NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2015 · VOL. CXXXVII, NO. 92 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
SNOWY CLOUDY
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CROSS CAMPUS The children are our future.
A recent piece by Business Insider went through the trouble of ranking the nation’s boarding high schools — which collectively represent themselves as the minor leagues for the Ivy League — by intelligence. Taking the top spot was St. Albans in Washington, D.C. Andover and Exeter still landed in the top 10, but we’re not sure if that’s good enough for them.
GOING GLOBAL FES AND SOM TEAM UP
NOT IN OUR STATE
VISUAL LITERACY
Senator Blumenthal slams Texas for stalling immigration reform.
YCBA PROGRAM TEACHES WRITING THROUGH ARTS.
PAGE 5 UNIVERSITY
PAGE 3 CITY
PAGE 7 CULTURE
$233.8 million
Closing loopholes in corporation and hospital taxes
BY ERICA PANDEY STAFF REPORTER
$557.6 million
$229.8 million
get, which includes approximately $900 million in revenue increases and is designed to close the billiondollar budget deficits projected for each of the next two years. As part of the budget, Malloy has also announced an ambitious three-
As Board of Alders President Jorge Perez bids farewell to his 28-year career in city government, New Haven will look to a twoterm alder to lead the board. While Gov. Dannel Malloy announced last Friday that he had selected Perez as the new state banking commissioner, Perez said he will not leave his presidential post for at least two months. Ward 23 Alder Tyisha Walker — the board’s current president pro tempore who represents the West River— is in line to replace Perez after he makes the transition to Hartford later this spring. Walker will serve as the board’s president until the next election cycle in November 2015. At Tuesday’s meeting, the alders included an agenda item to formally congratulate Perez and thank him for his service as alder of the Hill neighborhood. Perez’s colleagues, including current and former alders, said his experience and guidance will be missed in city government. “You can’t replace that kind of leadership,” former West Rock Alder Darnell Goldson said. “No one on the board comes close. You just can’t do it.” The Board of Alders has not seen a change in leadership since 2012, when Perez was elected as President after a six-year hiatus. Perez, who served as president from 2000 to 2005 and then again from 2012 until now,
SEE MALLOY PAGE 4
SEE PEREZ PAGE 4
Grand total revenue changes
Extensions and modifications to current taxes
*including $70.1 million subtracted due to tax cuts
$139.5 million
Federal revenue Medicaid
Fund transfers
$7.9 million
Other revenue measures, including changes to alcohol sale laws
$15.3 million
Full circle. And now, to bring
Business Insider and Wall Street together, the publication posted a list of “The 25 people you should avoid on Wall Street” yesterday. Naming “the guys who mime golf swings in the office” and “the serial connector on LinkedIn,” the article called out most directly “the guy who still talks about his college athletic career,” namely former hockey captain Keith McCullough ’99.
Perez leaves void in BoA leadership
GRAPH STATE BUDGET
$1.4 million
Fees
BY NOAH DAPONTE SMITH AND MICHELLE LIU STAFF REPORTERS After three months of spending cuts, Gov. Dannel Malloy announced a comprehensive plan Wednesday to balance the state’s budget. Since he was re-elected to his second term in November, Mal-
loy has aggressively cut spending in most government agencies and announced a hiring freeze for all but critical positions in order to close a budget shortfall of over $100 million. In his presentation to lawmakers in Hartford yesterday, Malloy presented a $40 billion two-year bud-
Sitting down with baseball captain David Toups ’15. PAGE 12 SPORTS
Malloy unveils two-year, $40bn budget
Stepping stones everywhere.
Meanwhile, the Ivy League represents itself as the minor leagues for Wall Street. For proof, look no further than today’s Yale Undergraduate Diversified Investments Morgan Stanley event, featuring Senior Managing Director Ray Spitzley SOM ’85. Apparently it’s not too late to sweet-talk yourself into a job.
HOME RUN
Fight! Some Ivy Leaguers
end up doing things besides finance, however, like politics. But likely 2016 GOP candidate Scott Walker doesn’t seem to care too much for his opponents, having called out fellow presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton LAW ’73 for not being a “fighter … just an Ivy Leaguer.” Walker also shared similar sentiments about Howard Dean ’71, so let’s see if he can walk the walk.
The other PDA. Donna Dubinsky ’77, Yale Corporation fellow and former Palm, Inc. CEO (remember when Palm Pilots were a thing?), is the guest of honor at today’s Morse Master’s Tea. The tech pioneer will be discussing how to shape both your own future and that of the University. A pricey $5. Yesterday, New Haven Police Department spokesman David Hartman reported a strange episode of Elm City mischief in which one man suffered minor injuries after being stabbed by another over a $5 debt from a game of pool they were playing. The munchies mystery.
A story in Wednesday’s Washington Post health section detailed a Yale study that explored the biology behind the “inexplicable urge to eat that has led generations of marijuana users to consume untold numbers of nachos, Twinkies”… and Wenzels.
THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1964 Yale College faculty vote to discontinue required attendance immediately before and after vacation periods, increasing student autonomy. Follow along for the News’ latest.
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ONLINE y MORE goydn.com/xcampus
YNHH penalized for hospital infection rates BY AMAKA UCHEGBU STAFF REPORTER With one of the highest rates of avoidable hospital-acquired conditions in the country, YaleNew Haven Hospital will be penalized by the federal government for the first time in its history. But physicians at Yale and the hospital are questioning the
metric used to determine which hospitals to penalize. Ranking in the top quartile for rates of hospital-acquired conditions — medical issues that arise during a patient’s stay at a hospital — across the United States, YNHH is one of 14 hospitals in Connecticut that will be penalized between October 2014 and September 2015 by
the federal government. Medicare payments, which make up roughly a third of the hospital’s income, will be reduced by one percent at YNHH and 720 other hospitals across the country, costing them $373 million in total. While the metric used to assess which hospitals to penalize was not developed at Yale,
Study to lawyers who want to be judges: Be conservative BY PHOEBE KIMMELMAN STAFF REPORTER A new study on judges’ and lawyers’ political preferences may hold important implications for law students who want to sit on the bench. Lawyers are typically more liberal than the population at large, while judges are typically more conservative than other lawyers, according to the study, authored by Harvard Kennedy School professor Maya Sen and Stanford professor Adam Bonica and released last month. The study, which examined data on almost 400,000 lawyers and judges in the United States, further found that higher courts are more conservative and politicized. This discrepancy, Sen and Bonica found, exists because Republicans “strategically prioritize higher courts” when it comes to judicial appointments. Sen told the News that this politicization of the bench is significant for current law students with judicial aspirations. “If you want to be a judge, going to a top-ranked law school and signaling that you are conservative is a good way to go,” she said. “There are fewer conservatives at these law schools, and so it would make you an attractive can-
didate.” Sen added that the study found that among law school graduates, there is a positive correlation between being conservative and becoming a judge. However, the definition of conservative varies widely among law schools. The study claims that students at elite law schools, such as Yale Law School, are more liberal, with UC-Berkeley Law producing the most left-leaning lawyers in the nation. Meanwhile, judges coming out of these law schools are simply more right-leaning than those who tend to become lawyers. Bonica said that although the study does not provide a data set that shows future judges are more conservative than future lawyers while they are still in law school, as the study focused on one year of data, prior research in the field strongly suggests that this is also the case. “Generally from what we know about political preferences, they are pretty well formed by the time someone is out of their undergraduate institution, especially if they go on to be politically active,” Bonica said. But Ben Picozzi LAW ’16 said it is difficult to assess whether prospecSEE JUDGES PAGE 4
the YNHH Center for Outcomes Research & Evaluation, led by Harlan Krumholz ’80, has recently been asked to refine it. In an attempt to curb avoidable adverse events in acute care hospitals, the Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010, includes strategies to improve inpatient care. To determine the rate of a hospital HACs, Medicare
assesses three types of unanticipated events: blood infections caused by catheters, catheter-associated urinary tract infections and “serious complications,” which are caused by eight types of injuries, including blood clots, bed sores and falls. “[Tracking HACs] is a blunt SEE HOSPITAL PAGE 6
Grad students posit safety concerns BY FINNEGAN SCHICK STAFF REPORTER Several leaders of the Graduate School Assembly voiced their concerns regarding student safety to the Yale Police Department, the New Haven Police Department and Yale Transportation at a security meeting Wednesday afternoon. During the discussion, GSA members complained of overcrowded shuttles, poorly-lit sidewalks and inconsistent police patrolling in neighborhoods occupied by graduate students. While a relocation of security resources away from Yale’s central campus is unlikely to happen, graduate students felt that the some parts of the city — specifically the East Rock and Mansfield Street communities — are poorly policed. “I just think that there’s been more focus on the undergraduate population,” GSA Chair Joori Park GRD ’17 said. “Its not intentional. It’s just the University culture.” To address this concern, GSA Transit and Security Committee Chair Ankit Difsa GRD ’16 suggested expanding Yale’s blue-light phone system to the East Rock and Wooster Square neighborhoods, where many students live, and increasing police
patrols of off-campus areas during the night. The YPD’s patrol boundaries border but do not completely cover the East Rock neighborhood. These areas, as well as Wooster Square, have been the sites of several attempted robberies in the past few weeks.
[The focus on undergraduates is] not intentional. It’s just the University culture. JOORI PARK GRD ’17 Chair, Graduate School Assembly GSA Representative Fabian Schrey GRD ’19 said graduate students often feel unsafe walking back home to these areas later in the day, adding that Yale shuttles are often full to capacity during these times. Park said transportation in New Haven is often a security issue, especially during peak hours. “We think these things are very much interrelated,” Schrey said. He said the addition of more shuttles SEE GRAD SECURITY PAGE 6