Yale Daily News — Week of March 19

T H E O L D E ST C O L L E G E DA I LY · FO U N D E D 1 8 7 8

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 2021 · VOL. CXLIII, NO. 20 · yaledailynews.com

New CT guidance makes spring semester vaccinations likely for all Yalies vaccinations by mid-to-late April, he added.

"If the tentative date becomes definite and the state allocates vaccine for students, as we believe likely, Yale Health will invite students to schedule at Lanman Center," Director of Yale Health Paul Genecin told the News in an email.

The University has not yet determined the order by which it will invite people to schedule appointments, as the governor's announcement came as a “pleasant surprise,” Medical Director for Infection Prevention at Yale New Haven Hospital Richard Martinello said. The University has previously used reverse alphabetical order to vaccinate students in the medical and nursing schools.

“I’m excited to hear that the governor is expecting for things to be opened up because it does give us, presumably, the opportunity to vaccinate undergrads and it would be wonderful to accomplish that before they head out for

BY ROSE HOROWITCH AND MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO STAFF REPORTERS Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont announced on Monday that state residents aged 16 and older could be eligible for the coronavirus vaccine starting April 5, accelerating the timeline for when Yale students could become immunized.

Public health experts at Yale now estimate that students could receive vaccinations throughout the month of April, starting on April 5. The state is expected to provide direct allocation to Yale to support student vaccinations, Professor Emeritus Sandy Bogucki, who sits on the Public Health Advisory Committee for Yale, told the News. But it is not yet clear how many vaccines will be provided or exactly when. As younger people become eligible for the vaccine, providers should offer the first slots to people with coronavirus risk factors, associate professor of epidemiology Luke Davis said. But the general population of Yale students should be able to get

SEE VACCINATIONS PAGE 4

REGINA SUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has sped up the state’s vaccine rollout, making Yale students eligible for coronavirus vaccines as soon as April 5.

Yale to hold in-person commencement Republican reps ask Salovey to testify on admissions

DANIEL ZHAO/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

The University plans to hold an in-person Commencement for graduating seniors, but not their guests.

BY ROSE HOROWITCH STAFF REPORTER The University will host an in-person Commencement celebration on or around May 24 but will prohibit guests from coming to campus, University President Peter Salovey wrote in a campuswide email on Monday.

The University will use Old Campus for ceremonies of up to 500 people at a time, University Secretary Kimberly GoffCrews said. Some Yale schools

are considering using the space for their celebrations. Graduating students can attend regardless of whether they are studying on campus or remotely, though public health experts are still working out a required testing and quarantine procedure for students who arrive on campus.

Students from the class of 2020 will not be allowed to attend in-person celebrations for the second year in a row, though Yale will invite them back to campus once public health condi-

Yale vaccinates some undergraduates

BY NATALIE KAINZ, MADISON HAHAMY AND MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO STAFF REPORTERS Although much of Yale’s student body can expect to wait more than a month until the vaccine is

available to them, some students have already received the shots.

Yale undergraduates who have received the COVID-19 vaccine through the University’s program, SEE UNDERGRADS PAGE 5

REGINA SUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Some Yale undergraduates have already received the COVID-19 vaccine, either at Yale or in other settings, due to their EMT status or research assistant positions.

CROSS CAMPUS

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1954.

In a special interview with the News, Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill, senior fellow of the Yale Corporation, insults the practices of Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy and his congressional investigations, calling him and his collegues the most "flagrant offender[s] of legislative ethics."

tions allow. The University Secretary’s Office — which handles Commencement planning — and deans of Yale’s schools will reach out to students with more details in the coming days.

“At the end of the day, I really believe that although it will be different it will still be very meaningful,” Goff-Crews said.

Though the year is unusual, the team is trying to incorporate Yale traditions, Director of University Events Heather Calabrese said. Students will still don caps and gowns, there will be marshals and banner-bearers as per usual — though they might not be allowed onstage — and there will be music, whether live or recorded. The University will mail students their diplomas on June 4, as the compressed academic schedule means that faculty cannot finalize grades before Commencement.

Yale’s public health experts do not think that all of the campus community will be immunized

by Commencement, Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun said. Still, SEE COMMENCEMENT PAGE 4

A group of four Republican representatives have called for University President Peter Salovey to testify on Yale’s admissions practices before a House of Representatives subcommittee. They say Yale discriminates against Asian Americans in its admissions process.

The Congressional Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties will hold a hearing on March 18 regarding violence and discrimination against Asian Americans.

The four politicians penned a letter asking the committee’s chairman to call on Salovey to testify at the hearing. They hope to examine whether the University discriminates against Asian Americans in the application process, the letter states. It is up to Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., to invite Salovey.

Salovey has not been formally invited to testify, University Vice President for Communications Nate Nickerson told the News.

SEE SALOVEY PAGE 4

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

As of March 17, Salovey has not been formally invited to testify, according to Vice President for Communications Nate Nickerson.

All CT adults eligible for vaccine Apr. 5

BY ALVARO PERPULY AND RAZEL SUANSING STAFF REPORTERS All remaining Connecticut adult residents could be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine as early as April 5.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont announced Monday that the state plans to accelerate its age-based rollout for the COVID-19 vaccine in anticipation of a significant shipment of Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines from the federal government.

Individuals aged 45 to 54 will be allowed to schedule an appointment as early as March 19. Under the same plan, residents older than 16 years of age could schedule an appointment to be vaccinated as early as April 5. This moves up by one month the timeline announced on Feb. SEE LAMONT PAGE 5

INSIDE THE NEWS

VACCINES

BY ROSE HOROWITCH STAFF REPORTER

Having effective COVID-19 vaccines will do little to end the pandemic if shots are not equitably distributed to reach the communities who need them the most, experts stressed.

Page 3 CITY & SCITECH

WHARTON

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Lamont's new plan speeds up vaccine eligibility for the original last bracket of residents by a month.

In the online exhibition “Edith Wharton: Designing the Drawing Room,” Julia Carabatsos ’20 uses drawing rooms to look at Wharton’s novels and her ideas on interior design.

Page 6 UNIVERSITY

REGISTRARS

Some Yale registrars said their job, while rewarding in some respects, is fraught with unclear expectations, lack of training, an overwhelming workload and more.

Page 9 ARTS

MASCOT

Yale announced Kingman as the successor to Walter, Handsome Dan XIII, in a photo-filled reveal on Thursday morning.

Page 11 SPORTS

PAGE 2

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

OPINION The unique destiny “W

hy should I care about his god, the lives, the destinies we choose when one unique destiny had chosen me, and along with me millions and millions of privileged others, who, like him, called themselves my brothers?”

Albert Camus in “The Stranger” We are all born free and equal. Yet the moment the first oxygen particles enter our bodies and our shrill cries resonate throughout the birthing room, we lose this equality — that one “unique destiny” chooses us. One might call it luck, divine judgement or destiny, but that first moment undeniably and unchangeably defines our lives. It determines the color of our skin, the financial situation of our family, the living conditions in which we are going to either thrive or suffer. It decides which group we will (not) belong to in society and thus our treatment by others. After reading “The Stranger” numerous times, I started contesting this assumption of equality and the implicit notion of freedom that lay within.

The main character Meursault’s race, religious views, morals and upbringing separated him from the rest of his community. His “unique destiny” had casted him as an outsider long before he fired those fatal shots. His predetermined perception by society directly translated into the type of justice, or more accurately, injustice that would prevail in his trial. At the moment of his punishment, his detachment from his society was all that mattered, not the fact that all people are equal before law.

His sentence was not for killing the Arab; instead, he was punished for being different and nonconforming.

For he was not a part of the majority, he had to merely accept and obey whatever the society deemed just, even if it brought his execution.

Meursault’s story resonated with me because I have always been a minority at different levels. As a dual citizen, I am a member of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria. In Turkey, I am the daughter of an immigrant and oftentimes people directly deem my mother to be a Bulgarian or a half-Turk. Now I am an international student, and we comprise only 11 percent of the student body.

Growing up, I always questioned my unique destiny, this sense of always feeling in between. I could not accept the utilitarian expectation that minorities should make sacrifices and conform for the greater good. I constantly asked myself, “Why is it always the minorities that have to give up some of their freedoms if we are all born equal?”

One part of me very well knew the answer to the riddle: It is utopian to think that each individual within a society could be made happy. For the sake of overall peace and unity, it made more sense to watch out for the best interest of the majority. But the other part of me would not give up so easily as this issue surfaced again and again in “The Stranger.”

Meursault had to make a sacrifice, in fact, had to face death penalty, in order to protect the order, the morals of the society in which he SUDE not fit. SimYENILMEZ did ilarly, minority groups all around Piecing the world have to make sacrifices Together even in democracies, supposedly the most inclusive form of government. This is especially common in countries with electoral thresholds as minority groups cannot hold a seat in the government and thus have a very slim chance of having their needs addressed. This inevitably harms the legitimacy of the government, paving the way for marginalized groups to embrace acts of violence in response to their problems. Results of this are often catastrophic: terrorism, polarized society and even civil war.

One could argue that we need such sacrifices, especially electoral thresholds, to prevent extremist parties from gaining leverage in the parliament and thus to stop the erosion of civil liberties and democratic values.

But can we even talk about liberty when my vote counts for nothing?

A person never chooses to be a minority; instead, this is determined by luck, divine judgement or destiny.

Yet that same person usually ends up being the enemy, either physically punished like Meursault or forced to live under constant emotional and mental pressure. Leaders, elected to represent and uphold our democratic institutions, often become the source of this pressure as they target minority groups in their speeches, blaming those communities for depriving the majority of resources and destroying the economic wealth of the nation.

We are not all equal. Yet, Camus would argue that we are all privileged, since we are all given a chance to live — the most basic right. But is it still a right if the person is deported from the country because they are a minority? Is it still a right if the person has to face forced assimilation to fit into the community? Is it still a right if the person turns into a victim of genocide?

I believe that to live would be the most basic right if we were all born free. Freedom and equality are not interchangeable; in fact, freedom is the precondition of our desired state of equality and justice. A person is born free only when their unique destiny is a cherished part of their identity rather than a hindrance. We should all strive to realize this for the minority as much as we do for the majority. Only then we can truly say, “We are all born free and equal.”

SUDE YENILMEZ is a first year in Berkeley College. Her column, “Piecing Together,” runs every other Thursday.

Contact her at sude.yenilmez@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS PUBLISHING CO., INC. 202 York Street, New Haven, CT 06511 (203) 432-2400 Editorial: (203) 432-2418 editor@yaledailynews.com Business: (203) 432-2424 business@yaledailynews.com

EDITOR IN CHIEF & PRESIDENT Mackenzie Hawkins

CITY Emiliano Tahui Gómez Meera Shoaib

MANAGING EDITORS Jose Davila IV Phoebe Liu

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Charlotte Zimmer

PUBLISHER Susan Chen OPINION Miranda Jeyaretnam Rabhya Mehrotra NEWS Valerie Pavilonis Kelly Wei

CULTURE Freya Savla SPORTS Margaret Hedeman William McCormack WEEKEND Ella Goldblum Elizabeth Hopkinson Andrew Kornfeld

YTV Sevi Burget-Foster Natalie Kainz Maya Weldon-Lagrimas Nicole Westfall

COPY Erin Bailey Maya Geradi Ako Ndefo-Haven Natalie Simpson Katie Taylor

PODCAST Allison Park

PRODUCTION & DESIGN Zully Arias Megan Graham Isabella Huang Louie Lu Annie Yan

DATA Darwin Do Ashley Qin MAGAZINE Macrina Wang Isabella Zou DIR. OF FINANCE Graham Hardcastle

PHOTOGRAPHY Zoe Berg Ryan Chiao Lukas Flippo Vaibhav Sharma Amay Tewari

ILLUSTRATIONS Dora Guo Anasthasia Shilov TECH TEAM Julia Burgiel Yaa Owusu OUTREACH John Besche Crystal Cheung Lucy Wilkins DIGITAL William McCormack Laura Nicholas Eric Wang Maya Weldon-Lagrimas Lucy Wilkins Christie Yu Daniel Zhao

THIS ISSUE COPY STAFF: Mikayla Barber, Xavier Blackwell-Lipkind, Marissa Blum, Meg Buzbee, Olivia Fugikawa, Joshua Gonzalez, Chris Lee, Adam Levine, Alexa Jeanne Loste, Lydia Monk, Hailey O’Connor, Alex Ori, Caroline Parker, Christopher Sung, Yingying Zhao, Sydney Zoehrer COPY ASSISTANTS: Patrick SebaRaj PRODUCTION & DESIGN ASSISTANTS: Jose Estrada, Rachel Folmar, Joshua Gonzalez, Eve Grobman, Karen Lin, Elifnaz Onder, Caroline Parker, Stephanie Shao, Isaac Yu EDITORIALS & ADS

The Editorial Board represents the opinion of 12-15 members of the Yale community.

Other content on this page with bylines represents the opinions of those authors and not necessarily those of the Managing Board.

Opinions set forth in ads do not necessarily reflect the views of the Managing Board. We reserve the right to refuse any ad for any reason and to delete or change any copy we consider objectionable, false or in poor taste.

We do not verify the contents of any ad. The Yale Daily News Publishing Co., Inc. and its officers, employees and agents disclaim any responsibility for all liabilities, injuries or

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

damages arising from any ad. The Yale Daily News Publishing Co. ISSN 0890-2240

SUBMISSIONS

All letters submitted for publication must include the author’s name, phone number and description of Yale University affiliation.

Please limit letters to 250 words and guest columns to 750. The Yale Daily News reserves the right to edit letters and columns before publication. E-mail is the preferred method of submission.

ADVERTISEMENT

(203) 432-2424 (before 5 p.m.)

(203) 432-2400 (after 5 p.m.)

Direct all letters, columns, artwork and inquiries to: Miranda Jeyaretnam and Rabhya Mehrotra Opinion Editors opinion@yaledailynews.com Direct all comments regarding the fairness or accuracy of stories to: Mackenzie Hawkins Editor-in-Chief (203) 432-2418 Mary Chen, Serena Cho, Talia Soglin, Asha Prihar Public Editors public@yaledailynews.com

COPYRIGHT 2020 — VOL. CXLIII, NO. 20

Living at work I

t has been a little over a year since we all departed for spring break, oblivious to the never-ending ordeal of remote work that was to come. For those whose livelihoods now consist of consecutive virtual meetings from their bedroom, “Zoom burnout” is a melancholic reality. It’s an unsustainable way to live: not merely “working from home,” but rather “living at work.”

Since last March, working adults sequestered within their homes have bemoaned the deterioration of work-life balance.

Brewing an early morning coffee now seamlessly bleeds into the day’s first conference call.

The end-of-day 5 p.m. delineation between work and personal life also has begun to deteriorate.

One survey showed that nearly 70 percent of remote-workers report working weekends now. The mere act of “stepping away from work” has become arduous, with the distance from our computer being the only limiting factor.

College students, however, have faced such a reality since far before the onset of the pandemic.

Many, if not all, of us eat, sleep, and breathe school — perhaps not academics alone but when combined with extracurriculars and meetings, you get pretty close. Most students, for example, would scoff at the notion of not having any obligations on the weekends. We also quite literally live at “work” — the classroom and library are each a stone’s throw away from where we eat, sleep, exercise, gather, etc., and

we see the subsequent repercussions both now and in non-COVID years. But it’s not just physical distance; it’s time — our AIDEN Google CalenLEE dars are cast wide open, free It’s to be schedComplicated uled for almost any waking hour of the day, 7 days a week. When was the last time you turned down a meeting because it was outside of your “regular working hours” or because you weren’t going to be “at the office”?

In some instances, such encroachment into our schedules does not haphazardly fall onto our calendars but rather is baked into it. Sections (and so m e t i m e s se m i n a rs) a re scheduled as late as 7 p.m., and libraries remain open until 2 a.m. in the morning, if not later.

And our busy weekday schedules leave us with little choice but to saturate our weekends with extracurricular activities.

In the middle of a pandemic, when our work literally follows us into the bedroom, it’s hard to ignore how fraught these boundaries have become. But for students, it is little more than an exacerbated version of the reality we have grown accustomed to in college: a livelihood that seldom evokes the liberty of saying “no,” of reject-

ing work’s intrusions into our moments of leisure.

Of course, there are a few quick fixes. For example, Yale could give students a break this semester. But in the long term, these do little to resolve a deeper cultural issue. In a twisted sense, being a “fulltime student” is as literal as it gets: It’s not 40 hours a week, it’s every hour of every week.

To be constantly and continuously available is unsustainable. Zoom class, Zoom meetings and Zoom “catch-ups” — any meeting a click away — have taught us this. The promise of convenience and accessibility levy a tax on our calendars, further extending the windows we are available to one another.

Once we are all vaccinated and regain the privilege of returning to some semblance of normalcy, we must interrogate the ways in which we have grown accustomed to “living at work.”

We would be remiss to return to a modus operandi where we seldom have any partition between our academic and extracurricular obligations and all else life has to offer as students.

One day, the pandemic will come to an end, and we will once again be “normal” students. Now, it’s up to us to determine how that normality shall be defined.

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 .

Reckonings E

very member of the Commonwealth has the memory of a family member obsessed with the royal family.

Mine is of my great-grandfather, who, I hear, had a huge poster of King George VI plastered to his wall — it was practically wallpaper. My dad doesn’t remember much of it, except that it was very red, and that my grandfather was very serious about what a strong and powerful leader George was.

I never knew my great-grandfather, but I like to imagine him following recent royal events in the newspaper very carefully, commenting on them like he was directly involved.

The people’s history with our colonizers is a complicated one. I spent my youth romanticizing the lives of Karen Blixen and Beryl Markham — both female British settlers— while at the same time sneering at the derogatory depiction of the Kikuyu people in “Out of Africa.” I knew that there was a Lord Delamere who would sit in the balcony of the Norfolk Hotel downtown and shoot Black people with a shotgun.

Still, I spent years applauding the work of the East Africa Women’s League — a group of white settlers who spent their days doing what is now considered white savior work. All this is to say that I knew the kinds of atrocities British settlers committed in Kenya, but I still fantasized about being a settler.

For years, the Commonwealth’s admiration of the Crown has existed in tandem with our knowledge of the atrocities that they committed. At my Anglican prep school, we got two days off to watch Prince William and Kate Middleton get married. When I moved to an American international school and expected the same for Meghan and Harry, I was sorely disappointed. The royal family manages the space of both the cruel former master and the beloved fairy tale with a proximity that only those who carefully create and manage a century-long mythology can employ. The Crown is our enemy, but also our best friend: Calmly, we straddle the line in between.

We all thought that Meghan Markle was a miracle. Finally, there existed someone to validate our feelings of warmth toward the Crown. Years of unrequited love were finally being returned in the best of ways: marriage. Suddenly the distant fairy tale was at

our doorstep.

Meghan, a Black woman, a working woman, a cosmopolitan woman, a real woman — someone just AWUOR like us — was ONGURU as close as we always wanted The Wild to be.

But in the West back of our minds there is always reality. Did we really expect Meghan to safely exist in British culture and media?

The same Britain that forcefully seized our lands, massacred us by the thousands and created the very myths that oppress us today? While watching Meghan’s demise was saddening, it was certainly not unexpected. This is what the Crown — and the world of imperialism it represents — does to people like Meghan. It demonizes them, hurls racist comments at them and their kin and eventually, through a carefully curated media bonanza, casts them out of their homes. This was always her destiny.

Yet the very public fiasco that is Meghan Markle’s departure has never been seen before. For the first time, the entire world has been forced to reckon with the true reality of the British Crown. The fairy tale, although wearing thin in the rest of the Commonwealth, has lasted a little longer in America, where the royal family has always been viewed with the gentle fondness of a distant cousin or a nextdoor neighbor. Now the truth is out: Britain is racist. What are you going to do about it?

Gone are the days of my great-grandfather, when Britain and the royal family were deemed an integral part of the world order. Are we brave enough to stand up and call it out for what it really is? Out of all the former colonial powers, Britain is the only one that has managed to shirk responsibility, even suspicion, for the monsters it has created. France has done away with the West African CFA, the currency that centralized West African currency in the French treasury, and begun to return stolen artifacts to their home countries on the continent. King Philippe has become the first Belgian king to apologize for the atrocities committed in the Congo. These

other colonizers still have a ways to go, but they’ve made a start.

THE ROYAL FAMILY MANAGES THE SPACE OF BOTH THE CRUEL FORMER MASTER AND THE BELOVED FAIRY TALE WITH A PROXIMITY THAT ONLY THOSE WHO CAREFULLY CREATE AND MANAGE A CENTURY-LONG MYTHOLOGY CAN EMPLOY. THE CROWN IS OUR ENEMY, BUT ALSO OUR BEST FRIEND: CALMLY, WE STRADDLE THE LINE IN BETWEEN. Whatever happens after this, one thing I am sure about is that this is the beginning of the end of our fantasy. It’s time to face the truth about what the Crown truly means to us, even if that truth destroys a perfect image.

Even while admiring the royal family, I have always been perfectly clear on where they stand with me, a dark-skinned Black woman from a former colony.

While Meghan’s story is sad, maybe it’s also a wake-up call.

It’s time for the British Crown to have a reckoning.

Meghan Markle’s exit is just the tip of the iceberg. Are we willing to uncover the whole lot?

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

Contact her at awuor.onguru@yale.edu .

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

NEWS

PAGE 3

“Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated.”

LOU HOLTZ

FORMER AMERICAN FOOTBALL COACH

First class of women rush the Edon Club, formerly SigEp

BY JORDAN FITZGERALD AND EMILY TIAN STAFF REPORTERS Twelve sophomore women have pledged to join the newest class of the Edon Club, the coed social group formerly known as SigEp. The organization, which disaffiliated from Sigma Phi Epsilon nationals last fall and reorganized itself under a new name, completed its rush process in early March.

“This is a brilliant opportunity for us to change the dynamic of social life at Yale for the better,” said Nathan Somerville ’22, Edon’s current president. “The classes below me have a lot of ideas about what they want the space to look like, and the energy to make it happen — I can’t wait to see them make this their own.”

These 12 women join a group of six juniors who were recruited last semester from the class of 2022 and formally initiated earlier this month.

They form a cohort of 18 women in the new coed group. As full members upon acceptance, members of the cohort will be eligible to run for leadership positions in the Edon Club.

Two of the six juniors were elected into executive board roles after they joined in the fall and others were heavily involved in the recruitment process, according to Somerville.

Lucy Minden ’22, one of the six women who joined in the fall, wrote in an email to the News that she joined when she realized that she could “have an actual impact

and a voice in the direction and ethos of the group.”

She met with other members in the days after Edon was created and eventually became involved with the administration of the group as a development chair — a position responsible for building community within the new class and integrating them into the group.

Throughout the month of February, the recruitment process was conducted mostly through virtual rush meals and events as well as small, outdoor in-person events — like socially distanced campfires, according to Somerville.

“I joined Edon because Yale really lacks co-ed social spaces and it would’ve been hard for Edon to transition without the help of nonmale members,” Amy Ren ’22 wrote in an email to the News. “It was intimidating to feel so outnumbered at first, but the existing members of Edon were really attentive and genuinely cared about getting our input before making any decisions.”

Ren is currently serving on the organization’s Recruitment Board and helped put together the rush process this semester. Ren, who was formerly a member of the sorority Alpha Phi, said that she appreciated that the rush process for the Edon Club was more casual and less hectic.

According to Ren, given that the group is still male-dominated, her class has been vocal in expressing their opinions regarding previous traditions they do not agree

LUCAS HOLTER/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

The 12 sophomore women join a group of six juniors who were recruited last semester from the class of 2022. with. The group hopes “to make sure that everyone can see Edon as a safe space to have fun and build strong friendships,” Ren said.

Somerville explained that the organization is not setting any quotas for the ratio of non-male to male members.

“We have always prioritised developing a strong community of unique individuals that we are excited to spend more time with, and we are simply no longer constrained by gender while doing so,” he wrote in an email to the News.

Because most members of the class of 2024 are not enrolled on campus, Edon leadership decided to focus their recruitment efforts this spring on sophomores. Two rush processes are tentatively planned for the fall and spring semesters next year to accommodate interested students from the Class of 2024 and Class of 2025.

Somerville indicated that rush opportunities for members of those two classes will be decided by the club’s next executive board and will remain contingent on

COVID-19 restrictions in the coming academic year.

“I’m incredibly excited to be a part of one of the few all-gender spaces on campus, and I hope Edon is the first of many single-gender groups to make that change,” Minden wrote.

The last time a Yale fraternity disaffiliated from its national organization was LEO in August of 2018.

Contact JORDAN FITZGERALD at jordan.fitzgerald@yale.edu and EMILY TIAN at emily.tian@yale.edu .

COVID-19 vaccine rollout in communities of color

BY LARISSA JIMENEZ, MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO AND ZAPORAH PRICE STAFF REPORTERS Having effective COVID-19 vaccines will do little to end the pandemic if shots are not equitably distributed to reach the communities who need them the most, many experts have stressed.

In the United States, communities of color have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, with Black people twice as likely and Latinx Americans 2.4 times more likely to have died of COVID-19 compared to white people. A DataHaven report last updated on March 10 also showed that there have been higher rates of positive cases and fatalities in Black and Latinx communities in Connecticut than in white and Asian ones. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, as of March 1, only 6 percent of those vaccinated in Connecticut were Black, and only 5 percent were Latinx.

“All COVID did was reveal what was already there,” Catherine John — a member of Unidad Latina en Acción and Black and Brown United in Action — told the News.

In New Haven — where entrenched health disparities have continued to manifest throughout the pandemic — concerns surrounding equity in vaccine distribution have been raised by public health experts and people of color. The Yale New Haven Health system, local community leaders and city and state health departments have made wide ranging efforts to address those concerns. The hospital system and city’s approach includes town halls, pop-up vaccine clinics in underserved areas of the city and a hotline for residents to ask questions about the vaccine.

But despite these efforts, difficulties persist as individuals struggle to navigate accessibility and communication barriers, in

addition to their own reservations about the shots.

The importance of messaging The President of the Greater New Haven National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or the Greater New Haven NAACP, Dori Dumas said that her organization was “committed to addressing health inequities” by spreading information to communities of color.

“Certainly we are advocating that our communities need to be a priority, and our communities need to have as many people having access to getting the vaccine, [and] having information about the vaccine,” Dumas said in an interview with the News. “Especially in the Black and brown communities when we are the ones dying at the highest rates and being affected the most.”

Dumas emphasized the importance of spreading awareness of the vaccine to communities of color, and mentioned a Zoom event the NAACP hosted in collaboration with YNHH titled “COVID-19 Vaccine: The Facts vs.

Fiction” this January.

Together with local organizations, YNHHS has been hosting virtual community town halls, where scientific experts, hospital officials and community leaders are gathering to dispel myths about the vaccine and answer questions from the public. The town halls, which are conducted live on Zoom and later uploaded to the YNHHS website, often feature some of the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation’s cultural ambassadors — who have been participating in Yale’s COVID19 vaccine outreach to communities — and are typically carried out in English and simultaneously close-captioned in Spanish.

According to Kyle Ballou, YNHHS Vice President for community and government relations, the idea to initiate these town halls stemmed from the observation that

REGINA SUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, as of March 1, only 6 percent of those vaccinated in Connecticut were Black, and only 5 percent were Latinx.

many YNHHS employees — especially those of color — have been hesitant to get vaccinated.

Lost in miscommunication But despite these efforts to educate the public, some community members are slipping through the cracks.

John told the News that vaccine distribution, COVID-19 education and outreach to “Black and brown residents of New Haven,” overall, has been “terrible.”

In Newhallville, a predominantly Black neighborhood where John resides, she said that people walking on the street often are not wearing masks. With the politicization of mask-wearing since the beginning of the pandemic, it can be difficult to discern whether that observation is linked to a lack of information. But it is possible that messaging campaigns are not reaching enough people.

John did not know of Yale-led campaigns to educate the public on mask-wearing and vaccinations, for example.

“Where’s Yale Hospital and University’s education campaign on [mask-wearing] and vaccination?”

John said. “People are going to lose their jobs because they’re not vaccinated … We need to tell people why they need to get vaccinated.”

YNHHS has launched a website titled “Get Your COVID-19 Vaccine” to encourage residents to obtain their shots and provide information on the vaccine. It has also compiled a “#CRUSHCOVID” support toolkit for those that have already been vaccinated to encourage friends and family to get vaccinated when they are able.

Local organizations are stepping up to fill the information gap as well. Unidad Latina en Acción, also known as ULA, coordinated a doorto-door vaccination drive Saturday evening. The drive, according to the Hartford Courant, gathered volunteers, community organizers and Mayor Justin Elicker to knock on over 5,000 people’s doors in Fair Haven to encourage them to get vaccinated. But John, who participated in Saturday’s event, said “Black and brown residents,” especially low-income and undocumented people, need more robust health services to address persistent health inequities.

She laments the spread of disinformation but attributes it to health care’s troubled history in using “Black and brown people [as] lab rats.” She also believes essential workers who live in urban, more densely populated areas and “have carried the Connecticut economy” need greater access to information and vaccination than they are currently receiving.

“I’ve had one person say to me that they know the government gave Joe Biden a different type of vaccine,” John said. “Where are these stories coming from?”

John Lugo, a ULA organizer, echoed John’s sentiment surrounding disinformation.

He told the News in Spanish that ”there isn’t sufficient information nor services for the immigrant community.”

“People educate themselves through Facebook or WhatsApp, where messages say the vaccine is fake or that it causes illness, and [ULA] wants to be a part of the effort to educate people,” Lugo said.

The price of ineffective communication Lugo said undocumented community members often think there are “obstacles” to vaccination such as documentation they must provide, when that is not the case. ULA, he said, aims to help get as many people vaccinated as possible by referring them to local clinics so they can make appointments.

Lugo is also hoping to get all members of the community, regardless of age, vaccinated. He said that ULA is organizing a car caravan to the State Capitol building on Friday to urge the state government to invest in the health of immigrant communities, especially since many are essential workers.

Marilu and Luis Rodriguez are two undocumented immigrants who have resided in New Haven for thirty years.

They told the News about the uncertainty and lack of information around access to health care and vaccination during the pandemic.

“Our leaders did not give us the necessary information, and when they did, it was too late,” Luis Rodriguez said. “The pandemic has affected us, as immigrants, gravely with consequences from unemployment to death.”

In August of last year, all five members of the Rodriguez family became infected with the virus after Luis caught the virus while on the job as a construction worker. His partner, Marilu Rodriguez, got COVID19 a second time in February of this year with worse symptoms than the rest of her family due to her pre-existing conditions.

While Luis Rodriguez received two weeks’ worth of compensation from his job after he became infected, Marilu Rodriguez did not. Instead, she told the News, she was compelled to take a month off from work both times she was infected.

“I have a part-time job and it was extremely hard for me because I didn’t get the help my husband did,” Marilu Rodriguez said. “We need more help. We work hard and we do the jobs that nobody wants to do. It’s unfair that we don’t even have lowcost health care insurance … It’s really stressful and depressing.”

Since returning to work, Luis Rodriguez has been dealing with long-term effects of his COVID-

19 infection, but, he said, he feels a responsibility to continue providing for his family.

A “multipronged approach” to bridging disparities “I still think there’s more we can do, and there’s more ideas we’re fleshing out right now, but for now, we’re really trying to do a multipronged approach,” YNHHS Chief Medical Officer Thomas Balcezak said in a press conference on Feb. 18.

Balcezak described a number of initiatives that the health care system is engaging in to get COVID-19 vaccines to vulnerable populations.

In New Haven, for example, they are using reverse 911 calls, which automatically go out to telephone numbers that are linked to zip codes that have been underrepresented in registrations for vaccine appointments.

In the call, people are given a special phone number for the YNHHS COVID-19 line, to which they can ring to be prioritized for an appointment in one of their sites. Similarly, the system also has a way of geocoding where individuals are calling from so that they can prioritize those in “communities where we are not seeing a high penetrance of vaccination,” Balcezak said.

The YNHHS has also been making efforts to address struggles that some have experienced navigating their virtual system. Now YNHHS is receiving calls at 833-ASK-YNHH, where questions about the vaccine can be answered and appointments can be facilitated over the phone.

Collaboration between the community, health care systems as well as city and state governments has been crucial to bringing these efforts to fruition. Ballou noted that she was able to work with community organizers and government officials who she had not known as well before.

According to her, this work will leave a positive legacy of the pandemic that she thinks will carry over into the future.

“I know these folks pretty well now, much more so than I did prior to this, and I think that’s a good thing that will continue,” Ballou said.

Joint efforts by YNHHS, community leaders and the state have also enabled the creation of pop up clinics — the first of which was held at the Bethel AME church in New Haven on Feb. 27, and the second of which was held at the Christian Tabernacle Baptist Church in Hamden on March 4.

According to Connecticut Health I-Team, as of March 11, over 1.2 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in Connecticut.

Contact LARISSA JIMENEZ at larissa.jimenez@yale.edu, MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO at maria.pacheco@yale.edu and ZAPORAH PRICE at zaporah.price@yale.edu .

PAGE 4

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

FROM THE FRONT

“Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.”

DWIGHT EISENHOWER 34TH RESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Spring vaccination likely for Yalies under new CT plan VACCINATION FROM PAGE 1 the end of the semester,” Martinello said.

Connecticut is using an agebased vaccine eligibility system, and is set to open scheduling to individuals aged 45 to 54 on March 19. On April 5, the state is set to then open scheduling for all individuals aged 16 to 34. Previously, those between the ages of 16 and 34 would only be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine starting on May 3.

Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, two of the three that have been granted FDA emergency use authorization, require two doses at least 21 days apart. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is the only single-dose vaccine the FDA has authorized for use.

It is too soon to tell which company’s vaccine Yale will receive in the first week of April, Bogucki said. No vaccination site has any say on which brand they receive.

But Martinello said he presumes the state is thinking about how students, who might leave the state in May, would benefit from the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Members of the Yale community will receive invitations to schedule their vaccine appointment through MyChart.

Although University-owned facilities, such as the Lanman

Center, are being used by the Yale New Haven Health system to vaccinate the wider public, Genecin explained that Yale Health is only vaccinating members of the University community. This currently includes faculty, staff members and eligible students, in addition to others who are enrolled in the Yale Health plan.

However, Genecin emphasized that undergraduates are not limited to the Yale vaccine program to get immunized — if capacity becomes an issue, students, as well as anyone else who becomes eligible, can get vaccinated wherever they are able to make an appointment in the state.

Davis said that universities have a significant role to play in ensuring people connected to them can get vaccinations, as the student population is concentrated on and around campus and there are healthcare providers nearby. Once people leave campus, they might be less likely to take the steps to sign up for the shot, Davis said.

Davis said by April there might be more vaccines than demand, so hesitancy becomes the limiting factor in how many people are getting the vaccine. There might need to be more ambitious outreach efforts to understand people’s wariness of the vaccine.

Among younger populations in

particular, there might be more vaccine hesitancy, Davis said.

Younger people might not see the risks of the coronavirus in the same way as older people or those with preexisting conditions.

Conversations among the Public Health Advisory Committee, which University COVID-19 Coordinator Stephanie Spangler chairs, have focused on vaccinating as many members of the University and YNHH as possible, as well as closely following the data to make sure they are vaccinating people from socially vulnerable communities, Martinello said.

The committee discussed the topic of mandating vaccinations, but any recommendations will “take into consideration current circumstances, as well as legal, ethical and equity issues once [the] vaccine has been freely available for a sufficient time to allow everyone to get immunized,” Bogucki wrote in an email to the News.

So far, demand far outstrips supply across the country. But Connecticut has fared significantly better than most states, ranking as 11th in the country for percentage of COVID-19 vaccines administered as of March 16, having injected 87 percent of doses received into arms. The state has also vaccinated 77 per-

REGINA SUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale public health experts are preparing to immunize the University community during the spring semester and discussing the best practices to do so. cent of people over 75, 71 percent of people between 65 and 74 and 40 percent of people between 55 and 64.

According to Reuters, President Joe Biden is in conversation with different countries to determine who

will get any surplus COVID-19 vaccine doses from the U.S. Contact ROSE HOROWITCH at rose.horowitch@yale.edu and MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO at maria.pacheco@yale.edu .

Class of 2020 not invited back for Commencement

VAIBHAV SHARMA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The class of 2020 was not invited back to the in-person events despite doing a virtual graduation last year.

COMMENCEMENT FROM PAGE 1 administrators wanted to allow students to gather in person because they knew that it is what students would prefer, he added. But the in-person celebration comes with caveats: Guests are not invited, both for lack of social distancing space and because it is not safe to invite so many people to travel to New Haven, even if Yale imposed quarantines and other restrictions, Chun said.

According to Chun, if infection rates increase and the state changes its guidelines, Yale might reconsider its decision to allow students to attend in person. The

University will change this plan and hold a fully virtual Commencement if there is a precipitous rise in cases that mirrors last spring and public health experts advise it, Goff-Crews added.

Even if vaccines are more widely available, Goff-Crews said the University likely would not change its plans to allow guests. Commencement proceedings are usually planned the year before they happen, so the planning time is now too short — it is too logistically challenging to “turn too much on a dime” and still maintain safe conditions and equity for students, she said.

The Commencement Office and public health experts are working on policy guidelines that organizers from all of Yale’s schools can use in preparing their Commencement ceremonies. This guidance will include information regarding how people can file into and out of the venue and maintain social distancing, hand sanitizer availability and speaker guidelines, such as when to remove masks.

Salovey will speak publicly to Yale College and record his remarks for the graduating class on the Yale 2021 website, which will offer virtual proceedings for family and other guests. The Yale 2021 website will have a different tone from the one that celebrated the class of 2020. It will focus less on the shock of the pandemic and more on celebrating the graduates, Calabrese said. There will be space for photos, videos and other contributed content from the graduates.

External speakers and honorary degree recipients are considered guests, so they will have to record speeches, speak via Zoom or be featured in photos or tributes. This includes Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who is slated to speak at the School of Public Health’s Commencement.

Yale’s graduate and professional schools are still deciding on

where to hold their celebrations.

Some, like the Divinity School, have spaces that can accommodate crowds, though a maximum of 200 people is expected.

Representatives from the Secretary’s Office have been meeting with health and safety advisers for several weeks as case rates improved and the governor announced he would ease restrictions. Last week, they went to the Public Health Advisory Committee to talk about the plans. Given the spread of the more transmissible B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant, it took until last week for the possibility of in-person graduation events to solidify, GoffCrews said.

Associate professor of epidemiology Luke Davis said the safest way to gather is outdoors in small groups that wear masks and socially distance.

“SARS-CoV2 spreads mostly through shared air, especially in close indoor spaces,” Davis wrote in an email to the News. “Crowds can create super-spreader events, which with travel can disseminate viruses far and wide. That’s particularly dangerous right now with new more infectious and more deadly virus variants emerging, as the world races to vaccinate enough people to reduce case rates, mutations, and the muchfeared emergence of vaccine-resistant variants.”

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has announced plans to allow social and recreational outdoor gatherings of up to 200 people at commercial venues starting March 19. Beginning April 2, outdoor event venues can also increase to 50 percent capacity, capped at 10,000 people, under Lamont’s new guidelines.

Among Yale’s peer institutions, the University’s plans fall in the middle, between the more conservative and the less restrictive. Harvard University has announced it will hold a remote Commencement celebration, whereas Princeton University will invite students and up to two guests to the university’s stadium.

“I know many people’s families come from far and wide to watch graduation and for that I’m sorry that they won’t be able to celebrate with us, but it’s important that Yale (and New Haven) not get overly confident about COVID safety and jump straight into a large event,” Kesi Wilson ’21 wrote in an email to the News. “Commencement normally has hundreds of people which at this point is a giant health hazard.

I’m happy for now that the school is erring on the side of caution, even though it sucks.”

Yale’s Commencement was held online last year.

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

Reps call on Salovey to testify on discrimination against Asian Americans SALOVEY FROM PAGE 1 “Yale’s admissions practices help us realize our mission to improve the world today and for future generations,” Salovey wrote in an announcement on the topic last fall. “At this unique moment in our history, when so much attention properly is being paid to issues of race, Yale will not waver in its commitment to educating a student body whose diversity is a mark of its excellence.”

The four signatories of the letter were Mike Johnson, R-La., ranking member of the Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties; Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary; Michelle Steel, R-Calif.; and Young Kim, R-Calif. The letter was addressed to Nadler and Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Steve Cohen, D-Tenn.

The letter asked Nadler to invite Salovey to testify so that the subcommittee could “thoroughly examine Yale’s admission processes and its discriminatory effects on Asian Americans.”

The request comes amid a series of legal actions over the last few months challenging whether Yale’s admissions process has discriminated against Asian Americans.

Last August, the Department of Justice alleged that Yale discriminated against Asian American and white applications in its admissions process, claiming that the University violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars any institution receiving federal funding from discriminating on the basis of race, color or national origin.

The Supreme Court has previously held that colleges that receive federal funding can consider applicants’ race in limited circumstances. But the DOJ stated that “Yale’s use of race is anything but limited,” and that Yale considers an applicant’s race at multiple points in the admissions process.

In October, the DOJ formally filed a suit against Yale.

It alleged that Yale’s admissions practices violated Title VI by favoring some applicants based on their race, instead of using race-neutral alternatives to achieve diversity goals. In early February, the Biden DOJ dropped the case against Yale,

but the DOJ resumed the compliance review that it had previously set aside to pursue the suit.

On Feb. 25, Students for Fair Admissions — which brought an admissions lawsuit against Harvard University in 2014 — filed a suit alleging Yale discriminates against white and Asian American applicants. This suit also claims that Yale violates Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. “SFFA’s lawsuit is another attempt to dismantle policies and practices that promote racial equity and provide equal educational opportunity,” Cara McClellan, assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, wrote in an email to the News. “As was the case when the DOJ filed its now-dropped suit, there is simply no evidence to support the allegations against Yale.”

McClellan added that the suit attempts to “reverse the progress” made over decades “at a moment in our nation’s history when Americans are demanding racial justice across institutions.”

The University has repeatedly stated that its admissions processes are in accordance with federal law and “decades of Supreme

Court decisions.” Salovey has maintained that Yale will not change its admissions practices.

The Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil

Liberties is made up of eight Democrats and six Republicans.

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

YALE NEWS

The request comes amid a series of DOJ and SFFA legal actions alleging that Yale’s admissions process discriminates against Asian Americans.

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

PAGE 5

FROM THE FRONT

"Thatcher was the motivation for my entire political career. I hated everything she stood for." NICOLA STURGEON FIRST MINISTER OF SCOTLAND

Yale vaccinates some undergrads doing research, emergency medicine

REGINA SUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Undergrads that work in labs with COVID-19 samples have beeen vaccinated.

UNDERGRADS FROM PAGE 1 clinical trials or through clinics in their hometowns reflected on what getting the vaccine was like and how they feel now that they are fully vaccinated.

"I have been very lucky to get jabbed so quickly, but I think it's important to bear in mind that it's still unclear whether being vaccinated prevents you from being contagious," Brandon Tang ’22, lieutenant of operations for Yale

Emergency Medical Services, or EMS, told the News. "I hope that students will remain cautious even after they receive a vaccine."

Tang explained that beyond its usual operations, YEMS has been involved in Yale Health's COVID19 response efforts, which include both flu and COVID-19 vaccination clinics. He received his first COVID-19 shot in January and experienced minor but transient side effects: a low-grade fever, chills and soreness in his arm.

Although he described a similar experience with the second shot, he mentioned that the symptoms were slightly more intense the second time around — a feeling that many among the already vaccinated have also reported.

But according to Tang, that was a small price to pay for the protection he now feels when doing his job.

"While being vaccinated by no means makes me invincible, and I have maintained the appropriate usage of PPE and continued to avoid risky behaviors, getting my shots has definitely made me much more confident in my patient care, because I know I am less likely to become infected and spread the virus to others," Tang said.

Chief Quality Officer for Yale Health Madeline Wilson, told the News that undergraduate students who fall under the Phase 1A criteria — working as healthcare providers or medical first responders — are eligible to get their shots.

According to Connecticut's official state website, Phase 1A began on Dec. 14. During Phase 1A, students who are part of the Yale EMS program were offered the COVID19 vaccine through Yale Health in light of their role as medical first responders on campus.

Undergraduate students who work in clinical research settings where they either handle live SARS-CoV-2 or patient samples that may contain it are also eligible for the vaccine under Phase 1A, Wilson said. While two of these students did confirm their vaccination to the News and said that they received MyChart invitations in mid-February, they declined to comment on their experience.

Dyuthi Mathews Tharakan ’22, an EMT for Yale Health and a member of the Stratford Emer-

gency Medical Services team, interacts with patients directly through Stratford and completed her training to work in vaccine clinics through Yale on Feb. 19.

Mathews Tharakan received the vaccine under Phase 1A criteria and echoed Tang's feelings about the side effects being worth the protection from the virus. She received the Moderna vaccine last month and said that she did not have any physical reaction to her first dose of the vaccine but had chills, a fever and soreness for a day and a half following her second injection.

“It was just draining and it was hard to move around but it 100 percent is better than getting COVID19 itself,” Mathews Tharakan said, adding that undergraduate medical workers all had the ability to choose whether or not to accept their vaccine appointment. “I was just grateful that it was over when it was done.”

Mathews Tharakan said that she feels much safer now that she has received the vaccine but also maintains the same social distancing and masking protocols to protect her community. According to the CDC, although the early data shows that getting vaccinated helps prevent people from spreading COVID-19, scientists are still exploring how immunity to the coronavirus might develop in the long run.

Charlotte Polk ’23 is a food service tech at Mercy Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri who received the Pfizer vaccine early this year. She comes into direct contact with COVID patients regularly.

“In terms of myself, I do feel safer being able to go to the grocery store and get gas,” Polk said.

“I [also] do feel safer interacting with patients knowing that I’ve had both doses of the vaccine.”

A greater proportion of students are slated to become eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations later this term: Gov. Ned Lamont had announced that COVID19 vaccine eligibility for those between the ages of 16 and 34 will begin on May 3. But per President Joe Biden's recent statement regarding accelerating eligibility timelines nationwide, Lamont is hoping to shift the current vaccination timeline forward. Biden

hopes that every United States resident will have access to the vaccine by May 1.

However, May 1 and May 3 fall about a week short of the end of classes for Yale undergraduates.

And the two-dose Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines require at least 21 days between shots, which has raised questions among students about how feasible it would be for them to get vaccinated before leaving campus for the summer.

Director of Yale Health Paul Genecin previously told the News that in theory, the fact that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only one dose could facilitate student vaccinations by the end of the spring term. But both he and Wilson stressed that whether or not this shot could be used to immunize all Yale students would be contingent on vaccine availability, which is coordinated by the state. Vaccine centers are also not allowed to choose a certain type of vaccine to receive, Wilson said.

Although the single-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine was granted Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA on Feb. 27, and the Yale New Haven Health system has since been given a limited supply, Wilson said that Yale Health's vaccine program has not received any doses as of March 11.

"We do hope to be able to offer [this] vaccine to students, but this is by no means certain and is entirely dependent on the vaccine supply at the time and what [is] made available to us by the state," Wilson wrote to the News.

Anyone can check their eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine at the Connecticut COVID-19 vaccine portal. Currently, healthcare personnel, medical first responders, long-term care facility residents, residents and staff of congregate settings, educators and individuals 55 and older are eligible to receive vaccinations under Connecticut’s phased rollout plan.

Contact NATALIE KAINZ at natalie.kainz@yale.edu , MADISON HAHAMY at madison.hahamy@yale.edu , and MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO at maria.pacheco@yale.edu .

Lamont says all adults eligible for vaccine in April LAMONT FROM PAGE 1 22, which had the last cohort in Lamont’s age-based rollout,, ages 16 to 34, scheduled to begin receiving vaccine doses on May 3.

Monday’s announcement follows President Joe Biden’s March 11 statement that all eligible adults should have access to the vaccine

by May 1, two days prior to the governor’s originally planned date.

“Based on our discussions with the federal government regarding vaccine allocation, we anticipate receiving more than 200,000 first doses per week by early April,” Lamont said in a statement. “This allotment, combined with our state’s strong execution over the past several weeks, allows Connecticut to significantly accelerate the schedule so that we can equitably and efficiently vaccinate as many residents as possible.”

The governor also stressed that the state will focus on accelerating access to the vaccine for those most medically at risk under the age of 45 in the month of April. The state will now move forward with prioritizing those who have preexisting conditions and are more vulnerable to COVID-19 complications. This follows backlash from disability group advocates after Lamont announced in late February that Connecticut will be pursuing a vaccination allocation plan strictly based on age.

According to Josh Geballe ’97 SOM ’02, the chief operating officer for the governor, the state government intended to pursue a policy prioritizing preexisting conditions when vaccine availability ceased to be a concern.

Geballe said that with increased availability, the state would “leave it to health care professionals” to decide if individuals should be prioritized based on vulnerability.

At the press conference, reporters raised concerns about

the high demand for the vaccine and the ongoing difficulties many residents have faced in making an appointment.

The governor said his office expects a rush for the vaccine in April when the vaccine becomes available to all ages, and suggested healthier adults “maybe [not] sign up [the] first few days” in order to allow populations most at risk a chance to get the vaccine first.

Geballe also stated that by late April or early May, everyone who is eager to get the vaccine should have the opportunity to receive it.

Reporters asked the governor whether universities in Connecticut should require students to receive the vaccine. The governor did not respond directly to the questions but mentioned that several universities have expressed interest in vaccinating all of their students before the summer. For its part, Yale has the capacity to vaccinate students before the end of the spring term as long as the University receives adequate supply.

“It’s still going to take some time to get the vaccine to everyone who wants it and I urge patience to the greatest extent possible, but over these next several weeks I anticipate that we will have an opportunity to considerably increase the amount administered each day,” Lamont said at the press conference.

The March 19 date to allow access to vaccines for adults aged 45 to 54 coincides with the reduction of capacity limits for many Connecticut businesses.

On that date, capacity limits on restaurants, libraries, gyms and offices will be eliminated. Other limits, such as those on theaters, will still remain. Theaters will be allowed to continue to operate at 50 percent capacity.

Maritza Bond, New Haven’s director of public health, told the News that she was “elated to hear

the Governor’s announcement” because it will allow the city “to vaccinate an age group that has been greatly impacted by the virus.”

Bond said that the city’s data indicates that a large number of positive cases in the Elm City has been among those aged 25 to 49 years.

“We look forward to getting every New Havener vaccinated and I am confident we will get it done with the help of the State, our local partners, and our tenacious nurses in the Health Department,” Bond wrote in a statement to the News.

Around 1.3 million vaccine doses have been administered in Connecticut as of Monday.

Contact ALVARO PERPULY at alvaro.perpuly@yale.edu and RAZEL SUANSING at razel.suansing@yale.edu .

UNSPLASH

Yale is ready to vaccinate students before the end of the spring term as long as University receives adequate supply.

PAGE 6

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

ARTS Exhibit on Edith Wharton, fiction and interior design opens online

BY ANNIE RADILLO STAFF REPORTER In an online exhibition called “Edith Wharton: Designing the Drawing Room,” Julia Carabatsos ’20 uses drawing rooms as a lens to look at Wharton’s novels and her ideas on interior design.

The exhibit explores the connections between Wharton’s fiction — the work she is best known for — and Wharton’s passion for interior design. The show was originally supposed to open as an in-person exhibit at Sterling Memorial Library on Commencement Day last year, but it was converted into a digital format due to the pandemic.

“The drawing room was a space of particular interest for me because it was the space that most of the characters who are women have the freedom to decorate and design as they want,” said Carabatsos, who is a former Arts editor for the News.

“So it tells us a lot about the world of women in the world that Wharton is describing in these novels.”

Carabatsos conceived of this exhibit last year when she was inspired by her senior thesis. As a double major in English and history of art, Carabatsos was drawn to connections between artistic objects and literature. When she read Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence,” she was struck by Wharton’s rich descriptions of objects and interiors. This inspired Carabatsos’ senior essay about the relationship between Wharton’s novels and design ideas.

In her essay, Carabatsos explored relationships between drawing rooms and the women that designed

them. In the exhibit, Carabatsos built upon this concept by focusing on Wharton’s design work.

“I really wanted to emphasize what I think is the lesser-known side of Wharton’s career, which is the interior design treatise on the decoration of houses and her own homes,” Carabatsos said.

For the exhibit, Carabatsos mainly drew from the Edith Wharton Collection in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The online exhibit features the same materials and text as intended for the in-person exhibit, and in the same sequence.

The exhibit begins by introducing and contextualizing Wharton.

It then discusses Wharton’s ideas about interior design, the house interiors designed by Wharton and Wharton’s novels.

Edward Cooke, a professor in the Department of the History of Art, advised Carabatsos during her exhibition planning. Cooke noted that this project was well-suited to an online format. He explained that since the exhibit cases in Sterling are shallow, Carabatsos selected flat objects for display. These were mostly photographs, which are easily translatable to a digital medium.

Cooke added that the ability to include links and videos in the exhibit created a “very rich experience,” as opposed to “a kind of flat exhibit” in Sterling.

Sarah Davis, a conservation assistant at Yale Library, created the online exhibit. She said the online format improved the exhibit’s accessibility through features such as text-to-speech, screen magnifiers and closed captioning on videos.

According to Kerri Sancomb, Yale Library’s exhibits program

manager and another advisor to Carabatsos, the online transition allowed them to introduce a metadata page — an online catalog for the exhibit’s objects. This allows viewers to view selected objects in the context of the library’s collections.

“Because the materials that I selected for my exhibit are very text-heavy, I think it’s easier to read those if you’re sitting at your computer and you can zoom in and take all the time to look at them,” Carabatsos said.

Davis changed several aspects of the exhibit while adapting its medium. Davis added language intended to help orient someone viewing the exhibit on a screen and occasionally re-ordered and reformatted text to better fit a screen.

Sancomb said that she and her colleagues hope the physical exhibit program will resume in some capacity next year, though they do not know what this will look like.

Sancomb said the library had two active student exhibit projects when the pandemic began, in addition to Carabatsos’.

“The online exhibits produced for each of these projects are fantastic and, though not what any of us originally signed on for, are the product of patience, adaptability, imagination and a commitment to sharing scholarship,” Sancomb said.

The exhibit went live on Yale Library’s website on March 1 and will remain available to the public indefinitely.

COURTESY OF YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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

Senior presents a one-man, Zoom-based comedy improv

BY TANIA TSUNIK STAFF REPORTER

COURTESY OF MARTY CHANDLER

Over the weekend, Marty Chandler ’21 presented his senior project in the Theater and Performance Studies major called “Do Your Happy Dance, Jericho!”

As a Zoom-based comedy improvisation, the show explored new ways of storytelling and artistic collaboration in isolation.

“Do Your Happy Dance, Jericho!” is about a Yale student in quarantine at the Whitney Theater for his 22nd birthday.

In the show, he decides to have a Zoom birthday party and entertain his guests by performing a long-form comedy improv.

For each show, Chandler came up with a different improvised story.

“I decided to explore the idea of what it looks and feels like to do the improv by myself,” Chandler said. “Living through a year of pandemic required a great deal of improvisation already, so I wanted to share this message of taking one day at a time and fully enjoying the time you have, as crazy as it is right now.”

Before the pandemic, Chandler planned to do his senior project along with his friends. When many of them decided to take time off, Chandler had to search for a new idea.

“Do Your Happy Dance, Jericho!” was partly inspired by other longform improvs, such as “Middleditch & Schwartz” on Netflix. The show involves a comedy duo that improvises performances based on audience suggestions while playing many characters. Similarly, despite being the only performer on stage, Chandler also took on multiple roles during the show.

As soon as Chandler proposed his revised project last fall, he contacted Jacob Yoder-Schrock ’22 to direct and Eliza MacGilvray ’23 and Sarah Valeika ’23 to coproduce the show. Valeika noted that producing an improv over Zoom was a “unique” challenge.

“But it also opened up a lot of opportunities for us to constantly think on our feet, have fun with camera angles, play

around with sounds and light and come up with new ways of engaging the audience in a digital platform,” Valeika added.

Since Chandler was the one allowed to access the Whitney Theater, he had to ensure that everything was planned ahead of time. Months in advance, the team coordinated with the theater studies faculty to schedule visiting times, build a set and arrange remote operation.

“Because we knew from the very beginning that the improv was going to be performed on Zoom, we were prepared and even excited to incorporate technology into the performance,” Chandler said. “Honestly, I felt like it all ended up working so well.”

According to the team members, much of the show’s success came from the “nurturing atmosphere of collaboration.” Valeika said that she had an incredible experience because she was surrounded by “talented, kind and generous people.”

During the performance, audience members could use the chat function on Zoom to react to the improv, which for Chandler was one of the “most gratifying parts” of the show. Several viewers said the main character’s experience was heartwarming and relatable, and that his dance “got [them] out of [their] seat so quickly.”

“The show just underscored the fact that in our world that often seems scary and isolated, there is still so much joy, hope and a reason to dance,” Valeika said.

“If there’s one thing that I learned from the experience of working on this project, it’s just that human beings are resilient and can find an opportunity to connect with each other regardless of whatever distance exists.”

Chandler said the main goal of the show was to incite others to “do [their] happy dance.”

The Whitney Theater, located at the Whitney Humanities Center at 53 Wall St., is the designated venue for theater studies productions.

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

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

PAGE 7

ARTS Yale Playwrights Festival goes virtual

BY ANNIE RADILLO STAFF REPORTER Over two weekends this month, the Yale Playwrights Festival invited playwrights to present their in-progress plays to a Zoom audience and gather feedback.

During the festival, 13 undergraduates have and will conduct live readings of their plays, on March 12, 13, 19 and 20. The readings are free and open to the public.

“The amount of information that a writer can get just by hearing the actors perform the words that they have written,” said Shilarna Stokes ’94, lecturer in theater and performance studies and a mentor for the festival.

“All of that is information that a playwright can’t really get just from having a lot of individual readers.”

The students selected for the festival were each paired with two mentors: a Yale faculty member and a professional not affiliated with the University. The playwrights first worked on their plays with these mentors and then coordinated with a student director and actors for their play’s reading at the festival.

Kevin Tang ’21, one of the festival’s playwrights, is a math and computer science major and first-time playwright. Tang wrote his play, called “Retracing Echoes,” while taking “Advanced Playwriting” with Deborah Margolin, a theater and performance studies professor at Yale. Margolin recommended he submit his play to the festival.

“It is very exciting because I think that there is some-

thing that I kind of have wanted to say, and both taking the playwriting class and then thinking about it more in this formal setting has really brought that into focus,” Tang said. “[Retracing Echoes] is a story that I maybe not always knew I wanted to tell, but kind of discovered I wanted to tell through the process of writing and reflecting.”

Tang described his play as

[they’re] trying to say and where [they’re] going.”

“I like to quip that programming is kind of like writing lines for a computer, so it translates nicely to writing lines for human actors,” Tang said.

Margolin described Tang’s play as “meltingly lovely.”

Ann Zhang ’24 debuted her play titled “It’s Not About Kyle” last weekend.

Her play follows protago-

KG Montes ’22 directed a play called “Jazz” by Zyria Rodgers ’21, which was also read last weekend.

“Jazz” is a play about five women, all of different ages.

Montes said these women are “learning to find the joy in the interactions with each other,” “the joy in life” and “learning to live for themselves and for each other,” especially as Black women, “constantly having to bear the weight of the world.”

COURTESY OF YALE PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL

an investigation into the role of memory and people’s relationship with remembering.

He said the play explores a “bright nostalgia” that he suspects most college students are familiar with, particularly seniors in college like himself.

Tang plans to continue writing even as he pursues a career in math and computer science. Tang said programming and writing a script both require the writer to “know the skeleton of what

nists Luce and Kyle — a character that represents Luce’s inner monologue. Since plays rely on dialogue, Zhang said she needed a mechanism to demonstrate Luce’s thought process. “[Zhang’s] play is hilarious but also really thoughtful, really insightful, surprising, incredibly moving,” Stokes, one of Zhang’s mentors, said. “I knew that it would have a successful reading when it was read yesterday, and it did.”

Montes said she thought the reading went smoothly, but it was difficult for actors to read certain parts of the script over Zoom, including call-and-response sections and duets. Yet she said that the online platform allowed her to work with actors who are currently taking leaves of absence.

Zhang was told that one of the most enjoyable parts of a typical festival was seeing at which moment in the play an audience member might fall asleep. But over Zoom,

Zhang was unable to discern this phenomenon, since audience members had their cameras turned off to reduce network lags.

“The laughter was missing,” Stokes said, adding that this was especially difficult in the case of a comedy like “It’s Not About Kyle.” But Stokes noted that though Zoom can alienate actors from their audience, it allows performers and viewers to concentrate in a way in-person performance does not.

“There’s no distraction of people walking into the theater late or someone opening candy next to you or lights going wrong.”

According to Julia Titus GRD ’99, a professor of Slavic languages and literatures who served as mentor in the program, it is difficult for an actor to draw energy from the audience on Zoom, particularly when audience members have their cameras off.

Neve r t h e l e ss, Titus described the virtual festival as “commendable.”

As a mentor, Margolin said virtual theater is only a “mild strain.”

“Of course it’s easier to read the room, it’s easier to see someone fidgeting, it’s easier to watch someone study, when you’re in the room with them,” Margolin said. “But somehow we’ve managed. We have managed to listen — to look at each other.”

The Playwrights Festival was founded in 2003 by theater and performance studies professor Toni Dorfman and Laura Jacqmin ’04.

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

‘Playing music for the joy of playing it together’: Yale Symphony Orchestra resumes in-person rehearsals

BY MARISOL CARTY STAFF REPORTER On Feb. 15, the Yale Symphony Orchestra, or YSO, resumed in-person rehearsals for musicians who are enrolled in classes on campus.

Since the end of Yale College’s residential college quarantine period, YSO has been rehearsing in Hendrie Hall’s band room instead of their typical practice location in the building’s Blocker Rehearsal Hall.

This band room is larger, which allows players to maintain 6-feet social distancing. Through a rotation process which allows groups of 18 masked orchestra members to rehearse together, each musician gets the chance to rehearse in person at least once a week.

“There is no substitute for playing together, because there’s this lag time on Zoom that just makes it virtually impossible — no pun intended — to play synchronously,” YSO President Stella Vujic ’22 said.

School of Music guidelines cap the number of people simultane-

ously allowed in the room at 20. To adhere to these guidelines, rehearsals include the 18 musicians, as well as manager Brian Robinson and conductor William Boughton.

The musicians enter the building one by one for rehearsal and have to check in at the front security desk, which has a roster of musicians who are slated to rehearse that day. Following School of Music guidelines, musicians are discouraged from talking or moving around the room more than necessary. At the end of each rehearsal, Robinson hands each musician a sanitizing wipe for them to clean their stand and chair before dismissing them individually.

Currently, only enrolled string musicians are permitted to participate in these rehearsals. String musicians who are not enrolled can tune into rehearsal via Zoom and follow along on their instruments.

Vujic explained that wind and brass musicians must make music with their breath, which spreads respiratory droplets at a high rate and makes it nearly impossible for

safe indoor rehearsals with these instruments. Still, she said the YSO is brainstorming ways to hold outdoor rehearsals for wind and brass players as the weather gets warmer.

In the meantime, wind and brass players are rehearsing virtually in small groups and receiving coaching sessions from School of Music students over Zoom.

Percussion players can play their instruments while adhering to COVID-19 restrictions, but they have been unable to rehearse in person or participate in YSO this semester because the professional instruments they use belong to the School of Music and are not accessible to undergraduates this semester.

“Currently, our ability to participate in YSO depends on each percussionist’s access to instruments,” YSO percussionist Angelica Lorenzo ’24 said.

Still, Lorenzo mentioned that three percussion players have stayed involved socially through the YSO families program, where

members from different class years and musical sections are placed into small social groups.

Nevin George ’23, the only YSO percussionist currently on campus, said it was “very disappointing” that percussionists have been unable to participate in YSO this year due to lack of instrument access.

George said that this semester, the YSO is rehearsing pieces it plans to perform in the coming fall, including Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.”

“This is one of the best pieces in the repertoire for percussion, and it has been a dream of mine to play it for many years now,” George said.

“However, while all the other sections are doing master classes on the piece and preparing their parts, percussionists have no way of learning the piece. Music was one of the main reasons I chose to come to Yale over other colleges, and it feels like a part of me has been missing for the past year.”

According to Vujic, YSO has not yet scheduled performances

or recordings for this semester and is focusing on “playing music for the joy of playing it together.”

The orchestra is working on pieces solely for strings such as a Mozart Divertimento and the Shostakovich Chamber Symphony.

Last semester, YSO rehearsed over Zoom in sections in which they practiced by having one person play while other musicians played along while muted. Vujic said that though this rehearsal format was not ideal, preserving continuity and solidarity for the orchestra throughout the pandemic was essential.

“Before the pandemic we all saw YSO as a weekly fixture in our lives, and didn’t appreciate every moment of it as much as we should have,” Vujic said. “But now, just being together, just playing pieces for the joy of playing them, is really great.”

Hendrie Hall is located at 165 Elm St. Contact MARISOL CARTY at marisol.carty@yale.edu.

COURTESY OF ADITYA CHANDER

PAGE 8

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

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Black Pre-Health Students at Yale host ‘Health on the African Continent’ talk

BY ANJALI MANGLA STAFF REPORTER On Feb. 27, Black Pre-Health Students at Yale, or BPHY, invited five healthcare and technology leaders from Africa to engage in conversation about the state of healthcare in Africa.

The five panelists included professors from the Yale School of Medicine and experts from the World Health Organization. BPHY co-president Ejehi Ihionkhan ’23 introduced the panelists, and public health and pre-health opportunities lead Morgan Emokpae ’23 asked the questions. Ihionkhan and Emokpae organized the talk with help from group leaders Israa Mustafa ’23 and Zerubabell Daniel ’23.

The panelists each represented different regions of Africa, including Ghana, Nigeria and the Republic of Congo, in order to dispel the so-called “monolith” myth of Africa being represented as a continent rather than a diverse group of many countries, according to Emokpae.

The experts spoke about the problems found in African healthcare systems, as well as potential solutions.

“There’s also this really pervasive narrative that African health is led by outside factors like health brigades and NGOs and outside influences,” Ihionkhan said. “The intent behind the event was to highlight that the center of the development of African health systems are African leaders who are academics.”

At the talk, the panelists agreed that “Africa could use some more intervention, but more engagement and more of a stake from the people who live in those areas once these NGOs leave,” Daniel said. “They need what they set up to be sustainable.”

According to Hani Mowafi, the chief of global health and international emergency medicine at Yale, most of the African countries he has worked in operate within a three-tier healthcare system: the high end of the public sector, including well-resourced hospitals in urban centers; the lower end of the public sector, which contains hospitals with fewer resources and the private sector. The private sector of healthcare in these African countries, while well-resourced, can often be unaffordable and poorly regulated by the government.

the Republic of Congo. According to her, many expensive drugs are inaccessible to residents of these countries, and the government does not sufficiently regulate their distribution.

Ntoumi added that many of the drugs sold in her home country of Nigeria, especially in her area of study on malaria treatment, are fake or inadequate.

“The drugs are very unregulated,” Ntoumi said. “It has been shown that among 100 drugs sold, more than 80 percent were not adequate or appropriate drugs. This is a major issue and not really tackled by the government. In my country, many people die because they cannot [even buy] malaria treatment.

The clinicians give prescriptions that nobody is able to buy.”

However, the panelists also shone a light on the positive aspects of African healthcare systems, which they said are not often appreciated from Western viewpoints.

Emokpae said that this portion of the talk provided him with lots of information on the state of healthcare in Africa that he was previously unaware of, and that it was his favorite part of the event.

Mowafi added that “one good thing [in the health systems] is the sense of community care that I have seen.”

“Because of a culture of caring for each other, it can dramatically expand the number of people with simple training, and you can train family members to help participate in wound care,” Mowafi said.

According to the four BPHY leaders who organized the presentation, it took about three months to gather the panelists who presented at the talk and to finalize all details. They agreed that the work was worth it, to help present this discourse in a COURTESY OF EJEHI IHIONKHAN way that uplifts and centers African voices.

“Despite the strategic position that Nigeria occupies The talk was co-sponsored by the Yale Nigerian in Africa, the healthcare system is very poorly devel- Students Association, the Yale African Students oped,” Adeniran said. “The country is greatly under- Association, the Yale MacMillan Center Council on served in the area of healthcare. The medical equipment African Studies, the Jackson Institute Global Health is very inadequate. More than half of the population Scholars Program and the Yale Association for African can’t even afford the high cost of healthcare.”

Peace and Development.

Francine Ntoumi, the founder and executive director of the Congolese Foundation for Medical Research, Contact ANJALI MANGLA at spoke on the state of drug delivery within Nigeria and anjali.mangla@yale.edu .

Darlington Akogo, another speaker and member of the WHO Focus Group on AI For Health, outlined some of the areas of concern within the healthcare systems of many African countries. He explained that there are some “infrastructural gaps” and cited Ghana as an example, as he said the country only has 10 ICUs, leaving many people underserved.

Another presenter at the talk, Adebowale Adeniran, who is a professor of pathology at the School of Medicine, shared thoughts on Nigeria’s healthcare system.

Yale neuroscientists image the brains of individuals in disagreement

BY NICOLE RODRIGUEZ STAFF REPORTER Yale researchers have implemented an imaging technique to peer into the neural systems of people engaging in conversation and study the neural patterns of individuals who are arguing, which could have implications in the study of interpersonal interaction.

For many years, neuroscientists have studied neural systems and activity in the brain, but this research has been limited to one individual at a time. Joy Hirsch, senior author and professor of psychiatry, comparative medicine and neuroscience at the Yale School of Medicine, and her team used data from one of Hirsch’s previous neuroimaging studies and adapted a technique that allowed them to image the brains of two individuals simultaneously while they are engaged in conversation.

Hirsch and her fellow researchers found that when two people are in agreement, there is increased neural activity in the sensory areas of their brains. However, when they disagree, regions of the brain involved in executive decision-making and planning show heightened levels of activity.

“This was a research project that was based on some new advances in interpersonal interaction and being able to look at the neural circuitry of two people engaged in conversation,” Hirsch said. “It is a very new kind of research where we can look at interactions between individuals rather than just single individuals in the scanner.

There is a whole new window of opportunity in neuroscience to study live interpersonal interactions between people.”

To perform this study, Hirsch and her team used data that her lab collected in 2015 and has been studying for at least four years.

According to Hirsch, they did not have the appropriate tools to properly approach the complex elements of the experiment at first, but as they developed their analysis tools, they were able to proceed.

The researchers recruited 38 individuals and assessed their opinions through an online survey that asked them whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements, including “marijuana should be legalized” and “the death penalty should be banned.” Based on their

responses, participants were separated into dyads — pairs of individuals — where each pair had agreed on two statements and disagreed on two others.

After matching the pairs, the researchers used an imaging technology called functional near-infrared spectroscopy to record brain activity while the participants engaged in face-to-face conversation.

“Spectroscopy is a fairly universal technique that we use for many things,” said Adam Noah, associate research scientist in psychi-

sory areas of the brain. However, when they were in disagreement, the neural activity in both people’s brains was focused on the frontal lobes — the area in charge of high-order executive functions like strategizing and planning.

Hirsch explained that the sensory areas that were active during agreement are part of the more social side of the brain and are responsible for controlling the frontal eye field, which is linked to more eye contact. Agreement also corresponded with

GIOVANNA TRUONG/STAFF ILLUSTRATOR

atry at the Yale School of Medicine and chief engineer at the Hirsch lab. “It is basically when you use light and you shine it through something to detect what is in it. This technique is defined by these spatially specific changes in blood oxygen concentration.”

Hirsch and her team found that when participants were engaged in conversation about the two topics that they agreed on, brain activity was at a low, consistent level and tended to be concentrated in the sen-

increased neural activity in the motor cortex, signaling a greater use of facial expressions such as smiling or nodding.

These results generally predict that the sensory social areas of the brain are active during agreement and that the executive function areas are more active during disagreement.

Hirsch explained that during normal conversation, which can involve agreement or disagreement, “back-channel” cues are used to signal understanding, amongst

other things. These back-channel cues occur within the brain and can be studied through acoustical analysis.

When studying the neural patterns of the dyads, researchers also recorded their speech, and this data showed that when disagreeing, people exhibit distinct qualities of speech. Some of these changes included an increase in conversation speed, pitch and overall energy used — measured by blood turnover in the brain — showing that participants put more force behind their articulation when speaking.

The study began after Maurice Biriotti, a founding trustee of the SHM Foundation and chair of medical humanities and enterprise at University College London, approached Hirsch with questions about the way in which people handle conflicts and whether there were any biological processes guiding these reactions. Biriotti ended up working with Hirsch on the study.

“We ran into an interesting problem, which is that neuroscience largely has looked at brains one brain at the time, because to be able to do a lot of the work in imaging you need to put people into a very large scanner,” Biriotti said. “However, lying in a large scanner is not very conducive to having a conversation.”

On one level, the research findings were not surprising to Biriotti. For example, he said that the activity of the frontal lobe seen during disagreement makes sense, due to the decision-making function of this area.

But on another level, he sees something more profound in the results. To him, based on the research, it seems that when people are in disagreement about subjects they are personally interested in, the parts of people’s brains that allow them to be more rational and open are less functional. He said that while one could say the conclusion is obvious, it was interesting to see that there is a biological explanation for the phenomenon. However, Biriotti said that more research has to be conducted to make further conclusions.

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience on Jan. 13.

Contact NICOLE RODRIGUEZ at nicole.rodriguez.nr444@yale.edu .

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

NEWS

PAGE 9

“It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.” VLADMIR PUTIN RUSSIAN PRESIDENT

Overworked and underpaid: Yale’s registrars are tired different one, she “didn’t have any guidance,” even though she was now a registrar for both graduate and undergraduate students in the new position.

YALE DAILY NEWS

While each of the eight registrars voiced their individual thoughts on what Yale could do to help, they have also formed a support group to fill training gaps.

BY MADISON HAHAMY STAFF REPORTER Marleen Cullen has worked in her current position as a registrar for the Anthropology Department for almost eight years. She is, as registrar, responsible for recording grades, handling course information, supporting students with major and graduation requirements, working with teaching fellows and more.

But for Cullen, the “more” often takes up the majority of her time. She is additionally expected to mentor students, assist the new Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of Graduate Studies every two years, record expenses and order travel and food for speakers.

Because there is no longer a receptionist in the department, a receptionist’s duties also fall under Cullen’s jurisdiction. Now, she must also organize mail, fix the jammed copy machine, and even stock coffee in the kitchen — all without additional compensation. “[These additional responsibilities] affect my accuracy,” she said.

“I take more time checking things over because I’m constantly interrupted. And it takes me longer to get my tasks done.”

Cullen is not the only departmental registrar whose on-paper requirements differ significantly from the day-to-day expectations set by each department. And more generally, she is not alone in expressing frustration with the treatment of and value placed upon the registrars by the University as a whole.

The News spoke to eight of the approximately 85 departmental registrars, some of whom wished to remain anonymous due to fears of retaliation. They each described a job that, while immensely rewarding in terms of interactions with students, is also fraught with unclear expectations, differing departmental standards, lack of training, poor communication, complicated technology and an overwhelming workload. While each of the eight registrars voiced their individual thoughts on what Yale could do to help, they have also taken matters

into their own hands by forming a support group to fill training gaps.

University Spokesperson Karen Peart, speaking on behalf of the university Registrar, told the News that Yale both “recognizes and greatly values” all of the work that FAS departmental registrars do.

Departmental disconnect Registrars are, according to Alexander Bozzi, the graduate registrar for applied physics department, “involved with the entire life cycle of a student, from the time he or she submits an application to the time he or she gets his or her diploma.”

They work with department chairs to develop teaching calendars, help faculty with utilizing different softwares and work with registrars across related departments.

According to Bozzi, because they are “the repository of much of the institutional knowledge of how the University actually works,” registrars field questions from faculty and department administrators.

When registrars begin their jobs at Yale, they are trained initially through the University Registrar’s Office in basic software and procedures, after which each department is expected to hold more specific training.

However, five registrars told the News that this amount of training differs significantly between departments.

Sabrina Whiteman, registrar for the computer science department, told the News that “a lot of us didn’t realize that we were missing certain pieces of training” and are instead being taught by their departments how to do different tasks “as issues come up.”

Some registrars, like Marcy Kaufman, the graduate registrar for the history department, got “lucky” and received personalized training from her predecessor in her department before they retired.

Another registrar who wished to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation said she had a similarly stellar training experience for her initial department placement as an undergraduate registrar. But when she left that department for a

A constant ‘state of anxiety’ Like Whiteman, six other registrars also told the News that in addition to differing standards of training, their supervisors and often faculty in the departments do not understand the intended role of registrars, which can lead to unrealistic expectations.

In one case, another registrar who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation had an additional department added to her workload — without additional compensation.

She called the added responsibility “an area of struggle” that “was just not feasible for one person.”

“There are times that I am working overtime to just try to stay afloat and do what needs to be done, but it’s been difficult,” she said, adding that she constantly finds herself “in a state of anxiety” because of how much work she is expected to complete.

Cullen told the News that, along with anxiety regarding the overwhelming nature of her tasks, she is also nervous around job security for upcoming summers, especially due to the new preregistration timeline that causes some of their summer tasks to move towards spring.

Peart declined to comment on concerns regarding job security.

Another anonymous registrar, because he works in two separate departments that act as a “bridge” for the rest of the academic program his work supports, considers his expectations tantamount to “two full-time jobs.”

Peart told the News that the responsibilities of departmental registrars “vary based on the needs of their specific department,” which can range from record-keeping to finance, faculty support and event planning.

Registrars, who Whiteman says are “expected to hold more information than [they] actually do,” will often hear about deadlines just weeks — if even that — before they occur. This short timeline complicates a process in which deadlines need to undergo additional procedural steps, including a faculty vote, to be approved before they are final.

“We’re almost mid-March, and I still don’t know when to tell my faculty when final grades are due for graduating students,” the registrar who had to shift to a different department with little additional training said.

Bozzi credits some of this confusion to the chaos caused by the pandemic, citing system changes that needed to occur because registrars were not in the physical office anymore.

But he acknowledged that no matter the cause, registrars are in a situation where students and faculty

expect them to know more information regarding dates, deadlines and schedules than they do.

Taking matters into their own hands Recently, departmental registrars have formed a peer group, which Whiteman started, to try to mitigate some of these issues.

Anywhere between 15 to 45 registrars attend the group’s monthly meetings, which usually contain a combination of commiseration on different issues and shared problems in addition to training sessions, according to Whiteman. In the training sessions, registrars who are skilled at one system — Whiteman, for example, is experienced with Qualtrics and has already helped a few colleagues with the software — can teach others who, due to differing training experiences, might never have learned those systems.

In total, departmental registrars might be expected to know around a dozen different systems, ranging from payment softwares to course inventory management.

“People felt relieved that they were not the only ones that wanted to cry at the end of every day,” Whiteman said of the first session, which occurred over Zoom this past fall.

Stacey Hampton, the graduate registrar for the comparative literature department, called the group “a much-needed support system during this pandemic.” For seven of the registrars interviewed by the News, the group provided a similar sense of camaraderie. For registrars newer to their positions, the group allowed them to hear advice and perspectives from those with decades of experience.

But Cullen and Whiteman said the group is not able to singularly solve the issues experienced by the registrars. Cullen noted that to her, the group felt more focused on “factual stuff to do with my job” instead of what she really needed support for: her additional off-paper tasks. Whiteman also acknowledged that the group serves as “a temporary solution to a very, very long-term problem.”

Staffing support While three registrars — Cullen, Kaufman and one anonymous registrar — interviewed by the News did specifically mention that they felt supported by their departments, students and faculty, none of them felt supported or appreciated by the larger University.

Four registrars indicated that hiring additional people could significantly help with their workloads and feelings of a lack of support.

“Registrars should not be expected to fill any work gaps a department may have,” the anonymous registrar who works in two separate departments wrote to the News in an email.

“Either more positions need to be created to handle the miscellaneous tasks of a department, or Registrars need to be compensated more fairly to adjust for the miscellaneous workload we take on.”

None of the registrars interviewed by the News said that they received additional compensation for the extra tasks they were expected to complete. Cullen noted that while department registrars receive an annual raise from Local 34 union negotiations, that increase is universal across all registrars and do not give individual registrars any “incentive to do a better job.”

Peart told the News that the University and union have “a collective bargaining agreement that defines pay and benefits for C&T staff members, including FAS Departmental registrars and includes a process to resolve disputes.” She added that employees with concerns are also encouraged to work with their supervisors and union representatives in order to address them.

Whiteman added that while giving registrars all of the miscellaneous tasks might save the money of hiring additional people, the University needs to think about “the quality, the experience of the person who has all these competing responsibilities.”

For Kaufman, an additional staff member in her department whose job would be to support the registrars and other department administrators would significantly help the current situation, in which there is “more work and fewer people doing it.”

“I think that the University undervalues department registrars,” she said. “[Yale is] supposed to be a place with a mission of teaching, research and creation and dissemination of knowledge, and Yale registrars are the people who hold that academic mission in their hands.”

The registrar who had to shift to a different department acknowledged that she felt a lack of appreciation from the larger University but noted that she did not consider this to be a Yale-specific problem.

Rather, she considered the workload and lack of understanding a result of those in higher positions failing to understand the impact of consistently delegating tasks to those below them.

In a follow-up email, Whiteman emphasized that as a whole, “[the registrars] love what we do.” But she said the frustration stems from the registrars being the “default” whenever faculty or department administrators have a question or an issue.

Whiteman added that students can help by understanding that departmental registrars do not have all the answers and similarly asking for more “transparent” communication from University administrators when needed.

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

Yale experts criticize Lamont’s plans to loosen COVID-19 restrictions

BY SYDNEY GRAY AND ROSE HOROWITCH STAFF REPORTERS Gov. Ned Lamont plans to loosen COVID-19 restrictions in the coming weeks, drawing criticism from some Yale public health experts who say that the state is locked in a race between variants and vaccines.

On Mar. 4, Lamont announced that Connecticut would ease certain COVID-19 restrictions. Though mask-wearing, social distancing and disinfection procedures will remain in place, beginning Mar. 19, capacity limits on restaurants, libraries, retail, gyms, offices and houses of worship will be lifted. Additionally, private social gatherings of up to 25 people indoors and gatherings at indoor commercial venus of up to 100 people will be permitted. Some Yale professors shared their concerns about the changes with the News, noting that data from the Yale Grubaugh Lab and Yale New Haven Health shows that the number of coronavirus cases caused by variants have surged in recent weeks.

“We’re still in a precarious place,” Chaney Kalinich, who heads variant reporting for the Grubaugh Lab, told the News. “We can respond to the success we’ve had in controlling the virus by loosening up on some things, but increasing capacity all at once in many non-essential indoor establishments in the way that’s planned entails a lot of risk that I don’t believe is worth it … I would

rather see every K-12 student have the option to return to in-person school before we increase capacity in bars and restaurants.”

In Connecticut, the statewide test positivity rate was 2.47 percent as of Friday, down from more than 6 percent earlier this winter.

There is not yet clear data on why the caseload recently decreased, said Luke Davis, associate professor of epidemiology. Looking to the coming weeks, epidemiologists are concerned about a growing risk of COVID-19 variants that could contribute to a spike in cases as Connecticut eases its restrictions.

The Grubaugh Lab tracks two types of variants. The first, which are called “Variants of Concern,” are variants with evidence that they spread more quickly or are likely to cause more severe disease than the original SARS-CoV-2. This category includes the B.1.1.7 variant, a more transmissible coronavirus variant first identified in the United Kingdom, the B.1.351 variant and the P.1 variant. The Lab also tracks “Variants of Interest,” which are variants that might be increasing in frequency or have mutations that may affect vaccine efficacy.

A large proportion of the current number of cases are from the B.1.1.7 variant. According to the Grubaugh Lab’s website, about 25 percent of new weekly cases were caused by the B.1.1.7 variant at the end of February.

Assistant Professor of Epidemiology

Nate Grubaugh estimated in an early March tweet that by Mar. 28, this variant would account for 75 percent of new cases.

“We are seeing exponential growth of B.1.1.7 in some populations from New Haven and Hartford Counties,” Kalinich wrote in an email to the News. “We expect it to be the dominant SARS-CoV-2 lineage by the end of the month.”

The Grubaugh Lab does not have sufficient data from outside of these counties, so the researchers cannot know the prevalence of the variant beyond these populations, Kalinich explained.

Another website run by the Grubaugh Lab that shares weekly reports on coronavirus epidemiology has information on a specific test called the TaqPath SARS-CoV-2 test that can detect the B.1.1.7 variant. The test is currently being used by many facilities, including Yale New Haven Hospital, to screen for positive cases of COVID-19.

Jordan Peccia, a professor of chemical and environmental engineering, explained that TaqPath uses a technique called a “spike gene failure test” that is able to detect one of the 17 mutations characteristic of the B.1.1.7 variant. Further sequencing of the results that trigger a spike gene failure can confirm the case is a B.1.1.7 case or one from another variant.

Initial TaqPath tests conducted at YNHH from December to early February found many of the viruses caus-

ing spike gene target failure belonged to a new viral lineage, B.1.375 — which the Grubaugh Lab deemed was “not of concern.” However, in the past three weeks, more than 90 percent of spike gene target failure results have been caused by the UK variant, demonstrating a marked rise in cases due to the highly infectious variant.

“Now that the B.1.1.7 is taking over, I’m not surprised that 90% of the spike gene target failure[s] are the B.1.1.7.,” Peccia wrote in an email to the News.

Kalinich explained that with only a portion of the population vaccinated against the coronavirus, it is the ideal time for variants that are more transmissible or resistant to the vaccine to emerge. The more often a vaccinated person is exposed to the virus, the more likely it is that a variant will emerge that can infect people who have been vaccinated, she wrote.

Connecticut has seen success in rolling out the vaccine, with 54 percent of the population over the age of 55 inoculated thus far. Vaccines will likely be available to all Connecticut residents sometime before the end of the summer, Kalinich noted.

As Davis sees it, the best-case scenario is that Connecticut could see a gradual and safe reopening in late spring or summer. The FDA-approved vaccines seem to protect against the B.1.1.7 variant as well as they do the original coronavirus. If enough people can get vaccinated before the B.1.1.7 variant becomes

dominant in the area, reopening could be possible. But if the variant becomes dominant, many more people will likely become infected due to its higher transmissibility, making it harder to reach herd immunity without excess deaths.

A worse possibility is that another variant, either the B.1.351 or the P.1 variant, overtakes B.1.1.7 as the dominant variant, and people who have received vaccinations become infected. “I am a little concerned about the rapid plans to reopen given all these things that are going to be hitting Connecticut at once,” Davis said, pointing specifically to the spread of the B.1.1.7 variant and the fact that many high schools are starting to reopen in the state.

As of now, the hospital can manage the number of patients it is seeing.

But Davis said it is important to keep case counts below the overwhelming numbers of last spring, particularly as hospital staff are exhausted from a year of long hours and caring for severely ill patients.

Lamont did not reply to requests for comment.

The Connecticut Department of Public Health reports 290,577 total cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.

Contact SYDNEY GRAY at sydney.gray@yale.edu and ROSE HOROWITCH at rose.horowitch@yale.edu .

PAGE 10

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

SPORTS

“The one thing I learned is to just give everything a shot. You don't want to live in regret.” CHLOE KIM YOUNGEST WOMAN TO WIN OLYMPIC SNOWBOARDING GOLD

Reese Stadium and its namesakes VENUE FROM PAGE 14 Despite his numerous accolades and records as a midfielder, perhaps Jon Reese’s most defining moment as a student-athlete came not on the lacrosse field, but as a football player.

Following hospitalization for a major car accident in which teammate and passenger Tony Guido ’90 claims Reese went through the steering column — losing half a dozen teeth, requiring a multitude of stitches and dislocating his elbow in the process — he suited up and took to the field with an Ivy championship on the line less than a week later.

At the time, Carm Cozza was the head men’s football coach for Yale.

“When I visited [Jon] in the hospital … there was no way I thought he’d play the rest of the year, let alone today,” Cozza told the News in 1989.

Yet, Reese recorded nine tackles that day after signing special waivers allowing him to play, and

spectators claimed that he hardly looked like a man who had suffered severe injuries a week prior.

He initially begged the coaches just for the ability to dress for the game, but following his replacement’s injury during kickoff, Jon marched into play in a specially designed helmet. Following the game, he was immediately checked back into the hospital.

“I was afraid to take my mouth guard out because I thought I’d find my teeth laying in it,” Reese said in the post-game interview on November 4, 1989.

Nearly three decades later, Jon said that while no specific play may jump out from either field, one of the most special moments was getting the opportunity to play alongside Jason — a sentiment which both brothers share.

Contact AKSHAR AGARWAL at akshar.agarwal@yale.edu .

RYAN CHIAO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Reese Stadium, formerly known as the Soccer-Lacrosse Stadium, was built in 1981 and further renovated in 2011 following a donation.

2022 Ivy Madness at Harvard BASKETBALL FROM PAGE 14 Harvard and Princeton directed the News to the Ivy League.

“My initial reaction is that it makes sense,” said Yale men’s basketball captain and guard Jalen Gabbidon ’22, who is currently taking a gap year. “[The return to Harvard in 2022] actually excites me personally, because we were ready last year and we’re going to be ready next year.”

Both the men’s and women’s basketball teams were slated to participate in Ivy Madness last year.

The women’s team ended the season with a tight 60–58 win over Harvard and entered the tournament as the No. 3 seed, while the men’s team had won its first outright regular season title since 2016 and was set to enter the tournament as the No. 1 seed. Only 12 of 32 NCAA Division I conferences fully completed their postseason men’s basketball tournaments, while 13 had completed women’s basketball tournaments prior to the cancellation of collegiate sports last March.

In the three seasons that Ivy Madness has been held, a member of the Ancient Eight has been the host, with Penn’s Palestra holding the first two iterations in 2017 and 2018 and Yale’s John J. Lee Amphitheater hosting in 2019. Each conference handles their tournament differently, with some, like the Big East, moving to large neutral locations like Madison Square Garden.

Others may elect to give higher seeds home-court advantage.

In the conference’s original 2019 press release, Ivy League Executive Director Robin Harris explained the decision to host the tournament on campuses: “Each Ivy League campus presents its own aura and distinctive traits. With this rota-

COVID-19 spread greater in rinks COVID FROM PAGE 14 ditioning operation levels — one corresponding to 1.1 air changes per hour and the other with a lower ventilation level of 0.2 air changes per hour in the ice rink.

Assuming a community positivity rate of 7 percent in both the low and high air exchange scenarios, the probability of infection for any given player varied based on the number of infected players in the rink. The model found that increasing the number of infected skaters from one to five multiplied transmission risk by a factor of 2.4 for the lower ventilation level and 3.5 for the higher ventilation level.

According to the model, if players wore masks, the risk of transmission would decrease by approximately 30 percent.

“About 30 percent effectiveness against transmission kind of plays out with what we know about masks,” said Albert Ko, department chair of epidemiology. “They’re not 100 percent.”

However, Ko stressed that masks are still important to prevent transmission, especially when

hockey players and skaters are breathing heavily while exerting themselves physically on the ice.

Pollitt also mentioned that poor ventilation in indoor spaces contributes to heightened levels of aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 particles that hover at face level and that the particular humidity conditions and temperatures in indoor ice rinks may aid in the survival of viral particles suspended in the air.

Pollitt also described the phenomena of “thermal inversion,” which can increase transmission risk.

“The cool air near the ice pad and the warmer air above create a thermal inversion,” Pollitt wrote to the News. “This inversion prevents air from above the ice from mixing with air in the rest of the arena. Virus released by players on the ice are effectively trapped and levels build up over time, increasing transmission risks.”

Additionally, Pollitt said that the use of ice rinks could also contribute to COVID-19 severity.

She cited many studies describing how Zambonis are known to release pollutants like nitrogen

SARAH EISENBERG/STAFF ILLUSTRATOR

The report examined the impact of HVAC airflow, the number of infected skaters and mask use on COVID-19 spread risk at indoor ice rinks.

dioxide when resurfacing the ice, potentially causing adverse health effects. She postulated that exposure to such pollutants could exacerbate the severity of the disease if a skater already has COVID-19.

Yale men’s ice hockey head coach Keith Allain ’80, whose Bulldogs did not play in the winter season, shared his perception of the situation with the News.

“I know there have been hundreds of college hockey games played this season, hundreds more in pro hockey,” Allain said. “I am unaware of any cases of COVID being spread because Zambonis trapped virus particles.”

With the acceleration of vaccine rollout, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont plans to loosen COVID-19 restrictions on sports competition starting March 19.

However, Pollitt and Ko cautioned that even with expanded age criteria for the vaccine, it will be crucial to consider ventilation in indoor facilities, including the ice rink and locker rooms, to help mitigate the spread of the virus.

Yale Athletics Senior Assistant Director of Strategic Communications Steve Conn said the athletic department was not able to comment on the risk of indoor play at Ingalls Rink. Greg Zullo, Yale’s director of third-party rentals and events, also declined to comment.

When asked what the report means for the future of Yale sports like hockey and figure skating, Ko said the answer is simple. Given the dangers of indoor ice rinks during a pandemic, players should get vaccinated to enable safe competition, Ko said. Due to the current status of the vaccine rollout in Connecticut, this is not feasible just yet.

“We don’t know about the duration of immunity [of the vaccine], but it looks like it likely may reduce infections,” Ko said.

“It may not be entirely transmission blocking but it’s going to be transmission reducing.”

As of March 17, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 113 million vaccines have been administered in the United States.

Contact SYDNEY GRAY at sydney.gray@yale.edu and AMELIA LOWER at amelia.lower@yale.edu .

MARISA PERYER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Trey Phills '19, right, celebrates with Jordan Bruner '20 after Yale beat Harvard in the 2019 Ivy Madness championship to advance to the NCAA Tournament. tion, we look forward to sharing the atmosphere and energy of our basketball tournaments with each of our campus communities and giving all of our devoted fanbases an opportunity to experience Ivy Madness in their own venue.”

In 2019, the Yale men entered the tournament as the No. 2 seed. The league had announced New Haven as the conference’s host location the year prior. In the championship game against Harvard, which was officially listed as the home team given the Crimson's No. 1 seed, the News reported an “active” crowd and chants of “this is our house!” coming from the JLA student section during the Yale win.

While the Harvard women’s team did not qualify for 2020 Ivy Madness, the Harvard men’s side saw roles reversed from 2019. Harvard was scheduled to enter the tournament as the No. 2 seed, setting up a potential finals showdown with the top-seeded Bulldogs. “[Harvard’s arena] is smaller. …

So it could get really loud,” Gabbi-

don said. “They will likely have some fans there, but we will also have some fans coming, as well.”

Lavietes Pavilion, which hosts both men’s and women’s basketball at Harvard, has a capacity of only 1,636 people. The Bulldog’s home court at John J. Lee Amphitheater seats around 2,800.

At the time of the original announcement, Harvard men’s basketball head coach Tommy Amaker was quoted in The Crimson echoing a similar sentiment: “We’re going to do our best to have a wonderful tournament atmosphere when we have it here.”

Despite his excitement about the return to Harvard, Gabbidon told the News that “we are not concerned about where we play.

The only thing that matters … is that you’re the better team. Which we’re confident we will be.”

Brown was originally scheduled to host Ivy Madness in 2022.

Contact NADER GRANMAYEH at nader.granmayeh@yale.edu .

Bruner ’20, ’Bama in NCAA tourney BRUNER FROM PAGE 14 — and eventually chose between Alabama, Baylor and Maryland.

When Bruner arrived in Tuscaloosa, where he is pursuing a graduate degree in sports hospitality, Oats was blown away by the former Bulldog’s work ethic. “[Bruner] found out [freshman forward] Keon Ambrose was going in [to the gym] at 6 a.m. every morning,” Oats explained in a press conference last Wednesday. “So he decided he's going in at 5 a.m. every morning in the fall. … He kind of sets the bar a little higher all the time like ‘Okay, nobody is gonna outwork me.’”

In the middle of the season, Bruner had operations on both his knees, Oats said, but has since re-entered the starting lineup. The forward did not play between the Jan. 12 win over Kentucky and the Feb. 20 matchup with Vanderbilt.

Oats, who is in his second year as head coach of the Alabama men’s basketball team, also spoke about the roles Bruner’s leadership and character have played in helping develop a team culture of hard work and winning.

The two-time Ivy League champion echoed the impor-

tance of building a program with high expectations.

“I'm just trying to bring a winning culture,” Bruner said. “Trying to be a leader … [and] turn the team into a team that expects to accomplish a lot of things.”

Bruner’s teammates have also felt his positive influence on the team.

Senior guard John Petty Jr. said that while Bruner’s feel for the game, shooting and playmaking ability help the team a lot, his biggest impact has been his leadership and his “voice.”

Senior forward Herbert Jones, the SEC’s player of the year and defensive player of the year, added that Bruner has continued to serve as a calming presence for the team whenever there is “a lot going on.”

“When things get rattled, he’s the voice that comes in and just calms everything down,” Jones said.

The Crimson Tide are scheduled for a first-round matchup with No. 15 Iona (12–5, 6–3 MAAC) on Saturday at 4 p.m. The Gaels, coached

by Rick Pitino, earned their spot in the tournament as champions of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament.

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

COURTESY OF JO FURMAN

Before settling on Alabama, Bruner's final six also included Arkansas, Baylor, Gonzaga, Louisville and Maryland.

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

NEWS

PAGE 11

“It’s not an easy process to sit down and talk about, ‘What’s your motivation?’ Because as I’m answering, I’m working it out for myself at the same time.” RUPAUL AMERICAN DRAG QUEEN

Alders grant Antillean Manor tax abatement

WILL WANG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Alders voted 21-2 to approve a tax abatement plan for the Antillean Manor project on Monday night.

BY VANIKA MAHESH AND OWEN TUCKER-SMITH STAFF REPORTERS On Monday evening, the Board of Alders voted 21-2 in favor of a 17-year tax abatement for the redevelopment of 31 affordable housing units at Antillean Manor.

The Dwight affordable housing project, long in the works, was granted a tax rate of $42,554 per year across 17 years under the abatement plan. The new units will be available for residents below the 50 percent of area median income threshold. The

project is run by Carabetta Companies, which bought Antillean Manor in 2018, and has involved extensive community input, according to Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers, who represents West River and Ward 23. The site’s new plan has broad support from many of the city’s alders, who say the manor will house residents in need of housing. Those opposed said the city’s tax abatement process is inherently flawed.

“I was a victim at one point of being young, having to worry about if the rain was going to fall on my head because there was a hole

in the roof of the ceiling,” Ward 30 Alder Honda Smith said on the importance of guaranteeing quality affordable housing. “It’s time to stop talking about the what-ifs and look at what’s actually happening.

These people deserve to live better than how they’re living.”

While the vast majority of alders supported the proposed abatement, two — Ward 7 Alder Abby Roth and Ward 10 Alder Anna Festa — spoke and voted against it. Festa argued that tax abatements like the one Carabetta requested make the city “the scapegoat” by making New Haven pay for what private developers should be funding.

“We are in desperate need of affordable housing,” Festa said.

“But our surrounding towns don’t support us.”

This isn’t the first time Roth and Festa have expressed concern over the city’s tax abatement process. The Board of Alders voted in November to provide tax abatements for two affordable housing projects in the Dixwell neighborhood. Roth and Festa were the sole ‘nay’ votes on that proposal. The two claimed they were kept in the dark about the process the aldermanic Low Income Supportive Housing Tax Abatement Committee used to calculate the abatements.

In December, Roth and Festa proposed a workshop for alders to discuss a reevaluation of the abatement process, but that has not yet happened, Roth said.

“Given the city’s significant economic challenges and only 40 percent of property being tax-

able, it’s fiscally irresponsible to not have a framework for evaluating these proposals,” Roth said.

“It makes it easy for developers like Carabetta to take advantage of the tax abatement process at the expense of other taxpayers.”

But Roth and Festa constituted an outspoken minority at the meeting. Amid rising tensions during the discussion of abatements, the two were urged by several of their colleagues, including Ward 22 Alder Jeanette Morrison, to not digress from the matter of Antillean Manor.

Walker-Myers, delivering remarks at the end of the meeting, said the alders on LISHTA did “their due diligence,” because “that’s what they’re put there for,” referencing Festa and Roth’s skepticism about the committee’s process.

“When we talk about transparency — transparency does not mean something isn’t transparent because you’re not in the room,” she said.

“What we’re actually doing is advocating for people who are underserved. Everybody cannot afford to live in a really expensive home with a number of different fireplaces.

These are people who have the rain come down in their apartment.”

Antillean’s redevelopment was discussed at a Feb. 23 Board of Alders Tax Abatement Committee meeting.

Clay WIlliams, of New Haven’s Economic Development Administration, acknowledged concerns about the tax abatement process at the meeting. But he said that the project should continue because it could provide new housing at a point where it is essential.

“Right now, we’re kind of flying without any guidance and we’re looking at what we consider to be a reasonable cost and reasonable numbers,” Williams said. “But we do need more guidance from the city in terms of how we should go forward with it. We don’t want to lose this project. So our recommendation stands for this project. The committee feels that it’s worth it for the city for $50,000 a year to support 31 families’ low income housing.”

At the Tax Abatement Committee meeting, Carabetta’s Helen Muniz emphasized that the planning process for Antillean Manor has been a long-term, involved project.

“We are very committed to this project,” she said. “I have spent four years not only reorganizing the [manor’s] board and working with the residents to create a design and a place for them to call home again. We really wanted to make this a cohesive community engagement for this development.”

Riqu Toney, a resident of Antillean Manor for the last 20 years, backed Muniz’s claim. She said that the property has been improving since Carabetta bought it and has “high hopes” for the repairs. Toney hopes to move back after the redevelopment.

In addition to the tax abatement from the city, Carabetta will be able to use a $3.1 million grant they received from Connecticut for the redevelopment process.

Contact VANIKA MAHESH at vanika.mahesh@yale.edu and OWEN TUCKER-SMITH at owen.tucker-smith@yale.edu .

How the Kerry Initiative will continue without Kerry at the helm

BY PHILIP MOUSAVIZADEH STAFF REPORTER Despite the recent departure of former Secretary of State John Kerry ’66 to serve as President Joe Biden’s climate envoy and his ensuing need to balance commitments to both the Biden administration and Yale, students and administrators within the Jackson Institute are hopeful for the continued success of the Kerry Initiative.

The initiative is made up of four component parts: GLBL 750, “American Power in the 21st Century,” a seminar previously taught

by Kerry; the “Kerry Conversations,” a series of interviews hosted

by Kerry at Yale; “Kerry Convenings,” a larger conference that in the past has focused on climate change and the Kerry Fellows, a selection of students from across Yale who work with Kerry and his team on global issues. All four components are expected to continue, despite Kerry’s new government role, which raises possible conflicts with government ethics regulations.

“We have worked to make sure each of those four components continues to, I hope, thrive,” said professor Jim Levinsohn, the director of the Jackson Institute.

According to Levinsohn, Kerry will no longer teach the semi-

nar due to scheduling conflicts.

Instead, the class will be taught by David Wade, Kerry’s former chief of staff and current lecturer at the Jackson Institute. However, Levinsohn added that Kerry is likely to make an appearance at some points during the course.

According to Wade, this semester’s guests have included a White House press secretary and the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, as well as a former assistant secretary of state.

The Kerry Conversations “are likely to continue” as well, and “there is some tentative planning for another one of those coming up this spring,” Levinsohn said.

The Kerry Fellows are continuing their work under Wade’s supervision, but Kerry remains involved.

Milan Vivanco ’21, a current Kerry fellow, said that his experience has not changed significantly following Kerry’s departure.

Fellows serve functionally as research assistants, preparing memos and research projects regarding United States foreign policy and climate change, Vivanco said.

Regarding the final component, the Kerry Convenings, Levinsohn said that the institute is hoping to host a large conference this semester, and that Kerry will be “very, very closely involved with that.”

The institute is still in the process of determining how exactly Kerry will be involved with the upcoming conference, but Levinsohn said that he hopes that Kerry will be able to maintain the prominent role he played in past events.

But Levinsohn also recognized that there are strict government ethics regulations that will determine how involved Kerry can be with the initiative.

According to a Congressional Research Service report, full-time appointees of the president serving in the executive branch cannot receive any outside income while they are serving.

The report states that certain non-career officials are “prohibited by Office of Government Ethics regulations from receiving compensation for speaking, lecturing, or writing activity if the subject matter of the speech, article, or appearance ‘deals in significant part with … the general subject matter area, industry, or economic sector primarily affected by the programs and operations of his agency.’”

Given the administration has not yet made public Kerry’s most recent financial disclosure form, it is unclear whether he falls into this compensation bracket — and by extension, how these regulations will impact his ability to work with Yale.

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Each of the Kerry Initiative’s four components are expected to continue, according to professor Jim Levinsohn, the director of the Jackson Institute.

On Yale’s side, Levinsohn said that he and the institute are navigating the situation “as they go.”

Though he acknowledged that some parts of the initiative will change, Levinsohn remained confident that the institute will be able to deliver on its goals despite Kerry’s temporary absence.

Wade drew a comparison to similar initiatives that carry Biden’s name at the University of Delaware and the University of Pennsylvania.

“They continue even while he’s president, and I’d assume

that it’s a big plus for those initiatives that he had another chance to serve the country,” Wade said. “This diplomatic assignment for Secretary Kerry I think will also prove to be a positive for the university that’s been his home and his home for the long term.”

The Kerry Initiative was established in 2017.

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

NHPS CFO Penn to leave for Hartford

BY CHRISTIAN ROBLES STAFF REPORTER After a year and a half of service, New Haven Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Phillip Penn will resign from his post to become the CFO of Hartford Public Schools on June 15.

On Tuesday evening, Superintendent Iline Tracey sent an announce-

ment about Penn’s resignation to members of the Board of Education.

That same day, the Hartford Board of Education approved Penn’s hire as their school district’s newest CFO. Penn’s two-year tenure was marked by balanced budgets, even after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last summer, Penn announced that the fiscal year 2019-20 budget yielded an $865 surplus instead of a

JESSIE CHEUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Penn’s term as CFO included balanced budgets for New Haven Public Schools amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

previously projected deficit of $8.3 million. As of March 5, CFO Penn’s fiscal year 2020-21 budget estimates that the district will see a $775,351 surplus for its general fund, the account that pays for district salaries and utility bills, among other essential services. On Wednesday, several district officials expressed gratitude for Penn’s service. “[Penn] has been helpful to us in closing two deficits, and was very supportive in several different ways,” Tracey wrote in an email to the News. “He will be greatly missed. We wish him great success in his new endeavor.”

Board of Education member Larry Conaway similarly praised Penn for having a “good handle” on the district’s budget. He added that Penn’s tenure has not come without controversy.

Penn had previously filed a harassment claim against BOE member Darnell Goldson last March. At a meeting that month, Goldson came out against adding funds to a district contract with a

predominantly white law firm, suggesting that Penn favored white contractors. Penn took offense at the comments and issued a harassment complaint against Goldson shortly thereafter. Tracey later hired Waterbury-based Tinley, Renehan & Dost on June 10 to investigate the complaint. The law firm’s report was finalized in December and concluded that while Goldson did not harass Penn, he did violate several unrelated board bylaws.

Conaway also questioned if the CFO’s departure is part of a larger issue with NHPS staff leaving for other school districts.

“My question is ‘What is Hartford doing [differently than New Haven]?

What is the work environment? Is it a better city structure? Is it a better board of education structure? What the heck is going on?’” Conaway told the News. “It has me concerned as a policymaker and a public leader in the city. It has me worried.”

Conaway pointed out that former Assistant Principal of James Hillhouse High School Digna A.

Marte and former Director of College and Career Pathways Dolores Garcia-Blocker are examples of this trend. Marte is now the principal of Bulkeley High School in Hartford and Garcia-Blocker is now the executive director of postsecondary success and alternative programming for Hartford Public Schools.

Conaway encouraged district officials and BOE members to engage in a dialogue about why NHPS officials are leaving the district.

Tracey did not directly respond to Conaway’s concern about district departures when asked via email. She said that Penn “is a highly-skilled worker in great demand.” Tracey would not provide any updates about Penn’s potential successor.

Former NHPS Chief Operating Officer Michael Pinto resigned in November to take up a position at the city’s Office of the Corporation Counsel.

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

PAGE 12

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

THROUGH THE LENS

D

uring the fall semester and winter break of my sophomore year at Yale, I shot street photography in my home city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as well as my partner’s hometown of Chicago, Illinois. I quickly grew uncomfortable with much of the popular representation of street photography I found when studying the form’s legacy. I listened to interviews and talks with photographers who went out looking to capture the glance, or the dirty fingernail that would say whatever a glance or a fingernail says about a place and the people that live there. This photography treated strangers as subjects to be composed rather than as actual people. I put together this series of photographs and the stories behind each photo in an attempt to broadcast those moments when street photography documents a human condition that is based in gentleness, passion and love — both understated and unabashed.

These images represent how I remember the individuals in each frame, rather than what my image says about the lives they lead. CASSIDY ARRINGTON reports.

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

NEWS

PAGE 13

“The older you get, the more fragile you understand life to be. I think that’s good motivation for getting out of bed joyfully each day.” JULIA ROBERTS AMERICAN ACTRESS

Kingman, introduced as Handsome Dan XIX, set to reign

YALE NEWS

Dan XIX is the nephew of Walter, Handsome Dan XVIII. BY ÁNGELA PÉREZ STAFF REPORTER On Thursday morning, Yale introduced Handsome Dan XIX in an official announcement as the successor to Walter, Handsome Dan XVIII, who retired earlier this spring.

Following XVIII’s retirement due to his handler Kevin Discelopo’s ’09 departure from New Haven, the search for Yale’s next mascot had been private until the reveal Thursday morning.

Born Jan. 2, the new puppy has been living in New Haven with his handler, Kassandra “Kassie” Haro ’18 since Feb. 28. The Berkeley College alumna will train, socialize and manage the pup’s public appearances. Unlike Discepolo, who worked in the Athletic Department before taking a new job in New York last fall, Haro works in the Yale Uni-

versity Visitor Center. Haro told the News that Dan XIX’s name is Kingman and that he will also call the Visitor Center his home.

“I am ecstatic. To see how loved he is already, by the community makes me even happier,” Haro wrote in an email to the News Thursday afternoon. “He is the most inquisitive puppy I’ve ever met. He loves exploring new spaces, meeting new people, attention, and treats.”

Haro added that Kingman sleeps with his favorite toy, a plush lobster, each night.

Discepolo, the former assistant athletic director of facilities, operations and events at Yale Athletics, still lives with Walter and now works at BSE Global, the Brooklyn company that operates and manages the Barclays Center, the Brooklyn Nets and other affiliated teams.

Kingman is the nephew of Walter via Dan XIX’s mother, who is a sibling of Walter’s. Both are Olde English Bulldogges.

As compared to English bulldogs, Olde English Bulldogges tend to be healthier, live longer and have an easygoing temperament, according to the International Olde English Bulldogge Association. The breed is a mix of English bulldog, bullmastiff, American pit bull terrier and American bulldog meant to mimic the original, extinct English Bulldogge of the 17th and 18th centuries.

“He’s showing the spirited commitment to Yale embodied by his predecessors — not to mention a remarkable ability to bring delight to all whose paths he crosses,” remarked University President Peter Salovey in the announcement. “We’re lucky to have found a worthy and, indeed, handsome dog to carry on the legacy.”

Handsome Dan’s social media pages underwent a rebrand almost instantaneously, with the official reveal including links to accounts on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Dan XIX will also feature on a new TikTok account. The Handsome Dan account has already posted videos and pictures and begun responding to tweets.

Students received the news with enthusiasm, sharing the announcement photo on various social media accounts and gushing about the puppy. Beatrice Maron Schaeffer’24 was surprised to hear that there would be a new Handsome Dan in her first year but said she was elated at the prospect of having a new mascot in the community. “[It is] really exciting, in our first year, to have the new bulldog,” she said. “We kind of get to grow up with him.”

Maron Schaeffer also noted her excitement at a Berkeley alum being the handler. She hopes Berkeley Head of College David Evans will expand “paw-ffice” hours with his dog Brie to occasionally include Handsome Dan XIX in the coming years.

Shots of Dan XIX wearing a Yale-blue bandana in various campus locations accompanied the announcement. Dan will continue his role as one of the most loyal supporters of Yale teams and Yale Athletics as a frequent presence on the sidelines and in the stands, but Haro said she also hopes to “diversify and expand” his activities in the future.

Dan XIX was one of nine puppies in his litter.

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

NBA Raptors 112 Pistons 116

NBA Nets 124 Pacers 115

SPORTS

NBA Bucks 109 76ers 105

NBA Kings 121 Wizards 119

FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE goydn.com/YDNsports Twitter: @YDNSports YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WOMEN’S LACROSSE SEVEN RECRUITS TAKE GAP YEAR Of the 27 returning members on the women’s lacrosse team, 17 have taken at least one semester off this year. Of the team’s nine recruits, seven opted to take a gap year, leaving only two currently set to graduate in 2024. For more, see goydn.com/YDNsports.

YALE GOLF COURSE TENTATIVE REOPENING APRIL 6-9 The Yale Golf Course is tentatively set to reopen sometime between April 6 and 9, the course’s general manager Peter Palacios Jr. told the News last weekend. The course closes for the offseason each winter, and its spring opening is dependent on the weather.

Behind the venue: Reese Stadium

“When things get a little rattled, he's that voice that comes in and just calms everything down when there's a lot going on. He pays attention to the smallest details.”

ALABAMA FORWARD HERB JONES ON JORDAN BRUNER '20

Harvard to host 2022 Ivy Madness

BY NADER GRANMAYEH STAFF REPORTER After a two-year hiatus, the Ivy League’s men’s and women’s conference basketball tournaments, known as Ivy Madness, are set to resume next year at Harvard’s Lavietes Pavilion, the Ivy League confirmed with the News.

BASKETBALL

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

Briefly teammates on the Yale men's lacrosse team, the Reese brothers teamed up to renovate the program's home.

BY AKSHAR AGARWAL STAFF REPORTER Reese Stadium, home to some of Yale athletics’ greatest triumphs in recent years, was erected in 1981 as the Soccer-Lacrosse Stadium — a new venue for lacrosse and soccer competition. Renovated and renamed in 2011, the venue has also hosted professional competition for the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team, Women’s Professional Lacrosse League and the local Elm City Express soccer club. It served as the primary soccer venue for the 1995 Special Olympics World Games.

Centerbrook Architects, the same firm that designed the Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center, devised the stadium, which boasts seating for nearly 1,800 spectators, four air-conditioned team rooms, concessions, ticket offices, a press box and several alumni viewing areas. It has been

home to some of Yale Athletics’ most profound moments.

“Reese Stadium, which is known to everyone in the college lacrosse and soccer worlds and loved by ESPN, has been an exciting venue that rocks with big crowds on game days,” Assistant Director of Strategic Communications Steve Conn told the News. “The place has seen many of the championship-clinching and record-breaking moments in the storied history of Yale sports.”

The brothers behind the venue Jason Reese ’87 and Jon Reese ’90, whose surname the stadium bears, made donations alongside others to support the stadium’s 2011 renovation and dedication.

However, the Reeses’ contributions to Yale extend far beyond their monetary donations. The eponymous duo were part of a dominant period for Yale men’s lacrosse, during which the Bulldogs collected

three Ivy League titles. Individually, Jon Reese holds the Yale record for career points and once held the goals record until he was overtaken by Ben Reeves ’18. Jon Reese set the record for most goals in a season with 82, still good for the NCAA’s top spot to date. He collected his fair share of accolades accordingly, with several All-American and Ivy League awards to his name. The National Lacrosse Hall of Fame inductee also captained the football team during his final year in New Haven. Jason Reese was a star goalie who also penciled his name in the Yale record books for career and season saves.

“That family has meant so much to Yale, which is why it’s so appropriate to have their name on the stadium,” Conn said, nearly a decade after the renovations and almost three decades following the brothers’ last steps as students.

YSPH report: More COVID-19 spread in rinks

SEE VENUE PAGE 10

YALE ATHLETICS

A report released by the Yale School of Public Health found elevated risks of SARSCoV-2 transmission at indoor ice rinks.

A report released last month by the Yale School of Public Health found elevated risks of SARS-CoV-2 transmission at indoor ice rinks.

COVID Krystal Pollitt, assistant professor of epidemiology, authored the report, which used a mathematical model to examine the heightened risk of COVID-19 transmission in conditions with varying heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, as well as in mask-wearing and non-mask-wearing scenarios.

The report concluded that it is reasonable to suspect that the use of

indoor ice arenas will increase the exposure risks of skaters to SARSCoV-2 aerosols.

“It is important to [be] aware of the increased risk of being out on the ice as the state reopens,” Pollitt wrote in an email to the News.

“Indoor spaces can present higher risk for transmission of SARSCoV-2, including ice rinks.”

The report examined the impact of three factors — heating, ventilation and air conditioning airflow, the number of infected skaters and mask use — on the transmission risk of SARS-CoV-2 at indoor ice rinks.

The report’s mathematical model used two different types of heating, ventilation and air con-

STAT OF THE WEEK

SEE COVID PAGE 10

21

In an email to the News, a spokesperson for the league said it will return to its originally planned hosting schedule starting in 2022.

A February 2019 announcement from the conference introducing that schedule stated that the tournament would rotate across Ancient Eight campuses — Princeton, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth and Columbia will follow as hosts

after Harvard in subsequent years.

That press release formalized the future of the league’s new postseason basketball tournament, which was introduced in 2016. Harvard was set to host the tournament in 2020 before its cancellation due to COVID-19 concerns.

The Ivy League has not made a public statement on Ivy Madness since announcing its cancellation almost exactly a year ago. The league released a statement in early November announcing the cancellation of winter sports but did not provide an update on the next site to host the tournament — consecutive cancellations had led to a lack of clarity regarding future host sites for the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. Athletics communications representatives from SEE BASKETBALL PAGE 10

WILLIAM MCCORMACK/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Lavietes Pavilion at Harvard has a capacity of 1,636 people. Yale’s JLA holds about 2,800.

Bruner ’20 helps 'Bama to NCAAs

BY JAMES RICHARDSON STAFF REPORTER When former Yale men’s basketball forward Jordan Bruner ’20 announced that he would be heading to the University of Alabama (24–6, 16–2 SEC) as a graduate transfer, he said it was “with the goal of winning a national championship.”

BRUNER

BY SYDNEY GRAY AND AMELIA LOWER STAFF REPORTERS

NBA Celtics 110 Cavaliers 117

Eleven months later, the Crimson Tide — Southeastern Conference regular-season and tournament champions — are six games away from reaching the pinnacle of college basketball as they enter the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament as a No. 2 seed. Over the course of the season, Bruner has been a positive influence for the team, according to his teammates and coach.

“We’re pretty confident going in,” Bruner told the News in a Zoom interview from the NCAA Tournament’s Indianapolis “bubble” Wednesday evening. “We're all hoping to make a deep run.”

The Crimson Tide, ranked as the fifth-best team in the country by the Associated Press, head into the Big Dance with a stifling defense, averaging over eight steals and four blocks a game collectively.

They have the second-best adjusted defensive efficiency rating nationwide, according to the 2021 Pomeroy College Basketball Ratings (KenPom).

Bruner, who contributes a block and a steal per game, has started all of the 21 games he has played for Alabama this season. He told the News that the work his team puts in on the defensive end of the court sets the Crimson Tide apart from the other 67 tournament teams hoping to make a March Madness run.

“We take pride in how we play defense,” Bruner said. “And you know, just like everybody says: defense wins championships.”

When Alabama head coach Nate Oats recruited Bruner as a grad transfer target last spring, he already knew about Bruner’s skills on the court.

As a senior at Yale last season, Bruner earned first-team

All-Ivy honors and recorded the Bulldogs’ first-ever triple-double. Bruner entered the transfer portal last spring to take advantage of an extra year of eligibility — he missed his sophomore season at Yale with a torn meniscus and could only play a fifth year outside the Ivy League. Alabama was the first of 25 schools to contact Bruner within his first three hours in the portal.

He narrowed down his list to six schools — current NCAA Tournament No. 1 seeds Baylor and Gonzaga, as well as Alabama, Arkansas, Louisville and Maryland, three of which are also playing in March Madness SEE BRUNER PAGE 10

COURTESY OF ALABAMA ATHLETICS

Jordan Bruner averages 6.1 points and 4.2 rebounds a game with Alabama this winter.

NUMBER OF GAMES YALE ALUM AND MEN’S BASKETBALL FORWARD JORDAN BRUNER ’20 HAS STARTED THIS WINTER FOR ALABAMA, A NO. 2 SEED IN THE NCAA TOURNAMENT.

FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 2021

WEEKEND New Stages for the Yale Undergraduate Jazz Collective // BY EMILY TIAN // DORA GUO

It’s been an intensely productive year for the Yale Undergraduate Jazz Collective, despite all pandemic-era expectations to the contrary.

First, when the pandemic suddenly felled plans for the YUJC’s annual jazz festival, student musicians put together a virtual artist relief concert for the New Haven Art Council’s Creative Sector Relief Fund.

Instead of full-capacity concerts at the Saybrook Underbrook came a series of carefully edited video projects, including a multi-media show in collaboration with the undergraduate spoken word poetry group, WORD, that streamed early this March. Since last summer, the YUJC — a group of undergraduate students that has convened since 2007 to perform jazz and promote jazz opportunities at Yale — has debuted two issues of its new magazine, “The Turnaround,” dedicated exclusively to promoting the jazz community at Yale and in New Haven. And this past semester, its 18 undergraduate board members have created a fully subsidized lessons program that employs New Haven musicians to coach Yale students with less formal exposure to jazz.

This outpouring of activity over the past year, even while the group has not been able to play with each other in person, may strike one as particularly unexpected: jazz, after all, per the words of Yale ethnomusicology professor Michael Veal, is a “music of real time togetherness, of interlocking reciprocity, and of collaboration.”

Without student jam sessions or in-person performances, YUJC organizers have been taking stock of the year to reimagine what the jazz community at Yale may become.

“We’re like the roots of a tree trying to find where the water is,” YUJC President Jason Altshuler ’23 said. “We’re searching for the things that are the most fun, most entertaining and most inclusive. As a student organization, we’re trying to foster a community that feels welcoming and open to anyone.”

Jazz may seem intimidating and insular from an outsider’s perspective, Altshuler added, and several members pointed out that a gender disparity persists in many jazz communities, including at Yale.

In one effort to make the community more inclusive for underrepresented musicians, board members established the new jazz lessons program — which has granted 10 students five free lessons over the course of the semester — to lower barriers of entry for students with limited prior exposure to jazz.

Musicians in the collective come from varying degrees of formal training themselves. While several members of the collective said that they had known about the jazz collective as they were applying to college, others stumbled upon the group by chance. Graham Stodolski ’23 said that he signed up to play at a student showcase organized by the YUJC in December of 2019 that celebrated the 60th anniversary of 1959, a significant year in jazz history. That performance was enough to convince him

to join the organization formally.

“Everyone sounded so good that night,” Altshuler said. “The backstage was humming.”

Zach Gilstrap ’22 grew up going to church in Dallas, Texas, where his grandmother played piano. And while he had always been surrounded by music, Gilstrap had not expected to perform at Yale until another YUJC member invited him to a student jam session in the early spring of 2020.

“It was really beautiful to see something I love so much being embraced by so many other people in the community. I had this feeling that these people loved music as much as I did, if not more,” Gilstrap said. Gilstrap, who is now on the programming team and helped design the magazine, filled out an application to join the collective from his phone — while he was still at the jam.

Jenny Lee ’22, who also joined the board this past year, had spent her childhood playing piano and saxophone, but soon left her high school jazz band experiences behind once she came to Yale.

“I felt like I was losing a part of myself while I was so busy in college. I went to one of the YUJC concerts and the first song they played — by Cannonball Adderley — is one of my favorites,” Lee said. Her term as the co-treasurer on the board began right after students left campus last spring.

“There are definitely people who have been together for a while and who are tightly connected. You would think you would feel excluded, but I’ve never felt that way. I walked across New Haven and bump into [some YUJC members] in the streets and know that we share a passion for jazz.”

Jeff Fuller ’67 MUS ’69, who now serves as an ensemble coach for the Yale School of Music Jazz Initiative, said that during his time as an undergraduate, there was always “a passionate, committed core of students pursuing jazz as the important art form and musical expression it was and still is.”

Now there are several undergraduate courses in jazz culture, history and theory — while he was a student, Fuller said, there were none. Jazz performance and listening existed nearly exclusively outside of schoolwork, and yet students still assembled together, setting up at gigs in local restaurants and coffee shops or practicing jointly in a dining hall or student lounge.

The role of the jazz collective, historically, has been to fill in the gaps where institutional support was lacking: The first iteration of the undergraduate jazz collective was established to connect and train musicians who did not play in the University’s audition-based jazz ensemble. Revived again in 2012, musicians sought to use the club as a platform to expand upon existing jazz opportunities that Yale offered.

The organization, whose activities range widely under the banner of jazz, organizes concerts with professional artists and students alike, and puts on other events free to the public each year, including the

Yale Jazz Festival every spring. As musicians-turned-advocates, YUJC members are also broadly interested in increasing jazz curricular offerings, locking in place Yale credits for jazz lessons and jazz combos — like classical lessons and ensembles.

“As I’ve constantly alluded to, offering jazz lessons, combos, ensembles and performances for academic credit would be a surefire way to preserve and grow the tradition of jazz at Yale,” Fuller wrote in an email to the News. “From my experience as a former Yale student and now as an instructor … [a Yale] degree should include the study of jazz if that’s what the student wants and cherishes.”

YUJC is far from the only opportunity for undergraduates to participate in jazz on campus: Many other students who are loosely or un-affiliated with YUJC play for the Yale Jazz Ensemble or for smaller groups. But Veal said that the YUJC is distinguished from other groups on campus because it is “the real substantive attempt to institutionalize jazz performance on the undergraduate level.”

Its prolific organizing has helped fill out the cavity of institutional resources dedicated to jazz performance and instruction.

That absence spurred a national-newsmaking controversy in 2015, when the Yale Jazz Ensemble, a University-sponsored big band, was temporarily suspended. The sudden absence of an extracurricular outlet for jazz musicians and appreciators on campus resulted in a push to standardize a formal jazz studies certificate program encompassing jazz theory, practice and history — that is, one akin to those of institutional peers.

Those demands were met with something of a compromise: According to Fuller, the Yale School of Music announced in 2016 a three-year Jazz Initiative that reinstated the Yale Jazz Ensemble, hired saxophonist Wayne Escoffery to teach a jazz improvisation course and introduced a jazz combo program, with three groups coached

by Escoffery and Fuller.

Still, however, Yale does not grant students credit for jazz performance lessons, even though comparable lessons for credit are offered for classical training through the School of Music. And at the School of Music, Yale still does not incorporate a formal Jazz Studies program, unlike its peer institutions.

Associate Dean for the Arts Kate Krier emphasized that relations between the student organizers and administration have been “collegial.”

“The Yale Bands regularly lend equipment, instruments, and space to YUJC events and artists; the Ellington Series makes tickets available for free to members of the YUJC and the Yale Jazz Ensemble/ Coached Combos Program; Professor Duffy regularly promotes student jazz combos for professional and/or university events,” Krier wrote in an email to the News.

While the organization is still advocating for increased programming from Yale, Altshuler also added that they have been largely funded by the Yale College Arts Discretionary Fund: a

“huge part” of how the group has been able to put on events at the Underbrook and support initiatives like the lessons program.

Now, however, while remaining closely affiliated with Yale, the group is in the middle of a process of transferring its status from an informal student group to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, which should generate opportunities for the organization to receive outside donations and thus become less financially reliant on the University. Longterm plans for the continuation of the collective are ambitious: The website notes that the Alumni Board may provide support in investing an endowment to support the creation of a jazz studies program.

“In an ideal world, YUJC would be superfluous,” said Dani Zanuttini-Frank ’22, the organization’s chief publicity officer, implying that if the University filled out a robust jazz program on its own, demand for the YUJC would be diminished.

It’s a strange statement to hear from a group whose future plans seem expansive.

But perhaps the strength of Yale’s jazz community is precisely that it is built by students; the dearth of a strongly institutional jazz program may have also generated more student engagement. That is not to say that student creativity and institutional support cannot exist side-by-side: Altshuler added that a “student run scene” can be a blessing, even if there are specific decisions — like offering credit for jazz lessons — that can only be handled by the University.

“What binds us together is a love of jazz — our loves are different, and they’re not based in the same artists, history, but they all come together into this abstract, amorphous thing,” said Ethan Dodd ’22, the chief financial officer and advocacy officer on the YUJC Board.

“There’s not such a dedicated undergraduate spirit at other comparable universities, even if they have more institutional support.”

Dodd recalled a Jazz Festival concert that the YUJC put on in his freshman spring, headlined by jazz drummer Nate Smith. As the lights dimmed in the Yale University Art Gallery’s Robert L. McNeil Jr. Lecture Hall, he strode up towards the back of the auditorium.

“I saw a father and a son — New Haveners. The father was showing his son what this is about, and I remembered that my dad loves jazz, too,” Dodd said. “There’s a wider community that appreciates what’s going on, and I was so in awe of what we had created.”

It is still — optimistically — months before students will be able cluster in Underbrook, listening to their peers play on stage with each other. And their music is play: joyous, provocative, moving, sometimes rakishly fast, other times halting and still.

When this is over, Veal said, we will need music to wake our spirits up.

“The greatest musicians can wake spirits up in two or three notes,” Veal said. “Music will be a horn that calls everyone back to life.”

Contact EMILY TIAN at emily.tian@yale.edu .

PAGE B2

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

WEEKEND THEATER

When the Curtain Closes Backstage College Street Music Hall Stagehands’ Fight For a Fair Contract During COVID-19 // BY NICOLE DIRKS

// SOPHIA DESCHIFFART

“S TA YSAFE & H EALTHY / SE EY OUS O ON” read the black letters (with some effort) arrayed on the white strip that overhangs the entrance to College Street Music Hall. As a passerby, the discombobulation of the well-meaning message is sort of funny, and sort of sad. It exudes a carelessness we might expect from an establishment neglected by the public as live performance gatherings are incompatible with public health. But looking across the street, you notice parallel the COVID-19 signage at the Shubert Theater –– two glass-encased, glossy posters that say “The Show Must Go On! But for now, we will take a brief intermission…” Maybe, it seems, the College Street Music Hall is struggling to follow its own message.

This small point of contrast between the two theaters’ exteriors make some sense given that College Street Music Hall is not taking care of its stagehands in the way that its neighbor and many other Connecticut venues do. A group of roughly a dozen stagehands picketed along the rainbow sidewalk in front of the building, with signs draped over their bodies that read “NO HEALTH CARE NO RETIREMENT NO FUTURE.” Monday to Friday last week, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., they stood, intercepted every so often by curious pedestrians and very often by honks of supportive drivers.

I noticed them as I walked home in their last hour of picketing in the late Friday afternoon sun. They stood in small circles, chatting with an energy that did not match the fatigue they said they felt standing there all day.

On March 11, 2020, frustrated by the lack of health benefits, retirement benefits, overtime, hourly wage system and overall substandard conditions and support, stagehands at College Street Music Hall joined the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 74. For the last nine months, the union has been in a stalled negotiation with College Street Music Hall management, which continues to refuse to negotiate a contract that would allow its employees to access benefits from the union.

The pandemic exacerbated the risks of no health insurance in particular, and has left stagehands almost entirely without work.

Multiple members of IATSE Local 74 –– the southern Connecticut division of a labor union that represents, trains, employs and protects performance venue employees –– emphasized that they mainly hoped

to “get the word out” and gain public support through the picket. According to Gardner Friscia, IATSE Local 74 president, they will return to picket in a few weeks, and keep doing so until the College Street stagehands get their contract.

College Street Music Hall opened up in 2015, 13 years after the closure of the same facility that once operated as the Palace Theater under different management. College Street Music Hall has had four different production managers during its time, and several picketers say that conditions at the venue have gradually worsened throughout the years. Taylor,* one of 21 College Street Music Hall stagehands –– pointed to the third production manager’s tenure from 2018 to 2019 as a pivotal period for the stagehands’ frustration. The issues with the third manager have carried over under the successor, Keith Mahler. “[The third production manager] was a poor leader, which led to a lot of animosity and distrust, to put it mildly,” said Taylor.

“The crew was continually understaffed and overworked. They’d be unloading a 26-foot box truck on the street that’s full of lighting and sound and there would be only five guys to unload the truck, bring it in the building, set up the show, do the show, break it back down and get it back on the road.”

Because this physical load is placed on a few individuals, the stagehands put their bodies at risk, some injuring themselves in the process. At the back of College Street Music Hall, a door opens onto a parking lot that could conveniently allow stagehands to unload trucks into the building with minimal distance. However, because Yale –– the owner of the parking lot –– has denied trucks access to the lot, stagehands must carry all their loads from the street onto a sidewalk filled with holes and cracks, as well as up ramps. Unloading thus takes up more time and adds more risk.

Stagehands’ work is both intense and prolonged beyond the norms of the job –– not only for those who move set pieces, but also for those who work with lighting, sound, hair, makeup and special effects. The small staff can work as many as 18 hours on a single day, while being paid the same flat sum. This payment varies only based on the positions held by different stagehands, and not by hours clocked.

“The [Department of Labor] has told me on more than one occasion that they had to perform wage investigations due to Mr.

WKND RECOMMENDS Irish soda bread.

Mahler not paying his unemployment insurance,” wrote Morgan, another College Street stagehand, in an email to the News. “To the best of my knowledge he’s avoided paying any sort of insurance towards accidental job related injuries. We’ve never been offered any recompense for our work clothes although there is a required dress code. I’ve even seen men turned down for parking vouchers when I had to come back on a Saturday night when the event was originally a benefit/courtesy.”

College Street Music Hall is able to maintain low wages in part because of its relatively young staff. While some experienced staff members are fixtures at the venue, some are less experienced stagehands who have fewer skills and who aren’t familiar with wage standards. They therefore are less likely to question the variability in their wages, a system that isn’t common in Connecticut according to Taylor. This structure contrasts with the Shubert across the street, as it generally keeps a mostly constant set of employees, who have health benefits and pension credits through IATSE. “It’s like summer camp,” said Taylor, referencing the young and less experienced stagehands. “It’s like, ‘Can we get away with paying these guys with pizza?’ and if they could, they would.”

On top of overtime and hourly wages, stagehands are prioritizing health insurance, which Morgan says is not offered at all at College Street Music Hall. The pandemic has exposed the vulnerability that uninsured stagehands face, even when given respite from the physical intensity of their work in a normal year (or any work at all, for that matter). One of the stagehands who has no health insurance is also immunocompromised.

The College Street Music Hall stagehands and supporting union members are in tense talks with Mahler, who picketers say holds almost all decision-making power in the contract negotiations. Several say he has remained stalwart about his position. One picketer, leaning casually against the green molding of College Street Cycles, nonchalantly explained to me that Mahler is resistant simply because he is “greedy.”

The pandemic shutdowns have both complicated contract negotiations with Mahler and made the need for a new contract more dire. “The pandemic took the wind out of the sails for sure,” said Taylor. “But any way you slice it, Mr. Mahler was going to fight tooth

and nail regardless, pandemic or not. We got bombarded with anti-union union busting propaganda pretty much every week for the voting period or up until the voting period when we were allowed to vote. He was prepared to fight us on this.” Mahler could not be reached for comment.

The New Haven Center for Performing Arts, the governing body for the music hall run by Mahler, recently acquired the Westville Music Bowl, a former tennis stadium situated right next to the Yale Bowl. The new venue is scheduled to host rock band Gov’t Mule at the end of April. The last time that College Street Music Hall hosted Gov’t Mule, stagehands worked from 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. The pay for their work, even on days like that one, varies from $75 to $350 for the entire day.

The pandemic has begun to wane and a reopening is approaching, but the negotiations are, in the words of Friscia, “nowhere near an agreement that is mutually beneficial” to management and the stagehands.

Yet, the stagehands and supporting IATSE picketers are hopeful, in part because they believe their asks are quite basic, and in part because of their faith in the public if they keep picketing.

One union member, Brad Bates, pointed out that once more people are aware of this issue, they might avoid spending money on future events at College Street Music Hall and help push ahead negotiations. Bates, who has worked in the industry for 30 years, kindly re-emphasized that he “wants the people protected” between sentences. He stuck around an extra 20 minutes after the eighthour day to talk to me as the rest signed out, sanitized their signs and headed home.

“We want the people here protected just like the people across the street, just like the people down at Woolsey Hall, the Palace Theater in Waterbury, The Bushnell up in Hartford,” said Bates in between car horn blasts. “We’re not working right now during a pandemic, so we’ve got nothing to do.

So we want to inform people that Local 74 doesn’t stand for it. And that’s it. … You can see a show, enjoy a show all you want. But do you want to frequent a place that doesn’t support its employees?” *Names of College Street Music Hall employees have been changed to protect their jobs.

Contact NICOLE DIRKS at nicole.dirks@yale.edu .

ONLINE THIS WEEK: PIXELATED EMOTIONS: Claire Fang ‘23 on why OMORI is the videogame of the moment.

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

PAGE B3

WEEKEND NATURE

Vernal // DORA GUO

// BY BAYLINA PU The snow is melting. Outside, the cold gathers what remains of itself, the last few masses of white steaming on the ground like New Year’s fish. Despite the entropy of the melted runoff, there is still a stubborn unity within the remaining piles — a sort of solidarity amid disorder. It is 2021, and I am back on campus after nearly a year, lingering in the almost-spring of a Cross Campus afternoon.

I have not yet known springtime at Yale, having spent the last quarter of my first year at home in light of the coronavirus. I’d barely gotten a taste of the warming weather before leaving, so I soak it in now, admiring the light of the descending sun against the nearby rooftops, turning the gray stone orange as if lifting a warm coal from between blankets of ash. The colors are softer now in the absence of winter’s stark white backdrop. My suitemate and I watch a few students kick around a soccer ball in front of the steps of Sterling Library; it’s almost midterm season, but the air is clean after the morning’s rain, the students relaxed and golden-hued.

For much of my first year, I saw the world through currents of snow. I remember bundling up in thick coats to summit East Rock with friends, our laughter made visible by the condensation of our breaths. I remember group lunches after Directed Studies lectures, when we moved outside to eat just as the ice was beginning to thaw. And I remember when spring break bled into summer, when there were no more dinners or dances to walk to on freezing nights, when lunches relocated to Zoom instead of the TD courtyard.

Now, after a fall semester spent remote, sophomores are back on campus. New and old faces break free of their pixelated forms as we shift, somewhat dazedly, back to college life: Suddenly, it is spring again. Suddenly, we are here again, in almost a continuation of our truncated first year in residence. The University is freshly lined with social distancing cues and testing centers, but the sun still sets in the same color. The snow still melts in familiar tracks, flowing down the same gutters as its past incarnations. The late night conversa-

tions quickly revive themselves, though there are spaces we reinhabit that feel larger than before, due in no small part to the far lower number of students on campus. We venture back to our old haunts, which wait empty for us, our memories like layers of dust over the wood paneling.

When things melt, it is really just an act of loosening. The sun frees water molecules from their orderly structure; the ice unhardens, but not without some resistance, clutching onto its solidity in the face of the changing seasons. Being on campus again feels like this, like clinging onto a reality that has grown aqueous and uncertain. The things we might have imagined our bright college years to be cannot survive in the same state as we envisioned them, no matter how much we might grasp for them.

Still, we are fortunate to be here, facing this semester together. Spring is a time for beginnings, but to begin requires the breaking down of an older version of the world — a reality that cannot return in the same form as before, but

which seeps through to feed the growth of the new. We let go of how we thought these next few years would be in order to adapt to how they will be. It’s a different kind of solidarity — one that necessitates vulnerability, our ability to collectively adjust and melt when it is time.

We put on our masks; we go on long walks with those we love; we change our habits and expectations to what the new season calls for.

The snow melts in sacrifice to the spring.

Back in my room, I play music from my laptop and write down the ideas swirling in my mind. The final night of the Lantern Festival has ended, and with it, the last of 2020. It is the Year of the Ox, and we are here in New Haven at the cusp of the seasons, anxious maybe, but with the glow of the new year in our faces like lamplight.

We hold our old visions of the world close to our chests, watching the water fall in. And then, like the snow, we will let go.

Contact BAYLINA PU at baylina.pu@yale.edu .

Loving Atlas // BY HYERIM BIANCA NAM

// DORA GUO

It was an intimate, yet impassive kiss — she breathed into my heaving lungs with immoveable majesty, threaded her lifeblood through my throbbing body, pumped my heartbeat into alignment with hers. I looked into her ancient, creased eyes, and through those cracked, uneven crevices I saw for miles: winding roads flanked by towering ravines, sidewalks stretching past a coffee shop and a brewery, an angel standing watch atop a monument for fallen heroes. I saw, and I knew and loved with deep wonder the aching beauty and story of my lover, my Atlas — my East Rock.

Such a tryst is, perhaps, a defining experience of Yale: a romance shared freely and generously from mouth to mouth, on blogs and social media. The trek up East Rock at the golden hour when the sun teeters on the building-barnacled horizon is a well-worn tradition of Yale students, an initiation that itches and beckons at fresh-budding first years. It is then that we first begin to feel like we truly belong at Yale, like we have signed our names in cosmic Sharpie on the massive autograph book of the University. In the months and years that follow, however, we quickly come to realize that East Rock is more than a grinning group selfie or a bucket list item. We come to rely on East Rock as so much more.

Maybe East Rock is where you turn for a run when you need to sweat out the stress of the week. Perhaps it’s where you find a home as a student trying to find housing. For the rest of Yale, East Rock is vast with possibility. It is where young professionals settle with dreams of the future they will unfold. It is where families settle and watch their children grow up on the playgrounds. It is one of the bloodlines that connects Yale to New Haven through community outreach and events. East Rock is where I virtually spent my pre-frosh summer planning outdoor trail events, as part of the community service program FOCUS. Even

from 700 miles away, I could feel the passion of my group leaders, and their enthusiasm for the work we did with the local government convinced me of the beauty of the symbiotic relationship between my university and its city — not one without its problems, but a beautiful one nonetheless.

East Rock was born a century after Yale, with humble beginnings as farmland. The neighborhood originally had a different name. Before it gradually took the name of the ridge that overlooks it, it was called Goatville for the goats that, according to urban legend, shared the Irish enclave with the human residents and raided their homes to eat their clothes. Goatville was founded in the 19th century as a small town meant to house a growing population of laborers and merchants, but through the Industrial Revolution and the decades that followed, it became known as East Rock, famous for providing a space for Yale faculty, staff and their families as well as New Haven residents. Graduate and undergraduate students alike rent out apartments and houses in the neighborhood, and East Rock is the destination of many a hiker or biker from the surrounding area and, of course, myself.

I first breached the gentle gates of East Rock in the fall of my freshman year, not loudly nor softly, but raggedly with labored panting that pumped my icy cheeks with a vivid, crimson flush that belied my exhaustion. I was on what I call a run — realistically, sporadic spurts of sprints followed by lengths of lethargy — and I had spontaneously opted to add East Rock as a “stop,” an intellectual judgment, really, to my initial run to Science Hill because of its rumored scenery and its omnipresence on my social media feed. I had underestimated, however, both the distance and physical commitment. My legs were already sore after bursting through the wrought-iron Saybrook gates

and dashing up Science Hill, but I stubbornly stuck to my promise to climb to the top of East Rock before returning to my suite. Guided by the trusted navigator, Google Maps, I made my way up Prospect Street with increasing deceleration until I had turned onto Edwards Street then again onto Orange Street. I slowly but surely forged my way towards where East Rock stood at the tail of the shoebill stork drawn by the map of New Haven.

As I trudged down the street in weary search of the bridge crossing the Mill River and leading to East Rock, I became aware of something strange and yet familiar. Each crack in the sidewalk, each tree, each car and pedestrian — no goats to be seen — ambling down the street hummed quietly with a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose. By the time I passed East Rock Coffee, I was overcome with the conviction of everything being not in its rightful place, but moving in its rightful path. In the manner that the planets revolve according to the law of gravity around the sun, I perceived my surroundings revolving according to some unspoken law around the core of East Rock itself, not merely the neighborhood nor the park but something bigger, something more whole.

Perhaps my lack of stamina came infelicitously. Without it, would I have chugged mindlessly through the neighborhood of East Rock, the space between my ears empty of all but the thump-thump of blood, the next aching step forward? What was supposed to be a 30-minute run slowly trickled into three hours of exhaustion. But when I staggered to the steel railing at the top of the ravine and looked down at the city nightscape blinking to life far below me, creating a galaxy of tiny, flickering lives, the fatigue itself felt justified.

It was right that I should stand there and laugh freely at the memory of the unleashed corgi I had seen vault to the top of a boulder lining the

ravine, attempt and fail to brake, and then disappear, fluffy rear-end first and oversized ears last, over the 10-foot drop much to the alarm of the tardy owner who found her grinning upwards and wagging her tail from far below, unharmed. It was right that I should have seen the autumn foliage paint the Mill River with a brilliant mosaic of amber, crimson, vermillion and gold as I ran across the bridge. It was right that I should have encountered East Rock that day, that I should have known her as I did, that I should have seen her in those colorful aspects of our lives. And it could only be more right that I seek her again.

And so East Rock becomes our sublet apartment homes, our morning bike trails.

We become one of the frantically fluttering, many-massed colonies that make up the community of East Rock. Even as we breathe in and out of our tiny lungs, East Rock comes to life and breathes, one long inhale and one long exhale that reaches from the deepest crevices of bedrock, that roll enormously beneath our feet like the deck of a grand galleon. East Rock blows silently over ashy, tarblack mugs of coffee, steaming the windows that frame sleepy locals at East Rock Coffee. East Rock sets the sun over the slumped shoulders of the graduate student, fast asleep over their open textbook. East Rock anchors us to the firmaments spinning close above where we stand at the peak of our world. East Rock is both everything for us and anything we can dream of — our Atlas, holding our sky.

East Rock breathes, and I shared her breath that day, locked our lungs together. For just an instant in the eternity of East Rock, our heartbeats aligned, and we met as partners in sweet, momentary lovemaking. I have, most intimately, loved East Rock; I love her still.

Contact HYERIM NAM at hyerim.nam@yale.edu .

ONLINE THIS WEEK: WKND RECOMMENDS Having a roomate with a sourdough starter.

WHAT ARE YALE MOMS UP TO? Annie Sidransky ‘24 and Ángela Perez ‘24 interview four to find out.

PAGE B4

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

WEEKEND SEX

// ANASTHASIA SHILOV

SEX ON THE WKND: Is he worth it?

How do I know whether or not it’s worth hooking up with an old fling again? I don’t want to waste any more time than I already have (he’s not worth it), but it would be fun and I’m curious to see where it goes this time around (like … what if he is worth it ...?).

Sincerely, a girl trying to make the most of post-pandemic life in this sea of disappointing men.

Don’t. He’s never worth it.

I met my boyfriend during the fall semester so we’re long-distance now. However, I think I could like another boy I met in a spring sem class. What should I do?

I’m no English major, but I think a close reading of this question is in order.

“I think I could like” This suggests that you don’t actually like this boy (at least not yet) but you could be open to developing feelings for him. Unless he’s a literal Greek god (which I doubt he is since he’s a man at Yale), he’s probably not worth leaving your boyfriend for. Also, honey, why are you thinking about other potential lovers when you’re in a relationship? I get it, sometimes the Zoom light hits just right and a guy who’d probably be a 5 in person is suddenly an 8 in remote school. Recognizing that someone is cute while you’re in a relationship is harmless, but the fact that you’re open to liking someone new suggests to me that you’re not satisfied in your current relationship. Maybe you’re like me and you live for the chase — are you just bored with your boyfriend and need someone new to pursue? Is your long-distance relationship not meeting your needs?

To make your life easier, I’ve come up with a flowchart to guide your decision-making: 1.) Do you get excited to talk to and hear from your boyfriend?

If yes, go to 1a If no, go to 1b 1a) Do you feel like something is missing in your current relationship?

If it’s physical (like sex, cuddling, hugs, etc.), go to 3 If it’s emotional (validation, compatibility, “sparks”), go to 4 If nothing’s missing, go to 1B 1b) How would you feel if you and your boyfriend broke up today?

If you’d be totally fine, go to 5 If you’d feel bad for a few days but get over it after that, go to 4 If you’d be utterly heartbroken, go to 2 2.) Drop this new guy. Hide his video in class. Chances are he’s probably just a transient crush. Work on investing in your current relationship and making it stronger.

2a) Do everything in 2 and take extra care to spice up your long-distance relation ship. Order each other your favorite food and have an extra special date night. Phone sex is your best friend ;) 3. ) Do you think seeing each other in person will alleviate these problems?

If yes, go to 2a If no, go to 4 4.) It sounds like you’re not totally satisfied with your relationship right now. Maybe consider having a conversation with your boyfriend to voice how you’re feeling. That might lead to a breakup or it might lead to a more fulfilling relationship.

5.) Consider ending things with your boyfriend. It sounds like this relationship isn’t doing much for you. Now, that doesn’t mean jump into new guy’s DMs right away. Take some time to reflect on what you’re looking for and what didn’t work in your relationship. sexonthewknd@gmail.com

WKND RECOMMENDS Bringing back early quarantine hobbies.