Yale Daily News — Week of April 30

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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · VOL. CXLIII, NO. 26 · yaledailynews.com

Higher on-campus housing demand causes increased stress ence was also highly dependent on a student’s residential college, with students in some residential colleges guaranteed on-campus housing in their college and others left wondering if they will have a bed on campus at all next year.

Boyd said that annex housing, mixed-college housing and converting some single bedrooms into doubles can help meet the shortage. And although it is not a guarantee, Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun anticipates that these measures will likely allow students who do not get a room in their college to find other on-campus housing.

“Everyone keeps telling us to take breathers, to really utilize break days as break days, to ask for help when we are feeling stressed and overwhelmed,” Sam Heimowitz ’23 told the News, “But how am I supposed to treat the break day like a break day when I am worrying about [not having on-campus housing]?”

BY JULIA BIALEK STAFF REPORTER As the spring semester concludes and fall term plans begin to take shape, Yale College students have been undergoing the often stressful process of determining their housing for next semester. This year, higher demand for on-campus housing, coupled with the housing process aligning with early course registration and finals period, made the housing process more stressful than usual, students and administrators told the News.

Although it is not atypical to see higher demand than supply for on-campus housing within a student’s residential college, according to Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd, the increased number of students who took leaves of absences due to the pandemic this year and will return to campus in the fall has led to higher on-campus housing demand for the next academic year. But this year’s housing process experi-

SEE HOUSING PAGE 4

DANIEL ZHAO/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Branford, Saybrook, Jonathan Edwards and Timothy Dwight colleges have the highest levels of oversubscription.

Yale ponders non-authorized vaccines As pandemic continues,

UNSPLASH

The pandemic has scattered Yale students across the globe, so not everyone has access to the same COVID-19 vaccines.

BY ROSE HOROWITCH, AMELIA LOWER AND MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO STAFF REPORTERS After announcing on April 19 that all students must receive a vaccine against COVID-19 come fall, the University is working through how to best protect international students who might only have access to vaccines the FDA has not authorized.

The University is currently only accepting the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson vaccines as fulfillment of the vaccine requirement, according to a Yale Health FAQ page. They are currently the only three vaccines with an U.S. FDA emergency use authorization. But for students in countries that have authorized the AstraZeneca, Novavax or Sinopharm-Beijing vaccines, there

are lingering questions as to how to proceed.

Yale Health leaders have urged all students to get vaccinated as soon as possible with whatever vaccine is available to them. The University will later determine whether to revaccinate students with one of the FDA-authorized formulations when they return to campus. Yale will vaccinate any student in the fall for free, and they will have to be vaccinated to participate in in-person programs.

"We are strongly recommending that people be vaccinated as soon as [the] vaccine is available to them and not delay," Jennifer McCarthy, chief medical officer for Yale Health, wrote in an email to the News. "Vaccination offers individual and societal protection from the consequences of continued transmission of the virus."

The Yale Health FAQ page states that re-vaccination with two different vaccines is not recommended at this time, but that if CDC guidance changes it is possible students who received international vaccines will have to be re-vaccinated in the fall with an FDA-authorized vaccine.

Yale Health will set up special vacSEE VACCINE PAGE 4

cheating gains speed

BY KEVIN CHAN AND MADISON HAHAMY STAFF REPORTERS At the end of the fall 2020 semester, Timothy Newhouse, associate professor of chemistry and instructor for “Organic Chemistry for First Years I,” sent an email to his students.

“Amazing job on the final!!! I just finished going through these and I am so pleased and excited,” Newhouse wrote, though he declined to comment for this article. “You did exceptionally well as a

class and maybe were the best class year that I've seen.”

But according to one student in Newhouse’s class, the exceptional grades were not the result of an extraordinarily intelligent or hard-working class, but due to acts of academic dishonesty committed by students — acts made much easier by the online format of the course.

“It's because you can literally from an iPad, switch over to Google SEE CHEATING PAGE 5

JESSIE CHEUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Per the News’ survey, half of respondents reported committing academic dishonesty for the first time during remote learning.

YCC candidates discuss policy issues at debate

BY LUCY HODGMAN STAFF REPORTER On Tuesday, Yale College Council presidential and vice-presidential candidates gathered on Zoom to debate their policy platforms ahead of the YCC election, which will take place on April 29 and 30. The candidates discussed a wide range of student issues, with focuses on mental health reform, student health care and advocacy for Yale’s first-generation, low-income community.

About 150 students attended the event, which was co-hosted by the YCC and the News. Editor-in-chief of the News Mackenzie Hawkins ’22 and YCC Vice President Reilly Johnson ’22 moderated the event, asking the candidates prepared questions before opening the floor to questions from participants.

Bayan Galal ’23 and Joaquín Lara Midkiff ’24 are both running for president, and Zoe Hsu ’24 and Jordi Bertrán Ramírez ’24 are running for

vice president. Lara Midkiff and Bertrán Ramírez are running on a ticket together, as are Galal and Hsu. Diba Ghaed ’24, who is running unopposed for YCC events director, did not participate in the debate.

“It’s been incredibly uplifting and heartening to hear from hundreds of you over the last few days, sharing your hopes and your vision for what Yale can become,” Lara Midkiff said at the debate. “I look forward to hearing from many more of you tonight, and in the days to come.”

Galal and Hsu have framed their campaign around the development of a “healthy Yale” — their campaign website describes physical health, mental health, community health, financial health and institutional health as the guiding principles of their platform.

Lara Midkiff and Bertrán Ramírez have made accessibility the focal point of their campaign, focusing on making Yale more accessible to students with physi-

cal or mental disabilities, students of color and FGLI students.

The first hour of the debate focused on the vice-presidential candidates, and the presidential candidates took the stage in the second hour. Candidates had the opportunity to present three-minute opening statements before answering questions from Hawkins and Johnson.

During the vice-presidential debate, Bertrán Ramírez and Hsu discussed the most effective forms of advocacy for financial aid reform.

“One thing that I’d like to speak to that is a little bit concerning is that on the platform of our opposing candidates, there’s no discussion of eliminating regular course fees,” Bertrán Ramírez said during the event. “As a student who is both in chem and in the arts, you’re looking at upwards of hundreds of dollars to spend on your online course fees.”

Bertrán Ramírez noted that class fees can also sometimes dissuade students from taking courses that

CROSS CAMPUS

INSIDE THE NEWS

The News announces the appointment of Thomas M. Greene as the new director of the Directed Studies program. He will be replacing Professor Alvin B. Kernan. As the new director, Greene hopes to make the program more flexible and open to experimentation.

QUARTET

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1965.

The Callisto Quartet has been selected as the next fellowship quartet-inresidence at the School of Music. They will begin their two-year residency in fall 2021. Page 6 ARTS

TRANSLATION

COURTESY OF CANDIDATES

From left to right: Jordi Bertrán Ramírez, Joaquín Lara Midkiff, Bayan Galal, Zoe Hsu. require expensive materials or other fees.

In response, Hsu said that she supported eliminating course fees, but asserted that this was more of a longterm goal for her and Galal.

“I have been advocating tirelessly for something as simple as a course-drop fee, only to be met by

The Yale Translation Initiative announced both a graduate and undergraduate certificate in Translation Studies that is expected to become available next academic year.

Page 8 UNIVERSITY

BREACH

denial,” Hsu said. “These FGLI students need immediate help. They need immediate stipends. And that is why I propose that we will use our YCC internal budget to make sure those stipends are given to the students as soon as possible.”

A nationwide cybersecurity threat to software used by the Yale New Haven Health System resulted in a six-day interruption of treatment for approximately 200 cancer patients.

Page 9 SCITECH

SEE YCC PAGE 5 BIRDS

The journeys of many birds migrating north this spring will be stopped short on their way through New Haven, as they collide into large glass windows, fall to the ground and die.

Page 11 UNIVERSITY

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION Recollections

I

look back on my first year of college with a mixture of apathy and fondness. I spent the first half of my year taking classes between the hours of 5 p.m. and 8 a.m. at home in Kenya, battled with immigration services to ensure that I could legally begin to attend college and, in the middle of a pandemic, flew thousands of miles away to move into a dorm room alone, in the middle of winter.

Despite all that stood against me, my first year was a positive experience. Yale’s class of 2024 has grown since we left high school a year ago. Now at the end of the road, we emerge ready to return to normal.

ALTHOUGH EVERYONE WILL HAVE SOME ADJUSTING TO DO, IT WILL BE ESPECIALLY DIFFICULT FOR THE CLASS OF 2024. WE’VE NEVER EXPERIENCED WHAT A NORMAL YEAR IS. I WORRY ABOUT THE ABILITY OF OUR COHORT TO GET USED TO ALL THESE CHANGES ON OUR OWN — THE PANDEMIC HAS STRIPPED US OF THE NORMAL RITES OF PASSAGE THAT FORCE US TO GROW UP AND GET USED TO BEING OURSELVES. A normal year, however, will present its own challenges to the 2024 cohort. Next year, we’ll be inundated with thousands of interactions daily, at a rate that will probably be overwhelming to a class used to only meeting people in our residential colleges or via neat Zoom links. In-person classes will mean that school will require more effort than a click: We’ll have to plan our days,

find out where our classes are and learn how to stay alert without the option to turn off our came ra s. E x t ra AWUOR curriculars w i l l b e co m e ONGURU more comm i t m e n t - fo Wild cused, and West N e w H a ve n will become a real place for many that spent the year studying in their childhood bedrooms.

Although everyone will have some adjusting to do, it will be especially difficult for the class of 2024. We’ve never experienced what a normal year is. I worry about the ability of our cohort to get used to all these changes on our own — the pandemic has stripped us of the normal rites of passage that force us to grow up and get used to being ourselves.

As the lens shifts away from us and to the new incoming class of 2025, I implore the Yale community not to forget us. Yale’s current support systems are geared entirely toward first-year students: Big sib programs, FroCos and academic counseling are oriented toward the new Yalie who is just finding their footing.

But next year, that group includes sophomores. Yale should continue to employ resources to help this middle group transition to a normal life at Yale. There are several possible solutions. For one, the residential colleges could include big sib programs for sophomores. They could also or allow the sophomore class to experience a real, in-person first-year orientation. FroCos were helpful in figuring out an online Yale — now that we will be in person, we need something to help us figure out regular life, too.

Some months ago, the class of 2024 received a survey from the Yale administration asking us for recommendations for the class of 2025. Many of us were appalled at the email. How were we expected to recommend a first-year experience when we were robbed of one? Next year, we will be expected to assume the role of fellow mentors to the class of 2025, without the knowledge or experience to do so.

While it is indeed vital to ensure that the class of 2025 also has a smooth transition to college life, there also needs to be a plan to restore to the class of 2024 what was abruptly taken from us. Yale’s responsibility to the class of 2024 is to continue to offer us support even as things return to normal. After all, who will tell us where the classrooms are?

AWUOR ONGURU is a first year in Berkeley College. Her column, titled “Wild West,” runs every other Tuesday.

Contact her at awuor.onguru@yale.edu .

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“Y

Cultivating innocence

ale students are incredibly mature.” I can hardly count the number of times that I have heard this statement, often uttered to celebrate the student body’s work ethic and dedication. At Yale and beyond, we applaud those who “grow up” faster than most, these precocious heroes who escape from the grip of immaturity to embark on a never-ending quest for personal achievement.

For those who subscribe to this view, childlike innocence becomes an adorable but undesirable burden. The archetypical child is messy, unproductive and sensitive; the ideal Yalie is driven, efficient and resilient.

Some of our classmates ran businesses in high school; others took college-level classes and worked at NGOs. Before even entering the gates of the University, all had already developed a panoply of adult-like habits, many of which require the abandonment of insouciance and naivete.

This trend extends beyond Yale itself. Without exception, the bastions of American meritocracy mass produce 20-yearolds who have long forgotten their childlike selves. The lives of “successful” high schoolers oscillate between SAT prep, hectic schedules and mechanical habits. Wannabe elites sacrifice their teenage nonchalance to get into a good university, where they sacrifice their free time to get a good internship, where they sacrifice their summer to get a competitive job, where they sacrifice their youth to get a promotion.

Every step of the way, their personality changes. As their shelves accumulate self-help books, the new members of the managerial class strategize their every move. They turn friendships into “networking,” smiles into performative PR and passion into profit. More independent than

ever, these rising stars barely need their parents anymore — in fact, they can hardly remember to call MATHIS home without assigning a BITTON slot on Google Through the Calendar.

Last month, Lookinga leaked survey from GoldGlass m a n Sa c h s exposed the reality of this life to which many of us aspire. Asked to rate their mental health on a scale of 1 to 10, employees answered 2.8 on average. Analysts gave a 2.3 to their physical health, a 2 to their general satisfaction, a 2 to the quality of their work life and a 1 to their personal life. One respondent wrote, “The sleep deprivation, the mental and physical stress. … I’ve been through foster care and this is arguably worse.” Another added, “My body physically hurts all the time and mentally I’m in a really dark place.” Throughout the survey, employees used the words “anxiety,” “pain” and “inhumane” dozens of times.

Yet none of us would expect these analysts to quit their job anytime soon. Why? Because they have sacrificed too much, and — in the process — have retained too little. Sleepless nights, lost summers and continuous anxieties come to justify this lifestyle of endless self-drain. When we come to adulthood too early, we become incapable of returning to a state of childlike bliss.

Of course, we should not trap ourselves into perpetual immaturity. One of the University’s main functions is to facilitate the transition from our familial cocoons to the “real world.” But there are many childlike qualities to which we should hold on. Where most

of us self-censor, the archetypical child speaks freely. Where most of us accept pre-fabricated paths, our younger selves dared to experiment, to ridicule themselves, to sacrifice common sense on the altar of imagination. More broadly, where our institutions reward cynics, we have every reason to cultivate and celebrate the virtue of innocence. Authenticity, unfiltered honesty, imagination — these are qualities about which the average Yalie has much to learn from the average 7-year-old.

Naturally, this accelerated child-adult transition is the product of social trends that we cannot alter by ourselves.

As Michael Sandel observes in “The Tyranny of Merit,” America’s institutions of elite-production rely upon a series of dogmas — an obsession with efficiency and productivity, a disregard of the common good, a disdain for the unquantifiable and an aversion to structural reform — that entrench the obligation to “grow up” in deeply unhealthy ways.

Trapped in this web of perverse incentives, Yalies may find adopting a childlike innocence futile. Yet we can all make our inner child ageless by cultivating certain habits and virtues.

We can, for instance, force ourselves to tell the truth whenever doing so may prove inconvenient.

We can also preserve a sense of spontaneity by avoiding the calendar-obsessed mechanization of the quotidian.

More generally, we can cease to raise our children by “preparing them for the real world,” and prepare the real world — one step at a time — for the flourishing of ageless children.

MATHIS BITTON is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles College. His column, “Through the looking glass,” runs every other Wednesday. Contact him at mathis.bitton@yale.edu .

GUEST COLUMNIST SAM HEIMOWITZ

A class divided again T

he entire sophomore class remembers the preCOVID-19 scene pretty distinctly. We exited campus blissfully hoping for a smooth return after spring break, only to face online classes and an indefinite absence from campus. As COVID-19 conditions improved, some students were allowed to return to Yale, with one exception — sophomores. Barring a housing exemption, our class would spend the first semester remote.

I’m in Branford, and my college’s spirit has remained resilient. This January, Branfordians marched into our storied suites with our heads held high. We’d stuck it out and hoped to rebuild our collective spirit.

Now Yale has presented us with another challenge. Next year, rising junior Branfordians might be kicked off campus — again.

We were told that first years would be living in the college, sophomores would be living in Vanderbilt Hall on Old Campus, seniors would get first pick and juniors would be subject to the leftovers. In other words, we’d sift through the remainders after selection by other classes.

If there weren’t enough rooms, there was no plan to annex us, and there was no communication as to why we were being torn apart again. We were on campus for under 1.5 semesters our first year and have barely been on campus for a full semester now.

This is a little more than 2 semesters of housing in 2 years. As Yale students, we are guaranteed two years of on-campus housing according to the official Yale College Undergraduate Regulations. Why does this not hold true for us?

Some colleges, including Branford, began using a new housing portal system this year: StarRez, as opposed to Vesta. Navigation of the new portal is difficult and we have been unable to assess the true extent of the housing shortage. If we go through with the draw and reject a room that is less than ideal, we will incur “a nonrefundable deposit of one-quarter (25%) of the term room rent,” per Financial Services. This is upwards of $2,000, which may pose an insurmountable barrier for some stu-

dents. By contrast, a deposit-free system could allow students who don’t want their housing assignments to relinquish them without consequence, opening up slots for students who wanted housing but did not get it, generating more space in the college.

Many students, if denied campus housing, do not have the financial means or resources to live off campus. In Branford, our housing draw has been pushed to April 28. Other colleges have similarly late draws. How are we expected to secure decent, inexpensive housing without knowing if we need to?

Moreover, many students already experience housing instability, and most people who planned to live off campus have already signed leases. Housing instability, food insecurity and the mental health repercussions brought about by the sudden loss of the vibrant Yale community will pose a serious threat to those forced to leave.

Yale has been hit extraordinarily hard by the pandemic and our community is still reeling. Divided, fractured and missing the heart and soul of our usual collective presence, how can we rebuild our community if we are to be separated again?

Through an outburst of over 300 messages in the Branford class of 2023 group chat, we realized that no one is worried about getting the biggest single or having a beautiful view of the courtyard.

Rather, we’re concerned for the coherence of our class community.

Branford’s administration offered one solution — converting our already tiny single rooms into dual occupancy standalone doubles. These types of rooms, which dominate the remaining doubles draw, are perhaps preferable to being kicked off campus altogether, but nevertheless represent a betrayal of the founding tenet of the Yale residential college system: after all, common rooms and suite-style living are fundamental to the microcosmic communities that characterize residential colleges on a broader scale.

I feel lucky to be here on campus during such turbulent times.

I appreciate the administration’s

efforts. But sophomores are upset and confused. Why are we being forced to scramble for housing at the last minute? Why do we always get the short end of the stick?

Here are a few solutions.

First, in order to reduce density on campus and to ensure singles, universities have secured housing in hotels adjacent to campus. For example, The U.S. Air Force Academy, University of Pittsburgh, New York University and Emerson College rented out floors of nearby hotels for students. There are many hotels and apartments around Yale’s campus that Yale could rent out which accommodate the cherished suite-style living.

Another solution is to count students from the class of 2023 who took leaves of absence as sophomores. Currently they are counted as members of the original rising junior class. Those of us who spent all of last semester at home, effectively losing a semester of true college life in the process, should be getting priority in the housing draw, not being pushed to the back of the line. This is especially true for those students who opted to take the entire year remote, who, if forced off campus, would only have one opportunity to live in their residential college, if at all.

Lastly, if hotels and changing the layout of the housing draw cannot be changed, we would appreciate greater transparency surrounding annex housing. Regardless of the situation, the Yale community will be fractured in one way or another.

If we are annexed to other residential colleges or to nearby Yale-affiliated buildings, at least we will still be part of the on-campus Yale student community.

I understand that we are dealing with a pandemic, and that we all have to adapt. But I believe that I, as a rising junior in Branford, have been asked to do more than others. The promise of Yale’s residential life should be given to all members of the community equitably. Yale, do better.

SAM HEIMOWITZ is a sophomore in Branford College. Contact him at sam.heimowitz@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 3

NEWS

“Me and my mom are pretty cool. My mother’s Caribbean, and she gets a little spicy, and I get a little spicy back.”

CARDI B AMERICAN RAPPER

Seven Yale affiliates awarded Soros Fellowship

BY PHILIP MOUSAVIZADEH STAFF REPORTER On Thursday, seven Yale affiliates, including four graduates of Yale College, were awarded the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, a merit-based scholarship specifically for immigrants and the children of immigrants.

Yale College graduates Katherine Fang ’17, Sergio Infante ’18, James Diao ’18 and Harold Ekeh ’19 in addition to three Yale affiliates — Nikolas Oktaba GRD ’25, Ryan Chow GRD ’22 MED ’22 and Jonathan Herrera Soto ART ’23 — join 26 other recipients of the highly competitive fellowship.

Established in 1997, the fellowship is available to graduate students in a variety of fields, from medicine and law to the social sciences and art. This year, it received a record-breaking 2,445 applicants, out of which just 30 fellows were selected. Successful applicants are given a grant of $90,000, the most generous grant for law school students in the country. Five of the seven Yale affiliated recipients spoke to the News about their backgrounds and the work they intend to do as Soros Fellows. Ekeh and Oktaba did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

“I’ve always been interested in how political institutions respond to ordinary citizens,” Fang wrote in an email to the News. “I am aware I won this fellowship in the midst of a banner year of violence against Asian Americans. Asian Americans are grappling anew with what their democratic participation might look like. As we fight to ensure our community remains physically safe, I also hope we take the broad, long view of interrelated political issues.”

All three of the graduates of Yale College who spoke with the News have an interest in the role that race plays in society. Race features directly in the work and interests of Fang and Diao and was a significant component in the undergraduate experience of Infante, who was in Grace Hopper College during its renaming process from Calhoun College.

Fang is pursuing a joint J.D./ Ph.D. degree at the Yale Law School and the School of Management, Infante is pursuing a doctorate in history at Yale, Diao is pursuing a master’s at Harvard University and Ekeh is pursuing a law degree at Columbia University.

Nikka Landau, director of communications and strategic initiatives for the Soros Fellowship, wrote in an email to the News that the scholarship is awarded to graduate students

YALE NEWS

The new class of Yale college and graduate students join 26 other recipients of the highly competitive fellowship. “who are poised to make significant contributions to US society, culture, or their academic field.”

In order to be eligible for the fellowship, Landau said that applicants must either be green card holders, naturalized citizens, individuals born abroad who graduated from both high school and college in the United States — a category which includes Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients — or the United Statesborn children of two immigrants.

Fang and Diao’s parents followed a surprisingly similar trajectory to the United States. Their parents were both born in China during the Cultural Revolution; their fathers were both from small villages and spent part of their education in Germany before moving to Houston. Both Fang’s and Diao’s grandparents later moved to the U.S. to help raise them.

Infante was born overseas, in Bogotá, Colombia, and moved to Houston at the age of five. Soto’s parents immigrated from Mexico in the early 1990s, and he was born and raised in the United States as the first U.S. citizen in his immediate family.

“I came to Yale knowing right off the bat that I wanted to be a historian,” Infante said. “I was very lucky because I didn’t know at the time that Yale had such a strong community of historians and such a fervent group of students studying history at the undergraduate level.”

As a Soros Fellow in the Department of History, Infante intends to pursue a doctorate in transnational history, focusing on the “European spaceport” in French Guiana, examining particularly the experience of migrant laborers. Infante described a personal relationship to French Guiana, where his grandparents moved for work when his father was very young, mirroring Infante’s own migration story.

Fang similarly explained that there is a personal connection between her work and her family’s history, and noted in particular her grandmother’s experience.

“She’d brought up five children in the era of Mao on little besides folk medicine and a fierce belief that girls and boys were equal,” Fang said.

“She was always really astonished that in America, you could find coins people had dropped on the streets.

I’ve developed fuller views since then of how complicated social mobility is in the U.S., but I do hold on to her belief that this country is special, its institutions worth fighting to perfect for all people.”

She said she wants to see Asian American participation in American political life broaden and to ensure that her community is not perceived as politically uniform or as a group of “single issue voters.”

As a joint J.D./Ph.D. student, Fang plans to study the law of

bureaucracy, enforcement actions and criminal justice.

Diao, a statistics and data science, molecular biophysics and biochemistry double major, described how as an undergraduate he “got really excited about this phenomenon of computing power changing our understanding of biology, the genetic code and how we can best understand human health and disease.”

He spoke about his interest “in the idea of race in medicine, particularly the use and misuse of race as a predictive input for clinical algorithms.”

To that end, during medical school he examined how when dealing with kidney complications, diagnoses may vary due to a race-based component to the calculations.

Chow, who is working towards a degree in medicine and genetics, focuses his graduate research on understanding the genetic determinants of anti-tumor immune responses and means of improving the efficacy of cancer immunotherapies.

Soto — one of the graduate students also awarded the fellowship — sees his work as an artist as a continuation of his parents’ immigrant story, one that he is keen to tell through his art. Soto has also used his work to advocate for issues of injustice.

He previously made art in tribute to 43 students kidnapped in Mexico in

2014 and has documented the portraits of over 200 journalists murdered in Mexico.

Other fellows reflected on the Soros Fellowship’s impact on the immigrant community. Diao praised the fellowship for its ability to “recognize the achievements of immigrants … and to bring together this community.” Chow was also optimistic about the impact the fellowship can have, writing in an email to the News that he hopes that “in some small way, my work will inspire a young New American to take the plunge and tackle a problem in our society that they are passionate about.”

Infante agreed, and cited diversity rates at top universities.

“It is absolutely abysmal that universities like Yale and Harvard and Stanford have rates of diversity in the professoriate and in the professional class … that [are] well below that of its students,” Infante said. “You have so many more Black and brown students studying at Yale than you do Black and brown professors, and so what the fellowship is doing is identifying a niche point where a lot of people need an extra impulse in order to make it, and it gives them that impulse.”

Since 1997, 107 graduate students at Yale University have been awarded the Soros Fellowship.

Contact PHILIP MOUSAVIZADEH at philip.mousavizadeh@yale.edu .

Rock to Rock riders raise $126K for the environment

RAZEL SUANSING/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

New Haven’s annual biking race returned to an in-person format after being held virtually last year.

BY SYLVAN LEBRUN, SAI RAYALA AND ISAAC YU STAFF REPORTERS On Saturday, bikers around New Haven celebrated Earth Day by riding between East Rock and West Rock to raise money for local environmental efforts.

The annual Rock to Rock Earth Day Ride consists of bike rides of various lengths, with participants pledging to raise money for local organizations supporting sustainability efforts. This year, Rock to Rock partnered with 25 organizations and raised over $126,000. The theme was “Save the Seas,” with the

tagline “The oceans are rising and so are we.” Rock to Rock is one of the Elm City’s largest annual civic events and drew over 550 people this year.

“It’s amazing that we have this collaboration,” said Anna Pickett, one of Rock to Rock’s co-organizers.

“People get to know what nonprofits are doing environmental work and how they can be supportive, so it’s an awareness-builder in addition to being a community-builder.”

Due to the pandemic, this year’s event was slightly modified so that bikers could participate in staggered rides across the city.

In order to take part in the Rock to Rock ride, bikers are asked to individ-

ually raise at least $100 each. These funds are then donated to an organization of the participant’s choice, which they can select out of a list of about 25 partners. These partner organizations — primarily environmental or social justice nonprofits — must use the Rock to Rock donations to make their work more environmentally friendly in some way.

“Each organization raises money for their different projects — urban farming, climate education, climate organizing, tree planting, advocacy,” said Program Coordinator of the New Haven Léon Sister City Project Chris Schweitzer, one of Rock to Rock’s partner organizations.

Participants were also offered prizes depending on the amount of money they were able to raise.

Individuals that raised more than $100 by April 6 got a free Rock to Rock T-shirt, and the first 20 riders able to raise $1,000 or more got a $25 gift certificate to a New Haven restaurant. Bigger prizes were offered to the top fundraisers — the individual who raised the most money received a new bike donated by The Devil’s Gear Bike Shop, one of the event’s sponsors.

For the 2021 Rock to Rock event, participating partner organizations included CitySeed, Solar Youth, Junta for Progressive Action, Columbus House, Massaro Community Farm, Common Ground and Gather New Haven. The three organizing partners involved with coordinating this year’s ride were Yale’s Urban Resources Initiative, the New Haven León Sister City Project and the city’s Department of Parks, Recreation & Trees.

Participants in the Rock to Rock event had a variety of different routes to choose from, Schweitzer told the News. The 20-mile ride, which stretches between East Rock and West Rock, is one of the event’s most popular routes.

Bridget Gilmore ENV ’21 and Tiffany Mayville ENV ’21, who spoke the News at East Rock Park after completing their rides, were part of a large group of Yale graduate students participating in Rock to Rock for the first time.

“Everything’s blooming,” Gilmore said. “The energy was really nice because we’re a big or spread out group, and it was very supportive.”

Serious cyclists opted for the “metric century” 66-mile ride,

winding through cities as far as Guilford, Wallingford and Woodbridge.

Many families chose an easier 2-mile ride at Edgewood Park suitable for young children. For non-bikers, local nonprofits Gather New Haven and Common Ground also led nature walks in East Rock Park and West Rock Park.

“The course was really nice, well-planned and well-marked,” said Adam Houston ’18 ENV ’21.

“We got a little bit of everything in Connecticut, got to see everything this area has to offer, and I felt really happy to be raising money for [URI] today.”

Massaro Farm, Common Ground, and URI had the top three teams on Saturday, raising $34,235, $20,891 and $12,601 respectively.

While last year’s event was held virtually due to the pandemic, organizers were able to hold an in-person event this year while implementing public health precautions. Riders were advised to take part in the event in small groups with staggered start times.

Participants could sign up for a specific time slot online. For those not comfortable with participating in person, Rock to Rock also suggested pledging to take 20 to 60 actions individually in support of the environment — such as volunteering with the various partner organizations or commuting by bike every Friday in May. The first Rock to Rock Earth Day Ride took place in 2009.

Contact SYLVAN LEBRUN at sylvan.lebrun@yale.edu , SAI RAYALA at sai.rayala@yale.edu and ISAAC YU at isaac.yu@yale.edu .

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“Louisiana's spicy, colorful politics have saddled our state with a reputation for tolerating lax ethical standards in government.” JOHN NEELY KENNEDY LOUISIANA SENATOR

Students say housing process is stressful, inequitable HOUSING FROM PAGE 1 Heimowitz is a member of Branford College, and until a few weeks ago, he had always thought it was a given that he would live on campus. But in late March, he received an email from Branford informing him that anyone who entered Yale in fall 2019 or prior would be part of the junior and senior housing draw.

According to the email, because juniors and seniors are not required to live on campus, those classes are not guaranteed on-campus housing in the event that Branford housing is oversubscribed, which — as Heimowitz learned a few weeks later — was the case.

After the class of 2023 was not invited back to campus for the fall 2020 semester, Heimowitz described feeling deeply upset and felt the same class was once again getting the short end of the housing stick. More than anything, he described the anxiety of what the additional separation would do to his Branford College community.

But he also expressed fears about what would happen if he could not get a room in Branford, was not offered annex housing elsewhere on campus and then could not find affordable off-campus housing so late in the housing process.

Chun told the News that Branford, Saybrook, Jonathan Edwards and Timothy Dwight colleges are currently experiencing the most severe imbalances of housing supply and housing demand.

However, Chun explained that the unevenness across colleges is not unique to this pandemic year — there are nearly always imbalances across the colleges, since they differ in size, room configurations and demand from year to year.

“It is very stressful, I know, for students who are in the smaller or tighter colleges,” Chun told the News. “But overall, we have a good balance, or a manageable balance, between students’ intent to live on campus and available capacity around all 14 colleges. We can’t promise it at this stage, but we anticipate that students who do not get a room in their college should be able to find a room elsewhere through annexing, but we will not know what spaces have room for annexing until all the colleges finish their housing draws.”

But while upperclassmen in some colleges are concerned with

not getting housing at all, students in other colleges have spent the housing draw concerned with getting the best view of the courtyard. Evan Roberts ’23, a member of Benjamin Franklin College, told the News that members of their college “were always told we would be guaranteed [on-campus] housing.”

Roberts explained how, because Franklin had lower demand than other colleges, she and her future roommates were “able to be picky about which entryway [they] wanted and were able to agonize over views, common room layout and square footage of rooms.” She expressed feeling lucky to be in a college that offered her so much housing security and flexibility, but emphasized the “ridiculous” disparities between colleges, adding that the “random” assignment to residential colleges should not determine the security of on-campus housing opportunities.

For her part, Boyd echoed Chun’s sentiment, writing to the News that “while enrollment numbers for next year are unusual, it isn’t unusual for individual colleges to see more demand than supply.” Boyd explained how annex housing and mixed-college housing should help meet the shortage, in addition to some colleges increasing capacity by converting singles into double bedrooms.

But while Heimowitz expressed appreciation for the administration trying to think of solutions to meet housing demand, he stressed that entering the housing lottery as a junior and getting a double room that was intended to be a single is not a desirable option for all students.

However, if students enter the housing lottery, get a room they are unhappy with — such as a converted double bedroom — and then relinquish their housing, they are fined 25 percent of the term’s room rent. For the 2021-22 school year, room costs are $10,100 for the year and $5,050 for the semester, meaning that a 25 percent fine would amount to over $1,200.

While the fine may make sense in a normal year, because of the circumstances of housing this year, Heimowitz described this fine as “insurmountable, unacceptable and inaccessible.” He explained how, in his opinion, the fine adds even more stress to a housing draw that has left many students frustrated and anxious by limiting their options and potentially forcing students to

VAIBHAV SHARMA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Chun stated that there will likely be enough annex housing for students who prefer to stay on campus. remain in a room they would be uncomfortable with if they were not in a position to pay the fine.

Chun explained that the purpose of the lottery is to introduce fairness and equity into the housing draw. While students who get a room and then relinquish it are fined, he clarified that students who enter the draw and do not get a room because capacity was less than demand are not penalized.

“If a student draws a room in the college, then we do need to have that commitment, otherwise the whole housing process would not work and would go infinitely,” Chun said. “People would just put bids in for rooms, and if they give up rooms after they draw them, it creates vacancies and inequities for other students who were serious about bidding for a room.”

But even for first years and sophomores, who are guaranteed housing for the upcoming school year, as they are required to live on campus, this year’s housing process has proven stressful in ways common to students of all class years.

Hamera Shabbir ’24 is serving as one of two housing representatives for her class in Branford College. Shabbir explained how the housing process this year “presented a lot of new, unique issues.” Specifically, she cited confusion about how to use StarRez — the new housing platform that many residential colleges used this year — and challenges for remote students in finding suitemates.

While Shabbir qualified that she does not have any frame of reference for what the housing process

has looked like in the past, she commented on the stressful nature of figuring out housing during such a busy time in the semester, as students are simultaneously searching for summer opportunities and housing and applying for fall seminars.

According to the Yale College Undergraduate Regulations, “on-campus housing is guaranteed for first-year students and sophomores, for whom on-campus residence is required.” However, for the upcoming school year, members of the original class of 2023 who entered in fall 2019 and took leaves of absence will not be required to live on campus as sophomores typically are — and therefore will not be guaranteed housing.

Contact JULIA BIALEK at julia.bialek@yale.edu .

How will Yale protect students who get non-FDA-authorized vaccines?

VACCINE FROM PAGE 1

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Yale will vaccinate any student in the fall for free, though they will have to be vaccinated to participate in in-person programs.

cination clinics at no cost to these students. Paul Genecin, chief executive officer of Yale Health, told the News that guidance is "evolving" as the CDC and FDA make additional recommendations.

The FAQ encourages that students still submit their COVID-19 vaccination record to the University for COVID-19 monitoring across the Yale community.

Associate professor of epidemiology Luke Davis said that it is understandable that only FDA-authorized vaccines fulfill Yale’s mandate. The challenge is that additional vaccines, including the AstraZeneca vaccine, might be authorized in the coming months, he said.

“Whatever Yale’s policy is in the future, that should not change the widely accepted public health recommendation that students should get whatever vaccine is safe and effective and accessible to them wherever they are as soon as possible,” Davis told the News. “If an additional immunization with a different type of vaccine is needed to meet Yale’s policy in the future, there’s no reason that we know of at this time why that wouldn’t be safe and effective, provided the vaccines are separated by a few weeks to avoid any direct interactions.”

Associate Athletic Director of Strategic Communications Mike Gambardella did not elaborate on Yale athletic-specific policies for international student-athletes.

“Any information on Yale policies regarding COVID and vaccines would need to be provided by Yale Health,” Gambardella said. “We continue to follow their instructions and guidelines.”

Full vaccination is defined as two weeks after the second Pfizer or Moderna dose or after the single-dose Johnson and Johnson vac-

cine. Yale Health recommends that students be vaccinated before coming to campus, as unvaccinated or partially vaccinated students will be required to quarantine on arrival, participate in required testing and potentially have other limitations on activities until fully vaccinated.

Davis said that there is only a small short-term increase in immunity after receiving the first versus the second Moderna vaccine. It is important for people to receive both doses in a two-dose vaccine series, but, in Davis’ opinion, students should potentially be able to participate in in-person activities two weeks after the first dose, instead of waiting six weeks.

Inci Yildirim, associate professor of pediatrics and Yale's principal investigator for the Moderna vaccine trials for children between the ages six months and 12 years old, explained that there are fundamental differences between the AstraZeneca vaccine, compared to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

The AstraZeneca vaccine uses an inactivated adenovirus vector to shuttle the coronavirus spike protein's genetic information into human cells. This is what allows the proteins to be produced in bulk by the cell's machinery, giving the immune system a chance to learn what they look like and how to fend off potential COVID-19 infections.

But although this vector is completely inactivated and thus unable to cause neither adenoviral infection or coronavirus infection, it has surface proteins that can be recognized by the body, Yildirim said. This brings into question whether potential booster shots for AstraZeneca vaccines, which some scientists are arguing might be necessary to combat emerging variants, would be effective. Even though adenovirus vectors are considered one of the safest and most effective vaccine vectors, immunity

that develops overtime with repeated exposure to the them might make the booster shot less effective, she said.

"It is a real concern, because we do not know how long the immunity against SARS-CoV-2 infection will stay with us — whether it is due to natural infection or vaccine-induced protection," Yildirim said.

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, on the other hand, are mRNA-based and use a lipid nanoparticle to deliver the genetic material to cells, according to Yildirim. This nanoparticle acts like a vehicle in a similar way to the adenovirus vector, and is completely degraded after it enters the cell. This makes it so the body's immune system has no way of memorizing what the nanoparticle looks like, thus guaranteeing a greater chance of success for the booster.

With regards to cross-vaccination with different brands of COVID-19 shots, Yildirim said that there have not yet been any formal studies looking into what affects this might have.

However, some countries in Europe have been forced to do this due to a recent safety pause and supply constraints involving the administration of AstraZeneca vaccines.

"Some people already had received the vaccine but the second dose was not available because the decision about the vaccine safety was not there yet," Yildirim said. "These countries decided not to wait for that decision, and they said we'll do the second dose with other vaccines, including Pfizer and Moderna vaccines."

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is being used in 135 countries, according to the New York Times’ world coronavirus tracker.

Contact ROSE HOROWITCH at rose.horowitch@yale.edu, AMELIA LOWER at amelia.lower@yale.edu and MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO at maria.pacheco@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

FROM THE FRONT

“Louisiana was as close to South Asia as the United States could get: it had spicy food, humidity, giant cockroaches, and a corrupt government.” SAL KHAN FOUNDER OF KHAN ACADEMY

Cheating increases amid remote learning … it's kind of isolated … and they restricted it to make it look like a courtroom, like there's two sides, the plaintiff and defense.”

They called the experience “very scary,” and said, “I personally regret doing this, and I wouldn't do it again, obviously.”

YALE DAILY NEWS

Students suspected of academic dishonesty are often referred to the Executive Committee for a hearing.

CHEATING FROM PAGE 1 and Google the exact problem … find the answer, write it down, and they wouldn't be able to tell,” the student said. All of the students who spoke to the News, whether they committed academic dishonesty or not, did so under the condition of anonymity.

Newhouse’s class was not the only one where cheating occurred.

Last month, the News conducted a survey on academic dishonesty at Yale, which was completed by 336 Yale undergraduates. Of that number, 96 students, or 28.57 percent of respondents, reported committing academic dishonesty during their time at Yale. Around half of those 96 students said they committed their first act of academic dishonesty during remote learning. The survey follows a similar one conducted by the News in February 2019, which found that 14 percent of the 1,400 respondents committed academic dishonesty.

“The heart of a university is a community of trust,” Tamar Gendler, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, told the News. “And the fraying of that fabric is a source of sadness and disappointment for faculty and students alike.”

The consequences When a student is suspected of academic dishonesty, which can range from unpermitted collaboration on problem sets to plagiarism, the instructor in that course will often refer the case to the Executive Committee — colloquially known as ExComm — whose purpose is “to enforce the Undergraduate Regulations in a fair, con-

sistent, and uniform manner,” according to their website.

The committee then decides whether or not to pursue a formal charge. For academic dishonesty, charges often range from a reprimand to suspension, depending on the severity and frequency of the infraction.

According to David Vasseur, chair of the Executive Committee, students are also able to meet with members of the committee to discuss the charge, choose an adviser to guide them through the process and sit before a panel of members of the committee “whose goal is to understand the context of the situation and, where warranted, to help students reflect on their actions and identify ways to grow from the experience.”

According to data from the committee, in 2019, there were 30 cases of academic dishonesty, 24 of which came from a plagiarized problem set or lab assignment. The majority of the punishments were either reprimands or probation. Data from 2020 is not yet available.

Another anonymous student who responded to the survey told the News that they were charged pre-pandemic by the Executive Committee for academic dishonesty and ultimately received the punishment of academic probation, which meant that they could not be in leadership positions for a year after, and the charge would show up on their transcript until they graduated.

“When the actual day came around [to sit in front of the panel], they gave me a ‘court’ date,” the student said. “They were meeting in one of the top level rooms of SSS so

The survey Vasseur told the News that, for the past few years, the Committee handled approximately 50 to 70 cases of academic dishonesty per year. This year, however, he anticipates “that we will be well beyond that range.” He added that they have already seen an increase in the number of academic dishonesty cases as compared to the last two pre-pandemic semesters, although he declined to provide a specific figure.

These results are in line with the News’ survey, which found that approximately 50 percent of those who committed academic dishonesty did so for the first time during the virtual learning semesters.

Yair Minsky, department chair of mathematics, wrote in an email to the News that this might be attributed to how the pandemic “scrambled everyone’s assumptions,” and made some students feel as though the remote learning environment was not as “real” as in-person learning.

“I think that, with everyone remote, the natural gut-level pressures to behave in certain ways are attenuated,” Minsky wrote. “We are social animals and without physical social contact we become less constrained.”

A third anonymous student echoed Minsky’s sentiments, noting that he has heard students compare this year to “a game,” making academic dishonesty feel more detached and less personal from the teacher and classmates and therefore easier to commit.

In an email, Vasseur similarly told the News that the stress of the pandemic and additional responsibilities, as well as the ease of accessing additional resources during exams, has combined to increase academic dishonesty during the past year. Along with “pressure to collaborate or share information with peers,” these additional casualties of the pandemic “ha[ve] very negatively impacted our community.”

Alongside an increase in cheating during the pandemic, the News’ survey also found that 52.58 percent of those who committed academic dishonesty did so in a science course, and 50.52 percent did so in a quantitative reasoning course. Only 19.59 percent committed academic dishonesty in a humanities and arts course.

Vasseur called this discrepancy unsurprising, as the type of exams taken in QR courses emphasizes the correctness of one unique answer, which can “increase the stress levels that students feel when completing assignments and tests.”

Dana Angluin, chair of the Computer Science Academic Dishonesty Committee, also told the News that she was unsurprised by the discrepancy, citing a 2019 News article on cheating in STEM courses. In that February 2019 survey, which 1,400 students answered, “35 and 40 percent of student respondents said they would be more likely to cheat in mathematics and sciences, respectively.”

In line with the survey results, Jessica Brantley, department chair of English, spoke about the lack of academic dishonesty in her department. “I’m glad to say I haven’t encountered academic dishonesty among my students in English,” she wrote in an email to the News.

‘Ethical cheating’ — is it possible?

The anonymous student in Newhouse’s class had never cheated before the pandemic began. But he found the classroom circumstances “so impossibly difficult” that “[he] felt like it was very ethical to cheat.”

“I always feel like I've never unethically cheated because I've always tried to honor the spirit of the rule and make sure that I'm learning,” he said.

But this term, “ethical cheating,” was largely derided by the other students and faculty interviewed by the News.

Minsky wrote in an email to the News that he “very much disagree[s]” with the idea of some sort of moral basis for committing academic dishonesty. He added that academic integrity is not “some kind of transactional thing.”

In an email to the News, Vasseur agreed, writing that while instructors need to adapt their courses to accommodate online learning and the stresses incurred

by the pandemic, academic dishonesty is “unwaveringly viewed as a serious offense by the executive committee,” whether or not adaptations to virtual learning are actually made.

A fourth anonymous student interviewed by the News, who said she has not committed academic dishonesty, acknowledged that some professors have been unaccommodating and said that she understood the rationale behind committing academic dishonesty during the pandemic. But she still said that she did not consider it to be acceptable.

“Everyone's just kind of doing what's best for them,” which is “worse off in the long run,” she said.

“Whereas if we all work together to petition a change in the way the course is being run, that would have a better result overall.”

Shelly Kagan, professor of philosophy, approached the question of whether the pandemic made cheating more ethical from a more philosophical perspective.

He said that he was largely skeptical of the claim, calling it “self-interest disguising as a moral argument.”

“In the previous four years,” Kagan said, “there were insane amounts of depression because of Trump being the president. … So shall we say, okay, so cheating for the last four years was fine. Climate change has been a problem that we've been increasingly aware of for the last 10 or 15 years. So shouldn't we say that cheating was perfectly fine for the last 10 or 15? There's always stuff.”

In a follow-up email, Kagan added that, “in almost all cases,” cheating ultimately harms the person who committed academic dishonesty, as they never actually learn the material.

“And if the class was worth taking in the first place,” Kagan said, “that is not only a waste of their time and money, but shortchanging their education, which is a horrible thing to do to oneself.”

In 2012, the first available year of Executive Committee data, there were 31 charges of academic dishonesty.

Contact KEVIN CHAN at k.chan@yale.edu and MADISON HAHAMY at madison.hahamy@yale.edu .

YCC candidates debate mental health reform and FGLI advocacy YCC FROM PAGE 1 The vice-presidential debate also turned to the question of Hsu’s qualification for the position as a first-year student. Hsu emphasized her experience as equity chair on the YCC, in which she focused on financial aid reform and advocacy for the FGLI community, and added that she has served on the YCC for as long as both Lara Midkiff and Bertrán Ramírez.

In response, Bertrán Ramírez referred to his involvement with other student organizations before running for YCC office.

“I have one year of experience in the YCC, but I ran for the YCC after a year of working with community organizers, a year of working with student activists,” Bertrán Ramírez said. “This is an experience that I find is crucial, and one that is not [otherwise] represented on this stage.”

The conversation then turned to the relationship between student organizations and the YCC during the presidential portion of the debate.

Lara Midkiff described this relationship as “super important,” emphasizing that the YCC and student groups should see each other as partners, rather than competitors.

Galal voiced her agreement with this idea and also noted the importance of the YCC working in tandem with student organizers without taking credit for their advocacy or ideas.

“For this reason, I found it alarming and quite untrustworthy that on the website for my opposition they had listed working to get off-campus students reimbursed for COVID testing as one of their victories, when I know firsthand that they were not on the team working on that,” said Galal, who is the YCC’s health and COVID19 policy chair. “I plan to always give credit where credit is due, and make sure that we are collaborating and not taking the credit of one another.”

In response, Lara Midkiff noted that he worked under Galal on the YCC’s COVID-19 policies, adding that he “was involved in those conversations about reimbursements,” and that the only credit he takes for this development is helping bring the idea of reimbursements to the table.

The two presidential candidates also discussed their commitments to reform the University’s mental health policies. Galal described her campaign’s plan for a student advisory committee within Yale Mental Health and Counseling that would work toward hiring a more diverse body of clinicians. Lara Midkiff listed the introduction of a mental health literacy guide, the empowerment of first-year counselors with mental health first-aid training and the hiring of more BIPOC counselors as among the shortterm goals of his campaign’s mental health platform.

Toward the end of the debate, the presidential candidates were asked how they would center FGLI voices if elected.

Lara Midkiff discussed the importance of equitable financial aid in empowering FGLI students to make the most of their Yale experiences, voicing his support for lowering the parent income threshold for zero parental contribution, expanding safety nets and eliminating course drop and extracurricular fees.

Galal noted that her campaign’s financial health policies were crafted in conjunction with the Yale First-Generation, Low-Income Advocacy Movement, or YFAM, an organization dedicated to advocating for the first generation, low-income students at Yale.

Galal explained that FGLI voices, including that of her running mate, Hsu, were central to her campaign.

In the audience question portion of the debate, president of YFAM Logan Roberts ’23 noted that while

he approved of Lara Midkiff’s policy proposals surrounding FGLI advocacy, YFAM was “disheartened” that the Lara Midkiff-Bertrán Ramírez campaign did not consult them during the development of these policies. He questioned how Lara Midkiff would collaborate with other organizations as president.

Former YFAM President Karen Li ’23, who attended the event, voiced a similar opinion to Roberts in an interview after the debate.

“YFAM is the only student organization on campus solely dedicated to advocating for the FGLI community, but the fact that they didn’t reach out at all makes me worried that they do not value YFAM’s efforts and YFAM’s student input and that in the future, they will not value a relationship with this crucial student organization,” Li said. “On the other hand, I was excited to hear that [Galal] and [Hsu] did reach out to YFAM for their input and that makes me confident that they will include FGLI voices and advocate alongside the FGLI community.”

In response to Roberts’ comment, however, Lara Midkiff said at the debate that YCC candidates were not allowed to collaborate with student organizations while drafting their political platforms.

YCC Vice President Reilly Johnson ’22 told the News that candidates generally are allowed to consult other students when drafting policy platforms. Johnson referred to the Officer Candidate Guidelines and said that candidates are not allowed to get help on their campaign until the onset of “Planning Period,” which began on April 16. During that period, candidates are allowed to get advice on policy platforms “pursuant to the guidelines set out by the CEC about timelines and number of people,” Johnson wrote.

LUCY HODGMAN/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Clockwise from top left: Jordi Bertrán Ramirez, Reilly Johnson, Joaquín Lara Midkiff, Bayan Galal, Zoe Hsu, Mackenzie Hawkins.

Also in audience questioning, Abey Philip ’22 challenged Lara Midkiff on his health care platform, claiming that during the drafting process of the list of demands put forth by the Yale Mental Health Justice Coalition, Lara Midkiff had been reluctant to include a preferred provider organization model on the grounds that it would make the University less likely to accept the list of demands. However, Philip noted that Lara Midkiff expressed support for a PPO on his policy platform and asked Lara Midkiff to explain this discrepancy.

Lara Midkiff dismissed Philip’s claim as “factually inaccurate,” adding that he had “always been supportive of a PPO model.”

After the debate, attendee Kamiye Runsewe ’24 told the News that she came into the event “leaning toward one ticket” but is now undecided.

Attendee Alana Liu ’23, however, said that the campaign reaffirmed her support for Lara Midkiff and Bertrán Ramírez, adding that while the two campaigns had similar platforms, Lara Midkiff and Bertrán Ramírez seemed to have a “clearer grasp of both long-term and short-term policies and their feasibility.”

Prevalent throughout the debate was the discussion of diversity and the unique perspective that each of the candidates’ intersectional identities grants them. Hsu spoke from her perspective as a FGLI student, and she and Galal both described their experiences as women of color in STEM fields. Lara Midkiff noted that he would be both the first Indigenous and the first openly disabled student body president in Yale’s history, and Bertrán Ramírez discussed how his queer, Latino and first-generation American identities shaped his perspective.

“It really inspires me to see so many students and candidates care about the same issues,” Hsu told the News in an interview after the debate.

“Mental health was brought up a lot, health care was brought up a lot and particularly the struggles that FGLI students face have been brought up so often tonight.”

Polls for all YCC positions, including president, vice president, events director and residential college senators open on Thursday, April 29, on YaleConnect.

Contact LUCY HODGMAN at lucy.hodgman@yale.edu .

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

ARTS Callisto Quartet selected as fellowship quartet-in-residence at the School of Music

BY SAM PANNER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Four new faces will join the Yale music scene next year as the Callisto Quartet begins its twoyear residency at the Yale School of Music.

The quartet, composed of violinists Paul Aguilar and Rachel Stenzel, violist Eva Kennedy and cellist Hannah Moses, has been selected as Yale School of Music’s newest fellowship quartet-in-residence. Even as a young group, they have performed extensively, including in New York City as part of the Schneider Concert Series and at Ravinia Music Festival in Chicago. The group has won prizes in major chamber music competitions and, most recently, served as graduate string quartet in residence at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. At Yale, they will study with the Brentano String Quartet — the School of Music’s faculty Ensemble in Residence — and coach undergraduate chamber groups.

“Yale will be a fantastic opportunity because we’ll be able to be teaching undergrad music students,” said Aguilar. “We’re really looking forward to that, we love teaching. Teaching is an essential part of how we learn ourselves. We think it’s one and the same, the way that we teach ourselves and learn to diagnose problems and find effective solutions for ourselves is exactly what we do with other students.”

The Quartet formed in 2016, according to their website. The members met at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where they were all pursuing individual degrees. Kennedy said that their common dedication to the pursuit of a career in chamber music brought them together.

The quartet quickly found success in several prestigious chamber music competitions, winning the grand prize at the 2018 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the second prize at the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition. They were also prize winners at the 2018 Melbourne, the 2018 Wigmore Hall and the 2019 Bordeaux competitions.

“What impresses me especially about them is that they — I don’t want to suggest that this is an unusual attribute — but they are 100 percent totally serious about this, all the time,” said Misha Amory, violist of the Brentano Quartet. “I don’t think I’ve met another young quartet that’s so much in earnest and so determined and focused to hone their art at all times and in all ways.”

Brentano Quartet violinist Serena Canin said

the Callisto Quartet’s cohesion manifests in their playing, and they have an “earnest way of expressing themselves” through music.

She also said the quartet’s musicians seem to rehearse well together and enjoy each other’s company. Canin noted that this is not always the case, as sometimes there are tensions between members of a group.

“I’m hoping to help them broaden their vision of music,” Canin said. “I think, when you play in a quartet, it’s very easy to get caught up in playing together, and I’d like to help them see bigger shapes in the music and maybe just get in touch with the larger picture, the larger message of music, so that they’re playing with perhaps greater freedom.”

The Callisto Quartet has also faced adversity in its young career. Kennedy said that one of the group’s main challenges is the limited financial compensation they receive for their work. This has been especially true during the pandemic with the absence of in-person concerts. Since string quartets are individually formed and do not receive institutional funding, performing in one brings financial uncertainty.

According to the School of Music’s website, the Yale Fellowship Quartet-in-Residence program offers a yearly stipend of $15,000 per

quartet member, in addition to an annual performance opportunity in Yale’s Morse Recital Hall. The fellowship can support quartets that are no longer students but not “full-blown professionals” either, Amory said. He added that the program serves as a “harbor” for young quartets as they work to establish themselves in the chamber music scene.

“It’s funny to have somebody ask the question, how have we had so much success,” Aguilar said. “I don’t think we would view it necessarily in that way, because there’s certainly been a lot of disappointments, a lot of challenges, and really, for us, it’s about the music, it’s about playing at the highest possible level.

So, any successes or recognitions that come along the way are just road signs along that journey that we hope to continue for as long as we are playing together … for us, playing the best we can, learning this amazing music and presenting it to people the best we can, that’s the number one priority.”

The Callisto Quartet will succeed the Omer Quartet — the current fellowship quartet-in-residence.

Contact SAM PANNER at sam.panner@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF MIKE GRITTANI

School of Architecture Indigenous Scholars named inaugural residents at Center for Architecture Lab

BY MARISOL CARTY STAFF REPORTER The Yale School of Architecture’s Indigenous Scholars of Architecture, Planning and Design — a student group dedicated to increasing awareness of Indigenous architecture — have been named the inaugural residents for a residency program called “Center for Architecture Lab” at the Center for Architecture in New York City.

The Indigenous Scholars of Architecture, Planning and Design, or ISAPD, is led

by Anjelica Gallegos GRD ’21 and Summer Sutton GRD ’22. An advisory committee at the Center for Architecture, which is a cultural venue for architecture in New York, nominated the student group to be the five-month digital residency program’s first-ever residents. The program plans to invite two sets of residents, with the second to be announced this summer.

“Our theme for the Center for Architecture Lab residency is ‘Indigenous Futurism,’” Gallegos said. “We will be exploring narratives of the future for Indigenous communities and architectural sovereignty guided by the lenses of technology, alternative worlds, science fiction and studies of temporality.”

Gallegos, Sutton and Charelle Brown ’20 established ISAPD at the Yale School of Architecture in 2018. According to Gallegos, ISAPD is meant to be a “collective student group focused on increasing the knowledge, consciousness and appreciation of Indigenous architecture, planning and design at the Yale School of Architecture and the Yale community at large.”

Gallegos mentioned that the group has worked on projects involving the curation

COURTESY OF ANJELICA GALLEGOS AND SUMMER SUTTON

and design of exhibitions, proposed curriculum additions for classes and increased Indigenous representation at the School of Architecture. Additionally, they helped provide information on the Indigenous inhabitants and caretakers of building sites for the Jim Vlock Building Project, an annual project in which first-year architecture students design and build structures in underprivileged neighborhoods.

This year, a six-person advisory committee at the Center for Architecture — composed of esteemed members in the architecture field including professors and executives at non-profits — selected ISAPD for their new residency program.

According to Katie Mullen, the Center for Architecture’s director of exhibitions and

programs, the Center for Architecture Lab was created in response to the destabilizing forces of the COVID-19 pandemic and the reinvigorated racial justice movements taking place across the United States.

“The seismic societal shift created by these circumstances have inspired museums, non-profits, professional membership organizations, educational institutions and others to think critically about their role in shaping public discourse,” Mullen said.

The Center for Architecture organizes exhibitions, public programs, a month-long design festival and educational experiences for K-12 students. This past year, it created the Center for Architecture Lab. The Center’s residency program allows residents to

connect with leaders in the architecture field, access the Center for Architecture’s digital platforms, design digital programs and receive a stipend.

During their residency, Gallegos and Sutton plan to consult with Indigenous leaders about designing structures with Indigenous communities in mind and drawing attention to designs by other Indigenous architects.

“Our intention is to bring Indigenous architecture perspectives to the mainstream architecture profession,” Sutton said.

Sutton also said that she and Gallegos will feature a range of work produced by Indigenous leaders and practitioners in an exhibition, speaker series and newsletter publications at the Center for Architecture. This featured work will include some of their own projects.

“The Center for Architecture Lab highlights the designs and ideas of diverse new voices, within architecture and design, to generate an introduction and conversation of various perspectives, unique solutions and important questions,” Gallegos said.

Mullen said that the Center for Architecture has a long history of ties to Yale School of Architecture through various initiatives such as the annual Deans’ Roundtable discussion, which often features deans from the School of Architecture. Yale School of Architecture Deans and students have also served on the board of American Institute of Architects New York, the sister organization to the Center for Architecture.

The Center for Architecture Lab’s second residency will be announced in June 2021.

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

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

Yale student presents ‘Kore,’ a radiodrama adaptation of the Greek myth

COURTESY OF KG MONTES COURTESY OF KG MONTES

BY TANIA TSUNIK STAFF REPORTER Last weekend, KG Montes ’22 presented an original radio play called “Kore” — an adaptation of the Greek myth narrated from the perspective of Persephone, who is also called Kore. The show explores the issue of generational trauma and tackles the experience of dealing with the effects of violence as a Black woman.

“Kore” tells the story of Persephone’s journey from a sheltered innocent maiden to queen of the underworld. Throughout the show, Persephone and her mother, Demeter, struggle to cope with the aftermath of experiencing the male gods’ violence.

The play focuses on how their generational trauma shapes their characters and changes their lives.

“I wanted to do a retelling of a wellknown story from a female perspective,” Montes said. “The original myth has no mention of how Persephone recovered from being kidnapped, how this traumatic event affected her and who she became because of that.

Instead, it went like, a girl got kidnapped but turned out all cool in the end. There’s no way it was ‘all cool.’”

In her adaptation, Montes specifically casted BIPOC women for the lead roles to draw attention to the issue of “white violence on Black bodies.” According to Noelle Mercer ’22, who played the role of Kore, the play turns away from “a strong Black woman” trope that risks to “desensitize” the audience of seeing Black women in pain. Instead, the show gives an honest perspective on their experiences of grief, trauma and pain.

After a difficult experience of her own, Montes came up with an idea for the play during her first year at Yale. In her sophomore playwriting class, she finished the first draft of “Kore” and later rewrote it several times. Last spring, she contacted Cleopatra Mavhunga ’23 to direct the production. Together, they chose the format of a radio play and held the virtual auditions in September.

“We quickly realized that the show’s mythical setting was too complicated to even try staging

over Zoom with a visual live component,” Mavhunga said. “The audience will not believe a bedroom in Minneapolis is the underworld — that’s just not going to happen. So, we settled for a radio play.”

The switch to an audio format saved time from set and costume design, allowing the team to focus more on the story development and character interactions. According to Mavhunga, having no video lets the audience create a more “elaborate, vivid and imaginative picture” in their head than any set can possibly do.

The transition to Zoom also brought its challenges, such as accommodating actors in different time zones and staging partner scenes with no video and frequent sound delays.

Nevertheless, the team did their best to compensate for those organizational challenges. The rehearsals started last fall to give time to prepare for releasing the final radio play this April.

“It was an incredible learning experience for us as actors,” Mercer said. “We learned how to create in a

virtual medium, use solely our voices for conveying emotions to the viewer and enkindle chemistry with a stage partner without seeing their face right in front of us. It wasn’t easy but was definitely worth it.”

As a result of this long preparation process, the team produced a show that can resonate with women of color, as it explores the ways in which Black womanhood is subjected to the generational cycles of violence and trauma and how it “pushes through that,” according to Mercer.

“Many like to view Black women as superheroes who can do anything,” Montes said. “Well, yes, it’s true. But we’re also human, if you cut us, we bleed. We can’t be expected to bear the weight of the world not taking some time to grieve. The trauma doesn’t just make you stronger; it also hurts a lot. I hope that our play will remind the audience of that.”

“Kore” will also be released on Spotify in the podcast format.

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

Music Haven awarded $5,000 through Adolf Busch Award

BY GAMZE KAZAKOGLU STAFF REPORTER On April 5, Music Haven — a tuition-free music institution that provides musical instruments and lessons for students in New Haven — was recognized with $5,000 by the Adolf Busch Award. Music Haven shared this year’s top award with David’s Harp Foundation in San Diego, California.

The Adolf Busch Award recognizes organizations that use music to promote the social good and enhance socioeconomic opportunities by supporting education and mentorship efforts.

The award is named after Adolf Busch, a German violinist and composer of the early 20th century. Busch is known for being among the first prominent public figures who denounced Hitler and his actions, which was rare for non-Jews at the time. This year, the award received over 100 applicants, the most in its history.

“What made Music Haven stand out to me is that they have a clear philosophy on participation and learning,” said Justin Lipton, senior associate of the Adolf Busch Award.

“They are extremely rigorous on setting expectations and actually holding their students and those students’ families’ expectations over time, and it shows in all the impact they have on their students.”

According to Seth Novatt, founder of the Adolf Busch Award, the majority of the applicants were organizations similar to Music Haven, such as orchestras or organizations that work with underprivileged communities. Novatt also noted that the award received more applications from organizations that work with incarcerated individuals than in previous years.

To make the decision, two committee members initially read all applications and narrow them down to 25 selec-

tions. Following this, the award’s advisory board — which comprises nine individuals with careers in law, marketing and music — selects five applicants. This board includes Busch’s great-grandson, composer David Ludwig.

These five organizations then have Zoom interviews with Award members.

“Music Haven made a fantastic presentation,” Novatt said. “They are really professional and believe very strongly in what they are doing.” Novatt also noted that it was “nice to

know” that Music Haven has been active since its formation in 2006, which increased his confidence about awarding an organization that was going to continue its services.

According to Lygia Davenport, the development associate of Music Haven, the team that partook in the Zoom interview was diverse and representative of the organization. It included a parent, an alumni member, a teacher and administrative staff.

“I think that they were impressed with the cohe-

siveness and lifelong partnership that Music Haven adds value to the families,” Davenport said. “We strive for equity and we strive to meet the needs of all of our students. Music Haven is very community-oriented, and it really works on building an individual and helping them in ways that are beyond just music.”

Music Haven is located at 315 Peck St. Contact GAMZE KAZAKOGLU at gamze.kazakoglu@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF MUSICHAVEN

PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

“I’m trying to lead a good Christian life, so there ain’t too much spicy to tell about me.” LORETTA LYNN AMERICAN SINGER-SONGWRITER

BOE discusses magnet school lottery results, school reputations

BY CHRISTIAN ROBLES STAFF REPORTER The question of just who deserves a spot at New Haven’s choice schools attracts annual debate in the months following the citywide school-choice lottery.

This year, that lottery took place in early March, and the results were announced on April 2. At Monday’s Board of Education meeting, New Haven Public Schools officials and board members discussed the plethora of complaints from district parents whose children did not receive spots at their preferred schools. In response to the parent feedback, the board discussed the growing gap between “desired” and “less-desired” schools, along with possible changes it could make to the existing lottery policy.

School choice policy is at the center of district efforts to ensure racial, ethnic and economic diversity within its schools. The city has used its magnet school program to promote these forms of diversity, inviting both NHPS and outof-district parents to apply for 15 inter-district schools. NHPS families can also choose from citywide magnet schools, neighborhood schools and charter schools.

“This year I was one of the people who had to navigate the lot-

tery,” board member Tamiko Jackson-McArthur said. “It was a pretty seamless process. … I thought you guys did a great job with the virtual pieces.”

Marquelle Middleton, New Haven Public Schools’ director of school choice, presented to the board on the district’s successful adaptation of the school choice lottery program to a virtual format. He labeled the smooth transition a “notable win.” This year, the city’s magnet schools participated in a virtual school choice expo. He also praised the district’s partnership with Princeton University on a “School Explorer Tool,” which offered parents virtual tours of schools and a rough estimate of how likely their child was to receive a spot at each of their selected schools. Middleton said that other successes included working with school counselors on school choice guidance and launching a survey to help students find schools that best fit their academic interests.

However, Middleton said that there are still areas for improvement. He added that parents still need support in selecting the “right” school for their child. He also said that some lottery schools and grades have no waitlists for the upcoming school year. He pointed out that pre-K enrollment at the

inter-district magnet schools is substantially down from last year’s numbers, which has led to open seats at schools like Brennan-Rogers Magnet School in West Rock.

The district’s data shows that the number of New Haven resident and non-resident lottery applicants was down this cycle compared to last year.

This year, 64 percent of applicants were placed at one of their top six school choices during the initial placement round on April 2.

Out of this pool, 56 percent of students were matched to their firstchoice schools.

Board members talked about the 36 percent parents of students who did not receive a placement. Many said they had heard from upset parents about having to enroll their child at “undesirable” schools.

Board member Darnell Goldson said that he had recently received a call from a district father whose daughter was not accepted into any of the six lottery schools the family had ranked in their application.

Goldson said he was sad to hear that the father would not send his daughter to her designated neighborhood school, James Hillhouse High School. He said that it is unfortunate that there is a perception of many neighborhood schools as completely undesirable.

COURTESY OF NEW HAVEN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The Board discussed how to improve NHPS’ school choice lottery program and change negative perceptions of non-magnet schools.

Board member Matt Wilcox agreed with Goldson that there is a perception problem with Hillhouse. He called for the district to take steps to improve the image of the school, beginning with an upgrade to the school’s website.

Jackson-McArthur said she believes the negative perception that cloaks Hillhouse to be a “racial issue,” suggesting that the school is seen as “the Black high school and unfortunately makes people feel some type of way.”

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, about 56.23 percent of the school popu-

lation was Black for the 2019-20 school year.

District Superintendent Iline Tracey stated that Hillhouse’s negative reputation also applies to several of the district’s neighborhood elementary schools. She said that the district has funneled “a lot of dollars” into these schools for marketing and added that more work must be done to make all NHPS schools “desirable.”

NHPS operates a total of 44 schools.

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

Yale Translation Initiative announces new certificates

YALE DAILY NEWS

The undergraduate and graduate translation certificates will become available to students next academic year.

BY ISABELLE QIAN STAFF REPORTER The Yale Translation Initiative recently announced the establishment of both a graduate and undergraduate certificate in Translation Studies that is expected to become available to students next academic year.

The certificate is the result of two years of planning by the Yale Translation Initiative. Founded by Director Alice Kaplan GRD. ’81, professor of French, and Associate Director Harold Augenbraum, former acting editor of The Yale Review, the program has sought to establish itself as

an interdisciplinary study of translation. Both undergraduate and graduate certificates will be open to students from across all disciplines.

“The field of translation studies has grown enormously since the 1990s,” Kaplan said in an April 23 panel held by the Yale Interpretation Network, an organization that provides pro-bono interpretation and translation between community members with limited English proficiency and social services. “I’m convinced we need to think about translation not just as a literary issue but in the much larger context of interpretation, machine translation, social justice, health. … All translation is

language access, even literary translation — because translation gives you access to a world you wouldn’t be able to know any other way.”

According to Marijeta Bozovic, assistant professor of Slavic languages and literatures and a member of the Translation Initiative’s steering committee, the program’s members originally only planned to create a graduate certificate, but they later realized that they had the infrastructure in place to create an undergraduate certificate as well.

Bozovic described the support from the University for the certificates as “unanimous.”

“Much of the excitement around the project has to do with the fact that this certificate is genuinely interdisciplinary, genuinely a new project — rather than one emerging mostly from one department or preexisting program,” she said.

In spring of 2022, Bozovic will teach the program’s first core seminar, which will serve as a foundational class for both undergraduate and graduate students interested in the certificates.

However, Kaplan also emphasized that the program is meant to extend beyond the classroom and allow students to pursue their learning in practical work, from legal internships to asylum cases. For example, while the required capstone project for the graduate certificate includes writing a scholarly article or creat-

ing an original translation of a text, the program also allows students to fulfill their requirement with a minimum of 40 hours of community service in translation.

“My ideal dream is a Translation Initiative that can reach out beyond academics to the community,” Kaplan said.

The certificate’s inclusion of practical work presents a different opportunity for translation at Yale, where in the past, the study and practice of translation have mainly been found in language- and literature-based programs, such as the comparative literature major.

For Luisa Graden ’20, director and founder of YIN and Yale postgraduate Gordon Grand fellow, the new program is a testament to the many spaces that require translation work. During the YIN panel, she noted that student interpretation can allow students to access a diversity of fields, including ones that they may be interested in pursuing in the future.

“I hope that this new [certificate] program will encourage students to leverage their translation skills toward language justice — working to ensure that the Limited English speakers are able to fully participate in their communities,” Graden wrote in an email to the News. “Translation is not just a literary art, it’s also a tool for accessibility, inclusion, and justice.”

Kaplan also highlighted the potential complications that come with human translation.

She noted that there has been a long history of translators who erase crucial aspects of an original text. Kapan held up as an example a French translator of William Faulkner, commenting that the translator made the choice to ignore the specific language used by African American characters in Faulkner’s work and instead to make the language “more universal.”

“These are new questions for translation studies — and they mirror to some extent our current moment with its awareness of race and privilege,” she said. “So these are exciting debates we need to be having, where translation and the translator … are no longer assumed to be neutral.”

However, Kaplan also made clear that the search for unbiased translation cannot be found with machine translation. By drawing from preexisting usages of words, machines simply absorb all the prejudices that already exist in society, she said.

“You end up with translation machines that are racist and sexist,” Kaplan said.

The Yale Translation Initiative was founded in 2018.

Contact ISABELLE QIAN at isabelle.qian@yale.edu .

Local activists call for climate change action, peace on Earth Day

BY CHRISTIAN ROBLES STAFF REPORTER Outside of City Hall last Thursday, local activists and Mayor Justin Elicker offered remarks, performances and petitions advocating for action on climate change.

The New Haven Peace Commission started planning for Thursday’s Earth Day rally in December and held regular meetings to discuss logistics. The Commission pooled together a lineup of speakers including activists from the Sunrise Movement, Ice the Beef and the New Haven Climate Movement, among others. The final program also included an African dance performance, a poem from a student at New Haven Public Schools and a musical performance by a member of the Peace Commission.

Speakers focused on advancing climate change mitigation policies, as well as pressuring Connecticut’s Congressional delegation to defund the United States’ military.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars goes into the military for military weapons that go overseas, that do not focus on us,” said Johanyx Rodriguez, a senior at High School

in the Community and the rally’s master of ceremonies. “And that money should be focused on how we can better help our country and how we can solve… climate change and a bunch of other local problems.”

In November, New Haven voters approved a ballot referendum asking Congress to transfer funds away from the US military budget to “prepare for health and climate crises.”

The referendum garnered the support of 82 percent of New Haveners. Rodriguez told the News that the Earth Day rally was a “public expression” for the ballot referendum. Other speakers also expressed their support for the referendum and spoke about the link between climate change and militarism.

Henry Lowendorf, co-chair of the Greater New Haven Peace Council, told community members that military funds should be diverted to spending on housing, healthcare and climate action. He said that $350 billion — less than half of the military budget in the 2021 fiscal year — could be spent on providing healthcare to one million veterans, installing solar panels in 10 million US homes, implementing wind energy in 10 US million houses and providing one million

college students with four-year scholarships. Lowendorf also circulated a petition at the rally which calls on the Connecticut’s federal representatives to implement the New Haven referendum.

Adrian Huq, co-founder of the New Haven Climate Movement Youth Action team, echoed Lowendorf’s sentiments. They argued that the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that US budget priorities have left the country “woefully unprepared” to address climate change, as well as other public health and economic crises.

Huq called to reallocate military funds towards realizing a Green New Deal, a non-binding Congressional resolution that outlines climate priorities.

Mayor Elicker also appeared on Thursday to express his support for the aggressive climate change action.

“We have so much more work to do, especially because of the goals that New Haven has laid out for its climate impact,” Elicker said. “I am grateful for your support, grateful to the organizers today and looking forward to that partnership with you all in the future to address so many environmental crises.”

CHRISTIAN ROBLES/CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

New Haveners demand their elected officials to cut military spending and invest in climate change solutions at the rally.

Elicker praised the Biden administration for rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, a slate of climate change goals that a majority of countries agreed to in 2015.

He added that New Haven is also taking climate action on the local level through its Climate Emergency Mobilization Task Force — a committee of New Haven residents and elected officials who work with the community to end local greenhouse gas emissions by Dec. 31, 2030.

Rally-goers received petitions to sign, chalk for writing messages on the ground and flyers for other climate-related events. The Peace Commission invited youth to attend another climate rally on May 15 at 3 p.m. at the City Hall Amistad Statue.

President Joe Biden has proposed a $753 billion military budget for fiscal year 2022, a $13 billion increase from the previous year’s budget.

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

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 9

“While we Brits love a curry, the French get their spicy kicks from the culinary traditions bestowed by their North African population.” RACHEL KHOO BRITISH COOK

YNHHS pauses radiotherapy treatment for six days

BY MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO AND RAZEL SUANSING STAFF REPORTERS Yale New Haven Health officials reported on Friday that YNHHS was one among several health care systems in the United States affected by a cybersecurity breach in the software system of one of its vendors, Elekta — a Swedish company that provides radiotherapy and radiosurgery services to hospitals worldwide. Treatment sessions had to be paused over the weekend but were resumed as of Monday.

Because Elekta uses a cloudbased storage system to program and deliver personalized treatment, the company had to shut down the software on April 20 following the breach to prevent other systems in any of the hospitals it serves from suffering subsequent invasions, YNHHS CEO Marna Borgstrom said in a Friday press conference. At YNHHS, this shutdown resulted in a six-day pause in the radiation treatment of about 200 patients. Doctors moved patients that could not miss any sessions to other locations outside YNHHS, and officials say there is no evidence that patient data was leaked through the breach.

“We have had opportunities to move some very time-sensitive cases to other locations and get [their treatment] done, and there are

certain radiation therapy treatments that are not being impacted,” Borgstrom said. “Every patient has been called personally, and we have also sent out individual letters.”

The pause rendered the health system temporarily unable to operate any of its Elekta machines, which rely on the company’s software to deliver radiotherapy sessions for approximately 200 patients who are undergoing active cancer treatment at YNHHS. But Dana Marnane, director of public relations and communications at Yale New Haven Health, confirmed to the News that treatment sessions resumed on Monday.

Radiotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that is based on radiation’s ability to destroy cells, and tumor cells are particularly susceptible to these destructive powers. This kind of therapy typically involves targeting radiation beams to precise locations in the body where a tumor is situated — to shrink it before it can be removed surgically or to get rid of remaining cancer cells following surgery.

Radiotherapy is a personalized treatment, as the dose of radiation, the position in which someone has to lay to receive it and the duration and frequency of treatment are all particular to each patient. To optimize clinical workflow and facilitate this highly individualized treatment,

Elekta’s care management software, MOSAIQ, allows for patient data, treatment regimens and any other necessary medical information to be stored in the same place, according to Elekta’s website.

Elekta’s interface, though especially useful for patients who are undergoing multiple kinds of treatment at once, aggregates a large amount of patient information. But according to YNHHS Chief Medical Officer Thomas Balcezak, however, the system saw no indication that patient information had been leaked in this breach.

In a 2016 study published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, physicians at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine reported that missing two or more radiotherapy appointments could extend a patient’s radiotherapy treatment course by an average of 7.2 days. According to the National Health Service, although the baseline prescription is for patients receiving radiotherapy to stick to a five-day-perweek schedule, some cases require more than one session a day.

Depending on the length of someone’s course of radiation therapy regimen, missing one or two sessions may not have significant clinical impacts, Beryl McCormick, acting chairwoman in the Department of Radiation Oncology at

MARISA PERYER/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Approximately 200 cancer patients across YNHHS were affected by the pause in radiotherapy services.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, told ABC News.

Vin Petrini — YNHHS senior vice president and chief policy and communications officer — said in the Friday YNHHS press conference that the system shares their patients’ concerns and was closely scrutinizing the situation. Balcezak added that though their radiation oncologists and information technology teams were assessing the implications of the pause, it is too soon to tell whether they will be reconsidering their use of Elekta’s services.

Elekta is also working to help any affected patients.

“An investigation is being conducted, and any affected customer(s) will be contacted and fully briefed through the appropriate channels and in accordance with any legal

requirements,” an Elekta spokesperson told WTNH. Elekta also shared a statement on its website, saying that the company is currently partnering with cyber experts and law enforcement to investigate what caused the cyberattack, how to mitigate the issue and prevent any future breaches.

Outside of YNHHS, 170 other hospitals and health care systems across the country were forced to shut down nationally after Elekta cut off access to prevent the malware from spreading.

Elekta has over 4,000 employees.

Contact MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO at maria.pacheco@yale.edu and RAZEL SUANSING at razel.suansing@yale.edu .

State rental assistance program facing slow rollout in New Haven

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Nonprofits, faith groups and the city government are collaborating to spread the word about the UniteCT Rental Assistance Program.

BY SYLVAN LEBRUN STAFF REPORTER Three months after its launch, a statewide rental assistance program that offers as much as $10,000 each to tenants and homeowners has distributed grants to only ten New Haven households.

Connecticut’s Department of Housing originally put aside $235 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds for its UniteCT Emergency Rental Assistance Program, with the goal of stabilizing the state’s housing market and helping residents facing eviction. This money, which would cover rent and utility payments for households making up to 80 percent of the area’s median income, has gone largely unused in the Elm City.

In the face of an unexpectedly low number of applicants, local community groups have begun outreach efforts to make this program accessible to all who need it.

“It’s a complex system that really needs some work rolling out … getting the message into the communities so that they can take advantage of it,” said Reverend Kelcy Steele, pastor of Varick Memorial AME Zion Church and the director of neighborhood and faith-based partnerships for the Bridgeport nonprofit Supportive Housing Works. “Because I know that more than 10 people in New Haven need rental assistance, and all of this money is on the table.”

The Rental Assistance Program, which launched in February, is designed to aid all Connecticut households who can present proof of financial hardship because of the pandemic. According to Steele, funding for this program comes from the American Rescue Plan, the federal COVID-19 stimulus bill that passed early this spring.

Virginia Spell, interim president and CEO of the Urban League of Southern Connecticut, told the

News that the economic downturns and job loss caused by the pandemic have led to an increased fear of evictions among New Haven residents who rent their homes.

“In the state of Connecticut, we’re already dealing with really high rental costs,” Spell said. “We’re concerned that folks might be evicted from their homes and see further hardship … we’re seeing the price for rental units, especially in New Haven, rise at a rate that is just not sustainable for folks living here.”

Each city in Connecticut is individually responsible for the distribution of their allocated portion of the rental assistance program’s funds, Steele explained. Housing Counseling Agencies — certified partner groups of the DOH in different Connecticut towns — have been central in the rollout of the program, doing outreach and also providing technical assistance at their offices to people struggling with the online application process.

The three local housing counseling agencies for New Haveners are NeighborWorks New Horizons, Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven and the Urban League of Southern Connecticut, which Spell directs.

Both Steele and Spell told the News that issues with technological accessibility have been significant barriers to the widespread rollout of this rental assistance program. The application for UniteCT’s rental assistance program is hosted on a software system called Yardi. Getting acclimated to this new system has been a “learn-

ing curve” for all parties involved, according to Spell.

“There was a lot of interest in the program, there were a lot of people that needed this resource, but they didn’t necessarily successfully navigate the system,” Spell said. “Folks really weren’t successfully navigating and completing their application so that they could be moved … to a supervisor who would then be able to approve the application.”

On the application, tenants are asked to upload scanned copies of documents including their lease and proof of income. Spell told the News that some applicants have been unable to locate physical copies of such documents — there have been cases where people have written “I do not have this document” on a blank piece of paper and uploaded that instead. Applications like these were not approved.

So far, according to Spell, very few New Haveners have been able to take advantage of the program. As of two weeks ago, only about 49 applications for rental assistance were successfully completed, of which about 10 were approved.

In response to this low rate of distribution, local organizations and city leaders have been collaborating to both spread the word about the program and address technological limitations.

Spell spoke about the rental assistance program at a community management team meeting for the Dwight-Chapel neighborhood on April 6, urging residents to take advantage of the funds. She told the

News that she and her partners hope to advertise the program at other CMTs in the future. Other outreach plans include door-knocking campaigns and the distribution of promotional fliers.

To bring the program to neighborhoods where access to technology is limited, Steele said, local organizations have scheduled visits from a mobile vehicle run by the Department of Housing. This vehicle has three computers on board, which residents can use to fill out the application.

Arlevia Samuel, director of the city’s Livable Cities Initiative, said that outreach for the Rental Assistance Program has been a “collaborative effort.” Currently, a team, which includes the LCI, the mayor’s office, faith leaders like Steele and local Housing Counseling Agencies, is planning outreach events.

On May 1, according to Spell, these groups plan to host a public event at City Hall. They will advertise the program and assist people in preparing the necessary materials for their applications.

“It’s important that it rolls out everywhere because nobody wants to have a lot of people facing eviction or homelessness when there are funds available to assist them in keeping their apartments,” said Samuel.

New Haven residents interested in the rental assistance program can contact UniteCT at 1-844-864-8328 with further questions.

Contact SYLVAN LEBRUN at sylvan.lebrun@yale.edu .

YLS students publish report on immigration and climate policy

BY JULIA BROWN STAFF REPORTER Last week, a group of law students from Yale Law School helped publish a 90-page report calling for the Biden administration to address migration and displacement in Central America as a result of climate change.

The students worked alongside other students and legal experts from Harvard Law School and the University Network for Human Rights throughout the fall. Following months of research, their recent report — released on Earth Day — examines the migration of residents of the Northern Triangle, an area composed of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

The report analyzes the impacts of climate change on migration, as well as the relationship between climate change and current and future migration flows. It proposes seven legislative measures that will ensure greater protection for climate-displaced migrants.

“What this report is trying to do is to understand how those two issues, climate change and immigration, interact and how they do so in the Northern Triangle,” Camila Bustos LAW ’21 said. “We know that climate change is happening. We know its effects are already being felt … in Central America. What we did was research into what climate science tells us and how that is going to impact migration from the Northern Triangle.”

Alisa White LAW ’22 ENV ’23 told the News that legal expertise is relevant when creating new legislation to help migrants, as well as when thinking about ways to interpret existing laws so that they better protect climate-displaced people.

She pointed to the Temporary Protected Status Program, which gives migrants from certain countries affected by natural disaster or armed conflict the ability to live and work in the United States for limited amounts of time. Migrants from Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela, among other

countries, currently have temporary protected status under the program.

“You also have the element of the history and the relationship between the laws and executive policies that were made with respect to Central America, and the role that the U.S. has played in that region, specifically addressing how the United States has contributed to destabilization of the region, as well as the United States’ role in driving climate change, which has made conditions really difficult,” White said.

Bustos similarly said that the United States owes a “moral and ecological debt” to Central America.

The report outlines seven major recommendations to address the climate displacement crisis. It calls on Biden to include slow-onset weather events — such as coastal erosion — in the definition of an environmental crisis, expand temporary emergency programs for climate-displaced foreigners and create a new “climate visa” for Central Americans that offers a path to permanent residency.

In addition, the report recommends incorporating climate change into the existing framework for refugee asylum.

It also advocates for increased funding for research on climate migration from countries in the Northern Triangle.

“Experts project that by 2050, climate change will displace nearly four million people across Mexico and Central America,” Harvard Law School professor Deborah Anker wrote in an April 22 press release about the report. “We cannot wait another twenty-five years to address these issues. The Biden administration must reform our immigration infrastructure now.”

The report explains that the main drivers of climate displacement include food insecurity, recurring droughts, declining agricultural production and water scarcity. Changes in the climate system create significant economic losses for small farmers, particularly those who produce coffee, corn or beans. In addition, soil

degradation and rising sea levels are other major reasons why people are forced to move as a result of climate change.

Even if the report’s recommendations go into effect, Bustos emphasized that the Biden administration will be unable to fully combat the effects of climate change and displacement since they are already occurring.

“The fact that the Biden administration has shown that it is willing to act on climate is good news, but even if we mitigate as much as we can, there’s already a level of warming that we’ve locked ourselves in because of past emissions,” Bustos said. “The impacts of that are already being felt, so droughts are longer than usual and hurricanes are more frequent.”

The Yale Immigrant Justice Project and the Yale Environmental Law Association are two of the groups that contributed to the report.

Contact JULIA BROWN at julia.k.brown@yale.edu .

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

“We are doing this to save football at this critical moment. If we continue with the Champions League there is less and less interest and then it's over. The new format which starts in 2024 is absurd. In 2024, we are all dead.” FLORENTINO PÉREZ ON THE EUROPEAN SUPER LEAGUE

Speed, light and rebirth at Coxe Cage

COURTESY OF SAM RUBIN '95/YALE ATHLETICS

Sprinter Trenton Charles ’22 holds the school record in the 60-meter dash with a time of 6.75 seconds VENUE FROM PAGE 14 the effort,” Roberts said at the dedication in February 2005, during which Shorter also ran a commemorative solo lap around the track.

“Frank Shorter is one of Yale’s great athletic heroes, and this is a great way to honor him.”

A trademark skylight and a speedy track The Cage has gone through numerous renovations and projects over the years, but two things have remained consistent: Coxe’s iconic skylight and the banked track’s trademark speed. When Yale first opened the facility in the 1920s, its half-mile relay team ran an exhibition race in 1:32.4, a mark that was better than any previous indoor time.

Yale’s Director of Track and Field and Cross Country David Shoehalter said he ran his fastest times as a former student-athlete at Penn when he raced at Coxe Cage.

“I probably ran 15 races here,” Shoehalter told the News in 2013.

“Every year I would run my best times here.”

The creation of a banked track at Coxe in 2005 only increased its speed. A 2012 study commissioned by the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Track and Field Committee found that banked tracks tended to result in faster times. According to the study, the only other college in the Ivy League with a banked track is Harvard’s Gordon Indoor Track Facility.

The banked track provides an advantage for runners, but it also requires a bit of an adjustment for some athletes, including Yale sprinter Sydney McCord ’24.

McCord, who is from California, was mostly accustomed to competing on outdoor tracks in high school.

“My first time going to the Cage and running on the track was so foreign,” McCord said. “It was more of an adjustment than anything else because the track is half the size and banked at an angle.”

While some runners take time to adjust to the unique nature of the facility, the aesthetics of Coxe Cage are an attractive feature for athletes. “When going through the recruiting process, Coxe Cage was definitely a factor in my decision,” Stavig said. “It was by far the best indoor track I’d seen from any other school I was looking at.”

Coxe C a ge fea t u re s a 26,000-square-foot skylight that lets in sunlight from the center of the roof. A steel frame matrix rises about 80 feet from the ground to support the roof and skylight, which was restored in 2013.

“There is no other … track building that’s anything like this,” Shoehalter said. “To bring someone in here and tell them you’re gonna train here every day is an attraction to people.”

For more, see goydn.com/YDNsports.

Contact BENNIE ANDERSON at bennie.anderson@yale.edu .

Five Ivy schools competing locally PHASES FROM PAGE 14 to sport. Dow anticipates a likely continuation of spring competition into the month of May “with future competitions to be determined.”

The University of Pennsylvania has also welcomed back athletic competition, entering into Phase IV on Mar. 27. Penn Senior Associate Athletic Director and Chief Operations Officer Scott Ward said that Penn has mainly competed with local Division I schools within a 40-mile radius of Philadelphia.

“Philadelphia local schools were very supportive [in] helping us find scheduling opportunities,” Ward said. “Spring sports are permitted to practice through Final exams, May 11, however, some have chosen to end their training sessions already or are finished with competition.”

Ward added that for some sports, it was easier to schedule games than for others because of opponent league and conference schedules.

Penn Senior Associate Athletic Director of Governance and Administration Kevin Bonner said that Penn’s spring teams competed primarily against fellow Philadelphia City Six schools: Drexel, La Salle, Saint Joseph’s, Temple and Villanova.

“Penn Athletics moved quickly through the Ivy phases from Phase 1 on February 2 to Phase 4 and competition on March 27,” Bonner wrote to the News. “Track and field and baseball were the first teams to compete on March 27 and in total, 11 spring sports have competed.”

Penn began 2021 in Phase 0, which lasted until February and then progressed through Phase I and II until Phase III, which started on Mar. 15, according to Andrea Wieland, the Penn associate athletic director for sports performance.

Wieland said that earlier this year, obstacles of completely virtual programming as well as no in-person activity, except for medical clearances for student-athletes who were near campus in preparation for the spring, made the fall and winter challenging. She is now happy to get back to local competition safely. “[I am] really hoping to get back to fully being in person even if it is with masks, which would be nice to not have,” Wieland said. “I am hoping for a complete return to Ivy League competition [next fall], and I'm cautiously optimistic.”

Wieland mentioned that Penn athletes compete without spectators and are masked and distanced when they are not competing.

There are no pre- or post-competition meals or use of lock-

Three seniors transfer as grads M. HOCKEY FROM PAGE 14 ment with the manner in which the league handled the situation.

“If there were prior warnings when they canceled our season in November that they would grant athletes an extra year, it would have helped a lot.” Welsh said.

Although they have already laced up their skates for the final time as Bulldogs, all three players secured the chance to play a “super” senior season away from Yale.

O’Neil — who is departing from the Blue and White with 17 goals, 27 assists and three ECAC All-Academic Team selections — will now don the same colors at the University of Connecticut. The 5-foot-11inch, 180-pound right winger joins the Huskies with 94 NCAA games already under his belt. O’Neil was also named as a finalist for ECAC Hockey’s 2020-21 Student-Athlete of the Year Award.

According to Daniel Connolly of The UConn Blog, the Pierson College physics major “is expected to be an immediate contributor” to the UConn squad.

Also sticking in Connecticut at Sacred Heart University, Palecco said he will strive to capture a championship title while also working toward a master’s degree in investment management and finance. The New Jersey native told the News that he was drawn to the Pioneers by their previous success and by the coaching staff’s evident excitement about their future plans for the team.

“That was something I wanted to be a part of, so it made sense to help them as much as I can,” Palecco explained.

er-rooms, and student-athletes are tested three times a week.

As Penn’s semester ends, so will its sports, with the exception of track and field competition during exam week. Similarly, Harvard wraps up its Phase II practices and sport-related activity, excluding voluntary strength and conditioning, at the end of its semester on April 28.

Harvard Senior Associate Director of Athletics Nathan Fry wrote in an email to the News that Harvard has been in Phase II for the majority of the spring term, with a small number of students in residence being the only ones permitted to participate in on-campus sporting activities.

“We thought it was important to set expectations early in the term for what our semester might look like, and to make sure we were in constant communication and coordination with our campus colleagues,” Fry said. “We expect to welcome a full cohort of students back to campus next fall, and we are actively planning for competition.”

Fry added that he most looks forward to the “vibrancy of having 1000+ student-athletes return to campus,” with their “commitment to excellence, their engagement with campus, and their exceptional talent.”

While Harvard will not have spring competition this year, Columbia men’s golf was able to participate in the Doc Gimmler Spring Intercollegiate Golf Tournament on April 17 and 18. Columbia is approaching the Ivy League phases differently depending on each team, so the five members of their golf team have, so far, been the only Lions to compete this spring.

Dartmouth has also been able to schedule some games against local schools, including its recent

YALE DAILY NEWS

In his last three seasons at Yale, Palecco notched 26 total points in 91 appearances, while also picking up an ECAC All-Academic Team selection during his sophomore campaign.

For Palecco’s roommate, Welsh, next season will offer both a new challenge and a sense of familiarity.

It will be the first time since his stint in the British Columbia Hockey League with the Victoria Grizzlies that Welsh will be pulling on the same sweater as his younger brother Nolan at Long Island University.

“I’m really excited to join my brother at LIU,” Welsh wrote in an email to the News. “That was one of the main reasons I chose there.

I think it will be a cool experience potentially playing on the same line as him.”

In addition to reuniting with his brother, 5-foot-10-inch, 175-pound Welsh is also looking forward to getting more ice time in a very competitive schedule and stepping in as a leader for the second-year program.

As an older player who has dressed for 93 games and skated on the Bulldogs’

top line during the 2019-20 season, Welsh’s experience is set to make an impact on the LIU squad, which is mainly composed of underclassmen.

In terms of academics, Welsh intends to pursue a masters in data analytics and business intelligence.

Although their future endeavors will take Palecco, O’Neil and Welsh away from New Haven, the bonds and lessons they have gained from their time at The Whale will not be easily forgotten.

“It makes the days a lot better when you know you are heading to the rink with a group who is bought in and loves being around each other,” Palecco noted. “These guys are like brothers to me and hopefully, we will be friends forever.”

Long Island University (3–10– 0), Sacred Heart University (6–10– 2, 6–6–1 AHA) and the University of Connecticut (10–11–2, 10–10–2 Hockey East) all participated in the 2020-21 season.

Contact TRISHA NYUGEN at trisha.nyugen@yale.edu .

Contact AMELIA LOWER at amelia.lower@yale.edu .

MEGAN GRAHAM/PRODUCTION & DESIGN EDITOR

Yalies at Maridoe knocked out in match play W. GOLF FROM PAGE 14

O’Neil, Palecco and Welsh will be graduate transfers to the University of Connecticut, Sacred Heart University and Long Island University, respectively.

home games against Tufts in men’s and women’s lacrosse and a softball split doubleheader at UMass.

Dartmouth’s men’s and women’s track teams also recently competed at the University of New Hampshire with other America East teams, such as UMass Lowell, Vermont, Maine and Hartford.

Cornell is currently in Phase III, hosting full in-person practices without social distancing restrictions, as outlined in the spring 2021 Ivy League phased athletics activity plans.

Princeton recently entered Phase IV on April 23 and has released an updated spring competition schedule that includes softball games, rowing competitions and track meets, according to The Daily Princetonian.

When asked about Yale’s current and future plans for athletics, Associate Athletic Director of Strategic Communications Mike Gambardella wrote in an email that Yale Athletics will “continue to work on a daily basis with our team physician and the University COVID19 Review Team to determine the appropriate Phase for our student-athletes.”

“Any summer plans will be approved through the University COVID-19 Review Team,” Gambardella added.

As the last two weeks of Yale Athletics remain undetermined in regard to phasing, the Bulldogs have been given no apparent inclination that they will enter Phase IV by the end of the semester.

Yale Athletics progressed to Phase II of the Ivy League’s plan for the resumption of athletic activities on March 15.

placing them at 18th at the end of stroke play.

“It was a lot of fun to play well on a big stage,” Gianchandani said. “The opportunity to play at that high level does not come very often, and it is always important to use those tournaments as learning experiences.”

Gianchandani said that while she was frustrated to lose in match play she emphasized that she will use this weekend’s experiences as “fuel to get better and better.”

Both Gianchandani and Lee plan to compete in some tournaments over the summer, though they are still finalizing their schedules. Both golfers told the News that they can-

not wait to compete with their teammates donning the Blue and White.

“I’m counting down the days until we’re all back out on the golf course together,” Yale women’s golf head coach Lauren Harling said. “We have really used this time to invest in our team culture and in one another and I have a feeling it’s going to be a special year. I’m so excited to see our team back on campus and get back to doing what we love together.”

No. 26 seed duo Savannah Barber and Alexa Saldaña won the tournament on Wednesday.

Contact EUGENIO GARZA GARCÍA at eugenio.garzagarcia@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF KAITLYN LEE

Lee (left), Gianchandani (center) and Simon (right) at the 2021 US Women's Amateur Four-Ball Championship.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 11

“I also have a soft spot for spicy chicken wings. They are always best eaten at dives and sports bars, like Wogie’s in the West Village, New York City, near my house.” GAIL SIMMONS CANADIAN FOOD WRITER

Bird collisions at Yale, in New Haven

BY JULIA BROWN STAFF REPORTER As millions of birds fly north for their annual spring migration, some of the birds’ journeys will be stopped short on their way through New Haven as they collide into large glass windows, fall to the ground and die.

Birds have crashed into windows across the University and the Elm City for years, with the Yale School of Management’s Evans Hall being a prime example of a reflective glass structure that birds have trouble recognizing. University affiliates have recently collected data about the collisions at the school, with one estimate revealing that an average of three birds per day struck SOM’s windows in the spring of 2014. But the problem is not confined to Evans Hall, or even to the Elm City: The American Bird Conservancy estimates that over 1 billion birds are killed in North America every year due to these collisions.

“Bird-window collisions are one of the leading causes of bird loss in North America,” Executive Director of the Law, Ethics and Animals Program at the Yale Law School Viveca Morris ’15 ENV ’18 SOM ’19 said.

“One billion birds per year killed due to window strikes [is] a tragic number. But it’s also a completely solvable problem, unlike many other problems facing animals. We know exactly what needs to be done to fix it and we have the ability to do that … yet here at SOM the building is killing at least 100 birds per year.”

Collections Manager at the Peabody Museum of Natural History Kristof Zyskowski confirmed to the News that Evans Hall causes 100 bird fatalities per year. He said that in the past 10 years, Rosenkranz and Luce Halls have had eight fatalities, the Peabody Museum-Kline Geology Laboratory complex has had nine fatalities and the Osborn Memorial Laboratories building has had five fatalities. He highlighted that SOM remains the “biggest killer” of birds on campus.

Collisions happen when birds are unable to recognize the glass in front of them, either because it reflects the sky or because the glass is so transparent and the birds can see through to open space on the other side. As such, solutions implement various ways to make the glass more visible to birds, such as through reflective films or etched patterns, while trying to maintain as much of the view as possible.

Yale and New Haven have both initiated steps to mitigate bird collisions in new construction projects. However, both struggle with their approach for existing buildings because retrofits can be very costly. For example, SOM Director of Facilities Bob Saidi estimated in October that installing protective film at the School of Management would cost at least $560,000.

“Are the buildings on Yale’s campus problematic for birds?

Absolutely,” Morris said. “But the problem is not limited to just Yale or to just a few buildings. I think it’s much bigger than that.”

The issue: Bird collisions across the University and the Elm City According to Morris, the School of Management is a “particularly egregious” example of bird collisions because of its design. She said that a graduate student found 18 bird carcasses lying around the building in May 2020, and that she expects to see similar numbers this May. In addition to the bird problem at Evans Hall, the Yale School of Architecture’s Rudolph Hall has noticed issues with bird collisions since last year. Associate Dean of the School of Architecture Phil Bernstein ’79 ARC ’83 said that numerous migratory birds crashed into a west-facing window on the seventh floor of Rudolph Hall last spring.

“We decided to do a small research project to see if that window — which appears to be the only one in our building with this issue — could be treated with a protective film that was architecturally appropriate and kept the birds from hitting it,” Bernstein wrote to the News. “Unfortunately, because of the configuration of Rudolph Hall, that window is eight stories in the air and there’s no easy way to reach it to apply the film. So we are currently looking at other options.”

Morris also said that the newly constructed Yale Science Building has killed a number of birds, and that Zyskowski has been collecting the carcasses of birds that have died crashing into its windows.

Zyskowski told the News he found nine window-strike casualties on the east side of the Yale Science Building in October, but that no dead birds have been found so far this spring.

In addition to University buildings, Morris explained that many buildings throughout New Haven that are “also problematic.” She pointed specifically to the former Alexion Pharmaceuticals Global Headquarters at 100 College St., the Consulate of Ecuador at 1 Church St. and the Knights of Columbus Tower at 1 Columbus Plaza as examples of existing buildings with windows that cause “alarming” numbers of bird collisions.

‘Could be more rigorous’: The University’s solution Strategies to reduce bird collisions broadly fall into two categories: standards for new construction projects or retrofits for existing buildings.

Yale’s solution for new construction projects is included in the Yale University Design Standards, which outline building regulations for the University. According to Director of the Office of Sustainability Virginia Chapman ARC ’85, bird-friendly guidelines for new construction projects are “now integrated” into these standards, which were last

COURTESY OF VIVECA MORRIS

University and City officials explained the steps they are considering to prevent birds from crashing into windows. updated on July 15, 2019 — after construction began on YSB. “We have highlighted these concerns and worked with colleagues at Facilities Planning to develop bird safe standards for all new building construction and renovation projects at Yale,” Chapman wrote in an email to the News. “It connects to the concern that our activities (in this case our buildings) have a negative impact on the environment, specifically biodiversity.”

According to the standards, the University seeks to increase the visibility of glass and dampen any reflections to reduce the appearance of a clear passage to the sky.

The standards also call for reduced light pollution and fewer “bird traps” such as open pipes, ventilation grates and drains that may confine birds in enclosed spaces.

The standards acknowledge that bird collisions occur “often” at the University and that say that “mitigation is a concern.” “[Chapman] and I were both recently on a call about how the University is going to implement monitoring, and has adopted all sorts of bird-safe design practices,” Morris said. “So it’s definitely working to some extent and it’s wonderful that Yale did that. And the standards could be more rigorous.”

As for the University’s approach to existing buildings, Bernstein told the News that the School of Architecture has since closed the sunshade on the window that was causing problems.

According to Bernstein, this “seems to have solved the issue” for the time being — although Morris pointed out that based on data, fall migrations are often much more deadly to birds than spring migrations.

Director of Facilities Operations at SOM Jill McSorley ’03 told the News that the School of Management is making progress toward finding a practical solution to the “distressing” problem.

“We are currently experimenting with window film for Evans Hall,

and now have eight small samples of film on the Eastern windows of the building,” McSorely wrote in a statement to the News. “We are evaluating the effectiveness of these samples, and are in the process of obtaining larger samples for these windows. We hope to have those larger samples in place by the end of the fiscal year.”

McSorley also pointed out that the school kept its shades down during summer 2020, which increases visibility for birds, and that the school has reduced indoor lighting in the building since the beginning of the pandemic.

Still, Morris said that she expects there will be approximately 100 bird fatalities at Evans Hall this year. She expressed frustration with what she sees as the school’s lack of initiative for implementing a solution to save the birds.

“This is … a missed opportunity for the school to lead by example,” Morris wrote to the News. “Nearly 300 birds are known to have died due to [SOM’s] building in the last three years, and that number is likely a significant undercount.

How many more birds have to die before action is taken?”

‘No other municipality in Connecticut’: New Haven’s unique solutions Morris brought the bird collisions to the attention of New Haven City Planner Jaime Stein a few years ago.

Stein has since spoken with ornithology experts and others to understand the issue and consider potential solutions. According to Stein, New Haven is the only city in Connecticut that has seriously explored solutions to bird collisions.

“It’s work that we like because it’s not super contentious,” Stein said. “Everyone wants to do things that will help birds.”

Stein explained that the city is currently working toward producing a recommendation outlining bird-safe features, which may

eventually turn into an ordinance.

The recommendation may include reflective or patterned treatments on the glass being used in windows to ensure that birds are able to perceive the glass.

Additionally, Stein said the city hopes to recommend that materials in proposed developments must have a threat factor below 30.

The American Bird Conservancy has developed a threat factor rating system that ranks materials on a scale of one to 100 on how birdfriendly they are. Lower scores indicate fewer bird collisions.

According to Morris, the American Bird Conservancy classifies materials with threat factors under 30 as being bird-friendly, meaning they reduce collisions by at least 50 percent. Morris added she thinks New Haven’s threshold is “good.”

Stein explained that these recommendations have almost entirely focused on new construction, rather than on retrofits for existing buildings. She added New Haven is generally unable to dictate design guidelines for private property, which limits the city’s reach.

“Basically, the jurisdiction to include bird safe design guidelines would have to come from the state,” Stein said. “The state of Connecticut has jurisdiction over the building codes. Each municipality doesn’t have the ability to tweak.”

As such, New Haven is unable to impose bird-friendly standards on the University because Yale buildings, such as Evans Hall, are privately owned by the University.

“It’s time for action,” Morris said.

“The sooner that a solution is implemented, the more birds that will be saved. We have a lot of data now and I hope that can be translated into a solution sooner rather than later.”

At least 4,000 species of birds migrate regularly, according to the National Audubon Society.

Contact JULIA BROWN at julia.k.brown@yale.edu .

Steven Wilkinson to serve as acting FAS dean of social science

BY MADISON HAHAMY STAFF REPORTER

YALE NEWS

Wilkinson currently holds three professorial roles and is Henry R. Luce Director of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies.

Pending the approval of the Yale Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — at its June meeting, Steven Wilkinson will begin a one-year term as acting Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean of social science which will end in June 2022.

Wilkinson — professor of Indian and South Asian studies; professor of political science and international affairs; professor in the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, or ISPS; and Henry R. Luce Director of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies — will serve alongside the current dean, Alan Gerber ’86, for the fall 2021 semester. Gerber — professor of political science, economics and public health and a professor in the ISPS — served as the dean of social science since its inception in 2014.

“A great university needs a great division of social science, and a great division of social science needs a great academic leader,” Tamar Gendler, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, told the News. “Alan Gerber has been truly transformative as the inaugural FAS dean of social science … and [Wilkinson] has in all of his roles shown a kind of deep integrity and stability [and] a willingness and ability to make difficult choices

without abandoning the human aspects of each decision that he makes. I look forward to the opportunity to work with him this year.”

The FAS social science dean oversees the day-to-day and longterm wellness of the seven departments within the FAS Division of Social Science — anthropology, economics, linguistics, political science, psychology, sociology and statistics and data science. Along with FAS Dean of the Humanities Kathryn Lofton, the FAS social science dean is also responsible for cross-divisional programs, such as African American studies; ethnicity, race and migration; and women’s, gender and sexuality studies.

According to an April 28 press release from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, during his tenure, Gerber played an integral role in growing the Department of Statistics and Data Science from a major with fewer than 10 students to over 60 students per class year. Gendler also told the News that as dean of social science, Gerber was “an extraordinary recruiter, retainer, promoter and supporter of faculty in each of the departments.”

Alexandra Apolloni, project specialist in the FAS Dean’s Office, told the News that the incoming dean and outgoing dean serving together this upcoming fall is an approach used by the FAS such to “ease the

transition and to ensure a seamless transfer of responsibilities.”

The same was done for Jeffrey Brock ’92, FAS dean of science, and the previous dean, Paul Turner, who stayed on for the 2018 fall term.

Wilkinson, current deputy chair of the FAS Senate and a former chair of the Department of Political Science, wrote to the News in an email that, in preparing for the position, he plans to “learn from as many faculty as [he] can about what their priorities are for their departments and programs, particularly in advancing the excellence and diversity of the division and strengthening our teaching and graduate programs.”

“I’m also looking forward a lot, intellectually, to learning more about the Social Science disciplines where I have less of a foundation, such as Linguistics and Psychology, as well as reading more of the books and papers being written by my colleagues across the division,” Wilkinson wrote, adding his gratitude to Gerber for agreeing to serve alongside him in the fall.

The social science dean is also a voting member of a variety of governing committees for the FAS, including the FAS Steering Committee and the Faculty Resource Committee.

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

PAGE 12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

THROUGH THE LENS

I

f you asked high school me to imagine my first year of college, I would have pictured dorm rooms and lecture halls, not empty beaches and abandoned towns.

Cast off of campus for the spring semester, my friends and I holed up in Dennis, Massachusetts, catching sunsets whenever our class schedules let up. It was cold, dark and windy for most of our stay. But at least we were there together.

KAREN LIN reports.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

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BULLETIN BOARD ILLUSTRATIONS

DORA GUO is asophomore in Pierson College.

Contact her at dora.guo@yale.edu .

SOPHIE HENRY is a sophomore in Jonathan Edwards College.

Contact her at sophie.henry@yale.edu .

GIOVANNA TRUONG is a sophomore in Pauli Murray College.

Contact her at giovanna.truong@yale.edu .

CROSSWORD

MALIA KUO is a first year in Morse College.

Contact her at malia.kuo@yale.edu .

ISAAC YU is a first year in Berkeley College.

Contact him at isaac.yu@yale.edu .

NCAA MLAX Brown 12 Boston University 5

NCAA SB Boston College 6 Dartmouth 4

SPORTS

NCAA MLAX Dartmouth 20 Saint Anselm 6

NCAA WLAX Tufts 11 Dartmouth 5

FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE goydn.com/YDNsports Twitter: @YDNSports YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

YALE GOLF COURSE NEW SUPERINTENDENT JEFFREY AUSTIN Jeffrey Austin, a former assistant superintendent at Augusta National Golf Club, comes to the Yale Golf Course from Quail Hollow Country Club in Ohio to fill the superintendent role. Yale announced the hire on Tuesday. For more, see goydn.com/YDNsports.

RECRUITING DEAD PERIOD REGULAR NCAA RECRUITING JUNE 1 The NCAA forbade in-person recruiting last spring with a “dead period” but has announced that it will conclude on June 1. With the end of the dead period, DI coaches can to return to regular recruiting.

For more, see goydn.com/YDNsports.

Behind the Venue: Coxe Cage

“It wasn’t until I truly embraced the journey and looked back on my time training in Coxe Cage that I’d realized it was the space where I’d not only experienced the most physical growth, but emotional growth as well.”

YALE SPRINTER ALIYAH CUNNINGHAM ’22

Five Ivies in Phase IV

BY AMELIA LOWER STAFF REPORTER As people roll up their sleeves to receive vaccines across the country, athletes at Brown, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania are picking up their sticks, gloves and rackets to resume athletic competition in Phase IV of the Ivy League’s plan for the resumption of athletic activities.

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

Coxe Cage has served as the home of Yale men’s and women's track and field since 1928.

BY BENNIE ANDERSON CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Since its opening in 1928, Coxe Cage has served as the home of Yale men’s and women's track and field.

With an oval track, eight interior sprinting lanes, a sand pit, a pole vault and more, the facility supports competition for all running and field events, including throwing events like the shot put. Charles Edmund Coxe, the namesake for Coxe Cage, was a hammer thrower who graduated from Yale in 1883.

Coxe later donated $300,000 to the University for the project with the intention of the completed construction being named after him, and his name has become synonymous with one of the most historic venues in the sport.

Many athletes today consider it to be one of the most lively indoor track and field facilities in the country.

“So many people are bustling around, and there are races

happening every few minutes,” sprinter Lauren Stavig ’22 said.

“There are also jumpers jumping, athletes warming up, spectators cheering on competitors and other activity constantly happening. You can literally feel the adrenaline.”

Renovations to Coxe Cage Coxe Cage has undergone two major renovations since the early 1980s to allow athletes to continue to use one of the most historic track and field facilities in the country. In 1982, Coxe Cage underwent a $1.9 million facelift that transformed the building. The 1982 renovation also involved the installation of a new track that the New York Times hailed as “one of the world’s fastest” — the addition of the En-toutcas oval and infield was a hallmark feature of the renovation, and the mounting of the track allowed runners to train with less strain. Later, in 1988, Yale added another track within the Cage.

After a long period of wear and tear, the facility required another upgrade in the mid 2000s. The 2005 renovation, which made the track banked with an incline, was funded with a donation from Donald Roberts ’57. Roberts proceeded to name the track within Coxe Cage after Frank Shorter ’69.

Shorter, a legend within the United States running community whom Runner’s World called “the father of the modern running boom” in a 2018 profile, served as a Yale cross country captain as a student and captured two Olympic medals, including gold in the marathon at the 1972 Munich games. A 1984 inductee into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, he remains the only American athlete to win two medals in the Olympic marathon event.

“Yale does a great deal of community outreach with the [Coxe] Cage, and I hope this will enhance

Welsh, Palecco, O’Neil to grad transfer

COURTESY OF YALE ATHLETICS

Forwards Tyler Welsh '21, Dante Palecco '21 and Kevin O'Neil '21 look to make the most out of their final season of NCAA eligibility as graduate transfers.

Walking through the tunnel and stepping out onto the ice in front of an electric crowd at Ingalls Rink is a feeling Yale hockey players get to enjoy almost every weekend during the winter season. While the COVID-19 pandemic has robbed them of reliving this experience, senior forwards Kevin O’Neil ’21, Dante Palecco ’21 and Tyler Welsh ’21 look to make the most out of their final season of NCAA eligibility as graduate transfers to the University of Connecticut, Sacred Heart University and Long Island University, respectively.

M. HOCKEY In February, the Ivy League granted senior athletes a one-time waiver that would allow them to compete as grad-

uate students during the 2021-22 season at their respective Ancient Eight institution. Despite this historic gesture, many Yale athletes expressed confusion about the announcement, which was released after 50 Yale graduate programs and all but one professional school had already closed their applications. Palecco, O’Neil and Welsh were no exception.

“I would have been elated to come back here and get another year with my teammates,” Palecco said. “I committed to Yale in the first place because I believe in what they preach and wanted to be a part of this brotherhood, and would do anything to extend that past four years. [The announcement] seemed as if it was an empty gesture.”

Welsh shared similar sentiments, relaying to the News his disappoint-

STAT OF THE WEEK

SEE M. HOCKEY PAGE 10

42

Although Yale and Harvard remain in Phase II with fewer than two weeks left of classes this spring semester, many of their fellow Ivy League members have progressed towards full practices without social distancing restrictions and intercollegiate, nonconference competition. Athletic directors and communications staff from Harvard, Penn, Dartmouth, Brown and Yale spoke with the News about their current phasing status, competition

and obstacles they have faced this year due to the pandemic.

Brown Athletic Communications Assistant Nick Dow explained that in the fall, Brown participated in Phase I activities — which only allowed for strength and conditioning workouts — from Oct. 8 to Nov. 15, but has now shifted to Phase IV. “Brown is currently in Ivy Phase IV [and] the university moved into that phase on 4/2 with Brown’s first competition occurring on 4/3,” Dow wrote in an email to the News. “Brown has competed in local, regional competition this spring in the sports of men’s and women’s crew, coed and women’s sailing, men’s and women’s track & field, softball, women’s tennis and men’s lacrosse.”

As part of their local and regional competition, Brown has competed against schools both in Division I and Division III, with the scheduling of competition varying from sport SEE PHASES PAGE 10

LOUIE LU/PRODUCTION & DESIGN EDITOR

SEE VENUE PAGE 10

Yale duo knocked out at Maridoe

BY EUGENIO GARZA GARCÍA STAFF REPORTER On Monday, Yale women’s golfers and tournament teammates Ami Gianchandani ’23 and Kaitlyn Lee ’24 were eliminated in the round of 32 of the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship at Maridoe Golf Club in Carrollton, Texas.

W. GOLF

BY TRISHA NGUYEN STAFF REPORTER

NCAA MLAX Penn 23 Cabrini 9

Sophie Simon ’25, who will join the Yale women’s golf team as a first year next fall, was also knocked out with her partner, Rebecca Skoler — a first-year golfer with the Virginia Cavaliers.

The knockout on Monday comes after two rounds of

stroke play four-ball on Saturday and Sunday. In four-ball, a pair of golfers play holes individually and only count the lowest score for their total. On Monday, the 32 best sides were seeded based on their stroke play scores to enter the match play stage of the tournament.

Both the Gianchandani-Lee and Simon-Skoler pairings made the initial cut of 32 sides after their impressive play over the weekend against some of the best amateur golfers in the country.

Both pairings featuring Yale golfers were eliminated in this first round of match play. No. 2 seed Gianchandani and Lee were eliminated by the No. 31 seed University of Kentucky duo of Marissa Wenzler and Jensen Castle by two

holes with one to play. No. 19 seed Simon and Skoler lost to the No. 14 Texas duo of Baylor’s Britta Snyder and SMU’s Sarah Beqaj by four holes with two to play.

“One positive takeaway is that we know that we are just as good as any of the girls in that tournament,” Lee said. “It was a great pressure experience, and I've learned a lot about my game and what I need to work on to get better.”

Gianchandani and Lee earned medalist honors after the second round of stroke play for finishing tied in first with a twoday aggregate score of six under par. Simon and her teammate finished the weekend even, SEE W. GOLF PAGE 10

COURTESY OF DARREN CARROLL/USGA

Lee (left) and Gianchandani (right) on the 14th green during the first round of match play.

COMBINED CAREER GOAL TOTAL FOR GRADUATING YALE MEN’S HOCKEY FORWARDS KEVIN O’NEIL ’21, DANTE PALECCO ’21 AND TYLER WELSH ’21.

FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021

WEEKEND

Rivers, Rights and Refugees

// ZIHAO LIN

// BY LUKA GAWLINSKI SILVA In the lush mangrove forests of Bangladesh, on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, a community struggles to survive amid the deterioration of their landscape. Fishing and farming in the Sundarbans have become virtually impossible as the forest’s water quality has declined; a result of the intrusion of salinity in its rivers, caused by drastically increased flooding from monsoons, rendered more frequent and destructive due to climate change. In an interview with the Environmental Justice Foundation, Abdul Zuffer, a resident of the region, who became homeless after a cyclone in 2009, stressed his concern over the effects of the changing climate. “The rice season is not at the right time, none of the rains are. And when it does rain, it is far heavier. … The future will bring more devastating storms. … We want to stay here, but it will be difficult.”

The uptick in the frequency and magnitude of disasters in the region hasn’t been brought by sheer bad luck. Climate change has been linked to dramatic changes in weather patterns and the intensity of several natural phenomena and disasters.

The El Niño/La Niña Cycle, for example, is when temperatures in the Pacific naturally vary from the norm every two to seven years, leading to unusually heavy rains and droughts in some parts of the world.

The world’s rising temperatures over the past several decades have been intensifying this phenomenon. Issues such as fossil fuel extraction and unsustainable ranching impact far more than just climate change and have also brought about significant changes to our planet’s geography, including deforestation and increased mudslides and wildfires. The impacts of these practices, in conjunction with more traditional effects of climate change, lead to a dire and rapidly worsening crisis of climate refugees (an umbrella term without a universally recognized definition that refers to migrants who have fled their homes due to environmental disasters or the negative consequences of climate change).

The rising number of climate refugees has led to increased outrage globally, as the direct and current human effects of climate change act as arguments for increased sustainability worldwide. This raises the question of how human rights discourse will be impacted by climate change: Do future generations have rights to a clean, safe Earth? Is it even possible to give rights to people who don’t exist yet? And what rights do climate refugees possess cur-

rently to asylum or in regards to the protection of their home communities? How do these questions affect the international response to environmentalism?

A recent landmark decision by the UN High Commissioner on Refugees has the potential to significantly change the landscape for climate refugees. It states that refugees displaced by climate-related issues have the right to asylum in the countries they petition without the stipulation that they have to return home afterwards.

It is important to recognize, however, that because of the United Nations’ lack of enforcement powers, it cannot command countries to adhere to these guidelines, rendering the High Commissioner on Refugees’ decision mostly symbolic. As such, the question of how countries will individually interpret or implement their declaration is still up in the air.

Nevertheless, the ruling is still extremely important due to its establishment of principle and precedent. As Marianne Engelman-Lado, a Yale professor with an accomplished history in civil rights law and climate justice, explained, “When we think about bending the arc of the law towards justice, we also think about a stepby-step process to have some basic principles recognized that can then be operationalized and/or implemented. … It creates the opportunity, or the space, for greater argument.”

Countries that do choose to adopt stricter protections of climate refugees may face certain challenges. As seen by the migrant crisis of the previous decade, Europe has had trouble accommodating such a large new population and assimilating them into local communities. More migrants may exacerbate this issue and cause strain on governments that are already struggling. At certain points in 2015 and 2016, Greece was receiving over 5,000 migrants daily. Their economy was severely impacted, with tourism dropping over 50 percent in 2016. Additionally, waste produced by the refugees,including thousands of plastic containers and rubber boats used in their camps and on their journeys, has hurt the country’s and the ocean’s ecosystems. This can add to the anti-migrant/refugee rhetoric present in growing alt-right movements around the globe,grounded in the harmful and xenophobic idea that their countries are worsened and damaged by the presence of migrants.

Although most media representation of refugees focuses on migrants leaving war-

torn, poorer countries, the idea that climate refugees are only the products of developing countries is both incorrect and harmful.

While least developed nations, and especially island nations, are bearing the brunt of climate change, it isn’t only the underprivileged that are adversely affected.

Climate-related disasters have also ravaged the Australian Southeast, where one of the worst wildfires in the country’s history burned down over 2,500 homes and displaced thousands. Even in the United States, an island in Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, housing about 460 inhabitants, has faced rapid emigration due to rising sea levels.

Take, as another example, the city of Miami, Florida. Although Miami was ranked by the UBS in 2018 as the eighth wealthiest city in the world and the third wealthiest city in the U.S., it suffers from increasing climate gentrification and the displacement of people in the area.

Because rising sea levels will likely submerge the city by 2100, the wealthier residents of coastal areas are moving inland to neighborhoods that have been traditionally occupied by lower income communities, leading to the areas’ gentrification, affecting living costs, cultural ties and more. “As people go from places that were very desirable,” Engelman-Lado said, “and they have funds, they can use their funds to buy into and disrupt long-standing communities that have been undervalued because of systemic racism or other factors.” Not only are the wealthy not immune to being displaced by climate change, but their displacement can directly impact and displace poorer communities as well.

Although it may seem like we are powerless to stop the Earth’s increasing volatility and the climate refugee crisis, Yale students are actually uniquely positioned to affect the issue. As of 2017, Yale University has invested over $1 billion in Puerto Rican debt. Puerto Rico, which was devastated by Hurricane Maria in 2017, has been struggling economically and has entered into a hefty amount of debt (totaling 74 billion dollars) trying to recover. Additionally, Yale also holds millions of dollars of investments in fossil fuels, the use of which has been linked to the worsening of natural disasters like Hurricane Maria, which led to thousands of displaced people and climate refugees. Is it ethical for an institution of higher education to actively maintain this debt, adding to the damage and oppression of a community already hurt by climate change? And is it morally justi-

fiable for Yale to hold investments in fossil fuels and thus contribute to the destruction of countless other communities in the future?

Summarizing the discontent the student body is experiencing with the way Yale’s endowment is being run, Adriana Colón ’20, a member of the Puerto Rican student organization Despierta Boricua, commented to the Yale Daily News that “Yale tries to act like their investments are apolitical. … Yale shouldn’t be part of this investment because it is contributing to a humanity crisis.”

Engelman-Lado also disagrees with Yale’s attitude towards their investments: “I think universities and colleges cannot take the position that their investments are neutral. … I fundamentally believe that there is no such thing as neutrality, and there is also no such thing as perfection. We have to strive to be the best we can be, taking morality into account, so where our investment is causing harm, we have to take a pause.”

The Yale student body has mobilized on the issue of the University’s investments in many ways, most notably in its 2019 Yale-Harvard football game protest, which made national headlines but was unsuccessful in leading to administrative changes regarding the school’s endowment. However, in promising news, and most likely as a product of tremendous student activism, the administration recently announced the establishment of a faculty committee that would discuss realigning Yale’s investments with “a new set of ethical principles more suited to the climate crisis.”

Work like this, on the local level, in conjunction with larger-scale actions like the recent ruling by the UNHCR, are capable of minimizing the way people everywhere are harmed by climate change. And in the pursuit of global climate justice, one thing is clear: In order to evade what is sure to be one of the most pressing humanitarian crises of the 21st century, we must work to ensure the safety and preservation of our most vulnerable communities, ranging from the concrete cultural hotspots of inland Miami, to the scorched bushlands and homes of Eastern Australia, to the few remaining fishermen that paddle slowly down the long, murky rivers carving, carefully, across the Sundarbans.

Contact LUKA GAWLINSKI SILVA at luka.silva@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND GAMES

Humanizing Everything

// DORA GUO

// BY GRACE ZHANG Let me tell you about my good friend Turbo. Turbo has been a reliable companion on many an adventure — small, quick and always enthusiastic — except when he gets hungry. Turbo sings to me to keep me alert when I’m tired; he forgives me when I accidentally hurt him; he listens carefully to my rambling thoughts, never interrupting.

In return, I pay close attention to his needs.

When he gets tired, I find him a place to rest; when he gets hungry, I feed him with only the best fuel. On the occasions when I pull over at the gas station and press “premium,” sacrificing an extra 54 cents per gallon, I don’t think of Turbo as a 2014 Acura TL. I give him a couple of solid pats, thinking of his feelings, hoping he appreciates the good gas and recognizes that this is a gesture of love.

My best friend’s car, Greg, might share some of Turbo’s physical features — a shiny

exterior and lights on his front and back, for example — but to us, he is a different creature entirely. A bit more unwieldy than Turbo, and sometimes prone to grumbling, Greg nevertheless is cheery and steadfastly determined. And Greg is more dignified than Turbo — he requested that it be established to the public that his proper name is Gregory.

To my friends and me, every object is a sentient being with a unique identity. A pimple on my forehead is a “she” — to pick at her is to irritate her and to incite her to retaliate by becoming bigger, redder, and itchier. How can we blame her for being angry when I have attacked her against her will? The potted plant in my room had her feelings hurt when I forgot to water her for two weeks — her wilting was a sign of her sadness. “I don’t know what she did to deserve a plant mom like me,” I wondered sorrowfully as I attempted to revive her.

Our attitude towards inanimate objects is seen as entertaining at best, delusional at worst. But to me, it is one of the best outlooks you could possibly have in life. Too often, we go through our days failing to fully recognize even the humanity in other people. We disregard the feelings of those we do not know, remaining unaware and uncaring towards the circumstances that contributed to their unique identities. By searching for and recognizing consciousness and emotion everywhere, including in the things that don’t move or speak, we become more connected to the world outside ourselves. We no longer limit our empathy to the people and things that only affect us directly. We open our minds to the feelings of everything and everyone around us. Humanizing everything reminds us always that humanity is everywhere, within every person, no matter how

removed their lives may be from our own.

If you don’t mind some mild stares and chuckling, I would encourage you to try it.

Acknowledge that the lightbulb that inconveniently went out was simply just tired and overworked. Apologize to the tree when you pick a flower from it, recognizing that you are taking a part of its body for your own pleasure. Give your favorite sweatshirt a cuddle and a kiss — after all, it’s kept you warm and cozy in so many instances, never asking anything in return other than a good wash from time to time. You might feel insane, but you might also come to realize that you feel a little less like it is you against the world; you might come to realize you’ve begun to treat the world just a little bit kinder.

Contact GRACE ZHANG at grace.zhang@yale.edu .

Chaos on a Checkered B oard

// SOPHIA DESCHIFFART

// BY ANNIE SIDRANSKY My plethora of Pinterest boards may give some indication that I’m a fan of aesthetics. Rainy days, gothic architecture, dark academia — all of which have absolutely no connection as to why I chose Yale — are circumstances which in their visual aspects foster specific moods — moods which I enjoy immersing myself in.

Chess has a brilliant aesthetic about it.

The carefully carved pieces atop a dual-colored checkered board, the intense focus of the players as they meticulously reason out their moves, the brimming quiet full of logic and painstakingly thought out plans to chip away at an opponent brick by brick; get yourself a cup of tea and you’re set. That’s all I thought the game was before I learned to play, anyway.

A few months ago, in a moment of overthinking while on the phone with my older sister, I mused that I was playing chess while the person whose text I was struggling to respond to was probably just playing checkers. I then joked that I didn’t even know how to play chess. I flashed to my surprise when

she offered to teach me.

We began that night. My sister and I each downloaded a chess app, and the game commenced. She let me win at first, because our goal at that point was just to teach me how the pieces moved. I picked it up quickly, and one game turned into two. Eventually we called it a night, and in the sleep that followed, my dreams swam with kings and queens and rooks and bishops.

The next day, a friend and I had our bi-weekly Zoom call. As we updated one another about the happenings in our lives, I mentioned that I was learning to play chess.

When I told him which app I was using, he lit up in recognition and said that he uses the same one. The logical next move was for us to start a game — he won.

Soon, I was playing every day, mostly against the computer. Game after game, I continued to improve. The way the pieces drifted across the board became second nature, and even throughout the mundane moments of my days, I started to see chess scenarios work themselves out in my mind.

WKND RECOMMENDS Primal screaming.

Now this wasn’t “The Queen’s Gambit”, and I was not, by any stretch of imagination, Beth Harmon. I was still losing just as many games as I won, but chess had moved to a place in my life where I began to claim it as a hobby.

I eventually gained the ability to see plots appear before me as I went through a game.

When I lifted a piece, I was thinking two or three moves into the future, anticipating how my opponent would respond, planning for something unexpected. I recognized that I could have been going further than that — I could have been figuring out the whole game before even touching a pawn. I didn’t though.

Of course, even the best chess players, no matter their strategy and scheme, can lose.

But they would most certainly win against me because I don’t look as many moves into the future as they do. I can see my end goal — checkmate — and I can see the first few steps I’ll take to get there, but that’s as far as I go. A few moves at a time, largely moment to moment. What can I say, I like a little bit of the unexpected.

Chess is a game of strategy, and I do have

strategy: Being chaotic, shortsighted and hoping for the best. Just kidding! (Mostly.)

Maybe my “strategy,” or arguable lack thereof, is why I’ve lost many of the games I’ve played. Maybe that’s why after that first game with my friend, he said I was doing so well that he thought I was getting help. Maybe that’s why I think chess is so much fun. Maybe that’s why it’s such a truly beautiful game.

People like to compare chess to all things grandiose and not entirely necessary — life, love, war, dance. But above all else, I think simply the aesthetic of chess comes closest to encapsulating its essence; chess, after all, is nothing more than a game. Nothing more than a still shot moment of players locked in concentration, cups of tea gone cold and 32 carefully carved pieces atop a dual-colored checkered board. It’s a painting. A sculpture.

A photograph. Art. And, in the words of the aesthete Oscar Wilde himself: “All art is quite useless.”

Contact ANNIE SIDRANSKY at annie.sidransky@yale.edu .

ONLINE THIS WEEK: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A STUDENT EMT: Mao Shiotsu ‘23 investigates.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND PROMISE

A Broken Promise Land // DORA GUO

// BY JACK MCCORDICK Six months after its release, I still don’t know anyone who’s actually read President Obama’s memoir, “A Promised Land” (though I do have one friend who sheepishly admitted to listening to it on audiobook — but only, she claimed, to have Obama’s soothing, dulcet tones accompany her on long quarantine walks). Even as its sales numbers quickly skyrocketed into the millions, I couldn’t muster even a mild interest. As a form of political narrative, the Team of Rivals, room-where-it-happened genre of American political storytelling has never been my thing (yes, I’m looking at you, Aaron Sorkin). Plus, it’s over 700 pages long — and that’s just the first of two volumes.

A quick Google skim of early Internet buzz around the book failed to arouse my interest. Conservatives, ravenous for some Obama chum after four years of the former president’s relative public silence, trotted out whiny, tired critiques of Obama’s putative divisiveness and “ingratitude.” Mistyeyed liberals, exhausted after four years of Trump’s garbled verbal slurry, waxed poetic over Obama’s “gorgeous” prose (though many reviews were, I must admit, more measured than reverent). Judging by the state of my Twitter feed, the reaction on the Left, long having shed any rose-tinted illusions of Obama’s transformational power, was a mix of careful dissections of the former-President’s slippery, self-exculpatory historical memory and mirthless amusement at his fumbling attempts to score dates in college by quoting Marx and Foucault.

So far, so predictable.

But then I came across something that made me angry. In an adapted excerpt published in The Atlantic, Obama explained that he had written the memoir primarily with the intention of inspiring young people “to once again remake the world, and to bring

about, through hard work, determination, and a big dose of imagination, an America that finally aligns with all that is best in us.”

But if Obama really cares about or even understands the young people he claims to be writing for, he sure hasn’t been acting like it. While historians and political scientists will of course debate for decades whether the Obama administration’s failure to deliver on most of its vaunted promises can be chalked up to Obama’s personal flaws or to the constraints of his time, what cannot be disputed is what he’s done since leaving office.

He’s bragged about expanding American oil production. He’s issued tone-deaf, sweeping denunciations of cancel culture and youth activism that earned him plaudits from rightwing culture warrior ghouls Tomi Lahren and Ann Coulter. As whispers of a general strike began to spread throughout the notoriously oligarchic and racist NBA at the end of the summer, he encouraged the players to get back on the court. He’s assuaged rich Democratic donors that fundamental system transformation is just not in America’s cards, and privately vowed to step in to keep Bernie Sanders — the candidate most favored by young Democratic voters — from winning the 2020 Democratic nomination.

For many young people, of course, Obama’s election likely marked the dawn of an incipient political consciousness.

Only the youngest of current Yale students might be too young to remember the night of November 4, 2008. If you’re anything like me, that night will forever be etched in your memory, and not just from the thrill of getting to stay up past bedtime on a school night. Who can forget the excitement of that moment, that cathartic feeling of national renewal and expanding historical possibility, a moment when the normally-sedate New York Times could declare, in a fit

of journalistic swagger that now appears laughably naïve in the grim light of Trumpian hindsight, that Obama’s election had swept “away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease”? Hope, indeed.

Though Obama flirted with radical rhetoric throughout the 2008 campaign trail — remember when his “Yes we can” speech conjured the spirit of “slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights”? — the tenor of his presidency was, like the policies he ultimately enacted, significantly more muted. As his administration failed to reduce inequality, did little to arrest global warming, and dragged on the country’s forever wars, Obama resorted to a combination of abstract paeans to “the idea” and “the promise” of America and vacant appeals to the evanescent “arc of history.”

In addition to these empty rhetorical crutches, political theorist Corey Robin argues that Obama’s “moral minimalism” was reflected most acutely in his constant avowals of the “slight but simple truth of children being safe,” which became a “recurring theme of Obama’s presidency, arguably its epistemological ground.” In a speech following Sandy Hook, for example, Obama claimed that the “one thing we can be sure of” is “the love that we have for our children.”

It’s a theme Obama continues to return to: “People who you are fighting may love their kids,” he lectured in a 2019 interview in which he chided young people for their “wokeness” and “call-out-culture.” (Ok Boomer, I sighed as I Googled “Dictators who loved their kids.”). This kind of rhetoric was always relatively weak political fare, but it’s especially thin gruel for my peers, who live in a world of stagnating wages and skyrocketing childcare costs and for whom, as the Australian climate scientist Sophie Lewis puts it, “the

pitter-patter of tiny feet is inevitably the pitter-patter of giant carbon footprints.”

“Politics, in wealthy countries,” the late anthropologist and former Yale professor David Graeber wrote in February 2019, “is increasingly becoming a war between the generations.” Obama is 59, just a couple years older than my parents, and the more I think about his politics the more I realize the degree to which they are, well, dated. The political common sense of Obama’s generation was that “there is no alternative” to the present order of things: liberal capitalism, presided over by the (seemingly, but usually anything but) benevolent hand of American military might. If the political rhythm of our parents’ generation was the rousing pulse of liberal triumphalism, buoyed by the naïve belief that America was entering an age of post-racial harmony at home and unchallenged hegemony abroad, ours is surely the opposite: a steady drumbeat of slow decline, punctuated by sudden crescendos of calamity — a mass shooting, an environmental calamity, a global depression, a once-in-a-century pandemic.

In his memoir, Obama judges the success of his presidency in terms of the “absence of catastrophe” and “the preservation of normalcy,” and professes to have seen his job as “upholding for everyone the fiction that we live in a safe and orderly world.” My generation knows these to be the hollow consolations of a parent who can’t accept how catastrophically bad things have gotten. To do what Obama couldn’t requires that my generation engages in politics not to anoint another savior, but rather so that we might ourselves become different people, and in so doing make a world better than the messed up one that made us.

Contact JACK MCCORDICK at jack.mccordick@yale.edu .

ONLINE THIS WEEK: WKND RECOMMENDS Zoomba.

GAMERS UNITE: Claire Fang ‘23 reviews tabletop role-playing games.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND TRUST

// SUSANNA LIU

please (do not) perceive me // BY NATALIE TROY As a long-term mild critic of chaotic influencer Caroline Calloway, I’m basically her ideal fan. In case you’re not a white-girl-legacy-Instagram-hyperactive-liberal-arts-major type like myself, you probably don’t know who Caroline Calloway is, in which case the New York Times can explain better than I can.

Basically, like many influencers, Calloway thrives off drama. However, aside from her wannabe Ivy League status, her literary pretensions, and her Cambridge senior essay on Cecile Beaton, what really sets her apart from other influencers is her professed willingness to share even the most vulnerable parts of her life with her audience — including life-altering, heart-breaking toughto-read accounts of her reckoning with her father’s premature death. And it’s primarily on Instagram, so that comes with photos of his vomit-stained sink.

Calloway provides the most jarring and visible example for me to open this piece with, but having made my first Instagram account when I was 12, I’ve grown up placing a huge amount of personal information online. Beyond posting restaurants where I ate pretty food and photos proving I have a normal number of friends, I’ve cultivated a number of places where I can practice selective vulnerability and emotional intimacy in ways that create a digital journal, semi-publicly visible, but probably only interesting in its entirety to me.

Take my 743 finsta posts. Here’s one from fall of my first year of college: “college update: Connecticut’s at peak beauty rn (these pics don’t even come close) but honestly it’s still kinda rough!!! i keep waiting for it to not be rough but i’m SO BAD at making friends, like there are cool people here but i can’t even remember the last time i hung out in someone else’s suite? like i’ve forgotten how to even get into that type of situation. and like i know a lot of people a little bit but so few people well. and also like i like doing stuff alone and i kinda need

that me time but hanging out in your dorm sucks ASS bc you are genuinely enjoying yourself but you can still hear people talking everywhere so you feel like you’re doing the “wrong” thing or like missing out on friend-making time you clearly need even though you legit just wanna watch netflix on your damn own.”

I’m no Caroline Calloway, but this confession of how I hadn’t hung out in anyone else’s suite for weeks felt like confessing that I was the source of the constant tampon-related drain clogs in Vanderbilt entryway B or something equally alienating and humiliating. It’s worth noting that this post followed months of relatively upbeat photos of the pretty and funny things I saw and experienced despite my general loneliness freshman year. Even among a relatively small group of my hometown friends who already cared about me enough to follow my finsta, I was so afraid of seeming unlikable that I kept posting meaningless photos of fancy libraries rather than being honest about how stressed I was about the ongoing Confederate threats to march on our North Carolina main street, being rejected by Yale’s nationally ranked mock trial team, and fending off gross men at the few parties I worked up the nerve to even go to.

Part of what got me through that year was “communicating with” others online about said loneliness (I’m sorry Marina Keegan, but I cannot recommend reading “The Opposite of Loneliness” as a lonely first year, because it really made me feel like there was something wrong with me). Emery Bergmann’s stunning “Advice From a Formerly Lonely College Student” gave me hope. My friends’ comments on my finsta showed me that I wasn’t the only person struggling with the same difficult transition to college. Having a private Instagram account with a relatively small number of followers allowed me to curate exactly who could see how sad I actually felt most of the time.

Even with this smaller audience, however, I edited my sadness, making sure to empha-

WKND RECOMMENDS Power posing in your mirror.

size that I was still doing what I wanted to be doing even if I couldn’t find other people to do it with, and it all went along with a pretty picture. There’s something insidious about the control social media lets its users feel, when really the algorithm controls who sees and gets to interact with my posts in the first place. It feels incredibly validating not just to have hundreds of people celebrate my prettiness on the rinsta, but also to have a handful of close friends comment — visibly to dozens of other “close” friends — admitting their own sadness and loneliness. But at the end of the day, do I really want to filter so many of my messily beautiful interactions with other human beings through the glorified advertising mechanism of the instagram feed?

Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe what’s missing from social media is a romanticization of all human emotions. When I was fourteen and on Tumblr, I indulged in the pure happiness of gifs displaying OTP’s as well as the addictive sadness that came when those OTP’s were separated forever (my fellow (former) SuperWhoLock stans know what’s up) ((as if Doctor Who invented the concept of unrequited love)). TikTok vulnerability maximizes quick cuts and humorous exaggeration or ambiguity, a type of performative melancholy that doesn’t really speak to the long-winded emo shitposter in me.

Lately, I’ve taken more of my sad girl hours to Twitter.

Take a couple tweets from a thread posted after my most recent crush went down in the flames of an “i just want to be friends” text: Imagine dressing all cute just to work on a paper and manifest being texted first instead of initiating two weekends in a row. haha that would be so embarrassing who would do that -11:00 AM · Mar 11, 2021·Twitter Web App Imagine getting dressed all cute just to get texted first...2b rejected lmaoooo cant believe it got worse-5:42 PM · Mar 11, 2021·Twitter Web App For my goal of getting exactly two people who know me fairly well to interact and com-

ment commiserating with my sorry state that day, this is the kind of vulnerability that works on twitter. While twitter’s analytics show me that a mortifying 196 people to date have witnessed my being rejected, the tweets still arguably show that I was desirable enough to find someone to talk to during the absolute desert of meeting new people during a pandemic and self-deprecatingly funny enough to note the humorous timing of the rejection on the same day as my earlier tweet.

Twitter was also there for me at 4am the next morning when I woke up crying and unable to sleep because of how fundamentally unlovable I felt. I spent the early morning hours trying on silly outfits, steaming my brand-new sourdough starter trying to get it to double, and unsuccessfully coaxing a small gang of raccoons to hang out with me (rejected twice in 24 hours? Damn, double homicide). Once again, I knew this wasn’t a big deal and could kind of see it coming — our second “date” involved a walk to Stop & Shop and on our third and final one he showed up 45 minutes late and wearing leggings under shorts — but that night, I needed to grieve the fantastical relationship that only existed in my mind. I needed to feel less alone, but I knew the situation wasn’t worth robbing my roommates of a good night of sleep. Or, did I need to feel less alone? There I was again, comparing myself to my handful of serially monogamous friends and the instagram couples somehow gallivanting from New Haven to Los Angeles in a pandemic. Maybe spending those 4 a.m. hours journaling and taking a bunch of melatonin would have been the healthier move for me in the long term.

In that moment, though, all it took to feel better was a blue dawn and the blue Twitter web app interface, showing me that a friend from high school was actively tweeting about online chess at 5:30 a.m. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Contact NATALIE TROY at natalie.troy@yale.edu .