NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2014 · VOL. CXXXVI, NO. 93 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
SUNNY CLOUDY
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CROSS CAMPUS All aboard the Hogwarts Express! The Sophomore
Class Council hosted their annual Harry Potter Week last week, filling Yale’s courtyards and colleges with magic and fantasy. Forget the movie marathon, the greatest week of everybody’s lives also included a Quidditch Workshop and a Tri-Wizard Trivia Tournament. In TriWizard Tournament tradition, the Yule Ball was held Saturday in Davenport College.
Potions. Oaxaca Kitchen
hosted specials for National Margarita Day this Saturday. Their offerings include Coconut, Blueberry and a creation called the Chiporita.
BASKETBALL WINNING STREAK SNAPPED
HARP TRANSITION
THROUGH THE LENS
Team recommends Mayor raise taxes next fiscal year
EXPLORING NEW HAVEN’S HISTORIC CHURCHES
PAGE B1 SPORTS
PAGE 3 CITY
PAGE 10 TTL
Reports exonerate authorities in See’s death BY ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER STAFF REPORTER Authorities involved in the arrest and detainment of Samuel See were not responsible for the death of the late Yale assistant professor, according to two reports obtained by the News on Sunday. Internal investigations conducted both by the Connecticut Judicial Branch and the New Haven Police Department found that judicial marshals and police
officers complied with all procedures and exhibited neither brutality nor negligence in their dealings with See, who died in police lockup last fall. See, on unpaid leave from Yale at the time, was detained on Nov. 23 following a domestic dispute with his husband, Sunder Ganglani. He was found dead shortly after 6 a.m. the next morning. A toxicology report certified his cause of death as a methamphetamineinduced heart attack.
Ten hours earlier he was treated for a cut above his eye at Yale-New Haven Hospital. The Judicial Branch, which oversees the lockup center at 1 Union Ave. where See was held, released a report which includes summaries of interviews with 13 marshals present during See’s confinement. An internal affairs report of the New Haven Police Department includes statements from arresting officers as well as interviews with judicial marshals on duty at the time of
See’s death. Both reports also include detailed descriptions of video surveillance showing marshals checking in on See — even having conversations with the inmate two hours before he was found unresponsive on the top bunk of his cell. “There is no evidence to support the fact Samuel See’s death … was the result of negligence or inattention by Judicial Marshal Services staff,” the Judicial Branch’s investigation concludes.
Dems canvass for Access CT
Fifteen going on sixteen. La
Casa brought the Quinceañera tradition, the celebration of a young woman’s fifteenth birthday, to campus this Saturday. The affair titled QuinceYALEa was recreated in the Ezra Stiles dining hall, featuring Erica Yurvati ’15 accompanied by a court of damas and chambelanes. The semi-formal celebration included dancing, music, food and an after-party.
Cutting it down. The teams have been announced for this year’s Final Cut competition. The Silliman team took their photo with no shirts on. From the Berkeley team, Angela Ning ’14 said her favorite thing to prepare is “the blood of [her] opponents.” The Jonathan Edwards team includes Caitlin Purdome ’17 who said if she were a Yale dining dish, she would be “potato pie because what is inside [her] is a mystery.” Fixing fraud. According to a recent piece in the New York Daily News, Yale professor Ian Ayres has started a project to help those who were cheated by Jordan Belfort, who was the inspiration for “The Wolf of Wall Street.” The Belfort Victims Fund was kicked off with a $22 donation from Ayres himself. He says the amount reflects what he paid for two movie tickets to the film, which made him think about how watching the film was indirectly deriving happiness from the misfortunes of others. Facebook’s founding. The
Harvard Crimson released a piece about the current state of Mark Zuckerberg’s old dorm room in Kirkland House. Seven other students live in the suite now, none of whom has yet managed to turn a dorm room company into a billiondollar company. Strangers have apparently entered the suite before to have drinks in celebration of Facebook’s decade anniversary.
THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1967 Joseph P. McDermott ’67 successfully trades places with his twin Edward, who attends Harvard. The swap was merely for fun, and lasted for a week. The two hitch-hiked to each other’s campuses, and took each other’s classes. Submit tips to Cross Campus
crosscampus@yaledailynews.com
ONLINE y MORE goydn.com/xcampus
The police department’s sudden death investigation, conducted by Detective Michael White, found that marshals “followed their protocols and checked all inmates every 15 minutes.” Based on the statements of four arresting officers, Detective Craig Dixon reported finding no evidence that any departmental rules or gender orders were violated. He deemed the officers SEE SAM SEE PAGE 6
YPD reports 2 sexual assault allegations BY MAREK RAMILO, POOJA SALHOTRA AND WELSEY YIIN STAFF REPORTERS
ster Streets in Dixwell, where Tyler Blackmon ’16 and Becca Ellison ’15, members of the Yale College Democrats, were canvassing residents to sign up for health care under Connecticut’s exchange. Revealing her health care needs in frank terms, Peterson said the
The Yale community received three emails last week reporting two separate complaints that two Yale students were sexually assaulted on the night of Feb. 8 at the same off-campus location. Yale Police Department Chief Ronnell Higgins reported the two statements in separate emails to the University community on Feb. 19 and Feb. 21. The messages stated that the alleged assaults occurred at the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house, and the second email corrected the first by reporting that they were both said to have taken place on Feb. 8. “I write to let [the University community] know that the Yale Police received an anonymous report today that a second Yale student was the victim of a sexual assault by an acquaintance, who is also a Yale student,” Higgins said in the Feb. 21 email. On Feb. 22, President of the Yale Sigma Phi Epsilon chapter Andrew Goble ’15 issued a statement saying the fraternity allowed another student group to lease a room in its house for a private event on Feb. 8. The statement said the event was open to guests of that organization, which remained unnamed.
SEE HEALTHCARE PAGE 4
SEE ASSAULTS PAGE 4
ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Dozens of the Yale College Democrats canvassed New Haven to help residents enroll in the state’s health care exchange. BY ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER STAFF REPORTER Alex Peterson is crossing her fingers that, by Thursday, she will have health insurance. She needs it, she said. Peterson, a Dixwell resident, is unemployed and addicted to heroin. Her state insurance policy lapsed in September,
four months after she lost her job at Dine In Connecticut, a third-party food delivery service. In search of Medicaid coverage, Peterson went last Thursday to the webpage of Access Health CT, Connecticut’s health exchange. Signing up online took 45 minutes, she said Saturday afternoon, standing on the corner of Ashmun and Web-
Avraham to advise dean search BY MATTHEW LLOYD-THOMAS STAFF REPORTER When University President Peter Salovey looks to a 14-person committee for advice on selecting the next deans of Yale College and the Graduate School, two students — Yale College Council President Danny Avraham ’15 and an undetermined graduate student — will be there to give their two cents. Last Tuesday, Salovey invited Avraham and Graduate Student Assembly Chair Brian Dunican GRD ’15 to choose
a student for the advisory committee. Both Avraham and Dunican chose to place selection responsibility in the hands of their respective elected assemblies. “I have always been a great supporter of gathering student input when making decisions that affect students,” Salovey said. “The development of the slate of candidates I will consider for these two positions will certainly benefit from student input.” After a debate over whether the Yale College Council should choose the representative or put the matter to a campus-wide vote, the YCC voted to select Avraham
on Saturday evening. Dunican said the graduate student representative will be chosen by a vote of members of the Graduate Student Assembly at their next meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 26. Although Dunican said that the decision to elect the graduate representative at the weekly GSA meeting is in line with GSA policy, Avraham’s selection by the YCC followed a contentious discussion about how the body should choose the representative. At the Saturday YCC SEE YCC PAGE 4 meeting, YCC Vice
Forums revive grading policy discussion BY YUVAL BEN-DAVID STAFF REPORTER After months of radio silence from administrators over grading reform, the ad hoc committee on grading has reached out for student opinions. The committee was commissioned in September 2012 to examine a possible restructuring of Yale’s grading policies. In a series of three forums this month — one each for juniors and seniors in the social sciences, arts and humanities,
and science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) — the committee and Yale College Dean Mary Miller solicited student feedback on their experiences with grading at Yale. With the committee slated to hand in their general recommendations to Miller sometime in the upcoming weeks, the open forums put Yale’s yearlong conversation on grading policy in the home stretch. Though buzzwords such as grade deflation and grade inflation have been the focus of many
student debates and protests in the past year, they did not figure heavily into the forum discussions this month, according to administrators and students in attendance. Instead, the overarching student concern was that letter grades can fail to provide adequate feedback of student work. “The overall tone that emerged from these discussions was a completely responsible view of students toward how to make the most out of their education,” Miller said.
According to Miller, students at each of the forums, especially the social science forum, expressed a desire to use grades as an opportunity for further learning and for improving their writing and research skills. Miller said students pointed to some English courses that assign multiple short papers — and in some cases offer the opportunity to revise and resubmit papers — as exemplary models of this sort of constructive grading. Julia Mattison ’14, who
attended the arts and humanities forum, said students expressed an overwhelming desire for comments in addition to grades on their end-of-term projects, which professors often do not hand back to students. “Students turn in substantial pieces of work at the end of semester and all we get back is a grade on our transcript,” said Leah Sarna ’14, who also attended the meeting. “Students are looking to learn from SEE GRADING PAGE 4