Yale Daily News — Week of Feb. 19

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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021 · VOL. CXLIII, NO. 16 · yaledailynews.com

Yale extends test-optional policy for 2021-2022 admissions cycle wish, but maintains that students who choose not to submit scores will not be disadvantaged.

“The staff at the admissions office understands that students have many priorities associated with the consequences of the pandemic; completing standardized tests should not be among them,” the announcement read.

Director of Undergraduate Admissions Margit Dahl told the News that the pandemic has continued to limit testing dates and sites. Because current high school juniors applying in next year’s admissions cycle have fewer opportunities to take standardized tests, Dahl said it did not seem reasonable to require them to submit scores.

Yale first implemented a test-optional policy for applicants to the

BY AMELIA DAVIDSON STAFF REPORTER Yale announced on Thursday that it will continue to be test optional for the 2021-2022 admissions cycle due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

With Thursday’s announcement, Yale joined a growing group of colleges and universities — including all other Ivy League Schools — in extending test-optional policies for applicants to the class of 2026 and 2021-2022 transfer applicants. In an official announcement posted to the Yale Admissions website, Yale cited the “extraordinary circumstances” of this year as reason to extend the policy. Yale will allow students to submit SAT or ACT scores if they

class of 2025 last June, as SAT and ACT testing dates were cancelled or delayed in the first few months of the pandemic. Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan told the News that the test-optional policy did not create “significant disruptions” to the admissions process this year, allowing the office to be more comfortable with a one-year extension of the policy.

“Our thoughtful whole-person review process allows us to consider many factors when considering applicants, and test scores are never determinative,” Quinlan wrote in an email to the News on Friday. “We have responded to the many disruptions caused by the panSEE TEST-OPTIONAL PAGE 4

New COVID-19 test result type the Broad Institute in Massachusetts, Yale's primary COVID-19 testing partner, and comes as the world faces the imminent threat of COVID-19 variants. The new inconclusive result type — which neither confirms nor denies the presence of the coronavirus in the sample — is meant to be followed up with another test to confirm whether or not the person has an active infection.

"Late last month, the Broad testing center upgraded our high-

BY MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO STAFF REPORTER In an email sent to the Yale community on Tuesday, Yale Health Chief Quality Officer Madeline Wilson announced that there will now be three main results for COVID-19 tests administered through Yale Health: positive, negative and "inconclusive."

The announcement follows recent developments in testing at

REGINA SUNG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Students who test inconclusive will temporarily move to isolation housing in Bingham Hall.

Judge denies Yale’s motion in Fontes case

HEDY TUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

A judge has ruled against the University’s motion to dismiss a case that six plaintiffs have brought against it.

BY ROSE HOROWITCH AND BEATRIZ HORTA STAFF REPORTERS A Connecticut judge has ruled against Yale’s motion to dismiss allegations that the University and Yale New Haven Hospital inadequately responded to harassment allegations that six women lev-

eled against Yale School of Medicine anesthesiology professor Manuel Fontes.

On Feb. 9, Connecticut federal Judge Janet Arterton rejected most of the University’s motion to dismiss the charges against it and SEE HARASSMENT PAGE 5

scale testing to double our capacity and increase the robustness of our assay," David Cameron, director of communications and media relations at the Broad Institute, wrote in an email to the News.

"After two weeks’ worth of data from the upgrade, working with the MA Department of Public Health, we adjusted the interpretation thresholds that we use to call a test ‘positive.'"

Prior to this change, alerts that could have appeared on someone's MyChart account included “test not performed” — for samples that "could not be processed for technical reasons, most often because too much mucus was on the swab" — and “invalid” for samples where no genetic material was detected, often due to improper swabbing.

Moving forward, those who receive an inconclusive result will be treated as if they were positive for COVID-19 until a negative result negates that possibility.

Students who test inconclusive will be contacted by Yale's testing team so that they can temporarily relocate to isolation housing at Bingham Hall on Old Campus while they wait for follow-up test results. Faculty and staff who SEE COVID PAGE 4

Three found dead in New Haven on Monday

BY RAZEL SUANSING STAFF REPORTER The New Haven Police Department is investigating three deaths that were first reported on Monday. Two men were found dead in a storage space on College St, and a third person was found dead near East Rock Park.

NHPD officers responded to a 911 call at approximately 12:03 p.m. on College Street and Crown Street downtown. There, in a stor-

age space in the back alley behind Jack's Bar and Steakhouse, they found two unresponsive men in their mid to late 50s. The two men were confirmed dead on arrival. A third victim was rushed to the hospital by ambulance, where police say the person is expected to make a full recovery. NHPD has reported that they are investigating the incident as a case of drug abuse and overdose. NHPD Assistant Chief SEE BODIES PAGE 4

ADRIAN KULESZA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The New Haven Police Department investigates two incidents that happened Monday.

NHPS middle schools to reopen

BY ALVARO PERPULY AND CHRISTIAN ROBLES STAFF REPORTERS Ellorem volor minihil iquideliAfter allowing most New Haven Public Schools elementary school students to return to school for in-person learning on Jan. 19, district officials announced on Tuesday that middle school students will also have the opportunity to return to campus beginning March 4.

On Tuesday, NHPS parents and Board of Education members received an email from Superintendent Iline Tracey that middle school students will have the option to enroll in an in-person, hybrid or remote form beginning on March 4. In an email to the News, Tracey wrote that the district’s decision comes after conversations with teacher and faculty unions. Tracey added that the district will consider reopening high schools in the near future, though she did not offer a timetable.

Following the announcement, some community mem-

CROSS CAMPUS

INSIDE THE NEWS

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1981.

CHILDCARE

An unidentified man falls to the bottom of a laundry chute in Payne Whitney Gymnasium.

The man — estimated to have fallen seven stories — is taken to Yale New Haven Hospital.

YALE DAILY NEWS

Quinlan confirmed that Undergraduate Admissions would remain test-optional next year but would not make decision on testing status past that point.

For many Yale employees, arranging for childcare during the pandemic has proven difficult — and can have lasting effects on workplace gender inequity.

Page 3 UNIVERSITY

MASKS

bers praised the district’s continued commitment to reopening schools, while others have called on the district to keep schools closed, as case rates fall into the CDC’s classification of “high transmission levels.”

“It's always been our plan to do a phased-in return to in-person instruction,” Board of Education President Yesenia Rivera wrote to the News. “Bringing back the

remainder of the students in the K-8 schools — which were prepared prior to the return of the PK-5 students — makes sense.”

NHPS parent Zeidy Cruz expressed support for the middle school reopening, telling the News that like other NHPS students, both of her children have struggled to adapt to virtual SEE REOPEN PAGE 5

DANIEL ZHAO/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

The district plans to reopen middle schools early next month, over a month after its elementary school students returned to classrooms.

A School of the Environment study found people are more likely to leave their residences in areas where mask mandates are implemented.

Page 7 SCITECH

FILM

On Feb. 19, The Council on African Studies will host its third annual Yale Africa Film Festival, which will showcase films from the African continent and its diaspora.

Page 8 ARTS

ATHLETE

The Ivy League announced the cancellation of athletic competition this spring but left open the possibility of local nonconference competition.

Page 14 SPORTS

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION G U E S T C O LU M N I S T LY D I A B U R L E S O N

The post-liberal synthesis

Don’t make us deal L with this, too Y

ale’s poorest students deal with many challenges when adjusting to life at Yale. We deal with this, too: Over Thanksgiving break, I sent two emails to Yale’s Financial Aid Office — one inquiring about a scholarship reaching my account, and the other requesting a letter that would qualify me for a graduate school application fee waiver. Within 24 hours, the Financial Aid Office had responded to the first request. After waiting a week for a response to the second, however, I called the office, only to be chastised. I was told that everyone else submitted these requests months ago during the summer and that my message was in the queue — “they’ll get to it when they can.”

Unfortunately, this encounter that I had with the Financial Aid Office, like others that have recently been reported in the News, is not abnormal. As I complete my fourth year at Yale, I’ve grown used to being brushed off — emails to the director of undergraduate financial aid receiving no response, requests made in Yale’s Safety Net portal never followed up on, phone calls with the financial aid office yielding no helpful information.

What I was not used to, and what many of Yale’s most financially vulnerable students are forced to get used to, is the Financial Aid Office’s insensitive remarks that disregard the fact that full-aid students, in many cases, do not know what we are doing. And it is precisely because we don’t know what we’re doing that we need the most institutional support.

Yale’s faculty and administration, and especially its financial aid office, need to offer more understanding and empathy when dealing with the university’s most vulnerable students.

The fact that full-aid students often don’t know what we’re doing when we arrive at Yale isn’t willful ignorance. Rather, we aren’t well-versed in Yale’s hidden curriculum. This curriculum isn’t taught in a classroom but includes cultural norms, values, expectations and perspectives that first-generation, low-income and minority students often don’t know because we grew up separately from them.

My encounter with the financial aid officer exemplifies the existence of this hidden curriculum: When he told me that other students had submitted their requests for a fee waiver in the summer, I thought, How was I supposed to know to do that? There is almost no one in my family who has a college degree, let alone anyone who could guide me in seeking a graduate degree. Getting into Yale did not suddenly grant me the ability to navigate a bureaucratic maze of offices and policies, nor did it elucidate a clear pathway to success at Yale and beyond. Because of my disadvantaged background, I am more likely to feel lost and isolated on campus, and therefore less likely to use the resources that are meant

to benefit me. The least the Financial Aid Office could do is not rub my own ignorance in my face.

This hidden curriculum doesn’t just affect student interactions with the Financial Aid Office, and my experience with administrative insensitivity is also not localized.

When one of my friends asked the Financial Aid Office to approve his student loan request, he was told to ask his parents for the money. Twice in the three years that I’ve applied for financial aid after my first year at Yale, I’ve had new required documents added to my financial aid checklist without my knowledge, thus causing me to receive a $40,000 bill in August that I am expected to pay.

It doesn’t matter to me that I eventually got the fee waiver letter from the Financial Aid Office or that my financial aid bill eventually equaled out. What matters is that the stress caused by these moments is utterly unnecessary. These are daily occurrences that full-aid students face when trying to navigate a relationship with the Financial Aid Office.

And there is absolutely no reason for them. There is absolutely no reason why poor students should be subjected to more stress simply because the administration meant to help the students doesn’t realize how much its words or actions are harming them.

From my correspondence with Director of Undergraduate Financial Aid Scott Wallace-Juedes, all financial aid employees received diversity, equity and inclusion training this past fall. Wallace-Juedes says that he expects “that everyone who interacts with the office feels respected, valued, and heard.” Given my experience with the Financial Aid Office during my time at Yale and the conversations that I’ve had with other students on financial aid, I can confidently say that Wallace-Juedes’ expectations have consistently not been met.

There are more students at Yale from the top 1 percent than there are from the bottom 60 percent. We are the minority in funds, in the student body population and in the amount of understanding that the administration has when they deal with us. Yale can’t immediately change our socioeconomic status, but it can change how its employees respond to our concerns. Better train the Financial Aid Office to talk with students with empathy and understanding.

Help Yale employees understand why we might not be able to ask our parents for money, why that scholarship check might mean the difference between a new laptop and a failing grade, why we might not know financial aid policies or ask for things as soon as everybody else does. Yale’s poorest students already deal with so many challenges when adjusting to life at Yale. Please don’t make us deal with this, too.

LYDIA BURLESON is a senior in Jonathan Edwards College. Contact her at lydia.burleson@yale.edu .

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ast week, Senator Mitt Romney proposed an unexpectedly ambitious plan to reform America’s child allowance programs. Combining and expanding existing welfare benefits, the Romney plan would help parents by providing $350 a month for kids five and under, and $250 a month for kids up to 17. It’s also important to note that the proposal phases out for large, wealthy families such as Romney’s. After the announcement, the plan received praise from sources as varied as the centrist Niskanen Center and the leftist People’s Policy Project, both of which argued that the Romney plan improves upon President Biden’s original proposal. The plan’s most ardent critics came from the right, with the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) calling the allowance “a move in the wrong direction.”

In and of itself, the Romney plan is a sensible, moderate and well-crafted proposal.

AEI’s opposition has little to do with substance, and much to do with the conservative establishment’s tendency to fetishize markets and demonize welfare spending. But Romney’s proposal also signifies a major paradigm shift in American politics: the gradual abandonment of laissez-faire economics, the increasing importance of family policy and the rise of a strange post-liberal coalition.

Let us start with the many reasons why conservatives and progressives may — and should — support Romney’s plan. To rightists, Romney offers a piece of legislation that is resolutely pro-family, one that will reduce the current system’s penalties for marriage and reward stay-at-home parents. As for leftists, the proposal’s progressive structure would reduce child poverty, help middle-class households and do away with the most regressive programs currently in place. Pro-family and anti-poverty, socially conservative and economically progressive, the Romney plan brings together a peculiar coalition of religious traditionalists and welfare spending enthusiasts.

Both these factions share a certain disdain for the market-friendly, neoliberal consensus that Bill Clinton and George W. MATHIS Bush personBITTON ify equally. For some, free marThrough the kets erode traditional strucLookingtures, atomize Glass communities and promote an absurd consumerist ethos. For others, markets exacerbate inequalities, deprive the disadvantaged of opportunities and facilitate the corruption of our political system. In both cases, unchaperoned capitalism shoulders the bulk of the blame, and welfare spending represents a logical solution — for instance, while some may have thought that President Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue package would lead to a Tea Party-style backlash, a recent CBS News poll found that 79 percent of Americans either support it or find it insufficiently ambitious.

In other words, this opposition to free market capitalism transcends partisan boundaries. Post-liberal conservatives and leftists may not agree on cultural questions, but they all support some degree of protectionism, higher taxes on the wealthy, generous family policies, redistributive measures and child allowances, as well as regulations on Big Tech and Wall Street.

More broadly, this coalition of free market sceptics aspires to reward those whose work is ignored by conventional economic models — stay-at-home parents and others who produce unquantifiable value for society at large. To move beyond standard measures of economic prosperity, to create a community-focused economy, to reward those who work in the shadows, all are ideas that Americans increasingly accept. On the Democratic Party’s primary stage, for instance, Andrew Yang argued that we should move beyond macroeconomic indicators that fail to account for the unpaid work that

families and communities do every day — an idea that would have seemed radical 15 years ago.

Naturally, these shared goals are not enough to form a coherent political party — we can hardly imagine traditionalists building a comprehensive platform with pro-choice activists. Of course, if American conservatives stopped obsessing over gender-neutral bathrooms and started thinking about broader cultural trends, they might realize that welfare spending is negatively correlated with both divorce rates and abortion rates. They might realize that those who genuinely want to preserve the place of marriage in American life would be better served by Bernie Sanders’s democratic socialism than by the Republican Party’s lip service. Surprisingly enough, giving people access to healthcare does more to advance the cause of family-formation than anti-trans rhetoric.

Nevertheless, in a country that has become more polarized than ever, this kind of non-partisan synthesis — an alliance between leftists and socially conservative critics of free market capitalism — is unlikely to emerge. But this need not matter so long as both groups reshape the ideological makeup of their respective parties, as they have begun to do.

On the right, think tanks such as American Compass are fighting against what they call the conservative establishment’s “market fundamentalism.” On the left, the likes of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have changed the Democratic Party’s conversation on issues such as healthcare, taxes and environmental policy.

This opposition to laissez-faire economics may prove temporary.

But if proposals such as Romney’s child allowance came to dominate America’s national conversation, the country would be able to move — one policy at a time — beyond a status quo wherein family formation and community building bow down to the invisible hand.

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

Asians in the crosshairs “V

iolence against Asian Americans is on the rise.” It is a hard-tomiss headline that has been plastered across news sites, Twitter feeds and Instagram stories for the past few weeks. From coast to coast, violence against Asian Americans in the United States is becoming increasingly prevalent.

For many, Asian American or not, this hardly comes as a surprise. What do we expect after hearing former President Trump blaming the “China virus” for a painful year full of lost jobs, seemingly indefinite quarantines and, yes, lost loved ones? Others like Tucker Carlson embarked on disinformation campaigns, arguing outlandish and debunked theories, including that COVID-19 was manufactured in a Chinese lab as a bioweapon. And while much of the recent political rhetoric has revolved around China, anti-Asian hate crimes have targeted much wider swaths of people, including Southeast Asian Americans.

While Trump and his counterparts are a significant instigator of such hatred, they are not the sole explanation behind the rise of antiAsian American sentiment. Rather, recent events mark the fallout from the geopolitical shift we have seen with the rise of China as a growing power in the international landscape.

China has become public enemy number one, and no one wants to be weak on China — something very apparent during the 2020 election.

As Trump’s campaign bore down on Biden for “40 years of being wrong about China,” the Biden administration countered with its own advertisement, slamming the Trump administration for being soft towards China. While the rhetoric in Biden’s message targeted Trump’s hypocrisy, the video was rounded out with ominous music and stock videos of Chinese people buzzing around airports and cities.

History is repeating itself in more ways than one. In France, the antiAsian concept of Yellow Peril was explicitly revived when a French

newspaper published a “Yellow Alert” headline alongside an image of a Asian woman wearing a mask.

A recent report by the Asian AIDEN American Bar LEE Association and law firm It’s Paul, Weiss Complicated compared the link between COVID-19 and hate crimes to the 9/11 attacks and the violence against Americans of South Asian and Middle Eastern descent. If we are to learn from history, we can be assured that such anti-Asian American sentiment will not cease once the pandemic is under control.

I do not deny that the Chinese government bears responsibility for its actions and failures, especially in the early days of the pandemic. And in an ironic twist, the Chinese government has also spun out condemnable Tucker Carlson-esqe conspiracy theories that the coronavirus was brought to China by the U.S. military.

But to say that anti-Asian prejudice is merely a response to China’s shortcomings during the pandemic would be as fallacious as arguing that American military intervention in the Middle East was solely in response to the events of Sept. 11.

Yes, it may have been a component, but America’s geopolitical and economic interests involving the Middle East, and now China, extend far beyond these two events.

There are bigger things going on: the United States is arguably facing a new primary adversary in our modern geopolitical landscape.

In fact, Biden’s National Security Council even created a new position, “Indo-Pacific coordinator,” to be filled by Kurt Campbell, the man largely responsible for shaping former President Obama and former Secretary of State Clinton’s “Pivot

to Asia” strategy. Likewise, the new Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, has indicated his feelings that China is undoubtedly America’s most significant challenge today. It is obvious that addressing China is becoming one of the few remaining areas for bipartisan agreement in our country.

Still, it is difficult to clearly define a line around realms of policy. Foreign policy is domestic policy. Our rhetoric around China has severe implications for Asian Americans, Chinese or not, in the United States. We know this from the numerous instances in history when Asian Americans have been targeted, excluded and assaulted as a result of international events like World War II. That being said, the Biden administration has already made a meaningful effort in this balancing act between foreign policy and domestic policy — far more than the Trump administration ever did — with an early executive action targeting bias in the COVID-19 response while encouraging the Department of Justice to combat anti-Asian harassment. And while efforts to secure an Asian American cabinet secretary were unsuccessful, Asian Americans like Neera Tanden and Katherine Tai are represented in Biden’s greater cabinet. We also have our first Asian American vice president.

Still, we must continue to reckon with the ways in which our foreign policy has deep-seated implications back home, especially for immigrants.

Anti-Asian discrimination and violence in the wake of COVID-19 is not an isolated incident; it is just the first example of how America’s China policy has come home to roost. But no matter how the U.S.China battle for power goes, we cannot allow ourselves, our parents, our grandparents and our community to be collateral damage.

AIDEN LEE is a rising senior in Pauli Murray college. His column, “It’s Complicated,” runs every other Wednesday. Contact him at aiden.lee@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 3

“In politics evils should be remedied not revenged.”

CHARLES-LOUIS NAPOLÉON BONAPARTE

PRINCE-PRESIDENT OF THE SECOND FRENCH REPUBLIC

Employees criticize Yale’s childcare policies

YALE NEWS

Some Yale affiliates have access to childcare-related benefits through the University.

BY MADISON HAHAMY STAFF REPORTER On Feb. 3, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Tamar Gendler wrote an email to faculty letting them know that recent efforts to convert Rosenfeld Hall into a childcare center for school-age children fell through due to the building’s conversion into a vaccination site.

“We extensively surveyed additional campus spaces and none meet the regulatory requirements for operating a childcare facility,” Gendler said.

The news came as a disappointment to many faculty members who were already stretched thin by the demands of working from home with their children’s constant presence. For them, trying to find a consistent and affordable option for childcare proved difficult as well — especially since many facilities have closed due to the pandemic.

Rosenfeld Hall would have been the only school-aged childcare center on Yale’s campus. Without it, some faculty now find themselves in the same position they have been in for many months — an unsustainable arrangement that could have lasting ramifications on gender inequity in the workplace.

“I am facing never-ending laundry, dishes and cleaning, combined with the pressures of acting like a grade-school teacher and IT professional (none of which I am qualified for) combined with my full-time job

and my desire to do that well,” Stacey Bonet, senior administrative assistant at the Yale School of Public Health, wrote in an email to the News. “Since the disadvantage women face in the workplace is cyclical, pandemic losses could result in generations of further disadvantage for women at work.”

On Dec. 1, members of Yale’s Childcare Consultative Committee presented a brief to University President Peter Salovey and other administrative officials detailing their issues with Yale’s current childcare plans and offering specific policy adjustments, which they also detailed in a December op-ed for the News.

The YCCC members suggested policies including 90 paid time off “COVID Days” for the spring semester, affordable and convenient childcare options provided by the University, childcare stipends for postdoctoral parents and more.

They also advocated for more centralized flexibility guidelines for academic departments that cover work hours and teaching arrangements.

Currently, those departments operate under a policy of individual discretion as to what accommodations they would provide.

The Committee is not an official group under the Provost’s office — although the YCCC has demanded that it become one, and a resolution asking for such a committee to be formed recently passed at an FAS Senate meeting. Instead, the YCCC is a coalition formed from representatives of the Women Fac-

ulty Forum, FAS Senate, Committee on the Status of Women in Medicine, Working Women’s Network, Yale postdoctoral associations and UNITE HERE Local 34, which is the union for clerical and technical workers at Yale.

According to professor of history Naomi Rogers, the administration’s primary response to these complaints has been organizing regularly scheduled meetings with a senior provost official.

Rene Almeling, associate professor of sociology, spoke positively of administrative response to childcare issues, both in general and in specific response to the YCCC brief.

“The YCCC committee is appreciative of the efforts being made by the Yale administration, especially the Provost and FAS Dean Tamar Gendler, to address pandemic-related childcare issues. If this was an easy problem to solve, it would be solved by now,” she said.

But even so, Almeling and other faculty do not believe these steps are enough.

For one, Yale lowered the number of Crisis Care days from 25 for the period between June and December 2020 to just 20 for the spring term. Crisis Care days give employees access to emergency backup care, which includes Bright Horizons Daycare located on West Campus or $100 reimbursements for care they secure within their personal network.

“Neither 20 nor 25 days will be enough to help parents with childcare for 6 months,” Krishna

Mudumbi, a postdoctoral associate, wrote in an email to the News.

Furthermore, Bonet noted that the benefits don’t account for scenarios in which group care or babysitting is not a safe option, such as if someone in the family has been exposed to COVID-19.

And the process of arranging most childcare centers or babysitting options requires an amount of time and energy that may not be feasible for working parents, Bonet added.

“I cannot help but wonder how many community members have not completed this process due to time or access?” Bonet wrote to the News. “It is a complicated process, and it is time-consuming.”

Childcare benefits also vary according to parents’ jobs. Postdoctoral parents, who are some of the most junior academic staff at Yale, do not receive the same stipends to offset the cost of childcare that graduate students and medical students do.

Postdoctoral fellow Chrystal Starbird told the News that she appreciated the efforts of the University to respond to the different YCCC requests, but that the postdoctoral population is still largely neglected.

“There is very little response to requests that address the needs of postdocs,” Starbird said. “It’s important for [Yale] to really consider the postdoc population, which is a vital part of Yale’s operations.”

Mudumbi acknowledged that Yale has made strides in the right direction, such as including postdoctoral fellows and associates in current childcare policies.

But Mudumbi told the News that postdocs currently do not have guarantees of contractual extensions, while Yale has offered to extend the tenure clock for those on tenure track.

University Provost Scott Strobel noted in an email to the News that Yale has spent over $4.1 million on expanding the back-up care accommodations for “benefits-eligible faculty, managerial and professional staff, post-doctoral fellows, post-doctoral associates, clerical and technical, and service and maintenance employees, and students of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.”

“We are pleased that the emergency back-up care program has been successful and widely used by the students, faculty and staff across the university,” Strobel added.

Strobel declined to comment on contractual extensions for postdocs, but did confirm to the News that ladder faculty received a oneyear appointment extension.

In an email to the News, Gendler pointed to adjusted teaching policies for the 2020-2021 academic year. Gendler noted that faculty can co-teach or teach two sections of the same course to reduce their course preparation load, and that deans and faculty can work together to come up with a teaching plan that accommodates their childcare needs.

“We are eager to continue working with colleagues within the FAS and across the University on this extremely important issue,” Gendler said.

But for some faculty, childcare issues have existed far prior to pandemic times.

Nina Stachenfeld, Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of Medicine, called childcare an “ongoing challenge” that only now is more “apparent and immediate.” Rogers noted that the pandemic exposed the tenuous ways in which families “cobbled together a working way to work at Yale.”

But, while it is not new, the gender inequities exacerbated due to the pandemic are especially worrisome.

“My primary concern if things are not rectified is that women at [the Yale School of Medicine] will lose progress and momentum in their professional lives because so much of the child and family falls especially hard upon them,” Stachenfeld said.

Starbird added that inequities in science in both “gender and minority participation” could broaden. She cited studies indicating that, during the pandemic, women and faculty with fewer resources have published fewer papers and submitted fewer grants — meaning that, in the future, those same people will be less competitive for grants and jobs.

Almeling, who in her sociological research specializes in gender, noted her concerns about “the long-term effects of pandemic-related caregiving burdens, which studies show has fallen mostly on women.”

She pointed to junior faculty who have had to interrupt research due to childcare needs struggling to get tenure in the future. She also mentioned postdocs who don’t receive adequate childcare benefits and have trouble acquiring a job.

“Unless Yale takes action to address the gendered inequities of the pandemic, we will be living with the effects for decades to come,” Almeling wrote in an email to the News.

Rosenfeld Hall is located at 109 Grove St. Contact MADISON HAHAMY at madison.hahamy@yale.edu .

Yale College students enter Phase 3 of arrival quarantine

BY SEAN PERGOLA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER After two long weeks quarantined in their residential colleges, on-campus Yale students were abuzz on Monday as they rediscovered the campus they’d been waiting to roam.

As of Feb. 15 at 7:00 a.m., Yale has entered Phase 3 of arrival quarantine procedure.

Undergraduate students are now permitted to move freely around campus, as well as invite on-campus guests into their suites. Traveling to the surrounding city and hosting off-campus students in their dorms remain forbidden. Despite the increased level of COVID19 risk due to the more lenient restrictions, many students remained enthusiastic about exploring campus once again.

“Stepping out of the gate for the first time onto Cross Campus, it was just a wave of nostalgia, and I was like ‘Oh my God, this is why I came back,’” Tyler Brown ’23 commented. “It was so good to see campus, and it was so good to see life happening … When I’m in my room, with the two walks I take every day to the dining hall, I don’t see anyone. It was so good to just see other people, and feel like I’m not in Grace Hopper looking at the world through a window, and I’m actually in New Haven, part of Yale, part of the city.”

The return to campus holds extra significance for sophomores, who, for the most part, have not been able to return to campus since

being sent home last March. Brown remarked that this exodus did not feel like it ended until Phase 3 started, when he was finally able to move out of the “little rectangle of [his] existence.”

First-year students who were granted a housing exception shared some of this excitement.

Their enthusiasm was somewhat dampened by a familiarity of lifted restrictions or perhaps a more immediate familiarity with Yale’s campus.

“It’s definitely different,” Abby Davis ’24 commented. “It was the second time around [for first years], so everything was a bit less exciting.” She quickly added, “Hopefully people will be less likely to go do crazy things on the first day this time.”

Regardless of these nuances, students from all classes shared a common interest in returning to popular campus destinations. Hillhouse Avenue, Sterling Memorial Library and a smattering of residential colleges were all frequent features in Yalies’ short lists of on-campus destinations, according to the seven students the News spoke with.

But local restaurants, grocery stores and off-campus apartments were also included in some students’ lists. Traveling to these off-campus locations is not permitted during Phase 3 of the arrival quarantine.

Some students have accordingly expressed worries about adherence to quarantine guidelines. With no mechanism in place to monitor students traveling off campus,

students must follow restrictions on an essentially voluntary basis.

“As long as everyone is diligent with themselves and tries to do the right thing, it should be okay,” Meg Dreany ’24 affirmed. “It starts to get out of hand when people kind of lose the respect for their community and their suitemates … you shouldn’t want to do anything that will put them in danger.”

Brown echoed these concerns, remarking that contact with New Haven seems inevitable. Even when following every precaution, any exposure to someone who had ventured into New Haven would cause contact levels to “skyrocket,” he said.

Regardless, Brown did not contend that students should remain restricted to their residential col-

leges. He instead emphasized that the guidelines in Phase 3 will be effective, so long as students adhere to them.

Phase 3 is currently slated to end March 1 at 7:00 a.m., when students will be permitted to travel off campus.

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

KAREN LIN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

In Phase 3, students can travel around campus and enter certain University buildings.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

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FROM THE FRONT

“Well, I was always a bit of a political junkie. Even as a kid I would read biographies of presidents and of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.” JOHN LEGEND AMERICAN SINGER-SONGWRITER

Judge denies motion to dismiss Fontes harassment claims HARASSMENT FROM PAGE 1 YNHH in the sexual harassment case against Fontes, originally filed on March 12, 2020. The case is now set to move into the discovery process. According to the court documents, the defendants requested the dismissal on the grounds that the plaintiffs did not provide enough evidence on five of their claims, such as the University having received notice of Fontes' behavior.

In the decision, Arterton ruled against all but one of the requests for dismissal, noting that all of the women said they had alerted higher-ups to Fontes’ behavior and were either ignored or brushed off. The complaint dismissed was a claim that Fontes had retaliated against the women after they spoke out.

"We're confident that we'll uncover in discovery that nothing was done in light of all these complaints," said Tanvir Rahman, a member of the legal team representing the plaintiffs.

"That's just not something that is legally allowed, nor is it morally or ethically something that's been tolerated."

Rahman said that Fontes received a “slap on the wrist” after a complaint that he inappropriately danced with a young female resident. After additional complaints were made, Fontes was appointed to head up diversity and inclusion efforts in the Anesthesiology Department.

Rahman said this was a “slap in the face” to the plaintiffs.

University spokesperson Karen Peart told the News that three of the six plaintiffs first approached the University with their allegations in the summer of 2019. Yale offered them support in the form of Title IX resources and advice on filing a formal complaint to the University. None of the plaintiffs wanted to file a complaint at the time, Peart wrote in an email to the News.

Not all of the allegations in the subsequent court filings were brought to the University’s attention in 2019, Peart wrote.

Still, she added, Yale has been working to resolve the issues that the plaintiffs have raised.

The women allege that Fontes, their supervisor, sexually

harassed them with inappropriate comments and forcibly kissed and touched some of them. Additionally, they claim that Fontes retaliated against them for speaking out. The judge dismissed one claim of retaliation, but opted to uphold the women’s other accusations of assault and battery as well as additional claims of invasion of privacy — allowing them to move forward with their accusations against Fontes, YNHH and the University.

In the suit, one plaintiff said she told Roberta Hines, the chair of the Anesthesiology Department, that Fontes had touched and massaged her without her consent. The plaintiff claims that Hines brushed aside Fontes’ behavior by saying, “Boys will be boys.” The chair did not respond to a request for comment.

Fontes, who denies the allegations, called the case "a successful attempt to derail [his] chance of becoming the chair of the department." Fontes detailed specific objections to the situations the women described, saying that the plaintiffs coordinated the allegations. He added that the six women are all friends and came together to harm his professional prospects. Additionally, he told the News that the women were discriminating against him because he is Black.

Rahman said the plaintiffs "dispute there is any conspiracy" and that many of them did not know about the others until after the complaints had been made.

He also emphasized that there are witnesses who can corroborate the plaintiffs' allegations.

YNHH spokesperson Mark D'Antonio wrote in an email to the News that once aware of the charges, YNHH immediately asked Fontes to "voluntarily surrender [medical staff ] privileges" at the hospital and "refrain from contact, oversight or influence in the employment of any individuals at YNHH.” According to D'Antonio, Fontes has not worked at YNHH since December 2019. Fontes explained that he went on leave then after failed back surgeries and chronic pain.

It was not related to the allegations against him, he said.

"We are disappointed in the ruling and will continue to vig-

MARISA PERYER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

According to Fontes, the case is a "successful attempt" to prevent his promotion to chair of his department. orously defend our position," D'Antonio wrote in the email.

In an interview with the News, Fontes said that the University first approached him about the allegations in December 2019. Members of the Provost’s Office presented “vague” information to Fontes and Hines that people had raised concerns about him, he said — and about a week later, he received more exact details about the complaints and their contents.

At the end of January 2020, H ines and former Medical School Dean Robert Alpern alerted Fontes that his leadership roles would be rescinded, he said. Fontes was previously the cardiac anesthesia fellowship director, division chief of cardiac anesthesiology and director of clinical research. Fontes said that the roles were stripped “without due process” and added that he had not been interviewed for any

investigation. He was aware that an investigation was underway.

He added that Pat Noonan, a lawyer who was representing the University, approached him first in the summer of 2020 and said Yale would pay Fontes’ legal fees or provide him with legal support if he resigned from his role as a Yale professor and agreed in writing not to sue the University. In December 2020 and January 2021, Fontes’ lawyers spoke with a lawyer representing the University.

Peart declined to comment on this legal arrangement.

Fontes said that in November 2020, he filed a discrimination complaint against the hospital, the University and his department chair on the basis of race, gender and disability in connection to chronic back pain that he describes as incapacitating.

Two months before, the hospital informed him that his priv-

ileges of practicing medicine at YNHH would be terminated because of his disability status, Fontes claimed in an interview with the News.

YNHH declined to comment on the complaint.

“It is an extremely frustrating and hopeless existence for me as a Black man in America being falsely accused of sexual harassment and being innocent and hav[ing] to live, deal with the career sabotage and the railing done against me and having my name all over Google as a sexual harasser, which is not true and there doesn’t seem to be any ending to this,” Fontes said.

The case was filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Connecticut.

Contact ROSE HOROWITCH at rose.horowitch@yale.edu and BEATRIZ HORTA at beatriz.horta@yale.edu .

Divided reaction to NHPS reopening REOPEN FROM PAGE 1 learning. Cruz, who is the parent of a ninth grader at Hillhouse and an 11th grader at Wilbur Cross, also wishes that the expansion included high school students.

Her daughter has told her that virtual learning has incentivized procrastination because it has corresponded to extra free time. Her son, who is on the autism spectrum, has found virtual learning difficult and overwhelming. She said that her son needs the oneon-one instruction that in-person learning offers.

However, other community members, including Board of Education member Darnell Goldson, expressed concern over the announcement.

Goldson said that, while he believes everyone wants an eventual return to in-person learning, he wanted to receive more information about the district’s plan for health and safety measures.

He told the News that he has heard from many teachers that “don’t feel completely supported.”

Goldson also told the News that the district should wait for a certification that schools are safe, with clearly defined clearing protocols, monitors on school buses and other safety measures. He also stressed the need for social distancing, contact tracing and more communication between students, parents and district officials.

Citywide Parent Team President Nijija-lfe Waters is among the NHPS parents opposed to the return of students. Waters, the mother of a fifth grade student, helped organize the Jan. 19 #SchoolsOut protest against the reopening of district elementary schools.

She told the News that she was surprised to learn about the decision over social media earlier today. Like Goldson, she is

unsure if NHPS is ready to expand its reopening plan, citing the lack of consistent district updates on COVID-19 case counts, the lack of nurses in some school buildings and the absence of significant guidance for parents of medically compromised students. While she is concerned and frustrated with the decision, Waters is not planning on holding another in-person #SchoolsOut protest.

Sarah Miller ’03, an organizer for New Haven Public School Advocates, told the News she does not believe the announcement is in line with CDC guidance for K-12 learning.

Miller said the city has had more than 250 cases per 100,000 people in the past seven days, which she asserts is beyond the cutoff to be in the CDC’s “high transmission red”

level of 100 cases per 100,000 people over seven days. CDC guidelines suggest that school districts in areas with high transmission levels should reopen for middle school students only if “strict mitigation efforts” including a robust testing regimen are in place. State data confirms these case numbers, and the district offers free voluntary COVID testing throughout New Haven.

When asked about the CDC guidelines, Tracey told the News by email that CDC guidelines depend on multiple factors. She did not respond to a question on whether the announcement violates any of these guidelines. Tracey also told the News that reopening decisions should be guided by other “school-specific factors such as

mitigation strategies implemented, local needs, stakeholder input, the number of cases among students, teachers and staff and school experience with safely reopening.”

Tracey added that the implementation of new mitigation strategies and continual monitoring of COVID-19 cases and positivity rates are also essential components of the decision to reopen schools.

Jennifer Graves, a preschool special education teacher at the Dr. Reginald Mayo Early Learning Center, has taught in person since Jan. 19. She told the News that she has felt relatively safe teaching, though she understands why many of her fellow educators do not.

As middle school students return to in-person education, Graves said she fears that older students will

be harder to contact trace. Graves added that she wishes the district would reevaluate their hybrid instruction model for teachers who have to teach in-person and remote students simultaneously, calling it “bad teaching.”

The district’s COVID-19 dashboard, which includes a tally on the number of COVID-19 positive cases among students and staff, has not been updated since Feb 3.

According to Tracey, the district is working with the New Haven Health Department on a new dashboard that will provide information in real-time.

Contact ALVARO PERPULY at alvaro.perpuly@yale.edu and CHRISTIAN ROBLES at christian.robles@yale.edu .

DANIEL ZHAO/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

NHPS’ reopening plans depend on local needs, stakeholder inputs, student cases and other factors.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“Folks, I can tell you I've known eight presidents, three of them intimately.” JOE BIDEN 46TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Yale to continue test-optional admissions

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

SAT and ACT testing dates were cancelled or delayed in the first few months of the pandemic.

TEST-OPTIONAL FROM PAGE 1 demic by remaining committed to the thoughtful, human-centered principles and practices that have guided our work for decades. That has not changed and will not change.”

Yale was the last of the Ivy League schools to announce a

one-year extension to test-optional admissions policies.

Quinlan told the News that the announcement came last week because he wanted to solicit input from the Faculty Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid, or CAFA, University administrators and senior admissions

office staff before he came to a decision. CAFA met about the issue on Feb. 8.

When asked whether Yale has considered remaining test optional after the pandemic ends, Quinlan said that the admissions office has not yet made a decision.

The admissions office is working

with Yale’s Office of Institutional Research to study the effects of the test-optional policy change.

“I expect the results of this study, combined with an assessment of the availability and accessibility of standardized tests will guide our decisions going forward,” Quinlan wrote in an email to the News.

“There is too much uncertainty at this time to predict what our policy will be after next year.”

Yale College will release admissions decisions for the class of 2025 on April 6.

Contact AMELIA DAVIDSON at amelia.davidson@yale.edu .

Yale Health announces new 'inconclusive' COVID-19 test result COVID FROM PAGE 1 receive an inconclusive result will be required to self-isolate at home until their follow-up results are available.

"The Broad Institute made the decision to change their test to look for 2 genetic locations or targets on the virus instead of just one," Wilson wrote in an email to the News.

"The primary motivation for this change was to provide some protection for their assay in the event that a variant or mutation affected their prior single target."

Viral targets in COVID-19 tests typically correspond to genes that have been identified within the SARSCoV-2 genome. If a test only has a single target, as used to be the case for the Broad Institute's test, a potential

mutation in the virus — such as the ones that have been observed in the U.K. or South African variants — could result in the virus evading the testing mechanism, leading to an inability to detect the its presence.

Wilson explained that Broad has added an additional target so that, if a coronavirus variant has a mutation that can trigger a positive in only one of the two target locations,

YASMINE HALMANE/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The inconclusive test result neither confirms nor denies the presence of COVID-19 in a sample.

then the test would yield an inconclusive result.

"Having multiple targets has added confidence in a diagnostic test, particularly when the viral load is very low," Pei Hui, clinical director of Yale's Molecular Diagnostic Laboratories, told the News.

Hui explained that for samples that are obtained either at very early stages of infection, during late recovery phases or under lowlevel contamination, some of the viral targets in the COVID-19 test will not fulfil the threshold necessary for a positive readout. In those cases, an inconclusive result is issued because the test cannot confidently determine whether the sample was positive or negative for the coronavirus.

According to Hui, having multiple gene targets increases the confidence of diagnostic tests, especially when the viral load is extremely low. This could also allow for labs to identify coronavirus variants, which might be detected when any one of the targets that are normally seen in COVID-19 samples are absent in the viral sample.

"Absence of one of the … targets may provide a clue for a dangerous variant," Hui said. "This was the reason our Pathology Lab was able to help identify the first two cases of the British variant recently in Connecticut."

However, even though the analysis of these gene targets could

lend itself to variant identification, Wilson stressed that even those who receive an inconclusive result should not interpret it as an assertion that they are infected with a coronavirus variant.

Instead, the result should be read as an indication that the viral load in the sample collected was not sufficient for a definitive conclusion about the patient's infection status. For that reason, Yale Health has decided to ask those who receive an inconclusive result to self-isolate until a follow up test can be performed, Wilson said.

"The vast majority of inconclusive results are not due to variants but due to very early or very late infection, with the amount of virus in the system being so tiny that only one of the targets tests positive," Wilson wrote. "From a public health perspective, the inconclusive result type is an indicator that the test should be repeated so that we don’t miss very early cases."

In her email to the Yale community, Wilson mentioned that it is possible — but unlikely — for an inconclusive result through Yale Health to point toward infection with a variant. Still, the lab will be monitoring for such samples.

The Broad Institute is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Contact MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO at maria.pacheco@yale.edu .

Fatal incidents in New Haven leave three dead BODIES FROM PAGE 1 Karl Jacobson said in a press conference that the two men were affiliated with the nearby Jack's Bar and Steakhouse and that police do not believe foul play was involved.

“We would say to people thinking about using drugs in the area to use extreme caution until we can figure out what this is,” Jacobson said at the press conference.

Jacobson said the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will perform an autopsy on the bodies by Tuesday morning.

Initial reports incorrectly claimed that the bodies were found inside 200 College Street, an apartment complex home to several Yale undergraduates.

A 1:37 p.m. Yale Alert asked the community to avoid the area while the investigation was ongoing.

Yale Police Chief Ronnell Hig-

gins and Yale spokesperson Karen Peart referred the News to the NHPD for comment.

The incident at College Street was the second NHPD investigation where officers found dead bodies in the city on Monday. Earlier in the day, a body was found near East Rock Park in the area of Farnam Drive and Orange Street.

NHPD is currently investigating the cause of the dead body. Jacobson said that it appears as if the body was moved to the park after the individual had died. He added that it does not appear to be a drug-related death. The two incidents are not believed to be related.

There were 1,032 drug overdose deaths confirmed in the state of Connecticut over the first 11 months of 2020.

Contact RAZEL SUANSING at razel.suansing@yale.edu .

ADRIAN KULESZA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

At 1:37 p.m. Monday Yale Alert asked the community to avoid the College Street area while the investigation was ongoing.

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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY New Yale-designed semiconductor coating could open door to cheaper and more efficient solar fuels

BY AISLINN KINSELLA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER A new Yale study tested a coating strategy for semiconductors that could improve the efficiency and lower the cost of solar fuel production.

Assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering Shu Hu and his research group developed a new coating to protect semiconductors from corrosion. In order to produce solar fuels, semiconductors are illuminated, then within the semiconductor, specific materials allow for the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen. This produces energy in a process known as photocatalytic water splitting. These necessary materials, however, are prone to corrosion when illuminated and have to be replaced often.

Hu’s group developed a titanium dioxide coating that can protect and stabilize these semiconductors, a step closer to generating solar fuel at a large scale. The paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on Feb. 8.

“With this new coating, we not only improve the stability of the photocatalyst from a few hours to more than 150 hours, but it also improves the solar-hydrogen conversion efficiency above 1.7 percent,” postdoctoral associate and lead author of the study Tianshuo Zhao told the News.

Without the protective coating, semiconductors may only operate for a few hours before they become too corroded to use. Previous methods to protect the semiconductors interfered with the separation of charged particles within the semiconductor — a crucial part of the device’s functioning — but the new coating allows for this separation.

Zhao said that the 1.7 percent conversion efficiency — a measure of how much energy was produced by the device — was a record for solar-to-hy-

drogen conversion, and added that he believes that future optimization will lead to much higher efficiency.

Hu agreed that the energy conversion would increase with future research. He said that their study had already looked at theoretical examples that could reach up to 10 percent in the near future, and hoped that the process could eventually reach 20 percent efficiency.

“If we even get to 10 percent, then the way that we produce solar fuel will completely change,” Hu said. “You see

of Engineering and Applied Science, said the field of solar-hydrogen production is currently dominated by materials such as oxides and nitrides, as opposed to semi-conductive materials. While these materials are more stable than the semiconductors used by Hu’s lab, they are not efficient enough to be practical.

According to Yanagi, generating solar fuels at a large scale will require using a material that is both efficient and stable.

Rather than trying to improve the efficiency of a stable material, Hu’s group

ANASTHASIA SHILOV/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

a pathway where the cost of fuels from sunlight is starting to be comparable to the gasoline price or natural gas price.

That’s where the tipping point is.”

The importance of the study, Hu explained, was the combination of understanding the water-splitting process and applying a coating to improve the semiconductor efficiency and stability.

Rito Yanagi GRD ’24, an author of the paper and graduate student at the School

took the opposite approach and worked to improve the stability of an efficient one.

Yanagi noted the paper only focused on improving the hydrogen half-reaction of the water-splitting reaction, so future work will need to address the oxygen half-reaction.

“The other half-reaction is a little bit more challenging than this half-reaction,” he admitted. “But the basic strategy is the same.”

Jaehong Kim, senior professor and chair of chemical and environmental engineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, commented on the potential for hydrogen fuel to be produced cheaply with the use of photocatalysts.

“The cost reduction promised by using these photocatalysts is particularly noteworthy,” Kim wrote in an email to the News. “We now see a trajectory to achieve less than $2 per kilogram [of hydrogen], which is comparable to the gasoline price when you use [hydrogen] to run a fuel cell car.”

Professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry and Director of the Yale Energy Sciences Institute Gary Brudvig told the News that the paper was a significant advance for the field of renewable energy production.

Brudvig’s group works on water-oxidation catalysts, which he believes could improve the efficiency of the reactions that Hu’s group focuses on.

He said the two research groups are currently working together and discussing those possibilities.

Brudvig also identified some of the challenges posed by renewable energy sources. Because solar energy and wind energy cannot be produced all the time, it is necessary to store electricity in chemical bonds. Hu’s research is a step forward in improving the efficiency of solar energy, but more work is needed to address the difficulty of its storage.

“It would be ideal if the fuel could be stored for a long time, and it could be used when you need it,” Brudvig said.

“The challenge is having systems that work efficiently and are scalable so that you can use them globally for solar energy storage.”

The Yale Energy and Sciences Institute is located on Yale’s West Campus.

Contact AISLINN KINSELLA at aislinn.kinsella@yale.edu .

Mask mandates associated with people spending less time at home, Yale School of the Environment study finds

BY AMRE PROMAN STAFF REPORTER The implementation of mask mandates around the country was correlated with people spending less time at home, a new study by a Yale School of the Environment team concluded.

Sparked by curiosity about the behavioral effects of various COVID-19 interventions, four researchers, including professor of natural resource economics Eli Fenichel and School of the Environment postdoctoral associate Youpei Yan, set out to understand the effect mask mandates had on how much time people spent at home. Using smartphone location data and careful analysis, they concluded that people leave their houses more when mask mandates are in place. This finding aligns with previous public health research into how people make trade-offs when it comes to their personal risk of infection.

“When you throw out a whole bunch of behavioral policies, they are not going to be additive,” Fenichel, the senior author of the study, said. “People will make trade-offs.

And I think people need to be mindful about the trade-offs that they’re making.”

Back in April, Fenichel said, as COVID-19 cases and mask mandates were both on the rise, he noticed how many people were leaving their houses for non-essential trips with the mindset that wearing a mask would render their trip completely safe. At that time, and to this day, research has not shown that the cloth masks worn by average Americans completely eliminate the risk of getting COVID-19.

This led him to wonder whether there was any correlation between the implementation of mask mandates and how much time people spent away from their houses in the midst of the pandemic.

Previous studies on similar phenomena — known as “risk compensation” — can be found in scientific literature, according to Fenichel.

“Probably one of the best examples is risk behaviors with HIV,” Albert Ko, chair of the Yale School of Public Health Epidemiology Department, said. “You have people who, you know, they’re on pre-exposure prophylaxis and they may not use condoms. There are people … entering on dangerous, potentially harmful risk behaviors.”

The central idea is that when certain preventative measures are implemented, some people may engage

more often in risky behaviors. Understanding how these dynamics work in the context of COVID-19 is a new, yet vitally important, field of study, according to the researchers.

As the article explains, the researchers used SafeGraph, a company which anonymizes and collects data on people’s whereabouts, and found that mask mandates are indeed correlated with Americans spending less time at home.

“This finding is not surprising and seems reasonable,” Paul Cleary, Anna M.R. Lauder professor of public health in the Department of Health Policy and Man-

KALINA MLADENOVA/CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

agement, wrote in an email to the News. “This is why so many commentators … emphasize that masking does not substitute for social distancing or … other preventive behaviors.”

The University’s own guidance, as laid out in the community compact, stipulates that all adherents must “wear face coverings in shared or public spaces,” but also compels all students, faculty and staff to practice social distancing and take other preventative measures to limit the spread of COVID-19.

According to Fenichel, public health guidance on masks has evolved since the study was in its early stages. Initially, he noted, there was not good communication on the effectiveness of masks. Ko also

highlighted the ongoing discussion on the effectiveness of various types of masks. Fenichel pointed out that this is worrying, as people make trade-offs between the wide variety of policies being presented at the same time.

“The key message here is to be a little bit more mindful about the decisions you’re making to protect yourself during the pandemic,” Fenichel said. “I am not saying that masks are bad. What I’m saying is that I think what we did is we threw the kitchen sink from a policy perspective, at this, without being thoughtful about perhaps some of the interactions among those policies. And I think that was confusing for people.”

The new question is whether another COVID-19 management strategy, vaccination, will cause a similar increase in risk compensation and, if so, what the resulting effects will be. Fenichel predicts that it will cause this type of behavior, citing comparable research conducted on vaccines for other pathogens.

Yet Fenichel is slightly less worried about vaccines causing people to leave the house more, given how much protection vaccines provide against the virus as compared to wearing a mask. He points out that even in a setting where not the entire population is vaccinated, people will still be more protected in public than they might otherwise. Ko noted that the specific type of vaccine is also important when considering its effectiveness, given that not all are equally protective.

“It depends on the vaccine,” Ko said. “Not all of the vaccines … may be … entirely transmission blocking, but they may reduce the risk of transmission. So, if people who are unvaccinated go out and aren’t using face masks and so forth, and, you know, but they could be infected and they can transmit [the virus].”

Nevertheless, as was reiterated by the University’s COVID-19 coordinator, Stephanie Spangler, in her most recent weekly update, wearing face coverings is a vital step in protecting the community. Fenichel highlighted that while it might be more complex on the policy level, wearing a mask is and should be an easy decision that all individuals make.

According to PR Newswire, the value of the worldwide reusable mask industry is expected to exceed $7 billion dollars by 2027.

Contact AMRE PROMAN at amre.proman@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

ARTS Yale Africa Film Festival to show films from Africa and its diaspora

BY MAIA DECKER STAFF REPORTER On Feb. 19, The Council on African Studies will host its third annual Yale Africa Film Festival. The festival’s films offer a wide range of voices from the African continent and its diaspora.

The festival, which will take place during the afternoon, is divided into three sessions. These sessions are centered around different themes: “Fashioning the Self and Community,” “Community and Care” and “Black Creativity and Community Organizing.” The themes span experimental, animated and fashion-related topics. The festival’s films, while featuring innovative aesthetics, were also chosen to bring people together. Although registration is required, the festival is free to attend.

“This year is a lot about community, building community and having care for each other during these strange and difficult times,” said member of the YAFF Planning Committee Leslie Rose, GRD ’21.

The festival includes six films, four of which are short films, which will be streamed live and followed by a panel discussion with the filmmakers and moderators. Attendees will receive a link for the two remaining full-length films which can be watched at the viewer’s discretion.

Rose said the festival includes live virtual screening because the organizing committee wanted to keep alive the “spirit of a film festival” while also respecting this year’s unique circumstances.

Each film will highlight a different facet of African culture and African experiences. For example, “Air Conditioner” follows Matacedo and Zez-

inha, two characters living in a world where air conditioners begin “mysteriously falling” in Luanda. Another film, Ayo Akingbade’s “Street 66,” documents people in the diaspora. The piece follows the life and work of Ghanaian housing activist Dora Boatemah in Brixton, South London.

Thomas Allen Harris, a filmmaker and senior lecturer in African American Studies and Film and Media Studies, said that an essential part of filmmaking is “giving voice to the voiceless.”

“Film, both in the production and distribution, is essential in terms of building community around a narrative, theme or group of people,” said Harris. “Particularly for people who are a part of a diaspora, there is a real desire to see representations of themselves, the complexity of their identities and different dimensionalities of their identities.”

In the festival’s third session, “Lights, Camera, Activism: Black Creativity & Community Organizing,” Harris, Akingbade and moderator Alexandra Thomas GRD ’24 will hold a conversation around “Street 66” and its historical context. Akingbade, who directed the film, primarily works on subjects of power and urbanism.

“The online festival is unusual in that we don’t get to enjoy the cinematic coming together of a live audience, but otherwise, it’s more accessible in that folks can enjoy the feature films on their own schedule and in their own homes,” YAFF Planning Committee member Ed Hendrickson GRD ’22 said.

The festival requires preregistration and will begin at 1 p.m. on Friday.

COURTESY OF UZO NJOKU

Contact MAIA DECKER at maia.decker@yale.edu.

Rocky Horror Picture Show returns to Yale

BY ANNIE RADILLO STAFF REPORTER Determined that the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” must go on at Yale despite the pandemic, the show’s student devotees hosted a virtual showing of the performance.

The show — spearheaded by Aurora Grutman ’22 for the second year in a row — drew 172 attendees, twice as many as last year.

Those behind the production livestreamed the show via a platform called CYA Live, which is promoted

by The Criterion Collection — the owner of the film’s rights. The original movie appeared with the eight-person shadow cast appearing in small boxes at the bottom of the virtual screen.

“I think the performance went as well as could be expected and incredibly well if you ignore the lag between the movie and the performers,” said Reilly Johnson ’22, who acted in the show. “I was really proud to do something new and unique, and I thought it was cool that we were sticking with

something we all love so much even in the terrible circumstances of the pandemic.”

Prior to the show, the production team and actors struggled to find a form of virtual presentation that would allow them to include the jeering, dancing and liveliness and the callbacks — responses shouted out by audience members in sync or in response to the original film, often disparaging the film in obscene language — present in typical showings of “Rocky Horror.”

Even though the team was unable to accurately recreate this experience, the online format made the show more inviting for many first-time viewers, as it allowed them to watch from a more familiar setting, according to first-time attendee Max Krupnick ’23. The show’s raucous callbacks were transformed into silent chatbox entries.

Grutman mentioned that the day before the show, the cast realized that the CYA Live chat function disabled the use of profane language.

“People couldn’t write ‘balls,’ or ‘fuck,’ or even ‘phuc,’” said Grutman. “A lot of the callbacks are pretty explicit.”

Luckily, the cast managed to remove this restriction. During the show, even though a vast majority of the audience did not know the callbacks, a single attendee knew them all.

“People who’d never seen the show realized this [audience member] was saying integral parts of the audience participation in the chat and would chime in,” Grutman said.

What resulted was a unique display of audience participation. Not only were the callbacks typed out in a chat rather than shouted out, but they also deviated greatly form their usual script. Participants specifically seized upon a classic callback, “Where’s your neck?,” typically yelled when the narrator makes their first appearance, chatting the question every time the narrator appeared on screen.

“Having never seen the show, I didn’t fully understand the cul-

ture of callbacks,” Krupnick said.

“But [I] did enjoy goofing around in the chat.”

Some attendees felt that the online showing actually made it easier to participate in a cultural phenomenon which can be difficult to partake in in person.

“The idea of dressing up and attending an interactive show is prohibitively intimidating for many people,” Krupnick said. “The fact that I could watch the show in my common room with just my friends made it an easy sell.”

But Grutman said that people are also naturally shyer on camera. Since audience members were more reluctant to participate, Grutman and her co-actor Charlie Foster ’21 became the sole actors in the orgasm-faking competition intended for the first timers.

The team was aware that many traditional components of “Rocky Horror,” such as the orgasm-faking competition, might make attendees uncomfortable. To make attendees feel more at ease, the production team chose not to

COURTESY OF ELIZABETH MILES

record the show and prohibited audience members from filming it.

Johnson said the “Rocky Horror” team was “really intentional about … [their] treatment of the difficult elements of ‘Rocky,’ specifically the sexual assault and cannibalism,” adding that they had many internal discussions about those topics. During the performance, actors notified the audience in advance and connected them to resources discussing uncritical portrayal of sexual violence in “Rocky Horror.”

Grutman said that despite the great limitations of showing Rocky Horror virtually, she loves the show. The online format even allowed the show to transform in new ways, she said.

“What I love about ‘Rocky’ is that it’s a space where you can really create,” said Grutman. “And it’s a space for everyone.”

The “Rocky Horror Picture Show” debuted in 1975.

Contact ANNIE RADILLO at annie.radillo@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

ARTS Yale student creates project to integrate violin pieces

by Black composers into pedagogical canon

BY MARISOL CARTY STAFF REPORTER

COURTESY OF AVA GEHLEN-WILLIAMS

Violinist and Yale Symphony Orchestra member Ava Gehlen-Williams ’24 strives to integrate music by Black composers into mainstream violin repertoire.

Earlier this month, Gehlen-Williams co-published a document titled “Integrating ‘Music by Black Composers: Violin Volume 1’ into The Suzuki Method for Violin Teachers and Students.” The document provides guidance on how nine musical pieces by Black composers — selected from a book called “Music by Black Composers: Violin Volume 1” — can be integrated into musical curriculums.

“There’s increasingly more of these great resources, like the ‘Music by Black Composers’ book, but it’s all treated as supplemental material,” Gehlen-Williams said. “It’s important that it is part of the core repertoire.”

Gehlen-Williams is a teacher following the Suzuki method — a teaching method that emphasizes immersion in a musical environment and applies the principles of learning acquisition to music. Suzuki students learn from a series of books with a set repertoire, and Gehlen-Williams’ document provides suggestions for pieces by Black composers that should be included in the repertoire and at what level they should be taught.

Gehlen-Williams co-published the document with her high school violin teacher, Sarah Pizzichemi. They both noticed that despite several teaching guides for works from the classical Western canon, there was less guidance about works by Black composers.

Gehlen-Williams explained that various books of violin music by Black musicians have been published, but it is difficult for teachers to find a way to integrate it into their curriculums. These books are often used as practice for sight reading — a practice that trains musicians to read on command — and are not viewed to have great pedagogical value.

YSO violinist Nanki Chugh ’22 said that she thinks Gehlen-Williams’ project is a “brilliant idea.”

“Creating resources that provide access to repertoire by Black composers is a really effective way to increase awareness and recognition

for both instructors and students, as well as helping begin the process to integrate Black composers into our classical music ‘canon,’” Chugh said.

YSO violist Daniel Chabeda ’22 said that there are many pedagogical challenges to teaching music composed by Black composers, not due to a lack of classical repertoire, but rather because the historical exclusion of Black composers’ works from publication and audio recording “severely hinders present exposure to those great works.”

“Not only is this repertoire incredibly diverse and artistically meaningful to articulate, but learning works by Black composers requires the musician to grapple with the history of exclusion that keeps these awesome pieces out of classical canon, publication and discography,” Chabeda said. “Initiatives like [Gehlen-Williams’] could bring a lot of missing masterpieces into classical music.”

YSO violinist Andrew DeWeese ’24 agreed that difficulties of integrating music by Black composers into core pedagogical repertoire arise from the works’ systematic exclusion from the canon.

The works are not performed with the same frequency, DeWeese said.

“I don’t believe there is a lack of repertoire by Black composers,” DeWeese said. “The more I have researched and the more I have attended concerts where these great pieces are played, the more I am made aware of just how much repertoire is out there.

The greatest shame I see is the systemic refusal to perform the copious Black compositions out there.”

According to YSO violinist Janet Hsu ’22, there is a lack of repertoire by Black composers in the music world, but the larger problem is the fact that the music is not widely shared.

“I think any musician can benefit from learning music by Black composers to understand the diversity in classical music,” Hsu said. “Without studying music by Black composers, you miss out on so much depth in music, as well as immersion in a variety of styles, melodies and history.”

Gehlen-Williams has been teaching violin since 2014.

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

Farago discusses global art criticism at this year’s YCBA Norma Lytton Lecture

BY BRYAN VENTURA STAFF REPORTER On Feb. 10, New York Times Art Critic Jason Farago ’05 delivered this year’s annual Norma Lytton Lecture hosted by the Yale Center for British Art. At the lecture, Farago discussed global art criticism in the modern day.

The Norma Lytton lectures are supported by the Norma Lytton Fund for Docent Education, established in memory of Norma Lytton by her family. According to Beth Miller, YCBA’s deputy director for advancement and external affairs, Lytton was an active docent at the center for more than 20 years. Lytton also engaged in research for the center’s “Paintings and Sculpture” department for a decade.

In this year’s hour-long lecture, Farago discussed how white art historians and critics should approach art from other cultures.

Farago also stressed the importance of interpreting art with an open mind.

“You’ve probably had this experience: you go into a museum, you look at the painting for two seconds, then you read the wall label because you want clarity,” Farago told the News. “But what if you let yourself be confused, and tried to work out what something meant on your own? Art is something more than information, and you might find your own way in.”

Farago emphasized that the

world of art advances with criticism. Yet he also said western critics, who are “almost entirely white,” should approach art created by non-Western societies with a mindset that allows them to make “substantive judgments.”

YCBA’s Head of Education Linda Friedlaender, who hosted Farago’s lecture, shared similar thoughts on approaching art.

“Appreciating, understanding and liking things are all very different things,” Friedlaender said. “I often explain to audiences that our mission is not to help or even get people to like what they see, but rather to try and understand what the artist may be trying to communicate. The visitor can decide if the artist was successful or not.”

Farago said he often sees younger people making quick judgments or comparisons, and added that he finds this “exclusionary” and “condescending.”

Instead, Farago believes aesthetic judgments reflect a civic character. He said that criticism should be constructive in the form of a social endeavor rather than personal judgment. “[Criticism] comes with more than just saying what you like or you don’t,” Farago said.

Farago told the News that he was “really glad” to be asked to deliver the lecture.

When he attended Yale as an undergraduate, his courses and trips to the

University’s museums helped him decide to be a history of art major.

“This felt not only like a homecoming, but also an opportunity to [trace] how I ended up where I am today,” Farago said. “I could have hardly foreseen it when I first walked onto Old Campus.”

Now, Farago writes a regular series called “Close Read” for the New York Times. He is excited to begin reporting about the post-pandemic state of museums in Europe and Asia once commercial flights resume.

A recording of Farago’s lecture will soon be made available online on the YCBA website.

Contact BRYAN VENTURA at bryan.ventura@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF YCBA

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

“Give yourself permission to shoot for something that seems totally beyond your grasp. You may be surprised at your capabilities” DANICA PATRICK RACE CAR DRIVER

Cullman Courts through the years VENUE FROM PAGE 14 venue’s brief opening in the fall of 2020, undergraduate students were charged $10 per court per hour, while staff, faculty and Yale Health staff were charged $40 per court per hour with no prime-time fees.

According to Lin, while the tennis teams only play on the outdoor courts for one to two months in the fall and occasionally at the end of April, there are currently 22 courts located outside.

THE RENOVATION After a wave of improvements in Ivy League tennis around the turn of the century, all of the member universities now have six indoor tennis courts, except for Brown, which has four, UPenn, which has eight, and Yale, which has eight.

“It was a different era of facilities. I played at a time when the Ivy Leagues were upgrading their facilities and Yale was pretty consistent with the rest,” recalled Christopher Drake, current Yale

men’s head coach and former tennis player at Brown, from which he graduated in 2003.

Cornell opened the indoor Reis Tennis Center in 1994 just before Harvard opened the indoor Murr Center in 1998. In the spring of 2000, Harvard reopened the outdoor Beren Tennis Center after renovation, while Dartmouth inaugurated both the outdoor Alexis Boss Tennis Center and indoor Alan D. Gordon Pavilion in the fall. Two years later, Columbia's six-indoor-court Dick Savitt Tennis Center opened in 2002.

Centerbrook Architects and Planners conducted the renovation of the Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center. Mark Simon ARC ’72, the project’s designer, evaluated eight or nine plans for adding courts.

“Our charge was to see how we could get eight new courts,” Simon said. “We settled on building four new courts in an indoor structure [in addition to renovating the original four courts]. What you see now is what everyone thought was the best direction to go.”

COURTESY OF CODY LIN

The Cullman-Heyman Center received its name after being initially constructed through a generous donation from Joseph Cullman III ’35.

No Ivy League competition this spring IVY FROM PAGE 14 ics competition this spring,” the eight Ivy League presidents said in a joint statement.

The announcement also stated that the conference would continue using the return-to-play athletic activity phases that it has employed since the beginning of the 2020-21 academic year. Earlier this month, the Ivy League modified its phasing guidelines to provide a path to competition, according to Matt Panto, the associate executive director of strategic communications and external relations within the Ivy League.

The conference announced Thursday that the phased training guidelines will remain in place despite the cancellation of Ivy League competition — Phase IV could potentially allow individual schools to participate in local nonconference competition.

“These competitions will be subject to league stipulations and must remain consistent with institutional policies for comparable co-curricular activities, including applicable travel restrictions for on-campus students and university visitor policies,” the announcement detailed.

T h e l o n g - awa i te d d e c ision comes a week after an exception to the Ivy League’s long-standing eligibility policies was announced. The onetime waiver allows graduating seniors the chance to compete as graduate students at their current schools next year, provided that they are accepted into a degree-granting graduate program. The announcement garnered mixed reactions from student-athletes, many of whom seemed puzzled by its timing, which fell after application deadlines to more than 50 of Yale’s graduate programs passed in December and January.

In January, the Ivy League released a “status update” about the possibility of spring sport competition to athletes and coaches. The memo was the Ivy League’s first official guidance on spring athletics since Novem-

ber and warned that the return of competition would require “significant changes” in the state of the pandemic, adding that athletes might have to make enrollment decisions without any definitive clarity on the status of spring competition. Yale’s deadline to request a leave of absence for the spring term passed on Monday, Feb. 15.

“The league was headed this direction for months,” Yale baseball alumnus Benny Wanger ’19, who had previously vocalized his frustration with the Ivy League’s decision-making process, said.

“It’s sad, but not surprising to anyone. This is a result of poor leadership, and while every other DI conference moves towards the start of their spring season too.

Since this was clearly a preset decision (COVID rates are dropping dramatically), presidents should've made this announcement back in December to help their student-athletes make future plans. If I were a current Ivy student-athlete I would feel totally betrayed by the administration. This decision is going to impact the Ivy League negatively for years to come.”

When asked for a timeline of when the decision was made and what prompted the Council of Presidents to decide to cancel the spring sports season, Panto said that the Ivy League does not comment on Council discussions and referred the News to the joint statement that was released with the announcement. According to The New York Times, the Ivy League is the only NCAA Division I conference that has not released a baseball schedule.

Last November, the Ivy League announced its decision to postpone spring sports through at least the end of February. Last year’s spring season was abruptly cut short due to the onset of the coronavirus.

The Ivy League announced the cancellation of its winter season on Nov. 12.

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

Heyman led the donation effort for the renovation, raising around $13 million. The facility doubled in size to encompass over 70,000 square feet and added a canopied entrance, which evokes a variety of images from a tennis swing to a tennis racket.

To follow the suggestion of Yale officials who wanted to reference neighboring buildings, Simon decided on brick columns ornamented by Kent Bloomer ART ’61 in order to create a biophilic marriage of materials.

“Yale wanted this place to be lively. This meant that the front entry should be fun. People go to play tennis for fun,” Simon said. “By adding [Bloomer’s] structure and his ornament, it brought an intention to say that this is a long-lasting place worthy of this kind of effort.”

TODAY Inside, the renovated lobby, named after the late Laurence C. Leeds III ’79 as a gift from his father Laurence C. Reeds Jr. '50, offers an elevated view of six of the eight indoor courts — the four newer courts, which spell out “Y-A-L-E,” and the two left courts, which make up half of the older courts. A seating cantilever accessible from the lobby opens directly above the courts, while a hallway below provides direct entry and wheelchair accessibility.

The original four indoor courts featured Dynaturf surfacing when constructed, but now all eight utilize DecoTurf — the same brand of surface used at the US Open and the Olympic Games — and have similar features to ensure fairness in competition. Simon said that the decision to install DecoTurf was also based on the use of the courts and the neighboring Connecticut Tennis Center for the former Connecticut Open, a “runner-up tournament to the US Open.”

“The center is really helpful with scheduling opponents. Other schools sometimes can’t invite strong teams because their facilities can be off-putting, but the [Cullman-Heyman Center] isn’t like that,” Drake said. “It’s not dark or gloomy.”

Additionally, Drake noted that the number of courts helps both the men’s and women’s teams stagger matches if needed and naturally “lends itself to recruiting.”

Women’s team member Chelsea Kung ’23 echoed this sentiment.

“I was blown away by the dedication that Yale Athletics has to tennis … It’s really enticing for future recruits to see that ‘Oh my god, tennis is a big deal here,’” Kung said during a Zoom interview.

For her teammate, Jessie Gong ’22, the center was not a deciding factor, but “more like an added bonus.”

The center is strengthened not only by its numerous newly renovated courts, but also by the facilities that it offers. The building contains locker rooms, a small gym converted from a children’s play area and offices for coaches.

In 2010, donations to the facility from Donald Dell ’60, Robin Selati ’88 and Jonathan Clark ’59 funded a scoreboard system. Further changes to the facility include new HD live streaming and a transition from halogen to LED lighting.

Since its renovations, the center has drawn architectural praise, including the 2009 American Sports Builders Association Outstanding Indoor Tennis Facility of the Year Award and an Outstanding Facility Award from the U.S. Tennis Association. Such praise has drawn tournaments to the center.

“In years past, Yale has been able to showcase the Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center through hosting numerous ECAC and ITA Championships and bring individuals from across the country to com-

pete at the highest intercollegiate level,” Associate Athletic Director for Facilities and Operations Danielle Upham said.

These tournaments include the 2009 Women’s Northeast Regional Championships, the 2009 Intercollegiate National Indoor Tennis Championship and the 2017 ITA Division I National Women’s Team Indoor Championship, in addition to professional tournaments such as the 2019 Oracle Challenger Series and men’s legends tournaments that drew players such as James Blake and Tommy Haas. An ATP-WTA pro event, the Pilot Pen Tennis, ran from 2005 to 2010. Then the center hosted a women’s only tournament in some form from 2011 to 2018 that drew Grand Slam winners such as Caroline Wozniacki, Petra Kvitová and Simona Halep.

The center opened briefly this past semester for recreational tennis, although masks were mandated except during play and most facilities, including showers and lockers, were unavailable. Bookings were made through Bond Sports. During the center’s closure, however, a number of first years coordinated to play tennis outdoors at Wilbur Cross High School.

Despite multiple temporary closures over the past several months, the center still inspires awe in students yet to visit and interest from organizers. It pays homage to those who came before it and grows through the help of those who developed their skills there. The Cullman-Heyman Center has proven that it can keep pace with the evolution of its parent institution and serve as a physical testament to the care of generations of Bulldogs.

The tennis center is located at 279 Derby Ave., West Haven.

Contact HAMERA SHABBIR at hamera.shabbir@yale.edu.

Athletes react to policy change REACTION FROM PAGE 14 en’s squash captain Aishwarya Bhattacharya ’21. Bhattacharya is enrolled in the bachelor’s/master’s of public health degree program, a five-year joint program between Yale College and the Yale School of Public Health. Prior to the announcement, Bhattacharya had accepted that next year she would have to cheer on the squash team from the sidelines.

Now, she has an opportunity to play one more season for the Blue and White.

“I am a little disappointed by the timing of this announcement, though,” Bhattacharya said. “I think that a number of athletes would have preferred to have known this earlier and a lot of deadlines have passed by now.”

The website for Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences lists deadlines for more than 50 different programs in a variety of fields from applied physics to history, all of which have already passed in either December or January. The one exception was the Yale Law School application, which is reviewed on a rolling basis, although the last deadline was Feb. 15.

Former Yale baseball player and current Miami Hurricanes player Benny Wanger ’19 had much harsher words to say regarding the Ivy League’s new policy.

“It's a weak move by the league — too little too late,” Wanger said.

“It basically just confirms that there will not be an Ivy season this year.” Although spring competition has been delayed, the Ivy League

has not yet ruled out the possibility of a spring season this year.

Wanger graduated from Yale in 2019 and then played as a graduate transfer student at USC in the shortened 2020 season. The twoway player took advantage of the NCAA’s ruling last March that gave spring-sport student-athletes an additional season of eligibility and used the graduate transfer portal again to play the 2021 baseball season at the University of Miami.

Unlike other NCAA conferences, the Ivy League typically does not allow graduate students to participate in athletic competition.

Contact EUGENIO GARZA GARCÍA at eugenio.garzagarcia@yale.edu and JAMES RICHARDSON at james.richardson@yale.edu .

St. Ivany at BC HOCKEY FROM PAGE 14 Ivany said. “The team here is much younger than at Yale … which provides a bit of a different dynamic in the locker room, but at the end of the day the message and goal is the same as it was at Yale … to win games and ultimately win a National Championship.”

The BC team consists of three seniors, five juniors, nine sophomores and 10 first years. Meanwhile, at Yale, the team breaks down into their seven seniors, three juniors, seven sophomores and seven first years.

BC sophomore right-wing forward Mike Hardman, one of St. Ivany’s roommates, expressed his excitement to have the ex-Bulldog joining him as an Eagle.

“Jack was a great addition to our team both on and off the ice,” Hardman said. “We were very excited when we heard he was transferring here and have really enjoyed having him on the team.”

Yale Athletics declined to comment on St. Ivany’s January transfer and Boston College Athletics did not respond to requests for comment.

When asked about his experience at Yale, St. Ivany emphasized

COURTESY OF YALE ATHLETICS

So far, St. Ivany has played 11 games and notched four points with the Eagles. that it was a pleasure for him to have the opportunity to wear the Blue and White.

“I made some of my best friends for life there and was able to learn from one of the greatest coaches in college hockey,” St. Ivany said. “Yale will always have a special place in my heart.”

Yale head men’s ice hockey coach Keith Allain spoke with a similar tone to the News last fall, stating

that “Jack will always be a member of the Yale Hockey Family.”

The Boston College’s men’s ice hockey team is ranked No. 1 in the country according to United States College Hockey Online polls.

Contact TRISHA NGUYEN at trisha.nguyen@yale.edu and AMELIA LOWER at amelia.lower@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 11

NEWS

“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.” FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

New Yale summer policies allow for student flexibility

BY JULIA BIALEK STAFF REPORTER While the pandemic shut down nearly all undergraduate activities on campus last summer, the University plans to welcome students back for summer 2021 — with some changes that promote flexibility.

On Jan. 29, Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun announced in an email to undergraduates that all Yale College students would be able to participate in in-person research or work this upcoming summer, regardless of their class year or enrollment status, so long as they fulfilled all public health guidelines and safety trainings required by their activities. Following this announcement, changes to summer policies — in regards to COVID19 tuition credits and research fellowships — have been made to allow students to take advantage of as many opportunities as possible.

“We are not constraining who can work on campus this summer,” Chun told the News. “To make it a viable option for as many students as possible, we’ve adjusted the science fellowship terms for the money that my office gives out.”

As Chun explained, in addition to inviting students back to cam-

pus for the summer to engage in work or research, another major change is that the Yale College Dean’s Office is giving out research fellowships for shorter terms.

In past years, the YCDO gave out research fellowships for 10-week terms. But upon hearing that many students wanted the ability to both engage in research and utilize the two free COVID-19 tuition credits for classes in Yale Summer Session New Haven, Online or Abroad — which are awarded to all students in the first-year and sophomore class who enrolled in both fall 2020 and spring 2021 and took one of the terms remotely — Chun decided to shorten the fellowships.

Now, students have the flexibility to engage in research and enroll in one YSS term, depending on the specifics of their research program.

In a document entitled Guidance for Yale Summer 2021 STEM Research Fellowships funded through the Office of Science & QR, Associate Dean for Science and Quantitative Reasoning Education Sandy Chang ’88 provides students who are awarded the Yale College FirstYear Summer Research Fellowship or the Yale College Dean’s Research Fellowship with a variety of options

that allow them to engage in research, enroll in YSS courses if they so desire and optimize their COVID-19 tuition credits if they are eligible for them.

Combinations range from 10 weeks of in-person research with no availability for summer classes to eight weeks of part-time, remote research that permits students to simultaneously enroll in one YSS course.

Chun said that students should be aware that Independent Research in the Summer — which is a fiveweek course that allows students to engage in full-time research on a particular interest with the help of a faculty advisor for credit — is a course to which the COVID-19 tuition credit can be applied.

Dean of Yale Summer Session and Associate Dean of Yale College Jeanne Follansbee explained that a student’s ability to engage in research and enroll in YSS courses depends on the particular requirements of specific research programs. For example, some research programs are full time and would not permit students to be enrolled in YSS courses simultaneously, while others may permit it.

However, with the flexibility of shorter research fellowships providing students with the possibility

to engage in research and enroll in one session of YSS courses in different combinations, students should be able to craft a summer that works for them. Follansbee guided students to a FAQ page that addresses how COVID-19 credits can be used.

First-year students and sophomores who are eligible for the COVID-19 tuition credits and receive financial aid through Yale College are also eligible for a YSS housing subsidy — which pro-

vides additional financial support to subsidize on-campus room and board if they choose to study in residence. However, to use that subsidy, students must enroll in two YSS courses during the same five-week session.

Session A of YSS runs from June 7 to July 9, and Session B runs from July 12 to Aug. 13.

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

SCHIRIN RANGNICK/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

For the upcoming summer, the Yale College Dean’s Office has shortened the length of its summer research fellowships.

Board of Alders unanimously agrees to sell Dixwell Plaza BY ÁNGELA PÉREZ STAFF REPORTER At a Tuesday night meeting, the New Haven Board of Alders unanimously approved the sale of cityowned land for a planned $200 million Dixwell Plaza redevelopment.

Two nonprofit connected corporations, the Connecticut Community Outreach Revitalization Program, or ConnCORP, and the Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology, or ConnCAT, have played a vital role in New Haven’s economic development efforts through employment opportunities and new facilities for residents. The organizations will purchase the plaza property, a mid-century strip mall on Dixwell Avenue, from the city for approximately $750,000.

ConnCORP’s plan, which was officially unveiled in January 2020 and has been in the works since

2013, includes the redevelopment of the Plaza complex, described

by Ward 21 Alder Steven Winter as “rusting and neglected.” The plan would build a new commercial building to hold a grocery store, child care center, banquet hall, performing arts center and more.

The ConnCORP is an economic development corporation associated with ConnCAT. ConnCORP looks to “drive economic development [in Dixwell and Newhallville] by investing in local commercial and residential real estate.

“This is about lives. This about job opportunities. This is about growth,” Ward 29 Alder Brian Wingate of Newhallville told his fellow alders at the meeting, thanking them for the board’s continued support for the project. “I really believe that we need this in this community at this time,” Wingate said.

Project funds will come from “pri-

vate equity, subordinated debt, new market tax credits and fundraising,” Erik Clemons, the president of ConnCAT, told the Independent in January 2020. According to Clemons, the project has no links to Yale.

Winter described the new development and the investments as “brought by an accomplished local development team,” noting that the space, together with the Q House, a community center in Dixwell in the process of rehabilitation, will “meet an array of community needs and fuel an engine for lifting families out of poverty.”

Winter noted that the Dixwell Plaza development does not “move the needle towards affordable housing,” but it does “provide a strong basis for hiring Black and brown New Haveners.”

For alders like Winter, local ownership remains a priority in a changing Newhallville neighbor-

hood. At the meeting, several alders pointed to a resident’s decision to keep real estate in local hands as a point of pride. Initially, alders said, an out-of-town investor made a high bid for a three-story house on Winchester Avenue, but the homeowner chose to sell the building to a local owner at a lower cost instead.

Winter noted that community feedback on the Plaza plan has revolved around building design, hiring policy and project affordability.

A change to the most recent version of ConnCorps’ plan requires that 25 percent of the total project value — the sum of costs including construction, acquisition and design — must be awarded to minority-owned businesses. In addition, according to the plan, 25 percent of project hours must be awarded to New Haveners, and “25 percent of project hours must be worked by Black and brown New Haveners, minorities as defined

in city code 12.5.” Funding to the Q house also increased.

In a speech before the final vote, Ward 22 Alder Jeanette L. Morrison of Dixwell thanked ConnCORP for its efforts in her community. The development, she said, has the potential to diversify the types of businesses and improve the livability of the neighborhood.

“This is the time to ensure that the Dixwell community has all the amenities it needs,” Morrison said.

“My father always used to say to me … ‘When I came here, if you lived in the Dixwell community, you never had to go downtown. Because everything you needed was right there, and that’s what ConnCORP is representing in this project.”

Dixwell Plaza lies between 200 Dixwell Ave. and 26 Charles St. Contact ÁNGELA PÉREZ at angela.perez@yale.edu.

For registered in-person classes, some start meeting, others waiting

BY EMILY TIAN AND MADISON HAHAMY STAFF REPORTERS While Associate Research Scientist Man-Ki Yoon plans to transition to in-person teaching in March, for now, virtual machines running car simulators hooked to the computers in the computer’s usual lab on Hillhouse have provided a pandemic-friendly substitute to his hands-on course on self driving cars.

Just shy of a year since classes first went online last March, 54 classes this semester were approved to be taught, at least in part, in person. Of those approved, around half are STEM courses and

labs, 15 fall into the humanities and social sciences and 10 are visual and performing arts courses.

The News reached out to 11 professors about their plans for in-person instruction, six of whom responded.

None are currently teaching their classes in person and only two — Yoon and Edward Wittenstein, lecturer at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs — indicated confidence that their classes would ultimately transition to in-person learning.

Wittenstein’s course, Cybersecurity, Cyberwar and International Relations, will have an in-person option starting on Wednesday, Feb. 17.

MARISA PERYER/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Almost half of registered in-person classes are listed as STEM classes, while only three percent are registered as language classes.

“It is a much larger classroom than normal, with everyone socially distanced, wearing masks, and closely following all Yale health procedures— plus a lot of wires, microphones, video cameras, and screens,” Wittenstein wrote in an email to the News.

“However, these necessary inconveniences are a small price to pay given our desire for in-person interaction, to the extent circumstances permit.”

In a follow-up email, Wittenstein added that he is tested twice a week and expects “rigorous adherence to all health protocols” from students who decide to attend his class in person. He also thanked Yale’s maintenance and custodial staff for their “tireless efforts” during the pandemic.

Charles Musser, professor of American Studies and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Political Science David Simon are both waiting for public health conditions to improve before teaching their respective classes in person.

Musser cited that he would receive the COVID-19 vaccine soon and Simon cited a potential downgrade of Yale’s alert level as potential signs to move to in-person teaching.

“Will it happen?” Musser wrote in an email to the News, “Who knows. Many of the students taking the class are not even in residence. Obviously it is a frustrating situation for all of us but we are finding ways to deal with it.”

Director of Undergraduate Studies of Anthropology William Honeychurch, who was planning to hold his undergraduate course in person after a successful in-person graduate seminar last semester, ultimately decided not to after the appearance of the new COVID-19 variants.

Although Honeychurch does not feel as though students are able to fully experience his course virtually, he called the decision “the best practice given the situation.”

While Mechatronics Laboratory is listed as a hybrid course, Tyler Imprescia ’22 added that it is currently set to remain remote.

“We’ll be receiving a box with everything we need to do all of the labs and the final project from wherever we’re learning,” Imprescia said.

“I’m sure it would have been a better experience in person, but I’m really glad we still get to apply the theory we’re learning to a physical product.”

The classes that will meet in person beginning in the third phase of the spring arrival quarantine have also needed to reimagine what a COVID-19-safe collaborative space may look — or sound — like.

Stoeckel Hall, where the School of Music is housed, debuted a no-latency audio system between studio practicing rooms in the fall, so that musicians in one room could hook up to an audio system that would allow them to listen, in real time, to musicians in another room in the building.

“You can be together without seeing each other,” Dani Zanuttini-Frank ’22 said. “Listening is where the information is. Have faith in your ears.”

Brian Isaacs ’22, who is taking a class called Musical Acoustics and Instrument Design that is cross listed in both the music and engineering and applied science departments, said that the Center for Engineering Innovation and Design will be reserved for their class during its lab times. While the class would theoretically be able to accommodate for remote lab work, all nine of his classmates are enrolled in New Haven and plan to attend the in-person classes.

Bradley Nowacek ’23, a theater and performance studies major currently residing on campus, will be attending a weekly theater performance class in person starting this Thursday.

Nowacek noted that the class will need to be adjusted to accommodate both students learning in person and remotely. But despite reservations about performing theater in masks, Nowacek still maintained that he appreciated gaining a “regular, dependable source of in-person contact” through the course.

Currently, Yale University is at an orange, or moderate risk, alert level.

Contact EMILY TIANat emily.tian@yale.edu and MADISON HAHAMYat madison.hahamy@yale.edu .

CORRECTIONS FRIDAY, FEB. 12 An earlier version of the article titled “Yale employees seek millions for University’s alleged mismanagement of funds” said that Yale filed a motion for summary judgement requesting the court dismiss the suit. In fact, the University is seeking a judgement on the suit without going to trial through the motion for summary judgement. The story also referred to the plaintiffs’ original filing as a “brief.” In fact, it is a class-action complaint. The story has been updated on the News’ website.

PAGE 12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

THROUGH THE LENS

S

tanding in my closet, I let go, submerging each lyric I sing with my memories, pain and anger. In front of me stands my microphone, taking in each vocal inflection and mapping them out onto a spectrogram. Twelve months ago, I was in Hartford, competing in the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella with my group, Cadence. Twelve months ago, I was performing in front of a crowd. Now, I sing alone. This is the reality of a cappella during a pandemic. But how do you perform as a group when you are scattered all over the world? How do you produce a video without it falling into the category of something mundane? How do you bring together ten different pieces of footage in a way that doesn’t resemble the appearance of just another lifeless meeting over Zoom? Music is art. It is nothing short of beautiful. And something beautiful does not deserve to be reduced to something prosaic.

Filming this video has been nothing short of a challenge. I have spent hours sewing, staging, adjusting lighting and focus, recording take after take, all in an effort to tell a story. Our song, “over the rainbow”, tells of being trapped in a dark place and capturing the essence of that is my goal.

The song alludes to the Wizard of Oz and a descent into darkness. As I turn myself into the witch, I reflect on what that means to me personally. I let the lyrics play on repeat in my head, a broken record spinning ‘round and ‘round, focusing in on the truth behind the words.

I like to film and edit at night when I have full control over the light and the color. There is a power behind each shadow. In the daylight, the contrast blinds, but at night it glows.

After I have finished filming, I find the act of removing my makeup to be both relieving and melancholic. While on my gap year, my extracurriculars are the few things tethering me to Yale. When this video is done, a cappella will calm down again and I will be left feeling empty. And while I look forward to the respite to come, I cannot help but wonderwhat will fill the newly-opened hole in my calendar.

ZOE BERG reports.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

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“Remember that a civilized nation cannot just have one party; if there were only one party, this would merely be a dictatorship.

Politics could not advance.” SUN YAT-SEN FIRST PRESIDENT OF CHINA

Elicker, New Haveners give continued plea for PILOT funding

BY THOMAS BIRMINGHAM AND OWEN TUCKER-SMITH STAFF REPORTERS In a Tuesday morning hearing, New Haven residents and politicians came together to continue voicing support for a bill that would increase funding for the state’s Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILOT, program.

The hearing was hosted by the Connecticut General Assembly’s Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee. It was held after Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposed FY 20212022 budget did not provide substantial boosts to the PILOT program — a move that New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker opposed.

Tuesday’s bill, introduced by Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney of New Haven, would allocate more funds to municipalities with a higher proportion of tax-exempt property.

New Haven, which now receives around $42 million annually through PILOT, would receive $91 million if the bill passed — a jump of almost $50 million. New Haven would receive the highest boost out of all the municipalities or districts covered by the bill, as it has the highest proportion of tax-exempt property.

The mayor and other New Haveners at the hearing said that the city — which faces a projected $66 million budget deficit for the next fiscal year — desperately needs additional funding to avoid resorting to major hikes in property taxes.

“This is by far the most important piece of legislation contemplated in this session,” Elicker said at the hearing. “It’s not only the highest legislative priority of the city of New Haven, but it’s essential to the vitality of many other communities and the economic wellbeing of our state.”

The tier system, which prioritizes cities with larger amounts of tax-exempt land, designates tiers based on the per capita value of the city’s net grand list — or the value of its taxable property. The first tier, which includes New Haven, is for cities with under an under $100,000 per capita grand list figure. Cities in this tier would receive 50 percent of what the state’s PILOT formula is supposed to provide — 77 percent of lost property tax revenue. Tier two and three cities would receive 40 and 30 percent of this 77 percent figure, respectively. The state has never actually provided the 77 percent reimbursement that the PILOT formula stipulates, and Looney called the figure “aspirational.”

Elicker said that Connecticut, compared to other states, is over reliant on property taxes. While PILOT was intended to remedy this, funding through the program has dropped over the last two decades and tax-exempt property in New Haven is on the rise. This combination, Elicker said, has led to an “increasingly challenging financial situation for our city, putting pressure on our ability to provide the very basic services that our residents and taxpayers need.” Elicker called New Haven’s situation “dire,” as he said he was forced to cut over 100 jobs in his last budget — while still raising taxes.

The price tag on the three-tiered PILOT model comes to around $129 million, Looney said. But in response to the cost, Elicker said there was no safe alternative.

“What do we think will happen if the city of New Haven ceases to be an economic engine in our state?”

Elicker asked the committee. “How are we supposed to attract new residents when our cities are increasingly unaffordable? The annual cost of this proposal pales in compari-

son to the revenue it would generate if we chose to invest in our cities and help them build out of this pandemic stronger than before.”

Several other mayors and first selectmen from across the state also gave their testimony on Tuesday, demonstrating bipartisan support for the program as well as a general sense of frustration towards Lamont’s handling of the proposal.

In particular, New London Mayor Michael Passero said he was “very disappointed” with the governor’s proposed budget.

Darien First Selectman Jayme Stevenson, one of the more vocal state Republicans in support of PILOT funding, testified in favor of the program — even though her city would fall into a tier that would receive the least additional funding.

“The health of our state is dependent upon many factors,” Stevenson said. “One of them is the health of our urban centers.”

Looney told the News he shares Elicker’s commitment to locking down PILOT funding, but also said he was less critical of Lamont’s proposed budget. Looney said that based on “personal conversations” with the governor, as well as several public statements in which Lamont expressed more general support for increased PILOT funding, Looney was optimistic about the potential for success with the bill.

Looney also said he was deeply encouraged by the over 20 New Haveners who came out to express support for the bill on Tuesday.

“Governor Lamont has said to me that he is supportive of PILOT and recognizes its equity,” Looney said.

“The issue is just finding the funds to implement it. [The hearing] was a sign of the broad based recognition of the fairness of this proposal.”

Although no one testified against the bill, some Republicans expressed

DANIEL ZHAO/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

New Haven would receive $91 million if the new PILOT bill passes. As of now, it receives $42 million annually. skepticism over its effectiveness.

Darien State Rep. Terrie Wood called out the fact that Democrats have held control of the legislature since the 1980s but have not made a move to fund PILOT at this level.

At the hearing, Wood questioned why Democrats had not already fully funded PILOT. Offering support to Looney, New Haven State Rep. Roland Lamar said more focus should be placed on the root of financial problems in Connecticut municipalities rather than on why PILOT has not been funded over the years.

According to Lamar, this is because Connecticut property taxes are “not sensitive” to varying levels of income. Though higher-income individuals generally pay more in taxes, Connecticut residents are paying the same percent on property taxes regardless of how financially well off they are. Lamar said PILOT funding would help ease that burden, and cities like New Haven can avoid significantly raising property taxes for all.

Harold Brooks, president of Local 3144 — a union comprised of management profession-

als who work for the city of New Haven — echoed Lamar’s concerns about the disproportionate effect of increased property taxes on low-income families. However, Brooks went further to state that increased PILOT funding is an essential step to address systemic racial inequality in New Haven.

Brooks said because the state has never fully funded the PILOT program, previous raises in property taxes and cuts in services have disportionately affected people of color.

“The underfunding of PILOT continues to exacerbate inequality in our communities,” Brooks said.

“COVID-19 showed how large the inequity between communities of color and ones that receive a disproportionate amount of PILOT funding is. This structure would correct an injustice that has existed for years.”

The bill awaits a vote by the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee.

Contact THOMAS BIRMINGHAM at thomas.birmingham@yale.edu and OWEN TUCKER-SMITH at owen.tucker-smith@yale.edu .

YLS announces two gifts to support student critical needs

BY JULIA BROWN STAFF REPORTER Yale Law School announced two gifts to the school last week honoring the life and legacy of Michael Varet LAW ’65 that will support “critical needs” of students at the law school: emergency expenses and funding for work in environmental law.

The gifts come from the Middle Road Foundation, the Varet family’s private foundation that focuses on education and healthcare, among other issues. The gifts established two funds: The Michael A. Varet ’65 YLS Safety Net Support Fund and The Michael A. Varet ’65 Summer Public Interest Fellowship Fund. The YLS Safety Net provides emergency funding that law school students may use for unexpected expenses.

The Public Interest Fellowship Fund seeks to help train future lawyers so they can address environmental challenges. The fund will enable four first-year Law School students to spend their sum-

mers working for environmentally focused public interest organizations that otherwise would not have had enough funding to hire them.

“We could not think of a better way to honor my father — who was completely devoted to Yale Law School — than to make a gift that will both meet the exigent needs of its students, about whom he cared deeply, and support critical public interest work undertaken to address the climate crisis,” Varet’s daughter, Sarah Varet LAW ’04, said in the announcement of the gifts.

Students may use the funding from the Public Interest Fellowship Fund to support their work with relevant environmental law and advocacy organizations, such as Earthjustice, the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund.

While Varet — who passed away in May 2019 — graduated from the Law School more than 50 years ago, he remained very involved with the Law School throughout his life.

Varet was a member of the Yale Law School Fund Board, which helps facilitate and promote the majority of gifts that are given to the Law School. He also served on the Yale Law School Association’s Executive Committee, which meets twice a year to discuss various programs at the Law School and helps connect Law School alumni and students around the world.

“We are profoundly grateful to the Varet family for their gifts to the Law School,” Law School Dean Heather Gerken said in the announcement. “Although Michael never sought or expected acknowledgement of all that he gave to Yale, we owe him a debt and are honored that his family has chosen to celebrate his legacy in this way.”

Varet was also involved with the diversification of the Sterling Law Building’s portrait collection, working to help the collection better reflect the history of the Law School. He funded many new portraits, including those of LGBTQ activist Charles Reich

LAW ’52, former Law School Dean James Thomas LAW ’64, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor LAW ’79 and civil rights activist Pauli Murray LAW ’65.

Varet’s gift for the YLS Safety Net endows the preexisting emergency funding program that was first established in 2019.

“The Michael A. Varet ’65 YLS Safety Net Support Fund enables Yale Law School to provide critical assistance to high need students facing unanticipated financial hardships,” Associate Dean of Law School Admissions and Financial Aid Miriam Ingber LAW ’04 wrote to the News.

“This fund will continue to positively impact generations of YLS students, and we’re very grateful to the Varet family for their incredible generosity.”

According to Gerken, the Law School’s Safety Net has been able to support students by covering a “myriad” of unexpected student expenses during the COVID-19 pandemic, including emergency flights home, temporary housing

and costs associated with technology needed to study remotely.

Over 25 percent of the Law School class of 2023 are the first in their family to attend any professional school. According to the announcement in “YLS Today,” Varet’s gift helps provide many of these students with needed financial liquidity or family support to pay for unexpected expenses.

“Michael cared deeply about the many first [generation students] we’ve welcomed into the school and understood how important it is to provide a ‘safety net’ for those students who do not already have one,” Gerken said. “Now that the Safety Net has been endowed by the Varet family, we have the necessary resources to meet the needs of students for generations to come.”

Over 70 percent of Law School students received some form of financial aid in the 2020-21 academic year, according to the school’s financial aid website.

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

Graduate school deadlines may block senior athletes with eligibility

BY MADISON HAHAMY AND JAMES RICHARDSON STAFF REPORTERS Last Thursday, Yale’s graduating class of student-athletes learned that the Ivy League had granted a waiver permitting seniors to compete in their sport next season as graduate students, but with one caveat: they must have been admitted to a degree-granting graduate program.

The announcement’s timing left some athletes confused, as it came after final deadlines for graduate school applications — the latest of which was Jan. 2.

In an email to the News, Lynn Cooley, dean of Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, reiterated that the latest application deadline, Jan. 2, had already passed and that “admissions decisions are nearly complete.” She pointed the News to a page listing various accommodations for prospective students listed on the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

website. The website lists “global pandemic (e.g. COVID-19)” as an extreme circumstance case for flexibility in admissions. Cooley declined to comment on whether senior athletes specifically might be able to submit applications past the deadline due to the pandemic.

The website indicates that individual programs have discretion in considering applicants who wish to apply after Jan. 2.

The News interviewed directors of graduate studies from three different programs — English Language and Literature, Political Science and Statistics and Data Science — who expressed varying levels of willingness to pursue application extensions for athletes who wished to apply to graduate school at Yale after hearing of the exception.

Both DGS for Political Science Alexandre Debs and DGS for English Language and Literature Catherine Nicholson told the News that deadlines for their programs have passed. Debs said he was not

aware of the new Ivy League eligibility exception for 2021-22.

“My guess is that this decision would really only be meaningful for students who have already applied and who get accepted in the usual way,” Nicholson said.

However, Co-DGS for Statistics and Data Science John Emerson wrote in an email to the News that, while no students have yet asked him to extend the deadline, he “would certainly be willing to consider it,” especially for their MA/MS program “that might be suitable for some students.”

Yale’s Associate Athletic Director of Compliance Jason Strong, who originally notified senior athletes of the Ivy League waiver in an email last Thursday, told the News that Yale Athletics will assist seniors with the necessary waivers for utilizing their eligibility.

However, Strong noted that the graduate admissions process is “under the purview of each graduate school.” Furthermore, students wanting to pursue this option are

YALE DAILY NEWS

Individual graduate programs have discretion in considering applicants who wish to apply after Jan. 2. “responsible for their own application and admissions process.”

According to the Graduate School’s accommodations page, students who are interested in applying to graduate school after the Jan. 2 deadline should contact the DGS and registrar of the program in which they are interested. The DGS and registrar would then need to contact the Graduate

School if they want to consider the request.

Most students who are accepted into the Graduate School’s programs must accept their offers by April 15.

Contact MADISON HAHAMY at madison.hahamy@yale.edu and JAMES RICHARDSON at james.richardson@yale.edu .

NCAAW No. 1 UConn 77 St. John’s 32

UEFA Man United 4 Real Sociedad 0

SPORTS

NBA Jazz 114 Clippers 96

NBA Hawks 122 Celtics 114

NHL (OT) Panthers 4 Hurricanes 3

FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE goydn.com/YDNsports Twitter: @YDNSports YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

INSIDE YALE-UCONN FOOTBALL BACKGROUND ON THE IN-STATE RIVALRY When the two schools meet for the 50th time at Rentschler Field in October, UConn will pay Yale $285,000, according to public records obtained by the News. Despite not playing since 1998, the in-state rivalry thrived for a half century before UConn’s divisional realignment.

For more, see goydn.com/YDNsports.

YALE FIGURE SKATING CLUB NEGOTIATING MOVE TO QUINNIPIAC After enjoying a presence at Yale’s Ingalls Rink for over 40 years, the Yale Figure Skating Club has been negotiating with Quinnipiac University to move the skating club’s home away from Yale, largely due to financial reasons, to the People’s United Center in Hamden. For more, see goydn.com/YDNsports.

Behind the Venue: Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center

"I think there is some confusion and disappointment with the timing of the [Ivy League grad waiver] since most deadlines for grad school have passed.”

WILL LAIRD ’22 YALE CROSS COUNTRY RUNNER

Ivy League rule exception evokes confusion, hope

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

The Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center has evolved to set the standards for collegiate tennis.

BY HAMERA SHABBIR CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Until the Cullman Courts opened on Nov. 13, 1972, Yale was the only Ivy League institution without indoor tennis facilities. Thirty-six years and a renovation later, the Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center would tie with the University of Pennsylvania for the most indoor courts in the Ivy League.

THE HISTORY Portraits of Yale’s tennis teams — stretching back over 100 years on the men’s side — line the renovated walls of the Cary Leeds lobby.

In place of the 1904 team, a sign reads: "A thorough search in 2008 was unable to locate a team portrait," and several scattered sheets declare the absence of formal competition during the World Wars.

Above the trophy displays and reaching across the lobby are rows of banners hanging from the ceiling featuring notable Yale tennis players. Those featured include recent graduates, players from the 19th century, all-American winners and Davis Cup champions.

“The history is very obvious when you go into the building,” men’s player Cody Lin ’22 said.

The center received its name after being initially constructed through a generous donation from Joseph Cullman III ’35 and then renovated through a donation effort led by Samuel J. Heyman ’60. The facility has served generations of Yale men’s and women’s tennis teams and hosted prestigious tournaments, both for collegiate and professional players. Lauded as one of the best collegiate facilities by architectural critics, coaches and players, it continues to play an integral role in the history of Yale athletics and serve as an amenity to the larger Yale community.

Commissioned through a matching donation from Cullman and bearing the name of his father, Joseph Cullman Jr., class of 1904, the original Cullman Courts complex cost $400,000 to build, nearly $2.5 million in today’s dollars. Herbert Newman designed the facility with functionality and cost minimization in mind as the University experienced financial issues. The project and donor were kept secret until a contractor accidentally leaked building

Ivy League spring-sport competition canceled

BY EUGENIO GARZA GARCÍA STAFF REPORTER Early Thursday afternoon, the Ivy League announced that it would not hold a spring sports season this year.

IVY LEAGUE In an email sent to Yale’s spring sport student-athletes just after 1 p.m., Director of Athletics Vicky Chun included a memo from the Ivy League that announced the cancellation of Ancient Eight spring sports competition for the 2021 season. Despite the cancel-

lation of all league competition, the Council of Presidents noted that local spring nonconference competition could happen should the state of the pandemic “substantially improve.”

The Ivy League office published an official press release a few minutes after Chun’s email to the Bulldogs’ spring athletes.

“As campus and community leaders, we believe that our public health responsibilities and educational principles preclude us from sponsoring Ivy League athletSEE IVY PAGE 10

COURTESY OF YALE ATHLETICS

Last November, the Ivy League announced its initial decision to postpone spring sports through at least the end of February.

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details to bidders. Local newspapers and the News reported the information before the University made a statement announcing the complex’s forthcoming construction.

Prior to the construction of the center, Payne Whitney Gymnasium’s amphitheater and facilities in Bethany and Cheshire hosted indoor tennis play for Yale. The complex was built near the athletic fields, and for nine years it was Yale’s newest athletics facility until Reese Stadium opened in 1981.

The location of the center makes viewership scarce, however.

“Since the athletic fields are far from campus, we have a lot fewer fans than we could have, and we definitely have to keep encouraging people to come support. That’s always been a challenge for us,” Lin said.

On opening day in 1972, undergraduate students paid $1.50 or $0.75 for singles and doubles to play recreationally on the courts, while faculty and staff rates were decided by prime hours and could range from $2.50 for prime-time singles to $1 for non-prime doubles. During the SEE VENUE PAGE 10

A new waiver will allow seniors an additional year of eligibility if they are accepted into a degree-granting graduate program.

BY EUGENIO GARZA GARCÍA AND JAMES RICHARDSON STAFF REPORTERS On Thursday, the Ivy League confirmed with the News that graduating senior student-athletes will now be permitted to compete as graduate students at their current Ivy institutions during the 2020-21 academic year, granted that they have been accepted into a degree-granting graduate program.

IVY LEAGUE Upperclassmen athletes shared a range of emotions with the News in response to the change, yet one question appeared ubiquitous: Why was the decision announced after most graduate application deadlines had passed?

According to the admissions page for Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, deadlines for more than 50 programs passed in either December or January.

“I think it’s a good thing that the Ivy League is reevaluating some of their rules due to COVID-19 and they’re trying to support the student athletes,” cross country runner Will Laird ’22 said. “From talking with other athletes at Yale, I think there is some confusion and disappointment with the timing of the announcement since most deadlines for grad school have passed … But all things considered, the rule still will allow more student athletes to participate in the Ivy League which is always good.”

When asked for comment on the timing of the policy change and the reasoning that led to the rule switch, Ivy League Associate Executive Director Matt Panto wrote in an email to the News that the Ancient Eight does not comment on the Council of Presidents’ discussions.

One athlete who is set to benefit from the waiver is womSEE REACTIONS PAGE 10

Former Yale defenseman settles in at BC

BY TRISHA NGUYEN AND AMELIA LOWER STAFF REPORTERS Jack St. Ivany, a junior defenseman from Manhattan Beach, California, recently decided to continue his ice hockey career at Boston College, leaving Yale’s team amid the restrictions on practice and competition implemented by the Ivy League.

HOCKEY The two-way defenseman joined the BC team after their sixth game of their season, picking up his first goal at the University of Connecticut on Jan. 23 with an empty-netter from his own zone and posting his first two assists against Merrimack on Jan. 16-17, according to the Eagles Hockey game notes.

While he had no plans of transferring to BC prior to the Ivy League’s cancellation of winter sports, St. Ivany described the shift in his expectations and his main motivation to take the leap of joining a new team.

“At Yale, in the fall, our team was very focused and determined on being ready for whatever kind of season we were given … and [we] really believed we were going to have a season,” St. Ivany said. “Once the Ivy League came out with their decision, my family and I felt it would be best for my development to find a way for me to play games this sea-

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Jack St. Ivany transferred to Boston College in January due to the cancellation of the Ivy League’s winter athletic season. son. I did not feel I was ready to play professional hockey, so we made the decision to look into transferring to another university.”

The ability to participate in gameplay with the Eagles was appealing to St. Ivany, who told the News that the period of time between March 2020 and January 2021 was the longest amount of time that he had taken off from competition.

St. Ivany has had a solid start with the Eagles, having played 11 games and recording a total of four points so far in his BC career. While donning the Blue and White, he played in 62 contests, earning a total of 30 points, with seven goals and 23 assists.

“It was a very long 10-month offseason for me and while you can practice skills and train in the gym, there really is nothing like actually

playing a game,” St. Ivany said. “So far I have been working to improve all aspects of my game, but I have been putting a lot of time into bettering my skating abilities.”

Transitioning from Yale to BC, St. Ivany described the differences in practice protocols in regard to the current health situation. BC tests and monitors the health of their athletes, in addition to using a “tracking system” to monitor its men’s ice hockey players on and off the ice for better contact tracing.

St. Ivany also noticed a change in his new team’s dynamic compared to his former squad.

“I have really enjoyed getting to know the team so far, they were very welcoming to me,” St. SEE HOCKEY PAGE 10

NUMBER OF GAMES FORMER YALE MEN’S HOCKEY PLAYER JACK ST. IVANY HAS PLAYED WITH BOSTON COLLEGE SINCE HE DEBUTED FOR THE EAGLES ON JAN. 8.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021

WEEKEND // MALIA KUO

Waifu or Wai-Fools Fetishize Japanese Women // BY MALIA KUO AND HANAÉ YOSHIDA Big eyes, bigger tits. Now that we have your attention, let’s talk about the fetishization of Japanese women.

“You’re so cute!”

“I love your features!”

“Do you watch anime? I’m obsessed with anime.”

“I’ve only dated Asians” “I’ve never dated a Japanese girl before” “I’m looking for a waifu” barf As women of Japanese descent, we hear these unprompted, uncalled-for phrases on the regular. We have watched many a relationship or talking stage crash and burn because yet another guy only wants our bodies for his weeboo fantasies. Realizing that the boy you’re starting to fall for is weirdly turned on by your “exotic aura” and couldn’t give a damn about you beyond your race is a special flavor of disgusting. In public and the pursuit of love, not only does being Japanese become a personality trait, it often becomes the only one that actually matters to other people.

In our time as best friends and talented Japanese women extraordinaires, we have often talked about our endless frustrations with being regularly fetishized and objectified. Why did he beg me to speak Japanese?

He really thought I would be his “personal geisha”? What does that even mean? Will we have to spend the rest of our lives having to screen every guy we meet for yellow fever or an anime girl fetish?

But the main question we asked ourselves was “Why is this happening?” After all, Japan was the dominant force of terrifying imperialism and brutal subjugation less than a century ago. Simply put, Japan was the closest thing Asia had to white people…

As in, they colonized everything. China. The Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam. You name it,

Japan has made moves on it. If there was ever an Asian country the European nations have considered their equal in enforcing cultural and racial hierarchy, Japan would be it. So, why aren’t Westerners fetishizing Japanese women for their massive traps and unbridled cruelty?

Japan has always been a nation that has captured the attention of the West. Complete with a 250-year isolation period, Japan is the definition of playing hard to get, cultivating the image of a mysterious, almost mythical land of refined society and epic tales of warfare. The debilitating defeat of the Japanese Empire in World War II did not destroy this fascination with Japan; instead, it created the perfect blank canvas for one of the most successful rebranding campaigns in human history. Japan could become whatever it wanted to, so it became what would sell.

Japan’s buzzword for their rebranding was “utopia.” Become more streamlined, more sleek, more advanced — create the facade of a futuristic society, when in reality, the innovation was just a temporary means to an economic end.

It started with Japan’s so-called “economic miracle.”

Following the war, Japan’s entire industrial bases were completely destroyed. The subsequent creation of newer, more efficient machines outcompeted foreign industrial complexes. This, coupled with the creation of a consumer economy and more streamlined work efficiency, thrusted Japan into direct competition with some of the world’s greatest economies. Westerners were shocked by this revolution — Japan was pumping out innovation faster than ever, constantly, because of the crippling internal competition in the Japanese market. Mit-

subishi, Toyota, Lexus and Honda took the automobile industry by storm. Electronics were exported worldwide. Japan seemed like the future.

And maybe thanks to Japan’s technological reputation, the main export of Japan became culture. And this is where the fetishization of its women comes in.

It all comes down to the mega-success of exporting kawaii culture and anime. Kawaii (“cute” in Japanese) is the cultural force that brought the world everything from Hello Kitty to the Lolita fashion trend to the sexy schoolgirl trope. And of course, anime.

From “HunterxHunter” to “Ouran High School Host Club,” anime has become a global obsession, reaching some 87.2 percent of the world’s population according to the Association of Japanese Animations. It’s an incredible medium, blending heartfelt and engaging storylines with captivating animation. It epitomizes the image that Japan is projecting — exciting, creative and very consumable. And yet, through anime and kawaii culture, Japan has also found a way to rebrand its misogyny. Contrary to common belief, Japanese culture is every bit as fueled by sexism and male dominance as our own. With those values in mind, Japan has created the perfect commodity: the innocent, submissive Japanese woman who is blissfully unaware of her made-for-men body.

Yes, who hasn’t seen the anime waifu running with toast in her mouth because she’s late for class, the bounce catapulting her gargantuan breasts to nearly cover her face?

Her schoolgirl skirt is just small enough to show the bottom of her ass, but she blushes shyly when the main character even looks at her. Through animations like these, it’s clear how anime is catered toward the “male gaze.”

Japan knows what sells, after all, and what sells is this sexualized, near pedophilic puppet of the Japanese woman.

And of course, with global consumption of Japanese social culture, this male fantasy is what most Westerners imagine when it comes to Japanese women. And then Westerners started fetishizing us. Great. Looks like our dating lives and sanity have been sacrificed for Japan’s reputation.

Of course, no country wants to be known as THAT imperialist oppressor. The U.K. will take Harry Styles, hating on Prince Charles and chav checks every day of the week over remembering the millions of deaths at the hands of the British Empire. The French will settle for their berets and baguettes if they get to forget the damage they wrecked in Africa. And don’t even get us started on America.

But no country has been as revolutionary in their rebranding as Japan in the 20th century, and hell, props to the motherland for fooling white people at their own game with such finesse. That being said, if you have any interest in Japanese culture whatsoever, you are welcome. You can now see through the marshmallowy clouds of marketing that have hidden your view of the real, raw and imperfect Japan, and for the sake of Japanese women everywhere, please do think twice about why you would like to return to your kawaii cleavage Camelot.

And if you are a weeb, omedeto gozaimasu, you’ve been manipulated!

Contact MALIA KUO at malia.kuo@yale.edu .

Contact HANAÉ YOSHIDA at hanae.yoshida@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND LOVE

Love Like an Ice Cream Sandwich // BY RAFAELA KOTTOU // ANNIE LIN

I would like to preface this article by saying that if you have somehow managed to find yourself in a serious, committed relationship: congratulations. You did it. You have defied all odds and I hope it lasts forever.

But if you — like me — are some shade of single, then welcome. Welcome to my thoughts on love.

This year, I did not get any chocolates for Valentine’s Day. Or any flowers. Or any decorated pink card with a sappy, romantic message. This year, I got absolutely nothing for Valentine’s Day. But it’s totally okay. It’s not like I wanted anything anyway. In fact, I’m happy I didn’t get anything for Valentine’s Day because it has confirmed my theory that Valentine’s Day is a total and complete waste of a holiday. And love is seriously overrated.

I used to believe in soulmates — you know, the hyper-idealistic and self-centered idea that there exists a single person in this crazy mess of a universe made especially for each of us. I used to daydream in class about getting married and having children and maybe even getting a pet dog or a goldfish. I used to be a sucker for Hallmark movies, bawling my eyes out at the scene where she miraculously comes to the sudden realization that she’s falling in love with her best friend. To be entirely honest, I would probably still cry watching that scene now. And the scene where he drives to the airport to dramatically profess his love for her before her flight takes off. And the scene where they open a bakery together. Oh, and maybe even the scene where he finally decides to introduce her to his parents. But that’s not the point. The

point is that this year, I’ve decided to hate love. I’ve decided to be a rebel. This year, I wore black on Valentine’s Day: black jeans and a black hoodie and a black belt.

It was supposed to send some sort of deep, meaningful, rebellious message about the stupidity of Valentine’s Day. I was supposed to look badass — like the type of girl who doesn’t care about soulmates and hates little children and would never cry at a predictable Hallmark movie.

I was supposed to look intimidating — like the type of girl you’re too scared to talk to. I even tried to glare at the Starbucks employee while waiting for my morning coffee. He asked if I needed anything else. No. I did not need anything else. I snatched my coffee off the counter and walked out with my head held high, as if I had things to do and places to be. On my way out, I saw a swarm of teenage boys walking down the sidewalk towards me.

Tall and handsome, with dark brown eyes and black hair and khaki pants — irresistible. My type exactly. One of them might’ve even been my soulmate. I hope you’re rolling your eyes right now because I most certainly am. There’s no such thing as soulmates. As the group of boys continued walking toward me, I tried to look away, praying that they did not approach me. Please do not smile in my direction. Do not wink at me. Do not even look at me. I’m wearing black on Valentine’s Day. It’s deliberate and it means that I do not want to be approached.

So while I was busy trying my absolute hardest to avoid any possible source of human interaction on Valentine’s Day, I came up with my newest theory on love.

Here goes.

Love is like getting an ice cream sandwich. You run down the street on a lazy Saturday afternoon in the middle of July, flipflops slapping against the concrete, beads of sweat dripping down your neck, hair sticking to your skin, sun painting your nose a gentle shade of pink. You wait in line at that blue and white ice cream truck for what feels like forever, behind the little boy on his bicycle and the old woman who owns three cats and the man who lives about a block away. You wait for that ice cream sandwich.

When the line finally clears, you almost can’t believe it. It’s your turn. You stand on your tip-toes and lean in, stretching your arm and thanking the man inside the truck.

You smile — palms sweaty and sun beating down against your forehead and feet hot against your flip-flops — as you peel back the wrapping paper. There it is.

But somehow, it’s not all what you expected. You look down and very quickly, you realize that it’s practically all melted and wet and the vanilla ice cream is dripping into the wrapping paper and onto your palms and down your wrist. The layers of chocolate become soft against your thumbs and the ice cream drips onto the concrete and you desperately want a refund. But by now, the sticky vanilla is all over your fingers and there is no way you could possibly get it off.

That’s love — seriously overrated.

Next time the ice cream truck rolls around, you ask for a popsicle. Why? Because you learned your lesson. Don’t get a sticky, melty, runny ice cream sandwich on a hot summer day. Get a popsicle. You’d think we would learn from love too. But we don’t.

Of course we don’t.

In fact, I think we live for that sticky, melty, runny love. I couldn’t tell you why. I am certainly no expert. Maybe evolution.

Maybe human anatomy. Maybe genetics. I don’t know. Science is confusing. But whatever the reason, we all fall for love. The illusion or the reality? Maybe a little bit of both.

This year on Valentine’s Day, I made sure that I would not fall for love. I spent the afternoon laying on my living room floor, scrolling through sappy, romantic Instagram posts. First there’s the oh-so-necessary picture of a couple hugging on their sofa. Then another couple taking a mirror selfie. They should really clean their mirror. A third couple kissing for the camera. I could’ve sworn that girl was single about a month ago. She could do better. “Roses from bae,” I read the caption below the next picture. Big deal. I could go out and buy myself roses too. But it’s not like I want roses anyway.

This year on Valentine’s Day, I’m proud to say that I chose popsicle. Because when you choose popsicle, you don’t get hurt. You don’t get melted vanilla ice cream running down your wrist and soft chocolate sticking to your fingers. You don’t get messy. Maybe someday, I’ll choose ice cream sandwich again. Maybe if he holds the door open for me and compliments my hair and dramatically professes his love for me in an airport and wants to open a bakery together. Maybe then, I’ll choose ice cream sandwich. But for now, I think I’ll stick to popsicle.

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

On Cooking, Loving and Learning to Live S //

// BY MAIA DECKER My new apartment has a small kitchen with a large window. Being in the heart of a mountain town in Montana, one can imagine the summits that would be visible if not for the brick wall adjacent. The counter is covered with an amalgamation of life: small succulents propagating on a plate, fruit nearly spilling out their glass bowl and halfempty glasses. My roommates and I tricked ourselves into believing some of the kitchen’s objects are essential; do all adults need jars for flour, sugar and rice? It is in this space that we’re becoming the versions of ourselves we need to be. While cooking for each other, we’re growing up.

When my sister and I were young, our parents insisted that we learn how to cook with them. When my mother made Indian food from her favorite now-closed restaurant, our little hands folded samosas and stirred dal. “One day you’ll live on your own,” she insisted. “You should know how to feed yourself.” My father would tell stories of not knowing how to cook rice in college, and we’d all laugh. Among all other things, teaching us how to make food was my parents’ way of preparing us to live.

The older I grew, the more I became myself through cooking. In high school, my best friend and I would make pasta together

while backpacking; in the morning, we ate oatmeal while the sun reflected off the lake, hitting our tent and bundled up faces.

In our own homes, we’d make garlic knots that turned into warped orbs. “No matter,” we would cry! Both attentive in school, we learned through cooking that perfection was a false stage that we’d painted for ourselves.

We could make mistakes and the world would continue turning.

Eventually, the oldest of my friends started moving into apartments with kitchens of their own. There, we would all cook together. One person would make a salad, ripe with tomatoes from their garden. Others told stories about school while dicing sweet potatoes and chopping rosemary. In the summer heat, far behind schedule, we’d all eat. Around second-hand tables, we learned to listen attentively to each other. One person’s silence often meant they were mulling over a fear. Then, we would go for a walk later, the moonlight soothing worry and the words “I love you” being offered as dessert.

When I left for school in the fall, I knew that, of all things, I would miss the people from home the most. While I was gone, we would have group calls and I would imagine how beautiful their faces once looked around a table. How their laughs sounded

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distant not just because of the thousands of miles they had to travel, but also because they weren’t echoing above our slightly chipped dinner plates. We entered adulthood together, and there we were, all trying to live out in the world without each other.

The first night I moved into my new apartment with my closest friends from home, we cooked dinner. The night, like many others, was documented with polaroids pinned to the corkboard that guards our front door — our smiling faces welcome us each time we hang our coats.

We have an eclectic group of roommates featured on the board, each studying something vastly different: astrophysics, wildlife biology, piano performance and humanities.

Some nights in our small apartment, Rachmaninoff’s intricate melodies will travel through the halls, teaching us unspoken wisdom, as the rest of us spin tales of our own lessons we have gained thus far in life.

“Use the knife like this to avoid cutting yourself,” we whisper, telling each other how to protect ourselves.

“You can tell the oil is hot this way,” one roommate will say, noting the moment when it is time to denounce fear and begin doing what needs to be done.

“These spices go well together,” another

announces while stirring sauce and teaching us about balance.

We have all made many mistakes in the kitchen. Once, the apartment filled with the smoke from burnt cookies. Last week, I sliced my hand open cutting carrots. Quite often, food will start to go bad in the fridge as we cling to the past. Throw the old milk out, it’s a new week.

At the end of each day, we are all still confused at how fast life has pulled us into adulthood. We all have to do things like pay bills, feed the cat and decide what it is we want to do with all the living that remains.

Still, we have our meals as a place of comfort.

Our hands are always busy. Playing études. Noting the joints of a bird’s wing.

Mapping out the universe. Writing in books.

Cutting vegetables. Washing dishes. Holding each other.

Despite what may come, we will always have to eat. Just as with all other special moments, the beauty is amplified when we are together.

Contact MAIA DECKER at maia.decker@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND CONNECTION

Pretend It’s a Review // BY MARGOT LEE

// SOPHIA DESCHIFFART

It’s your first time in New York City. Perhaps you’ve come here by plane or train, saving up for the trip and making a list of places to visit. You’ve seen the photographs, but now you are finally strolling through the Capital of the World.

Around Midtown, you pause in the street to gawk at the glassy towers and the bright shops beneath them. People fly in and out of mustard taxi cabs, shifty-eyed and deliberate as they ignore you.

Except one.

“Move along!” Fran Lebowitz yells at you. “Pretend it’s a city!”

Cultural critic Fran Lebowitz made her streaming show debut last month with Netflix’s “Pretend It’s a City.” The seven-episode documentary series is directed by her longtime friend Martin Scorsese. It is a show about New York,

but even more than that, it’s about Fran Lebowitz. She is the true subject in a three-and-a-half-hour interview grouped around topics such as the city, art, transport, money, sports and books.

I didn’t know much about Lebowitz before watching the docuseries. But for days after watching the show, I felt as though she lived inside my mind. Lebowitz is a unique character, but she certainly falls into the type of the esoteric New York grouch. She is a humorist with a no-nonsense attitude, which makes her a delightful curmudgeon as she delivers each witty, stinging criticism of society. She isn’t a comedian; she isn’t searching to set up some punchline. She is Larry David-esque in her grievances, but less playful and with a little more snark. There’s a

frustration and political edge to her opinions. “I cannot stand my fellow man,” Lebowitz declares.

She is a writer, although her last published work was a children’s book in 1994. Before that, her two books of comedic essays on culture and her life — “Metropolitan Life” (1978) and “Social Studies” (1981) — were bestsellers. In the ’70s, she wrote for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine with a column titled “I Cover the Waterfront.” She has been the subject of a Scorsese documentary once before in “Public Speaking” (2010), and “Pretend It’s a City” seems like an excuse to hear more from Lebowitz, whose content nowadays is scarce.

“Pretend It’s a City” is a niche show and a hard sell. I didn’t quite know how to pin down the docuseries. It is about Lebowitz, but at moments, it is more interested in her stories than her life.

I could describe the show in several ways. Here is a sampling: Sardonic writer delivers a scathing takedown of the modern world in an interview with a Hollywood director.

Two artists gallivant around Manhattan and look at landmarks such as: Grand Central Terminal, the Wall Street Bull, the Chrysler Building, Times Square (“the worst neighborhood in the world”), etc.

A wistful reminiscence of a bygone bohemian era of New York from two icons who lived through it.

Humorist observes the actions of people and passes judgement.

There is no real arc to the show but somehow, Scorsese connects it all. Archived footage and visual aides help move from one anecdote, one quip, to the next as though it were a natural conversation. The images recall a cultural and artistic New York of the ’60s and ’70s. Scorsese’s interest in this era is a trait of his documen-

tary work — passion projects that run concurrently with his films — particularly his music documentaries. Like tour footage of George Harrison, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones, Scorsese arranges Lebowitz’s dialogue in the way he arranges a concert.

And this is a concert — a Fran Lebowitz concert. Like a musician riffing, she receives audience and interview questions without missing a beat, and can talk about any subject at length.

Her opinions are the music of the show. For many minutes, we hear about the problems of Times Square and the $40 million spent on repaving the islands so that tourists can lie down in lawn chairs. Lebowitz questions the closing of subway stations to install mosaics of Weimaraner dogs in clothing. She cannot tolerate the obsession with “wellness” and wants to smoke on planes. She is outraged by the state of things.

In the 2000s, Lebowitz played a judge in a few sporadic episodes of “Law and Order.” She had a similar cameo in Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013). It’s a fitting role for Lebowitz, up on the bench with her dark gown and gavel, looking disapprovingly at her fellow citizens and setting bails.

To some, Lebowitz’s opinions might be overbearing and snobbish. She is uncompromising.

David Letterman interviewed Lebowitz in 1980, asking if she could form a group of others with similar disturbances. Her response was: “Unfortunately, there are no people with similar disturbances.”

Lebowitz herself cannot understand viewers irritated by her opinions as she has no real power to enforce them. “If I could change it, I wouldn’t be so angry,” Lebowitz explains in the series. “The anger is, I have no power, but I’m

filled with opinions.”

So what is the point of this show?

You might not agree with all of Lebowitz’s opinions. I certainly didn’t. But I am a fan of grouchiness and had a ridiculous amount of fun listening to Lebowitz. Apart from being searingly witty, she is the ultimate flaneur. She has been the eyewitness to New York for decades. The series has a fanciful nostalgia for an older New York — one where Lebowitz roamed the streets barefoot, eating breakfast in diners with jazz legends and visiting clubs that no longer exist.

While commenting on all aspects of life that have changed, Lebowitz herself is the antithesis of change. She is a luddite without a computer or a cellphone, which gives her the time to watch the world. For years, she has adopted a constant uniform. A navy men’s suit jacket, Levi’s, cowboy boots and dark circular sunglasses make her instantly recognizable on the streets of New York. She dons an oversized coat in “Pretend It’s a City” and becomes a hulking rectangle. She has been a smoker since a young age.

In a city where nothing is permanent, there is something comforting about an icon who doesn’t change. As long as there are people who get annoyed and complain about trivial things, there is a sanity to the world. It’s a little indulgent, for both Scorsese and the viewer, but there is a joy to watching Lebowitz and Scorsese shuffle around New York and chuckle together. As Lebowitz urges, “Any fun you can have, friend, go ahead.”

You may as well have fun with it, since Lebowitz can’t. She doesn’t have Netflix.

Contact MARGOT LEE at margot.lee@yale.edu .

The Girl From Magnolia Street

// BY KATE WILLIAMS

Love. It is indescribable and unpredictable. It is peaceful and frantic, beautiful and painful, happy and sad, easy and hard. It is both the lightning that strikes during the storm and the rainbow at the end of it. Love is, well, love.

I’m no expert on love. Then again, no one is. Love means different things for everyone. Some call it fate or destiny, while others call it hard work and patience. All I know is that I have been lucky enough to experience it. In fact, I have already had the greatest love of my life.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when it happened, but even in my earliest memories of my mother, I knew it was love. At first, it was the little things that made me know.

When we would bake together and I would inevitably end up with frosting smeared across my face and the kitchen covered in flour. When we would spend hours together playing Just Dance on the Wii, failing miserably at hitting the right moves, but succeeding in laughing so relentlessly that we’d find our abs sore the next day. I could sit on the couch with her in silence and still be the happiest I have ever been in my entire life.

The pure happiness and relief I felt when I saw her was unmatched.

No matter what had happened she would never fail to melt my worries away. A smile or laugh from her was contagious, the best cure in the world. There was always this sense of security and contentment with her, a sense that I could not get from anyone else.

As I matured, I began to understand how thoughtful and compassionate she was. Every argument or fight always ended with her apologizing first, even when I was in the wrong. Once, we had a heated debate about her belief in the superiority of waffles. It ended with a homemade stack of pancakes in front of me, a peace offering, even though we both knew she was right about the true winner. I stopped taking everything she did for me for granted. She sacrificed everything for me: her mind, body and soul.

I was constantly in awe of her.

The way she captured a room every time she walked into it. No matter how many people were there, the world stopped. It wasn’t because she wanted all eyes on her, but because she had her eyes on everyone else. She was always able to make people feel like they were the only person in the universe — that they were heard and important. And the thing is, to her, they truly were.

She never forgot a story or the face that went with it. Everyone, even the construction worker paving the grocery store parking lot knew her name because she knew theirs.

One night we were watching the Oscars together, and the in memoriam part of the show came on. An intense feeling of dread washed over me. I had never really thought about death, or what it meant. I asked her what she thought happened when someone died. She said she didn’t know.

I felt a tightness in my chest — a response to the newfound panic in my head. Not because I found dying scary, but because the idea of losing my mother was unimaginable. I couldn’t even begin to think of a life without her. That is when I truly realized what she meant to me. I loved her with every fiber of my being.

The thing about love is that with it comes heartbreak. The greatest love of my life was my mom. She passed away a few years ago. It was heartbreaking. The kind that never really heals.

My mom grew up in Neptune Beach, Florida, right on the water.

A year before she passed, we took a mother-daughter trip down there to help pack up my grandmama’s house. After a couple of long days that involved lots of cardboard boxes and trips to Goodwill, we decided to take a breather and go for a walk on the beach. We walked along the sand looking for shells and time got away from us. A snap of cold February water hit my feet as high tide met them. I let out a squeal and ran up towards the boardwalk,

looking over my shoulder at the water chasing me.

I saw my mom standing in the same exact position I had left her in, and watched her let the saltwater pool around her feet. I saw a glimmer in her eye and the corners of her mouth started to turn up. I knew what was coming. She turned on her heel and ran straight into the ocean, fully clothed, laughing and splashing as if she were a child once more.

“Chicken!” she called back at me. “You’re not scared, are you?” she said, facetiously. I looked down at my long sleeve T-shirt and jeans, mentally preparing myself for what I was about to do. I sprinted towards her, clenching my teeth when the water hit every part of my body all at once.

We spent time diving under and floating over waves as they came to us. Years before, she had taught me how to read approaching waves at the very same spot. I remembered being scared to dive through the big ones at first. Eventually I had gotten up the courage to try. Somehow, all of those years later, I still remembered what she had said: “You know, most of the things I love in life start out a little bit scary.”

I told her she’d said this as we were walking back up the boardwalk on Magnolia Street, soaking wet. She cracked a joke about how wise she was, but then she stopped and looked at me a little more seriously. A warm breeze swept her hair away as it touched her face, revealing the gold

speckles in her blue eyes, “What I said is true, though. And, in your heart of hearts, you will never run out of love to give. Especially, if you’ve learned how to love to live.”

I loved her more than anyone else in the entire world, and I still do. After losing her I didn’t think I would ever love so deeply again.

Until I did. I don’t know if it was destiny or fate. The best way that I have found to describe it is through a Japanese term, “Koi No Yokan.”

This phrase — difficult to translate into English — represents the feeling upon meeting someone that you will inevitably fall in love with them.

I know she would have loved him. In fact, sometimes he reminds me of her. The way that he is always able to make me laugh and how people always like him. The way that he feels the need to always be okay so that everyone else is. The way I can see through his eyes into his soul, and how brilliant his mind is. I even hear her in his appreciation of little things in life, like the beauty of a bright yet unawake morning or the peace in untouched snow.

It isn’t just in him. I see her in my brother’s smile and my sister’s walk. My cousin has her sense of humor and my uncle, her wisdom. I sense her in one of my best friend’s thoughts and in the twinkle of the other’s eyes. I think of her when I hear the rush of the ocean, look out at a breathtaking view from the peak of a mountain or laugh at the stars above.

I believe, through her, I’ve begun to learn how to love to live. For me, that has come in the form of living to love. When my mom died, all that was left of her was a whole lot of love. So I take that love she left me and I give it away as much as I can because I know that’s what she would have wanted.

I don’t know what exactly love is.

But I know how it feels, and I know that it’s out there. It can be scary sometimes, but then again most of the best things in life are. I know that there is always more love in this world, if we can only find it in our hearts of hearts to give.

Contact KATE WILLIAMS at kate.williams@yale.edu .

// KALINA MLADENOVA

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND PEOPLE

STRANGERS: Making Fashion Green with Rakel Tanibajeva // BY OWEN TUCKER-SMITH

// RAKEL TANIBAJEVA

Last spring, Rakel Tanibajeva traveled to Turkey for spring break — and then the world shut down. Stranded there, the Yale sophomore wound up learning more than she ever expected about the fashion industry. She found herself at Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, among the most massive covered markets in the world, covering over 30,000 square meters.

Standing in the bazaar, Tanibajeva said, she was struck by the scale of the mass production of clothing.

“Going there was shocking,” she said. “I was overwhelmed by how everything was replicated. I watched the workers, and it seemed almost archaic how they had to lug all of these things through these cobblestone hills. It’s one thing to learn about it in school or on your own. It’s another thing to be faced with it.”

The pandemic slowed many of the world’s creative endeavors. But for Tanibajeva, lockdown ended up spurring her interest in the fashion world. She wound up working in the big leagues as a sustainability ambassador behind the scenes of New York Fashion Week, one of the world’s famous “Big Four” fashion weeks. She’s picked up various other designing and style gigs while simultaneously working as a model.

“It’s been a whole twilight zone over the past year,” she said. “I was originally doing an interview, and I was talking about being an environmentalist. … Long story short, they were like, ‘That is very cool, you seem very passionate about this, how would you like a working opportunity here?’”

And then, all of a sudden, Tanibajeva was in the midst of a colossal fashion endeavor of her own: the startup of her sustainable living company, Lots of Berries.

I talked to Tanibajeva this week over Zoom, and I got the chance to hear about the story of the company.

“Being an environmentalist, I’ve always had a conundrum of concrete things I could do to support the movement,” she said. “Obviously I could educate myself and learn a lot about the topic. … I could go to protests … but I wanted to do something more concrete and hands-on. With all the free time that I had sitting during quarantine, I was like, ‘This is the moment.’ So I put all my energy into it.”

Lots of Berries, she said, is a sustainable lifestyle brand, so it doesn’t just include fashion — it extends to cooking, home decor and more. It started from the produce angle, when she organized a community garden, and thus the name Lots of Berries felt appropriate. The company is kicking off with LOB Fashion, the company’s clothing line. Soon, they’re going to try to tackle sustainable housing with a teaching program modeled on the Tiny House Project.

“I thought it was a cute name, too,” she added.

She said the company hopes to establish a workshop space in the Catskills, to actually create clothes “on a wider, but still sustainable scale.”

As Tanibajeva told me about all of this — about being on New York Fashion Week, about designing clothes, about modeling, about the berries — one central question I had remained: How did she learn it all?

After all, she’s a full-time student in college, working in what seems to be a high-level, professional sphere.

The answer she gave me: that she comes from a “fashionable family.”

“My mom is a very big inspiration for me, because she’s an artist,” Tanibajeva said. “She taught me a lot of what I know, and I always get a lot of inspiration from her. It was a very fashionable family. You could walk around my apartment, and most of my books are about fashion.

It’s really nice to be able to bounce ideas off of somebody.”

As she’s worked on her brand, Tanibajeva has been pulling not just from her family background, but from the breadth of knowledge she’s gotten from her studies at Yale.

At the University, she’s an environmental studies student — “surprise, surprise,” she joked. She said she “loves” environmental studies at Yale — that it’s “global and encompassing.” She’s also had the opportunity to meet all sorts of students studying the topic. In New York, she met another prospective environmental studies student pursuing opera singing. “Environmentalism impacts every aspect of life. It’s very encompassing. I meet people with a variety of interests. It’s really cool to hear their stories, and we get to educate each other through that.”

As she’s built experience — both in

environmental studies and in fashion — she said she’s picked up on many misconceptions about sustainable fashion, and she wanted to debunk them with the elegance of her brand.

“A stereotype of sustainable fashion is bohemian, hippy or dippy clothing, but what I’m trying to exhibit with my brand is that you can be in high fashion and still be environmentally conscious,” she said.

She also noted that while sometimes fast fashion brands seem cheap in the moment, they need to be replaced constantly. “High-quality clothing in the long term is cheaper than fast fashion,” she said. “You always have to be renewing it. With more sustainable materials, they last longer.”

She said with her brand, she’s also working on trying to make the clothing affordable.

As for the future, Tanibajeva said she hopes to continue the business and watch it grow for a long time, but “we’re taking it one day at a time — focusing in on the moment and getting done what we can.”

More immediately, she said she can’t wait to get back to physical production. Before the pandemic hit, she was able to work on a real photoshoot, and it was a blast.

“It was super fun to work as a director and work with models and have them in my clothing,” she said.

“That was a very fulfilling process that felt amazing. It was a good time.”

Tanibajeva said there are so many things people can do to incorporate sustainability into their daily lives. “Turn off your lights when you leave the room,” she said. “Support sustainable brands. Go thrifting — thrifting is a really fun thing to do, even during COVID. I find myself doing it even more. It’s a fun activity you can do with your friends or by yourself, and it’s sustainable.”

Currently, Lots of Berries is trying to engage in online outreach. They’re working on uploading videos to their YouTube channel on the basics of sustainable fashion — what it is and how to engage with it. Tanibajeva said she’s hoping that if the Catskills workshop launches, they can teach some in-person classes there.

“And hopefully sell some berries,” she added. “Maybe lots of berries!”

Contact OWEN TUCKER-SMITH at owen.tucker-smith@yale.edu .

Framing ‘Framing Britney Spears’ // BY CLAIRE FANG One of my earliest and deepest fears is the fear of becoming famous. Famous famous, specifically. I’d be okay with low-level fame, the kind that leaves you unrecognized in the grocery store with maybe one or two emails in your inbox from people you don’t know every month. But celebrity-level fame is terrifying — to be ceaselessly hounded by paparazzi, to have each one of your personal relationships dissected by strangers in tabloids and on talk shows, to exist in the public eye as a deity and as an object. You know, like the kind of famous Britney Spears is.

There’s cruelty in the way people treat famous women, especially. Even more so if they happen to be working in a profession where their bodies are a focus of their work. The “moral” outrage and ridicule society voiced against Miley Cyrus when she let go of her sanitized, kid-friendly Disney image and to some extent against Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B for “WAP” surrounded Britney Spears throughout her career.

“Framing Britney Spears,” a documentary produced by the New York Times and currently available on Hulu and FXNow, comprehensively summarizes Spears’ career from her smalltown Louisiana roots to her present struggle against her father’s conservator status. It goes over all the incidents that made it into the public consciousness — her relationship with Justin Timberlake, her subsequent breakup with Justin Timberlake, her marriage and children and divorce, the “breakdown” where she shaved her head, the court case that started the conservatorship and, finally, the #FreeBritney movement. Furthermore, and this is what makes the documentary stand out, it puts the events of her tumultuous life in the context of the pervading misogyny in America.

During her first appearances on television, as a young preteen, she was asked whether or not she had a boyfriend (“What about me?” asked the host, rather shamelessly putting a child on the spot about whether or not she would want to date a middle-aged man in front of a live audience). These questions would only grow more invasive as she grew older: “Are you a virgin?” “What did you do to make Justin suffer?” “What kind of image do you think you’re giving to young girls?” “You know you’re sexy?”

Hounded by photographers hungry for a mistake, for some proof that she was the “slut” that a Clinton-era America was obsessed with seeing, denigrating and destroying, it’s little wonder that Spears sought to send a message by shaving her head in 2007. At the time, the media dismissed her as “going crazy”, but “Framing Britney Spears” raises the point that she very well meant to say: “I do not exist for you to consume.” Entertainment shows, as a funny joke for the whole family, listed the things she had lost: “her relationship, her marriage, her hair, her mind.”

Should an adult woman who is capable of headlining world-

WKND RECOMMENDS An oat chai latte from Blue State.

wide tours and producing platinum records be denied basic agency over her own life? This is the central question of “Framing Britney Spears” and the controversy surrounding Britney Spears today as she is refusing to perform until her father is removed from conservator status. As conservator, he is legally given control over his daughter’s personal, medical and financial decisions. Given the conservatee’s loss of autonomy, this legal category is reserved for people who are elderly or incapable of the activities of daily life.

// MARLENA RAINES

Why was Spears placed under a conservatorship at all? In January 2008, she was admitted to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center under a psychiatric hold following her refusal to turn over her sons to her ex-husband’s representatives. This was the inciting incident that launched the bid to put her under a conservatorship, and her (previously uninvolved) father’s complete control of her life henceforth. Despite the extremity of her mental distress during her hospitalization, she was released after just five days without difficulty and went on to

perform again the next month. This calls into question whether her mental state was in such jeopardy she had to lose many of her fundamental rights.

She was able to communicate with a lawyer prior to the case, and the lawyer, on record, said that she seemed perfectly capable of understanding and taking his legal advice. That, in itself, should disqualify a conservatorship. But a court order was released declaring her unfit to select a lawyer for herself.

Over a decade later, why is Spears still under a conservatorship? The documentary does not hold back in showing how much particular men in her life disregarded (and continue to disregard) her agency, and her clear, stated, preferences for how she would like to live her own life. In an interview about #FreeBritney and whether or not Britney is being held against her will, her ambivalent brother, Bryan Spears, complains that the women in his family are “very, very strong-minded, and have their own opinion, and they wanna do what they wanna do, and as much as I admire that, as a guy, being, like one of two guys in this entire family, it kinda sucks, man.”

If Spears is strong-minded, firstly, that is not something that should be treated as somehow a bad thing for the men around her, and secondly, it’s additional proof that the conservatorship is completely unsuited for her situation.

The documentary featured paparazzo Daniel Ramos, who photographed for the tabloids that would relentlessly comment on and mock Spears’ sexuality, her purported reasons for breaking up with Timberlake, her perceived failure at mothering, etc.

When asked about whether he had a role in Spears’ deteriorating mental health in the years leading up to her (in)famous shaved head in 2007 (where she also attacked his truck with an umbrella), he claimed that she never indicated that she wanted to be left alone.

“What about when she said ‘Leave me alone’?” retorted the documentarian.

Well, Ramos said, that didn’t seem to mean she wanted them to leave her alone “forever.”

“Framing Britney Spears” has a clear, obvious message, an “agenda” so to speak; it has chosen a side when it comes to the #FreeBritney movement, and for good reason. But, more than that, it shows us the essential humanity of its subject, through a quite moving examination of Spears’ roots, early struggles and first friends. She started as a small-town girl, but she was never afraid of fame in the way I am. She should never have been given reasons to be afraid.

Contact CLAIRE FANG at claire.fang@yale.edu .