NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · MONDAY, APRIL 20, 2015 · VOL. CXXXVII, NO. 124 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
RAINY RAINY
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CROSS CAMPUS Here’s to you, 2019. Yale is
great, especially during these three days. Some quick tips: (1) Don’t even bother with sleep or homework while you’re here, (2) Make your own schedule based on what you want to see and (3) Just be glad that it’s not snowing right now.
Most importantly. (4) Join
the News. From 10:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. tonight, we will host an Open House in our building at 202 York St., for anyone looking to contribute to the Oldest College Daily. There’s a reason why one of the first things you did was pick up a copy of today’s paper.
As for everyone else: Play
nice. We know that everything is starting to pile up, what with just five days remaining till the end. But no matter how many Grand Strategy papers and Bridgewater applications and Skull and Bones initiation rites are hanging over your head, you were once a prefrosh, too.
We have that, too. The Center for Engineering Innovation and Design is holding an information session about CS50 today at noon. There, you’ll learn that we actually offer everything that Harvard does and infinitely more. Exhibit A. For even more proof
of Yale’s relevance on the tech scene, read Friday’s New York Times feature about Genius co-founders Ilan Zechory ’06 and Tom Lehman ’06. According to the story, their company’s wild success has driven the close-friendsturned-business-partners to the emotional edge and back. Still, they’ve managed to keep things running more smoothly than the Facebook guys did. Our bread and butter. Political
science, however, has always been and will continue to be a hallmark of Yale academics. The Yale Political Union, for example, engages Howard Dean ’71 — who has traded his spot atop the Democratic National Committee for a position on the Yale faculty — in a debate today. While we’re not all as argumentative as the YPU might be, Yalies are always enthusiastic about intellectual discourse.
So hip. Demonstrating the
GETTING READY FOOTBALL PREPS FOR THE FALL
WELCOME TO YALE
DOING GOOD
Ask yourself this question, prefrosh: Can I picture my life here?
YLS ANNOUNCES NEW PUBLIC INTEREST FELLOWS.
PAGE B1 SPORTS
PAGE 2 OPINION
PAGE 3 UNIVERSITY
Chanel CEO stresses the importance of strong leadership. PAGE 7 UNIVERSITY
Do Yale and New Haven need Ward 1?
A
s candidates running for Ward 1 alder start to roll out their agendas in anticipation of the municipal election in seven months, campaigns will spur discussions on campus and around New Haven about how Yale students should engage with city government. But students and city residents alike remain conflicted on whether or not a student voice should exist in city government and, if so, what the role of that representative should be. ERICA PANDEY reports. On a late afternoon at the end of March, as sunlight filtered across Old Campus, Fish Stark ’17 stood behind a podium in the Dwight Hall common room.
UPCLOSE The room, framed by Gothic columns, was mostly empty, occupied only by about a dozen members of Stark’s campaign team. Stark
had declared his candidacy for Ward 1 alder earlier that month. His opponent will be incumbent alder Sarah Eidelson ’12, who is vying for a third term. To give freshmen, who will arrive on campus in August, a chance to learn about both candidates, they have agreed to run as Independents in the November election. The composition of Stark’s team was mostly freshmen, nearly all of them members
of the Yale College Democrats. The Annapolis, Maryland native had met most of them at the beginning of the fall semester, when he served as the organization’s membership coordinator. As the campaign launch began, students trickled into Dwight Hall. Many, though by no means all of them, were freshmen. Stark circled the room, introducing himself to unknown faces and greeting old ones. Former mayoral candidate Justin Elicker FES ’10 SOM ’10 — for whom Stark canvassed in 2013 — made an appearance. When Stark took the podium, his speech was general; he spoke not so much of specific policy proposals, which he promised would come later in the campaign, but of his vision for the position. “We need an alder who is committed to working every day to bring Yale students off the sidelines and into our New Haven community,” Stark said. But Stark’s campaign
speech bore resemblance to those of his predecessors — former Ward 1 alders who have garnered criticism from students for failing to deliver on campaign promises to foster meaningful town-gown collaboration. Stark is the most recent student to file papers in hopes of becoming Yale’s undergraduate representative at City Hall. The current Board of Alders does include one graduate student representative, Aaron Greenberg GRD ’18, who serves the Wooster Square neighborhood and was elected in 2013. But only the Ward 1 constituency is overwhelmingly student-based. Ward 1 — often dubbed “the Yale ward,” one of 30 represented on the city’s legislative body, the Board of Alders — encompasses Old Campus and eight of the 12 residential colleges. While Ward 22, represented by Alder Jeanette Morrison, houses the remaining four SEE UPCLOSE PAGE 4
BY VIVIAN WANG STAFF REPORTER Last week’s ground-breaking on the two new residential colleges marks the beginning of a host of changes for Yale, in areas ranging from student body size to residential life. But it also represents the culmination of another, quieter change: the role of the Provost’s Office’s Facilities Access Group. The Facilities Access Group, a subcommittee of the larger Provost Advisory Committee on Resources for Students and Employees with Disabilities, is tasked with assessing the accessibility of Yale’s current buildings and planning the accessibility of new ones. But in the past, its influence has been limited by late involvement in the design process. For example, although the group made several recommendations during the construction of Evans Hall that would have increased accessibility before the building’s 2014 opening, the suggestions came too late to be imple-
mented, said Judy York, director of the Resource Office on Disabilities. Now, as Yale plans for the new residential colleges — in which every suite and entrance will be fully accessible to mobility-impaired students — the subcommittee says they feel they have more influence over the design process. “It was because we were not involved early on that we are now involved early on,” York said. “[The construction of Evans Hall] was the catalyst for when we started saying, ‘We have to be involved before the plans seem to be finalized.’” The initial design for Evans Hall left even the main entrance of the building inaccessible, calling for stairs to lead to the front door, said Glenn Weston-Murphy, an engineering design advisor within the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences who served on the Facilities Access Group for 10 years. He quit several years ago due to frustration with the limited influence of the committee, he said, and the plans for Evans Hall were some of
KATHRYN CRANDALL/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER, YALE DAILY NEWS
Sarah Eidelson ’12 and Fish Stark ’17 have agreed to run as Independents in the November election.
Brenzel to join Woodbridge in advisory role
Accessibility considered in new colleges the last that he reviewed. Although the main entrance to Evans Hall is now accessible, Weston-Murphy said, other problems remain with the building’s accessibility. The inner courtyard, for example, can only be accessed by a step, except for a ramp at the far end of the courtyard. Part of the conflict stemmed from a lack of communication between outside architects and designers, and internal project managers and review committees, Weston-Murphy said. “If it’s done right, accessibility should be looked at seriously in the very early stages of schematic design,” he said. “What was happening was that we weren’t even seeing the drawings until much later in the design [process] … It became a nonproductive relationship, because you were almost in an adversarial mode when the designers would come.” As a result, he said, he felt that
Even after he steps down from his role as master of Timothy Dwight College, Jeffrey Brenzel will remain a member of the Yale community next year, working part-time for University President Peter Salovey. During a farewell ceremony in the TD dining hall on Sunday night, Brenzel told attendees that he will work “half-time” in the President’s Office as a research associate. Brenzel will be working closely with Salovey to develop policy and research communication in higher education, he said. “I will be working at the President’s direction on higher educational commu-
SEE ACCESSIBILITY PAGE 6
SEE BRENZEL PAGE 6
BY FINNEGAN SCHICK AND VICTOR WANG STAFF REPORTERS
Entrepreneurial contests award thousands in prizes
variety available in campus life at Yale, WYBCX Yale Radio will host a Battle of the Bands later tonight for those of you who’ll be returning to high school before Spring Fling.
BY LIONEL JIN STAFF REPORTER
Worthy of watermelon. As
she prepares to step down, University VP for Global and Strategic Initiatives Linda Lorimer received a curious gift over the weekend: a decadent sculpture made of watermelons, at one point stationed in the Sterling nave.
THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1966 The Economics Department announces an accelerated master’s degree program for undergraduates.
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HIGH FASHION
LIONEL JIN/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
At the Entrepreneurship Across Yale contest weekend, team Premie Breathe pitches their project.
For the first time, three leading entrepreneurial contests at Yale joined forces to put together one blockbuster weekend of business pitch competitions. At the Entrepreneurship Across Yale contest weekend, held at the School of Management on Friday and Saturday, finalists for the $25,000 Sabin Prize, the $25,000 Thorne Prize and the $16,000 Yale Venture Challenge pitched their ideas to judges from business and academia. In packed lecture classrooms, the teams — which were a mix of students from Yale College and various graduate schools — presented ventures ranging from a cheaper respiratory device for premature infants to a more eco-friendly clothing line. The weekend also featured “Tuna Tank,” Yale’s take on the popular television competition “Shark Tank.” The competition drew 11 teams vying for a $1,000 prize.
“We really wanted to showcase the whole range of innovative ideas happening at Yale,” said Brita Belli, Yale Entrepreneurial Institute communications officer. “We have more and more people interested in entrepreneurship from across the University. We want to strengthen the bonds between those groups, and we see this as the beginning of something bigger.” Bringing participants and audiences from the different contests together promotes a cross-fertilization of ideas from across the University, said Kyle Jensen, director of entrepreneurial programs at the SOM. The exchange of ideas across fields was also reflected in the composition of the teams. Computer science and cognitive science major Phil Esterman ’17, electrical engineering and computer science major Henok Addis ’17 and English major Jillian Kravatz ’17 were the brains behind StoryTime, SEE ENTREPRENEUR PAGE 6