Yale Daily News — Week of April 2

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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · VOL. CXLIII, NO. 22 · yaledailynews.com

Salovey unveils fall term plans the email. “We are excited to consider all that we have learned over the past twelve months and plan a safe and fulfilling new academic year.”

In the fall term, nearly all courses are planned to be taught in person, although some larger lectures may be held remotely. There may also be a short period of remote instruction at the start of the semester, as students who might not have had access to vaccines over the spring or summer will have the opportunity to receive them at Yale, according to the announcement.

Salovey and Strobel also expect to reopen Yale’s facilities — including spaces for art, athletics and recreation — with “enhanced safety measures” in place. It is too soon to decide definitively what those might be, but they could include masking, distancing and capacity limits, said Richard Martinello, medical director for infection prevention at Yale New Haven Hospital.

Once Yale’s officials have a clearer picture of the public health situation in the fall, they will make final decisions about the possibil-

BY ROSE HOROWITCH STAFF REPORTER In an email sent to the Yale community on Monday, University President Peter Salovey and University Provost Scott Strobel announced plans for a fall term that will closely resemble the Yale of years past.

Salovey and Strobel wrote that they were “cautiously optimistic” that the University could offer a full residential program in the fall. All students will be invited to return to campus, classes will primarily be in person, staff members can return to on-campus work and dining halls and performance venues will reopen to the community. The email also announced a standard academic calendar in which the semester is slated to start on Sept. 1. Students who have not been vaccinated by the start of the fall term may participate in a phased move-in process so they can receive a shot at Yale before in-person courses begin.

“Thank you for your resilience and commitment to our shared communities,” Salovey and Strobel wrote in

YALE NEWS

Some public health precautions, such as mask wearing, will likely continue into the fall despite vaccinations, Salovey and Strobel wrote. ity of student gatherings and athletic competition. The Ivy League Council of Presidents will determine whether there can be a traditional fall athletics season.

Staff members who have been working remotely can begin phasing back into in-person work on

Aug. 1. By Oct. 1, all will likely have returned. But unit leaders can elect to bring some staff back to campus starting as soon as June 1.

Vice Provost for Academic Initiatives Pericles Lewis had been developing different scenarios for the fall term and consulting with

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Hill held numerous diplomacy jobs before coming to Yale in 1992, including working as an advisor to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

BY MADISON HAHAMY STAFF REPORTER Charles Hill, diplomat in residence, lecturer in International Studies at Yale University and Brady-Johnson Distinguished Fellow in Grand Strategy, died on Saturday afternoon of complications relating to an infection.

When Hill came to Yale in 1992 — his wife, senior lecturer Norma Thompson, was a professor in the political science department — he already had a decorated record of

foreign service. After graduating from Brown University and completing his graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, he worked foreign service postings in Switzerland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Vietnam. Among other positions, he served as a policy advisor at the State Department, an advisor for Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, political counselor for the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, executive aide to Secretary of State George Shultz and an advisor to Boutros Boutros-Ghali,

SEE HILL PAGE 4

SEE FALL UPDATE PAGE 4

Harris visits Elm City

Professor Charles Hill dies at 84 1992-1996 Secretary-General of the United Nations.

“Yalies would not have seen much of this elegant, well-dressed person, headed off to New York very early each weekday to work in the office of Boutros Boutros-Ghali,” Paul Kennedy, J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History, told the News.

Kennedy, along with Hill and John Lewis Gaddis — Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University — established the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy in 2000.

It was around this point that, according to Kennedy, Hill became not just an icon of foreign policy but a “legendary” figure within Yale itself. Gaddis said that, for Hill, teaching classes at Yale was “the most important thing he'd ever done in life, or could ever do.”

Hill taught history and political thought for over 20 years in Yale’s Directed Studies program, but was also known for creating seminars on topics he found interesting. One semester, Hill taught a class entitled “The Architecture of Power.” Another year, he created a

the Public Health Committee, but Salovey had the final say from among the different options.

The Public Health Committee, chaired by University COVID-19 Coordinator Stephanie Spangler, is

BY CHRISTIAN ROBLES STAFF REPORTER On March 26, Vice President Kamala Harris and other elected officials visited two local childcare providers during a one-day visit to New Haven.

The stops formed part of Harris’s efforts to promote the new administration's $1.9 trillion stimulus which aims to support childcare facilities, reduce child poverty and assist pub-

lic schools more broadly. The visit, a part of the “Help is Here” tour, follows President Joe Biden’s March 11 signing of the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion spending package that includes federal aid for state and local governments, one-time $1,400 checks for single tax-filers, a temporarily expanded child tax credit for the 2021 tax season and money to help school districts reopen, among SEE HARRIS PAGE 4

LUKAS FLIPPO/PHOTO EDITOR

Harris came to the Elm City on the “Help is Here” tour to tout the new American Rescue Plan.

High-risk groups to receive How to get the COVID-19 vaccine in CT vaccine prioritization BY ÁNGELA PÉREZ STAFF REPORTER

BY ALVARO PERPULY AND OWEN TUCKER-SMITH STAFF REPORTERS Gov. Ned Lamont announced on Monday that certain medically high-risk individuals

should be prioritized in the vaccine rollout, as Connecticut prepares to open vaccination appointments to all individuals 16 and older later this week.

SEE PRIORITIZATION PAGE 5

REGINA SUNG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Around 10,000 high-risk Connecticut residents under the age of 45 have not yet been vaccinated, according to Geballe.

Connecticut residents between the ages of 16 and 45 are eligible to sign up for vaccines beginning Thursday, which means that most Yale students in residence can now sign up for an appointment.

As the state prepares for a flood of registrations, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont noted in a press conference on Monday that not everyone who becomes eligible will be able to make an appointment on April 1. He has warned 16 to 45-year-olds not to “rush the gate” at the same time.

While vaccinations are open to students now, Lamont instructed vaccine distribution centers to give priority to high-risk individuals before students. These high-risk groups include people with sickle cell disease, end-stage renal disease and Down syndrome, as well as people in active cancer treatment or who have organ transplants.

CROSS CAMPUS

INSIDE THE NEWS

The Yale Daily News publishes an editorial implying that University students have lost faith in President Nixon following the onset of the Watergate scandal. The columnists look forward to the secrets that will be revealed during Sen. Sam Ervin's investigation into Watergate.

WITHDRAWAL

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1973.

Individuals familiar with Yale's medical withdrawal policies said they are overly punitive, isolating and expensive. Some cited fears of forced withdrawal as barriers to seeking help.

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CANTORUM

REGINA SUNG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Eligible individuals can schedule appointments through Yale Health, the Yale New Haven Hospital, the state of Connecticut and local pharmacies.

Here’s what you need to know before booking a vaccine appointment: The vaccine is free regardless of insurance status. Some locations may ask for insurance and opt to bill health care providers, but this should come at no cost to the individual. Yale Health mem-

This week, in celebration of Holy Week and Easter, the Yale Schola Cantorum is releasing four virtual recordings featuring works by diverse composers.

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BUS

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont announced Tuesday that he will instruct CT Transit to provide free, statewide bus transportation on weekends over the summer.

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bers — including all Yale students — can print a version of their Yale insurance at yalehealth.yale.edu/ tips-scheduling-pharmacy, along with pharmacy billing codes.

When heading to a vaccine appointment, individuals should SEE GUIDE PAGE 5 LUNG

After years of planning by the Yale New Haven Hospital, the Winchester Center for Lung Disease opens in its new North Haven location.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION GUEST COLUMNIST STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE

Ask, and it shall be given?

Content warning: This article contains mention of suicide. *** n March 23, Yale students received an email no one wants to receive. A student had died by suicide. I didn’t know Rachael. I graduated long before she even stepped foot on campus, but her story is so familiar. In the days following her death, my social media feed was flooded with students, past and present, grieving and sharing their experiences of mental illness at Yale. I was hardly surprised. In 2015, I wrote a story for the News about another student who died by suicide, and the News was subsequently filled with stories about students having poor experiences with the administration regarding their mental health. But I continue to be saddened and shocked by the massive number of Yalies who are now disclosing their stories.

I was diagnosed with depression in high school, but thought it would go away once my dream of attending Yale came true. Little did I know that my journey with mental illness was just beginning.

The almost-casual cruelty of Yale’s competitive atmosphere almost destroyed me. The financial pressures of being a low-income student drove me to despair. I had panic attacks during finals, hiding in bathrooms until the moment passed. The YDN building sometimes felt like home but was also the place I contemplated suicide after hard nights of editing. My dorm room was the first place I had delusions and experienced severe paranoia. The symptoms of mania — lack of sleep and reckless behavior — were so normalized, even encouraged, that I didn’t even realize I was sick.

I didn’t tell anyone.

Negative experiences with peers and professors made me believe that I needed to “suck it up,” “get over it” or simply push it all to one side. So that’s what I tried to do. But it never worked. On paper, I had everything, but I felt as if I had nothing. I felt all alone. Unfortunately, the stories I now read on social media reveal that people were experiencing versions of the same thing all across campus.

So when I heard of the various responses from the university last week, I was shocked and disgusted.

According to current students, Dean Marvin Chun wrote an email that ended with the line, “If you ask for support, you’ll get it.” Not only is that incredibly offensive to the students who asked for help and did not receive it, but it also shows a lack of understanding of why students don’t ask for help in the first place.

The notion that help is there if you ask for it is so situational and depends greatly on your unique combination of support systems.

I didn’t ask for help for a reason.

O

Sure, it is true that Yale Mental Health and Counseling is free for all students. But free isn’t useful when long wait times seem to be the norm. Recently, a friend waited over a month to receive an initial intake appointment. And, sure, it is technically true that — as Yale’s most recent press release says — no one is prohibited from taking time off. But Yale College students on medical withdrawal have to apply for reinstatement and go through a laborious set of requirements, including taking additional college credits at their own expense, with no guarantee of being able to return. I was too afraid to ask for help because I remembered hearing stories of people who had asked for help and been forcibly withdrawn. The possibility of being asked to leave — and of potentially never returning — was simply not a risk I was willing to take.

I had kind and supportive deans — something not everyone feels they can say. But I didn’t give them the details because I knew the consequences of doing so. I liked my therapist, but, even then, I didn’t tell them everything either. I certainly didn’t tell my professors.

Asking for accommodations for a certified learning disability felt hard enough. Asking for a mental health reason seemed impossible.

While my initial reaction to the statements Yale put out this past week was shock and disgust, ultimately, I was hardly surprised. It seemed so typically Yale to respond to emotional trauma with a legalistic statement. In this way, the University has failed over and over again.

The fact that so many students push through Yale despite all this is no reason for the administration to turn its face away from the crisis of mental illness on campus. There are brave and bold students pushing for cultural change, but their efforts will be fruitless if the administration is not willing to reevaluate policy.

As an alum, I can say that my mental health got a lot better when I graduated from Yale College. But that hopeful message shouldn’t be a refrain Yalies utter to themselves in order to push through the so-called “bright college years.” I would say that it’s time for change, but that time passed a long time ago. Reform is overdue. Why aren’t suffering students more of an urgent concern? What must they prove in order for the administration to pay attention? I see the press releases and the statements but continue to be dissatisfied with my alma mater.

Some compassion would be nice.

STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE (’17 DIV ’20) is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Divinity School. She was the Editor in Chief of the Yale Daily News from 2015-16. Contact her at stephanie.addenbrooke@aya.yale.edu .

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COPYRIGHT 2020 — VOL. CXLIII, NO. 22

GUEST COLUMNIST CONNIE TIAN

Speaking out against hate crimes “G

et the f--- out of my way you f---ing Asians” he shouted.

Spitting at my feet, he took off running in the opposite direction.

A year ago, I went to New York to visit a friend. We agreed that we should avoid taking the subway and walk around instead. Not only because we were scared of COVID-19, but because there had already been several attacks against Asian Americans that week in New York. Despite the precautions we took as we walked around, a man furiously locked eyes with me. He ran towards me, placed his hands on my shoulders and pushed me into the wall of the nearby scaffolding.

My friend was angry. I was stunned. We reported the incident to her campus police. “I’m sorry, but there isn’t much we can do about this,” they responded. “There have already been several similar incidents around campus already. Be careful out there.”

I called my parents. “How could this happen to you?” they asked. “Why did you let this happen to you?”

It wasn’t until I called my parents that I was able to discern some of the emotions churning within me. Was I being an inconvenience to the police? Was I being a burden to my friend who was taking the time to show me around the city? Should I even be reporting an encounter as small as this when people around me were getting beaten, stabbed, even killed?

Like many other immigrant children who have grown up in America, my parents always spoke to me about the “American Dream Tax.” Life in America is much better than in China.

The macro- and microaggressions are the price we pay to be here. So, after calling my parents, I decided to not share my encounter with others. As scared as I was, I felt I had no right to place that burden on the people around me — especially when so many were suffering from COVID-19. Their problems were worse than mine.

I would just keep my head low, and stay quiet.

I had done my best to suppress this memory over the last year. I never brought it up again to my parents, and I refused to tell any more of my peers. However, after the exponential rise in anti-Asian hate crimes this past year and the recent shooting in Atlanta, I realized something: No matter the degree of our experiences, anti-Asian hate is a serious problem and should be treated as such.

Trauma is not a competition.

There is no fine line defining what is an awful hate crime and what isn’t. Hate is simply hate.

While many immigrant parents believe in the American Dream Tax, I choose to believe differently. To me, America is more than just a country that is better than home. America is the champion of progress and equality. So if we keep these experiences to ourselves, how can we acknowledge the problem? How can we progress?

It embarrasses me to write about my encounter. It embarrasses me to voice my opinion when dozens have lost their lives while I simply suffered a bruise. But I also know that I would never wish this to happen to anyone else. When xenophobia rears its ugly head, we cannot keep quiet. By staying silent, we unintentionally let this behavior slide. We let the offender off without any significant repercussions, and even worse, enable them to do it again.

So I urge you to speak out about your experiences. I understand that this may not be natural to do — immigrants like my parents, after all, were taught to lay low and avoid making a scene. I cannot tackle this instinct, nor the incentives behind it. But our generation is different.

We know that we cannot remain silent. We know that we would never brush off our peers if they told us about any of their experiences with hate. There is a certain beauty in sharing our experiences. We not only advance the conversation, but also gain comfort and solidarity with our peers. While I still feel uncomfortable talking about my experiences, I hope t hat sharing my story helps more of my peers feel comfortable in talking about theirs as well. Because sharing stories is the only way we can start to create change.

CONNIE TIAN is a sophomore in Grace Hopper college. Contact her at connie.tian@yale.edu .

GUE ST COLUMNIST NANCY XU

What I learned from medical withdrawal The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a certified listener, call 1-800-273-8255.

To talk with a counselor from Yale Mental Health and Counseling, schedule a session here and also here. On-call counselors are available at any time: call (203) 432-0290. *** wish I had a chance to talk to them. To give them comfort.

To give them one more good day. But when you want to die, that crime above all crimes, it’s too much of a risk. You’re afraid someone will find your note, your Google searches. You stop reaching out.

The option my therapist presented to me when I reached this stage of suicidality was medical withdrawal. It’s often called “medical leave,” but I want to be clear: It is not a leave of absence.

You are withdrawing your enrollment from Yale.

If you are considering withdrawal, I want you to know these facts: As a withdrawn student, you still have your NetID, you can still apply to programs like Yale Summer Session, and you are not restricted in your ability to contact professors and other students. You do not have to re-apply to Yale, and your application for reinstatement is very likely to be accepted.

However, you cannot return to campus without explicit permission from your dean. You do not have access to Yale Mental Health and Counseling.

Once your request to withdraw is approved, you have 72 hours to move out, including booking any flights and shipping your belongings. To re-enroll, you have to submit an application including taking two credits (in YSS or through another university), an essay, an interview and recommendation letters. Even as you apply for reinstatement, you are not eligible for housing lotteries or class pre-registration.

I

In short, I felt that the University wanted me to disappear at a time when I was already feeling suicidal.

When I spoke to deans and therapists about medical withdrawal, they seemed to believe it was the only solution to student suicidality. I was very lucky. I had a peaceful environment for recovery at home. I had friends and family to return to. I was academically in a good place. I was looking forward to getting a puppy. If I hadn’t been so lucky, especially if my home life caused or worsened my mental health deterioration, the one-size-fits-all-ness of medical withdrawal would have been an unacceptable solution. I was not offered any alternatives.

For the month of February 2020, all I could think about was that binary choice: withdraw and leave behind the life I’d worked so hard for, or stay and risk everything. Every decision in that process was guided by fear of control being taken away from me — I told my dean that I was struggling with suicide because I was afraid she would find out after I attempted something. I agreed to meet weekly with both her and my therapist because I felt like a liability to the University. I withdrew because I was afraid that if I didn’t, I would end up in the hospital and then be told to withdraw. It’s telling of my pathology that I was more afraid of being forced to leave Yale than I was of dying… but that’s just it. My pathology was the very thing we were trying to resolve, and it was worsened tenfold by the policies intended to alleviate it.

This, in the fog that was the worst time of my life, is what my brain heard: You are a danger to yourself and those around you. You are a liability to the University. Get out or we will force you out.

My first few months away from Yale truly felt like a “withdrawal” — I suddenly severed myself from my best friends, my freedom, everything I valued about growing into an adult at Yale. I was left to navigate the private health care system and fumble my way through reinstatement requirements… in the midst of COVID, no less, a situation

in which everyone has been subject to the isolation and fear that used to claim my every day.

“Used to” is an important phrase here. In hindsight, going on medical withdrawal was the best decision I have ever made. I needed that year away from the Yale bubble to rediscover my priorities in life. It’s hard to imagine, now, that I had nearly killed myself over something as arbitrary as a choice of major, over worries as small as an exam grade.

I’ve heard that most students who go on leave or withdrawal are ultimately happy with their decision; I believe them. But how much easier would it have been to come to that decision if I had known all the rules up front? If I hadn’t been treated like a delinquent because of something I couldn’t control?

I have no desire to condemn MHC or anyone else involved in the process. Every individual did their best in a situation where the best simply isn’t enough. But I cannot minimize the frustration and, without exaggeration, mental anguish I felt at the sterility, opacity and blame of the rules surrounding medical withdrawal.

Students who consider medical withdrawal are already in incredibly vulnerable psychological positions. We should show them the utmost compassion and support as they go through some of the most difficult times of their lives.

Policies should be clearly written and easily accessible.

If you are considering withdrawal, please know that there are people at Yale who understand what you are going through and want you to keep going. The solution to suicidality is not binary, and there are good days just waiting for you to arrive. You are brave for making the choice, regardless of whether you choose to withdraw or to stay.

“It’s a major step. It’s okay to fret. … It’s a second chance. It won’t be your last.” - “Breakfast”

by Half Alive.

NANCY XU is a rising junior in Silliman College. Contact her at nancy.xu@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 3

NEWS

“The Axiom of Choice is necessary to select a set from an infinite number of socks, but not an infinite number of shoes.” BERTRAND RUSSELL BRITISH PHILOSOPHER

Students express grievances over Yale’s medical withdrawal policies

BY JULIA BIALEK AND AMELIA DAVIDSON STAFF REPORTERS Content warning: This article contains references to suicide and self-harm. *** The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a certified listener, call 1-800-273-8255.

Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support.

To speak with a trained listener, text HELLO to 741741. It is free, available 24/7 and confidential.

To talk with a counselor from Yale Mental Health and Counseling, schedule a session at bit.ly/31vleMl. On-call counselors are available at any time: call (203) 432-0290.

Additional resources are available in a guide compiled by the Yale College Council at bit.ly/2O5Vd3h. *** In recent days, questions about medical withdrawals have circulated on social media, prompting students to share their experiences and qualms regarding Yale College’s withdrawal and reinstatement policies.

The loss of Rachael Shaw-Rosenbaum ’24, who died by suicide last week, has sparked conversations about Yale’s medical withdrawal policies. After a Facebook post inaccurately claiming that Yale denied Shaw-Rosenbaum medical withdrawal prior to her death was widely circulated in her home community of Anchorage and among college students across the country, students spoke out online about Yale’s policies governing withdrawals, sharing fears about the reinstatement process and the threat of forced withdrawals.

Yale has since released a statement denying that Shaw-Rosenbaum ever formally requested a medical withdrawal, and a source close to Shaw-Rosenbaum corroborated Yale’s statement to the News.

Beyond the lack of a formal request, the circumstances leading up to her death remain unclear.

Still, students familiar with Yale’s medical withdrawal process said that changes to the University procedures are long overdue. The News spoke to eight individuals who withdrew or considered withdrawing from Yale for mental health reasons.

All of the students expressed some level of frustration with the policies that they say can feel overly punitive, isolating and expensive. Four individuals cited fears of forced withdrawal as barriers to being able to seek the help that they need.

“To make a student that has zero control over what they’re experiencing, whether it’s mental health related or physical health related — to make them choose between their well being and their Yale education is completely ridiculous,” Griffin Wilson ’24, a student who considered a medical withdrawal due to struggles with mental health, said. “And ultimately it can lead to some pretty severe consequences.”

Recent controversy On Friday, a Facebook post written by an Anchorage parent circulated widely in the Anchorage and Yale communities. It included an inaccurate description of Shaw-Rosenbaum twice petitioning and twice being denied medical withdrawal from Yale. In its first public comment on Shaw-Rosenbaum’s death, Yale released a statement Saturday denying that she requested a leave of absence or withdrawal. The News confirmed with her boyfriend, Zack Dugue, that she never formally requested withdrawal. The larger circumstances leading up to her death remain unclear.

The post, which included a letter written by another author, described Shaw-Rosenbaum allegedly petitioning Yale “to take a leave from school and attend a mental health facility.” The letter alleged that Yale informed her that “her enrollment would not be held and she would have to reapply. Rachael petitioned the decision. Yale denied her appeal.”

The woman who wrote the letter acknowledged in an interview with the News that it was based on secondhand information, making it “hearsay,” and directed the News to a counselor and teacher from Shaw-Rosenbaum’s high school as potential sources of the information, both of whom told the News that they had not spoken to Shaw-Rosenbaum in a long time and had no prior knowledge of her mental health struggles at Yale.

In a statement issued by the University on March 27, the University declared the allegations in the letter to be “unequivocally false.” Yale subsequently updated that statement to

include a message of grief and mental health resources, neither of which were originally included. Instead of “unequivocally false,” the statement now says that the allegations are “simply not true.”

“Rachael did not ask her dean, or any other administrator in the College or Yale Health, if she could spend time away from Yale,” the edited statement reads. “Yale College would never deny anyone permission to take time off to address a health concern; anyone who asks for that permission receives it. Every semester, students take leaves and withdrawals, then return later to resume their studies.”

Dugue, who is a first year at the California Institute of Technology, told the News that he and Shaw-Rosenbaum spoke every day, and she had never mentioned petitioning for nor requesting a mental health withdrawal.

Still, Dugue said that he is grateful that out of the tragedy of Shaw-Rosenbaum’s death, communities reignited conversations about Yale’s withdrawal and reinstatement policies.

“Rachael wouldn’t want us to be talking about her; she would want us to be talking about the next kid,” Dugue told the News.

“Because there’s going to be a next kid, and she would want us to be focused on saving them.”

Yale College’s withdrawal policies According to the Yale College Programs of Study, there are two ways students can take time off from Yale: through a leave of absence or a withdrawal.

A student “in academic good standing” may petition the Committee on Honors and Academic Standing by the 15th day of the term to take up to two terms of absence.

Having academic good standing means a student has earned a sufficient number of course credits corresponding to their class year and has no more than three grades of F in a term of over two or three successive terms. To return to campus from leave, students only need to notify their residential college dean by the beginning of the term specified in the student’s petition to the Committee. If a student is granted a leave of absence, they are given a rebate for any tuition paid and a prorated refund for room and board.

However, a student who leaves Yale after the 15th day of a term must withdraw from Yale College with tuition rebate amounts depending on the date of withdrawal. There are five types of withdrawals — academic, medical, personal, disciplinary and financial. Students who have withdrawn are not permitted to stay in campus residences, use University resources or facilities, attend classes or participate in extracurriculars. They may only come to campus with permission from their residential college dean or the Dean of Student Affairs.

Unlike taking a leave of absence, withdrawing does not imply a right to automatically return. Students who have withdrawn must go through a reinstatement process in order to return to Yale.

“Withdrawn students do not lose their ‘spot’ at Yale, and despite a common misperception, they do not have to re-apply for admission,” Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd wrote to the News. “Nearly all student requests for reinstatement are granted for the following semester; in many cycles, all applications are approved.”

Withdrawal for medical reasons must be approved by the director of Yale Health or the chief of Yale’s Mental Health and Counseling department.

According to the Yale College’s leave of absence, withdrawal and reinstatement procedures, while a student may voluntarily withdraw, Yale College also “reserves the right to require students to withdraw in certain cases.”

Cases for forced medical withdrawal are evaluated based on whether “the student is a danger to self or others, the student has seriously disrupted others in the student’s residential or academic communities, or the student has refused to cooperate with efforts deemed necessary by Yale Health and the dean to make such determinations,” according to the Yale College Programs of study.

According to Paul Hoffman, chief of Yale Mental Health and Counseling, mandatory medical withdrawals are “very rarely used.”

To return to Yale College following a medical withdrawal, students must meet requirements set by the Committee on Reinstatement, which aims to determine whether

students have the ability to return to Yale and finish their degree in academic good standing.

Students who wish to be reinstated must submit an application form, a personal statement and letters of support for their reinstatement. Students on medical withdrawal must also get letters from clinicians. All students must also undergo interviews with the Committee on Reinstatement, and students on medical withdrawal must also interview with Yale Health administrators.

Finally, according to the Yale College Programs of Study, students who have withdrawn must complete two college-level courses at another college of their choosing or through Yale Summer Session. They must earn A or B grades in order to return. Students who withdraw during a term must normally remain away for at least one full term, not including the term of withdrawal.

According to the Yale College Programs of Study, while the majority of students are granted reinstatement, it is not guaranteed. If a student’s reinstatement is denied, they have the chance to apply for reinstatement again in a future term.

Student discontent Yale’s medical leave policies were thrown into the national spotlight following the death of Luchang Wang ’17, who died by suicide in 2015 while enrolled at Yale College. In a Facebook post just hours before her death, Wang called attention to Yale’s policies surrounding medical leave.

“Dear Yale: I loved being here. I only wish I could’ve had some time,” the 2015 Facebook post read. “I needed time to work things out and to wait for new medication to kick in, but I couldn’t do it in school, and I couldn’t bear the thought of having to leave for a full year, or of leaving and never being readmitted.”

Public outcry following Wang’s death was enough to bring about some changes. Previously, reinstatement after a mental health withdrawal required an in-person interview in front of the reinstatement committee, which, in addition to the requirement to complete two college level courses, could be cost-prohibitive. After Wang’s death, Yale updated its policies to allow students petitioning for reinstatement to conduct interviews online, and to make it clear that students on financial aid can receive need-based scholarships for Yale Summer Session to complete their two courses. If students elected to take their two courses at another college or university close to home, Yale would eliminate their Student Income Contribution the following semester to make up for costs of nonYale classes.

Based on interviews with eight students familiar with the medical withdrawal process, Yale’s changes since 2015 have not gone nearly far enough.

Fear of involuntary withdrawal While some students hope to be granted a medical withdrawal, others fear it. And for those students, the anxiety about a mandatory medical withdrawal — a procedure Boyd described as “exceedingly rare” — can prevent them from seeking the care they may need.

A member of the class of 2019 — who asked to remain anonymous out of fear for revealing private medical information — said they struggled with their mental health throughout their time at Yale. The individual stated that there were times that they knew they should have been hospitalized, but they were “absolutely terrified of and resistant to this option” since the individual believed that a stay in the hospital could lead to a forced medical withdrawal.

When the individual did speak to the on-call therapist during mental health crises — a service provided to all Yale students through Yale Mental Health and Counseling — they explained that they intentionally presented the appearance of being in better mental health than they were, in order to “avoid losing agency” over their own treatment and enrollment status.

Jen Frantz, originally a member of the class of 2019, but who did not finish her bachelor’s degree, took her first medical withdrawal due to her declining mental health in March 2017. After applying for reinstatement in fall 2018, Frantz was rejected. After applying for reinstatement a second time, she was permitted to return to campus in spring 2019 but shortly after the start of the term she decided to take another medical withdrawal.

She does not plan on returning to campus to complete her degree.

Frantz told the News that she frequently feared being forcibly withdrawn from Yale. She described being hospitalized after returning to campus in spring of 2019 and begging the hospital to interact with her outside therapist rather than Yale Mental Health and Counseling. She feared being stripped of the agency to make her own choice about what would be best for her health.

Nancy Xu, originally a member of the class of 2022, decided to voluntarily take a medical withdrawal in February 2020, after fearing she would be forced into the withdrawal process.

“It just got to the point where I felt like I was under such a degree of surveillance and pressure that I didn’t feel safe staying at Yale, and the fear of involuntary withdrawal was definitely a piece of that,” Xu said. She is currently undergoing the reinstatement process and hopes to return in the fall as a member of the class of 2024.

According to Boyd, while she understands that students are concerned about involuntary medical withdrawals, they are “exceedingly rare.”

“It is a common misconception that any serious mental health concern will automatically prompt a withdrawal,” Boyd wrote to the News.

“In fact, students most often remain on campus while receiving treatment, and usually return to campus even after hospitalizations. Another common misconception is that students who take medical withdrawals will lose their place and risk not being able to return to Yale. That is just not true. Once they have met the reinstatement requirements, all withdrawn students can return to Yale. I hope students will talk openly with the people who are caring for them, to help guide that care.”

A fear of asking for help In addition to a fear of forced withdrawal, some students expressed that anxiety about the reinstatement process can keep them from seeking a medical withdrawal in the first place.

Griffin Wilson ’24, who was originally a member of the class of 2023, told the News that he inquired about a medical withdrawal in February 2020, after his first year at Yale was marked by severe depression, anxiety and a suicide attempt. After learning about Yale’s reinstatement policies, and that he would have to withdraw for an entire year rather than just the remainder of the semester, Wilson decided to try to “tough out” the rest of the semester — a decision that, without the COVID-19 pandemic, he said may have been dire.

“Honestly, if it wasn’t for COVID19 sending me home in March, I one-hundred percent can confidently say that I would not have made it; I would have taken my own life,” Wilson said. “And I would have been the kid dead in their dorm room. That was the way it was going.”

Upon returning home due to COVID-19, Wilson finished the spring 2020 semester remotely and then enrolled in a residential treatment program. He is taking a leave of absence for the 2020-2021 school year and plans to return to Yale in fall 2021.

According to Boyd, the reinstatement process is designed to aid students for a successful transition back to Yale.

Stephanie Addenbrooke ’17 DIV ’20, a former Editor in Chief for the News, shared that she never formally asked for or took a medical withdrawal during her time as an undergraduate out of fear of the many uncertainties. As a low-income international student, Addenbrooke did not see withdrawal as a feasible option due to the complicated logistics of visas and the requirements of reinstatement. She was afraid of the repercussions of withdrawing, and she also feared that if she disclosed too much about how she was actually feeling to the Yale mental health counselor she was seeing, she may be asked to withdraw.

“I was the editor of the Yale Daily News, I was in Grand Strategy, I had an amazing internship lined up,” Addenbrooke told the News. “But the idea of losing all of those things — not just Yale, but also everything that went with it such as my friend group, graduating with friends and my extracurriculars — and coming home and feeling like I had failed, prevented me from really seeking the kind of help I probably needed.”

Financial barriers to withdrawal and the two-course requirement James Brandfonbrener ’22 was originally a member of the class of 2021. But in November 2019 — more than halfway through the semester amid poor mental health and strug-

gles to keep up with his class work — Brandfonbrener was granted a medical withdrawal.

Brandfonbrener explained to the News that the first barrier he faced to getting the medical withdrawal was a financial one. Because he withdrew after the midterm, he said he felt like there was a “significant financial disincentive to simply stick through [his] mental illness and finish the term.”

According to the Yale College Undergraduate Regulations, students who withdraw after midterm are not entitled to “rebate of any portion of the tuition, room, and board fees due or paid for that term.”

Lucy Wilkins ’22, former YTV editor and current Yale Daily News digital and outreach desk editor, took a medical withdrawal in the fall of 2017 due to physical health reasons and returned in the spring of 2019.

While she said she returned “happier and healthier” from her time away, Wilkins, she also found it difficult to meet the two-course requirement as a first-generation, low-income international student.

The cost of attaining those credits was a major concern to her, and finding an institution in which to enroll was challenging. Since Wilkins is from the United Kingdom, she could not attend Yale Summer Session because her visa was deactivated until she was reinstated, and Yale did not accept online credits for reinstatement prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alicia Abramson ’24, originally a member of the class of 2022, took a medical withdrawal in the fall of 2019. Abramson described the two-course requirement as a barrier that made her time away from campus on medical withdrawal — a time she hoped would be spent focusing on her mental health — feel stressful and arduous.

“I left Yale so that I could focus on my mental health without academics, so it is kind of insane that I still had to deal with being a student in order to come back,” Abramson said.

“There is so much deterrence from going on leave — from having to apply for reinstatement, to having to pay to take classes to not having Yale support while you do all of it. Sometimes the stress of it all feels like it defeats the purpose of the medical leave.”

Boyd said the two courses are meant to prepare students to return to “the rigors of Yale academics.” She explained that students who face financial hardship in paying for the courses can work with the chair of the Committee on Reinstatement to “explore other options.”

A lack of support during withdrawal After a student is notified that they are granted withdrawal, they have 72 hours to leave campus and are not permitted to visit campus again without permission from the Dean of Student Affairs or their residential college dean.

Brandfonbrener described his move out period as “pretty brutal” and said that being told to pack up so quickly and not return made him feel like he had something to feel ashamed of for not being able to push through his mental illness and finish the term.

Like Brandfonbrener, Abramson stressed how the medical withdrawal process felt isolating. Since those who withdraw are no longer on a Yale Health insurance plan, lose access to their Yale emails and not generally permitted to be on campus, she described feeling “left on [her] own without Yale’s support.”

Abramson applied for reinstatement in spring 2020 and was granted her request. However, she decided to take a leave of absence for this year due to COVID-19 and intends to return in the fall of 2021.

Frantz described the lack of support she felt from Yale throughout the medical withdrawal process — especially when she was rejected from her first reinstatement attempt.

“My dream of Yale was that I was going to get to this amazing place and excel, be the best in my particular field and that I was going to love every second of my time here,” Frantz told the News. “But the truth is, I saw all the people around me doing the things I wish I could have done at my dream school but could not because I was sick. I was not well, and I could not get the support I needed through Yale. At the end of the day, I had the realization that I had given that place my all.”

Students can find more information about Yale’s withdrawal policies in the Yale College Programs of Study.

Contact JULIA BIALEK at julia.bialek@yale.edu and AMELIA DAVIDSON at amelia.davidson@yale.edu .

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“I wear cheap shoes. I don't even wear socks.”

RODRIGO DUTERTE PRESIDENT OF THE PHILIPPINES

In-person instruction, full residential program likely in fall semester FALL UPDATE FROM PAGE 1 making these decisions based on the prediction that 70 percent of Connecticut residents will be vaccinated by the close of summer, a critical mass of the population that might allow for herd immunity. The committee is also considering how to combat vaccine hesitancy among community members, including how best to share the experiences of people who received the vaccine.

Further, the committee is discussing whether to mandate vaccinations, as Rutgers University recently announced that students are required to receive the coronavirus vaccine to return to campus. So far, Yale administrators have neither decided to do the same nor ruled it out as an option.

The committee is trying to make campus as safe as possible for everyone on it, Martinello said. Though the committee has safe and effective vaccines at its disposal, some people have medical contraindications to being vaccinated, such as severe allergies.

Martinello said the committee has to

consider this when deciding whether to mandate vaccinations at Yale.

Additionally, there are questions about the legality of mandating vaccinations. There are three coronavirus vaccines permitted for use under an FDA Emergency Use Authorization, but they have not yet received full FDA approval.

“One could say it doesn’t make sense to have three people in the same dorm suite if they’re not vaccinated,” Dean of the School of Public Health Sten Vermund said. “There may be circumstances in which we would ask people to be vaccinated in exchange for certain job descriptions or certain living circumstances.”

But Martinello said that while there is discussion about mandates, there is no “active plan” to head in that direction.

As more people get vaccinated, questions remain as to how normal circumstances will be during the fall semester and beyond. According to Salovey’s email, there is an “initiative underway to evaluate future ways of working” that aims to assess

whether some staff could continue remote work in the long term. Vermund said some people have found that they work more productively from home during the pandemic.

In a prior interview with the News, Salovey said protocols on how to limit the spread of disease might continue after the pandemic ends.

Yale might keep up some of the new ways food is prepared in the dining hall, how buildings are cleaned and for what hours they are kept open.

Additionally, he thinks there will be more telemedicine appointments at Yale Health, Yale Mental Health and Counseling and beyond.

Some public health precautions, including mask-wearing and asymptomatic testing, will continue into next year, Salovey said. He added that the University has additional contingency plans in place should public health conditions worsen.

As of now, the University is maintaining its restrictions on visitors coming to campus until at least the start of summer. Further information on Yale’s visitors

LUKAS FLIPPO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

University officials have not decided whether to mandate vaccinations ahead returning to campus for the fall semester. policy will be available later in the term, Salovey wrote.

And while the fall will see largely in-person instruction, most of Yale’s summer session courses will be offered online — although there may be some expanded in-person opportunities for people living in New Haven during the summer, according to Salovey’s email.

Students living on campus over the

summer will adhere to the same public health protocols they have followed this spring, including asymptomatic screening and contact tracing programs.

The University has had 366 cases of COVID-19 since Jan. 1, according to its coronavirus dashboard.

Contact ROSE HOROWITCH at rose.horowitch@yale.edu .

Community mourns professor Charles Hill

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Hill established the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy in 2000 with Paul Kennedy and John Lewis Gaddis.

HILL FROM PAGE 1 course on “Baseball as Grand Strategy.” Most recently, he held a firstyear seminar called “Intellectual Circles.” For a class taught specifically to alumni, he created a syllabus on the Mississippi River and how civi-

lizations formed in riverbeds, solely because he found the topic fascinating, according to Andrew Lipka ’78.

Kennedy noted that, one semester, Hill decided to teach a class on Tibet and, when pressed as to why, he remarked that “no one’s taught on [the country] and it’s such an

interesting area to teach about.”

Kelsang Dolma ’19, who advocated for the course when she was an undergraduate, recalled feeling frustrated with the lack of courses on Tibet and China. After a “serendipitous encounter” with some notes written by Hill on the topic, Dolma met with Hill a few times, after which Hill created “Tibet: An enduring Civilization.”

“My seemingly impossible dream came true,” Dolma wrote in an email to the News. “I unfailingly tear up whenever I think about how profoundly understood Hill made me feel as a student; a once in a lifetime act of kindness. Rest in peace to the best professor in the whole world.”

Along with his foreign policy service and frequent seminar inventions, Hill was also known for his openness to discussion and lack of preconceived notions.

Lipka recalls taking an expedited Directed Studies Course with Hill through an alumni program. While discussing the plague of Athens,

Lipka disagreed with a classmate’s idea as to what caused the plague, and Hill challenged him to propose his own idea.

“That night, I stayed up all night, researched, wrote a short paper and presented,” Lipka said. “[Hill] read it, sat there seriously — he was always serious — looked at me and said, ‘You’ve done it.’”

Lipka still remembers how it felt to be taken seriously by Hill, despite being “just a student.”

Lily Weisberg ‘21 wrote in an email to the News that his ability to “waste no time on preconceived notions of anything” was “the core” what made him so special.

While Weisberg acknowledged that Hill was opinionated, it was these opinions that made his classes so engaging.

“I adored him,” Weisberg said. “I am so grateful to have known him. I will really miss him.”

Although Hill stopped teaching last year, he still went to his office every day — just around a month

ago, he sent an email to Lipka reiterating that “everyone declares that I have retired, but I haven’t.”

Hill continued to go into his office until Sunday, March 21. On Tuesday, March 23 he was admitted to the hospital.

“So that pretty much means that he took one day off since he arrived in 1992,” Thompson said.

Molly Worthen ’03, Hill’s biographer for the book “The Man On Whom Nothing Was Lost,” was helping organize a retirement book alongside Justin Zaremby '03 for Hill filled with tributes from students at the time of Hill’s death.

“It’s rather amazing that he agreed to cooperate with me on the project, considering that he gave me a C- on my first DS paper,” Worthen said.

The book, entitled “A Commonplace Book for Charles Hill,” will now be a memorial and is scheduled to be published this summer.

Contact MADISON HAHAMY at madison.hahamy@yale.edu .

Harris lands in New Haven, talks childcare, ARP HARRIS FROM PAGE 1 other provisions. The bill passed the House with a 219-212 vote and the Senate with a 50-49 vote.

Harris and other prominent federal and state officials stopped by the Boys & Girls Club of New Haven and the West Haven Child Development Center on their visit.

New Haven is slated to receive at least $94 million in federal funding from the American Rescue Plan.

“We are having this conversation to be clear about the challenge and crises we are facing as a country that in many ways has been accelerated by the pandemic,” Harris said just before a roundtable discussion with state and federal leaders at the Boys & Girls Club. “This is a moment to leapfrog over what otherwise might have been incremental change. To actually fast forward and address some of the longstanding issues that have affected our children.”

Air Force Two landed at the Elm City’s Tweed Airport at approximately 2:30 p.m. on March 26.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, U.S. House Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-New Haven) and Jahana Hayes (D-Waterbury) along with the U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona greeted Harris.

According to Harris chief spokesperson Symone Sanders, the visit was also her last stop on the “Help is Here” tour. The Biden-Harris administration launched the “Help is Here” tour on March 16 to highlight how the American Rescue Plan benefits U.S. families. Administration officials previously visited Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Jacksonville and other U.S. cities in the nationwide tour.

Upon landing, Harris departed for the Boys & Girls Club of New Haven, where she offered remarks for the White House pool press before having a closed-door discussion with federal and state lead-

ers about children’s issues. Harris then answered questions from the pool press. Shortly thereafter, the vice president departed for the West Haven Child Development Center where she offered brief remarks for staff and visited a classroom of 14 three- to five-year-olds.

During that visit Peter Velz, the Director of Press Operations for the Vice President, taught the classroom of children that the proper way to pronounce Harris’s first name is “COMMA-la,” not “Ka-MA-la.”

Harris talks stimulus, policy At the Boys & Girls Club, the vice president highlighted three key areas of the American Rescue Plan: child poverty, childcare and learning loss recovery.

Harris said that the $1.9 trillion package seeks to reduce child poverty in America by half through policies such as the expanded child tax credit, which would give $3,600 per child under six and $3,000 per child between seven and 18 annually. Pre-pandemic, the credit amounted to $2,000 per child.

Local efforts in favor of the child tax credit increase long precede the American Rescue Plan. New Haven’s DeLauro has continuously advocated for the increase since first introducing a similar proposal 18 years ago. She has made frequent media appearances since and recently published a piece in TIME Magazine to promote the policy. The expanded child tax credit is currently temporary, but DeLauro stated March 26 that she is committed to making it permanent.

Harris said that investment in childcare facilities is of particular importance during the pandemic.

She noted that childcare centers not only help children but also working-class mothers and the economy more broadly.

At the West Haven center, she made similar remarks, stating that two million women have left the

workforce since the start of the pandemic and that childcare support will help women return to work.

During Harris’s visit, Lamont announced his plans to use $210 million in federal stimulus money to invest in early childcare programs statewide. Under Lamont’s plan, $50 million of the $210 million would go to the state’s Care 4 Kids program, which supports parents enrolled in higher education or a workforce training program, and another $120 million would fund “operational stabilization grants” for struggling childcare businesses.

The American Rescue Plan provides $122 billion in elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds, also known as ESSER funds — federal dollars that school districts nationwide will be able to spend on school reopening, academic acceleration and socio-emotional support for students. While at the West Haven center, Harris stated that the investment will help alleviate learning loss and address the “recent history of inadequately funding our schools.”

At the Boys & Girls Club, the roundtable of federal and state leaders discussed the increase in the number of reported cases of child neglect in Connecticut during the pandemic and the mental health toll that the emergency has had on children.

to tour the childcare center and the American Rescue Plan more broadly.

“I’m excited because [the Hill is a community] where there is Black and brown. We’ve been suffering a lot — even prior to the pandemic,” Hunt told the News. “Now there’s light at the end of the tunnel with the help that the federal government has sent our way.”

Hunt said that his constituents often suffer from food insecurity, high unemployment and housing access issues during the pandemic, adding that 25 percent of the residents in the Hill neighborhood are food insecure. He believes federal spending will help alleviate some of those issues. Hunt added that Harris’ visit shows that the New Haven community’s organizing efforts for the Biden-Harris ticket last fall were not in vain and that the administration’s stimulus package will help the community.

David Allen, an East Haven resident who saw Air Force Two at Tweed, agreed with Hunt that the American Rescue Plan has supported New Haven families. Allen told the News that he is currently unemployed but that the $1,400 stimulus check he received from the federal government has helped him pay expenses.

White House pool reporters Daniela Altimara of the Hartford Cou-

New Haveners react to Harris’s visit New Haven community members came out to the streets in droves to see the Harris’s motorcade. Some brought welcoming messages, others protest signs.

Ward 3 Alder Ron C. Hunt, who represents the Hill neighborhood where the Boys & Girls Club is located, waited at the intersection of Howard Avenue and Columbus Avenue with constituents to see the motorcade. He told the News that was excited about Harris’s decision

Harris met with state and federal leaders in the Elm City to discuss education and childcare issues on March 26.

rant and Emilie Munson of Hearst Media’s Washington Desk covered the day’s visits and recounted seeing some supporters of former President Donald Trump waving Trump 2020 flags along Harris’ motorcade route. At Tweed Airport, a Trump supporter was spotted holding an “Americans 1st” sign, in reference to Trump’s campaign slogan. The supporter later left the airport in a golf cart spray-painted in colors of the American flag.

At the Boys & Girls Club, members of Unidad Latina en Acción held a sign urging the Biden-Harris administration to immediately halt deportations. ULA Director John Lugo explained in an interview with the New Haven Register that the group’s presence was to call for action on immigration reform.

Despite having initially halted some deportations for their first 100 days in office, the Biden-Harris administration has continued to deport thousands of undocumented immigrants, a policy that has been met with nationwide controversy.

Harris’s secret service agents picked up pizzas from Sally’s Apizza in Wooster Square at around 3:30 pm. Later in the evening, they visited Zuppardi’s of West Haven.

Contact CHRISTIAN ROBLES at christian.robles@yale.edu .

LUKAS FLIPPO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

FROM THE FRONT

“You're not going to find a man whose socks don't get dirty or who doesn't snore.”

HELEN REDDY AUSTRALIAN-AMERICAN SINGER

Lamont announces list of high-risk groups to be prioritized for vaccines PRIORITIZATION FROM PAGE 1 The state is defining medically high-risk patients as residents who have a variety of conditions, including sickle cell disease, liver failure or Down syndrome. Those currently undergoing active cancer treatment or who have received a solid organ transplant are also eligible.

Patients over the age of 16 who are hospitalized at the state’s two major children’s hospitals — Connecticut Children’s Hospital and Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital — and those who live with intellectual and developmental disabilities at state institutions are also part of Lamont’s list of high-risk groups.

During Monday’s update, Lamont also mentioned a plan for Johnson & Johnson vaccination sites on college campuses in May and emphasized that amid a nationwide rebound in cases, residents should continue to comply with COVID-19 precautions.

Regarding the prioritization of high-risk groups, the state has provided no new standardization as to how hospitals and health facilities allocate vaccines to high-risk patients, aside from designating these groups as a higher priority.

“Different hospitals are going to handle this differently,” Josh Geballe, the chief operating officer for the governor, said at the press conference. “Some will do outreach directly to the patients in their system, give them some reserved appointment slots with their mass vaccination sites.

Some others may do dedicated clinics and some others may just look to vaccinate patients as they come through for their normal appointments over the next week or two.”

According to Geballe, the vast majority of the high-risk patients have already received

the vaccine, given that many are over the age of 45. But he said there are about 10,000 high-risk Connecticut residents who are below the age of 45 and have not yet been vaccinated.

The governor’s list of highr i s k pa t i e n ts o m i ts several groups of people who are included on the CDC’s list of people with underlying medical conditions. This includes people living with HIV, diabetes, dementia and cerebrovascular disease. It also includes individuals with heart conditions such as heart failure and coronary artery disease.

Geballe responded to the concern by stating the list of highrisk patients was devised with the consultation of chief medical officers at numerous hospitals, who created the state’s classification based on who they “felt [was] most worthy.” He also stressed that a person with a condition that is not on the list can still make an appointment starting April 1 through the normal process.

“I wouldn’t overread or worry too much if your condition is not on that list,” Geballe said. “It’s just a little extra invitation from hospitals for certain severely ill people to make it a little easier on them to get in.”

Geballe also clarified that medical providers are able to add people with different conditions to their list of prioritized patients.

During Monday’s update, Lamont said the state hopes to set up vaccine sites on college campuses statewide in May before students disperse for summer break, over a month after they will be eligible for a vaccine appointment. These clinics are scheduled to offer the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Even as vaccinations are underway, Lamont called on the state’s university students to continue

REGINA SUNG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

New Haven County COVID-19 cases are rising faster than nearby areas, with hospitalizations up 40 percent from Mar. 19. acting responsibly amid the ongoing public health crisis.

In response to a question at the press conference about a recent party the police reported at the University of Connecticut, Lamont emphasized that now is an especially important time for college students to comply with social distancing protocols.

“We got a little spring fever, because it’s been a very long year,” Lamont said. “I can’t say firmly enough that we can make an enormous difference for the rest of the summer and the rest of the year going forward if we keep our guard up a little bit longer. That’s especially true of the young people who are ready to party and ready to let it rip a little bit.”

These precautions matter even more in the New Haven County area, Geballe said. The area has recently seen a more significant rise in cases than neighboring counties. New Haven County currently has 211 COVID-19 hospitalizations, up 40 percent from March 19. Fairfield County, which currently has the second most hospitalizations in the state behind New Haven County, saw a 16 percent rise over the same amount of time.

“The valley area is a bit of a hot spot right now,” Geballe said. “A lot of those individuals end up at Yale-New Haven. It’s an important area for people to be taking proper precautions to get that back down.”

While Lamont emphasized the need for caution as vaccinations move forward, he said the state will be able to “manage” any “fourth wave” of the virus that the Centers for Disease Control warned about this week as case counts rebound nationwide.

But Lamont said he thinks the state’s quick vaccination efforts would be enough to hold off a dangerous spike, especially since the state’s most vulnerable have already been vaccinated.

All adults 16 and over in Connecticut will be able to make a vaccine appointment starting April 1.

Contact ALVARO PERPULY at alvaro.perpuly@yale.edu and OWEN TUCKER-SMITH at owen.tucker-smith@yale.edu .

What to know before receiving a COVID-19 vaccine GUIDE FROM PAGE 1 bring a mask, their insurance card, Yale or otherwise, and a photo ID. Individuals should not schedule appointments at more than one vaccination site.

Students should make sure to receive and keep safe their vaccine card, which they will likely have to show for their second vaccine dose appointment for the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.

Individuals are expected to return to the same clinic or location at which they got their first dose to get their second, keeping in mind that Pfizer vaccine doses are taken 21 days apart, and Moderna vaccine doses are taken 28 days apart. People between the ages of 16 and 17 are only eligible for the Pfizer vaccine.

Due to a low supply of vaccines from the state and allocation priorities for high-risk individuals, Yale has urged students to pursue vaccine opportunities offered outside the University.

According to the CDC, individuals are not considered fully vaccinated until two weeks have passed since their final vaccine dose, meaning a second Pfizer or Moderna dose or a single Johnson and Johnson dose.

There are four principal ways for newly-eligible Yale community members — including most students — to get the vaccine: through Yale Health, the Yale New Haven Hospital, the state of Connecticut and local pharmacies.

Some locations will list which vaccines they provide, allowing students some say in the vaccine they will receive — all of which have extremely high efficacy.

Student Health Chief Christine Chen ’93 wrote in an email to Yale students that “the most effective vaccine is the one that gets into your arm.”

Through the Yale program On Thursday, students will receive an email with a MyChart link to schedule an appointment at the Lanman Center. Spangler noted in an email to the News that to accommodate significant demand, appointments will not open all at once, but will likely become available throughout the day on April 1 and the following days.

Once students have received an invitation, they may routinely check the Yale Program website for available slots until they are able to schedule an appointment. A student may

also reschedule or cancel an appointment through MyChart by clicking the “Visits” tab and following the instructions under “Appointments."

Yalies should receive an email confirmation upon making their appointment and also upon rescheduling.

Yale New Haven Health has posted an instructional video outlining these steps via the MyChart mobile app.

Vaccine appointments will generally last 15 to 20 minutes. After receiving a dose, an individual will be placed in an observation area for 15 minutes before leaving. During an individual’s time at the clinic, they should receive instructions on how to schedule an appointment for the second dose.

Through Yale New Haven Hospital Yale Health and Yale New Haven Hospital have separate vaccination programs. Those eligible also have the option of signing up through the hospital’s program.

To schedule an appointment through the hospital, students should use the hospital’s website and check for availability. On the site, they have the option of making an appointment as a guest or through a MyChart account.

YNHH also provides a calendar that lists the network’s locations and the types of vaccines — Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson — available at each site. YNHH will operate sites throughout the state of Connecticut, but appointments should only be made for locations to which patients can return for a second dose.

Through the state of Connecticut The CDC’s Vaccine Administration Management System, or VAMS, helps residents of any state schedule vaccine appointments. Connecticut residents can refer to the state-specific online vaccine portal in order to find testing sites near them. After filling out a form at the above link, eligible Connecticut residents will receive a confirmation email with a link to VAMS that allows them to book an appointment at clinics throughout the state. Instructions on how to create a VAMS account can be found on the Connecticut Department of Public Health’s website.

VAMS periodically updates their website with sign-up slots as appointments become available, so routinely checking the website after submitting one’s information and confirming one’s identity can help residents

find an appointment. Insurance is not required to use VAMS. The state of Connecticut’s website also has a resource page for residents to enter their zip code for compiled local resources on getting vaccinated.

Yalies who are not in New Haven but are eligible for the vaccine in their state can also use the VAMS platform to find local vaccination clinics.

At local pharmacies Walmart, Walgreens, CVS and local New Haven pharmacies all have opportunities for New Haveners to get vaccinated. The vaccine is free of charge, but some locations may require insurance to schedule appointments.

Since students are automatically enrolled in Yale Health’s basic health care plan, they can present their Yale insurance cards if asked, downloadable on the Yale Health website.

As with the other methods, pharmacy websites automatically update frequently and are worth monitoring. Some offer opportunities to sign up for email alerts to receive notifications of available slots.

Other local New Haven pharmacies are also receiving doses. Calling or going to the businesses to check are also options to secure a vaccine. *** Students will have multiple opportunities throughout the remainder of the semester to schedule appointments through the various methods listed above. Lamont said in Monday’s press conference that the state plans to provide single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine opportunities geared towards college campuses statewide in May before students head home for summer break.

“We are hopeful and anticipate getting vaccines, specifically Johnson and Johnson in early May specifically for students,” Spangler wrote in an email to the News. “As this is a onedose vaccine, it is possible they can still be vaccinated by the end of the semester. This is not confirmed as of today, but we do expect it.”

About 97.6 million Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine as of Wednesday, according to the CDC.

REGINA SUNG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

All three authorized vaccines — Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson — are highly effective, according to the CDC.

Contact ÁNGELA PÉREZ at angela.perez@yale.edu .

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

ARTS Yale Cabaret presents ‘Expats Anonymous’ in collaboration with Singaporean artists

BY TANIA TSUNIK STAFF REPORTER Last weekend, the Yale Cabaret’s Company of Cab 53 presented a virtual play called “Expats Anonymous” in collaboration with artists from Singapore. The show addressed topics of immigration, belonging and survival in the midst of a pandemic, specifically tackling issues of systemic classism and racism within the Singaporean immigrant community.

“Expats Anonymous” was proposed and written by Malaysian-Singaporean playwright and actor Rachel Chin. It tells the story of a young Malaysian-Chinese woman named Annie who faces the prospect of deportation from Singapore as an unemployed expatriate during the pandemic.

She is forced to compete with other immigrants for a single job opening and the chance to stay.

“This play is a story of one person, but it’s a reality for too many people,” Chin said. “The more I was researching the topic, the more I was struck and angered by how little discussion and transparency there is regarding the expats’ integration process.”

Chin is a multilingual actor, singer, playwright, model and emcee based in Malaysia and Singapore. The show was inspired by the real-life experiences of Chin’s Thai housemate during the lockdown in Singapore. During that time, Chin’s housemate lost her job and was unable to find another one due to new governmental policies favoring local inhabitants. Eventually, she was forced to return to Thailand.

According to Chin, both the pandemic and inadequate governmental support drove many people out of Singapore. These people had been living in the country for years

and had families, friends, and jobs — they only “lacked a birth certificate.” Chin wanted to bring public attention to these issues.

Chin knew Cab member Thomas Pang DRA ’23 from their undergraduate experience together at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. During the lockdown, Chin met other Cab members at Shakespearean play readings organized by Pang. She proposed the play to the Cab in November and completed the script in January. Chin and the Cab then put togethera team of Yale students — including director Alex Keegan DRA ’22 — and Singaporean actors and dramaturgs.

Cab team members noted how important it was to “give voice” to the expat community and immigrant experiences.

“Being an immigrant is like trying to endure an emergency water landing: assimilation is

my life vest, and my cultural identity is the baggage I’m asked to leave behind to survive,” said Miguel Urbino DRA ’23, a scenario designer of the play.

Because many team members were in different time zones, scheduling rehearsals and performances was challenging.

“We had a total of five weeks rehearsal process, so it required us a real Herculean effort to scramble everything together in such a short amount of time,” Chin said. “We all had to remain in constant communication with each other, that’s why I am so thankful that I found this team.

Without their help and support, there would be no show.”

Following every performance, there was a live talkback that invited the audience to engage in discussions about immigration, systemic racism, classism and policy responses to the pandemic.

The team’s main goal was for the play to resonate with those who struggle to be accepted in their homes as well as to highlight the “nuances of privilege and disempowerment” in expat communities. Members also wanted to stress the importance of connectedness in times of hardship.

“If there was one thought that I could have my audience walk away with, it’s that we, as individuals, are stronger together,” Chin said. “Within a system, one person can’t do very much. But if everyone stands together, and we defend each other, and we work with each other, then we can change so many things about the world that we live in.”

“Dear 2020, With Love: A Euphoric Play,” the next Yale Cab show of the season, is set to premiere on April 15.

Contact TANIA TSUNIK at tania.tsunik@yale.edu .

RACHEL CHIN/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Schola Cantorum presents four virtual performances for Holy Week

BY MARISOL CARTY STAFF REPORTER Throughout this week, the Yale Schola Cantorum is releasing four virtual choir recordings to celebrate Holy Week and Easter.

The Yale Schola Cantorum, sponsored by the Institute of Sacred Music, is a chamber choir composed of students from different departments and professional schools across the University. In order to celebrate Holy Week — the week leading up to Easter — the ensemble released a recording on Monday and will release three more on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

The recordings will be available on the choir’s Facebook page and YouTube channel.

“Participating in virtual performances is definitely only a fraction of what it’s like to perform live, but what’s amazing about our Schola productions is that it nearly sounds as though we were together once all the audio files are combined,” Deborah Stephens MUS ’22, a member of the choir, said. “We have a fantastic sound engineer and stellar singers that make it possible.”

Performances this week feature works by a range of composers from the 16th to 20th century, including female composers Raffaella Aleotti and Amy Beach, as well as Black composer David Hurd.

Schola member Chris Talbot MUS ’21 explained that this year, Schola members and leadership championed lesser-performed works from different time peri-

ods. They are doing so this week by programming works by Aleotti and Beach, who Talbot said were “wonderfully talented composers largely ignored during their time.”

According to Stephens, the Schola’s primary goal in selecting the variety of composers was to introduce more diversity and representation into their programming. Yet the composers are united in their common “penchant and passion” for writing choral music.

“While each piece is different, I think each work is united by their deep emotional character,” Talbot said. “In the Christian Church, Holy Week marks the end of Lent, a period of quiet, solemn reflection, and this time and the emotions that

surround it have inspired composers for centuries. In this way it’s fascinating to see how composers from different eras have approached these same themes in strikingly different ways.”

The choir has not been able to meet in person during this academic year. According to Stephens, the group is optimistic about rehearsing in person this fall, but this possibility will ultimately depend on safety guidelines from the CDC and the university.

To put the recorded performances together, each singer made an a cappella rendering of their part while listening to a click track, with piano accompaniment, of the piece in their headphones.

The choir’s sound engineer then edited the videos together.

COURTESY OF ROBERT LISAK

Talbot noted that putting together recorded performances can be more time consuming than live performances.

“Singing in virtual performances is taxing but very rewarding,” Talbot said. “While in a live performance small mistakes can be easily ignored, they seem especially significant when recording a part for a virtual choir, and you don’t want to let your fellow singers down with a subpar performance. Because of that, it’s not uncommon to record five or even 10 takes of a five-minute piece before landing on the best one.”

The Schola Cantorum was founded in 2003.

Contact MARISOL CARTY at marisol.carty@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Reina Maruyama speaks at STEM and Social Inclusion Event

BY ANJALI MANGLA STAFF REPORTER Reina Maruyama, associate professor of physics and astronomy, spoke at the third event of the STEM and Social Inclusion lecture series on Tuesday.

Organized by Jacqueline Tanaka, associate director of STEM student success, the series aims to expose students from underrepresented backgrounds to faculty mentors in STEM with similar backgrounds. Students involved in STEM research are invited to host each event, and are also able to ask the professor questions after their presentation.

During Tuesday’s talk, Maruyama talked about her life from birth in Japan to getting her bachelor’s degree in Applied Physics from Columbia University and her doctorate from the University of Washington. She also spoke about her role now as a physics professor at Yale, where she oversees three projects in the South Pole, Italy and South Korea.

“As I was studying physics I wasn’t really thinking about being underrepresented,” Maruyama said. “When I went to Columbia as an undergraduate student, I was so excited to be surrounded by many Asian American students. I was really excited to study and I was excited to be myself, and to do something with my life. As an undergrad, I actually was the only woman in the physics major and in some of the courses I was taking.”

Maruyama found that when she moved to the West Coast to pursue her graduate studies, she found a larger Asian American community that she could resonate with as compared to her undergraduate years. During this part of her life, she said, she found that her Asian American identity superseded her identity as a woman in STEM.

Maruyama moved from Japan to the United States at the age of 12, which in turn made the transition to a predominantly white town like New Canaan, Connecticut, all the more challenging.

M a r u ya m a p ra i s e d t h e recruitment of scientists to the Yale Physics Department in the talk. In such a male-dominated field like physics, Maruyama said she appreciates Yale’s

ANJALI MANGLA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

“The school was virtually all white, the whole town,” Maruyama said. “There were a few students of color, a few East Asian families, and so I was friends with many of them. It was tough going to middle school and high school at that time.

I actually didn’t speak any English, so there were a lot of things coming together at that time that made that time pretty difficult. It was a process for me to be aware of going from being an Asian to becoming an Asian American.”

commitment to the inclusion of more female physicists within the department, in comparison to other elite universities.

Maruyama attributed this conscious recruitment within the Physics Department to professor of physics and astronomy Meg Urry, who was the former chair of the Physics Department from 2007 to 2013.

Urry reached out to Maruyama and offered her a position at Yale in 2013.

“The fact that Meg Urry was the chair and she was very much invested in diversity and inclusion in the Department and in the University and in the field of physics overall, all those things were definitely a part of my decision to come to Yale,” Maruyama said.

Tanaka said she found Maruyama’s journey to be very fascinating, after the talk. One thing she noticed in her presentation was that in all of Maruyama’s photos, Maruyama was constantly surrounded by her friends and a strong support system.

According to Tanaka, keeping friends close and having a support network when studying a difficult discipline like physics is important.

“She is a person who really has a tremendous number of friends and colleagues,” Tanaka said.

“The smallest research team of hers is 25, and the largest one is hundreds of people. So, at the end, we said that one of the lessons we could draw from her talk was that you need to hug your friends and listen to your friends and keep them close. That’s how you get through tough times.”

Charnice Hoegnifioh ’24, a student who attended the event, has gone to previous events during the STEM and Social Inclusion series. She said that she learned a lot about Maruyama’s field and also felt empowered as a woman of color starting out in the STEM field.

Hoegnifioh said she plans on attending future talks, as the professional mentors provide a way for students to learn how to overcome challenges within the field.

“The event with Dr. Maruyama was wonderful,” Hoegnifioh said.

“As a female, person of color and first-year student researcher, it was incredible to hear about Dr. Maruyama’s journey in astrophysics. I came away from her

talk with not only a deeper understanding of astrophysics, dark matter and neutrinos, but also with much-needed knowledge on how to overcome challenges and persevere in STEM fields.”

Maruyama is currently leading three international projects that are a part of the search for the basis of dark matter: COSINE-100 in South Korea, DM-Ice at the South Pole and CUORE, located in Italy. She is also involved in the HAYSTAC collaboration at Yale — which is exploring the possibility that dark matter is composed of particles called axions.

With the Atlanta spa shootings occurring a week before the event, Tanaka opened the talk by honoring the women who had been killed by reading the list of names of the Asian women who were killed.

Tanaka thought it was important to acknowledge ongoing social injustice while opening a talk about STEM and Social Inclusion, as Maruyama’s own Asian heritage was so important to her journey. Tanaka’s daughter is also Japanese American, which was another motivating factor for her to address the recent racial trauma.

“It’s not just the social identity in STEM, it really is about being an Asian American woman in STEM, on a week where, a week after, horrific things happened to Asian women,” Tanaka said. “I felt it was really important to say the names of the women who had died.”

The next STEM and Social Inclusion speaker is Larry Gladney, the Phyllis A. Wallace dean of diversity and faculty development and professor of physics, who will give a talk on April 6.

Contact ANJALI MANGLA at anjali.mangla@yale.edu .

YSPH study finds that Black Medicare patients have higher 10-year death rate after strokes

BY ANJALI MANGLA STAFF REPORTER A study conducted by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health found that 76.4 percent of Black Medicare patients die during the 10 years after a stroke event, in comparison to the 75.4 percent death rate for white patients, 70.3 percent death rate for people of other races or ethnic groups and 75 percent overall death rate among Medicare patients.

The study, led by Judith Lichtman MPH ’88 PhD ’96, department chair of chronic disease epidemiology, utilized data from national feefor-service Medicare billing claims of patients over 65 years of age who were discharged from the hospital with a diagnosis of ischemic stroke — which is caused by an artery

blockage that prevents blood flow to the brain. The dataset spanned 2005 to 2016 and described the information of 744,044 Medicare beneficiaries. The study’s results highlight the racial disparities in the treatment of ischemic stroke, indicating that even after adjusting for comorbidities, Black people have a higher risk of dying within 10 years of a stroke.

“When we started to look at it over time, we noticed that this separation by race really seemed to happen within the first year [after stroke],” Lichtman said.

“So, really, early in the recovery, it looked like there seemed to be these differences with a little bit of a higher mortality for Black patients who had an ischemic stroke. After adjusting for all of these comorbidities, we found

Lichtman said the study’s results have the potential to inform important policy decisions. She emphasized the importance of ensuring that all elderly patients can equitably access resources for effective prevention of comorbidities and other complications that can arise from an acute stroke event, especially in the first year following the event.

“I think what it shows us is that we often think of the acute stroke event, but I think this is telling us that that early recovery period in the first year is really important,” Lichtman said.

“And I think it gives us clues that we really need to look at whether or not there are differences in utilization and access to care in the first year after having an ischemic stroke.

By that I mean, do we have facilities being accessed equally? Are people going for their neurology visits? Are people going to their appointments for secondary prevention? There must be something in that early window of care that really sets somebody up for their longterm trajectory.”

Lichtman’s team of research scientists who analyzed the data for the study included Erica Leifheit GRD ’10 and graduate student Andrew Arakaki MPH ’20.

Arakaki emphasized that the study revealed racial differences in survival that were evident within the first year of follow-up, which indicates that race differences in secondary prevention and rehabilitation services immediately following discharge may impact long-term survival experiences for Black patients.

“This study underscores the need to better understand contributors of racial disparities in long-term mortality following ischemic stroke beyond sociodemoJESSIE CHEUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

there was an increased risk of about 4 percent higher for Blacks, so the risk of dying at 10 years was 4 percent higher for Blacks as compared to whites.”

The study graphed survival curves, which showed the survival rates of patients from discharge to 10 years after their stroke, according to Lichtman. These curves of survivorship were shown to separate early, with the white survival curve tracking higher than that of Black patients, and this trend continued throughout the 10-year period.

Lichtman explained that these results indicate that there is something going on in the first year following the stroke that might set the differing trajectories for Black and white patients in motion.

graphic and clinical characteristics,” Arakaki wrote in an email to the News. “There could be differences in healthcare utilization or care seeking behaviors that drive these differences.”

This study was among the first United States-based studies that aimed to assess the 10-year outcome in terms of mortality following ischemic stroke in elderly patients, according to Arakaki. Lichtman said that many other investigations study stroke as an acute event and look at its impacts in the short term, but it is also important to analyze outcomes of strokes after a few years.

Lichtman said that the study’s results demonstrate the need to “dig deeper” into the level of care that stroke survivors receive within the first year after their medical incident.

Another collaborator, Larry Goldstein, is a neurologist at the University of Kentucky who worked on the clinical context of the study and aided with data interpretation.

Goldstein and Arakaki were not too surprised by the results.

According to Arakaki, the overall 10-year mortality rate in the study was consistent with rates observed in international cohorts of elderly adults. However, both researchers said most of these studies were done in racially homogenous European populations.

“African Americans have a higher burden of stroke than Americans from other self-identified race-ethnic groups,” Goldstein wrote in an email to the News. “Continuing to aggressively address opportunities for primary and secondary prevention are important strategies.”

The study was funded by the American Heart Association and the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health.

Contact ANJALI MANGLA at anjali.mangla@yale.edu .

PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

“You choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color.” GARY OLDMAN ACTOR

Pedestrian struck on Chapel and High Street

JILLY MEHLMAN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The intersection of Chapel and High Street, where a woman was hit by a pickup truck on Tuesday.

BY RAZEL SUANSING AND ISAAC YU STAFF REPORTERS At around 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, a 31-year-old woman was hit by a pickup truck at the intersection of

Chapel and High Street in front of the Yale University Art Gallery.

According to New Haven Police Department spokesperson Anthony Duff, Robert H. Stallings, the pickup truck operator, was

traveling west on Chapel Street when he drove through the intersection when he struck the crossing pedestrian. The police arrived on the scene shortly after the incident. The victim was immediately loaded into an ambulance and taken to Yale New Haven Health.

A NHPD dispatch officer told the News that just after 3 p.m. that the victim was conscious and alert, having sustained a head laceration and internal injuries.

“Preliminary indications are the injuries to the pedestrian are non-life threatening,” Duff told the News.

Stallings, a 66-year-old man from West Haven, stopped his truck and remained at the scene for questioning, Duff said. In a NHPD press release on Wednesday, Duff indicated that Stallings failed a field sobriety test at the scene. NHPD’s

investigation found Stallings at fault for driving under the influence.

Police temporarily blocked off Chapel Street from its intersection at College Street before permitting through traffic. Traffic continued to flow on High Street, but the section of Chapel Street between High and York Streets was closed following the incident. The street was cleared by Tuesday evening.

For the last two weeks, Chapel and High Street intersection has temporarily operated as a stop sign intersection, with temporary signs posted between lanes of incoming traffic from both oneway streets. The New Haven Independent reported that the temporary signs were placed after the stoplight system at the intersection suffered a technical failure.

Brand new pedestrian signal lights were installed at the Chapel and High

Street intersection last year, but they have not yet been turned on. The lights will be activated sometime this year as part of a larger upgrade of pedestrian infrastructure across Downtown, according to Director of Transportation, Traffic and Parking Douglas Hausladen ’04. This intersection has not previously had pedestrian signals.

The police officers transported Stallings to the Union Avenue Detention Center and later released him on misdemeanor summons.

Stallings is due to appear in New Haven Superior Court on June 1.

The incident comes two weeks after a fatal accident at the intersection of Chapel and Temple Street.

Contact RAZEL SUANSING at razel.suansing@yale.edu and ISAAC YU at isaac.yu@yale.edu .

Free bus services coming to New Haven this summer

BY ALVARO PERPULY AND ISAAC YU STAFF REPORTERS Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont announced Tuesday that he will instruct CT Transit to provide free, statewide bus transportation on weekends over the summer.

Free bus services will be available beginning on May 31, the start of Memorial Day weekend, and continuing until Sept. 6, Labor Day. The Connecticut Department of Transportation plans to use up to $3 million procured from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act to support the program across all systems operated

by CT Transit, including New Haven-area bus routes. This change, announced at a press conference for the Transportation and Climate Initiative, is part of the state’s ongoing effort to provide economic relief amid the pandemic.

“To help support our economic recovery from the pandemic, I want to make Connecticut’s many

attractions and businesses reachable by as many of our residents as possible.” Lamont wrote in a press release. “Implementing free weekend bus service this summer — the busiest time of tourism season — will help facilitate that.”

According to 2015 data on American car ownership, approximately 30 percent of New Haven residents do not own a car. Lamont hopes this effort will also help these residents who rely on public transportation, adding that he would like to see “less people in cars.”

Joyce Goodman, an Elm City resident who identifies as handicapped, told the News she is happy to hear about the free bus travel on summer weekends. Goodman said she frequently uses the bus to travel from her home on State Street near Hamden to downtown New Haven to “enjoy New Haven.”

“I like the scenery. I meet some nice people.” Goodman told the News while waiting for a bus at the New Haven Green. “I like just sit-

ting around sometimes and enjoy the atmosphere of the place.”

This announcement is a part of Lamont’s latest push to expand statewide bus services. Lamont’s recent state biennium budget proposals for 2022 and 2023 provide $1,169,634 each year to extend operational hours for 19 New Haven area bus service routes to 1 a.m., which officials hope will benefit commuting workers as the economy recovers.

With many of Yale Shuttle’s routes operating on weekdays only, free bus services on the weekend could encourage Yale Summer Session students or those pursuing internships on or around campus to venture further out into the city.

Ramsay Goyal ’24, who is planning on pursuing a summer internship in the city, told the News that free public transportation would improve his mobility throughout the city. Adult all-day bus passes currently cost $3.50, and single fares cost $1.75.

“The city’s bus fare is one of the biggest barriers right now, since

I’m a Yale student with the free Yale Shuttle as an option,” Goyal said. “I’m definitely more likely to use services if they are free.”

Additional funding for state transportation services are on their way. The Federal Transportation Administration announced on Monday that approximately $120 million in federal monies

will be allocated to New Haven-area transit systems through the recently passed American Rescue Plan.

CT Transit was founded in 1976.

Contact ALVARO PERPULY at alvaro.perpuly@yale.edu and ISAAC YU at isaac.yu@yale.edu .

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Lamont said bus rides will be free this summer as the state looks to boost its pandemic-hit economy.

New Haven residents slam Yale, defend library in budget hearing

BY OWEN TUCKER-SMITH STAFF REPORTER As the city debates Mayor Justin Elicker’s proposed fiscal year 2021-22 budget, New Haveners are continuing to slam Yale University for what they see as lacking financial contributions to the city.

Elm City residents shared their views on the budget at a Tuesday evening Board of Alders Finance Committee public hearing. The proposed budget, published by Elicker on March 1, includes two possible scenarios. The first is a proposal for a “Crisis Budget,” which would lead to cuts to various city services and a tax hike on New Haven residents. The other is a “Forward Together Budget,” which does not change funding for city services — but would only be possible if New Haven receives additional funds from the state of Connecticut and the University. At the hearing, New Haven residents said that to achieve much-needed progress on issues like housing, climate justice and public safety — and to avoid service cuts through the Crisis Budget — Yale needs to pay more.

“I love the Edgewood neighborhood where I live,” New Haven resident Joelle Fishman said in her testimony. “Neighbors have looked out for each other with food supplies, snow shoveling, all kinds of mutual aid.

And we should expect no less from our largest neighbor and employer, Yale University, and Yale New Haven Hospital. That’s why I join with my neighbors in every part of New Haven to send a loud and clear message that it’s not okay to hoard millions and expect families like mine to pick up their tab so the city can function.”

60 percent of the city’s property is tax-exempt due to the presence of Yale, YNHH and other nonprofits. While recent legislation passed through the Connecticut General Assembly may aid cities like New Haven with tiered Payment in Lieu of Taxes funding — and works towards the mayor’s goal of adopting the Forward Together Budget — frustrated New Haveners testifying on Tuesday were adamant that payments from Yale would help the city afford essential services.

In a statement to the News, University spokesperson Karen Peart noted that Yale’s contribution to the city has risen recently.

“We have historically raised our voluntary payment over the years when the city has hit financial difficulties,” Peart wrote. “It has grown to $13m for FY21, which is close to a 50% increase from just a few years ago. The university also pays about $5 million annually in property taxes on non-academic properties through its community investment program,

KAREN LIN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

At a Tuesday hearing, New Haven residents discussed the city’s two budgets and largely said that Yale needs to pay more.

making Yale among the top three real estate taxpayers in New Haven.”

Pushing the legislative agenda The Board of Alders passed a legislative agenda at the beginning of the month establishing five core issues for City Hall to focus on, including protecting the environment and establishing public safety. In testimonies at the hearing, residents urged the committee to consider the importance of several agenda items, and to think about how the University’s lack of contribution impacts New Haven’s ability to achieve progress in these areas.

Five New Haveners’ testimonies on Tuesday night focused on the environment. Those speaking emphasized the urgency of climate change, and said that if the Elm City does not properly invest in climate infrastructure, it will be in trouble.

New Havener Kiana Flores said the city should consider enacting New Haven Climate Movement’s “Climate Justice and Green Jobs Fund” idea, which would allocate 0.2 percent of the city’s budget toward climate projects that cut carbon emissions.

“We can’t wait another year for adequate climate funding,” she said. “The youth of New Haven are looking toward the city to take the action we so desperately need.”

New Haven resident Eluned Li noted that between 1980 and 2018, the U.S. experienced 213 climate disasters. As the city considers its priorities, she said, it needs to invest in climate-positive actions — like localizing energy generation and boosting education.

Moreover, she said that to fulfil the city’s needs, Yale needs to help.

“Yale University thrives financially, sprawled across the city and occupying valuable land,” Li said. “They publish better than most schools in the field of climate change, public health and socio-economic conditions, but don’t seem keen to pay their share to help see these issues resolved.”

Manuel Camacho, youth president of local youth anti-violence organization Ice the Beef, empha-

sized the importance of public safety in the city, especially during the coronavirus pandemic.

“I am out here trying to bring opportunities to the youth wherever I go,” he said. “However, it’s frustrating to contribute such vast amounts of hard work, and know that Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital aren’t contributing their fair share, even when our city is in a crisis. If these institutions paid their fair share, we could fund our priorities like safety and education, and help end the cycle of violence that so many of our friends and families fall victim to.”

Mitchell Library — a “gem” Many of those who did not testify on legislative issues turned their attention to a potential Crisis Budget cut: the closing of Westville’s Mitchell Library. Under Elicker’s budget proposal, Mitchell Library would need to close if New Haven does not receive an additional $53 million in funding from the state and Yale.

Lauren Anderson, vice president of the New Haven Free Public Library’s Board of Directors, said that current times require cities to “fortify” library systems, not eliminate them.

“Budgets are moral documents,” Anderson said. “The treatment of our libraries by those documents speaks deeply to our shared values.

For every $1 spent on public libraries nationally, roughly $5 are returned to their communities. Without question, investing in our libraries is investing in the long-term well-being of our city and its people.”

Charles Asner, who lives in Westville and has autism, said libraries are particularly important to those with disabilities.

“People depend on public libraries not only as a source of literacy and learning, which is important, unquestionably, but also as a means of connecting with the community through things like art galleries and science lectures,” Asner said in his testimony. “Libraries like Mitchell provide a forum for all sorts of cultural exchanges.”

Asner added another concern: Removal of a library branch creates a vacuum in the library system. After the proposed budget was released at the beginning of the month, City Librarian John Jessen noted that if Mitchell was shut down, the west side of the city would not have a library.

Yale’s potential Elicker has not yet provided any public update on the status of his conversations with the University regarding Yale’s contributions to the city, though on March 1 he said he was “cautiously optimistic” about obtaining additional funds from the University.

In his testimony, longtime New Haven resident Charli Taylor said the concerns fellow residents had expressed — from the environment to housing — come down to a lack of funds.

“These kinds of choices — libraries, dealing with pollutants, or housing and jobs, they shouldn’t be choices that any of us have to make,” Taylor said. “It’s the funding. We can only bleed so much, and we have this institution that has an incredible amount of wealth in New Haven, constantly growing that wealth and not giving back in a way that we can all see.”

Melissa Chambers said she has worked on the front lines at Yale New Haven Hospital since the beginning of the pandemic. She’s gone from working part time to now being a clinical receptionist at the hospital.

“I’m committed to growing and learning the skills that I need to have a successful career,” Chambers said.

“In return, I should have the stability of owning my home, access to health care and a stable retirement. Many New Haven residents across our city deserve these services as well, so we need investment in our city — the commitment from large employees like Yale University to win a recovery that helps uplift all of our residents.”

The Board of Alders’ deadline to vote on the budget is early May. Contact OWEN TUCKER-SMITH at owen.tucker-smith@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 9

“No one wants to see a boring tube sock.”

ROB KARDASHIAN AMERI-

CAN TELEVISION PERSONALITY

New Haven street sweeping season resumes in April

BY ISAAC YU STAFF REPORTER Coming soon to your neighborhood: Pelican and Tornado, a pair of street-sweeping machines that will keep New Haven’s roads clean.

On Wednesday, officials kicked off New Haven’s annual street sweeping season at a press event behind the Department of Public Works. On display were the pair of street-sweeping machines that will be visiting each New Haven neighborhood to remove salt, leaves and other debris from roads. This year, their operations will span from April 1 to Nov. 30. Officials also said that they are counting on New Haven residents who use streetside parking to move their cars before street sweeping sessions.

“We’re really trying to get the word out about how important it is for street sweeping to happen,” Mayor Justin Elicker said. “It keeps our city streets clean, and it’s also good for the environment.”

The mechanical sweeper Pelican is a new addition to the DPW and cost $225,000 as an upgrade from an older machine, according to DPW director Jeff Pescosolido. Pelican will work with its teammate Tornado, a broomand-air sweeper, to reduce runoff water pollution and beautify streetscapes. Last year, DPW removed 2,000 tons of debris from city roads.

Pelican and Tornado’s first destination on Thursday will be Wooster Square. According to DPW’s full street sweeping schedule, the machines will make monthly visits to each of their 14 routes, which are roughly divided by neighborhood.

They will clear the streets of winter salt, sand residue, motor vehicle oil and fall leaves.

“The city of New Haven is very proactive in keeping our streets clean — [all] 231 miles,” said Pescosolido.

In addition to reviewing the schedule, residents should go onto the city’s website and sign up to receive emergency alert notifica-

tions about street sweeping via text and email so they know when to move their cars, Elicker said. These alerts, which include information about other services like snow plowing, will supplement the use of large, red-lettered paper signs that are posted at sweeping sites 24 hours in advance.

Emergency Operations Director Rick Fontana said that the emergency alerts will consist of short, simplified texts this year in response to resident feedback.

“Sign up for alerts, stay on top of the street sweeping season,” Director of Transportation, Traffic and Parking Doug Hausladen ’04 said.

“Talk to your neighbors, talk to the folks on your street and let them know that street sweeping is here.”

This season will also see the continuation of a “no-tow” policy that the city established last September.

Previously, car owners who failed to move their cars during a street sweeping session would receive

a $50 ticket and an $89 towing fee, in addition to any storage fees imposed by towing companies.

Now, offending cars will not be towed, and owners will instead receive a $100 ticket, reducing the overall cost to residents as well as the stress of retrieving their possessions.

“People don’t have to race across town to try to find their

car,” Elicker said. “The idea is that [this system] is easier, but there’s still a real incentive [to move their cars].”

The New Haven Department of Public Works is located at 34 Middletown Ave. Contact ISAAC YU at isaac.yu@yale.edu .

ISAAC YU/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Pelican and Tornado are the two new street-sweeping machines that help to keep New Haven’s streets clean.

Nation’s first FEMA mobile vaccination unit coming to New Haven

BY MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO AND OWEN TUCKER-SMITH STAFF REPORTERS The first mobile vaccination unit in the nation, supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, will arrive in New Haven on April 8, following a 10-day stay in Bridgeport. This FEMA unit — which will vaccinate state residents with the one-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine — will stay in the Elm City for two days and return for two days in May. The mobile vaccination unit is part of a federal effort to “support jurisdictions in providing COVID19 vaccinations” and increase accessibility to the shots, according to a March 26 FEMA press release. Following its Monday launch in Bridgeport, the unit, which travels through a van, is scheduled to make its way across the Nutmeg State, stopping twice in New Haven and visiting 17 municipalities over the course of two months. Other vans will be deployed

to other states across the country according to FEMA. The press release outlines that destinations were selected based on the CDC’s social vulnerability index, the U.S. census bureau’s community resilience estimates and other metrics that indicate low vaccine coverage or other barriers to vaccine access.

“FEMA has supplied the [mobile vaccination unit] and the state is providing everything else,” Harry Leo Skinner, external affairs officer for FEMA, wrote in an email to the News. “FEMA’s focus is to ensure equity [in] distribution of the vaccine to those disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.”

FEMA’s mobile unit is expected to administer a minimum of 250 vaccinations per day, with the capacity to vaccinate up to twice that amount, according to a press release from Gov. Ned Lamont’s office. In New Haven, this could mean as many as 2,000 vaccinations over the four days the van will be in the city this spring.

REGINA SUNG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

FEMA will be in New Haven from April 8 to April 10, as well as for two days sometime in May.

The unit comes at a time when vaccination eligibility in Connecticut is about to expand dramatically to the approximately 1.3 million state residents between the ages of 16 and 44 on April 1.

In Connecticut, the mobile vaccine unit will be staffed by UConn Health, Griffin Health, Hartford HealthCare and Trinity Health of New England. The Yale New Haven Health System will not be directly involved with FEMA’s operations.

According to WTNH News 8, the mobile vaccination unit first set up shop at Bridgeport’s Beardsley Zoo and has since moved to the city’s Department of Public Health building, where it will stay until April 1.

Anne Horbatuck, vice president of Ambulatory Operations at UConn Health, told NBC Connecticut that the Bridgeport vaccine site consists of a large tent, where vaccine administration services will be provided, and the van itself, where the actual doses will be stored. Horbatuck added that the tent also includes a waiting area and six socially-distanced sections for medical professionals to administer shots.

Following the Bridgeport launch, Lamont held a press conference in which he expressed excitement about seeing so many people at the van when it opened.

“It just shows that we are going to make an extra effort, especially in those communities where it’s not easy for them to get vaccinated,” Lamont said of the mobile vaccination unit project. “We’re making it easy for them.”

FEMA has said its mobile vaccine units will only administer the

Johnson & Johnson shot in an effort to enhance the program’s efficiency — for the two-shot Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, individuals are encouraged to get both doses at the same clinic, which is difficult to do in a moving vaccination van.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is the only currently FDA-authorized candidate that requires just one dose to confer immunity.

In early March, Lamont released a list of 50 Connecticut zip codes that will receive priority vaccine access, according to their Social Vulnerability Index. This list included much of Bridgeport, along with zip codes in New Haven’s Dixwell, Westville, Fair Haven, Dwight, The Hill and Newhallville neighborhoods. The FEMA van will be targeting areas on this list, Lamont said.

Jeffrey Flaks, CEO of Hartford HealthCare, also attended the Bridgeport launch, and added emphasis to the importance of providing vaccines to the communities on Lamont’s list. Hartford Health, Flaks said, has noted that the proportion of vaccines given to residents of these 50 zip codes has risen in recent weeks — from 34 percent three weeks ago to 39 percent this week. Flaks added that he hopes the percentage will rise above 40.

“The race is to get this vaccine to as many residents within our state as quickly and as safely as possible,” Flaks said. “We have made a commitment, and our commitment is to ensure that no community will be left behind.”

As part of efforts to improve vaccine accessibility, the state also

plans to distribute $33 million in federal funds to local health departments and community organizations meant to “establish outreach, education and services for minority and traditionally underserved communities,” according to the press release from the governor’s office.

According to Lamont and Connecticut Public Health Acting Commissioner Deidre Gifford, the effort will include an expanded outreach campaign, including phone banking, canvassing and more mobile vaccine units like the one coming to the Elm City.

“Early on, we recognized we need to do better in underserved and minority communities who have been hard hit by COVID-19,” Gifford wrote in the press release.

“By providing funding and support to local equity partnerships, we are empowering the people and organizations on the ground who know the residents of these communities best to reach out and ensure they have the information and access necessary to receive the vaccine.”

Local health departments, Lamont and Gifford said, can apply for funding by April 15, and grants will be distributed around April 23. Application information is being communicated by the state this week.

A s o f Mo n d ay, a ro u n d 700,000 Connecticut residents are fully vaccinated.

Contact MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO at maria.pacheco@yale.edu and OWEN TUCKER-SMITH at owen.tucker-smith@yale.edu .

Jackson Institute hosts Sen. Mark Kelly for conversation panel

BY SEAN PERGOLA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The Jackson Institute for Global Affairs is well known for hosting high-caliber speakers in its virtual events, and current United States Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a former astronaut and retired Navy captain, is by no means an exception.

The Jackson Institute hosted Kelly for a conversation panel on Tuesday.

Kelly rose to political prominence after campaigning for gun control legislation in Arizona and secured his Senate seat in 2020 after defeating Republican incumbent Martha McSally in a special election. During the panel, Kelly discussed at length the importance of technological innovation and bipartisan compromise. The conversation was guided by moderator James Hatch ’23, an Eli Whitney student, former Navy SEAL and personal friend of Kelly.

“Mark is a special guy, given his background, and it’s important for people to get as much exposure to him as they can get,” Hatch told the News. “Both for his state and our country, we need to have more of what he has, and we need it now.”

Hatch specifically praised Kelly’s determination to be “a middleof-the-road kind of guy,” in addition to his devotion to scientific facts — Kelly did not shy away from technical matters in his speech.

Kelly commented on the “great success” of Operation Warp Speed under former President Donald Trump, celebrated the success of NASA’s most recent Mars rover project and discussed the United States’ development of microchips.

Kelly introduced these technological innovations as issues of both economic and national security importance. When discussing the supply chain of semiconductors, he emphasized the shortcomings of United States’ manufacturing compared to Taiwanese capabilities, and mentioned his support of the CHIPS for America Act to incentivize domestic microchip manufacturers.

Quinn Moss ’24 attended the event and noted her surprise about Kelly’s special emphasis on technology.

“I thought it was interesting that [Kelly] framed these technical issues as a potential point of bipartisan agreement, like for example ... the development of microchips in opposition to Chinese manufacturing,” Moss said. “It’s not really an issue I had thought about before, especially not in the context of international relations.”

Interwoven in Kelly’s discussions of international competition was a theme of American exceptionalism: Kelly stated with confidence that the United States could outcompete other countries due to its uniquely innovative population.

Although optimistic, Kelly acknowledged that the United States seemed to be falling behind other world powers. He said current development “wasn’t sustainable,” which he said was one of his primary reasons for his Senate campaign. He maintained that greater focus on education could change the country’s “trajectory” and allow the United States to capitalize on its exceptional capabilities.

“This is what’s going to keep us competitive with our adversaries around the world — that we are really good at science and technology and engineering,” Kelly said.

“We’ve got the most creative people in the world, we’ve got the best universities … like Yale and others and great students.”

The senator also spoke about his hope for bipartisan compromise to benefit the United States as a whole.

He especially emphasized the need for bipartisan support of COVID-19 relief bills, which included allocation of funds towards the development of broadband access in rural areas.

Kelly spoke with reverence of the former Sen. John McCain, who previously held Kelly’s Senate seat, and his ability to reach across the aisle. “[It’s] certainly something that I’m going to strive towards, especially right now,” Kelly said. He mentioned McCain’s work with a bipartisan working group to pass a com-

prehensive infrastructure bill and discussed the importance of coalition building to pass such measures.

“In this era of hyper-partisanship and political extremism, it is refreshing to hear Senator Kelly discuss the importance of practical, common-sense policy solutions grounded in science, facts, and expert analysis,” Edward Wittenstein ’04 LAW ’12, deputy director for leadership programs at the Jackson Institute, said.

Director of the Jackson Institute James Levinsohn expressed satisfaction with the conversation panel and praised Hatch and with Kelly for their contributions.

“One focus of Jackson is a commitment to public service and Senator Kelly exemplifies that,” Levinsohn wrote in an email to the News. “I thought the Jackson community might learn from and enjoy hearing from Sen. Kelly and having Jimmy Hatch, a Yale College second year, conduct the interview only made it more special. Both Mark Kelly and Jimmy Hatch are very, very special people.”

Sen. Mark Kelly resides in Tucson, Arizona, along with his wife, former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.

Contact SEAN PERGOLA at sean.pergola@yale.edu .

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Kelly spoke about the role of technological innovation and bipartisan compromise in economic and national security.

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

“With but few exceptions, it is always the underdog who wins through sheer willpower.” JOHNNY WEISSMULLER COMPETITIVE SWIMMER, WATER POLO PLAYER AND ACTOR

Army vs. Yale, six years later VENUE FROM PAGE 14 “However, when it was officially announced that the game was a go, in the months leading up to the fall, every person that I saw walking around New Haven was talking about the game. It was as if you had gone back in time 50 years. That’s what I imagine it was like half a century ago when Yale football was the biggest draw in the state of Connecticut.”

As part of Team 142’s season-long celebration of the Yale Bowl centennial, a September battle with Army was officially set to commence in New Haven. In a matchup poised to be a spectacular celebration of American football tradition more than anything else, the renewed rivalry between two talented, fierce foes more than lived up to expectations.

For Reno, it was unlike any other pregame he had experienced in his career.

“It was one of those really beautiful September days where there wasn’t a cloud in the sky,” he said.

“I remember the pregame in particular, where I was standing on the sideline with a referee, and all of a sudden he looked at me said, ‘You don’t see that too often.’ I asked what he meant, and he told me to look back at the press booth, and I saw two snipers stationed in the box because Army had General Rodriguez in attendance for the game.”

The pregame festivities had kicked off the night before the game, akin to a Yale-Harvard matchup, with the bands of both schools performing at Woolsey Hall. The following Saturday morning, rather than an agglom-

erate of cars congesting Derby Avenue, close to 1,000 cadets crowded the road instead, marching in rows of four all the way from Marginal Drive past the Walter Camp Memorial Gateway and into the Bowl, all while bagpipers led the way.

Flanders recounts how, in the 19 seasons he spent coaching at Yale, he had never witnessed as many fans lined up outside the stadium as he did that day.

“A few years before Yale-Army, we started doing a ‘Bulldog walk’ from the arches down to the field,” Flanders continued. “On a typical Saturday you could expect to see some parents and a few drunk college students, but on that day, it was like going to the Macy’s Parade. Everyone was there so they could see the cadets come and walk through the arches. As good as the football game itself was, the atmosphere pre- and post-game completely out-shined it.”

The so-called “march on” is a tradition typically reserved for the Army-Navy rivalry. In fact, to Reno’s knowledge, “the Corps of Cadets never travel for any athletic reason except for the Navy game.”

Yet, much to the delight of the Yale students adorned in red, white and blue who swarmed the Walter Camp Memorial Gateway that morning, the cadets made the nearly 100mile trip east from West Point to be in attendance at the Bowl.

With Bulldogs and Black Knights fans alike beginning to settle into the stands, in another tradition typically reserved for Army home games at Michie Stadium, the game balls were parachuted into the venue by members of the Parachute Team. When the first cadets began making their descent onto the field,

chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” echoed throughout the Bowl.

“For the audience, despite the game being adversarial to a certain extent, it certainly felt like this matchup was a celebration of American culture in a lot of ways,” former Team 142 running back Tyler Varga ’15 said.

The stage was now set for the Blue and White, the undeniable FCS underdog, to wage battle with FBS Army and its potent triple-option attack. Fittingly, both teams would rise to the occasion.

The squads exchanged touchdown blows twice in the first half before a last-minute Black Knights score handed the Elis a seven-point deficit going into halftime. With Army scoring a pick-six a minute into the second half, it appeared that Yale would be unable to go toeto-toe with a Black Knights offense that had been as good as advertised.

The clubs traded touchdowns once more, but Team 142 managed to put together two consecutive touchdown drives to knot the score at 36 apiece. Three seconds into the fourth quarter, Army answered right back with a touchdown in a game that had officially reached barn-burner intensity.

A few cadets also started a flag relay during this fourth quarter, when one cadet took an American flag and began running with it around the inner concourse before handing it off to another cadet.

After a few times around, a Yale student with a cape made out of the American flag ran alongside the cadet. Before long, a sea of children joined in as well.

“Every fan on both the home side and visitor side in the bleach-

Chen '23: three-time world champ

YALE ATHLETICS

As part of a season-long celebration of the Bowl’s 100th birthday back in 2014, Team 142’s rivalry with Army was finally renewed after a nearly 20-year hiatus. ers just started cheering like crazy as the cadets ran all the way around the Bowl,” Reno said when recounting the event.

There was still a game to be played, however, and Yale was in desperate need of a score. With fewer than two minutes left in regulation, Varga, who had been having his way with the FBS defense all afternoon, scored his fourth touchdown of the game to tie it at 43 — forcing overtime.

The Black Knights got the ball first in extra time, taking it all the way to the two-yard line. Yale summoned its biggest defensive stop of the day by forcing a fourth-down. Army’s ensuing field-goal attempt missed the uprights completely, which opened the door for the Bulldogs.

Six plays later, Varga saved his best score for last — bulldozing his way through several Army defend-

With a final total score of 320.88, Chen beat silver medalist Yuma Kagiyama and bronze medalist Yuzuru Hanyu.

SKATING FROM PAGE 14 gram components score — which evaluates a skater’s artistry — in the short program.

Meanwhile, Chen started off in one of the worst ways possible, falling on his first jump — a quadruple Lutz — during his short program. Prior to that miscue, Chen had not fallen in a competition since the 2018 Grand Prix Final, according to NBC Sports.

He entered the free skate on Saturday in third place, 8.13 points behind Hanyu.

“As soon as I took off, I was like ‘Oh, this is not going well, this isn't the right takeoff,’” Chen said on Thursday. “Just tried to bail out as best as I could without wasting too much energy.”

On Saturday, Chen looked to be a man on a mission. He led off his free skate — set to a medley of music by American composer Philip Glass — with the same jump he missed on Thursday: the quad Lutz, landing it perfectly. Chen then attacked his quad flip-triple toe combination with vivacity, and it seemed that, for one Saturday afternoon in Stockholm, there was nothing that could stop him.

Figure skating analyst Jackie Wong took to Twitter shortly after Chen’s tour de force to put into words what Chen had just shown the world.

“No doubt — that was the best program Nathan Chen has

ever skated,” Wong tweeted.

“Hands down.”

Chen earned 222.03 points in the free skate, fewer than three points shy of his own world record. Hanyu, on the other hand, made a few errors of his own on Saturday, leading to an underwhelming fourth-best score in the free skate and a third-place finish overall.

But while all of the attention was on Chen and Hanyu battling for a gold medal at Worlds, 17-year-old Yuma Kagiyama, in his senior World Championship debut, put together two strong performances en route to a silver medal. His father and three-time Japanese champion Masakazu Kagiyama coaches the young skater.

“I’m very happy,” Kagiyama said through an interpreter about placing second at his inaugural senior Worlds. “Being here, I wanted to make sure I landed on the podium. That’s what I’ve trained for. And I guess my work has paid off.”

Stockholm’s 2021 World Figure Skating Championships is the last major individual event of the figure skating season, which typically runs from fall through spring. And with the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics less than 11 months away, the skaters’ focus shifts towards preparing for future events.

Hanyu and Kagiyama both

stated their desire to get back to practicing as soon as they get home. Hanyu specified that he was eager to continue working on his quad Axel.

A quadruple Axel — a jump that involves four-and-a-half rotations of the body — has never been accomplished in the history of the sport.

“I want to be the very first person to land it cleanly in a competition,” Hanyu said through an interpreter.

Chen, who has not lost an individual event since his fifthplace finish at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, emphasized that with each event the level of competition is continually increasing. He said he looks forward to challenging himself heading into the Olympic season.

Then, he gestured to his left, to where Hanyu was sitting.

“And this guy is going to do a quad Axel, so I need to figure that out too,” Chen quipped.

Even with a Hanyu quad Axel on the horizon, a third consecutive World Championship for the American made one thing clear: At the 2022 Winter Olympics, Nathan Chen is the man to beat.

The 2022 Winter Olympics are set to take place in Beijing from Feb. 4 to Feb. 20 next year.

Contact JAMES RICHARDSON at james.richardson@yale.edu .

Yale 49, Army 43.

“There’s no question we were the definite underdog in that game,” Flanders said. “[Team 142] was a group of kids that liked being the underdog and liked having that chip on their shoulders, and it played into that game for sure. You're very seldom going to win a defensive battle against a team like Army, especially when you're the underdog. You have to find some ways to score more than you probably should, and we did.”

In 1987, the Yale Bowl was declared a National Historic Landmark by the federal government.

Contact JARED FEL at jared.fel@yale.edu .

Yale’s Denver trio: Morrill, Cotler, Ierlan M. LACROSSE FROM PAGE 14

COURTESY OF INTERNATIONAL SKATING UNION

ers to break the plane of the endzone, giving Yale the victory and tying a school record with five scores in a game in one fell swoop.

second on the team with 20 goals and currently leads the Pioneers with 22 assists. Tierney called Cotler “a mainstay on our first midfield.” The 6-foot midfielder, who has started all nine games, is fifth on the squad with 12 points.

Ierlan and Cotler told the News that they have kept in contact with their old teammates at Yale, many of them giving support before the start of games and “living through [them] this year.”

When they are not playing lacrosse or attending school, the trio said they have spent much of their free time outside and exploring the nearby mountains, while also occasionally playing golf and fly fishing.

“Our team pretty much goes by a motto that’s ‘survival of the fittest,’ so whoever gets sick first is gonna be the team that loses,” Cotler said, referring to public health protocol adherence. “We’ve been pretty strict, [and] I think, honestly, without the season, I would say that more athletes will have less restrictions, and I think having the season is keeping us COVID free.”

While Ierlan said he is focusing on completing his political science degree, Cotler and Morrill are working towards their master’s degrees in quantitative finance, as they make preparations to graduate in 10 weeks.

Morrill, who departed New Haven as one of the most decorated attackmen for Yale with the second most points in program history, mentioned his excitement to play for Denver.

“Moving to a new conference, I think we've gotten pretty used to playing the Princetons, the Dartmouths, the Harvards of the world, and just playing new teams and having to prepare for whole different styles I think has been something that's fun and different,” he said.

During his Yale career, Morrill also earned numerous accolades while suiting up for the Blue and White, including several All-American honors and multiple All-Ivy selections.

Despite being a mid-season addition, Ierlan got immediately to work, said Tierney. The Pioneers’ 23–10 win over Providence last weekend was Ierlan’s first appearance with Denver.

“Like the other two, [Ierlan] has fit in very well with the guys on our team,” Tierney said. “In his first game, he went 14 for 14 [on faceoffs] and was so excited to play lacrosse again.”

The perfect faceoff performance from Ierlan was nothing new. He stands out as the most prolific faceoff specialist in NCAA history. Having first transferred to Yale to play in the 2019 season in which the Bulldogs reached their second consecutive national championship game, he played a major role in Yale’s recent dominance, setting nearly a dozen NCAA records for faceoffs and ground balls in the process.

The three look forward to the rest of their season with cautious excitement.

“We're just trying to take this thing one game at a time, one week at a time,” Cotler said. “We've already had a game canceled with [Villanova] due to COVID, so we're just trying to stay focused on getting better every day. Obviously we have goals to win it all, both in the Big East and the NCAA. We have lofty goals but we got talent to do it.”

The Pioneers last took the field against Yale in 2005, losing 10–9 in an overtime finish.

Contact AKSHAR AGARWAL at akshar.agarwal@yale.edu and AMELIA LOWER at amelia.lower@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF NCAA PHOTOS/DANVER ATHLETICS

Morrill and Cotler made their move after graduating from Yale last year, while TD Ierlan transferred to Denver last month.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 11

“Guys will take one pair of jeans, five T-shirts and three pair of socks and that’ll get you by for 10 weeks.” JON BON JOVI AMERICAN SINGER-SONGWRITER

New lung disease center opens in North Haven

BY ERIN BAILEY CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Yale New Haven Hospital’s Winchester Center for Lung Disease opened on Tuesday. The state-of-the-art facility will serve as a comprehensive pulmonary center for lung health.

Construction of the center was delayed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. According to Francine LoRusso, the vice president and executive director for heart and vascular services at Yale New Haven Health, the delay turned out to be a “blessing in disguise,” as scientists’ understanding of the transmission of COVID19 allowed the team to alter the center’s design to ensure better infection control.

“As a result of the lessons we learned from the pandemic, such as the need for negative pressure rooms, we went back and adjusted our architectural drawings” LoRusso said at the center’s ribbon cutting ceremony Wednesday. “Those adjustments came at a significant cost, but fortunately [Yale New Haven Hospital’s leadership] gave the go ahead to fully fund the center.”

The center is equipped to treat a wide array of pulmonary conditions, including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, adult cystic fibrosis, pulmonary

fibrosis, sarcoidosis, pulmonary hypertension, bronchiectasis, tuberculosis and post-COVID-19 pulmonary disease, according to the center’s website.

As a part of the Yale New Haven Health North Haven Medical Center, the WCLD will house interventional immunology services, as well as laboratory, endoscopy and radiology services. There will also be Smillow Cancer hospital doctors present at the North Haven center.

Naftali Kaminski, a professor of pulmonary medicine and chief of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, is one of the over 50 physicians that will treat patients at the new center. The ability to have comprehensive pulmonary care under one roof will allow for increased communication and collaboration among sub-specialties, thus improving patient care, according to Kaminski.

According to President of Yale New Haven Hospital Keith Churchwell and Kaminski, the new center’s clinical space triples that of previous clinics and, as such, will triple access to care for lung patients. “[The center] reflects [Yale New Haven Health’s] focus on making outpatient care more accessible and more convenient to a wider community,” Churchwell said at the

ceremony. “It is part of our strategy to bring in care to the communities where our patients live.”

The center was created in response to large demand for increased access to pulmonary care in the New Haven community. As most pulmonary conditions, such as asthma, are lifelong, the demand for pulmonary care is high.

Churchwell noted that many patients were struggling to get appointments at a smaller YNHH lung clinic. The hope is that the new center will improve patient accessibility though its increased capacity, in addition to its abundance of free parking — something lacking at the downtown location.

According to Kaminski, as treatment options for patients with pulmonary conditions such as cystic fibrosis have increased life expectancies, the demand for pulmonary care is increasing and will continue to do so in the coming years.

“The [center] has an important connection to the pulmonary health of our community,” said Jennifer Possick, the director of the center. “It has evolved over time to meet new challenges.”

Along with a variety of wellknown pulmonary conditions that the center will treat, physicians there will also be equipped to care for a novel condition — post-acute COVID-19 syndrome. This condition is characterized by persistent

or long-term COVID-19 symptoms, including chest pain, cough and fatigue.

“This year has been tough for all of us,” Kaminski said. “It also has created a new disease, that we didn’t know before — post-acute COVID syndrome. People who have recovered from the disease want to go on with their life, and they have a lot of symptoms.”

The new center will house a COVID-19 recovery program which will address postCOVID-19 symptoms and complications, including changes in memory, cardiac abnormalities, blood clotting disorders and mood

changes, according to the program’s website.

Churchwell, along with other physicians at the WCLD, hopes the center will be a regional destination to treat lung disease. The center houses 30 exam, consultation and procedure rooms, in addition to a Level 3 CPAP — a state-of-the-art cardio-pulmonary exercise test to assist doctors in determining the causes of shortness of breath.

The Winchester Center for Lung Disease is located at 6 Divine St. Contact ERIN BAILEY at erin.bailey@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF YNHH

The Winchester Center for Lung Disease opens in new North Haven location, after years of planning by Yale New Haven Hospital.

NHPS, Yalies to roll out High School English Language Learner program

BY CHRISTIAN ROBLES STAFF REPORTER For New Haven Public School high schoolers learning English, the pandemic has meant a lack of exposure to the language. To address this challenge, NHPS and Yale students have partnered to form a new online tutoring program that pairs Yale students with

beginner or early intermediate level English language learners.

According to Pedro Mendia-Landa, English Language Learner programs director for NHPS, the district has identified 142 high school multilingual learners who are new arrivals to the U.S. and whose language proficiency is at a beginner or early intermediate level. To support these stu-

RYAN CHIAO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

As of Thursday afternoon, 18 Yale students have signed up to tutor 33 interested ELL students.

dents, Rosalyn Diaz-Ortiz, NHPS Supervisor of English Learning, along with Gema Martinez Castillo ’21 and other Dwight Hall Public Schools Interns worked with the Yale Office of New Haven Affairs to set up an afterschool language enrichment program. The program plans to launch this upcoming week as a pilot program for a larger rollout in the fall semester.

Students in the program will be able to practice their English language skills on Tuesdays to Thursdays from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 12 to 2 p.m. Yale tutors and organizers alike expressed excitement over rolling out the new tutoring program. “[The pandemic] has been really bad for multilingual learners, particularly newcomers to New Haven, who live in homes where English is not spoken,” said Claudia Merson, Yale director of public school partnerships, in an interview with the News. “I’m excited about this [program] going up even though it’s late, because New Haven is a city that attracts newcomers all the time.”

Merson added that the virtual ELL tutoring program is expected

to continue in the fall semester and will be further developed during its pilot phase. She said that the program is part of a larger conversation over which tutoring resources will stay virtual or switch to in-person instruction in a post-pandemic world. She said she expects the ELL initiative and some other Yale-NHPS partnerships to stay virtual for the foreseeable future.

Furthermore, Merson explained that virtual education programming has actually yielded some benefits for NHPS. She said that prospective Yale tutors do not face long commute times to work with students while tutoring online — lifting a time commitment burden from Yale partners. She also added that virtual programs allow Yale students to easily work with NHPS schools that are located far away from campus.

The ELL tutoring program is not the first NHPS-Yale partnership that has arisen from the COVID19 pandemic. In early November, Dwight Hall and NHPS launched a homework helpline staffed by Yale students for NHPS students at select Title I schools. This help-

line continues to be managed virtually over Google Meet.

Martinez Castillo noted that unlike prior programs, the new ELL tutoring program does not emphasize homework help — but instead focuses on gaining fluency in English.

“The program itself offers written and language development,” Martinez Castillo said in an interview with the News. “Tutors will be having conversations with students, practicing those language skills.”

As of Thursday afternoon, 18 Yale students have signed up to tutor 33 interested ELL students. Though Martinez Castillo said that the majority of the ELL students are native Spanish-speakers, she noted that some speak other languages, like Persian. Each tutor will have received mandatory training through both Yale and NHPS by the time they start to work with students.

Students interested in becoming a program tutor are encouraged to contact Martinez Castillo at gema. martinezcastillo@yale.edu.

Contact CHRISTIAN ROBLES at christian.robles@yale.edu .

Justice Impact Movement, YCC call on Yale to ‘ban the box’ in admissions

BY AMELIA DAVIDSON AND LUCY HODGMAN STAFF REPORTERS The Justice Impact Movement and the Yale College Council are calling on Yale admissions to ban questions about an applicant’s criminal record, in a new report and through a meeting with Yale admissions officials.

JIM is an initiative associated with the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project that focuses on eliminating barriers to education for formerly incarcerated people.

Over the past month, JIM collaborated with the YCC to issue a report recommending that Yale “ban the box” — meaning that they remove questions about criminal record — from the Yale College application.

Ban the Box is a national campaign which seeks to reduce the collection of criminal justice information in applications for jobs and universities by removing the “box” that formerly-incarcerated people must check to indicate that they have been convicted of a crime.

“Education is crucial for the successful reintegration of formerly incarcerated people into society, which benefits justice-impacted people themselves as well as their families and communities,” the JIM and YCC report read.

“Specifically, we believe institutions of higher learning should not

discriminate against otherwise qualified candidates for admission solely based on prior interaction with the justice system.”

On March 30, members of the YCC and JIM met with representatives from the Office of Undergraduate Admissions to advocate for the removal of an inquiry on Yale’s application into applicants’ disciplinary histories. According to Grace Freedman ’24, JIM founder and executive director, the meeting was “really productive” and the Office of Undergraduate Admissions plans to revisit the topic later in the semester.

Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan confirmed to the News that the meeting occurred but declined to comment further on the matter.

During the 2019-2020 admissions cycle, the Common Application permanently removed its criminal history question. However, Yale still includes a criminal history question in the Yale-specific section of the Common Application. The question asks applicants, “Have you ever been convicted of, or pled guilty or no contest to, a misdemeanor or felony, or are there any criminal charges pending against you?”

“The very collection of criminal justice information has a chilling effect on prospective students

who believe that Yale will not admit them because of their previous interactions with the justice system,” said YCC Vice-President Reilly Johnson ’22.

Johnson has overseen the YCC’s engagement with JIM on this initiative, establishing a task force composed of YCC Senators and JIM members. Task force members drafted the comprehensive report, which provides background on the issue and formally asks Yale Undergraduate Admissions to “ease the collection and usage of criminal justice information.”

According to Johnson, the report also presents secondary recommendations in case the task force’s demand that the Office of Undergraduate Admissions “ban the box” entirely is unsuccessful. These include collecting criminal justice information only after students have accepted their offers of admission, limiting inquiries about criminal history to specific offenses like stalking or sexual assault and “re-evaluating how and in what contexts criminal justice information is used.”

Melat Eskender ’24, a Morse College senator and member of the task force, emphasized the racially disproportionate effect of the collection of criminal justice information.

“This issue is important to me because, as a Black woman, I know intimately how my community is

overpoliced and disproportionately incarcerated,” Eskender said. “Racial inequality is so pervasive in the criminal justice system that it is impossible for the inquiry and usage of criminal justice information in college applications to be a race-neutral practice.”

According to Eskender, the Office of Admissions seemed open to adopting the policies of institutions like New York University, which does not include criminal justice information in their first reading of undergraduate applications.

Eskender also noted that the task force cares “immensely” about campus safety. She noted that the only study conducted on the relationship between criminal record screening and campus safety did not find a statistical difference in the rate of campus crime between institutions that did or did not collect criminal justice information.

The study, a 2015 report from the Center for Community Alternatives, found that crimes committed on college campuses are more often committed by students without prior criminal records.

“There is no reason that formerly incarcerated or justice-impacted individuals should be discouraged from receiving a degree,” said Zoe Hsu ’24, the YCC equity chair. “Five states and 50 universities have already banned the box; Yale should follow suit.”

Universities that have banned the box include the University of California system and the State University of New York system.

Although JIM and the YCC’s report was Yale-specific, JIM is also pursuing more general ways to ban the box in higher education. Freedman has authored and proposed “H.B. 6228: Ban the Box in Higher Education,” a bill in the Connecticut State Legislature that prohibits higher education institutions from using information about criminal history in admissions and financial aid decisions.

Should H.B. 6228 pass and become law, it would force Yale and other Connecticut institutions to ban the box in admissions. However, Freedman hopes that Yale will choose to do so regardless.

“Hopefully, we will have legislation that passes and that will be implemented the following year,” Freedman said. “But we’re trying to make it so that Yale can lead on this before they are just pushed legally to do it — they could actually stand up and lead in this fight for increasing access to higher education.”

The Connecticut Legislative Session will last until June 9.

Contact AMELIA DAVIDSON at amelia.davidson@yale.edu and LUCY HODGMAN at lucy.hodgman@yale.edu .

PAGE 12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

THROUGH THE LENS

V

ice President Kamala Harris visited the Elm City last Friday as a part of the Biden administration’s “Help is Here” tour to discuss how the American Rescue Plan will impact teachers and students. Harris visited the Boys & Girls Club of New Haven and the West Haven Child Development Center. Yale Daily News photographers Cassidy Arrington and Lukas Flippo documented the crowds that gathered near the Boys & Girls Club to catch a glimpse of Harris in transit.

LUKAS FLIPPO AND CASSIDY ARRINGTON report.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 13

BULLETIN BOARD ILLUSTRATIONS

MALIA KUO is a first year in Morse College.

Contact her at malia.kuo@yale.edu .

GIOVANNA TRUONG is a sophomore in Pauli Murray College.

Contact her at giovanna.truong@yale.edu .

SOPHIE HENRY is a sophomore in Jonathan Edwards College.

Contact her at sophie.henry@yale.edu .

CROSSWORD

ISAAC YU/PRODUCTION & DESIGN STAFFER

NCAAW No. 1 Stanford 78 No. 2 Louisville 63

NCAAW No. 1 SC 62 No. 6 Texas 34

NCAAM No. 11 UCLA 51 No. 1 Michigan 49

SPORTS

MLB Rockies 8 Dodgers 5 FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE goydn.com/YDNsports Twitter: @YDNSports

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PENN QUAKERS FIRST IVY TO COMPETE SINCE 2020 Last week, Penn Athletics moved into Phase IV of the League’s plan for the return to athletic activity, allowing spring teams to participate in local competition. The Quakers's full spring athletic schedule can be found online.

MEN’S ICE HOCKEY ALLAIN ’80 COACHING WITH USA From April 26 to May 6, head men’s ice hockey coach Keith Allain ’80 will be working as an assistant coach for the U.S. National Team at the 2021 IIHF U18 World Championship in Frisco, Texas. This will mark Allain’s 14th USA Hockey assignment.

MLB Pirates 5 Cubs 3

“That’s the legacy they’re leaving — they lived our core values, they created new standards to our program. They left this place better than they came.”

ALLISON GUTH, HEAD WBB COACH ON ANDREW '21 AND ANDREWS '21

Behind the Venue: Yale Bowl

ANASTHASIA SHILOV AND ZULLY ARIAS/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR AND PRODUCTION & DESIGN EDITOR

The Yale Bowl has been lauded as both an architectural landmark and a college football treasure.

BY JARED FEL STAFF REPORTER On sunlit Saturday afternoons in the fall, roughly a mile and a half off of Yale’s main campus, the time-honored congestion of once trolleys, now cars, stuffing the northbound Derby Avenue all the way to Walter Camp Memorial Gateway has been an unfaltering tradition for over a hundred years. It is a ceremonial traffic jam that has come to represent New Haven’s ritualistic display of fandom for Yale football and the stadium that the team calls home: the Yale Bowl.

Early Beginnings The conceptualization of the Bowl, the second-oldest active collegiate football stadium in the country, dates back to 1913, when a mandate was given to a Yale

committee to provide revamped and refined athletic venues in order to give the student body abundant athletic and recreational opportunity.

Back then, it was clear that the Yale football team — which, having not experienced a losing season in its then 40-year history, was one of the premier programs in the country — had grown too large for its wooden, insufficiently seated stadium, the Yale Field. Thus, an 85-acre plot of land just across the street from the Field was bought by the committee as it formulated plans for a new stadium capable of holding massive crowds. However, the committee eventually settled on design plans not for a stadium, at least in the traditional sense of the word, but for a bowl. The field would be situated within a completely enclosed stadium, the

likes of which had never before been seen in the United States.

Ground was broken, both figuratively and literally, in the summer of 1913, when builders excavated a hole in the ground in the shape of the field. They then used the dirt and soil they had dug up to build up a berm — a ridge constructed of compacted soil designed to divert water away from a particular area — around the perimeter, giving the Bowl its now-signature dish-like shape.

When construction finally finished in 1914, the Yale Bowl was met with instant, widespread acclaim. Modeled after Roman amphitheaters while also echoing the neo-Gothic style of Yale’s very own campus, it was an engineering and architectural wonder that could hold 70,000 fans. The bowl-like shape itself was especially commended for how it pro-

Chen ’23 takes gold at World Championships

vided audience members from any seat in the facility with an exceptional view of the field.

“We are so fortunate that we get to use [the Yale Bowl] for all of our practices,” current head coach Tony Reno said. “We were doing our workouts a few days ago, and as soon as those doors to the field open and you start walking down the tunnel, no matter what time of year it is … you get those butterflies in the stomach because you're so excited to be back at the stadium.

It’s a surreal place.”

In the century that followed, the design of the Bowl served as inspiration for many other nowiconic stadiums, such as the Rose Bowl, built in 1922, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, built in 1923, Michigan Stadium, built in 1927, and the Cotton Bowl, built in 1930, to name a few. The term “bowl” had a noticeable influence on sport linguistics, as it has been used to describe both college championship games and one of the world’s most-watched annual sporting events — the Super Bowl.

The 1970s were an especially busy decade for the venue, which hosted the New York Giants for 12 games while Giants Stadium was being built. In 1975, Pelé played one of the final games of his soccer career on Yale Bowl sod. The Eagles, the Grateful Dead, the Who, Led Zeppelin and other legendary performers all rocked the Bowl, attracting tens of thousands in the process. The stadium even served as host for the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games.

Yet in a century crammed with enough sensational moments and historical occasions to fill a book,

BY AKSHAR AGARWAL AND AMELIA LOWER STAFF REPORTERS

M. LACROSSE COURTESY OF INTERNATIONAL SKATING UNION

In a come-from-behind victory, Chen won his third consecutive world championship on Saturday, defeating Yuma Kagiyama and Yuzuru Hanyu.

After a breathtaking free skate performance on Saturday, Chen seized his third consecutive world title at the 2021 World Figure Skating Championships in Stockholm, Sweden. With a final total score of 320.88, Chen surged back to recover from a fall during the short program on Thursday, beating Japanese silver medalist Yuma Kagiyama by 29.11 points. Two-time Olympic gold medalist Yuzuru Hanyu, who is also from Japan, rounded out the podium.

SKATING

“It’s amazing,” Chen told the media after the medal ceremony.

“The fact that I’m able to be here at this world championship after that unprecedented year … I’m very elated right now.”

The competition was not entirely smooth sailing for the five-time U.S. national champion. The 26-year-old Hanyu was exceptional on Thursday, finishing the short program in first place. In a show-stealing performance to Robbie Williams’ rock number “Let Me Entertain You,” the judges were certainly left entertained, as they awarded the five-time Japanese national champion the highest pro-

STAT OF THE WEEK

SEE SKATING PAGE 10

1.80

Sept. 27, 2014: Army vs. Yale 1893 marked the first time that the Elis and the Black Knights faced one another, making their rivalry one of the oldest in college football. This matchup became a yearly tradition for nearly five decades, but between 1943 and 1996, these two schools only saw each other six times. This was mainly due to a 1945 decision in which the Ivy League presidents prevented the Ivy League football program from participating in the NCAA Division I Football Championship or any postseason action. This meant that games against Yale were not to be counted as bowl-eligible wins for any Football Bowl Subdivision school, Army included.

After a 39–13 shellacking at the hands of the Black Knights in 1996, the rivalry was brought to a halt until 2014, a year that marked the 100-year anniversary of the Yale Bowl. Managing to elude NCAA dictum, Yale acquired a waiver ensuring that a potential game against Army would be bowl-eligible.

“Since we’re a [Football Championship Subdivision] school, when I first heard rumblings that they were going to try to get Army to come to play [Yale] in the Bowl, I was, of course, a little bit skeptical,” Yale’s 2014 defensive coordinator Rick Flanders said.

SEE VENUE PAGE 10

Three Bulldogs playing for Denver The Denver men’s lacrosse team (7–2, 5–0 Big East) took down Providence (3–5, 2–4 Big East) in its most recent matchup over the weekend with three former Yale lacrosse players setting the pace.

Attacker Jackson Morrill ’20 led Denver with 7 points, while midfielder Lucas Cotler ’20 found the back of the net once. Transfer TD Ierlan, meanwhile, picked up 10 ground balls in addition to winning every faceoff he attempted.

BY JAMES RICHARDSON STAFF REPORTER

one year, one game, one afternoon stands out in particular. A perfect concoction of celebration and competition, harmony and rivalry, clanship and feud, it was a moment in Yale football history that has left an indelible mark on collegiate football lore.

The Saturday win was the first game in which all three former Elis played together as Pioneers. Morrill and Cotler chose to transfer to Denver last year to utilize an extra season of eligibility following the cancellation of spring 2020 competition and the Ivy League’s initial decision to maintain its policy restricting athletics to undergraduates in their first four years of enrollment. Ierlan transferred to Denver mid-year after much of the Yale men’s lacrosse team decided to take leaves of absence this spring, rendering the team unable to compete as they awaited an official decision on spring competition from the Ivy League.

Despite transferring to Denver, Ierlan, who was also the No. 1 MLL draft pick last May, will graduate with a Yale degree in the future. All three student-athletes emphasized that they would have returned to Yale if policies around eligibility and

athletic competition had worked out in their favor this year.

“I was a little more unorthodox,” Ierlan said. “With the Ivy League not playing this year … it seemed like they had no intention of letting us play … so I knew I wanted to finish it out with Jackson and Lucas.

Being two of my best friends and playing at Yale together, it seemed like the best fit.”

The three are currently living in a house with other graduate students at Denver — midfielder Danny Logan, midfielder Kyle Smith and attacker Ethan Walker — and have spent time bonding with their teammates while attending practices.

Cotler, a major offensive weapon for the Elis who contributed a combined 25 points with Morrill during Yale’s 2018 NCAA Division I men’s lacrosse tournament run that resulted in a national championship, expressed his appreciation for his new teammates and the opportunity to play again this season.

“The type of character that is across the team, it’s a very high

character of individuals, so that's been kind of the biggest positive for me,” Cotler told the News. “There are a lot of similarities [to Yale]. I think that's what kind of drew us to Denver in the first place.”

Cotler said that both he and Morrill wanted to play together this season, especially under the leadership of Denver head coach Bill Tierney, whom Cotler referred to as a “lacrosse legend.”

Tierney reciprocated the respect and added that he was thrilled to receive some of Yale’s finest.

“We knew they were great players,” Tierney wrote in an email to the News. “I have so much admiration for [Yale men’s lacrosse head] coach [Andy] Shay. … But I knew if we were to take any fifth-year guys from his program, they would be great young men, players and teammates.”

Tierney said Morrill has adjusted well to Denver associate coach Matt Brown’s offense and “quarterbacks our team each game.” Morrill ranks SEE M. LACROSSE PAGE 10

COURTESY OF NCAA PHOTOS/DANVER ATHLETICS

Three former Bulldogs — Jackson Morrill ’20, Lucas Cotler ’20 and TD Ierlan — have helped lead the Denver Pioneers to an undefeated conference record.

ERA FOR YALE PITCHER ROHAN HANDA ’22 BEFORE THE 2020 SEASON ENDED AFTER 10 GAMES. HANDA HAS ELEVATED HIS FASTBALL VELOCITY INTO THE MID-90S SINCE. For more, see goydn.com/YDNsports.

FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021

WEEKEND FRIDAY, XXXXBER XX, 201X

// SOPHIA DESCHIFFART

The Deportation Class Series: Bringing International First Years Together // BY GAMZE KAZAKOLGU When Awuor Onguru ’24, an international first year from Kenya, got an email from Ozan Say — the OISS senior advisor — she added the in-person course HUMS 116 to her schedule and did not think twice.

Say was recommending that she take the class for immigration purposes due to the “ICE document.” Onguru took the advice, just as many on-campus international first years did as they finalized their schedules back in August.

The ICE document published back in July 2020 mandated that all international students on an initial F1 visa, which meant only first years and sophomores who took a gap semester, have to take an in-person class in order to be eligible to remain in the U.S. While some international Yalies worked in a lab and some were in an in-person arts class, a series of two classes called HUMS 115 and HUMS 116 were the easiest options to fulfill the requirement for many. For instance, as a DS student with a difficult essay workload, Onguru thought that this half-credit course which required only three single pages to write per term didn’t seem like a big deal.

The classes turned out to be more than an obligation for most international students.

They became sources of social normalcy in an otherwise disrupted year. Attending class became a social event: Everyone dressed up, walked together and sometimes got food or ice cream after the class.

“The class has become a way for me to find a community in an unexpected way, ” Onguru said. She added that her favorite part of the class was learning that Yale students invented the Frisbee. “I thought it was such a Yale thing,” she said.

Even beyond fun facts about the college, the content of the course series —

which focuses on the history of academia as well as Yale’s specific history — piqued many students’ interest. Some sophomores and American students even took the class out of sheer curiosity. They got to listen to speeches by prominent Yale faculty, such as Dean Chun, about how much Yale costs and why. In the weekly discussion sections, Chun’s lectures sparked personal discussions about why one might go to college.

Wei-Ting Shih ’24, an international student from Taiwan and Nicaragua, also took the class for immigration purposes, but ended up thoroughly enjoying its format.

“Professor Lewis is amazing and he has so much passion for the course and so much expertise. And that passion he has and the expertise he has makes the class so engaging. It’s very evident that he puts a lot of dedication into this course, so that’s very admirable,” Shih said.

Shih enjoyed seeing her peers face-toface and becoming more comfortable with the international community as they discussed Yale’s beginnings, its hierarchies, its cultural role and its diversity.

Ultimately, however, the point was not necessarily to enjoy the class. The point was to be eligible to stay in the United States and at Yale. Michael Gabashvili ’24, an international first year from Georgia, felt “kinda icky” about the regulation. “It’s just [ICE] trying to make our lives harder,” he said.

Still, Gabashvili is very thankful for the Yale faculty who made it possible for the internationals to attend college as first years. Otherwise, he thought he would be “doomed” with an eighthour time difference and would consider a leave of absence. Although Gabashvili thinks that the regulation should not exist because it hinders international

students’ ability to enjoy the first year experience, he appreciates the way that Yale has dealt with it by constructing this as a pass/fail course with only two weekly components.

Nonetheless, the class posed problems for some international students’ schedules. For instance, as a prospective history and EP&E major, Shih would probably not have taken the class if it was not required, since balancing majors was already challenging enough. Both Onguru and Elifnaz Onder ’24, an international first year from Turkey, had to sacrifice classes they wanted badly to take.

“The general opposition among the students wasn’t because of how the class format was, but because we had to do this class on a basis that is unfair,” Onder said.

Another discouraging fact was the time and location of the class: 7 p.m. on Wednesday nights at Science Hill, which was particularly exhausting after a long day of office hours, seminars and extracurricular meetings.

Communication and socialization amid pandemic regulations was another difficulty. As the students and the faculty tried to keep to social distancing regulations, class discussions became more burdensome. For Onder, English was not her first language, so it was already hard to understand people when they spoke quickly.

With masks on and social distancing in place, discussing the philosophical content of the course usually meant trying to catch a few words and make meaning out of what she couldn’t hear on the other side of the room. From what Onder observed, English was many people’s second language, so they were all struggling to translate from their first language and try to hear people

through their masks and social distancing.

When the COVID-19 risk was especially high, the class switched to an online format on Zoom. Both the students and the professor missed the opportunity to interact beyond the screen. For professor Lewis, this class had been an unusual opportunity to learn about international students’ experiences and to build on his ongoing book about college education.

“One of the reasons why I thought this would be a good class for students is to think about ‘Why am I doing this?’ ‘Why am I in college?’ It might seem obvious to people, they probably have been applying to college for the large time of their lives, or maybe their parents assumed that they would go to college. But why does it exist this way, why learn this way instead of some other way, like fully online or learning in your hometown?

What are the advantages and possibly the disadvantages of the college system?” Lewis said.

While the class was perhaps the best way out of the ICE document, it also served as a reminder to many international Yalies about how different their world was from the American students.

“American students never have to think about ‘If I’m not taking this class, I’m going to get deported’ or getting a driver’s license, getting in a car with someone, taking a class, literally anything,” Onguru said. “And this class is just a reminder that going to school in the U.S. is a very different experience for international students.

It’s like, you’re here, but we can put you out by literally anything.”

Contact GAMZE KAZAKOLGU at gamze.kazakoglu@yale.edu .

PAGE B2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND FRIENDS

It’s Complicated // BY RAFAELA KOTTOU I’m lying flat on my back on our living room floor. The lights are off and the room is dark. Apparently I’ve been killed, but I don’t know who killed me.

We’re playing Mafia. It’s a Saturday night.

By now, countless Goldfish crumbs and bits of Oreo cookies from our carpet are probably clinging onto the exposed parts of my scalp and the dried ends of my hair. But I suppose I shouldn’t really be worrying about that.

After all, I’ve just been killed by the Mafia.

Someone’s foot brushes against my shoulder, and a few moments later, the lights turn on and they gather on the carpet. They sit criss-cross applesauce like we used to sit when we were in kindergarten, ready to catch the Mafia. He rests his elbows on his knees, and looks in her direction, raising his eyebrows. It seems to me like he’s awfully quick to accuse her. But the rules say that once you’re dead, you can’t speak. So I stay silent.

She tries to defend herself, laughing as she explains that she couldn’t possibly be the Mafia. He doesn’t believe her. His eyes get smaller and he turns to look at the rest of the group. They furrow their brows and scrunch up their noses, looking into each other’s faces as they try to decide who’s lying and who’s telling the truth.

Generally, I think humans are quite complicated, perhaps the most complicated species to ever exist. They talk, but oftentimes, they don’t mean what they say. They act, but sometimes, they don’t know what they’re doing. They think, but usually, they don’t tell anyone what they’re thinking. Understand-

// ZI LIN

ing another person is practically impossible.

We’re all just too complicated. But tonight, as I sit criss-cross applesauce with my college friends in the living room of our apartment, it feels oddly simple. Tonight, we’re just little kids playing pretend. I almost wonder if we ever really grew up to begin with.

Because when the music turns on, Sarah dances in the middle of the kitchen like she wouldn’t care if the whole world was watching. And while we order dinner, Chris stays slouching on the sofa, fingers moving rapidly and eyes glued to his phone screen, watching his avatar run through fantasy lands and swim through sparkling oceans. And when Agastya’s stomach starts to grumble, he pulls open the refrigerator door and grabs a strawberry Danimals smoothie bottle — covered in a gigantic cartoon monkey, expertly marketed to all those animal-loving 5-year-olds and all the not-particularly-animal-loving, sleep-deprived, yet somehow still-energized 18-year-olds. And as they all sit on the living room carpet, they squint their eyes and scrunch up their noses and furrow their brows as if the only thing they care about is catching this Mafia.

For a moment, it almost feels like we’ve forgotten about all the things we have to do tomorrow. Lab reports and research meetings and problem sets and lunch dates and laundry. Well the laundry can probably wait until next week. Maybe even two weeks from now, though that might be pushing it.

Regardless, we try not to think too hard about tomorrow because tonight, we’re all

just little kids playing pretend. Tonight, I’d like to think that I never really grew up to begin with. Because somehow, I am still that same little girl from back when everything was so much simpler — that girl who screams at the sight of needles and believes in lucky rocks and pukes at the thought of airplanes and chooses chocolate over all else. Perhaps we don’t really have to be so complicated after all. Perhaps we’re only complicated because we make ourselves complicated.

We talk in code words, dropping everso-subtle flirty hints and quietly mumbling passive-aggressive phrases, never really saying what we mean because we don’t want to seem too direct or too straightforward.

God forbid we sound desperate. We leave snarky comments and strange emojis on social media, expecting that our crush or our ex-best friend or our now-worst enemy will know why we’re so upset. We act cold and distant because we want them to notice. We want them to care. Never once do we consider that they might just not understand.

They might have a billion other things running through their minds — things that we may never even know about. They might be hoping for something simple.

Because, in a world where we have to act so grown-up, I think that sometimes, we all want something simple. Sometimes, we all want to feel like we’re little kids again, little kids just playing pretend, little kids before everything got so complicated.

The lights turn off and the game goes on, and I stay lying on our living room floor,

playing dead and listening to the sound of their footsteps as they race through the hallways. They hide in the bathrooms and lock the doors, trying to get away from the Mafia, following each other as they shuffle through the darkness. I stay staring up at the ceiling, thinking about the fact that a year ago, we didn’t even know each other. A year ago, we were thousands of miles apart — Spain and India and Texas and Virginia and Illinois and Connecticut. A year ago, I didn’t even know that these people existed. But now, we’re here, running through the same hallway, sitting criss-cross applesauce and looking into each other’s faces, trying to catch the Mafia. I want to believe that I’ve known them forever because it feels like I should’ve known them forever. But I guess even the best of friends were once just strangers. I guess even the people who once seemed so complicated are now the people who make life feel so simple.

Their footsteps get quiet as they find places to hide away from the Mafia, and I stay lying on my back as the Goldfish crumbs rub against my head, thinking about the fact that alone, each of us is quite complicated. We all have our own to-do lists running through our heads, our own problems we want to solve, our own things we want to do and things we wish we could undo. But together, we’re not so complicated. Tonight, I’d like to think that the world is not so complicated. Perhaps it’s just a bunch of little kids playing pretend.

Contact RAFAELA KOTTOU at rafaela.kottou@yale.edu .

What Is in a Haircut? // BY MARISSA BLUM

// CECILIA LEE

The first time I changed my hairstyle was in the third grade when I decided, against my better judgement, to get bangs. The cut not only made me look like a 12-year-old version of my father, but it gave me lice, too. As I cried on the playground while other kids mocked me and called me names like “mushroom,” I vowed that I would never make such a bold hair decision again.

In fact, the experience had come to scar me so deeply, it was not until my sophomore year of high school that I even considered cutting my hair shorter than mid-back length. What I didn’t realize at the time was that the embarrassment I was experiencing came from the fact that I had defied the gender norms that had been pushed on me: Girls are supposed to have long hair, boys are supposed to have short hair.

From that point on, I always felt uncomfortable about my hair. My thick Jewish curls made it difficult to manage, especially if it was long, but I would rather deal with a head full of frizzy hair than risk being made fun of. All this time though, I found myself staring in the mirror, tying back my hair and positioning it in such a way that it looked like I had a pixie cut. All this time, I kept my desire for short hair under tight wraps, hoping that one day, I might finally gain the courage to chop it all off.

That day finally came last Wednesday, when, after years of waiting and internalized

shame, I fought back by shaving the bottom half of my head.

The process of deciding to cut my hair may have taken a long time, but choosing a new style was infinitely more difficult.

I wanted to find something that wouldn’t make me look like Toad, but that could also express my masculine and feminine sides that I felt were equally important to my individuality. I went through a mental list of all the powerful, yet stubborn, female characters I looked up to for inspiration. Captain Marvel in Endgame? That wouldn’t go with my curly hair. The Korra bi-bob? My hair would be too frizzy. Morgan the Tik Tok barista? That wouldn’t work with my facial structure.

In the end, I settled for a more subtle Sokka-style undercut that could be covered when I put my hair down. It would be the best of both worlds. If I was feeling more masculine, I could put my hair up and let the undercut shine, but if I was feeling more feminine, I could let my curls fall. So, I went on line, found a COVID-safe salon in Los Angeles, and booked the appointment.

For the next two weeks, I couldn’t sleep. I found myself constantly anxious about the appointment. Not only was it the first time in years I would be drastically changing my style, but it would be my first time going out since moving back home from school in November.

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I lay awake at night with the same internal monologue running through my head.

Q: Why are you so afraid of shaving your head?

A: Well, obviously I don’t want to look like my dad.

Q: Okay, yes, but why else?

A: Um, I guess I’m just afraid that if I cut my hair short people will think I look weird.

Q: Okay, but who are you shaving your head for?

A: Me? Q: And who gets to decide what you consider beautiful?

A: Me? Q: Yup! So why exactly are you afraid to cut your hair, again?

A: Good point, I guess I’m shaving my head!

On a hot Wednesday afternoon, I stepped into Folklore, a queer salon in the LA suburbs. I attribute the success of my haircut to the decision to go to a queer barbershop. My hairstylist, David, perfectly understood the unique gendered aspects of hair and presentation, and he neither judged me, nor ques-

tioned my decision to choose a haircut that would allow me to explore my masculine and feminine sides.

Before he shaved my head, he double checked that I wanted to go through with this.

“Are you sure you want to cut off your hair?” My tentative “yes” was all he needed for the go ahead.

As he glided the razor along my scalp, I felt a wave of fear mixed with hesitant joy wash over me. Unable to free my hands from the barber cape, I watched as tears fell onto my lap. In those tears was the relief I could now express after years of self-doubt and fear.

Some people might think I am being dramatic about a haircut. But in such a heavily gendered society, it can take years, even lifetimes for individuals to unlearn the social cues that define gender and gender norms.

For me, I feared that if I lost my hair, I would sacrifice my femininity, but in reality, it allowed me to find it outside of what others thought I should look like.

Gender does not have to be tied to hair.

Personhood and self-expression are much more important, and for myself, I saw the evolution of my hair as part of my journey of self-acceptance. So, if you’re thinking about changing your look … GO DO IT! Contact MARISSA BLUM at marissa.blum@yale.edu .

ONLINE THIS WEEK: REMINISCING ON HOW YOU MET YOUR COLLEGE FRIENDS? Isa Dominguez ‘24 writes about the genesis of a friendship.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B3

WEEKEND TALK

What We Owe To Our Friends

// WINNIE JIANG

// BY APARAJITA KAPHLE Warming weather and the flurry of pollen spiraling through the air are the clearest indicators that spring has arrived. Sunsets at 7 p.m., whistles of birds returning to nests and rainy days followed by incandescent rainbows form the mosaic of the season.

It’s no surprise, then, that I think of spring as the most nostalgic of all seasons, full of memories that have not yet been oversaturated by summer.

This spring is especially nostalgic, as I think back to one year ago when the first COVID-19 case came to the United States, shutting down schools, stores and cinemas.

As the school year came to a close, my Latin teacher shared a poem from Catullus XLVI, and the last lines have stuck with me deeply.

“O dulces comitum valete coetus, longe quos simul a domo profectos diversae varie viae reportant.”

“Farewell sweet bands of fellow friends Whom having set out far from home at the same time Different paths bring back again in various ways.”

The poem has many meanings, but I choose to interpret it as a commentary about friendship. The genuine friendships and relationships we’ve cultivated throughout school and other avenues will always remain a part of us.

There is no pomp and circumstance required.

Then it comes to fellow friends, you are bound to find your paths crossing once again. While a cheesy and cliche lesson, I’ve found that it has stuck with me as I think about my past and current friendships.

While there are numerous songs speak-

ing about the love one feels in a romantic relationship, there are few that attempt to describe the love between friends (though Maude Latour’s latest release is an exception). Understandably, the process of articulating friendships and platonic relationships is difficult. While romantic relationships often have a clear starting point, rarely are the beginnings of friendships ever distinctly defined. While I could tell you when I met my best friend, I cannot tell you the moment when we became friends. Perhaps it was when she gave me a ride home from school that one time, or when we ranked all of our favorite rom-coms. Or maybe it was the moment in class when our teacher was talking about something serious and heartbreaking and we randomly looked at each other across the room, and suddenly it was an asthmatic struggle not to burst into laughter while our teacher lamented over her recently deceased dog.

With my best friend in particular, much of our relationship, like many others, relied on consistent communication. If I saw a funny meme, it was imperative that I send it to her immediately. If something mundane happened in second period, she had to know before third. Midnight thoughts, awkward dreams, melodramatic hypotheticals — just when we thought we’d run out of things to talk about, one of us would mention a random tidbit and we were back. Even with the onset of the pandemic, while I felt that I had slowly lost touch with some friends, my best friend and I were stronger than ever. We Facetimed, Zoomed, saw each other from our driveaways when we could. It was not easy, but it was manageable if you were with the right people.

And then we headed off to college. The

challenges of remote learning and adapting to a new environment took a heavy toll on me. While I could always talk to her about my stressors, at a certain point I felt as though I began to sound like a broken record. New day, same problem. My texts to her became superficial: “lol yeah that’s really funny,” I’d send half-heartedly. What was worse is that I felt as though our conversations were forced; we were having them out of some weird obligation to save face. It came to a point where I felt as though even texting back was a chore in itself. What did I really even have to say? The well of our friendship had run dry. We had drunk up all the conversation. There is something tragic in the messages of two friends who have nothing to say to each other.

It was only when I had a conversation with my mom that I was able to see things differently. She called me one night and told me about how my dad was on the phone all day with his brother, my uncle. It had been months since they had last talked, and yet here they were, speaking about the most mundane things on hours on end. It dawned on me that they weren’t speaking out of desperation or awkward obligation but rather were speaking because they had something to say and they wanted the other to hear it.

My friend and I didn’t talk for months.

We both stopped messaging each other and stopped responding as well. There was no animosity — there was just nothing. One day, however, I had a really awkward experience in a Zoom meeting. I immediately ran to my phone and, like muscle memory, texted her, “you won’t believe what I just did.”

She responded in a beat, and soon we were on the phone, no longer talking about Zoom but instead enthralled in a discussion about

what Michael Cera movie we thought was the worst. We talked all day. I missed my PSET deadline. I could drop one of them, so who cares, anyways? For the next few days, we didn’t talk again. Then, a week later, she texted me about how Amazon delivered the wrong package to her house and how she spent an hour on tech support. That mundane topic spiraled into a five-hour conversation.

There is a belief that all friendship requires frequent conversation. That, at the least, you should be updating them about big milestones like relationships or jobs. But I’d argue otherwise. I understand that there’s a need to constantly keep in touch, but I find that that’s not as productive as we think it is.

Adopting that rhetoric frames maintaining friendships as a chore, something you check off on a to-do list. Instead, it’s important to understand that communication should occur when things happen that are worth talking about. It can be life-altering events, or it can be about a bad joke you overheard on the bus. The obligation we hold within a friendship isn’t an obligation to constant communication, it’s an obligation to quality conversation. We must be open to the idea that our friendships will hold in the absence of communication. That our paths will undoubtedly cross again.

Two days ago when I was outside working on an essay for class, I noticed how nice the spring weather was and I immediately texted my friend. She responded “omg i was literally about to text you the same thing — isn’t spring the most nostalgic season?” We hadn’t talked for weeks.

Contact APARAJITA KAPHLE at aparajita.kaphle@yale.edu .

ONLINE THIS WEEK: WKND RECOMMENDS Eating your vegetables.

“WE CAN DO SO MUCH BETTER”: Eui Young Kim on what our community must do to improve mental health.

PAGE B4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND TEACHERS

The Teachers Behind New Haven’s Youth // BY ÁNGELA PÉREZ

// AMY BINKOWSKI

Amy Binkowski Twenty years ago, Amy Binkowski switched up her plan to pursue business in order to start teaching, and she hasn’t looked back.

After studying retail management at Simmons University in Boston, Binkowski spent some years working in retail before realizing she “hated almost every minute of it.” Binkowski switched up after she worked at a day care and discovered her love for teaching, getting her master’s degree in education from the University of New Haven shortly after.

Binkowski, a sixth-grade teacher at East Rock Middle School, has been teaching in New Haven for 20 years and at her current school for seven. She did not anticipate becoming a teacher, despite the fact that her mother always told her she would make a great one.

Her favorite part of teaching is the social and emotional learning class her school offers. This year, the class started for the first time. In it, everyone is asked to keep their cameras on as the students discuss themselves, their feelings and current events.

They’ve discussed the U.S. Capitol insurrection and the importance of elections on some days, while on other days they have worked on mindfulness and relaxation in the face of stress.

This year, teaching online has forced her to adapt to new technology. She has, in a way, become closer with some students than she would in a normal year. Now that schools are hybrid, she is nervous about adapting to having some students in person and others online — especially balancing how to focus on one group without neglecting the other. She is also worried about her father, who lives in the house next to hers, as he undergoes radiation.

Going back to in-person work during the pandemic means seeing her family less in order to keep them safer.

In her free time, Binkowski joked about whether she gets “to do anything,” saying that lately, it feels like it’s either school or family, but not both at the same time. She added that she has worked on this during the pandemic and that she’s discovered she loves cooking and reading.

When asked about advice to any future teachers, Binkowski said to “be flexible.” As a single mother and teacher herself, Binkowski seems to understand the value of this better than most, taking time from her personal life to work with her students beyond what’s asked of her.

“I haven’t done my job if they leave my room and don’t know that they are loved and to treat others with kindness and respect.”

// GARRETT GRIFFIN

Garrett Griffin Garrett Griffin has been teaching since 2016. He fell into teaching after majoring in accounting while he was in college and decided to pursue it somewhat unexpectedly. His mom used to tell him he should be a teacher growing up but he never believed her.

“I hope my students take … [from my class] kindness and a humanity … and a regard for others,” he said.

After being hospitalized because of COVID-19 complications late last year, Griffin is no longer nervous to teach hybrid, saying that “the worst is behind me.”

He also added that being online has made him shift his priorities as a teacher from students’ academic performance to their well-being. Seeing students not participate makes him question what could be happening to prevent them from turning their cameras on, instead of being angry at them for not showing up.

East Rock Middle School, where he teaches, is a community magnet school. This is not lost on Griffin, as he recalls having his first Black teacher when he was in first grade. He still remembers Ms. Taylor and her “warmth.” He hopes students with similar backgrounds and experiences can see themselves in him by seeing themselves leading and teaching.

“Having someone with a similar background as you … their approach, their style is familiar and it helps engage you in the classroom,” he said.

Outside of the classroom, Griffin loves music. He plays the drums and listens to gospel, jazz and R&B music — he jokingly added that he likes older music. He wishes he had the opportunity to teach his students more music.

Griffin echoed Amy Binkowski’s advice to future teachers, saying they should “be flexible!”

“One of the major lessons this school year is our ability to be flexible. … Your attitude has to reflect your flexibility.”

Contact ÁNGELA PÉREZ at angela.perez@yale.edu .

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