wife, professor Jane Levin, spent most of the night greeting the constant flow of students who crowded through the door and filled the bottom floor.

Later in the night, many

students crowded around the Levins for photographs with the Yale President. Though students mingled over cups of hot apple cider, desserts and Halloween candy and listened to SEE STUDENT APATHY PAGE 4

State criticizes McMahon campaign

BY LORENZO LIGATO AND MICHELLE HACKMAN STAFF REPORTERS The State Election Enforcement Commission has issued a warning to Republican U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon about her “deceitful tactics” in disseminating absentee ballot applications in the final days before Election Day. In an Oct. 25 letter to McMahon’s campaign committee, the Commission, which is tasked with ensuring the integrity of the state’s electoral process, said it has received dozens of complaints from members of the public and town clerks’ offices regarding McMahon’s dissemination of unsolicited absentee ballot applications.

The material sent to electors by McMahon’s campaign included a letter soliciting voters to cast their ballots for the Republican candidate alongside an absentee ballot application. The SEEC executive director and general counsel

Michael Brandi said in his letter to McMahon campaign manager Corry Bliss that McMahon’s campaign committee allegedly used envelopes that were “disguised” as official or government communications in campaign mailings.

When we opened the letter, my father was disgusted. He would never vote for Linda McMahon.

MARY ZORZANELLO New Haven resident The mailings were enclosed in envelopes with stamps stating “DO NOT TEMPER OFFICIAL DOCUMENT” and “STATE OF CONNECTISEE SEEC PAGE 4

PAGE 2

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION

.COMMENT “All this time I was unaware I had a sexy major but I guess it makes yaledailynews.com/opinion

We have no clue I

n case you forgot, there is an election today. For many of us, this will be the first time we cast a ballot for the next president of the United States.

With the timing of all of this, I thought for a while that I’d write a column about for whom I was voting. But I kept having trouble putting a decent piece together.

On one level, wedged somewhere between being a scientologist in Vatican City and a drunken Red Sox fan in the central Bronx, lies the popularity of a column, “The Case for Mitt Romney,” at Yale. On a deeper level, though, is that when it comes right down to it as college students, we really have no clue what we are talking about.

To speak of students at one of the world’s best universities as being clueless seems relatively counterintuitive. For all of the Kant or Derrida we have under our belt, we are certainly as qualified to vote as the “average American.” Right?

However, I’m someone who has never held a job longer than a summer, who has never been entirely financially independent, who has never served in the military and, in general, has never had to endure the realities of the world without the knowledge that I was never far from the safe haven of home and Mother Yale. Actually, the belief that I am qualified to vote for the president of the United States could be the furthest thing from the truth.

While my story is far from universal, I would hazard that it is closer to the majority here at Yale. Our lives have mostly existed in the realm of ideas, sheltered largely (at least for a few more years) from the harsh circumstances of the realm of action.

The academy — with its prestige and resources — can with little difficulty construct an appealing set of rose-colored glasses, by which we can evaluate ourselves and in turn a readily simple world. In doing so, we afford ourselves an intellectual authority by association; one that not only allows us to access this world, but grants permission to speak confidently of its truths.

There is something about voting at such a young age, which allows for, if not reinforces, this dangerous temptation. Just look at the last few weeks of columns on these pages. With relative certainty, students have become economists, political philosophers, four-star generals and often all the above, in 800 words or less.

This is all well and good, as long as we remember we are playing dress-up. Even as someone who has devoted a large amount of his Yale career

to politics, I really have no clue if I’ll re-read my columns 30 years from now with a laugh, as I dust off my HARRY anniverGRAVER sary edition of “The Gravely Audacity of Hope.”

Mistaken And we shouldn’t be mistaken about this: we don’t know really know the world we theorize about. But now, for whatever merit, we are expected to cast a concrete, actual vote on its future.

There is a powerful tension between the purpose of a liberal arts education and the presuppositions behind the right to vote. On one hand, we are expected to first learn just how unwise we are, and through our education gain glimpses into the guiding principles that will build our character in adulthood. On the other hand, as voters, we are expected to possess sufficient means to choose the qualifications of the next leader of the free world.

This tension becomes even more powerful as the particular features of our demographic come into play. We certainly have a proclivity for intellectual infatuation. For every Ayn Rand there is a John Rawls. We are inclined — by finding just the right thinker, professor or book — to feel we have found the keys to unlocking the world. But we lack the range of practical experience to adequately break from the binding of books.

With all this said, I plan on voting today. Men far wiser and braver than me have fought for and designed the system that we have inherited.

However, I will not vote without a deep sense of conflict. Perhaps I have been granted a privilege, although well-intentioned, before my time. Perhaps our voting bloc is still too academically insulated to have so much sway on the world.

In any circumstance, many of us will today, for the first time in our lives, participate in one of the most remarkable traditions of the Western world. Voting is a right conceived by the greatest minds of our history and forged by the blood of heroes before us. Let us not approach this moment just with reverence, but also the intellectual humility it deserves.

MANAGING EDITORS Gavan Gideon Mason Kroll

SPORTS Eugena Jung John Sullivan

ONLINE EDITOR Caroline Tan OPINION Marissa Medansky Dan Stein NEWS Madeline McMahon Daniel Sisgoreo CITY Nick Defiesta Ben Prawdzik CULTURE Natasha Thondavadi

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The News’ View represents the opinion of the majority of the members of the Yale Daily News Managing Board of 2014. Other content on this page with bylines represents the opinions of those authors and not necessarily those of the Managing Board. Opinions set forth in ads do not necessarily reflect the views of the Managing Board. We reserve the right to refuse any ad for any reason and to delete or change any copy we consider objectionable, false or in poor taste. We do not verify the contents of any ad. The Yale Daily News Publishing Co., Inc. and its officers, employees and agents disclaim any responsibility for all liabilities, injuries or damages arising from any ad. The Yale Daily News Publishing Co. ISSN 0890-2240

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

G U E S T C O L U M N I S T SANJENA SATHIAN

Why I’m not voting I

n 2008, I was one year and seven days shy of being able to vote. I spent my fall walking around malls and my high school hallways in Atlanta, Ga., registering voters, informing people about their voting rights and doing everything I could in the absence of casting my own ballot.

Four years later, I’m legally allowed to cast my first ballot in a presidential election. But I won’t be voting this year.

I’ve always been disgusted by people who don’t vote. I have seen them as lazy to my energized, passive to my active, and uninformed to my educated. This year, I am one of them, and I do not feel lazy, passive or uninformed. I feel cheated, robbed and stripped.

In October, my father sent a mailin absentee ballot application to Fulton County in Georgia on my behalf. Between the two of us, we re-sent the form twice more, and I made several frustrating phone calls to my county registrar’s office. I was first told in October to “be patient,” then, on Nov. 2, that I must not have submitted the information properly.

On Monday, Nov. 5, no one answered the phone.

I am not too lazy to bother. I have cared about politics since middle school. My political beliefs were born in Georgia, and the work I poured myself into in 2008 was in service of that community’s voice. But the state has left me without one.

I don’t know if the mail was delayed because of Hurricane Sandy, or if my father or I made a mistake so egregious that my request had to be discarded (this I doubt), or if someone didn’t pay enough attention, thinking it wouldn’t be such a big deal for just one envelope to slip through the cracks. I worry that a careless mistake was made. But I also worry that something much worse is at play —

that Georgia, along with other states in this country, is engaging in active voter suppression.

I can’t know if someone maliciously disregarded my pleas. I have no face for the people who have robbed me: they are unknowns, and I’m the one left feeling like an idiot. I’m the one left thinking that I should have changed my registration to Connecticut this year or that I should have gone home over fall break and voted early or stormed the county courthouse to get the ballot myself. And maybe there’s more I could have done. But it shouldn’t be this hard. It’s my right.

I won’t be alone this year. Mistakes or deliberate campaigns will challenge millions of Americans’ right to vote. The nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School says it’s a problem with many faces. There are voter challenges, like the ones launched against Pennsylvania households with more than three or four children, accusing people of using a dead person’s name to vote or registering from a vacant lot. There is voter intimidation, like the stories my friends who canvass in Latin American communities in Connecticut have to share, or deceptive practices, like what happened in Georgia in 2000, 2004 and 2008, when voters were given misinformation about polling stations.

This year alone, there was the wave of controversial voter ID legislation, which will be implemented in six states Tuesday, including in Georgia. There is whatever chaos descended on Florida, as early voters were caught in the madness.

My completely unscientific polling — the Facebook status I posted Monday night in distress — suggests I’m not the only one. Students from Georgia, but also from Illinois, Mississippi, Ohio, Florida, Washington, D.C.: red and blue

parts of the country alike didn’t get their ballots this year or in past years. Something is wrong across the country. Something is wrong with this supposedly representative process when human error or bureaucracy can take away someone’s right to vote — or when there is the space for something worse, something intentional to happen, for citizens to be systematically disenfranchised in so many ways and in so many places.

SOMETHING IS WRONG WHEN WE ARE DENIED OUR RIGHT TO VOTE There is not such a big difference between whatever careless attitude likely robbed me of my ballot and those direct efforts to intimidate or deceive or cage away others’ votes. Both the mistakes and the malicious come from a place of laziness and disregard toward democracy.

I am scared that the state of politics in this country can hang on the poor management and bureaucracy of a few. I am scared that I am one of millions whose right to vote will be compromised this year because the electoral machine chews up individuals and spits out only a small percentage of the representation. I am furious that even as I write this, I know that my voice remains tiny. I am yelling at a Goliath that cannot hear me.

SANJENA SATHIAN is a senior in Morse College. Contact her at sanjena.sathian@yale.edu .

G U E ST C O LU M N I ST JAC KS O N M C H E N RY

My absentee election

KAREN TIAN/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

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'GOBIAS' ON 'THE MISCONCEPTION ABOUT PHILOSOPHY'

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sense”

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COPYRIGHT 2012 — VOL. CXXXV, NO. 47

I

’m convinced that I didn’t vote this year, at least not really. How can merely mailing a piece of paper all the way across the country mean anything significant?

My ballot arrived from California a couple weeks ago. A few days later, I finished researching the propositions on which I wanted to exercise my direct democracy.

Then I bubbled in the bubbles I liked, and after I waited in a short line at the post office for stamps, my ballot was on its way to sunnier climes.

Everything went smoothly, but I found the experience of voting absentee ridiculously surreal. No white curtain separated my decision-making process from the rest of my life. I couldn’t even fill out my ballot in private: someone had to sign a witness statement on the envelope. This meant that my opinions didn’t officially mean anything until my roommate took a break from his problem set. I didn’t even vote on a Tuesday.

But even as an absentee vote makes you rely on the crowd, it also separates you from it. Propositions that are heavily debated in California never made it onto my radar (and how are you supposed to vote with confidence without seeing the attack ads from both sides?). Back at Yale, people attempted to pitch Connecticut candidates to me with fliers, tirades and visits to my suite, but as soon I admitted that I was voting absentee, the fervor disappeared.

It was that lack of fervor that got to me the most. Maybe it’s the influence of “Schoolhouse Rock,” but I always

expected that the act of casting a ballot would mean more to me than it has. Even though I knew I would be among the millions filling out a ballot on some Tuesday in November, I thought that my vote seems like it mattered the most.

I like to think that if I had voted in person, I would feel differently. Every vote does count the same in the end, but the ones found in voting booths must mean more to the people who fill them out than the one I marked up in a dorm room meant to me. They got an “I voted” sticker. I didn’t. Therefore, they voted and I didn’t — that’s how it works, right?

CASTING YOUR VOTE SHOULDN'T JUST BE ABOUT GETTING A STICKER And if I did vote, then what is our country thinking? I’m not nearly qualified enough for this! What if I change my mind? Don’t the events of Hurricane Sandy mean that I qualify for retrial? I filled in my ballot while catching up on “Game of Thrones,” for goodness sake.

By 18, I was supposed to know how to make the right decision, not only for myself, but also for the rest of the country. I’m 19 now, and pretty much all I know

with confidence is that this is not the case.

I can’t even choose a sandwich at Gourmet Heaven without having doubts about the other options. How am I supposed to back a president?

Maybe this year’s election is to blame for not providing a candidate or proposition that truly inspires confidence. But barring the elections of 1792, 1864 and season four of “The West Wing,” when will there ever be a presidential candidate that is the definitively the right choice?

Not to get highfalutin, but democracy forces you to choose from a mixed bag of pros and cons. If there is no best option, fight to include one.

But I don’t fight. I have never donated money to a campaign or even bought a pin.

I tend to avoid debating my political opinions. You’re not just supposed to be proud of the act of casting a ballot, you are supposed to be proud of the statement you make by doing so: that you’ve grown up and taken a stand for something. By not embracing what I could have said with a ballot, I lost out on that feeling.

Later tonight, as the results of the general election flicker across news networks and Twitter streams, I’ll know that, in some small way, I contributed to the mass of statistics. My vote counts. But, returning to my original question, will that mean anything? To me, at least, it won’t mean as much as it could have.

JACKSON MCHENRY is a sophomore in Silliman College. Contact him at jackson.mchenry@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 3

ELECTION DAY

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” THOMAS JEFFERSON

G U E S T C O L U M N I S T BAOBAO ZHANG

GUE ST COLUMNIST ZAK NEWMAN

The value of our votes

What’s next?

T

his Tuesday, you won’t find me at the nearest polling place.

Despite all the get-out-thevote (GOTV) college and university-wide events I passed by. Despite all hundreds of Facebook ads I perused. Despite all the campaign mailers I received from Linda McMahon.

I won’t be casting a ballot because I can’t.

Many of my friends and classmates are surprised to discover that I am not actually a U.S. citizen. To them, I seem like a civically minded American. In 2008, I canvassed for Barack Obama. In 2010, I covered the midterm election for a public radio station in my hometown. In 2012, I researched GOTV strategies for political scientists and contributed to the News’ coverage of the election as a multimedia editor. But unfortunately, I only have a green card.

Like the 17 percent of Yalies who are international students, I can’t vote. But to those of you who can, please vote today.

Maybe I’m too bright-eyed and bushytailed about democracy in the U.S. Then again, few Americans know what it is like to live in autocracies. Growing up in China, you become a political cynic by age 7. The well-connected join the Communist Party to later “dang guan” — that is, to move up the government’s bureaucratic ladder. “You need to an envelope of cash

or a large pack of cigarettes to get anything done here,” my grandmother would often joke.

When my family moved to America, I began third grade, where I learned about democracy for the first time in my social studies class. The idea sounded foreign and wonderful to me. Citizens can hold their leaders accountable, legislators can openly debate about policy and even a peanut farmer can become a president.

Though my parents dutifully paid their taxes, they couldn’t vote. Democracy still remained an abstract idea until senior year of high school. Desperate to receive a green card so I could receive financial aid for college, I wrote my Congresswoman Kathy Castor, D-FL, to expedite my family’s immigration process. Instead of unanswered emails, I received several helpful phone calls from Castor’s aides. A month later, my family received our green cards. No envelopes of cash required.

I am not writing an encomium of American democracy. Political dynasties still exist. Corporations can raise unlimited amounts of money to support or oppose candidates. Overly aggressive voter fraud laws discriminate against citizens in several states. But despite all of these problems with our political system, Americans should feel proud that they can participate in fair and free elections today.

During my two years as a research

assistant for professor Nikolay Marinov, I worked on a data set covering every election in the world since 2000. I noted a curious phenomenon. Ordinary people in illiberal democracies turn up in large numbers for elections. Sometimes they risk their lives to cast a ballot or to protest election fraud. I often wonder what drives these people to vote — even when they are fighting uphill battles against crony politicians and unfair electoral procedures.

Perhaps they sincerely believe their voice, however marginalized, can improve their countries’ political institutions.

The Yale voter doesn’t travel dozens of miles across muddy roads to vote. She isn’t concerned about getting beat up for voting for the wrong person. Her choices are not between a semi-dictator and a corrupt tycoon. As a friend of mine wrote on Facebook, “It’s worth remembering how exceptional it is that we determine who governs us. Our leaders stress about growing our economy, not building themselves bigger palaces.” So appreciate the admirable imperfection that is American democracy because you have the power to transform it at the ballot box.

I’ll be voting in 2014. I hope you’ll vote today.

BAOBAO ZHANG is a senior in Calhoun College and a former multimedia editor for the News. Contact her at baobao.zhang@yale.edu .

GUEST COLUMNIST SCOT T REMER

Promoting the general welfare E

ver since the Tea Party’s founding, its members have vociferously called for a return to basic principles. When they disingenuously bray about a return to traditional family values and the ideologies of the Founding Fathers, their words mask an irrational hatred toward President Obama and an agenda bent upon overturning decades of progress. But perhaps on Election Day, we should take their advice and examine the Founding Fathers’ words.

If we do, we will realize just how radical the RomneyRyan agenda is.

Take the Constitution, for example. This venerated document, the philosophical basis for our legal system, begins with the resonant phrase “We the People.” The choice of pronouns was intentional. The Founding Fathers, steeped in Locke and Montesquieu, understood social contract theory.

They knew full well that any political entity is more than the sum of its parts, that people enter into a social contract to maximize the collective good and that tending to the general welfare is essential to, if not the end goal of, statecraft. When we as individuals unite and sacrifice for the common benefit, we all prosper.

Far from embracing the common good, Romney and his allies pooh-pooh it.

They seem to exist in a Randian utopia where commu-

nity is nothing more than an aggregation of individuals and "public" is a dirty word.

When President Obama suggested that no businessman exists in a vacuum and that you can’t simply pull yourself up by the bootstraps, the right assailed him for persecuting so-called job creators.

But they have learned nothing from the 2008 meltdown.

Rather than questioning the efficacy of surrendering government to corporations and touting privatization as a panacea, they have rushed headlong down the true road to serfdom — namely, the subjugation of the middle class and poor to the interests of the über-rich — all in the service of an extreme and nihilistic individualism.

IT'S TIME TO ASK OURSELVES WHAT THE FOUNDING FATHERS WOULD THINK In his recent book "What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets," Harvard professor Michael Sandel poignantly comments on the dangers of the marketization of life, chronicling the creeping erosion of democratic norms and values as corporate ideas and values insinu-

ate their way into every facet of our lives. From education to election financing to health care to welfare reform, the logic of the marketplace rules the day. We rarely consider the implications of thinking of government as a business or of education as a product to be marketed. At what cost do we cast aside our compassion for the Social Darwinist gospel of the free market?

Today’s Republican Party views government in a radically different way than the Founding Fathers did. Rather than championing a strong, centralized government to promote economic vibrancy, it believes that government should be an impotent handmaiden to the private sector. Indeed, the public sector doesn’t even seem to exist anymore: both Obama and Romney claim that government doesn’t create jobs, an utterly nonsensical assertion. Just look at the millions of firefighters, policemen, teachers and civil servants employed by — guess who? — the government.

When conservatives grudgingly acknowledge the public sector, it is the target of their animus: Having a tough time finding a decent job with benefits? Blame those teachers, sitting pretty with their healthcare and pensions; don’t blame the businesses who refuse to pay a living wage.

At any rate, according to the Republicans, government has no business improving

people’s lives. As their idol Ronald Reagan quipped, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” Hurricane Sandy has clearly disproved this notion, but the Republicans also seem to believe that citizens have no responsibility towards the government and their fellow citizens. Their refusal to support tax increases, even for millionaires, is one example. Another is Ryan’s meanspirited budget, which converts Medicare into a voucher system and slashes education funding and Social Security. The social safety net, a concrete acknowledgment of our common existence, would be essentially vaporized under such a plan. Ultimately, what is at stake in this election is nothing less than America’s political philosophy. We can retain our commitment to the common good and individualism tempered by community, or we can discard it in favor of a radical, selfish atomism. John Donne famously declared that, “No man is an island.”

The Founding Fathers, having “mutually pledged” their lives “to each other” to defeat a mighty and implacable foe, certainly agreed with Donne.

One only hopes that we still do.

SCOTT REMER is a freshman in Pierson College. Contact him at scott.remer@yale.edu .

A

fter months of ads, hundreds of thousands of calls and thousands of doors knocked, the election is finally coming to a close. Both sides have laid out the stakes of this election and their plans for the future. But no matter which party is victorious today, we cannot expect any meaningful progress unless we are a part of it.

Yale students this semester have contributed to history in this election. The Yale Dems have traveled across the region, talking with voters from New Hampshire to Pennsylvania about the importance of voting in this election.

We have called thousands of voters across the country and in critical swing states including Ohio and North Carolina to share with them President Obama’s plans to fight for the middle class and spur job growth. We have registered over 500 students on campus in partnership with progressive groups on campus like Students Unite Now and the Party of the Left. Working together, we believe that will push forward on the crucial work President Obama has done to restart our economy, to fight for social justice, and to improve our relationships abroad.

Conservatives on campus have put together their own impressive operation in support of their views. Largely inactive in 2008, Republicans on campus have knocked on doors in support of their candidates and have registered voters on campus in bipartisan work with the Dems.

Active political engagement on both sides of the aisle is critical to sustaining impassioned conversation about where we want to go as a country. The conversation must continue past Wednesday.

Over the past four years we have seen the 2008 promise of hope fulfilled. Reforms to the America’s healthcare system mean that more Americans than ever are covered by health insurance, that insurers cannot deny coverage for preexisting conditions, and that basic preventive care is covered.

The Dodd-Frank reforms have set up necessary protections to ensure that we do not experience the same economic collapse we saw in 2008. The repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has meant that gay and lesbian members of the military can step out of the shadows and stand as equals with their fellow service members. And the President’s recent executive order to defer action on millions of young people residing in the United States and contributing to our economy will allow these

hard-working students to stay in this country legally.

But we have also seen the worst of Washington since the last time we went to the polls for a national election. Gridlock and brinksmanship have come to characterize our most vital American institutions and disrespect for the legislative process or for those elected to our highest offices has never seemed quite as prevalent.

In fact, fewer pieces of legislation have made it through this session of Congress than in any other in the modern era. Games have been played with the credit of the American people and an impending fiscal cliff awaits the winners of today’s elections.

THE CONVERSATION CANNOT END ON WEDNESDAY Students on campus may not see eye to eye on every issue, but we know that civility and bipartisan work on common goals are necessary to move this country forward. We know that whomever is victorious today will need bipartisan support in a divided government to meet the challenges that lie ahead of us. In the coming months, our priorities must be centered around restoring responsibility in Congress and reinvigorating our faith in our American institutions.

Students on both sides of the aisle at Yale and across the country have proven to be leading members of their respective coalitions. We must use that position to hold our political process accountable and responsive to the needs of voters uninterested in political games. That means organizing in opposition to politicians that have held the policymaking process hostage. That means supporting those public servants that reach across the aisle. And that means not being intimidated to take a strong position on the national stage.

We have shown decisively this election season that students can take a leading role in this election.

But our work doesn’t end here.

ZAK NEWMAN is a senior in Jonathan Edwards College and President of the Yale College Democrats.

Contact him at zak.newman@yale.edu .

YDN FORUM BLOG VISIT FOR LIVE UPDATES, REACTIONS AND CONVERSATIONS AS ELECTION DAY PROGRESSES. yaledailynews.com/opinion

GUE ST COLUMNIST DAN NAHUM

Tough love and the Iranian crisis L

ast November, a microphone caught an interesting conversation at the G-20 summit. Unaware that they were being recorded, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy complained about the Israeli prime minister, and Obama answered, “You’re fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day!” The key take-away from this incident, other than to make sure the microphone is off, is that the American president talks to the Israeli prime minister on a daily basis.

As an Israeli, I can tell you that American elections are almost as influential on Israeli politics as our own elections. I have

often discussed today’s elections with Yale students who are genuinely concerned about the fate of Israel. When I did, many described a dilemma they faced: the Democratic Party might match many of their values, but it does not support Israel as much as the Republican Party, especially regarding the Iran crisis. I’d like to explain why, in my opinion, there is no conflict here.

President Obama does support Israel. He opposes a certain foreign-affairs policy, namely an attack on Iran. It’s not just Obama — according to a poll made by “Maagar Mochot,” an Israeli research institute, 59 percent of the Israeli public thinks

an attack could still be avoided.

Regardless of whether a strike on Iran would be the right move, Obama does not oppose Israel, but the policy of the current Israeli government — a policy which many Israelis oppose as well, and one they are glad to see Obama preventing. Moreover, even if attacking Iran were the wish of the majority of Israelis, “supporting Israel” does not necessarily mean supporting its every caprice. Helping Israel, more a protégé of the US than its ally, can sometimes mean restraining it.

An Israeli attack on Iran would have consequences reaching far beyond the two nations. From

the previous Head of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, to former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, there’s a wide consensus that an attack could lead to a major regional conflict.

For decades, Israel’s defense and safety have relied directly on the US, its faithful ally. In the last decade, the US suffered a series of natural disasters, an oil spill, a harsh economic crisis and two wars in the Middle East. Therefore, it is understandable if it’s reluctant to give Israel “a blank check to take action,” as Gates has phrased it. Israel owes much to the US. Asking to withhold, for now, an attack that might ignite a wide-scale regional

conflict and drag the US into yet another war in the Middle East is not too much to ask.

A VOTE FOR OBAMA IS NOT A VOTE AGAINST ISRAEL The purpose of this article is not to argue whether an attack on Iran in present-time is the right solution or not. The purpose is merely to suggest that if you believe that it’s the wrong solution, then voting for Obama

does not conflict with Israel’s best-interest. When you go to the polls today, remember that supporting Israel might in some cases mean objecting to its current policy. Remember that it’s no shame to say, “This does not end in Israel. This is a worldwide issue, and we get a say in this.” And remember that many people, in Israel and the entire world, are waiting breathlessly to see what American voters decide, hoping the results save them from war.

DAN NAHUM is a freshman in Silliman College and a former soldier in the Israel Defense Forces. Contact him at dan.nahum@yale.edu .

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“I’m going to continue to talk about what is important to the people of Connecticut, which is jobs, getting people back to work, the economy.” LINDA MCMAHON U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE

Students weigh president’s involvement STUDENT APATHY FROM PAGE 1 a performance by the Shades a cappella group, the event did not lend itself to personal conversation with Levin and other administrators present.

“Wait, I don’t even know which one was President Levin,” one student said to her friend after she shook hands with Levin and other administrators upon entering the house.

The Levins’ Halloween Party, which the couple has hosted for the past two decades, is the only regular event when the President’s House is open to the entire undergraduate student body.

Most students in attendance have few other opportunities to interact with the University’s top administrator. Students interviewed said they perceive a disconnect between the Yale President and the student body — and, now, in the midst of the first presidential search in over two decades, the majority of students interviewed told the News they do not care about the search process.

A DISTANT PRESENCE

Since its onset, the presidential search has drawn sharp criticism from certain students on campus, including Students Unite Now, which formed soon after Levin announced his retirement and has advocated for increased student input in the search.

But the majority of the student body is apathetic. Of 30 students interviewed, four said they are invested in the search for the new president, and one, who is a SUN member, said he is deeply concerned about a lack of student representation on the Presidential Search Committee. For the remaining 25 students, the search is of little consequence.

Fifty-five percent of respondents to a News survey on the presidential search last weekend said they have some degree of interest in the search, and the remaining 45 percent said they are not interested to varying degrees.

“I don’t care — not at all,”

Ike Lee ’15 said when asked if he is invested in the Presidential Search Process. “There are more important things for me to care about.”

I think it’s really unrealistic that one person be responsible for 5,000 undergraduates in any way that’s actually meaningful.

APURV SUMAN ’16 The students said a set of key factors contribute to their apathy. The majority of the students interviewed said they do not fully understand the role of the University president in influencing their daily lives — a problem they said their distance from and lack of face-to-face interaction with the president only perpetuates.

Of respondents to the News’ survey, 58 percent have never interacted with Levin, 27 percent have met the president once, and the remainder have met the president twice or more.

Indeed, for many of the costumed students posing for photographs with Levin on Halloween night, the pictures will serve as a reminder of the only time the undergraduates have come into contact with Levin.

Because Levin is not a visible presence in students’ day-today lives, those interviewed said they cannot see how the search for a new president will matter.

“I feel like this process doesn’t have that much relevance to me,” Isa Qasim ’15 said. “Presumably, the [new] President would be charting the course of the University for years to come. I’m interested in that, but it’s not relevant to what my next two years will be.”

“We are trying to pull demand into the Saybrook Dining Hall, which has traditionally been the most under-utilized residential college dining hall,” Van Dyke said. “Plans for Monday Madness at Saybrook might include omelet stations or special smoothies that we make and distribute to students.”

Van Dyke said Saybrook sees an average of 283 students on Monday through Thursday nights. The college largely serves its own students, she added, because 283 is roughly the same number of meals Saybrook serves on Sunday evening Family Nights, when the dining hall is only open to Saybrook students. By comparison, Berkeley serves an average of 482 students on Monday through Thursday nights — 50 percent more students than it serves on Sunday evenings, she said.

In light of Berkeley’s new restrictions, which close the dining hall to transfers two Mondays a month from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., Van Dyke said Yale Dining chose Saybrook dining hall as an alternative to Berkeley on Monday nights because the dining hall is underutilized and located across the street from Berkeley. She added that each Monday evening, a sign will be posted in Berkeley College informing students of Saybrook Monday Madness directly next to a sign explaining Berkeley’s new rules.

Van Dyke and several students interviewed said many non-Saybrook students are reluctant to eat in Saybrook because the dining hall is difficult to find and has a reputation as one of the least desirable among the residential colleges. Lincoln Mitchell ’15 said he “always gets lost” when he tries to go to Saybrook and often ends up at the Branford College dining hall.

Saybrook dining hall is directly

college masters and deans have roles that involve creating personal relationships with students, adding that such responsibilities are not required of the president.

“I never expected at any point during my four years here to sit down and get to know President Levin,” Suman said. “I think it’s really unrealistic that one person be responsible for 5,000 undergraduates in any way that’s actually meaningful. Then it’s not feasible for him to do his job well.”

But not all of Yale’s presidents have been as absent as Levin from students’ consciousnesses.

Bobbi Mark ’76, who worked in the Office of Development and served as chair of the Yale Alumni Fund, said she remembers feeling close with Kingman Brewster, who served as University President from 1963 to 1977.

After Brewster stepped down and moved to England, Mark said she reached out to him while travelling in London despite having never interacted with the president during his term at Yale.

Brewster hosted Mark and a

friend in his office at the time.

“I think he was a really beloved figure on campus,” Mark said. “I must have felt some connection to have the chutzpah to say ‘Hi’ in a letter.”

At other Ivy League universities, the connections students feel with their presidents vary from school to school.

An Oct. 24 article published by the Brown Daily Herald described the student fervor surrounding former President Ruth Simmons, and categorized Yale, along with Columbia University, as schools in which there is less of a personality-cult around the campus leader.

Lincoln Mitchell ’15 said he visited a friend at the University of Pennsylvania last weekend, and said he noticed that many students had pictures with Penn President Amy Gutmann.

“Everyone [at Penn] says the president’s really cool,” he said.

“There’s a lot of transparency — you see more of the president and she seems more involved. She’s like a master.”

Forty-two percent of respondents to the News’ survey said the next Yale president should be “somewhat more involved” in student life, 17 percent responded “significantly more involved” and 22 percent said they want the President to have the same amount of involvement as Levin.

Eighteen percent were not sure of their opinion.

Laurans said interaction with students is an important part of the president’s job, but she added that many other administrative and public responsibilities to the University must take precedence.

Still, Levin said he has many opportunities to interact with students, including dinners at his home with various student groups and receptions for freshmen and seniors.

“It’s one of the great pleasures of the job, the opportunity to interact with students,” Levin said.

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

GRAPH STUDENT INTEREST IN PRESIDENTIAL SEARCH Very Interested

40

Somewhat Interested

141

Neither

40

Somewhat Uninterested

73

Very Uninterested

36

I’m not sure

THE PRESIDENT’S MANY ROLES

But the president’s job description leaves little time for

Admins react to overcrowding SAYBROOK DINING FROM PAGE 1

getting to know undergraduates.

In a university with more than 11,000 students across its various schools, Levin is unable to meet everyone.

“Yale College has often felt that the President belongs to them,” said Penelope Laurans, Jonathan Edwards College master and special assistant to the President. “But in fact, he’s the president of the entire University.

Every dean and director of every professional and graduate school reports to him, and all the students in all those schools are part of the community of which he is the head.”

Students interviewed said they are largely unaffected by lack of direct contact with Levin. Only two students expressed dissatisfaction over the infrequency of student contact with Levin, and others said they would like to see more of the President, but they understand that his job is not to have a hands-on role with undergraduates.

Apurv Suman ’16 was one of several students to say residential

0 0

30

60

90

120

150

Campaign tactics questioned

across the street from Old Campus, but several freshmen interviewed said they do not frequent the dining hall.

“Even though Saybrook is near Old Campus, I would never schedule a meal there because it’s hard to navigate and loud inside,” said Anne O’Brien ’16. “The only times I’ve been to Saybrook were for my FOOT trip reunions because it happened to be a convenient place for our group.”

We are trying to pull demand into the Saybrook Dining Hall.

CATHY VAN DYKE SOM ‘86 Director, Residential Dining Van Dyke added that Berkeley may be popular with freshmen because it has traditionally been one of the dining halls open during Camp Yale, so freshmen get used to going to Berkeley.

Six Saybrook students interviewed said they do not think it will lead to overcrowding because of the little publicity for the initiative. Saybrook student Rachel Brown ’15 said she is looking forward to the new foods Yale Dining will provide on future Mondays.

Berkeley students Max Rolison ’15 and Andrés Bustamante ’15 both said they are “loving” the new restrictions in Berkeley dining hall, and that they support Monday Madness’ efforts to attract students to the Saybrook dining hall.

Monday Madness at Saybrook was set to begin last Monday, Oct. 29, but was delayed due to Hurricane Sandy.

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

JESSICA HILL/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Linda McMahon’s campaign for U.S. Senate is under supervision due to complaints regarding materials mailed to Connecticut voters.

SEEC FROM PAGE 1 CUT ABSENTEE BALLOT APPLICATION ENCLOSED.” Neither the McMahon nor the Chris Murphy Democratic Senate campaigns responded to repeated requests for comment.

“With respect to absentee ballots, the McMahon campaign has complied with every law and regulation on the books, has sought and received guidance from the secretary of state every step of the way, and has discussed the SEEC’s letter with them and been assured that we have done nothing improper,” McMahon spokesman Todd Abrajano told the New Haven Register.

“The only people who are raising this issue are Democrat clerks who are complaining about having to deal with the increased volume because this is the first statewide absentee ballot program they have seen in a long time from a candidate outside of their own party.”

In the letter from the SEEC, Brandi advised Bliss of the rules for disseminating unsolicited absentee ballot applications and warned him of the laws that prohibit influencing the electorate by corrupt means as well as misrepresenting the eligi-

bility for voting by absentee ballots.

Brandi said the official-looking stamps caused confusion about the nature of the forms, especially among elderly electors.

He explained that Connecticut residents often mistook the mailing to be an official mailing from state offices rather than campaign materials.

Mary Zorzanello, a New Haven resident and nurse practitioner at the Yale School of Medicine, was one of the voters that filed a formal complaint to the SEEC after her 95-year-old father received the material from McMahon’s campaign regarding his absentee ballot application. Zorzanello called McMahon’s letter “deceitful,” as the stamps on the envelope seemed to indicate official government information.

“When we opened the letter, my father was disgusted,” Zorzanello said. “He would never vote for Linda McMahon.”

After Zorzanello and others raised their concerns to the SEEC, the Commission held a meeting on Oct. 24 and agreed to issue the warning, according to a cover letter sent to Zorzanello by SEEC staff attorney William Smith.

In his letter to Bliss, Brandi also wrote another complaint against the McMahon campaign.

“There have been concerns about the committee’s phone banking, where the voters were given a return telephone number of their town clerk’s office, leaving their staffs inundated with calls,” he said.

The Commission has decided not to take further action regarding such complaints, citing jurisdictional reasons. SEEC staff attorney Joshua Foley explained that the SEEC only supervises state election laws, while McMahon’s campaign is a federal one. In addition, he said, while McMahon’s campaign’s practices might be “distasteful,” they don’t necessarily present potential violations. Nonetheless, both Brandi and Fouley said the Commission views these complaints “with grave concern” and would continue to monitor McMahon’s campaign committee’s activities.

In Connecticut, voting by absentee ballot is limited to those who are unable to vote on Tuesday because of illness, physically disability, religious practices, service in the armed forces or geographic absence from Connecticut.

Contact LORENZO LIGATO at lorenzo.ligato@yale.edu . Contact MICHELLE HACKMAN at michelle.hackman@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

NEWS

$6

CORRECTIONS MONDAY, NOV. 5

The article “Indigo Blue closure weighed” misidentified the gender of Kerri Lu ’14.

FRIDAY, NOV. 2

The column “Think before you vote” misidentified Ballotpedia as an election-specific offshoot of Wikipedia. In fact, Ballotpedia has never been associated with Wikipedia.

GSA debuts new mentorship program

BY J.R. REED CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The Graduate Student Assembly will officially launch a mentorship program this week called Common Grounds, through which graduate students can request free vouchers to take a professor out for tea or coffee at various locations on campus.

GSA members began a pilot version of Common Grounds in March last year as a way to encourage students to build better relationships with faculty. In the past, the GSA had helped sponsor an annual Mentoring Week, which included panel discussions with students and faculty to brainstorm ways to improve mentoring resources in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. But the Assembly decided to develop Common Grounds and discontinue Mentoring Week because the program had not been wellattended, said GSA Chair Lauren Tilton GRD ’16. Tilton said she thinks that Common Grounds will be beneficial to students because it provides a more casual environment than the classroom for graduates to connect with their professors.

Hopefully [the program is] a good excuse to engage outside of the formality of a lab or class or mock orals.

LAUREN TILTON GRD ’16 Chair, Graduate Student Assembly “The program gives a great reason for students to go to an advisor and say, ‘Hey let’s talk about my work or the professional field I’m studying or how [the professor] got involved in academia,’” Tilton said. “Hopefully it’s a good excuse for students and faculty to engage outside of the formality of a lab or class or mock orals.”

Common Grounds — which GSA members voted to expand last month — builds on two similar programs that also promote interactions between graduate students and faculty members, Meals for Mentoring and FEAST, “Free Eating Attracts Students and Teachers,” Tilton said. Unlike these two programs, she added, Common Grounds requires students to initiate interaction with faculty members.

Students who would like to participate in the program

must e-mail GSA Treasurer Joori Park GRD ’17 and can later pick up $6 vouchers to spend at one of several campus locations, including Bulldog Café, Marigolds, KBT Café or Bass Café, Tilton said. GSA members hope to also include the newly-opened Becton Café as a potential location, she added.

Tilton said she hopes that at least 100 graduate students use the program, which will run until June 2013.

“We have a lot of GSA members who would like to participate, and people across many departments said they would be interested,” Tilton said. “If we can increase contact time for 100 graduates by 30 to 45 minutes on a regular basis, that would be great for these students.”

During the pilot program last summer, the GSA received between 40 and 50 voucher requests, said Ksenia Sidorenko GRD ’15, chair of the GSA Academics and Professional Development Committee, adding that she is hopeful that many more students will use the service during the academic year. The GSA will make a stronger effort to publicize Common Grounds this semester, she said.

Sidorenko said she used a Common Grounds voucher to get coffee with the professor with whom she wanted to work as a second dissertation advisor.

Out of 20 graduate students interviewed, 18 said they had not yet heard of the mentorship program. Still, 14 students said they would be interested in using the program at least once during their graduate school careers.

Liyang Zhang GRD ’18 said she had not heard of the program but would consider participating in the program during her third year because she wants to focus primarily on passing exams for the next two years.

Jialu Chen GRD ’18, a Ph.D. student, said she talks often with her faculty advisor and could use Common Grounds as a way to further improve her relationship. She added that she thinks the program would be especially beneficial to Master’s students, because in those programs, students do not have as much contact with professors because of the higher student to faculty ratio.

The GSA meets every other Wednesday at 7 p.m. in HGS 119.

Common Grounds is an iniative promoted by the Graduate Student Assembly providing free vouchers for graduate students to invite their professors for tea and coffee.

Vouchers can be redeemed at specific cafés around campus.

Div School promotes diversity

BY ALEKSANDRA GJORGIEVSKA STAFF REPORTER This year, students and faculty at the Divinity School are taking part in a new, year-long initiative spearheaded by Marilyn Kendrix DIV ’13 that aims to tackle issues of race.

Kendrix said she was inspired to initiate an effort to promote a dialogue about diversity at the Divinity School after reading “The New Jim Crow,” a book that addresses race-related problems in contemporary society.

The initiative, which developed as a result of several informal conversations among students and faculty last spring, is a yearlong effort intended to be the first installment of three yearlong projects to promote different types of diversity on campus.

The school has already hosted two diversity-training workshops for faculty and students and will hold several more events throughout the year, including a lecture from Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow,” in February.

“I think it is fairly agreed upon that when issues of race arise in class, we shy away,” said Kendrix, a member of the school’s student council. “[Race] is like the big elephant in the room — we hope it’s going to go away if we don’t talk about it.”

Thomas Troeger ‘67, a professor involved in the effort, said Kendrix’s concern with race in the Divinity School coincided with several informal conversations he and other professors had with students. Because of these conversations, Troeger, professor Mary Moschella and Julie Kelsey DIV ’84, assistant dean of Students for Pastoral Initiatives, joined with students to plan the programs on race offered this year.

Moschella and Troeger said students and faculty felt last spring’s informal conversations failed to spark a productive discussion among members of the Divinity School community because people held back when they started feeling uncomfortable. Moschella added that the conversations were too broad and not structured enough.

Kelsey said that through these conversations, administrators, faculty and students all realized there may be a need for professional guidance.

“There was a feeling that there is more breakdown along racial lines than we would like,” Kelsey

said, “but we did not have the tools to facilitate the kind of conversations we wanted about this on our own — we seemed to get stuck.”

The initiative’s organizers used Allies for Change — an outside organization that promotes social justice — to help run two diversity training workshops, which faculty and students attended separately and took place in October, Moschella said. During the workshops, Troeger said participants were asked a series of “provocative” questions about race, and they later discussed these questions in small groups. The training officers advised the participants not to change the topic when they became uncomfortable with the discussion, but to examine the source of their discomfort, he said. Their advised strategy to deal with race allowed faculty and students to talk to each other “without being defensive,”

Troeger said, adding that he heard a number of faculty mention the usefulness of the workshop.

We did not have the tools to facilitate the kind of conversations we wanted about this on our own.

JULIE KELSEY DIV ’84 Assistant dean, Students for Pastoral Initiatives Moschella said roughly 35 faculty members attended the faculty workshop, and Kendrix said she thinks nearly one third of the student body came to the student workshop.

Moschella said the school has recently made an attempt to recruit professors and students

from underrepresented groups such as African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Latinos.

She added that diversity programs aim to integrate students and faculty from a broader range of backgrounds into the community.

“We want not only diversity, but full inclusion as well,” she said. “This means we want [members of underrepresented groups] to have an influence on the culture of the institution, to be fully present.”

In the next two years, the initiative will cover the issues of sexuality and class.

Approximately 10 percent of the Divinity School’s entering class of 2012 identified as African-American.

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

GRAPH DIVINITY SCHOOL ADMISSIONS DIVERSITY 60 50

Applicants Admitted New class

40 30 20 10 0

Asian

AfricanAmerican

Latino

Multiracial

GRAPH DIVINITY SCHOOL ENROLLMENT DIVERSITY

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

Do the Elements of Style get you excited?

Work for Copy.

Money available for Common Grounds vouchers.

39 African-American

266

White

7 Asian 11 Latino 6 Multi-racial 31 International Students

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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“Leadership; leadership is about taking responsibility, not making excuses.” MITT ROMNEY U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CANDIDATE

President, Senate races still close ELECTION FROM PAGE 1 woman Elizabeth Henry ’14 said. “We certainly hope that people are going to be voting for Romney, but that’s not really our concern right now. We are mainly trying to mobilize Yale students to vote for Linda McMahon.”

The Yale College Democrats have adopted a similar approach, explained Dems president Zak Newman ’13 and Dems elections coordinator Nicole Hobbs ’14.

“At this point most people know they’re voting for Obama and our job is to convince them to also fill in the box for Murphy and other Democratic candidates,” Hobbs said, adding that “of course we’ll also be talking about the President, but the main focus is on winning this competitive Senate seat.”

The Dems’ main priority is to get Yalies to the polls during two-hour canvassing shifts, Newman said, while graduate students the Dems have worked with previously will canvass other parts of the city. Residential college captains will be responsible for making sure that students in their respective college have voted through a combination of door knocking and phone banking, Newman added.

Members of the activist group Students Unite Now (SUN) and the Party of the Left will join the Dems in pulling votes for Murphy, said SUN member Sarah Cox ’15.

According to Murphy campaign spokesman Eli Zupnick, thousands of volunteers will knock on doors across the state today.

“We’ll have people in every city in town,” Zupnick said. “Our canvassers will go out at 9 a.m. and stay out until the polls close. Chris is going to be crisscrossing the state starting even earlier, greeting workers, stopping in at diners, attending democratic town committee meetings and motivating people to vote.”

Zupnick added he did not have a prediction for how the race would turn out, only saying that “it’s going to be close.”

Newman, though, said he was optimistic for a Murphy victory, citing what he called Murphy’s strong performance in the debates between the two candidates.

Murphy has eked out ahead of McMahon in the polls after a month that saw them neck and neck. Heading into Election Day, RealClearPolitics has Murphy with a five-point polling lead over McMahon after trailing by nearly a point in mid-September.

Still, Yale College Republicans campaign director and McMahon campaign volunteer Ben Mallet ’16 cited McMahon’s tactic of appealing to Obama supporters as a winning election-day strategy. McMahon’s campaign has released advertisements in recent weeks encouraging Connecticut voters to split the ticket, voting for McMahon even while supporting Obama.

“It’s too close to call right now, but we’ve been seeing trends that make me really optimistic,” he said. “We’re finding a lot of Democrats who say they’re voting for Obama but also voting for Linda.”

Connecticut Democrats press secretary Elizabeth Larkin called the splitticket strategy “deceitful,” explaining that McMahon would thwart Obama’s policy objectives if she were elected to the Senate.

The McMahon campaign could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon.

GRAPH PRE-ELECTION DAY POLLS, NATION AND CONNECTICUT

OBAMA V. ROMNEY RealClearPolitics National Average 48.8 3.1

We’re finding a lot of Democrats who say they’re voting for Obama but also voting for Linda.

BEN MALLET ‘16 Linda McMahon Campaign Volunteer Larkin also weighed in on the state’s house races, saying she was “confident” Democrats would prevail across the state. Specifically in the third district, she said, polling has favored Democratic incumbent DeLauro over Republican challenger Winsley.

But DeLauro campaign manager Jimmy Tickey said the campaign “takes nothing for granted” and will be conducting get out the vote efforts across the district today.

“We’re going to be calling people who’ve said they support us to make sure they’re voting and canvassing to make sure that those last few undecided voters support Rosa and get to the polls for her,” he said. “This is really the final stretch. This whole thing is about to be behind us.”

The Winsley campaign could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon.

As Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney made their final tours through swing states in the waning days of the election — including in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania — the RealClearPolitics polling average put Obama at a .7-point lead over Romney nationally, much slimmer than his 10.8 polling lead in Connecticut. The New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog gave Obama a 92.0 percent chance of claiming victory tonight based on current polling.

Polls are open in Connecticut from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Students in Jonathan Edwards, Calhoun, Branford, Silliman, Timothy Dwight, Saybrook, Trumbull and Berkeley can vote at the New Haven Public Library, while those in Davenport, Pierson, Stiles and Morse can vote at the Wexler-Grant School.

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

48.1 RealClearPolitics Connecticut Average 42

52.8 5.2 FiveThirtyEight Chance of Winning 92

8

MURPHY V. MCMAHON RealClearPolitics Polls 48.6

43.6 7.8 Rasmussen Reports Polls

51

45 4 Quinnipiac Polls

49

43 8 FiveThirtyEight Chance of Winning

System abilities considered VOTING FROM PAGE 1 enough for the state mainframe to handle,” Harris said. “We’ve been working with the Department of Administrative Services to troubleshoot the capacity issues for a month or so, and we’re also working with registrars to make sure they’ll have what they need come Election Day.” Harris emphasized that no data had been lost in the process, but registrars had only been slowed down by the clogged network. He added he did not think any of the prior difficulties with adjusting to the new voter registration system would impact the results of Connecticut’s Senate race.

If there are any problems on Election Day, the new system allows registrars to drive to the next town to print voter lists, said Mark Raymond, the chief information officer at the Department of Administrative Services’ Bureau of Enterprise Systems Technology.

Raymond added that none of the state’s registrars have reported problems with the new system in over a week.

“There have been daily conference calls

with the Secretary of the State’s office and all the registrars throughout the state.

Everyone has been given the opportunity to express any outstanding concerns,” Raymond said.

The state has been conducting periodic testing, and now everything works fine.

ANGELINA KAETHER Deputy Democratic registrar, Stamford Registrars across the state said they were pleased that the old system was still available when they encountered glitches with CVRS2 because they were able to use the old system as a backup.

Terry Bivona, deputy Republican registrar of voters for Stamford, said “it would be a concern” if the old system was not available as a redundancy precaution, but she

7.8

92.2

noted that far fewer issues related to voting so far this year than during the 2008 presidential election.

“Last time we had a serious problem with ACORN,” Bivona said, referring to the now-defunct advocacy organization.

“We had about 300 duplicate voters and fake names attempt to register to vote. A 12-year-old girl registered. We even had someone named ‘Victoria’s Secret’ file paperwork.”

State officials said one of the benefits of the new system is that it allows registrars to track voters statewide with less information. Stamford Deputy Democratic Registrar Angelina Kaether said the new system allows state officials to search a voter by birthdate, which is a “significant improvement” because applications can often be difficult to read.

Connecticut has 169 towns with voter registrars.

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Contact JOHN AROUTIOUNIAN at john.aroutiounian@yale.edu .

CROSS CAMPUS THE BLOG. THE BUZZ AROUND YALE THROUGHOUT THE DAY.

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PAGE 7

BULLETIN BOARD

TODAY’S FORECAST

TOMORROW

Sunny, with north wind around 6 mph.

High of 46, low of 32.

High of 47, low of 37.

WATSON BY JIM HORWITZ

ON CAMPUS TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6 4:30 PM Let Freedom Sing: American Folksongs and Spirituals Featuring students from Richard Lalli’s MUSI 222: “The Performance of Vocal Music” seminar. Whitney Humanities Center (53 Wall St.), Auditorium.

5:30 PM Ballet Technique Class Work with instructors from the New Haven Ballet. Free admission. Sponsored by the Dance Studies curriculum housed in Theater Studies and the Alliance for Dance at Yale. Broadway Rehearsal Lofts (294 Elm St.), Room 303.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7 12:00 PM Lunchtime Chamber Music Chamber music ensembles will perform. Free admission and open to the general public. Sprague Memorial Hall (470 College St.), Morse Recital Hall.

THAT MONKEY TUNE BY MICHAEL KANDALAFT

8:00 PM Learn to Belly Dance A collaborative workshop with the Yale Arab Students’ Association. Free for undergrads with ID at the door, $5 all others. 8–9 pm: a tour of exciting cabaret, stage and theatrical styles of belly dance: learn some fun moves from each and explore some common belly dance props (veil, Isis wings, skirts, canes, swords). 9–10 pm: learn Shaabi style choreography (flirty, fun, and sassy) at the intermediate level.

Morse College (304 York St.), Crescent Theater.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8 4:00 PM “Philanthropy and Policy: The Modern Service Movement” A discussion with Shirley Sagawa, Dwight Hall’s 2012 Distinguished Mentor. Sagawa, co-founder of Sagawa/ Jospin Consulting Firm, was named a “Woman to Watch in the 21st Century,” by Newsweek magazine and one of the “Most Influential Working Mothers in America” by Working Mother magazine. A national expert on children’s policy and philanthropy, she has been called “a founding mother of the modern service movement” in the United States. She is currently a fellow in the Center for American Progress. Dwight Hall (67 High St.), Chapel.

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Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

CLASSIFIEDS

CROSSWORD Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Lewis ACROSS 1 Things to wear 5 Chemists’ rooms 9 One who asks too many questions 14 Campus sports gp.

15 Irish name for Ireland 16 Christina of “Speed Racer” 17 Dough dispensers 18 Real attitude underlying a facade 20 Letter to Santa, essentially 22 Pennsylvania in Washington, for one 23 Summer in Lyon 24 Sent a quick note online 25 The Hulk’s alter ego 30 Barnyard brayer 33 Woman in Poe’s “The Raven” 34 J. Paul Getty or J.R. Ewing 36 Dubai bigwig 37 “... to __ it mildly” 38 Piece of ice 39 Revolutionary toy of the ’70s-’80s?

42 “Boyfriend” singer Justin 44 Fr. holy woman 45 Song covered by Michael Bublé, say 47 Glasgow vetoes 48 Toronto’s prov.

49 Dining room necessities 52 Photos at the precinct 57 Aunt Jemima competitor 59 Auth. unknown 60 Perfumer Lauder 61 “As I see it,” online 62 Maker of Duplo toy bricks 63 Just behind the runner-up 64 Overly compliant 65 Flier on a pole, and at the ends of 18-, 25-, 45and 57-Across

THE TAFT APARTMENTS Studio/1BR/2BR styles for future & immediate occupancy at The Taft on the corner of College & Chapel Street. Lease terms available until 5/31/13. It’s never too early to join our preferred waiting list for Summer/Fall 2013 occupancy. Public mini-storage available. By appointment only. Phone 203495-TAFT. www.taftapartments.com.

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11/6/12

By Neville Fogarty

DOWN 1 Emulate a beaver 2 Play beginning 3 Farm butters 4 Big party 5 Beatles tune that starts, “When I find myself in times of trouble” 6 Like some Navy rescues 7 Champagne designation 8 Set eyes on 9 “Ignorance is bliss,” e.g.

10 Upset 11 Clickable pic 12 Sandy-colored 13 Levitate 19 Humped beast 21 Sidelong look 24 Mid. name substitute 25 Anoint 26 Put the check in the mail 27 Bring together 28 Veggie on a cob 29 Pride and prejudice, e.g.

30 Caribbean resort

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(c)2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

31 Like a teetotaler 32 Bergen’s dummy Mortimer 35 Scored 100 on 37 Domino dots 40 Practiced in the ring 41 Art of verse 42 Thailand’s capital 43 QB’s mistakes 46 “Well said” 47 African river

SUDOKU EASY

11/6/12

49 Atkins of country 50 Silence 51 Pro debater 52 Auntie of the stage 53 45 minutes, in soccer games 54 Scott Turow work 55 Roman robe 56 Smooch, in Staffordshire 58 __-dandy

1 4 3 2 1 5 8 3 4 7 7 8 8 1 9 2 6 6 5 4

9 7 8 6 8 3 9 4 3 4 1 2 4 2 7 6 1 1 9 7 4 1 1 3 8

THURSDAY High of 45, low of 36.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY ‘Science’ awards Yale rainforest class

BY DAN WEINER STAFF REPORTER A Yale course that sends student to harvest and analyze plant samples from South American rainforests won the Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction from Science magazine last month.

Since the course began in 2007, students in “Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory” have spent spring break in South America gathering a class of microbes called endophytes for analysis at Yale over the rest of the term and the summer. Science magazine spokeswoman Melissa McCartney said the magazine selected the Yale course because it has so successfully encouraged students to learn through discovery.

“Some of those students have actually classified new endophytes and been published in scientific journals,” McCartney said. “That is the best example that you could ever hope for of students finding their own answers.”

Course co-founder and molecular, biophysics and biochemistry professor Scott Strobel said students in the course pursue Ph.D.s at three times the rate of other Yale science majors and more than 80 percent of students in the course continue their research after the course concludes. While scientists estimate that millions of fungal species exist, researchers have identified fewer than 100,000, which allows students like those in Strobel’s course to document new endophytes regularly.

In the course, students first target certain endophytes for analysis and then complete a battery of biological and chemical tests on their samples.

“They also immediately become the world expert in the particular organism they have identified,” Strobel said. “They know how it grows, they know how it behaves, they know what its activity is. I think that’s a very empowering experience for students.”

Giovanni Forcina ’14, a molecular biophysics and biochemistry major who took the course last spring, said it was the best science class he has taken as Yale. He is currently continuing the research he began during the course and said he hopes to have publishable manuscripts

“Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.” E. O. WILSON AMERICAN BIOLOGIST AND THE WORLD’S LEADING AUTHORITY IN MYRMECOLOGY, THE STUDY OF ANTS

Bird family tree compiled

BY JENNIFER GERSTEN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

by the end of the spring.

Forcina said the practical and theoretical nature of the course introduced him to a range of interesting laboratory techniques, including two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which no instructional lab at Yale teaches. He added that the course makes students take responsibility for their projects like no other instructional labs do.

“You’ve played a role in the project every step of the way,” he said. “Having that sort of ownership of the project I think is really motivating, and it makes you want to continue going.”

Forcina said his experience in the course has influenced his career plans. He arrived at Yale intending to go to medical school, but after researching last summer and continuing the project this semester, he said he is deciding whether to pursue a graduate degree in biochemistry or a joint M.D./Ph.D. program.

Russell Ault ’14 said he has always wanted to go to medical school, and he enrolled in the course hoping it would help him decide whether to pursue a joint degree like Forcina.

While Ault said he still has yet to reach a verdict, the project he began in the course and continues to pursue has shown him that he enjoys research.

History major Jack Doyle ’14, who took the course last spring, said he does not know what career path he wants to pursue once he graduates, but said the experiences some of his peers had with the course solidified their interest in conducting laboratory research for the rest of their lives.

Science magazine awarded the prize for Inquiry-Based instruction to 14 other courses this year from a pool of over 100 applicants.

Entitled “Student-Directed Discovery of the Plant Microbiome and Its Products”, the essay from “Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory” was written by Stroebel, Yale lecturer Carol Bascom-Slack and University of Arizona plant sciences professor Elizabeth Arnold. The essay appeared in the Oct. 26 issue of the magazine.

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

ANNELISA LEINBACH/CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

For the first time, all 9,993 living bird species can roost on one family tree.

In a five-year study titled “The global diversity of birds in space and time,” published Oct. 31 in the journal Nature, a research team led by Yale evolutionary biologist Walter Jetz compiled the most complete version of the avian family tree to date using data from DNA sequencing and fossil records. Contrary to expectations, the tree suggests that birds’ overall rate of speciation, or formation of new species, has increased over time.

Family trees allow scientists to determine diversification rates, or the calculated rate at which new species are formed and maintained, said Jacob Musser GRD ’15, a Ph.D. candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale. While previous studies have focused primarily on diversification within one or two small groups of birds, the new study uses a complete tree to chart patterns of diversification across all bird life and map them geographically, Musser said. The approach allowed the researchers to determine, to their surprise, that both rapidly and slowly diversifying groups are interspersed throughout the tree and therefore a number of different bird species are responsible for increased bird diversity, he added.

The study also reveals that these diversification rates do not vary with latitude. Scientists have long debated why there are more bird species in the tropics than in higher latitudes and had attributed the difference to higher diversification rates, said Jetz, lead author of the study. But the researchers found rapidly and slowly diversifying groups in both the tropics and high latitudes, indicating that geography was not the sole contributing factor to bird diversity.

“When you get closer to the equator, you have more species,” Musser said. “But that doesn’t mean you’re producing species faster.”

The tropic regions of the Earth have existed for a greater amount of time than its more temperate regions, which may have given tropical bird species more time to diversify, researchers said.

After determining diversification rates, the researchers began considering how ecological factors such as global warming might have

caused differences in the rates.

“Special innovations in evolving birds may have seized upon certain environmental niches that allowed them to diversify faster,” Jetz said. Gulls and woodpeckers, for instance, are high latitude species groups whose diversification may have been aided by climate change.

Of the 9,993 species included in the family tree, 3,330 had no documented DNA. Rather than leaving these undocumented species off the tree, the researchers chose to make assumptions about their placements within certain families, said Arne Mooers, co-author of the study and professor of biodiversity at Simon Fraser University. To ensure accuracy, the team generated thousands of trees allowing for alternate placements of these birds, then averaged the results.

When you get closer to the equator, you have more species. But that doesn’t mean you’re producing species faster.

JACOB MUSSER GRD ’15 Ph.D. candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology “It required a bit of chutzpah to do that,” Mooers said. But the step, he added, was necessary. “There are lots of questions you can’t ask about speciation if you only have two-thirds of the total species [on the tree]. It’s better to include them all [than] be led astray by species that are missing.”

For Jetz, the most significant part of the research was being able to tie the evolution of birds over time to their current geographic distribution.

“I think that’s conceptually really the most novel and exciting bit, that we are able to connect species alive today to their position and history in the family tree of birds,” Jetz said.

Other members of the research team included J. Joy of Simon Fraser University, G. H. Thomas of the University of Bristol and K. Hartmann of the University of Tasmania in Australia.

Contact JENNIFER GERSTEN at jennifer.gersten@yale.edu .

VICTOR KANG/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Students in “Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory” gather plant samples in rainforests.

Aerospace team balloon soars

BY J.R. REED CONTRIBUTING REPORTER As most students enjoyed their first day of fall break, members of the Yale Undergraduate Aerospace Association were enjoying views of a helium balloon they had launched 50,000 feet into the air.

At 11:42 a.m. on Oct. 24, 20 YUAA members successfully launched the high-altitude aircraft, called Horizon Skyview, at the top of Hubbard Park in nearby Meriden, Conn.

The balloon was attached to a Kevlar-coated enclosure carrying two high-definition cameras and a tracking system custom-designed

by YUAA members, said YUAA co-founder Israel Kositsky ’13. Last month’s launch, the third conducted by YUAA in the past two years, was designed to obtain video footage and digital images of the balloon’s flight and to test YUAA’s communication tracking system.

Temperature sensors were also attached to the balloon to record interior and exterior temperatures at different altitudes.

“We’ve been working on this balloon since last semester,” Kositsky said. “This launch was important because the main communication tracking system was one we developed. This system, a point-to-point radio system, put a transceiver on board the balloon, which, using the GPS, transmitted the location of the balloon to us in real time.”

YUAA members split up into three teams and each used a custom-designed iPhone tracking app to follow the trajectory of the balloon in relation to the location of each team, Kositsky said. Two teams used cars to follow the path, with one at the bottom of the hill close to the highway, while the third team watched the balloon’s path from a tower on the elevated hill. Each team transferred the tracking data received from the balloon to a server accessible to every YUAA member. The server also allowed members of the general public to view the balloon’s trajectory via a live feed.

The team chose the Hubbard Park location in order to maintain extended visual and radio

contact with the balloon due to the park’s high elevation, said Jan Kolmas ’14, YUAA cofounder and current co-president. Despite the park’s elevation, Kolmas said the location was not ideal because of its proximity to the ocean. The balloon was expected to reach a height of 50,000 feet, but team members are still processing data to obtain the exact altitude, he added. The balloon is also expected to have traveled 60 miles before ultimately landing in the Long Island Sound. Once the helium balloon finally burst, the parachute vehicle floated down into the water, but team members have yet to recover it.

Despite not retrieving the aircraft following the launch, co-president Stephen Hall ’14 said he was pleased overall with how the launch went.

“For the whole month before, we had people waking up at 7 a.m. on Saturday mornings to test the balloon at scattered launch locations,” Hall said. “At the end of the day, we have a track of the trajectory the balloon took and that was the main goal of the system, and that is what we need going forward for future projects.”

Aside from the altitude attained, distance traveled and external temperatures measured, Kolmas agreed that the team succeeded in its primary goal to establish an effective tracking communication system.

“To our knowledge, few, if any other organizations, have this type of infrastructure behind their launches,” Kolmas said.

Kositsky said YUAA hopes to modify and apply their tracking and navigation technology to future launches with different aircraft types such as low-altitude aircraft, autonomous aircraft and rocketry. YUAA will use this system on Saturday during its first rocket launch.

Currently, 35 students are involved in YUAA, and a majority of them study STEMrelated majors.

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

Medical library examines past

BY MATTHEW LLOYD-THOMAS CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Chisels, retractors and a hook used to wrench out teeth are just some of the artifacts on display at the Yale School of Medicine’s Cushing and Whitney Medical Library that might make visitors glad to live in the 21st century.

Titled “Medicine at Work,” the exhibit seeks to help library visitors understand the evolution of medicine over time by displaying a variety of instruments, books, fees and manuals related to medical work through the past five centuries, though it focuses primarily on tools used in the 18th and 19th centuries. The exhibit opened on Sept. 22 and will continue running through Jan. 13.

The exhibits create an awareness of medicine’s rich past and of the library’s rich historical collections.

SUSAN WHEELER Curator for Prints and Drawings, Whitney Medical Library Showcased in the foyer and rotunda of the library, the items on display are drawn from the library’s extensive medical history collections. The contents of the exhibit can also be viewed online through the library’s website.

“The exhibits create an awareness of medicine’s rich past and of the library’s rich historical collections which document and illuminate it,” said Susan Wheeler, curator for prints and drawings at the library.

Visitors may find parts of the exhibit almost humorous, with many of the instruments and their uses relics of a time when medical knowledge was far

more limited. One device, called a Perkins Tractor, was used to ease discomfort by diverting “noxious electrical fluids” that supposedly caused pain.

Although the antiquated saws and probes may make visitors thankful for the state of modern medicine, a list of fees from the 19th century, published by the Western Texas Medical Association, might leave those without insurance longing for simpler times.

According to the chart, a consultation was expected to cost $2, while an operation for a cataract could run anywhere from $30 to $200. According to Health Care Blue Book, a free online tool that helps show consumers fair prices for health care services, an operation for cataracts today might cost between $3,000 and $4,000.

While visitors to the library might be interested in the exhibit, medical students who frequent the library appear to pay it little mind.

“They always have exhibits here,” said Don Hart, a second-year resident in Emergency Medicine, while walking through the library. “People are looking all the time, but I’m not sure they’re students.”

Hart said he thinks the exhibits are frequently shown to tours for prospective medical students.

Dexter Barks, who works at the circulation desk at the library, said he has not received any feedback on the exhibit but added that people “do pay attention” to the exhibits.

In addition to the exhibit on the work of medicine, a concurrent exhibit called “Nurses” is on display in the hallway outside the library.

Yale’s medical school was founded in 1810 and counted Nathan Smith, Benjamin Silliman and Jonathan Knight among its first faculty members.

Contact MATTHEW LLOYDTHOMAS at matthew.lloyd-thomas@yale.edu.

Antibiotic resistance killing off bees

MICHAEL MCHUGH/CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

BY EMMA GOLDBERG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Yale researchers have identified a potential culprit in a nationwide increase of honeybee deaths — resistance to an important antibiotic.

In the Oct. 30 issue of the mBio journal, Yale professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Nancy Moran published a study showing that beneficial bacteria found in the guts of honeybees have acquired genes that make bees resistant to tetracycline, an antibiotic used to prevent colonydestroying infections and other bacterial diseases. Moran’s research identified eight tetracycline-resistant genes in American honeybees that were absent in honeybee populations where such antibiotic treatment is banned, suggesting that use of tetracycline has genetically altered beneficial bacteria and made colonies more prone to infection.

“We noticed that the [first] colony collapses happened in 2006, which is when the antibiotic was first introduced,” Moran told the News. “But it’s really a very speculative concept right now.”

Researchers in Moran’s lab are looking to confirm the link they have established between antibiotics and colony collapses so as to impact policy-making in the beekeeping community.

“The beekeepers are interested in healthy bees. If we can show that antibiotics affect honey production or colony survival, we can draw their attention,” Moran said.

To test bee genes for resistance to antibiotics, researchers in Moran’s lab isolated all of the bacterial DNA in bee guts and transferred them into independent DNA

molecules called plasmids. These plasmids were then put into E. coli and sequenced so that the tetracycline-resistant genes could be identified. To determine how different bee populations interact with antibiotics, researchers used a technique called polymerase chain reaction to amplify bee DNA samples collected from various locations in the United States, New Zealand, the Czech Republic and Switzerland.

“We found that bees from the USA, which had a long treatment history [with tetracycline], carried the most resistant genes,” said Waldan Kwong GRD ’16, one of the authors of the paper and a researcher in Moran’s lab.

If confirmed, Moran’s research could have wide-reaching impact on American crop growth and production. Honeybee pollination plays a critical role in the $15 billion U.S. agriculture industry. The industry has been plagued by recent bee colony collapses, due primarily to bees’ contraction of the bacterial disease foul brood.

University of California, Davis apiculture professor Norman Gary stressed the magnitude of the colony collapse disorder.

“Only recently has the true value of honeybees been appreciated by people in this country,” Gary told the News. “The colony collapse disorder is a complex issue and many scientists are advancing theories to explain its cause.”

Kwong said he hopes the research conducted in Moran’s lab will encourage beekeepers to exercise caution when introducing new antibiotics into bee colonies.

“Beekeepers and the general public should be aware that application of antibiotics not only affects pathogens but also the normal healthy microbes that coexist

with the host,” he said. He added, however, that further research and consultation with the beekeeping community are needed before any new policies can be introduced and implemented.

Gary said bee die-offs are likely the result of multiple factors rather than a single central cause.

“In the scientific community we’re hoping that honeybees will develop a resistance to the cause of the colony collapses,” he said.

Moving forward, researchers in Moran’s lab are studying the health benefits and hazards posed by gut bacteria in bees.

They are studying the microbes that have become resistant to tetracycline to understand the beneficial functions they perform, such as pathogen defense, as well as the negative impact they can have on bees’ immune systems.

“We want to understand how bacteria function in bees,” Moran said.

Her lab is currently working on an experiment that exposes bees to antibiotics and analyzes their long-term effects.

Though she said the team has evidence that bacteria can help bees digest food, Moran said they hope to discover other health benefits bacteria provide bees.

“It’s basic work, but nothing like it has ever been done before,” she said.

The lead author of the paper was former Yale postdoctoral researcher Baoyu Tian, and other authors included Yale researchers Nibal H. Fadhil and J. Elijah Powell. The research was funded through a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Contact EMMA GOLDBERG at emma.goldberg@yale.edu .

BME prof wins Packard Fellowship

BY DHRUV AGGARWAL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

KAMARIA GREENFIELD/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The exhibit “Medicine at Work” features 18th and 19th century medical tools.

Yale biomedical engineering assistant professor Rong Fan was awarded the 2012 Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering on Oct. 15.

Fan, who passed several screening rounds first within and then outside Yale to clinch the fellowship, will be awarded $875,000 over a fiveyear period from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. These Fellowships are awarded to the nation’s “most promising” science and engineering professors to pursue research in the early stages of their careers, according to the Foundation.

Fan said he plans to use the grant to study proteins and their communication systems at the single-cell level.

His team will investigate why certain proteins lead to cancer, and why the patterns of malignant abnormalities differ from person to person. Since proteins are fundamental to understanding cell operation, Fan said he wants to conduct protein analysis to find potential treatments for cancer.

“We want to take a bunch of proteins to understand what’s going on,” he said.

Stuart Campbell, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, said he sees potential in Fan’s work, which will show how different proteins express themselves in tissues. He also lauded the atmosphere for scientific discovery at Yale.

“The biggest thing about Yale is the ability to identify and take advantage

of collaborators,” he said. “It’s easy for a young investigator to come and become integrated with what’s happening.”

Fan’s SEAS colleagues said they are pleased with his fellowship win.

Lin Han, a postdoctoral fellow in biomedical engineering who worked on Fan’s project, called him a “genius” who is adept at combining the use of technology with research aims.

Fan, who described the fellowship as “difficult to get,” submitted his initial proposal to the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the end of last year. After internal screening, the University nominated two researchers for the Packard fellowship. Of the 100 researchers from 50 universities participating in the competition, 16 were eventually awarded the fellowship, Fan said. Of the final 16, he is one of two winners from engineering fields — the rest have backgrounds in disciplines such as physics or chemistry.

Kathryn Miller-Jensen, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, described Fan as a “great colleague” in a Sunday email.

“He is very creative at using technology to enable novel biological assays,” she said. “He has an instinct for picking important biological problems.”

Fan conducted his experiments at the Malone Engineering Center, located at 55 Prospect Street.

Contact DHRUV AGGARWAL at dhruv.aggarwal@yale.edu .

PHILIPP ARNDT/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Professor Ron Fang was awarded the $875,000 Packard Fellowship.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY ‘Science’ awards Yale rainforest class

BY DAN WEINER STAFF REPORTER A Yale course that sends student to harvest and analyze plant samples from South American rainforests won the Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction from Science magazine last month.

Since the course began in 2007, students in “Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory” have spent spring break in South America gathering a class of microbes called endophytes for analysis at Yale over the rest of the term and the summer. Science magazine spokeswoman Melissa McCartney said the magazine selected the Yale course because it has so successfully encouraged students to learn through discovery.

“Some of those students have actually classified new endophytes and been published in scientific journals,” McCartney said. “That is the best example that you could ever hope for of students finding their own answers.”

Course co-founder and molecular, biophysics and biochemistry professor Scott Strobel said students in the course pursue Ph.D.s at three times the rate of other Yale science majors and more than 80 percent of students in the course continue their research after the course concludes. While scientists estimate that millions of fungal species exist, researchers have identified fewer than 100,000, which allows students like those in Strobel’s course to document new endophytes regularly.

In the course, students first target certain endophytes for analysis and then complete a battery of biological and chemical tests on their samples.

“They also immediately become the world expert in the particular organism they have identified,” Strobel said. “They know how it grows, they know how it behaves, they know what its activity is. I think that’s a very empowering experience for students.”

Giovanni Forcina ’14, a molecular biophysics and biochemistry major who took the course last spring, said it was the best science class he has taken as Yale. He is currently continuing the research he began during the course and said he hopes to have publishable manuscripts

“Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.” E. O. WILSON AMERICAN BIOLOGIST AND THE WORLD’S LEADING AUTHORITY IN MYRMECOLOGY, THE STUDY OF ANTS

Bird family tree compiled

BY JENNIFER GERSTEN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

by the end of the spring.

Forcina said the practical and theoretical nature of the course introduced him to a range of interesting laboratory techniques, including two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which no instructional lab at Yale teaches. He added that the course makes students take responsibility for their projects like no other instructional labs do.

“You’ve played a role in the project every step of the way,” he said. “Having that sort of ownership of the project I think is really motivating, and it makes you want to continue going.”

Forcina said his experience in the course has influenced his career plans. He arrived at Yale intending to go to medical school, but after researching last summer and continuing the project this semester, he said he is deciding whether to pursue a graduate degree in biochemistry or a joint M.D./Ph.D. program.

Russell Ault ’14 said he has always wanted to go to medical school, and he enrolled in the course hoping it would help him decide whether to pursue a joint degree like Forcina.

While Ault said he still has yet to reach a verdict, the project he began in the course and continues to pursue has shown him that he enjoys research.

History major Jack Doyle ’14, who took the course last spring, said he does not know what career path he wants to pursue once he graduates, but said the experiences some of his peers had with the course solidified their interest in conducting laboratory research for the rest of their lives.

Science magazine awarded the prize for Inquiry-Based instruction to 14 other courses this year from a pool of over 100 applicants.

Entitled “Student-Directed Discovery of the Plant Microbiome and Its Products”, the essay from “Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory” was written by Stroebel, Yale lecturer Carol Bascom-Slack and University of Arizona plant sciences professor Elizabeth Arnold. The essay appeared in the Oct. 26 issue of the magazine.

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

ANNELISA LEINBACH/CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

For the first time, all 9,993 living bird species can roost on one family tree.

In a five-year study titled “The global diversity of birds in space and time,” published Oct. 31 in the journal Nature, a research team led by Yale evolutionary biologist Walter Jetz compiled the most complete version of the avian family tree to date using data from DNA sequencing and fossil records. Contrary to expectations, the tree suggests that birds’ overall rate of speciation, or formation of new species, has increased over time.

Family trees allow scientists to determine diversification rates, or the calculated rate at which new species are formed and maintained, said Jacob Musser GRD ’15, a Ph.D. candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale. While previous studies have focused primarily on diversification within one or two small groups of birds, the new study uses a complete tree to chart patterns of diversification across all bird life and map them geographically, Musser said. The approach allowed the researchers to determine, to their surprise, that both rapidly and slowly diversifying groups are interspersed throughout the tree and therefore a number of different bird species are responsible for increased bird diversity, he added.

The study also reveals that these diversification rates do not vary with latitude. Scientists have long debated why there are more bird species in the tropics than in higher latitudes and had attributed the difference to higher diversification rates, said Jetz, lead author of the study. But the researchers found rapidly and slowly diversifying groups in both the tropics and high latitudes, indicating that geography was not the sole contributing factor to bird diversity.

“When you get closer to the equator, you have more species,” Musser said. “But that doesn’t mean you’re producing species faster.”

The tropic regions of the Earth have existed for a greater amount of time than its more temperate regions, which may have given tropical bird species more time to diversify, researchers said.

After determining diversification rates, the researchers began considering how ecological factors such as global warming might have

caused differences in the rates.

“Special innovations in evolving birds may have seized upon certain environmental niches that allowed them to diversify faster,” Jetz said. Gulls and woodpeckers, for instance, are high latitude species groups whose diversification may have been aided by climate change.

Of the 9,993 species included in the family tree, 3,330 had no documented DNA. Rather than leaving these undocumented species off the tree, the researchers chose to make assumptions about their placements within certain families, said Arne Mooers, co-author of the study and professor of biodiversity at Simon Fraser University. To ensure accuracy, the team generated thousands of trees allowing for alternate placements of these birds, then averaged the results.

When you get closer to the equator, you have more species. But that doesn’t mean you’re producing species faster.

JACOB MUSSER GRD ’15 Ph.D. candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology “It required a bit of chutzpah to do that,” Mooers said. But the step, he added, was necessary. “There are lots of questions you can’t ask about speciation if you only have two-thirds of the total species [on the tree]. It’s better to include them all [than] be led astray by species that are missing.”

For Jetz, the most significant part of the research was being able to tie the evolution of birds over time to their current geographic distribution.

“I think that’s conceptually really the most novel and exciting bit, that we are able to connect species alive today to their position and history in the family tree of birds,” Jetz said.

Other members of the research team included J. Joy of Simon Fraser University, G. H. Thomas of the University of Bristol and K. Hartmann of the University of Tasmania in Australia.

Contact JENNIFER GERSTEN at jennifer.gersten@yale.edu .

VICTOR KANG/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Students in “Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory” gather plant samples in rainforests.

Aerospace team balloon soars

BY J.R. REED CONTRIBUTING REPORTER As most students enjoyed their first day of fall break, members of the Yale Undergraduate Aerospace Association were enjoying views of a helium balloon they had launched 50,000 feet into the air.

At 11:42 a.m. on Oct. 24, 20 YUAA members successfully launched the high-altitude aircraft, called Horizon Skyview, at the top of Hubbard Park in nearby Meriden, Conn.

The balloon was attached to a Kevlar-coated enclosure carrying two high-definition cameras and a tracking system custom-designed

by YUAA members, said YUAA co-founder Israel Kositsky ’13. Last month’s launch, the third conducted by YUAA in the past two years, was designed to obtain video footage and digital images of the balloon’s flight and to test YUAA’s communication tracking system.

Temperature sensors were also attached to the balloon to record interior and exterior temperatures at different altitudes.

“We’ve been working on this balloon since last semester,” Kositsky said. “This launch was important because the main communication tracking system was one we developed. This system, a point-to-point radio system, put a transceiver on board the balloon, which, using the GPS, transmitted the location of the balloon to us in real time.”

YUAA members split up into three teams and each used a custom-designed iPhone tracking app to follow the trajectory of the balloon in relation to the location of each team, Kositsky said. Two teams used cars to follow the path, with one at the bottom of the hill close to the highway, while the third team watched the balloon’s path from a tower on the elevated hill. Each team transferred the tracking data received from the balloon to a server accessible to every YUAA member. The server also allowed members of the general public to view the balloon’s trajectory via a live feed.

The team chose the Hubbard Park location in order to maintain extended visual and radio

contact with the balloon due to the park’s high elevation, said Jan Kolmas ’14, YUAA cofounder and current co-president. Despite the park’s elevation, Kolmas said the location was not ideal because of its proximity to the ocean. The balloon was expected to reach a height of 50,000 feet, but team members are still processing data to obtain the exact altitude, he added. The balloon is also expected to have traveled 60 miles before ultimately landing in the Long Island Sound. Once the helium balloon finally burst, the parachute vehicle floated down into the water, but team members have yet to recover it.

Despite not retrieving the aircraft following the launch, co-president Stephen Hall ’14 said he was pleased overall with how the launch went.

“For the whole month before, we had people waking up at 7 a.m. on Saturday mornings to test the balloon at scattered launch locations,” Hall said. “At the end of the day, we have a track of the trajectory the balloon took and that was the main goal of the system, and that is what we need going forward for future projects.”

Aside from the altitude attained, distance traveled and external temperatures measured, Kolmas agreed that the team succeeded in its primary goal to establish an effective tracking communication system.

“To our knowledge, few, if any other organizations, have this type of infrastructure behind their launches,” Kolmas said.

Kositsky said YUAA hopes to modify and apply their tracking and navigation technology to future launches with different aircraft types such as low-altitude aircraft, autonomous aircraft and rocketry. YUAA will use this system on Saturday during its first rocket launch.

Currently, 35 students are involved in YUAA, and a majority of them study STEMrelated majors.

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

Medical library examines past

BY MATTHEW LLOYD-THOMAS CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Chisels, retractors and a hook used to wrench out teeth are just some of the artifacts on display at the Yale School of Medicine’s Cushing and Whitney Medical Library that might make visitors glad to live in the 21st century.

Titled “Medicine at Work,” the exhibit seeks to help library visitors understand the evolution of medicine over time by displaying a variety of instruments, books, fees and manuals related to medical work through the past five centuries, though it focuses primarily on tools used in the 18th and 19th centuries. The exhibit opened on Sept. 22 and will continue running through Jan. 13.

The exhibits create an awareness of medicine’s rich past and of the library’s rich historical collections.

SUSAN WHEELER Curator for Prints and Drawings, Whitney Medical Library Showcased in the foyer and rotunda of the library, the items on display are drawn from the library’s extensive medical history collections. The contents of the exhibit can also be viewed online through the library’s website.

“The exhibits create an awareness of medicine’s rich past and of the library’s rich historical collections which document and illuminate it,” said Susan Wheeler, curator for prints and drawings at the library.

Visitors may find parts of the exhibit almost humorous, with many of the instruments and their uses relics of a time when medical knowledge was far

more limited. One device, called a Perkins Tractor, was used to ease discomfort by diverting “noxious electrical fluids” that supposedly caused pain.

Although the antiquated saws and probes may make visitors thankful for the state of modern medicine, a list of fees from the 19th century, published by the Western Texas Medical Association, might leave those without insurance longing for simpler times.

According to the chart, a consultation was expected to cost $2, while an operation for a cataract could run anywhere from $30 to $200. According to Health Care Blue Book, a free online tool that helps show consumers fair prices for health care services, an operation for cataracts today might cost between $3,000 and $4,000.

While visitors to the library might be interested in the exhibit, medical students who frequent the library appear to pay it little mind.

“They always have exhibits here,” said Don Hart, a second-year resident in Emergency Medicine, while walking through the library. “People are looking all the time, but I’m not sure they’re students.”

Hart said he thinks the exhibits are frequently shown to tours for prospective medical students.

Dexter Barks, who works at the circulation desk at the library, said he has not received any feedback on the exhibit but added that people “do pay attention” to the exhibits.

In addition to the exhibit on the work of medicine, a concurrent exhibit called “Nurses” is on display in the hallway outside the library.

Yale’s medical school was founded in 1810 and counted Nathan Smith, Benjamin Silliman and Jonathan Knight among its first faculty members.

Contact MATTHEW LLOYDTHOMAS at matthew.lloyd-thomas@yale.edu.

Antibiotic resistance killing off bees

MICHAEL MCHUGH/CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

BY EMMA GOLDBERG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Yale researchers have identified a potential culprit in a nationwide increase of honeybee deaths — resistance to an important antibiotic.

In the Oct. 30 issue of the mBio journal, Yale professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Nancy Moran published a study showing that beneficial bacteria found in the guts of honeybees have acquired genes that make bees resistant to tetracycline, an antibiotic used to prevent colonydestroying infections and other bacterial diseases. Moran’s research identified eight tetracycline-resistant genes in American honeybees that were absent in honeybee populations where such antibiotic treatment is banned, suggesting that use of tetracycline has genetically altered beneficial bacteria and made colonies more prone to infection.

“We noticed that the [first] colony collapses happened in 2006, which is when the antibiotic was first introduced,” Moran told the News. “But it’s really a very speculative concept right now.”

Researchers in Moran’s lab are looking to confirm the link they have established between antibiotics and colony collapses so as to impact policy-making in the beekeeping community.

“The beekeepers are interested in healthy bees. If we can show that antibiotics affect honey production or colony survival, we can draw their attention,” Moran said.

To test bee genes for resistance to antibiotics, researchers in Moran’s lab isolated all of the bacterial DNA in bee guts and transferred them into independent DNA

molecules called plasmids. These plasmids were then put into E. coli and sequenced so that the tetracycline-resistant genes could be identified. To determine how different bee populations interact with antibiotics, researchers used a technique called polymerase chain reaction to amplify bee DNA samples collected from various locations in the United States, New Zealand, the Czech Republic and Switzerland.

“We found that bees from the USA, which had a long treatment history [with tetracycline], carried the most resistant genes,” said Waldan Kwong GRD ’16, one of the authors of the paper and a researcher in Moran’s lab.

If confirmed, Moran’s research could have wide-reaching impact on American crop growth and production. Honeybee pollination plays a critical role in the $15 billion U.S. agriculture industry. The industry has been plagued by recent bee colony collapses, due primarily to bees’ contraction of the bacterial disease foul brood.

University of California, Davis apiculture professor Norman Gary stressed the magnitude of the colony collapse disorder.

“Only recently has the true value of honeybees been appreciated by people in this country,” Gary told the News. “The colony collapse disorder is a complex issue and many scientists are advancing theories to explain its cause.”

Kwong said he hopes the research conducted in Moran’s lab will encourage beekeepers to exercise caution when introducing new antibiotics into bee colonies.

“Beekeepers and the general public should be aware that application of antibiotics not only affects pathogens but also the normal healthy microbes that coexist

with the host,” he said. He added, however, that further research and consultation with the beekeeping community are needed before any new policies can be introduced and implemented.

Gary said bee die-offs are likely the result of multiple factors rather than a single central cause.

“In the scientific community we’re hoping that honeybees will develop a resistance to the cause of the colony collapses,” he said.

Moving forward, researchers in Moran’s lab are studying the health benefits and hazards posed by gut bacteria in bees.

They are studying the microbes that have become resistant to tetracycline to understand the beneficial functions they perform, such as pathogen defense, as well as the negative impact they can have on bees’ immune systems.

“We want to understand how bacteria function in bees,” Moran said.

Her lab is currently working on an experiment that exposes bees to antibiotics and analyzes their long-term effects.

Though she said the team has evidence that bacteria can help bees digest food, Moran said they hope to discover other health benefits bacteria provide bees.

“It’s basic work, but nothing like it has ever been done before,” she said.

The lead author of the paper was former Yale postdoctoral researcher Baoyu Tian, and other authors included Yale researchers Nibal H. Fadhil and J. Elijah Powell. The research was funded through a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Contact EMMA GOLDBERG at emma.goldberg@yale.edu .

BME prof wins Packard Fellowship

BY DHRUV AGGARWAL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

KAMARIA GREENFIELD/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The exhibit “Medicine at Work” features 18th and 19th century medical tools.

Yale biomedical engineering assistant professor Rong Fan was awarded the 2012 Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering on Oct. 15.

Fan, who passed several screening rounds first within and then outside Yale to clinch the fellowship, will be awarded $875,000 over a fiveyear period from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. These Fellowships are awarded to the nation’s “most promising” science and engineering professors to pursue research in the early stages of their careers, according to the Foundation.

Fan said he plans to use the grant to study proteins and their communication systems at the single-cell level.

His team will investigate why certain proteins lead to cancer, and why the patterns of malignant abnormalities differ from person to person. Since proteins are fundamental to understanding cell operation, Fan said he wants to conduct protein analysis to find potential treatments for cancer.

“We want to take a bunch of proteins to understand what’s going on,” he said.

Stuart Campbell, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, said he sees potential in Fan’s work, which will show how different proteins express themselves in tissues. He also lauded the atmosphere for scientific discovery at Yale.

“The biggest thing about Yale is the ability to identify and take advantage

of collaborators,” he said. “It’s easy for a young investigator to come and become integrated with what’s happening.”

Fan’s SEAS colleagues said they are pleased with his fellowship win.

Lin Han, a postdoctoral fellow in biomedical engineering who worked on Fan’s project, called him a “genius” who is adept at combining the use of technology with research aims.

Fan, who described the fellowship as “difficult to get,” submitted his initial proposal to the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the end of last year. After internal screening, the University nominated two researchers for the Packard fellowship. Of the 100 researchers from 50 universities participating in the competition, 16 were eventually awarded the fellowship, Fan said. Of the final 16, he is one of two winners from engineering fields — the rest have backgrounds in disciplines such as physics or chemistry.

Kathryn Miller-Jensen, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, described Fan as a “great colleague” in a Sunday email.

“He is very creative at using technology to enable novel biological assays,” she said. “He has an instinct for picking important biological problems.”

Fan conducted his experiments at the Malone Engineering Center, located at 55 Prospect Street.

Contact DHRUV AGGARWAL at dhruv.aggarwal@yale.edu .

PHILIPP ARNDT/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Professor Ron Fang was awarded the $875,000 Packard Fellowship.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

AROUND THE IVIES THE DARTMOUTH

“The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.” ADLAI E. STEVENSON VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES UNDER PRESIDENT GROVER CLEVELAND

T H E D A I L Y P E N N S Y L VA N I A N

Obama, Clinton rouse NH crowd

Romney rallies in last push for PA

BY NICOLE GREENSTEIN STAFF WRITER

MAGGIE ROWLAND/THE DARTMOUTH

President Barack Obama’s Sunday speech at the State House in Concord urged residents of swing state New Hampshire to vote.

BY JASMINE SACHAR AND BLAZE JOEL STAFF WRITERS CONCORD, N.H. — President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton spoke to a crowd of 14,000 people behind the State House in Concord on Sunday in speeches that aimed to draw parallels between Obama and Clinton’s economic policies. The two also touched on women’s issues, job growth and health care, all while trying to emphasize the differences between Obama and his Republican opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

The speeches were part of a larger rally that also featured Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Democratic New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch. All speakers stressed the need for New Hampshire residents to vote on Tuesday. With many polls indicating that the race is close, New Hampshire’s four electoral votes could make the difference in the election.

Clinton reminded the crowd that New

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Hampshire was crucial state in his own bid to become president. His wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, also won the state in the 2008 Democratic presidential

primary.

“Twenty years and nine months ago, New Hampshire began the chance for me to become president,” Clinton said.

Clinton turned the attention to Obama, noting that he campaigned for him in 40 events in his 2008 campaign, but is “much more enthusiastic now” than he was then.

Clinton enumerated the reasons for his support of Obama, praising his foreign policy, the auto bailout and his work to help the economy thus far. In the past two years, Obama has created 5.5 million private sector jobs compared to the 2.6 million created over eight years under the

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Bush administration, according to Clinton.

“I am telling you, I have spent years studying the economy, and I know what creates jobs,” Clinton said. “I hope I have some credibility with you on balanced budgets. No U.S. president or anyone living within the borders of the U.S. could have fixed all the damage that was done from the financial crisis in just four years.

That’s not possible.”

Clinton lauded the president for passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and for his support of Planned Parenthood.

Romney, who opposed the auto bailout, has been trying to undo his previous statements now that the automobile industry has been improving, Clinton said.

“I expect he’ll be offered a job as chief contortionist of Cirque du Soleil,” he joked.

Obama began his speech by somberly reflecting on the past week dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

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Hoping to be the first GOP nominee to paint Pennsylvania red since 1988, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made a campaign stop in Bucks County Sunday night.

“What a Philadelphia welcome, thank you,” said Romney as he took the stage to the “Rocky” theme song and the chants of 30,000 rally-goers.

The rally was about 30 miles away from campus.

Despite a streak of Republican losses in Pennsylvania, Romney remained optimistic that he could take the Keystone State.

Obama’s wide leads in the state appear to be fading, as an Allentown Morning Call/Muhlenberg College poll released Sunday pegged Obama only 3 percentage points ahead of Romney — 49 to 46.

“This audience and your voices are being heard all over the nation. They’re being heard in my heart,” Romney said. “The people of America understand we’re taking back the White House because we’re going to win Pennsylvania.”

Attendees weathered the chilly winds in style, donning red, white and blue blankets and Romney-Ryan beanies. Although medics had to help one attendee who fell ill from the cold, most remained energetic and held their “Pennsylvania Believes” signs high above their heads.

Romney presented a bleak view of the country under Obama’s leadership and argued that his five-part plan for the

economy would get America “roaring back” again.

He promised higher take-home PENN pay for workers and energy independence in eight years.

“Obama has not lived up to promises to solve big problems,” Romney said. “I will.”

He did not shy away from attacking his opponent.

“President Obama asked his supporters to vote for revenge.

For revenge!” Romney said in reference to a comment the president made on Friday. “Instead, I ask the American people to vote for love of country.”

Romney added, “He’s hoping we’ll settle. Americans don’t settle. We build, we aspire, we dream, we listen to that voice which says, ‘We can do better.’”

But the former Massachusetts governor also incorporated themes of bipartisanship into his speech. He suggested to the audience that they “reach across the street to that neighbor with the other guy’s yard sign.” He added that his administration would “reach across the aisle in Washington to people of good faith in the other party.”

The rally ended with a dramatic display of patriotic fireworks set to the swelling music of the Texas instrumental band “Explosions in the Sky.” Romney shook hands with supporters as he headed back to his tour bus. He continued on to Newport, Va., for another rally that same night.

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

NATION

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — The White House the prize, President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney raced through a final full day of campaigning on Monday through Ohio and other battleground states holding the keys to victory in a tight race. Both promised brighter days ahead for a nation still struggling with a sluggish economy and high joblessness.

“Our work is not done yet,” Obama told a cheering crowd of nearly 20,000 in chilly Madison, Wis., imploring his audience to give him another four years.

Romney projected optimism as he neared the end of his six-year quest for the presidency. “If you believe we can do better. If you believe America should be on a better course.

If you’re tired of being tired … then I ask you to vote for real change,” he said in a Virginia suburb of the nation’s capital. With many of the late polls in key states tilting slightly against him, he decided to campaign on Election Day in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where he and Republicans made a big late push.

The presidency aside, there are 33 Senate seats on the ballot Tuesday, and according to one Republican official, a growing sense of resignation among his party’s rank and file

that Democrats will hold their majority.

The situation was reversed in the House, where Democrats made no claims they were on the verge of victory in pursuit of the 25 seats they need to gain control.

National opinion polls in the presidential race made the popular vote a virtual tie.

In state-by-state surveys, it appeared Obama held small advantages in Nevada, Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin — enough to deliver a second term if they endured, but not so significant that they could withstand an Election Day surge by Romney supporters.

Both men appealed to an ever smaller universe of undecided voters.

More than 30 million absentee or early ballots have been cast, including in excess of 3 million in Florida. The state also had a legal controversy, in the form of a Democratic lawsuit seeking an extension of time for preElection Day voting.

There were other concerns, logistical rather than legal.

Officials in one part of New Jersey delivered voting equipment to emergency shelters so voters displaced by Superstorm Sandy last week could cast ballots. New York City made arrangements for shuttle buses to provide transportation for some in hard-hit areas unable to reach their polling places.

MATT ROURKE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Supporters listen to Vice President Joe Biden speak during a campaign rally in Richmond, Va.

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Post-Sandy housing uncertain

JOHN MINCHILLO/ASSOCIATED PRESS

A man looks out onto the debris removed from his home, which was severely damaged by Superstorm Sandy.

BY MEGHAN BARR AND JENNIFER PELTZ ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK — Government leaders are turning their attention to the next crisis unfolding in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy: finding housing for potentially tens of thousands of people left homeless.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it has already dispensed close to $200 million in emergency housing assistance and has put 34,000 people in the New York and New Jersey metropolitan area up in hotels and motels.

But local, state and federal officials have yet to lay out a specific, comprehensive plan for finding them long-term places to live, even as cold weather sets in.

And given the scarcity and high cost of housing in the metropolitan area and the lack of open space, it could prove a monumental undertaking.

For example, can enough vacant apartments be found?

Will the task involve huge, Hurricane Katrina-style encampments of trailer homes? And if so, where will authorities put the trailers?

In stadiums? Parks?

Authorities cannot answers those questions yet.

“It’s not going to be a simple task. It’s going to be one of the most complicated and long-term recovery efforts in U.S. history,” said Mark Merritt, president of Witt Associates, a Washington crisis management consulting firm founded by former FEMA director James Lee Witt.

Tactics that FEMA used in other disasters could be difficult to apply in the city. For example, Merritt said, it’s impossible to set up trailers in people’s driveways if everyone lives in an apartment building, and it’s harder to find space to set up mobile homes.

Sandy killed more 100 people in 10 states but vented the

worst of its fury on New Jersey and New York. A week after the storm slammed the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, 1.4 million homes and businesses remained in the dark.

Another storm — a nor’easter packing heavy rain and gusts of 50 to 60 mph — was headed for the metropolitan area Wednesday, threatening more flooding and power outages that could undo some of the repairs made in the past few days.

With the temperatures dropping into the 30s overnight, people in dark, unheated homes were urged to go to overnight shelters or daytime warming centers.

Because so many voters have been displaced by the storm, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order allowing people to vote in Tuesday’s statewide and presidential elections at any polling place in the state. New Jersey had already taken similar measures.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

WORLD

“Being gay is not a Western invention. It is a human reality.” HILLARY CLINTON U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE

Syria’s opposition bloc grows

BY KARIN LAUB ASSOCIATED PRESS DOHA, Qatar — The main Syrian opposition bloc on Monday broadened its ranks to accommodate more activists and political groups from inside the country, officials said, in an apparent nod to international demands for a more representative and cohesive leadership.

However, the Syrian National Council’s reforms, approved on the second day of a five-day convention in Doha, may not suffice to counter a U.S.-backed plan to create a new opposition leadership that would greatly dilute the SNC’s influence.

The U.S. has criticized the SNC, dominated by exiles and academics, as ineffective and out of touch with those fighting in Syria to overthrow President Bashar Assad.

Under the U.S.-backed plan, proposed by prominent dissident Riad Seif, the SNC would become part of a new leadership group, holding only 15 of the organization’s 50 seats — thus making room for more representatives from inside Syria.

“The SNC is in an existential struggle right now,” Doha-based analyst Salman Shaikh said of the wrangling within the Syrian opposition. After four days of internal SNC meetings, the group will meet with Seif and his supporters on Thursday to discuss the new leadership plan.

The SNC would risk further strain with its increasingly impatient foreign backers if it is perceived as the main obstacle to a unified opposition.

On Monday, SNC members floated counter proposals to Seif’s plan in an attempt to circumvent it.

The outgoing SNC leadership, to be replaced in elections Tuesday and Wednesday, said Thursday’s meeting should focus on the formation of a transitional government instead of the composition of the opposition’s leadership, according to Anas Abdah, an SNC conference organizer.

U.S.-based Syrian academic Radwan Ziadeh proposed convening a 300-member national conference in rebel-controlled Syrian territory close to Turkey. The conference, representing SNC members, military commanders, technocrats and local council leaders in equal measure, would form a transitional government to administer the rebel-run areas, he said.

SNC members suggested that their Qatari hosts, eager to forge a unified opposition, would keep delegates in Doha until a deal is reached. However, participants could fail to rally around one plan because of divisions in the opposition.

The SNC conference is being held at a time of deepening distrust between the SNC and the West.

Washington and other foreign backers say they can’t boost aid to

Syrian rebels unless the opposition is united and represents more diverse groups within Syrian society, including those fighting on the ground in Syria. On the other hand, many in the opposition feel abandoned by the international community and say they’re not getting the money and weapons they need to topple Assad.

The [Syrian National Council] is in an existential struggle right now.

SALMAN SHAIKH Doha-based analyst U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. is looking for “an opposition that represents more of the groups, more of the geographic representation, more of those who have been involved on the ground with local coordinating councils, with revolution councils.”

Syria’s bloody 19-month conflict, which activists say has killed more than 36,000 people, is stuck in a military stalemate rebel fighters blame on a lack of strategic weapons, such as anti-aircraft missiles. Islamic militant fighters have also assumed more prominent roles in recent months.

Push for gay marriage in France slows

BY THOMAS ADAMSON ASSOCIATED PRESS PARIS — A plan to legalize samesex marriage and allow gay couples to adopt was a liberal cornerstone of Francois Hollande’s election manifesto earlier this year. It looked like a shoo-in for the French President, supported by a majority of the country, and an easy way to break with his conservative predecessor. But that was then.

Now, as the Socialist government prepares to unveil its draft “marriage for everyone” law Wednesday, polls show wavering support for the idea and for the president himself amid increasingly vocal opposition in this majority Catholic country.

And it’s not just religious and rural leaders speaking out; top figures within Hollande’s own party also are at loggerheads over the plan. The Socialists are now dragging their feet, releasing the bill later than planned and delaying parliamentary debate on it until January.

The political hot potato has exposed divisions between urban France, where homosexuality is widely accepted, and the rural heartland, where conservative attitudes hold sway.

Unusually for this strictly secular country, it has also brought reli-

gious views to the foreground. Most French people identify as Catholic even if only a minority attend church.

Archbishop Andre Vingt-Trois made it a point to defend heterosexual parents Sunday in a homily at the pilgrimage site in Lourdes in southern France.

The pope weighed in last month, urging French bishops to oppose the bill, and France’s chief rabbi Gilles Bernheim joined other religious leaders in his opposition.

Right-wing opposition to fullfledged gay marriage in France has generally centered on the impact on the traditional family. But some have been more strident.

One prominent Paris official warned that recognizing gay marriage could lead to legalizing polygamy, pedophilia and incest. Francois Lebel’s comments drew particular attention, and condemnation, because he oversees the neighborhood that includes the presidential palace and he officiated at former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s marriage to ex-supermodel Carla Bruni.

Attracting equal controversy, Christian Democrat Party leader Christine Boutin — who brandished a Bible in France’s National Assembly in 1998 to protest gay civil unions — has said the law could open the floodgates to moral decline.

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 13

SPORTS

“Most of you have been playin’ this game for 10 years … you got two more quarters and after that most of you will never play this game again as long as you live.” GARY GAINES FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

Bulldogs finish in fourth

Yale sweeps titles at Big Green WOMEN’S TENNIS FROM PAGE 14 opportunity to see how our team matches will go in the spring,” she said. “Everybody was cheering, really energized and excited to be playing. I think we did a really good job of being aggressive and playing our game style, which is something we’ll be looking to do in our spring matches.”

On the first day of play the Bulldogs took down BU in both singles and doubles. Without ceding a match, Yale triumphed 7–0 in singles play, with Hamilton, Li and Sullivan all winning their matches 6–0, 6–1 and captain Elizabeth Epstein ’13 taking down her opponent 6–0, 6–0.

Later that day, Yale won all four of its doubles matches against UMass.

Everybody’s been playing great in practice, and we were really excited about making a statement.

ANNIE SULLIVAN ’14 Women’s tennis

BRIANNE BOWEN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The field hockey seniors set a school record for most conference wins in four years with 20.

BY GIOVANNI BACARELLA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The field hockey team surrendered the Ancient Eight crown this weekend, but refused to go quietly in its season finale.

FIELD HOCKEY The Bulldogs (6–11, 3–4 Ivy) defeated Brown (6–11, 1–6 Ivy) on Saturday with a 2–1 comeback victory. The win marked the 20th Ivy victory for the graduating class, which set a new school record for most wins in four years. The seniors suffered only eight losses in league play during their collegiate careers. Last year, the Elis claimed the team’s first Ivy League title in 31 years, but were unable to repeat their championship run this season.

Throughout their final game, the Elis applied constant pressure on the Bear defense. They poured on a total of seven shots in the first half and nine in the second.

“We had a pretty consistent attack for most of the game, getting shots, putting pressure on their defense,” back Molly Wolf ’16 said.

But Brown goalkeeper Shannon McSweeney made four of her 10 saves in the first half and the Bears took a 1–0 advantage late into the game after opening the scoring in the 24th minute.

Back Megan Kirkham ’15 credited McSweeney with preserving the Bears’ lead. By the 60th minute, the Bulldogs had outshot Brown 14–6 but still trailed by one, and Yale head coach Pamela Stuper was forced to call a timeout.

“Basically, I just told [the players] that they needed to relax,” Stuper said. “We were just trying so hard that we weren’t staying composed and poised within the game to actually execute … so I just talked to them about slowing the game down.”

Only a minute later, the Bulldogs put away the tying goal. Forward Jessie Accurso ’15 received a cross from captain Maddy Sharp ’13 and tipped it in from the left side of the goal.

The Bulldogs capitalized on their momentum and found the net once again only seven minutes later. Though Brown had kept Yale scoreless on eight penalty corners through both halves, the Bears defense faltered on the ninth. Wolf, who was credited with four of Yale’s 10 shots on net, scored her second career goal off a direct shot from the penalty corner. Midfielders Mary Beth Barham ’13 and Erica Borgo ’14 were awarded assists on the play.

“Our team is definitely not one to give up, so we kept battling until the final whistle,” Wolf said. “Getting a corner call so late in the game was a great opportunity for us, and we knew that if we executed it we would be successful.”

Over the course of the game, Yale earned nine penalty corners to Brown’s zero and outshot the Bears 16–6.

With the tables turned, the Bears pulled McSweeney in the final two minutes. But the Bulldog defense held strong despite the added pressure of a kicking back, and Brown was unable to manage any more shots.

The clock ran down, the final whistle blew and the season came to an end.

Though the Bulldogs must hand over their Ivy League title to former co-champion Princeton, the team’s success this year could be measured by its ability to play through a difficult schedule. Yale faced six of the top 21 teams in the country, including four of the top six.

In addition, just three games into the season, midfielder Georgia Holland ’14, who was a first team All-Ivy selection last year, suffered a torn ACL and was lost for the season.

“A few weeks ago, we could’ve just packed it in and said we’re just not good this year,” Stuper said. “I think what’s tribute to the team is that they chose not to do that — they chose to come out every Monday at the start of a new week and tried to figure out what it was that we needed to do to win next weekend’s games. It showed a lot about the character of this team and the direction of the future.”

Playing against nationally ranked teams only contributed to making the team better, Kirkham said. Stuper added that the team’s improvement was visible and the Bulldogs regrouped from its early season struggles, battling all the way through the 70th minute of Saturday’s game.

“The quality of our play reached its zenith during the last two weeks of season, and it was great my collegiate sports career ended on a high note,” Sharp said.

Yale finished the season in a fourthplace tie with Penn and Cornell.

Contact GIOVANNI BACARELLA at giovanni.bacarella@yale.edu .

On Day Two of the tournament, the Bulldogs continued their display of dominance by beating Dartmouth 4–0 in doubles and 7–1 in singles, a victory that Hamilton said the team was particularly happy to get.

“It was good to get so many wins, but I think beating Dart-

mouth was especially good because they’re in our conference and we’ll definitely be playing them again in the spring,” she said.

The final day of play ended with a clean sweep over UMass in singles, with all eight players winning comfortably in straight sets.

Sullivan praised the team’s performance and said she thought the past fall season was possibly the best the Elis have ever had as a team.

“Because it’s the end of the fall season, we worked really hard for this tournament so we could play another season on a high,” she said. “Everybody’s been playing great in practice, and we were really excited about making a statement about Yale tennis.”

Sullivan also highlighted the impact that freshmen Hamilton, Li and Courtney Amos ’16 have made in their first season, saying “they have brought a lot” to the team. The freshmen’s success is reassuring considering the loss of graduated seniors Vicki Brook ’12 and Steph Kent ’12, and leaves the team well-prepared for the upcoming Ivy League season and potentially the NCAA tournament.

The Bulldogs finished at No. 29 in the country in last year’s end-of-season ITA rankings as the highest-placed team in the Northeast region.

Contact JASMINE HORSEY at jasmine.horsey@yale.edu .

Sailing avoids Sandy in CA competition SAILING FROM PAGE 14 dent-athletes at Yale, as he spent time working in a lab in Europe over the summer while many of his collegiate competitors were training for the next regatta.

The race was unlike any other the Elis had sailed this season. All of the sailors competed in laser radials, a singlehanded Olympic class of boat rather than the usual double-handed one, where one person sits in the boat as opposed to two. That change would prove to be a real adjustment, according to Billing and Dennis.

“It was fun, but frustrating at certain times,” Billing said in an email. “I am definitely more comfortable in doublehanded … now that I have been practicing in them for three years.”

The race was also different because, as Cullman explained, the team was competing for Fowle Trophy points, which determine a team’s national ranking at the end of the year and are only awarded at the most important competitions of the season.

Though the hurricane did not affect the race directly, the Elis lost three important days of practice immediately before the race, Billing said.

The co-ed and women’s sailing teams will race again this weekend at the Atlantic Coast Competition at the Merchant Marine Academy in King’s Point, N.Y. Contact DAVID BLUMENTHAL at david.blumenthal@yale.edu .

Elis earn four points in final weekend WOMEN’S SOCCER FROM PAGE 14 Annie Hull ’15 sent the ball up the line to Kubiak, who tiptoed around a few Brown defenders and smashed the ball into the top half of the net to put the Bulldogs up 1–0.

The rest of Sunday’s game came down to what coach Meredith said would be the key to beating Brown on Thursday — controlling the midfield. The Elis pressured the Bears on both halves of the field, taking valuable space away from the Bears.

While most of the beginning of the game was spent in the Bulldogs’ half of the midfield, the Elis spent the second half attacking Brown. With just 14 minutes left in the game, the Bulldogs peppered the Bears relentlessly, earning corner kick after corner kick for a total of five straight opportunities.

The Bulldogs were less successful in the midfield battle in their 2–2 draw against the Bears on Thursday.

“Going into Thursday whoever controlled the midfield would win the game,” captain and midfielder Jenny Butwin ’13 said. “Starting with a 4–4–2 [formation] today, we were definitely matched up front.”

In Thursday’s matchup Brown scored first when the Bears’ Chloe

Cross scored her fifth goal on her 59th shot of the season. But in the second half, the Bulldogs fought back as midfielder Kristen Forster ’13 popped her seventh goal of the season past the Bears to tie the game. Just 18 minutes later, the Bulldogs took the lead when forward Melissa Gavin ’15 blasted the ball past Brown goalkeeper Amber Bledsoe. With five minutes left, the Bears were able to even the score at 2–2, but the Bulldogs were not ready to quit.

Just 18 seconds after the Bears tied the game, Forster rushed up the field and fired a shot past Bledsoe, but it rang off the post, leaving the game tied at the end of regulation. The two overtime periods ended without further dramatics, and the game ended in a draw.

The players were happy to have finished their season and careers with a victory after Sunday’s game.

“Not many teams get to end their seasons on a win,” forward Anne Song ’13 said. “It was nice to be with the seniors one more time.”

Meredith started all seven healthy seniors in Sunday’s game.

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

MARIA ZEPEDA/ PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Brown held a 7–3 edge in shots on goal, but the Bulldogs came away with a 1–0 win in their season finale on Sunday.

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TIGERS COMING TO TOWN The Princeton Undergraduate Student Government approved $3,000 in funding on Sunday to send 550 students to New Haven for this Saturday’s YalePrinceton football game. Last year, the Elis defeated the Tigers 33–24 at Princeton.

BOBBY THALMAN ’13 ELI EARNS IVY HONOR The senior goalkeeper was named the Ivy League co-Player of the Week along with Cornell midfielder Stephen Reisert after making 11 saves and weathering 36 shots while giving up one goal in Yale’s 1–1 draw against No. 11 Brown on Saturday.

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“It was great my collegiate sports career ended on a high note.

MADDY SHARP ’13 CAPTAIN, FIELD HOCKEY

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

Yale closes season on high note

BY ASHTON WACKYM CONTRIBUTING REPORTER After a back-and-forth tie against Brown on Thursday, the Bulldogs sailed past the Bears on Sunday during the final career game for eight Yale seniors.

WOMEN’S SOCCER On Thursday, Yale (8–7– 2, 1–4–2 Ivy) matched Brown (7–9–1, 1–5–1 Ivy) 2–2 in Providence during a game broadcasted on the Fox Soccer channel. After some adjustments to their strategy, the Bulldogs took on the Bears at home on Sunday for the annual “Senior Day” game and came away with a 1–0 win. The victory was Yale’s fifth shutout of the season, and the Elis closed the season with fourth straight games without a loss. Captain Jenny Butwin ’13 said the Elis struggled to control the midfield on Thursday, but overcame that challenge to finish the season with a winning record on Sunday — their

Elis dominate invitational WOMEN’S TENNIS

10th in the past 11 seasons.

“I’m glad the seniors [went] out with a win,” head coach Rudy Meredith said. “I’m proud of the seniors. They all played well.”

I’m glad the seniors [went] out with a win. I’m proud of the seniors. They all played well.

RUDY MEREDITH Head coach, women’s soccer An early fifth minute goal gave the Bulldogs the lead in an emotional win for the eight Eli seniors. Against Columbia two weeks before, the Bulldogs also scored quickly, only 48 seconds into the contest.

The goal came from forward Mary Kubiak ’13. Defender SEE WOMEN’S SOCCER PAGE 13

TIM JEON/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Annie Sullivan ’14 and her partner Ree Ree Li ’16 won the doubles championship at the Big Green Invitational this weekend.

BY JASMINE HORSEY CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The women’s tennis team closed its fall season with decisive victories at the Big Green Invitational Nov. 2–4.

MARIA ZEPEDA/ PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

WOMEN’S TENNIS

The Elis went undefeated in their last four games to finish the season.

Dropping just one match over the three-day tournament at Dartmouth, the Bulldogs finished 11–0 in singles and 22–1 in doubles. With wins over UMass, Boston University and host Dartmouth, Yale solidified its place as a power in the Northeast region.

Playing in the No. 1 spots, Madeleine Hamilton ’16 and doubles pairing Annie

Sullivan ’14 and Ree Ree Li ’16 finished the tournament as singles and doubles champions, respectively.

Hamilton said that the team’s performance at the tournament bodes well for the upcoming spring season.

“I think this tournament was really the SEE WOMEN’S TENNIS PAGE 13

Sailors compete at National Championships

BY DAVID BLUMENTHAL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER While most of Yale confronted a hurricane last week, one member of the No. 3-ranked Yale co-ed sailing team and two members of the No. 1 women’s sailing team braved the elements in Long Beach, Calif.

SAILING Last week, Cameron Cullman ’13, Claire Dennis ’13 and Emily Billing ’13 joined 33 other athletes at one of the nation’s most elite sailing competitions: The Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association’s Singlehanded National Championships. Cullman was unable to defend his

national title and finished in fourth, while Dennis and Billing finished in third and tenth place, respectively.

Dennis finished in the top three at the ISCA championships for the fourth time in four career trips to the competition.

Her string of successes fittingly came to an end where she grew up and where her single-handed sailing career began: her home state of California.

The other sailors also said they enjoyed being in California, as the weather was certainly a welcome alternative to the hurricane that passed through New Haven this weekend.

“The weather was very nice,” Billing said. “The mornings were very light but the breeze generally built throughout the afternoon before diminishing in the

STAT OF THE DAY 33

late afternoons. We never saw any windy races but the conditions were challenging.”

Of the three, Cullman was under the most scrutiny as the defending national champion. And while he was somewhat disappointed with his fourth-place finish, Cullman said he was pleased with the team’s overall performance and added he did not find balancing the pressure of being the defending champion difficult.

“Any pressure came from being the only one to earn points for Yale and I didn’t feel it affected my sailing whatsoever,” Cullman said in an email. Cullman also explained how his struggles this weekend reflected the challenges of stuSEE SAILING PAGE 13

ZEENAT MANSOOR/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Claire Dennis ’13 finished in the top three at the championships for the fourth time.

THE NUMBER OF MATCHES WON BY THE WOMEN’S TENNIS TEAM AT THIS WEEKEND’S BIG GREEN INVITATIONAL. The Elis went 11–0 in singles and 22–1 in doubles, with Madeleine Hamilton ’16 wining the singles championship and Annie Sullivan ’14 and Ree Ree Li ’16 taking the doubles title.