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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2015 · VOL. CXXXVII, NO. 115 · yaledailynews.com

INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING

RAINY RAINY

47 45

CROSS CAMPUS

SELL OR TAKE? MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS

INCREASE VISIBILITY HEY, CLASS OF 2019 YPD makes appearance at the AACC to discuss policing.

ADMISSIONS OFFICE TURNS FOCUS TO RECRUITMENT.

PAGES 10–11 SCI-TECH

PAGE 3 UNIVERSITY

PAGE 3 UNIVERSITY

Candidates debate admin relations

Department Chief Ronnell Higgins’ latest email went out a little past midnight Tuesday, alerting campus to a robbery that took place at the York Street-Chapel Street intersection. Neither of the victims, both undergraduates, reported injuries, but still: That Google Maps location was far too recognizable.

He got to say “Hi.” EGOT-

winner Bobby Lopez ’97, who wrote the scores for “Avenue Q,” “The Book of Mormon” and “Frozen,” visited Yale yesterday, joining the Spizzwinks(?) for dinner at Yorkside. Not that it bothered him anyway, but good thing the cold weather’s gone now.

He noticed. Emails from

University President Peter Salovey are (sort of) more light-hearted than the ones Yalies get from Higgins, and Monday’s was particularly upbeat due to the arrival of springtime. Encouraging students to step outside to soak it all in, Salovey wrote vividly on the idea of renewal.

Expanded online presence.

A Monday post on YaleNews announced new Google Custom Search systems in the University’s website. Welcome to the 21st century, Yale.

New Haven’s first spin studio, Shift Cycle, opens on Crown Street.

PAGE 7 CITY

Behind Bergdahl, a Yale professor

Close to home. Yale Police

It’s actually happening. If the construction alongside Prospect Avenue isn’t enough proof that the new residential colleges are moving along, mockups of potential college crests have made rounds both on campus and online.

NewYaleColleges.com went live recently, featuring profiles of namesake candidates — including regulars like Bouchet, Hopper and Cloud — and renderings of the shields that might one day line their halls.

SHIFT AND SPIN

YALE LAW SCHOOL LECTURER REPRESENTING BERGDAHL

BY SKYLER INMAN STAFF REPORTER

putting an undergraduate on the Yale Corporation his central promise, Joe English ’17 stressed broader, more grassroots outreach efforts.

Ben Martin ’17, meanwhile, touted plans to weave together distinct student groups, such as athletic teams and the cultural houses.

A particular flashpoint was a disagreement over how the YCC

On Nov. 23, 1970, just off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, a Lithuanian sailor named Simonas Kudirka jumped ship.

Leaping from the Soviet fishing vessel where he worked, Kudirka landed on the deck of the Vigilance, the U.S. Coast Guard cutter that was floating nearby. Although Kudirka sought asylum from the USSR, authorities aboard the Vigilance allowed Soviet sailors to take him back, resulting in his assault and imprisonment in a Lithuanian mental institution.

The situation that unfolded, in which Kudirka was revealed to be an American citizen, made national headlines and blossomed into a military controversy so large it became known as U.S. Coast Guard’s “Day of Shame.”

The military trial that followed would become the first major case for young lawyer Eugene R. Fidell — then a 25-year-old assistant legal officer serving in the U.S. Coast Guard.

Over four decades later, Fidell — who now lectures on military justice and American tribal law at the Yale Law School — finds himself at the center of another controversial case. Fidell is acting as the civilian rep-

SEE YCC DEBATE PAGE 4

SEE BERGDAHL PAGE 4

KAREN YANG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

YCC presidential candidates Joe English, Ben Martin and Andy Hill participated in a heated debate Monday.

BY JOEY YE STAFF REPORTER With Yale College Council elections beginning this Thursday, candidates for next year’s executive board sparred Monday over the council’s role in negotiating the boundary between the student body and the administration.

Candidates for the four positions — all of which are contested, save

the vice presidential race — spoke before an audience of more than 50 students in Linsly-Chittenden Hall, sharing their plans to better serve students by ensuring more robust access to high-level decision makers in the University. The centerpiece of the debate, the showdown among the three presidential candidates, revealed similar priorities yet distinct plans for achieving these goals.

While Andy Hill ’17 has made

University to pilot Classes*v2 alternative

BY EMMA PLATOFF AND VICTOR WANG STAFF REPORTERS Starting with a potential replacement of Classes*v2, the University is looking to bring outside technologies back to campus.

Beginning this fall, 40 to 50 courses across the University will pilot Canvas, a learning

management system that may replace Classes*v2. While Canvas has already supported several distance-education programs — including those in Yale College Summer Session, the Doctor of Nursing Practice program, other initiatives in the School of Forestry and the School of Management and some classroom courses — the

fall pilot will provide more comprehensive feedback for its suitability to on-campus courses. If the pilot is successful, the University would likely convert to the new platform gradually, over the span of roughly two years.

“The level of satisfaction [with Classes*v2] is modest — it’s okay,” Deputy Provost for Teaching & Learning Scott Stro-

bel said. “But people find it to be awkward and kind of clunky.

Some of the things [that some Yale professors] want to do with a learning management system they can’t do, so they tend to go outside [Classes*v2].”

The newly formed Learning Management System steering committee, composed of nearly two dozen faculty, staff and stu-

dents from across campus and chaired by Strobel, will oversee the pilot study and issue a recommendation regarding Canvas in spring 2016. If, after consulting with pilot participants and support providers, the committee does not recommend a switch to Canvas, the University SEE CLASSES*V2 PAGE 6

Yale Tech? Harvard State?

Following up on United States President Barack Obama’s proposal to create a free community college system nationwide, The Washington Post published “Are Harvard, Yale, and Stanford really public universities?” yesterday. The piece’s writer called for a tax on universities with large endowments to perhaps help fund Obama’s plan.

Kid cannabis. According

to a story by CBSNewYork, Connecticut lawmakers are considering legislation that would eliminate the age restriction on access to medical marijuana.

Found a way. After initially

being cut from the roster, Ryan Lavarnway ’09 suited up for the first Opening Day of his career, as the Eli’s Baltimore Orioles topped the Tampa Bay Rays by a score of 6-2.

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1965 Three professors accept visiting faculty positions in the Romance Languages Department.

Follow along for the News’ latest.

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ONLINE y MORE goydn.com/xcampus

A decade later, fmr. YIO intern manages billions

BY LARRY MILSTEIN STAFF REPORTER Endowment managers at other universities have long wondered how Chief Investment Officer David Swensen has consistently generated returns above Yale’s peers. Now, they may have a little bit more insight.

In a New York Times profile published last Thursday, former Yale Investments Office analyst Zhang Lei GRD ’02 SOM ’02 chronicled his journey from interning under Swensen to managing one of the world’s most successful firms, Hillhouse Capital Group. The firm, which Zhang founded in 2005, now controls over $18 billion.

It is no coincidence that Zhang named his firm in honor of the street that runs through Yale’s campus. Just three years after Zhang graduated, the University became one of his earliest backers, “seeding” $20 million in capital when Zhang first solicited investments — a decision that underscores Yale’s willingness to seek out unconventional sources of opportunity.

“I actually had no investment experience at all prior to

Judge: Wang cannot stand trial

BY SARA SEYMOUR STAFF REPORTER

the internship,” Zhang said.

“By working there, that really helped me get to the fundamental core of what really is an investment, and that made me always ask what is really the essence of investing versus what is the noise.”

Zhang added that even after Yale agreed to invest with Hillhouse Capital, he was initially hesitant to charge the University on the terms of the contract since “we just started and I felt we hadn’t proven ourselves,” he said. It was only after YIO Senior Director Dean Takahashi ’80 SOM ’83 personally called and insisted that he begin charging the University that the true business partnership between Hillhouse Capital and Yale began.

Zhang described his investment philosophy as a combination of “Swensenism” — a term inspired by Swensen’s philosophy of “unconventional wisdom”— and traditional Chinese Buddhism. He added that during his time at YIO, he learned the importance of identifying genuine talent and focusing on the fundamental questions.

Judge Thomas O’Keefe Jr. ruled yesterday that alleged murderer Lishan Wang is not competent to stand trial.

Wang, who has been accused of murdering former Yale-New Haven Hospital postgraduate fellow Vajinder Toor in 2010, has been representing himself in court until today. In 2010, Wang was ruled competent to stand trial, but due to the prolonged nature of the case and concerns about Wang’s ability to continue to represent himself, O’Keefe ordered a competency exam in early February. The competency exam was conducted later that month by the New Haven Office of Court Evaluations, which is part of the Connecticut Mental Health Center. The psychiatrists who conducted the exam found that he was not competent to stand trial.

“Can someone who has a lot of symptoms of a psychotic disorder ... represent themselves in a murder trial?

Probably not,” O’Keefe said in court.

However, the psychia-

SEE INVESTOR PAGE 6

SEE WANG PAGE 6

SARA SEYMOUR/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Lishan Wang has been accused of murdering a postgraduate fellow at the Yale-New Haven Hospital.

PAGE 2

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION

.COMMENT yaledailynews.com/opinion

Money and happiness M

oney can’t buy happiness, so goes the popular saying. This is probably true for most of the readers of this column: A few thousand more dollars in the bank don’t matter nearly as much as a late-night conversation with a friend, a hug from a family member or a supportive community. But, for many people in the world, money does indeed buy happiness — the ability to spend evenings with one’s children instead of having to work two jobs, or to sleep securely under a mosquito net without fear of malaria.

A good deal of progressive political activism in the United States today is driven by the conviction that most social problems could be alleviated by taking money from some people and giving it to others. This is the premise behind federal antipoverty programs, such as food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which transfer money from the rich to the poor. (It is also, unfortunately, the premise behind several other federal initiatives, such as Medicare and the mortgage interest tax deduction, that simply transfer money to the upper middle class).

Recent progressive activism at Yale seems to be driven by a similar conviction: that our University’s problems could be solved if different people had money. Nearly every one of campus activists’ prominent grievances is a demand that the University distribute its money differently: whether to low-income students, marginalized communities or mental health — as well as away from the fossil fuel industry.

Sometimes money can buy happiness, and sometimes it can’t. There are some problems in America and at Yale that I imagine can be solved with more money, and some that I don’t think money will help at all, but most of my thoughts are based on speculation. Most of the time, people have no idea what will make them happy, so I certainly don’t know either.

Instead, I’d like to make a broader point about social responsibility and institutions.

There is an instinct that many of us possess: When we see a problem in our society or our communities, we look for the biggest institution around and demand that it solve the problem. Usually, the easiest way we can think of for an institution to solve a problem is to throw money at it, so that’s what we demand. We see communities crumbling across the United States, and we call for new welfare programs to allow for our social fabric to mend itself. We see a campus full of anxiety and stress, and we call for more mental health professionals — who are definitely essential to improving cam-

pus mental health, but only one part of the solution.

When our go-to strategy for solving probSCOTT lems is to GREENBERG appeal to large instiThe Segue tutions for money, we do our communities and ourselves a great disservice. We compress our vast social responsibilities into the small box of “political activism” and lose many opportunities to help those around us.

Not all problems are best solved by large institutions or with money. Many problems can only be solved with personal attention, emotional energy and relationship building — when individuals take on the challenge of changing people’s minds or helping them to feel loved. It’s easy to demand that other people spend their money differently. It’s much harder to live your life and build your community according to your highest ideals.

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SCOTT GREENBERG is a senior in Ezra Stiles College. His column runs on Tuesdays. Contact him at scott.greenberg@yale.edu .

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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

FEMALE YALE COLLEGE COUNCIL PRESIDENT'

Take a walk N

early every 15-minute block of time of my Yale career has been mapped out on Google Calendar. Every day, I bounce from meeting to meeting, meal to meal, class to class and library to library. And for the most part, I’m pretty unapologetic about it. Such meticulous planning allows me to make the most of my Yale experience and to milk my four years here for all they're worth.

But a few weeks ago, I tried something different: I threw my GCal out the virtual window, and I took a walk.

Where was I going? I had no idea. How long would I be gone?

Not a clue. I just wanted to do something that served no practical purpose and met no deadline.

So I grabbed my tennis shoes, queued up my favorite Spotify playlist and hit the streets of New Haven.

And for the first 15 or 20 minutes, nothing happened. I had no particular destination in mind, other than a vague notion that I wanted to walk away from Yale, and my mind never dwelled on any one thing more than another.

At Yale, activists often claim that students have little power over how the University operates. This is untrue. Students have almost no power over the University budget, for sure, but we have almost complete control over our campus culture.

Every four years, the undergraduate population turns over fully, and the student body gets to decide what sort of expectations to convey to the freshmen, which set of social norms to promote, which extracurricular activities will thrive and what memories alumni will carry with them.

Money sometimes buys happiness, and all of us should be willing to lead less comfortable lives in order to share our prosperity with others. But, ultimately, social responsibility is about much more than giving our own money or taking it away from other people. It’s about making an effort to change the world through our actions and relationships, rather than waiting on a larger institution to do so.

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'THEBURREN' ON 'WE NEED A

Eventually, however, I slowly realized at least one of the reasons why I was out there, why I had this inexplicable itch TYLER get away BLACKMON to from campus: Over the last Back to few months, I had been botBlackmon tling up a lot of issues inside that were gnawing away at me and keeping me from functioning at full capacity.

So, as I moved beyond the edge of campus, I forced myself to keep walking until I figured out exactly what was bothering me and what I needed to do to resolve it. I mostly walked in a straight line, turning only occasionally and haphazardly, giving no real thought to where I was going or how long I would be out. And as I turned down streets I had never seen before and as the time slowly ticked by, I finally came to a resolution about the personal issues

that had been bothering me over the last few months.

By then, nearly 45 minutes later, I had ventured far from my residential college and had no plan about what I would do next.

But instead of turning around, I just kept walking.

During the next phase of the walk, my thoughts varied widely.

On the deeper side, I reflected on my time at Yale and where I was going: What kind of person did I want to be? What kind of career made the most sense for me?

Who were the people who meant the most to me?

But other thoughts were more trivial. I thought about how I used to hate New Haven but how I’ve now fallen in love with this city. I also realized little things like how incredibly close the new residential colleges will be to the residents of Dixwell and wondered to myself whether that would have positive or negative implications for town-gown relations.

And then, after nearly two hours, it just seemed time to come home. So I did.

I can’t say for sure that such a whimsical Tour de New Haven

would be fruitful for everyone.

But it’s worth thinking about how much of your time is structured while you’re here at Yale. Perhaps it’s worth sacrificing time spent on an essay or problem-set for your own mental health. Perhaps not.

I’ll admit to going right back to a well-structured schedule immediately upon returning to campus, and I’ll also admit the 8 p.m. walk was a shameless repudiation of every email Ronnell Higgins has ever sent. But that two-hour catharsis of complete and utter alone time was surprisingly refreshing. I simply needed to reset.

So if you have something on your mind that you just can’t shake, or if you want to see more of this great city, or if you just have a free block of time that GCal hasn’t yet taken hostage, consider taking a walk. You might be glad you did.

TYLER BLACKMON is a junior in Jonathan Edwards College. His column runs on alternate Tuesdays.

Contact him at tyler.blackmon@yale.edu .

SOMETIMES MONEY CAN BUY HAPPINESS, AND SOMETIMES IT CAN'T

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“Could've really used this about a week ago.”

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COPYRIGHT 2015 — VOL. CXXXVII, NO. 115

THAO DO/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

GUEST COLUMNIST GRAHAM AMBROSE

I

Questions beyond STEM

n a Washington Post column titled “Why America’s obsession with STEM education is dangerous” late last month, Fareed Zakaria ’86 renewed the debate on the recent shift towards science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Zakaria’s not a critic of STEM in the abstract, candidly recognizing its central role in addressing many of the vexing questions of the modern age, from medical research on longevity to statistical insights on inequality. What he does criticize — justifiably — is the focus on STEM at the expense of other subjects.

The nascent trend, from college campuses to primary school classrooms, has been framed as a prizefight that pits the quantitative against the qualitative, science against the study of the human experience. And in the age of unprecedented technological innovation, enduring economic stagnation for the middle class and the commodification of increasingly expensive higher education, lucrative STEM degrees appear to have all but won the fight.

Even the liberal arts-championing Ivy League institutions have endured 20 percent declines in humanities departments over the past decade.

It’s math that even English majors understand well: The great American novel no longer has the same draw as the novel

American start-up.

Skills conferred to students of the humanities — writing, listening, conversing, disagreeing, appreciating the past, speculating for the future — are empirically less profitable than those of STEM students. But they’re certainly no less significant.

In general, practical objectives define the American obsession with STEM. Most fundamentally, science answers questions, using the tried-and-true process of investigation and discovery. Students perennially complain that the humanities seem to offer comparatively fewer resolutions, endlessly circling back to the same existential queries left to us by Locke, Plato and Rawls. But the gift of the humanities is not in the answers they provide, but in the questions they provoke. You cannot begin the process of scientific inquiry without lessons from the humanities.

All scientific aspirations begin with the recognition of a need for an answer to a question. But first we must decide which questions are worth asking — by asking certain questions, other questions necessarily must go unanswered. The very act of asking a question is an inherently moral one, based on the social utility humans believe an answer might realize.

It follows that the questions we care about reflect our priori-

ties and values. Look at a modern example: global warming.

Most people hold an uncontroversial belief that present generations have both a practical and ethical obligation to protect the planet. For the past 30 years, the overwhelming body of data has demonstrated the inconvenient truth that, due to man-made activity, the planet is heating at a perniciously fast rate. Science has delivered a preponderance of the evidence, but so what? Data itself doesn’t convince a zealous minority of the crisis or silence the entrenched opposition.

It takes pathos to persuade people that the facts uncovered by science contain something meaningful, that the questions underlying the discoveries are consequential. It takes skills that require a deep-seated understanding of cultural nuance and psychological and sociological factors.

Here lies an important distinction: Those who refuse to believe in science aren’t merely disputing the evidence; they’re objecting to the premise.

After all, scientists can spend their careers addressing any infinite number of issues. But that they choose a single question to answer reveals that we, as a people, place some value in that answer. Beyond our perceived sacrosanct mores, the underlying motivations and assumptions that buoy research become

hard pills to swallow for those whose basic worldviews remain incompatible with rationalism.

Science is the meadow of rationality. To shepherd all skeptics into the pasture, to convince them to buy into the premises of science, we need language, persuasion and an appeal to nonrational factors — in short, an essential understanding of the human state.

Enter the humanities. Its lessons represent the bridge between two ostensibly disparate worlds, the rational sciences and the waveringly irrational human mind. Without a deep appreciation for the values and priorities of a society, science is a compass without labels. Though the scientific method is the best tool we’ve yet agreed upon for unearthing truth, it wouldn’t function without astute questions directing its labors and a populace willing to accept and act on its findings.

Science works with our sense of humanity, not against it.

And, whether we admit it or not, the questions asked reflect our priorities and values as a people. These priorities and values, determined by ongoing interrogation and discourse, are the core of the humanities.

GRAHAM AMBROSE is a freshman in Jonathan Edwards College. Contact him at graham.ambrose@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 3

NEWS

“No one is above the law. Not a politician, not a priest, not a criminal, not a police officer.

We are all accountable for our actions.”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA 41ST MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES

Admissions Office switches gears

BY TYLER FOGGATT STAFF REPORTER For months, tens of thousands of college students courted Yale, in interviews and application essays. Now, for the lucky 1,962 admitted, it is time for Yale to court them.

The Office of Undergraduate Admissions has now shifted its focus to recruiting the income coming class, a process that Director of Outreach and Recruitment Mark Dunn ’07 said began immediately after students were notified of their admission. Admitted students were invited to join the admitted student website, and hundreds of students have already joined the class of 2019 Facebook group to begin connecting with one another, Dunn said.

“We’re really racing the clock in April,” Dunn said. “And for [admitted] students, it’s their senior year, they still have AP classes and prom and sports teams and theater performances and all of that going on in April, and now they have to make this really big decision about the next four years of their life.”

On Saturday, the Admissions Office hosted a virtual student forum — a way for admits to get their questions about Yale answered live by current students and admissions officers — which started last year. Dunn said the office will host three or four of these forums throughout the month of April, allowing students to tune into a Google hangout with several current students and an admissions officer. Students can post questions that are answered live, Dunn said, and videos of each forum are archived online so students can watch them on YouTube later.

Dunn said the Admissions Office relies heavily on current Yale students and their enthusiasm for the University, as well as their willingness to share their own personal stories with new admits.

“There’s no way that I can tell 1,962 admitted students

everything they want to know about Yale,” Dunn said. “But if we can make the right connections between them and the 5,400 undergraduates who are here right now, those kinds of connections and information exchanges will happen organically.”

Prefrosh advisors, who call admitted students to congratulate them on their acceptance, as well as Bulldog Days hosts and participating student groups, are pivotal to the office’s recruitment efforts, Dunn added.

Both Dunn and Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeremiah Quinlan said the office is also emphasizing the recently announced expansion of the Computer Science Department to admitted students.

“I think it’s a remarkably exciting time to be a Yale student and, over the next month, my colleagues and I are making sure our admitted students know about exciting new developments on campus like the game-changing expansion of the Computer Science Department announced last week — including a new 10,000 squarefoot space for undergraduate research,” Quinlan said.

Dunn noted that the Admissions Office wrote an email to admitted students featuring computer science hirings, along with the news of the donation to renovate the Hall of Graduate Studies. Yale tries to emphasize that students do not have to choose between excellence in STEM disciplines or excellence in humanities when attending the University, Dunn said.

Michelle Park, a high school student from Los Angeles, said she received an email from Yale two days ago, titled “‘Gamechanging’ News for Yale Computer Science, Engineering and the Humanities.” Park, who is interested in studying computer science, said she is glad the University is putting so much effort into expanding computer science at Yale, and found the email to be an effective marketing tech-

nique.

Dunn said students have already begun registering for Bulldog Days, and that this year’s event will be slightly different from previous versions. Bulldog Days will have a record number of events this year, Dunn said, with over 120 student group events listed on the program.

Furthermore, this year’s Bulldog Days will feature an arts symposium for the first time.

Four of five admitted students interviewed said they will be attending Bulldog Days.

Santiago Vargas, a high school student from Massachusetts, said he has narrowed down his college choices to Yale and Harvard. Vargas said he appreciated the phone call he received from a current Yale student shortly after being admitted to Yale. But, Vargas said, Harvard’s recruitment efforts have been similar to Yale’s.

“I was impressed, however, by the fact that Harvard has a whole underrepresented minority outreach program,” Vargas said.

“So I was contacted by a current Latin American student. I thought it was a nice touch.”

Park said that although she originally planned on attending Stanford after receiving an early offer of admission, she has been so impressed by Yale’s recruitment efforts that she is seriously considering coming to New Haven.

“Yale’s recruitment efforts are the best compared to the other schools I’ve been accepted to,” Park said. “I actually got an automated message when I asked a question to another Ivy’s financial aid office, and that was the only effort they made to answer my question. On the other hand, Yale basically ambushed me — in a very nice way — with people to contact directly for help on anything.”

Admitted students must inform Yale of their decisions by May 1.

Contact TYLER FOGGATT at tyler.foggatt@yale.edu .

Budget looks to increase education funding

BY VICTORIO CABRERA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER New Haven Public Schools is hoping Mayor Toni Harp will not budge on her budget.

The New Haven Board of Education’s Operations and Finance Committee met yesterday afternoon to hear about several contract renewals and policy proposals as well as the proposed budget for fiscal year 2016. Three weeks away from final approval from the Board of Education, the budget is in the final stages of revision, but it is largely dependent on the success of Harp’s proposed $3.3 million increase in education funding.

“It’s the biggest increase in education funding in a decade,” said NHPS Chief Financing Officer Victor De la Paz. In the best case scenario, the budget would increase by $5,342,080 to $227,427,120, De la Paz explained. For this increase to happen, Harp’s proposed $3.3 million increase in education funding would have to pass the Board of Alders, and the district’s magnet schools would have to recruit 200 more students to secure an extra $1.6 million from the state Department of Education.

If successful, these two measures would increase the district’s per pupil spending by $120 to reach $9,942. The proposed budget also invests $3,128,000 in what De la Paz termed “priority areas,” which include adequate staffing, summer school and after-school programs.

To balance the budget, costs had to be cut to account for a projected $6.85 million increase in contractual expenses. De La Paz’s budget includes $1.75 million in savings from locking in a lower fuel price for school buses and making the district’s transportation more efficient. An additional $800,000 in savings came from general reductions in the budget.

The budget also includes a $500,000 decrease in the Food Service Subsidy — the amount the district pays for low-income students’ meals — and $1.5 million in savings from not rehiring certain posts. De La Paz stressed that this process of reducing staff would take several budget cycles and would be carried out on a case by case basis.

In addition to discussing next year’s budget proposal, the board reflected on successful savings made this year. In particular, Chief Operations Officer for NHPS William Clark described the school district’s recent efforts to cut costs for snow management. During the 2013–14 school year, with roughly 48 inches of snow, NHPS spent $825,000 on snow clearing. Despite

snowfall in excess of 60 inches this school year, the district cut snow removal costs to $642,000.

Clark attributed this success to the collaborative relationship between district workers and contractors.

“We’ve got to juggle a little — mix and match,” he said. Clark added that although the district used to subcontract snow removal, the district negotiated a deal with the workers’ unions, where district employees are now also involved in snow removal. This cooperation between the district employees and contractors, he said, made this winter a success by boosting morale and cutting costs.

Although the district saved on snow removal this year, attendees of yesterday’s meeting were critical of the district’s spending on hiring a finance resident with an MBA from a top school.

The district’s hiring of the position last year was subsidized by a two-year grant from Broad Foundation Residency in Urban Education Program, which subsidizes roughly one-third of the hiring.

One of our priorities has to be nurses.

How many nurses can we get with that money?

CARLOS TORRE President, Board of Education Still, attendees raised concerns about the roughly $80,000 that the district is paying for the remainder of the salary and benefits. Board of Education President Carlos Torre expressed concern about where this grant fits in with the district’s other priorities. He noted that as a relatively poor district, NHPS has to balance their limited budget on a number of priorities.

“Sometimes we feel like jugglers on a high wire,” he said. “One of our priorities has to be nurses. How many nurses can we get with that money?”

De La Paz agreed that the district’s portion of the salary is substantial, but he emphasized that hiring someone similarly qualified on the open market would be much more expensive than what NHPS is currently paying.

The Board of Alders will vote on the city’s final budget in May or June.

Contact VICTORIO CABRERA at victorio.cabrera@yale.edu .

Students discuss campus crime, policing with YPD

BY STAPHANY HOU STAFF REPORTER On Monday evening, officers from the Yale Police Department and students gathered at the Asian American Cultural Center to discuss broad issues of policing in a national and local context.

Led by YPD Chief Ronnell Higgins and Lieutenant Joseph Vitale, the dinner conversation was attended by a handful of students who are involved in the Asian American Cultural Center and Native American Cultural Center. The conversation began with questions regarding the use of body cameras in police departments across the nation and was followed by questions from students regarding the YPD’s dynamics and role in the University.

“We want to understand student opinion and thoughts, and we thought that it would be best to start a dialogue at the cultural centers,” Higgins said.

AACC member Mohan Yin ’16, a former production and design editor for the News, began the discussion by asking Higgins about the use of body cameras in the YPD. Higgins said the YPD was one of the first police departments in the nation to pilot the use of body cameras. The department owns 10 body cameras, and though not every officer is required to wear one, a single supervisor on each shift must wear one, Higgins added.

Students also asked questions regarding the circumstances under which the YPD sends out emails to the student body.

AACC Co-Head Coordinator Jessica Liang ’17 suggested that the rate of crime emails sent out increases over breaks and tend to report crimes in areas which graduate students frequent. Higgins explained that emails are only sent out when the crime poses a continued threat to the community. If the criminal has been apprehended, then no email is sent out, Higgins added.

When asked about the kinds of communication and feedback that the YPD receives from the student body, Higgins spoke about the interactions that all 87 of YPD’s police officers have

ANNELISA LEINBACH/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale Police Department Chief Ronnell Higgins, along with other officers, met with students at the Asian American Cultural Center. every day with students.

“Every single interaction by a YPD officer is an opportunity to have some constructive conversation with a community member, but there is no one avenue that any police department can or should take to communicate,” he said.

AACC Co-Head Coordinator

Hiral Doshi ’17 also raised concerns about the measures the YPD takes in order to avoid situations of racial discrimination.

Higgins cited high professional standards, a selective recruitment process and diversity training for his officers.

Regarding the situation in Ferguson, Higgins said he believes

that the Ferguson police department was not committed to servicing its community. It is a big problem if the culture of one police department makes it so that the men and women working in it behave in a way that contradicts the mission of the police organization as a whole, he said.

Students interviewed after

the event said they thought the conversation with the police had been productive, though they were disappointed with the low turnout. Yin said he thinks the dinner conversation provided insight into the YPD’s inner workings.

“Policing wasn’t particularly an issue that I was involved in,

but this was a good opportunity for us to communicate with the people who are in charge of this department,” he said.

The YPD, established in 1894, is the nation’s oldest university police department.

Contact STAPHANY HOU at staphany.hou@yale.edu .

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“For me, motivation is a person who has the capability to recruit the resources he needs to achieve a goal.” ARSENE WENGER FRENCH COACH

Four decades after Kudirka case, Fidell represents Bergdahl BERGDAHL FROM PAGE 1 resentation for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the 29-year-old who spent five years in Taliban captivity after reportedly walking off of his base in the Paktika province of Afghanistan.

THE ROAD AHEAD

Sitting in his office at YLS, Fidell recalled vividly the details of the long-ago Kudirka trial.

“It had tremendous human

drama attached to it,” he said.

“Kudirka was lucky to be alive.”

After a lengthy investigation, the U.S. Army charged Bergdahl last month with desertion and misbehavior in front of the enemy. Unlike Kudirka’s case, which garnered significant public sympathy, Bergdahl’s situation has evoked the opposite.

Facing what some are calling a landmark military controversy, Fidell said the intense public reaction against his client is due,

in part, to political ire towards Obama.

“It’s a proxy war,” he said.

The public backlash surrounding the charges brought against Bergdahl has been violent at times. Short of suggesting the guillotine, Fidell said, a number of angry onlookers have been calling for his client’s execution.

And while some early reports suggested that the death penalty might, in fact, be on the table if Bergdahl’s case ends up going to

trial in a court-martial, Fidell was quick to dismiss this idea. He said it is not considered a capital case.

As such, the heaviest possible punishment in the case of a conviction would be life in prison.

In the meantime, Bergdahl is free and working in an administrative capacity at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas.

While Fidell could not comment on the case’s potential trajectory, he said, for now, he is focused on preparing for the

Article 32 hearing — a kind of pre-trial hearing that some have dubbed the military equivalent of a grand jury.

“It’s really not that,” said Donald Guter, president and dean of the South Texas College of Law. “You can think of it really as a trial before a trial. The defense has much more of an opportunity to see the evidence and present the counter-evidence.”

Guter, who retired in 2002 from the U.S. Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps as a rear admiral, said that, while the officer presiding over an Article 32 hearing will often recommend that the case goes to trial in a court-martial, there are many possible outcomes of the pretrial.

He said that, from the standpoint of the prosecution that Fidell might face, there are two usual paths for the Article 32 proceedings: to lay out all of the evidence in order to convince the defense to opt for a plea agreement, or to present the minimum amount of evidence that is necessary to get it to proceed to courtmartial. A plea agreement would forgo a trial.

Either way, Guter said, the two charges Bergdahl faces pose different challenges.

“On a desertion charge, it’s generally difficult for the government to move forward because they have to show intent to remain away permanently,” Guter said. “And that intent is shown at the moment of departure. That’s the hard part for the government, but the desertion charge is the lesser of the two charges in terms of seriousness.”

Guter said that misbehavior in front of the enemy, as the more serious charge, will likely be the crux of the issue during the proceedings.

ACADEMIA AND ADVOCACY

SKYLER INMAN/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Eugene R. Fidell will represent Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who spent five years in Taliban captivity after walking off his military base.

This is not the only hot-button military issue that Fidell has tackled in recent years.

In 2003, Fidell advocated on behalf of James Yee, the Muslim Army chaplain at Guantanamo against whom the U.S. Army levied a handful of charges, including espionage and aiding the enemy.

After the Army dropped all court-martial charges against Yee, he published a book reflecting on his experiences up to and

during the trial titled “For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire”. In it, Yee wrote that hiring Fidell was “one of the best decisions [he] ever made.”

Fidell declined to speak about how he came to represent Bergdahl. Nonetheless, with the Article 32 proceedings slated to begin July 8, Fidell said that, thus far, it has not been difficult to balance his duties as lecturer with those of a practicing lawyer.

“The tempo of the case has been such that it hasn’t really created a massive collision where I’ve had to choose one or the other,” Fidell said. “This is not business as usual; I think the pace has been slow. The Army has undertaken an enormous investigation.”

Fidell said he enjoys having a foot in both the academics and the practice of law, and he feels that both experiences enrich the other.

Students in his military justice course at Yale agreed.

Ben Neuhaus LAW ’17 said Fidell’s emphasis on professional ethics and practical applications significantly enriches academic discussion in the course.

Rebecca Forrestal LAW ’16 said she appreciated Fidell’s approachability as a military justice expert and as an instructor.

She said his primary concern is encouraging more civilians to become interested in military justice issues.

“I think he actually wants you to think about what it’s like to be in the situation of the client,” Forrestal said.

Anirudh Sivaram ’15, an undergraduate who petitioned to enroll in the course, said that, while Fidell does not discuss his active cases in class, it has been interesting having him as an instructor as the Bergdahl case unfolds.

Fidell, who occasionally coteaches a course on the Supreme Court with his wife, former New York Times Supreme Court correspondent Linda Greenhouse LAW ’78, has taught at YLS since 1993.

As the Florence Rogatz Visiting Lecturer in Law, Fidell laughed about the word “visiting” in his title.

“I’m like the man who came to dinner — I won’t leave!”

Contact SKYLER INMAN at skyler.inman@yale.edu .

YCC presidential candidates debate student-admin relations YCC DEBATE FROM PAGE 1 should engage with prospective changes to mental health resources and policies. While Hill said the most prevalent problem is a lack of communication between the administration and the undergraduate community, Martin said it is necessary to make sure the administration is following through with its promise to hire more clinicians.

Martin said he would advocate for a clearer distinction between medical and disciplinary withdrawals, adding that students who have left Yale for medical reasons often feel “alienated.”

“Students won’t be able to heal if they’re being punished like this,” Martin said. “When an employer sees you withdrew, there’s no distinction from whether they withdrew for medical or disciplinary reasons.”

English, however, refuted the points about communication and hiring clinicians, as he said Yale had already hired two more clinicians, and the YCC had already made its position on the matter clear to the administration.

English currently serves as chief of staff on the council’s executive board, bringing him into close contact with the current president and vice president. English was careful to emphasize these connections, stressing the meetings with Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway and other administrators he had attended with current president Michael Herbert ’16. Martin currently represents Ezra Stiles College on the council, while Hill represents Berkeley.

Throughout the debate, Hill linked substantive policy questions back to his central focus: putting a student representative on the Corporation. Still, when asked to name three members of the Corporation, Hill said he only knew of Charles Good-

year ’80. He said his own hazy understanding of the Corporation is indicative of the body’s secrecy. Hill said he had already met with Holloway, who pledged his support for a student seat on the Corporation.

In response, English said he, along with Herbert and YCC Vice President Maia Eliscovich Sigal ’16, had already secured the support of Holloway for this initiative, but that the dean of the college has no influence in the matter.

English similarly could not list more than one specific individual with whom he would

work to execute a plank of his platform, “a comprehensive shift in sexual assault policy and the operations of the UniversityWide Committee on Sexual Misconduct.” He said he would consult with Marichal Gentry, dean of student affairs, and “administrators in Yale Mental Health and Counseling.”

Further topics ranged from financial aid to the state of the cultural centers, from athletic representation on the YCC to resources for LGBT students.

In a more lighthearted moment, presidential candidates were given 30 seconds

to answer a question from the audience: how they would bring Trader Joe’s, and more broadly “affordable food,” to Yale. Martin quipped that he would “take over and destroy” Emporium DNA. English said he would bring University Secretary and Vice President for Student Life Kimberly Goff-Crews a “Trader Joe’s gift basket” to convince her to take up the issue. Finally Hill cited yesterday’s news that a Five Guys burger joint is slated to open downtown as a sign that New Haven is moving in the right direction.

Yamile Lozano ’17, who

attended the debate, said she thought all three candidates made strong points. She noted, however, that while she agreed with most of their platforms, English struck her as the candidate with the most experience.

Other members of the audience agreed. YCC member Peter Huang ’18, who also attended the debate, said he thought English understood best how to approach the various issues discussed.

“I personally believe Joe English expressed his ideas with the clearest language,” Huang said.

“As this campaign goes on I hope

to understand more about the concrete steps that will be taken by each candidate.”

Events Director Candidate Megan Ruan ’17, who could not attend the event due to a scheduling conflict, sent in a prerecorded video of her statement.

She is competing with Amour Alexandre ’17.

Both Daniel Tovbin ’17 and John Risbergs ’17 are running for finance director, and Madeline Bauer ’17 is running unopposed for vice president.

Contact JOEY YE at shuaijiang.ye@yale.edu .

KAREN YANG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Daniel Tovbin ’17 and John Risbergs ’17, running for YCC finance director, participated in a debate for all YCC on Monday.

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

NEWS

“The reality about transportation is that it’s future-oriented. If we’re planning for what we have, we’re behind the curve.”

ANTHONY FOXX U.S. SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION

State expands SNAP program

BY MICHELLE LIU STAFF REPORTER

YALE DAILY NEWS

Connecticut farmers see opportunities to expand their customer demographic by accepting food stamps at farmers’ markets.

Federal and state agencies are working to make food stamps a widely accepted payment method at farmers’ markets statewide.

This recent initiative, championed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, aims to help Connecticut farmers expand their customer base. Although some farmers and farmers’ markets have accepted Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits since 2005, two meetings were held late last month to expand the number of vendor participants in the program. Between the two events, 21 additional farmers’ markets signed up for the initiative more than doubling the number of markets in the state accepting SNAP benefits in the state.

“Accepting SNAP at farmers markets is a win-win-win situation,” said Kurt Messner, acting regional administrator of the Northeast Regional office for the USDA Food and Nutrition Service.

“It gives farmers direct access to new customers; gives SNAP recipients access to healthy food; and encourages consumption of locally grown produce.”

The initiative also provides grants for free Electronic Bank Transfer equipment — mechanisms that allow for money to be transferred from one account to another through computer-based systems.

David Dearborn, a spokesman for the state Department of Social Services, said the department — which administers the federallyfunded SNAP in Connecticut — currently enrolls over 400,000 individuals in 228,000 households in SNAP. Prior to the sign-up meetings, only 15 of the 156 Connecticut farmers’ markets and direct marketing farmers listed in the USDA’s National Farmers Market Directory were authorized to accept SNAP. These 15 included four in New Haven, including the Wooster Square Farmers’ Market and the

Downtown Farmers’ Market, which double the value of SNAP dollars used.

Federal and state officials also said the Electronic Bank Transfer system would ease the payment process for customers. According to Marketlink, the vendor that partners with the agencies to supply the EBT equipment, the system will expand these markets’ customer bases because customers will no longer need to worry about running out of cash. The Marketlink website said some individual farmers’ sales have more than doubled when using the EBT system to accept SNAP. Adam Rabinowitz, a professor in agricultural and resource economics at the University of Connecticut, said access to the markets is still a concern. He said that, for the program to succeed, there needs to be an increased awareness of the initiative so that SNAP customers know they have another option other than normal supermarkets. Likewise, Rabinowitz said that markets in more urban areas currently see greater use of SNAP, while those in locations with fewer public transportation options tend to see less.

“As long as marketing is done correctly, the program has an advantage everywhere,” Rabinowitz said.

Messner noted that the next step of the initiative is to focus on marketing, especially by spreading awareness through both the state and other community partners.

Connecticut farmers and farmers’ markets can also participate in several other programs such as the Farmers Market Nutrition Program and the Senior FMNP, which offer low-income women, children and seniors vouchers that can be redeemed at these vendors.

In 2005, the Elm City’s Wooster Square Farmers’ Market became the first market in the state to accept SNAP. Contact MICHELLE LIU at michelle.liu@yale.edu .

Panel to take on transportation funding quandary

BY DANIELA BRIGHENTI STAFF REPORTER Facing the challenge of funding a series of ambitious, decades-long transportation projects, Gov. Dannel Malloy announced the formation of a Transportation Finance Panel last week.

Malloy first introduced his 30-year transportation plans in his budget address in February. At the time, he did not outline how he would fund his proposal — which includes widening highways, expanding rail service and upgrading bridges across the state.

Since then, state officials and residents have expressed frustration with Malloy’s administration for not proposing any funding ideas. The new panel, charged with developing potential funding plans by the end of this summer, is intended to combat that.

“The governor was pretty clear in explaining that he wants us to develop a menu of options for providing financing for thirty years of transportation improvements,” said former New Haven state Rep. Cameron Staples, who chairs the panel. “He’s not looking for us to specifically say which financing options would occur in which years.”

Thus far, the only transportation funding option proposed by legislators is instituting tolls on state highways. Staples said Malloy has not ruled out tolls or any other specific

funding methods and that the panel will consider all options before making any recommendations.

The nine members selected for the panel are professionals in different fields, so as to make the panel more inclusive and fair, said Garrett Eucallitto, undersecretary for Transportation Policy and Planning at the Office of Policy and Management. The group’s members, he noted, include individuals with backgrounds in clean energy, housing and economic development.

Eucallitto’s role on the panel is to serve as the liaison between the panel and the administration, ensuring panel members have access to all the research and information they might need.

“I will assist the chair with whatever he needs to run the panel efficiently and effectively,” Eucallitto said. “Connecticut cannot wait any longer to solve this problem, and we have a governor and a General Assembly who have made fixing our infrastructure a priority.”

The panel will also hold conversations with commissioners of the Department of Transportation, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Department of Revenue Services and the secretary of the Office of Policy and Management.

Andres Ayala, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles, said

he will provide the panel with accurate information about the revenues the Connecticut DMV collects. Other departments will have similar roles. Although they will not participate directly, Ayala said, representatives of other departments will ensure the panel receives the necessary information to make its recommendations.

“The Connecticut DMV is glad to be included in this conversation,” Ayala said.

“Formulating a panel like this is an excellent strategy to cover all positions and issues.”

The panel expects to have its first meeting this month, Malloy spokesman Devon Puglia said. After this first meeting, Staples anticipates holding monthly meetings until the end of the deadline set by the governor for the panel’s report.

Staples also said the panel intends to hold at least one public meeting to seek input for financing options, but the panel has not yet set the date for that meeting.

“It will not just be us meeting amongst ourselves,” Staples said. “At this meeting, the public will be invited to testify and give their ideas.”

Staples previously served as house chairman of the General Assembly’s Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee.

Contact DANIELA BRIGHENTI at daniela.brighenti@yale.edu .

mary karr yale institute of sacred music presents

poet and memoirist author of Sinners Welcome and The Liar’s Club

Facing Altars: Poetry and/as Prayer yale literature and spirituality series

Thursday, April 9 · 5:30 pm Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Rm 101 63 High St., New Haven

Free; no tickets required. Book-signing follows.

Presented in collaboration with Yale Divinity Student Book Supply. ism.yale.edu

OPINION. YALE DAILY NEWS

Gov. Dannel Malloy has called on fellow legislators to explore available financing options for Connecticut’s transportation.

Send submissions to opinion@yaledailynews.com

YOUR THOUGHTS. YOUR VOICE. YOUR PAGE.

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“The Domain Name Server is the Achilles’ heel of the Web. The important thing is that it’s managed responsibly.”

TIM BERNERS-LEE INVENTOR OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB

New platform “Canvas” may replace Classes*v2 CLASSES*V2 FROM PAGE 1 will continue to explore alternatives to Classes*v2 while keeping the current system in place.

The impetus for the pilot comes from several different directions, including developments at Yale and in the broader landscape of educational technologies. For one, the Sakai software that underlies Classes*v2, which Strobel said was first implemented over a decade ago, is beginning to show its age.

Jennifer Frederick, executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, said Classes*v2 is an open source management system that relies on its users to develop new, customized functions. However, since there is a growing number of institutions withdrawing or considering withdrawing from the system, including Harvard and Stanford, she said the community will become less supported and less vibrant.

Simplifying to one system would make it easier for professors to reuse material in different contexts, Strobel said, noting that some professors use different learning programs to teach similar courses across various University programs like Yale Summer Session. Canvas may also carry benefits such as more frequent software updates, off-hours technical assistance and enhanced stability.

Executive Director of the Office

of Dissemination and Online Education Lucas Swineford, who is also a member of the committee, said feedback from both students and faculty has been positive where Canvas is currently in place.

So far, Canvas appears to be easier for both students and faculty to use.

ALAN USAS Director of Information Technology, SOM This is the second year in which Canvas has supported small network online courses, the SOM’s first online programs. Now, the SOM will join the broader campus pilot to evaluate Canvas’s suitability for other SOM programs, including degree-granting ones, according to Alan Usas, the SOM’s director of information technology and Chief Information Officer and a member of the LMS steering committee.

“So far, Canvas appears to be easier for both students and faculty to use and provides a more contemporary user experience,” Usas said. “At many of SOM’s peer [business schools], Canvas has already proven itself, and I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t be successful here.”

Of four professors interviewed, two said Classes*v2 offers ade-

quate service, but all four identified imperfections in the system. English professor Wai Chee Dimmock said she uses an outside platform to complement Classes*v2, as the other system allows for more “interactivity and collaboration” among students.

Still, she said she is largely satisfied with the “basic functionality” of Classes*v2.

But music professor Craig Wright, a member of the LMS steering committee and chair of the University committee on online education, described Classes*v2 as “clunky and outdated,” adding that he hopes to teach a course as part of the pilot this fall.

All eight students interviewed said they were relatively satisfied with current performance of Classes*v2. Isaiah Cruz ’17 said that while Classes*v2 “gets the job done,” he would like to try a new system. Mojmir Stehlik ’18, who does not think upgrading the system should be a priority, said Classes*v2 has room for improvement, but that costs should be carefully considered.

According to its website, Canvas is used by more than 1,200 colleges, universities and school districts.

Contact EMMA PLATOFF at emma.platoff@yale.edu and VICTOR WANG at v.wang@yale.edu .

Zhang shows Swensen’s strategy INVESTOR FROM PAGE 1 “You can see that by the time [the YIO] got to the point of making [that] investment, they already likely knew him very well because he worked there and so on,” said William Jarvis ’77, managing director of the Commonfund Institute. “So the due diligence — if not already done — the hard lifting about the character of the person, how they look at things and so on was in some ways already taken care of.”

The YIO declined to comment.

Swensen, Zhang’s former supervisor, emphasized in his 2000 book, “Pioneering Portfolio Management,” the importance of avoiding “comfortable investments” that place name recognition above the character of an individual money manager.

“Because entrepreneurial firms tend to be newer and smaller, track records may be harder to define and interpret.” Swensen wrote.

“While backing an entrepreneurial group takes more courage than serving up a ‘name brand’ recommendation, investment success may require backing managers without standard institutional credentials.”

After leaving Yale, Zhang worked for a hedge fund based in Washington that focused on emerging market investments.

But with only limited working experience outside of the YIO, it is clear that Zhang was not a traditional pick for a $20 million investment — even from an endowment with $15 billion at the time. However, with Hillhouse Capital consistently producing double-digit annual returns, Yale’s risk has paid off.

But more than the success of one fund manager, this decision also highlights the way in which

alumni of universities and their endowment offices can uniquely benefit from maintaining mutual ties, even when thowse alumni are not the direct recipients of investments.

MIT Finance professor Andrew Lo ’80 said that leveraging the skills and investment knowledge present in the alumni community is not a new phenomenon.

Alumni are quite loyal … so they have … motivation for participating in supporting the endowment activity.

ANDREW LO ’80 Professor of Finance, MIT “I think it is an advantage because alumni are quite loyal to the university so they have additional motivation for participating in supporting the endowment activity,” Lo said. “We have seen this not only at Yale, but at other universities as well, where if you look at the investment committee of endowments, they are populated with alumni who are talented in the investment industry and are willing to give their services and expertise.”

He added that Swensen uniquely cultivates this type of relationship among Yale alumni and particularly members of the YIO, as he has an ability for identifying skill and mentoring those individuals for success both within and outside the office.

Jarvis said developing this type of “network effect” is one of the key features that distinguishes Yale in identifying interesting opportunities and is often one of

the hardest things for other institutions to replicate.

“It really is dependent on who your network is and if you have got a network of really creative, well plugged in people, they will be able to bring you [investment] ideas,” Jarvis said.

Still, there is a fine line between tapping the skills and access of those affiliated with universities and creating business relationships that can questioned for nonfinancial motives.

Most notably, Dartmouth College faced controversy in 2013 for the number of investments placed with trustees of the university. At the time, 13.5 percent of its assets were in funds managed by trustee-affiliated firms.

As a result, a group of anonymous individuals wrote a letter calling upon officials to investigate whether these types of investments could be characterized as conflicts of interest.

Though Yale does not disclose the percentage of its endowment invested with alumni of the school, Lo said that these types of business relations are not a major concern at Yale and among peer institutions.

“I think these relationships have to be managed carefully, but given the professionalism in the endowment world, I don’t see this as a big issue,” Lo said. “There are many examples of Harvard Management Company giving birth to a number of alumni that have continuing productive and positive relationships with HMC, so that is an example where this kind of potential conflict can be managed, and more importantly, allows the endowment to leverage this experience and knowledge base.”

Contact LARRY MILSTEIN at larry.milstein@yale.edu .

ELENA MALLOY/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

This fall, many courses at Yale will pilot Canvas, a potential replacement of Classes*v2.

Alleged murderer deemed incompetent to stand trial WANG FROM PAGE 1 trists added that through the course of restoration, there is a high probability that he could be restored to competency.

The report submitted by the psychiatric team found that Wang suffers from paranoia, reactive emotional states, patterns of disorganized thinking and perseveration — the inability to transition from one idea to the next in a socially appropriate way.

The psychiatrists also found that Wang is subject to making statements that suggest grandiose thinking, which is typically seen in patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

O’Keefe stressed in court that, though Wang is clearly highly intelligent and very respectful, between the findings of the psychiatric team and Wang’s behavior in court, it is clear that he suffers paranoid thinking.

“I have to balance his rights to represent himself with his right to a fair trial,” O’Keefe said.

According to Sec. 54-56-d of the Connecticut code, for a defendant to be considered competent to stand trial, he or she must be able to understand the proceedings of the case against him or her and must be able to assist in his or her own defense.

As a part of standard exam procedures, to gauge Wang’s competency, the psychiatrists said they tried to get a sense of the defendant’s mood, abstract reasoning skills, attention and concentration skills, and a history of his mental health.

“We are concerned that he doesn’t have an overarching understanding of the proceedings,” Alexander Westphal, one of the psychiatrists who conducted the report, said in court. “His thinking about it is distorted.”

The competency exam also included testing of Wang’s factual and rational understanding of the case. Madelon Baranoski, another one of the psychiatrists involved in drafting the report, said in court that one’s rational understanding is their ability to apply their factual understanding to their

own case. This, according to Baranoski, was where Wang faced significant difficulty. Baranoski said that often people who suffer paranoia show a discrepancy between their factual understanding and their rational understanding.

In the wake of O’Keefe’s ruling, Wang will be transferred to Connecticut Valley Hospital. He will be treated by a group of doctors, separate from those who tested his competency, who will work towards mentally preparing Wang for trial. A third group of doctors from the hospital’s Whiting Forensic Division will then conduct yet another competency exam to deem whether he is ready to stand trial.

Towards the end of the trial, Thomas Ullman — supervisor of the public defender’s office for the Judicial District of New Haven — was appointed by the judge as Wang’s attorney. Ullman had been serving as Wang’s standby attorney after his previous standby counsel, Jeffrey LaPierre, recently left the public defender’s office.

After Ullman was appointed as counsel, Wang expressed confusion as to why his pro se right had been revoked, given that the report was only intended to cover his ability to stand trial. O’Keefe responded that a person who is deemed incompetent to stand trial is also incompetent to represent himself and speak on their own behalf.

O’Keefe said he believes that the issue of whether or not Wang is competent to represent himself will continue to be an issue, even if it is ultimately decided that he is competent to stand trial. O’Keefe also said in court that usually competency exams are fairly straight forward, but that there was nothing straight forward about this case.

“He’s very intelligent, he can follow instructions.

In many, many ways he’s different from most people who go through a competency exam,” O’Keefe said.

The Connecticut General Assembly last amended the laws regarding competency to stand trial in 2011.

Contact SARA SEYMOUR at sara.seymour@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

NEWS

“Home is where one starts from.”

Spin studio opens on Crown

12 colleges, 12 ways to sign up for housing

BY FINNEGAN SCHICK STAFF REPORTER For undergraduates at Yale, the housing process is far from uniform across the 12 residential colleges.

Since spring 2014, nine colleges have implemented an online system called StarRez to allocate housing assignments, but each college dean uses the site differently. Students in the three remaining colleges — Calhoun, Trumbull and Davenport — are left using a mix of off-line or other online methods to sign up for on-campus housing. Despite the discrepancies between residential college procedures, students were largely satisfied with the housing process. Of 20 students interviewed, 18 said they found their college’s online or offline system to be helpful. But students said frustrations and minor inconveniences linger, ranging from poor timing to a lack of information about different suites.

I think [the process] was probably the easiest it could have been.

JOSH HOCHMAN ’18 Kugan Ishwar ’17 said he would prefer for the entire process to be online because it would streamline the housing lottery. He added that Branford, his residential college, was not helpful to him throughout the housing process.

Pierson student Bárbara Santiago ’17 said her college only used the new online system to

allow students to form groups and to see a map of the available rooms.

“It would be much better if the online system could draw random numbers,” she said.

StarRez, which allows students to register, form suite groups and select their rooms online, is in its second year at Yale. But by opting to use the system in different ways, the residential colleges prevent Yale’s housing process from becoming uniform for all students.

The StarRez site for Berkeley College temporarily went offline this spring, prompting an April 1 email from Dean Mia Genoni, who extended several housing deadlines for juniors. Despite this glitch, Berkeley students were largely pleased with the housing process this year.

“I think [the process] was probably the easiest it could have been,” Josh Hochman ’18 said.

However, many students interviewed said they had been largely disengaged from the entire process, adding that their roommates had been responsible for the whole process. Both Alex Croxford ’18 and Ashton Megli ’18 said their roommates had to sign up for their rooms online because they were too busy during the week.

Some students said they do not think the housing process could be improved and that many of the issues that arise while choosing rooms are unavoidable.

“Everybody has their preferences, and they’re always going to clash,” Alex Reinking ’16 said.

Last year, approximately 87 percent of Yale’s 5,409 undergraduates lived on campus.

ELENA MALLOY/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Shift Cycling, New Haven’s only spin studio, recently opened on Crown Street and offers fitness classes for a range of ages and abilities.

BY CAROLINE HART STAFF REPORTER New Haven’s only spin studio, Shift Cycling, opened Monday on Crown Street.

The studio is located on 199 Crown St., just around the corner from Elevate Nightclub. The studio offers classes with different training focuses, such as strength or endurance, and various lengths, ranging from 30 to 90 minutes.

The studio also offers classes for disabled people, elementary school age children and families.

“I wanted a place where people could forget about the outside world — their business, school, relationships — and get in a dark room and go into their own place,” said Jenn Kuehn, founder, owner and trainer at Shift Cycle.

Kuehn said her experience as a collegiate swimmer and her career as a personal trainer eventually led her to conceptualize Shift Cycling. In March 2014, she opened the first Shift studio in Guilford,

Contact FINNEGAN SCHICK at christopher.schick@yale.edu .

T H E G O R D O N G R A N D F E L L O W S H I P A T YA L E

Danny Meyer

T. S. ELIOT POET

04.07

CEO, Union Square Hospitality Founder, Shake Shack

The Business of Food Tuesday April 7 at 4:30 pm Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Room 101 63 High Street, New Haven, CT Free Gifts, Good Food

Info: heather.calabrese@yale.edu

which she said was an immediate success.

As a result, she decided the following June to expand her studio to New Haven, and she began looking at potential locations.

Kuehn recruited regular Guilford spinner Bridget Winterhalter MED ’16, a student in the physician associate program, to work at the New Haven studio, where she is currently employed.

Winterhalter, who hails from Philadelphia, said she was surprised upon moving to New Haven that there were not more spin and fitness studios in the city. She said Shift Cycle’s New Haven location will fill a demand around campus for a spin studio.

“This is the best thing ever away from school,” Winterhalter said. “I think it will attract a lot of Yale students.”

The studio is currently offering promotions to attract students, including a two for $20 class special and an unlimited 30-day pass for $150.

Kuehn said the studio’s name reflects its mantra — to shift one’s focus towards self-improvement by working hard within

one’s means.

“In the middle of ‘shift’ is the word ‘if,’ ” she said. “I wanted people to consider the ‘if’ — what if you followed your passion, your heart and what was important to you?”

Members of the Yale community who showed up for opening-day classes expressed excitement about the prospect of a new fitness option in Elm City.

Kate Hunter, a writing tutor for Jonathan Edwards College, attended a class yesterday at the recommendation of a friend who frequents the Guilford location. She added that she is excited to have a studio fitness option within a walkable distance from the Yale campus.

Heather Ferguson SPH ’16, who also participated in an opening-day class, said she enjoyed the workout and plans to come back.

199 Crown St. was formerly home to Chameleon Haircolor Café and Spa. Contact CAROLINE HART at caroline.hart@yale.edu .

PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

“You always get a special kick on opening day, no matter how many you go through. You look forward to it like a birthday party when you’re a kid.” JOE DIMAGGIO 13-TIME MLB ALL-STAR

Strong showings on the water

YALE DAILY NEWS

Both the Yale women’s and coed sailing teams are currently ranked No. 1 in the nation, according to Sailing World.

SAILING FROM PAGE 12 Another delegation consisting of skippers Casey Klingler ’18 and Eric Anderson ’16 and crews Isabelle Rossi de Leon ’17 and Amelia Dobronyi ’17 finished eighth out of 16 teams at the BU Trophy.

Anderson and Dobronyi sailed in the A Division and finished with 35 points, while Klingler and Rossi de Leon finished with 14 points, second among B Division squads.

“BU was a bit too windy for me and Casey … most schools had much heavier coed teams,” Rossi de Leon said. “It is nearly impossible to sail fast in those conditions with our weight combo … However, we sailed well and ended up a close second in our

division.”

In the open coaches poll to determine the Sailing World’s College Rankings, 17 out of 19 coaches voted the Yale coed team to be ranked No. 1 and 12 out of 17 coaches voted for the women’s team as the top squad as well.

Additionally, Doris and Isler were named New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association sailors of the week for their performance at the Duplin Regatta last week.

The coed team heads to the Fowle Trophy and the Mystic Lake Team Race Invitational next weekend while the women’s team is staying in Connecticut for the Emily Wick Trophy.

Contact ALEX WALKER at alex.e.walker@yale.edu .

Sending the wrong message COLUMN FROM PAGE 12 him was dismissed after an appeal. However, that appeal failed to raise any new evidence that would support Hardy’s side of the story. It merely resulted in a dismissal because his accuser, former girlfriend Nicole Holder, failed to show up to the appeal hearing.

While we can speculate on case specifics till red-faced and flustered, one thing is true: Greg Hardy was, based upon evidence and within a court of law, convicted of domestic violence. That much should be enough for any NFL team to stay as far away from him as possible.

Ultimately, team owner Jerry Jones and the Cowboys made a fundamental mistake. They placed winning on the field ahead of very basic ethical obligations.

Hardy is a tremendous blight upon an already troubled NFL. Teams should have blacklisted him. Several, like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, did just that. Jones, however, in a furious push for a title, gave the green light to sign a player who should probably never have set foot on an NFL field again.

Jones’s daughter, Charlotte Anderson, who serves as the Cowboys’ executive vice president, defended the signing.

Anderson stated that “we [the Cowboys] don’t believe in throwing people away,” according to Sports Illustrated, and that “the experts have told us that it’s better to provide a way out.” What Anderson’s statement tells us is disturbing: Given all the speculation surrounding the case, the Cowboys — or at least their executive VP — clearly believe that Greg Hardy committed the crimes he is accused of and don’t care enough to avoid him altogether.

The issue with Dallas signing Hardy isn’t limited just to the NFL, however; it reflects a frightening mentality both in the sports world and in the business world at large. The idea of putting business ahead of ethics reflects poorly on everyone involved. While business owners like Jerry Jones have a responsibility to do everything in their power to pursue excellence on the field, there comes a point where that success is no longer worth the moral price tag that comes with it. Selling your integrity for a shot at a championship isn’t just wrong; it’s insulting to your entire fan base. Assuming football fans — myself included — won’t notice or won’t care is simply an affront to our intelligence.

Those defending Hardy and the Cowboys need to see the bigger picture here: If situations like this continue to arise, the NFL will go beyond merely alienating female fans — it won’t have any left. For owners and league leadership to preach endlessly about giving back to communities, players being role models and the integrity of their organization while allowing players like Greg Hardy, Adrian Peterson and Ray Rice to continue their

Elis head to N.J., Fla. TRACK & FIELD FROM PAGE 12 vide an occasion to compete to the best of our abilities,” hurdler Mackenzie Mathews ’16 said. “We gained valuable race experience as we are gearing up for our annual Yale-Harvard dual meet next weekend.”

Mathews was one of the five Bulldogs who competed in Florida. Each of the five sprinters raced against a field of opponents that required heats in the double digits from much bigger schools. Mathews’s time of 14.90 seconds in the 100-meter hurdles was good for 61st in a field of nearly 75 runners.

Sydney Cureton ’16 raced in the 100-meter dash, placing 65th in another huge field of competitors with a time of 12.28 seconds. Emily Cable ’15, the last of Yale’s women sprinters who competed in Florida, placed 50th in a field of 65, running her 400-meter dash in 54.84 seconds.

Two members of the men’s team competed in Florida, with MarcAndre Alexandre ’17 running in the 400-meter dash and Paedyn Gomes ’18 racing in the 110-meter hurdles.

Alexandre, in a field of 70 runners, placed 40th with a time of 48.04 seconds, and Gomes, in a field of 68, placed 59th with a time of 14.89 seconds.

Bulldog distance runners stayed north, competing in Princeton in an unscored meet against Northeast competition. The women’s team had participants in the 800-meter run, the 1,500-meter run, the 5,000meter run and the 10,000-meter run.

Emily Waligurski ’17 led the way for the Bulldog runners in the 800meter. Her time of 2:12.64, which was good for a personal record, earned her fourth place. Taking fifth and sixth in the 800-meter for the Bulldogs were Frances Schmeide ’17 (2:13.29) and Meredith Rizzo ’17 (2:13.62), respectively.

Six Elis competed in the 1,500meter run, led by captain Kira Garry

COURTESY OF ESPN

Defensive end Greg Hardy played just one game in the 2014 season before being placed on the exempt list.

NFL careers is simply hypocrisy.

Situations like this Hardy’s make it harder to be an NFL fan. How am I supposed to balance having a sister, girlfriend and mother with supporting a league that simply doesn’t care about women? Like many other sports fans, I love football and I’m happy to get up and cheer for my favorite team, but nobody should have to question their own moral compass every time they switch on the TV on Sundays.

While it is impossible to expect the NFL to be a perfect bastion of morality, it is more than fair to expect the league and its teams to exhibit some form of self-discipline. Were Hardy employed by any organization other than the NFL, he would be out of a job right now. While one cannot, and should not, fault the NFL and its 32 teams for operating like businesses, it is reprehensible to put business before doing what’s right. Discussion like this isn’t preaching from an ivory tower; it’s bringing attention to an issue that has no place

Six Bulldogs came away from the weekend at the Sam Howell Invitational with personal bests. ’15, who placed second with a time of 4:27.07 that was also good for a personal best performance. Less than a second behind her was Shannon McDonnell ’16, taking third with a time of 4:27.13.

Two Yale runners raced in the 5,000-meter run, and both came away with personal bests. Rachel Jones ’17 placed 19th with a time of 18:01.82, while Claire Ewing-Nelson ’18 placed 25th with a time of 18:08.19.

Anna Demaree ’15 was Yale’s sole competitor in the 10,000-meter run, taking fourth with a time of 37:12.25.

“There were a number of outdoor personal records at the meet of Friday, and that’s always a great way to start a season,” Waligurski said. “It really showed that everyone is in a great place to start the season, and we are only going to improve from here.”

The men also showed success at Princeton, though they only com-

peted in two events: the 800-meter run and the 1,500-meter run.

In the 800-meter, James Randon ’17 stole the show, taking first place with a time of 1:53.13, a personal best in the event. Following closely behind him with a time of 1:54.25, Jacob Sandry ’15 ran a personal best and took fifth.

In the 1,500 meter-run, Adam Houston ’18 and Ryan Brady ’18 both set personal records, finishing in 23rd with a time of 3:59.99 and taking 26th with a time of 4:01.17, respectively.

“Jacob Sandry had a breakout race, and it felt great to get everyone running similar distances,” Randon said.

“And it always feels good to win.”

The Bulldog teams will be together again next Saturday as both squads head to Cambridge for the annual Yale-Harvard dual meet.

Contact ADAM JENKINSON at adam.jenkinson@yale.edu .

MARC CUGNON is a sophomore in Calhoun College. Contact him at marc.cugnon@yale.edu .

Despite weather, crew dominates WOMEN’S CREW FROM PAGE 12

BRIANNA LOO/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

on our sports fields, at our schools, in our businesses or at home. There is no excuse for domestic abuse, and there’s no excuse for organizations like the Dallas Cowboys and the National Football League to normalize this sort of violence. Maybe Hardy, Rice and Peterson, among others, do deserve second chances, maybe expecting a long term punishment is unfair, but all we’re doing by letting these men off the hook is making excuses. Hardy and his ilk deserve to never play another down in the NFL. There shouldn’t be a second shot when it comes to abuse, especially in a league where these players are idealized as role models by young fans. As players these men represent the organizations they are a part of, and ultimately the NFL as a whole. Unfortunately, the league seems just fine with that.

tition and caused officials to cancel most of the events at the 2,000-meter Cayuga Inlet course. Yale’s second varsity eight boat completed its race and posted a first-place finish, but officials were not able to record times for the race.

“The conditions this past weekend were tough,” captain Nina Demmerie ’15 said. “It is easy to get distracted by these [logistical] changes, but the team did a great job of focusing inward and not letting distractions affect the way we raced.”

With another regular season race now behind them, the Elis look towards another away race next weekend, this time in Boston. Yale will battle Dartmouth and Boston University on Sat-

urday for the Class of 1985 Cup, which the Bulldogs have won for the past two years.

With more than a month remaining until the Ivy League and NCAA Championships in May, Demmerle said, the rowers are still focusing on improving each week.

“As we transition back to practice this week, we want to focus back on doing the fundamentals really well in an attempt to gain some speed before lining up against Dartmouth and BU this Saturday,” Demmerle said. “We had a good weekend at Cornell and would like to use it to take one step forward as a team to find some more speed.”

Contact GREG CAMERON at greg.cameron@yale.edu .

JENNIFER LU/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale’s women’s crew varsity four is 11–0 this season through the first three races of the spring.

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

BULLETIN BOARD

TODAY’S FORECAST

Rain, mainly after 8am. Steady temperature around 47. Calm wind becoming northeast 5 to 9mph.

TOMORROW High of 45, low of 35.

XKCD BY RANDALL MUNROE

ON CAMPUS TUESDAY, APRIL 7 11:30 AM Gordon Grand Lecture: A Conversation with Danny Meyer. The Yale School of Management invites you to the Gordon Grand Lecture: A Conversation with Danny Meyer. Mr. Meyer is CEO, Union Square Hospitality Group. Registration required. Evans Hall (165 Whitney Ave.), Rm. 2400.

12:00 PM Jane Owen: A Discussion about Food. Jane Owen is an author, designer, broadcaster, campaigner, and editor of The Financial Times’ “House & Home” section, where she writes about gardens and landscapes. An award-winning journalist, she served as an executive at The Times (of London) for nine years and was their garden correspondent for five years. Kroon Hall (195 Prospect St.), Burke Aud.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8 1:00 PM “Conversation, Race and Society: Exposing Hidden Narratives Through Art.” This program, featuring Elizabeth Alexander, Yale professor of poetry, African American Studies and American Studies, and artist Titus Kaphar is part of a series of public conversations held in conjunctions with Alexander’s course “Contemporary African American Literary, Visual and Performing Arts,” which explores the work and innovations of contemporary African American authors and artists. Yale University Art Gallery (1111 Chapel St.).

7:00 PM Swing Into Spring at the Yale Library! All are welcome to an evening of dance and fun with music from the Music Library’s archives. A free swing dance lesson, unique film footage, free cake, good company and more. Sterling Memorial Library (120 High St.), L&B Room.

THURSDAY, APRIL 9 4:30 PM Memory Politics in Estonia: 20th Century Literature and a New National Consciousness. Andrei Hvostov will give a talk about the social and political situation of Russians in Estonia and the other Baltic countries in light of developments in Putin’s Russia. Rosenkranz Hall (115 Prospect St.), Rm. 241.

y SUBMIT YOUR EVENTS ONLINE yaledailynews.com/events/submit

XKCD BY RANDALL MUNROE

To reach us: E-mail editor@yaledailynews.com Advertisements 2-2424 (before 5 p.m.)

2-2400 (after 5 p.m.)

Mailing address Yale Daily News P.O. Box 209007 New Haven, CT 06520

Questions or comments about the fairness or accuracy of stories should be directed to Editor in Chief Isaac Stanley-Becker at (203) 432-2418.

Bulletin Board is a free service provided to groups of the Yale community for events. Listings should be submitted online at yaledailynews.com/events/ submit. The Yale Daily News reserves the right to edit listings.

To visit us in person 202 York St. New Haven, Conn. (Opposite JE) FOR RELEASE APRIL 7, 2015

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

CLASSIFIEDS

CROSSWORD Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Lewis ACROSS 1 Peru’s __ Picchu 6 Angle iron 10 Highest point 14 Kindle download 15 SeaWorld performer 16 Ellington’s “Take __ Train” 17 Older name for a passenger bus 19 Glass darkener 20 Responded in court 21 Cape NNW of Cod 22 Saguaros, e.g.

23 Covered up 24 Wedding gown follower 27 Place in quarantine 29 Legal thing 30 Came down with 31 Kate, before Petruchio’s “taming” 32 Bit of legislation 33 U2 lead singer 34 Like one resisting innovation 38 Die dots 41 Thumbs-up 42 Best man’s offering 46 Santa __ winds 47 Fellows 48 Stir-fry vegetable 50 Pirate Blackbeard’s real name 53 Rank below cpl.

54 Believer in the Great Pumpkin 55 NYC airport 56 Narrow opening 57 Installed, as carpet 58 Hole-making tool 61 Years, to Nero 62 Wows, and how 63 Stone marker 64 Droops over time 65 Peel in a cocktail 66 Filled with cargo DOWN 1 Tennessee home of the NBA’s Grizzlies

By David Poole

2 Do away with 3 French department that translates to “golden slope” 4 Robin __ 5 Kiev is its cap.

6 Canadian coin nicknamed for the bird on it 7 Lego or Eggo, for example 8 Duke Univ. conference 9 Stadium shout 10 Rose essence 11 Lake Michigan metropolis 12 Bring up 13 Chip away at 18 Golfer’s ride 22 Dollar divs.

24 Cry out loud 25 Curved foot part 26 “Dallas Buyers Club” actor Jared 28 Some summer babies, astrologically 32 Summer coolers, for short 33 What winds do 35 Like Easter eggs

Monday’s Puzzle Solved

4/7/15

SUDOKU SIMPLE

8 6 7

©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

36 Emailed 37 Texter’s “From a different angle ...”

38 Spanish rice dishes 39 Gary’s home 40 Hocking 43 Answered a help-wanted ad, say 44 Whence Rossini’s barber

4/7/15

45 Spilled the beans 47 Dalloway’s title 48 Most judicious 49 Virg. neighbor 51 German cars 52 Actor Cary 56 Latina lass: Abbr.

58 Peace, in Acapulco 59 Be indebted to 60 High-speed www option

6

2 7 5 6 3

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

THURSDAY High of 43, low of 38.

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Language affects value assigned to objects

BY QI XU CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

THAO DO/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

A new Yale neuroscience research study sheds light on just how much of an effect language can have on the value people assign to certain goods.

The research used prior knowledge about the “endowment effect” — a phenomenon in which people are willing to pay more to keep an item than they are to purchase the same item — to ask how one’s willingness to part with an item is influenced by whether they hear the word “sell” or “take.” Conducted by former lab manager at the Yale Decision Neuroscience Lab Kirk Manson and Yale professor of neurobiology Ifat Levy, the research appeared in Plos One Journal on March 30.

“Just by saying, ‘How much will you sell it for?’ [as opposed to ‘How much will you take for it?’] can change the value the sellers put on the good, or change the way they approach the entire transaction,” Manson said.

The researchers compared data collected under two hypothetical conditions that they set up for research participants: the “sell” condition and the “take” condition. Participants in both cases were given the same set of pens. In the sell condition, they were asked, “How much would you sell the pens for?” In the take condition, the instructions asked participants, “How much would you take for the pens?” Subject participants gave higher prices under the sell condition.

Manson said that the word “sell” might put into the participants’ minds a motivation to make money.

“Calling someone a seller is activating [in them] a motivation that is associated with the characteristics of a seller, such as selling high and buying low,” Manson said.

He added that although he cannot infer from the findings the specific motivations at play, the findings are consistent with other theories, which suggest that different roles in transactions make individuals focus on different aspects of those transactions and behave differently.

Levy said the findings may influence how researchers write

instructions or structure experiments for their behavioral studies.

“Subtle manipulation in experimental design may lead to very different outcomes,” she added.

Steve Chang, Yale professor of psychology and neurobiology, said the findings imply that circuits in the brain associated with how people attach value to objects and experiences are influenced by how others phrase value-related information.

Manson said the finding is important for informal market transactions, such as personal exchange of property. These transactions, unlike daily purchases at convenience stores or shopping malls where goods have price tags and their prices are non-negotiable, often include bargaining between sellers and buyers.

More broadly, Manson said, the finding has implications for the language companies use in acquisition contracts.

“I am not an expert in management. The bigger picture of social implications on marketing and management are somewhat out of my range. But I can see these as remarkable points being influential,” he added.

Manson said the research opens doors for research into different language manipulation.

The researchers used “take for” because they viewed it as neutral, but it is possible, Manson said, that it is not. If the latter is true, the difference in assigned prices may then be the result not of the word “sell” raising the ascribed price, but rather of the phrase “take for” pulling it down, he added.

Levy said future directions for research include examining how not only language, but also any kind of unexpectedly influential manipulation might exert impact on decision-making.

Chang added that it would be interesting to use fMRI to observe how the brain circuits that assign value to objects and experiences are differentially activated in the “sell” and “take” conditions.

The term “endowment effect” was first coined by the economist Richard Thaler in 1980.

Contact QI XU at qi.xu@yale.edu .

Socioeconomic status, brain surface area linked

BY SPANDANA BHATTACHARYA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER In the largest-ever interdisciplinary study of its kind, researchers have established links between low socioeconomic status and brain structure.

A consortium of researchers from Columbia, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Yale, among other institutions, investigated the relationship between brain structure and socioeconomic factors, independent of genetic ancestry. Based on a sample size of 1,099 individuals between the ages of three and 20 years, the study found that among children from the lowest-income families, small differences in income were positively related to relatively large differences in cortical surface area. Cortical surface area is connected to skills needed for academic success, such as language, reading and attention span. The study was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience on March 30.

“This study is the first of its kind looking at real life population,” said senior author of the study Walter Kaufmann, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Rett Syndrome Program at the Boston Children’s Hospital. “We tried to represent the ethnic and social composition of the U.S. and we collected imaging, genetic and socioeconomic data.”

Kaufmann noted that small increases in income within the lowest socioeconomic rungs had the largest impact on increases in cortical surface area.

There were three distinctive features of the study, said Natalie Brito, a postdoctoral student at Columbia who studies developmental psychology and works with Columbia University professor of pediatrics Kimberly Noble, first author of the study. First, the researchers investigated the effects of paren-

tal education and family income separately, two variables often “lumped together” in studies but which may separately influence the result. Second, while past studies only focused on cortical volume, this study separated its two components, namely cortical surface area and cortical thickness. Third, the study controlled for genetic ancestry.

David Glahn, professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, said he was struck by the interdisciplinary nature of the project.

“My first thought when I read this paper was neuroscience meets social justice,” he said.

While he said he was “not surprised” by the results, Glahn acknowledged that the scientists successfully demonstrated the effect of socioeconomic factors on brain development.

Although past scientific research has shown that environment influences development trajectory, the paper made two innovations, Glahn said. First, the study’s focus on actual brain structure and sample size made it “by far the largest and most authoritative study in this field.”

In addition, he noted that extracting minority status from poverty is very difficult, but the study does so by taking into account genetic ancestral variables.

“If we didn’t believe it before, this study tells us there are specific biological consequences of having a poor environment as a child, namely things like not enough food or not enough consistency, “ Glahn said.

Noble said it is important to note that the study indicates correlation and not causation. She added that she and her colleagues are in the process of planning a large research study to establish causal impact.

Kaufmann said the results of the study have important conse-

quences for both the sciences and the social sciences. He added that it would be interesting to conduct research studies following individuals over time and explore what other factors in brain structure could explain the results of the study.

Similarly, Glahn said the study raises several questions for future

explanation.

“Part of what is exciting is that the biggest changes are happening in the lowest socioeconomic level,” he said. “I would like to see more studies possibly showing similar results, particularly in the lowest socioeconomic groups, which is where you would possibly have the most important

statement from a policy perspective.”

He added that he would also like to see studies that probe the method used by the authors to dissociate genetic effect and environment, and investigate whether it would be a viable method to study other topics like aging.

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, more than 16 million U.S. children are growing up in families whose incomes fall below the federal poverty line.

Contact SPANDANA BHATTACHARYA at spandana.bhattacharya@yale.edu .

THAO DO/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 11

“The flu is very unpredictable when it begins and in how it takes off.”

HARVEY V. FINEBERG FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE

Flu vaccine may not decrease symptom severity

BY IVONA IACOB CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The results of a recent study published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases suggest that influenza vaccines, though preventive of the disease, have little to no effect on its severity.

A team of researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, together with health departments and universities across the country, including Yale, discovered that in the age group of adults over 50 years old, influenza vaccines have no impact on the severity and complications that may result from the disease. The study was published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases on March 27.

“I think that we have some modest evidence from this one influenza year that disease severity might be reduced in a small way, in a modest way,” professor of preventive medicine at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine William Schaffner said.

“But we could not detect using our methods a really substantial influence for impact on severity, which frankly surprised us.

The study collected data through the Influenza Hospitalization Surveillance Network over the 2012–13 flu season. The network included data from more than 3,000 patients 50 years or older who had been vaccinated more than four days prior to hospitalization. Schaffner added that the researchers targeted the above 50 age group because older people are particularly susceptible to influenza and especially more severe forms of the disease. Previous stud-

ies have suggested that the vaccine is effective in reducing the severity of the disease, but the results of this study stand in contrast to those data, Schaffner said.

The flu causes roughly 30,000 deaths every year in the United States, said Akiko Iwasaki, Yale professor of immunobiology and molecular and developmental biology, who has conducted research on influenza and who was not affiliated with the study. Iwasaki added that up to 90 percent of these deaths are caused by complications of influenza, such as pneumonia, and occur among people 65 years or older.

Because of the ever-changing nature of the virus and its widespread effect on the population, the annual epidemics of influenza have substantial social and economic consequences, added Schaffner.

Arthur Reingold, professor and head of epidemiology at University of California at Berkeley and coauthor of the study, said in an email that each year, researchers attempt to assess the effectiveness of vaccines used against various sub-groups of the population. However, the fickle nature of the flu virus itself is what makes it difficult for researchers to create a perfect vaccine.

“Because the flu virus is constantly changing, our current approach to making flu vaccines involves making an educated guess every February regarding which strain(s) will circulate and cause disease the following winter,” Reingold said.

Contact IVONA IACOB at ivona.iacob@yale.edu

CAROLINE TISDALE/CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

Oxytocin’s effects nuanced

THAO DO/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

BY GEORGE SAUSSY STAFF REPORTER An international team of researchers has found that the “love hormone” oxytocin has more nuanced effects on the brain than previously thought.

The team, including Yale professor of psychology, economics and management David Rand, gave participants a dose of oxytocin and found that the chemical’s effect on decision-making differed based on the way the participants thought about those decisions. They found that, after being exposed to oxytocin, people who were “intuitive” decision makers were more likely to favor members of their own group when cooperating, while those who were “reflective” decision makers tended to show less ingroup favoritism in cooperating.

The research will be published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

“We were trying to show whether oxytocin affects social cognition,” said study lead author Yina Ma, a post-doctoral fellow in the Cognitive Neuroscience Division of the Lieber Institute for Brain Development.

“Oxytocin is a key neuropeptide that plays a key role in social cognition but the literature has shown inconsistent results, so we are trying to explain why — one of the key things we are thinking about is cognitive style.”

Previous research had found that oxytocin and intuitive decision-making activate similar parts of the brain. The literature on the effects of oxytocin on ingroup favoritism, however, had been mixed with some studies showing an increase in in-group

favoritism and some showing no effect from the oxytocin.

Oxytocin [ … ] plays a key role in social cognition but the literature has shown inconsistent results.

YINA MA Fellow, Lieber Institute for Brain Development But past research had definitively shown that intuitive decision makers — those who prefer fast heuristic decision-making methods — tend to cooperate with members of their own group in comparison to cooperating with members of an outgroup.

Meanwhile, reflective thinkers — those who use slower analytic methods — show less ingroup favoritism. Those facts, along with questions about why research on in-group favoritism has been inconclusive, allowed the researchers to hypothesize that the inconsistencies could be explained by different ratios of intuitive to reflective thinkers in sample sizes. The more intuitive thinkers there are, the greater the observed effect on in-group favoritism, and the more reflective thinkers there are, the less the observed effect.

To test that hypothesis, the researchers tested a group of 150 Chinese men in a double-blind study, giving them either an oxytocin nasal spray or a placebo.

They found intuitive thinkers were more likely to increase ingroup favoritism. Among reflec-

tive thinkers, the effect was reversed, verifying the researchers’ hypothesis.

Ma said these results will be instrumental in understanding how oxytocin affects the brain before researchers can begin to look into clinical applications.

She said a future project may be to closely examine the anti-anxiety effects of oxytocin.

According to Kevin Pelphrey, director of the Yale Child Neuroscience Lab, who was not involved in the study, studies like this could be particularly helpful for treating autistic children.

Studies measuring the effects of oxytocin on autistic children are currently being conducted, but if these treatments become standard, researchers need to understand that kids in different contexts will react differently to oxytocin, he said.

Currently, pharmaceutical companies are working on methods of increasing the oxytocin levels in the brain without having to directly dose a patient with oxytocin itself, allowing researchers to not have to depend on nasal sprays, Pelphrey said.

Rand said in an email that the subfield of oxytocin research should continue to become more interdisciplinary, forming stronger connections between the fields of biology and psychology.

He added that it would be interesting to conduct the same research on American participants to see whether the results differ.

Oxytocin is released in the body after sex and during maternal bonding.

Contact GEORGE SAUSSY at george.saussy@yale.edu .

IF YOU MISSED IT SCORES

NCAAM Duke 68 Wisconsin 63

MLB Boston 8 Philadelphia 0

SPORTS QUICK HITS

ERIC HSIEH ’15 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED HERO Yale’s sweet-swinging first baseman has started to pick up some national attention for his hot start. The lefty — currently hitting 0.426 with a 0.579 on-base percentage — was profiled in Sports Illustrated’s April 6 issue in the “Faces in the Crowd” section.

MLB Toronto 6 N.Y. Yankees 1

y

MLB N.Y. Mets 3 Washington 1

MLB Seattle 4 L.A. Angels 1

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YALE MEN’S LACROSSE TEAM MOVING UP IN THE POLLS The Bulldogs routed Dartmouth 10–4 on Saturday to even their Ivy League record to 2–2, but the win had other benefits as well. Yale moved up two spots to No. 9, marking the first time in three weeks that the Elis were inside the top 10.

“It is really important for us to not lose sight of our goals even when ranked No. 1.”

SANAM RASTEGAR ’16 SAILING YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

Sailing teams ascend to No. 1

BY ALEX WALKER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER As the championship season draws nearer, the Yale coed and women’s sailing teams cruised toward success this weekend with another top finish for the coed squad and a fifth-place finish for the women’s team. The Bulldogs have also found new wind in their sails, as the coed team recaptured its spot as the top team in the country and the women’s team claimed No. 1 in the national rankings by Sailing World as well.

The sailors noted that while the No. 1 ranking serves as a testament to their dedication, it will not impact how they prepare for the 2015 Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association nationals, which are in Newport, Rhode Island from May 25 until June 4.

“It is such a privilege to be on a No. 1 ranked team in college sailing,” Sanam Rastegar ’16 said. “It really shows how much talent we have on our team and how hard we work to keep ourselves at the top … but I think it is really important for us to not lose sight of our goals even when ranked No. 1.”

Over the weekend, the women’s team traveled to Rhode Island to compete in the Dellenbaugh Women’s Trophy hosted by Brown. Sailing for Yale were skippers Morgan Kiss ’15 and Marly Isler ’16, as well as crews Emily Johnson ’16, Natalya Doris ’17 and Claire Huebner ’18. The team finished fifth out of 18 schools, just edging ahead of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

On Saturday, the winds were strong enough that racing had to be cut short, but the conditions calmed down enough at the regatta on Sunday to allow Brown to claim the win.

The A Division sailors, consisting of Kiss and Johnson, finished fifth overall with 48 points, while the B

SAILING

Track splits for East Coast competition

BY ADAM JENKINSON CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The Yale track and field teams sent runners to meets all over the East Coast, as some Bulldogs competed in Gainesville, Florida at the Florida Relays and others traveled to Princeton to compete in the Sam Howell Invitational.

TRACK & FIELD On Friday and Saturday, the majority of the Elis traveled to

ing,” Belling said. “Given the challenging conditions, it was important to use speed and boat handling to stay upright and respond to sudden changes in velocity and wind direction. The Charles [River] can be really variable and frustrating, and I was impressed by our team’s ability to respond to changes and communicate well on and off the water.”

SEE SAILING PAGE 8

SEE COLUMN PAGE 8

Crew Katherine Gaumond ’15 was part of the coed team delegation that edged out Harvard last weekend.ff edging out archrival Harvard. The delegation from Yale included skippers Graham Landy ’15, Ian Barrows ’17 and Malcolm Lamphere ’18, along with crews Katherine Gaumond ’15, Charlotte Belling ’16 and Christopher Champa ’18.

Just like the women’s squad, the Elis competing in Boston had to deal with tough weather conditions.

“This weekend … was about as windy as it gets in college sail-

The ethics of sports business Like it or not, sports are a business. Whether you prefer the highest, professional levels of competition like the NFL, NBA or NHL to collegiate or high school play is irrelevant. At the end of the day someone is out there to make a living. Nowhere is this cash-driven mentality more apparent than the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry that is the National Football League.

The NFL has had more than it’s fair share of scandals over the past year, highlighted by the league-wide fiasco that resulted from Ray Rice beating his fiancée Janay Palmer in a hotel elevator. Given how poorly Commissioner Roger Goodell handled the Rice scandal in one of the NFL’s most tumultuous off-seasons in years, one might think that the league and its teams would aim to take the moral high ground in the future. Apparently nobody told Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys front office.

Following his release from the Carolina Panthers, Dallas took advantage of the NFL’s free agent signing period to ink Pro Bowl defensive end Greg Hardy to a one-year $11.3 million contract, according to ESPN. While this seems like a shrewd move that allows Dallas to pick up one of the league’s most talented defensive players, Greg Hardy was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend just months prior to the Dallas signing. In fact, the conviction was the main reason Hardy was on the market to begin with.

In fairness to Hardy, the state’s case against

YALE DAILY NEWS

Division team, which consisted of Isler, Doris and Huebner, finished fourth with 40 points. The fifthplace finish was a combination of the two teams’ scores.

Meanwhile the coed team headed to Boston to compete in both the Boston University Trophy at Boston University and the Marchiando Team Race at MIT. The Bulldogs sailed to their fifth consecutive win at MIT, finishing with a record of 13–2 and

MARC CUGNON

Crew sweeps in New York

the Sam Howell Invitational and competed against some familiar competition, including Brown, Harvard, Penn and Princeton. But five Bulldogs — three women and two men — traveled even further south to the University of Florida to race against some of the fastest and toughest competition in the country.

“Good competition breeds great performances, and big meets like the Florida Relays proSEE TRACK & FIELD PAGE 8 JENNIFER LU/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Yale women’s crew varsity eight finished with a time of 5:55.6, 7.5 seconds ahead of Cornell.

BY GREG CAMERON STAFF REPORTER Facing difficult rowing conditions in Ithaca, New York, the Yale women’s crew team swept Cornell and Iowa this past weekend, building momentum as it looks toward key races in the final weeks of its regular season.

WOMEN’S CREW BRIANNA LOO/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Five Yale track and field athletes traveled to compete at the University of Florida last weekend.

STAT OF THE DAY 1

The Eli women dominated their opponents in five races at Cornell’s home course, as the three varsity eight boats and two varsity fours each won their events by significant margins. In the varsity eight race — the only Yale race to register times

on Saturday after conditions postponed the remainder of Friday’s competition — the Bulldogs posted a time of 5:55.6, more than seven seconds ahead of the Big Red crew.

The win over Cornell gave Yale its third straight claim to the Cayuga Cup, which marks the winner of the annual Yale-Cornell varsity eight race.

“I’m proud of the way our team raced this weekend in the challenging conditions,” second varsity rower Amina Edwards ’15 said. “We’ve had some logistical challenges with weather and travel this season and I think our team has handled them well.”

Though Yale’s five races against Cornell and Iowa were initially scheduled for this

past Friday, the varsity eight race launched a day late because the course was too dark on Friday after the previous races had finished.

The other four races began on schedule, and Yale showed similar domination over its two opponents, with three Bulldog boats besting the second-place finisher by more than 10 seconds. The second varsity eight race was the closest, as Yale finished in 6:13.9 with Iowa’s boat posting a time of 6:16.4.

Yale then had races scheduled against Northeastern and Buffalo for Saturday on the same course, but heavy winds and waves rendered the water unfit for compeSEE WOMEN’S CREW PAGE 8

THE CURRENT NATIONAL RANKING OF BOTH THE CO-ED AND WOMEN’S SAILING PROGRAMS. Year after year, the Bulldogs prove to be a force to be reckoned with on the water, and this season is no exception.