Yale Daily News — Week of Sept. 24

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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 · VOL. CXLIII, NO. 31 · yaledailynews.com

Student organizations permitted to host larger in-person events

BY PHILIP MOUSAVIZADEH STAFF REPORTER On Wednesday, the University’s student organization team announced via email to student organization leaders that they were lifting the 20-person cap on in-person meetings. New club sports guidelines also allow exemptions for games and practices.

In an email sent to the leaders of student organizations, the group announced that, as long as current Yale and Connecticut health guidelines are met, student groups can hold in-person meetings that exceed 20 people. In order to have more than 20 people at a meeting, all attendees must be masked, no food may be served and the meeting must have a time limit of 90 minutes.

According to new gathering rules for club sports also released on Wednesday, club sports will also be allowed to apply for exemptions from the 20-person and 50-person capacity limits.

“The Student organizations team is always striving to help student groups thrive on campus,” Assistant Dean and Director of Student Affairs Hannah Peck wrote in the email to the News. “In this instance, we wanted to make it simple for groups to run their basic meetings. We are hopeful that the public health situation will continue to improve and groups will be able to reinstate even more of their regular activities over the course of the year.”

In the past, student organizations were only permitted to host in-person meetings of up to 20 people, making in-person activities particularly challenging for some organizations. The new regulations now allow student organizations to reserve classroom space on campus for meetings with over 20 students.

Another significant change in the policy is that student organizations may now invite visitors for short-term events to the extent that they follow the visi-

tor regulations. On-campus visitors are required to be fully vaccinated and a faculty or staff member must serve as the host in order to ensure compliance with all the regulations.

“This policy is meant to allow for guest speakers who further an educational purpose but is not meant to bring visitors to campus to simply attend an event,” the email to club leaders said.

The requirements for student groups include abiding by the universitywide mask mandate, restricting attendance to only group members, ensuring a large enough room capacity for students who wish to distance and keeping the meeting time under 90 minutes.

There are also a series of new registration requirements: The meeting itself must be registered via Yale Connect, and it must be held in spaces reserved through the Registrar's Office.

Bayan Galal, president of the Yale College Council, expressed her support for the policy change.

REGINA SUNG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Students from the Latinx poetry group ¡Oye! meet at La Casa for a club event on Monday.

“We are pleased to see the update in restrictions on student organizations,” she wrote in an email to the News. “This means that the YCC will be able to begin

meeting in person again, after a year and a half of virtual Senate meetings. The first in person SenSEE GROUPS PAGE 4

TF shortage to blame for intro course caps Former Yale Armory to

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

In some cases, students have been turned away, and professors expressed long-term concerns about Yale’s classroom environments.

BY MADISON HAHAMY AND ISAAC YU STAFF REPORTERS At least five professors have been forced to cap introductory lecture courses — including “The American Century” and “Foundations in Education Studies” — for the first time this semester, in large part due to a shortage of teaching fellows and confusion around the new preregistration system.

In interviews with the News, professors affected by teaching fellow shortages pointed to both a larger undergraduate population and fewer graduate students as primary causes of the problem, and they all expressed some level of concern regarding how TF shortages would affect learning. Large introductory lecture courses often rely on teaching fellows to help facil-

itate office hours, additional discussion sections and generally assist the professor.

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Deputy Dean Pamela Schirmeister ’80 GRD ’88 called the teaching fellow shortage the “chief factor” behind capped courses. She also credited the new preregistration system implemented this fall with making TF allocations more difficult.

This semester’s TF shortages can in part be attributed to fewer admitted graduate students and budgetary restrictions imposed during the early months of the pandemic, the News previously reported. Overall, these factors mean that caps could continue for the near future — or even become more strict.

“It’s working out alright this year, but we’re looking ahead to a situation in a couple of years where we’re going to have an expanded undergrad population … and because of the pandemic, highly restricted the number of graduate students we admitted,” professor of history and American studies Beverly Gage said. “We only SEE FELLOWS PAGE 4

become new training field

BY WEI-TING SHIH STAFF REPORTER

Once a 20th-century state-ofthe-art facility, home to Yale’s club polo and equestrian teams, the site of the former Yale Armory is on its way to becoming a new grass training field available for use by Yale’s athletic teams, student groups and the Yale community.

Located at 40 Central Ave., the historic armory once stood at the heart of the University's athletic campus. It was adjacent to Johnson Field and close to both the DeWitt Family Field and the Yale Bowl. The site, which will become a natural grass field, also sits right across the street from SEE ARMORY PAGE 5

GOOGLE MAPS

Construction on a new grass training field is underway at the site of the former Yale Armory, which was demolished in 2019.

Bond, Brackeen eye secretary of the state runs

BY HANNAH QU AND TYUS SHERIFF CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS Two New Haven public officials have launched exploratory committees to replace Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill in the 2022 general election.

In August, Westville Ward Alder Darryl Brackeen announced that he was exploring a bid for the position. On Wednesday afternoon, New Haven Director of Health Maritza Bond held a press event where she announced her own exploratory committee. The candidates, both Democrats, hope to build upon Merrill’s work on voting rights and economic opportunity.

“I know that anything is possible if you have the right team and the dedication to get it done,” Bond shared in her press release on Wednesday.

In his August press release, Brackeen noted the state’s growth

thus far, but added that there was more work to be done to make Connecticut more inclusive.

“While we’ve made so much progress as a state, there is still so much more we can and must do to make Connecticut a stronger, fairer, and more inclusive democracy and economy for all,” Brackeen stated in the release.

Former New Haven Mayor Toni Harp has endorsed Bond, while current New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, State Rewpresentative Robyn Porter and Board of Alders Majority Leader Richard Furlow have endorsed Brackeen.

The secretary of the state is mainly responsible for processing files and legal records for businesses and elections within Connecticut. The officeholder may also use the high-profile position to push for legislation, especially election-related legislation. Merrill will be stepping down after 12 years in office and

nearly three decades in public service. A Democrat from Mansfield, Merrill has pushed for universal absentee balloting and has centered much of her recent work around fighting election disinformation. She announced her decision not to seek a fourth term in January, citing her desire to see new ideas and people enter the office.

Maritza Bond On Wednesday, Bond announced a committee to explore the possibility of succeeding Merrill. Her exploratory committee launch was held at Criscuolo Park with around 30 supporters present.

In her announcement, Bond emphasized her commitment to fighting for people of all racial, ethnic and ecwonomic backgrounds.

She said her main goals include serving the people of Connecticut, expanding voting rights and providing more economic oppor-

CROSS CAMPUS

INSIDE THE NEWS

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1964.

CALDER

After student complaints that the orange juice in Davenport tastes like "s---," dining hall officials from several colleges admit that "they had been mistaken in their orange juice-making techniques" by adding too much vitamin C concentrate.

After a three-year absence, a colorful mobile by American sculptor Alexander Calder titled "Gallows and Lollipops" has returned to Beinecke Plaza. Page 6 ARTS

OPIOIDS

HANNAH QU/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Supporters gather with city Director of Health Maritza Bond at her Wednesday afternoon committee launch. tunities. She noted that while her wbackground is in public health, the field has many intersections with that of statewide elections.

Yale professors and administrators weigh in on biopharma settlements — including one involving members of the Sackler family — and the ongoing opioid crisis.

Page 8 SCITECH

TRUSTEE

Joshua Bekenstein ’80 is the newest senior trustee of the Yale Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, and will oversee the upcoming capital campaign.

Page 11 UNIVERSITY

“The pandemic has shown how public health and voting interSEE SECRETARY PAGE 5 ELECTION

For the first time since 2007, a Republican will be on the ballot for New Haven’s mayoral election, challenging incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker. Page 13 CITY

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 2

OPINION Do it again I

t feels oddly like the first day of my first year all over again, except this time, fuller. More alive. More vibrant, too, as if the world has suddenly taken on a shade that no LED screen ever came close to coloring.

I’m still a far cry from my normal self. I’m in the middle of shaking all that rust off my conversational skills, which have shrunk and shriveled through all the months I’ve been shut in my bedroom. I’m slowly learning to match Facebook profiles to real faces, struggling to trek between Science Hill and Old Campus — figuring out all those other strange troubles that come after what seems like a one-and-a-half-year hibernation.

But I’m awash in a happy kind of sensory overload, my spirits buoyed by the good food and even better people.

I write this as bursts of laughter and all those pent-up words come bubbling out among the circle of juniors a few yards next to me. There’s the usual, jittery jumble of anxiousness and excitement floating in the air. There’s an eager anticipation of all the work, people and late nights that lay ahead of us.

But mostly I feel awe. It’s not every day that you get to work out in what more closely resembles a cathedral than a gym, after all. I’m in a place where 14 dining halls serve me food to my stomach’s desire and world-renowned professors share the same wood-paneled seminar rooms with me. I live in a residential college deserving of Harry Potter treatment. I have century-old libraries with floor-to-ceiling shelves and a lifetime’s worth of books no more than a three-minute walk away.

Tell me I’m not dreaming.

IN THE MIDST OF THE PANDEMIC, WE CREATED A SCHOOL YEAR NO LESS MEMORABLE THAN ANY OTHER OUT OF PLEXIGLASS DIVIDERS, ZOOM SCREENS, LAUGHTER AND TEARS. Of course, glitzy Gothic buildings and light-soaked classrooms should never overshadow all the acres of progress and room for accountability that Yale still has stretched before it. As an institution, and as a college, it’s far from perfect — Yale has yet to prioritize its students’ mental health struggles, pick up its act before the greater New Haven community and confront its troubled legacy of elitism, to name just a few. But I struggle to describe the feeling all the same, this disbelief mixed with equal parts

GUEST COLUMNIST YIHAO XIE

pride and joy as I find an unoccupied tree on Cross Campus or gaze out from the winHANWEN dow on York Street. SurZHANG real might come closThoughtful est to articspot ulating it.

In the midst of the pandemic, we created a school year no less memorable than any other out of plexiglass dividers, Zoom screens, laughter and tears. Twelve months later, we embark on the beginnings of a college semester just as exciting in packed lecture halls and music-filled common rooms.

Maybe that’s the magic of Yale: the fact that this 300-year-old campus has always had something new to show us — to surprise us with — behind every peeledback layer and passing year. That here, somehow even after generations of shoe soles and stories have worn down these stone paths, life and learning never get old. There’s always a little more magic, just a few more pockets of wonder to spare.

Like Woolf’s Scottish lighthouse, Yale is a place — no, more than that: a special combination of people, moments and dreams all gathered together with astrological fortuity and astronomical precision — that seems at once time-bound and timeless, eternal, undying.

That magic might wear off occasionally, slipping behind tomorrow’s test, melting into the pages of our books, at times seeming to disappear altogether in the unforgiving grind of deadlines and schedules. Life will get in the way. But it’ll always be there, patiently waiting for us to return to it even after the tassels have been swung or the 4 a.m. lamplight extinguished. Those moving staircases, those talking fireplaces, they never really left us to begin with. We just have to remember how to find them.

For now, though, my heart is nestled snugly in Cross Campus. I feel grateful to be surrounded by people who have welcomed and uplifted me, one pixel and punchline at a time. I feel grateful to be here.

Sterling Memorial Library looms faintly behind the students reclining on the grass. I have books, whole stacks of them, sitting in my dorm room. A problem set that I have yet to start on, an essay to write.

No matter. I can still see the slightest notes of summer in the leaves. And all I want is to savor this sense of wonder, hold onto it for just a little longer.

HANWEN ZHANG is a sophomore in Benjamin Franklin College. His column, “Thoughtful spot,” runs biweekly on Thursdays. Contact him at hanwen.zhang.hhz3@yale.edu.

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Ain’t no sunrise when Yale-NUS is gone

n my last day as a student at Yale-NUS College, I decided to film the sunrise. From the vantage point of my 25th-floor suite, I set up my camera toward the east and clicked the shutter. Hues of amber first seeped through the distant clouds. Then a glowing sphere of orange emerged from the horizon and lifted the lingering mists of the twilight, revealing the contours of Singapore’s urban landscape.

I haven’t set foot on the YaleNUS campus since 2018 when I came to Yale for graduate school. I reminisce a lot about the view from our high-rise residential towers.

The heavily trafficked seaport to the south, busy arterial highways connecting public housing estates to the west and north and lush urban forests to the east. Those sights never grew old, and the memory of my Yale-NUS community hasn’t faded away since I left.

Receiving the news of YaleNUS College’s dissolution was devastating. It feels like being told that a loved one had a terminal disease with a terrible prognosis.

With every passing day their life and luster diminish a little. I want to be home. I want to see them with my own eyes. I want to be able to do something. Yet an ocean and a pandemic keep me away.

And the adults in the family who supposedly know the reality of life try to assure and comfort. Some also tell us, not so subtly, to give up hope. It’s hard for everyone, but it’s better to focus the energy on moving forward, and hold on to whatever we can.

The defeatist grown-up talk did not get through. I joined my schoolmates to rally everything in our power, even pushing the envelope, to save our own family. Among the groundswell of organizing, past and present students liaised with members of Parliament, wrote letters and columns defending the value of Yale-NUS and liberal arts education in Singapore and put up an online petition that has gathered over 14,000 signatures against the top-down decision-making of NUS. Truth be told, after three weeks, my stubborn optimism is starting to wear a little thin. After all, we are fighting and questioning “a considered” decision, a fait accompli, a “merger” endorsed by the country’s minister of education himself. This does not look like a battle we can win — the adults may have a point. But a past shared and a future promised together are at stake here. Our kinship and family are at stake. How can we concede and give up?

The pain of loss hasn’t dulled and I am still incredibly angry. It took past and present students, faculty and staff more than a decade to painstakingly bring the Yale-NUS community to life. Yet the NUS administrators planned our senescence did so single-handedly and clandestinely, and are now executing it with much greater haste. We demand and deserve answers but have received nothing satisfactory.

For the past few weeks I’ve been trapped in the cycle of grief, feeling betrayed, disillusioned, powerless and indignant all at once. I want closure, closure that probably won’t come from the powers that

be. Instead, going through these emotions has given me some solace.

I tell myself that it’s okay to have conflicting reactions. And I want to say this to my friends, too: It’s okay to get riled up one moment, and slumber in quiet resignation alone the next hour. We are experiencing a collective loss, and every type of reaction is justified.

It will take a long time for all of us to fully process what closure means.

For now, I choose to continue this silly denial and resistance. It may or may not salvage Yale-NUS College, but I believe our resistance is an act of remembering. A remembering that will define our community’s continued existence even after our name is erased from the walls.

As I sit in front of my desk and type this letter, the short clip of a time lapse that I recorded is kept on replay. That morning was an emotional moment to bid farewell to the community that I had just shared four years of my life with. I wrote in the caption, “The Move-out Day for the Class of 2017. For many like me, this was the last night (and morning) on campus. Tomorrow, the sun still rises.”

I hoped to see that sunrise again.

Maybe in 2022, at the 5-year reunion for the class of 2017. I also hoped that many generations of Yale-NUS students after us would get to enjoy the spectacular view. It is now a dashed hope. The sun won’t rise on YaleNUS College again.

YIHAO XIE is a graduate of YaleNUS College (‘17) and Yale School of the Environment (‘19). Contact him at yihao.xie@aya.yale.edu .

G U E ST C O LU M N I ST JAC K M C C O R D I C K

Tilting at ‘illiberal’ windmills D

ecrying the putative leftism of elite colleges has been standard right-wing fare for decades — William F. Buckley’s 1951 “God and Man at Yale’’ pioneered the genre. By now, we’ve all encountered some version of the argument: Elite universities like Yale are bastions of leftist, “illiberal” ferment, bursting with adherents brainwashed by their radical professors and hell bent on destroying the bedrocks of American society. In recent years, however, carping about leftist orthodoxy on college campuses has become fashionable among self-described “liberals,” especially of the Harper’s Letter variety. At a moment of sustained right-wing assaults on the academy — from legislative attacks on university curricula to professor watchlists to the longer-term defunding of higher education — liberal hand wringing over the supposed radicalism of college students gives conservatives a convenient bipartisan alibi. But these arguments aren’t just dangerous.

They’re wrong.

Take, for example, the Economist magazine, which devoted its Sept. 4 cover story and “Briefing” section to what it calls “the threat from the illiberal left.” One article in particular focuses on schools like Yale, its title posed as a question: “How did American ‘wokeness’ jump from elite schools to everyday life?”

The argument — such as it is — is a puzzling one. According to the Economist, a “loose set of once-radical ideas about identity, social justice and self-expression” were “incubated for years in the humanities departments of universities (elite ones in particular)” before they, virus like, spilled over their ivy-garlanded walls and infected the rest of the country. When exactly the spillover occurred, or why it did when it did, is left up to the imagination.

To reach such a sweeping conclusion, the article conjures a bizarre, quasi-conspiratorial alchemy: add a dash of helicopter parenting here, a dollop of Herbert Marcuse and Paolo Freire there, top it off with a sprinkling of pliant university administrators and a caffeinated shot of social media frenzy and — presto! — you get a recipe for everything from anodyne corporate DEI trainings to calls for

open borders. For a publication so enamored of “reason” and “objectivity,” the Economist sure does indulge in its share of the occult.

Of course, Yale’s student body is not a political monolith. Yale is undoubtedly host to a strong tradition of student organizing on the left, though right-wing hysterics vastly overstate its size and influence over the university. So too is there a non-insignificant mass of conservative students, whose organizations, such as the Buckley Program, boast far deeper pockets than any left-wing equivalent. But the dominant political orientation at Yale is neither “left” nor “right” per se.

Rather, the political zeitgeist at Yale is no different than the common sense that has suffused elite American institutions for the past several decades. That ideology is perhaps best captured by what critical theorist Nancy Fraser calls “progressive neoliberalism.” A “real and powerful alliance of two unlikely bedfellows,” “progressive neoliberalism” refers to the joining of progressive forces — mainstream movements for feminism, antiracism and multiculturalism — with the forces of cognitive capitalism (Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood). Think: Goldman Sachs diversity initiatives or Nancy Pelosi donning a kente cloth.

That this political sensibility flourishes at an elite school like Yale should be no surprise. Yale accepts more students from the top 1 percent than the bottom 60 percent income distribution, and finance, consulting and Big Tech behemoths comprise nine of the top ten employers of its graduates (with Yale itself the sole outlier). If the pearl-clutching writers at the Economist really want to see where the real socialization is happening at Yale, they might consider popping into a packed-to-thegills economics lecture, or better yet, an investment banking recruiting event at The Study.

But the Economist’s argument suffers from a deeper misapprehension. In treating students’ political preferences as a proxy for the tenor of an entire institution, they obfuscate the degree to which the structure of contemporary universities — especially elite ones like Yale — is increasingly right-wing.

As historian Asheesh Kapur Siddique noted last spring, the gover-

nance model of the 21st century university vests an enormous amount of power in boards of trustees, which at Yale — like most schools — is a who’s who of business executives, corporate lawyers and financiers.

What that means practically is that Yale has come to be governed less like a school and more like a corporation. Any institution that deploys a sprawling and unaccountable private police force across an entire city, that gobbles up land while shirking taxes, that is notorious for union-busting even among the Ivy League and that employs over half of its teaching faculty on short-term, precarious contracts, can hardly be called “leftist” even in the most superficial sense.

The old saw about Yale being a hedge fund with a school attached to it is actually just a half-truth — as the cultural critic Davarian Baldwin argues, it’s more like a full-blown company town, with Harkness Tower a 21st century smokestack.

One sign of the intellectual laziness of the anti-woke crowd is their tendency to reach deep into the past for dubious historical analogies that purport to explain our current moment. The Economist says that “left-wing activists” at universities are reviving the “confessional” practices of the Catholic Inquisition. Yale professor and cancel-culture-scold Nicholas Christakis went back even further in a recent tweet, arguing that college students are party to the resurgence of an “ancient culture of denouncement” (which ancient culture that is, I’d love to know).

To understand the politics of elite universities, we must instead look squarely at the transformations of the past half century of American life: the rise of winnertake-all politics and the ideology of meritocratic individualism, the persistent diversion of substantive demands for racial justice into cosmetic, superficial fixes, the erosion of democracy, the corporatization of the university and of much else. Liberals tilting at “illiberal” windmills are missing the forest for the trees.

JACK MCCORDICK is a senior in Branford College. Contact him at jack.mccordick@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

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“I decided long ago never to walk in anyone’s shadow; if I fail, or if I succeed at least I did as I believe.” WHITNEY HOUSTON AMERICAN SINGER

Sophomores weigh in on first on-campus experiences

YALE NEWS

As they begin a semester of in-person learning at full capacity for the first time, some sophomores said the University has not given them enough support.

BY OLIVIA TUCKER STAFF REPORTER It was summer when Lauren LeClaire ’24 first visited Yale — not as a prospective applicant or recent admit, but as a rising sophomore.

LeClaire spent the entirety of her first year at Yale in her childhood bedroom on Zoom, a situation not unheard of among members of her class. The majority of the class of 2024 spent half or all of last year away from campus, with the COVID-19 pandemic precluding an in-person introduction to Yale. This fall, sophomores are returning to Yale for the first time in many months, or, like LeClaire, arriving for the first time ever, and the in-per-

son college experience is new to them all. But some say the University has not done enough to help students adjust.

“I feel like we’re in such a weird, vulnerable position,” LeClaire said. “Like [first years] obviously get their support, and the upperclassmen got it down, and we’re all just wandering around.”

This fall, the sophomore experience has proven particularly atypical from the start. While first year move-in took place Aug. 27, and many older students had the flexibility of off-campus housing, sophomores could not move in until Aug. 30, two days before the start of classes. In the fall of 2019, by contrast, upperclassmen residences opened two

days before first year move-in and a full week before classes.

The abbreviated move-in timeline made the initial transition to campus life more challenging for sophomores, according to Sophomore College Council President Leleda Beraki ’24. She said many students were “scrambling” to unpack and adjust.

“The turnaround was definitely not good for our stress levels or our sleep schedules,” Beraki said.

LeClaire said she wished the University had let sophomores move in earlier and provided optional orientation programming. She spent this past summer on campus enrolled in Yale Summer Session courses as a “test run” for the fall, giving her the chance to get to know New Haven and make friends. Without that few months’ head start, she said, she would have been “out-of-my-mind confused, like terrified.”

Beraki concurred that a sophomore orientation could have helped students meet peers outside of their residential colleges and learn about “resources and spaces” available to them.

In an email to the News, Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd highlighted efforts the University has made to help the class of 2024 bond this fall, such as the Aug. 30 class dinners in the residential colleges and the sophomore trip to Quassy Amusement Park in Middlebury, Connecticut. These events were intended

to help foster in-person connections and establish the “character and identity” of the class, Boyd added.

Students should turn to their advisers for “continuity and support,” Boyd said, as well as deans and heads of colleges. Boyd also pointed to the community wellness specialists in the new Yale College Community Care program — a mental health program where staff are affiliated with specific residential colleges — as a resource.

While Sofiya Bidochko ’24 told the News that she appreciates the administration’s efforts to help her class bond, she wishes the school would “put more time into everyday resources.”

An optional sophomore mentorship program — either in small groups, FroCo-style or in individual pairings with upperclassmen — could be hugely beneficial to students, she said, particularly those struggling to connect with their older peers.

“I don’t have a FroCo anymore, so I can’t ask her [questions] … if you don’t know that many people at Yale and you don’t know many upperclassmen, which you probably don’t because everything was remote [last year] and people had so much trouble making friends, then you wouldn’t know who to ask,” Bidochko said.

First-year counselor Deon Ababio ’22 acknowledged that many experiences this year’s sophomores are facing mirror

those of the first years he is currently advising. He feels that students originally in the class of 2024 who took one semester off last year are now considered second-semester first years but are not receiving the same support as the class of 2025, he added.

“I expect that all students, regardless of class year, are facing challenges as they start the semester during the pandemic, which of course has affected everyone,” Boyd wrote.

Beraki pointed out that the rigor of in-person work alongside new social commitments is also proving challenging to sophomores who are experiencing both simultaneously for the first time. She has been struggling to find balance because “life is not just hopping on a Zoom call anymore,” she said.

Beraki emphasized that sophomores are in “dire need” of transitional resources, and LeClaire echoed her sentiment.

“I feel like there are sophomores that are kind of alone in the world right now,” LeClaire said.

“They go to their room, they go to meals and they go back. I feel like people still need the help. … I feel like a lot of people are pretending they have it down.”

As of February, there were 1,759 members of the class of 2024, including the 568 members of the original class of 2023 who took semesters off.

Contact OLIVIA TUCKER at olivia.tucker@yale.edu .

Elicker says more than 64.7 percent of eligible residents fully vaccinated

BY MARIA KOROLIK CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Eighteen months after the pandemic first reached New Haven, the city is finally seeing a decline in COVID-19-related hospitalizations and positive COVID-19 tests, primarily due to its high vaccination rates. However, the city’s vaccination efforts are not over yet.

On Tuesday, public health officials and Mayor Justin Elicker held a press conference outside City Hall to provide an update about New Haven’s vaccination efforts and COVID-19 rates.

According to Elicker, more than 71 percent of the city’s eligible residents — residents above the age of 12 — have received at least one vaccination shot, with 64.7 percent fully vaccinated. Elicker said that New Haven’s partnerships with health- and community-oriented organizations were essential in achieving these numbers, and there are now over 530 pop-up vaccination sites around the city.

“It starts with community, and it ends with community,” said Maritza Bond, New Haven’s director of health.

Last month, the city announced that all New Haven

c i ty e m p l oye e s wo u l d b e required to get vaccinated or undergo weekly COVID-19 testing. Now, over 70 percent of the city’s government workers are vaccinated, and 90 percent of the city’s government employees are registered under the program to either be vaccinated or comply with testing. According to Elicker, the city has been flexible so far with the remaining 10 percent of employees, but after the Sept. 27 deadline, people who decline to comply with the mandate could be deemed unfit for work.

Crystal Emery — the CEO and founder of URU, The Right to Be, Inc., a nonprofit focused on community outreach and diversity — said that the city’s partnership with smaller local organizations is “important because you have to reach people where they are.” Elicker and Bond also both acknowledged that the city government alone could not have achieved the Elm City’s current vaccination numbers without the help of their community partners.

Wilbur Cross High School student athletes Jarel Delgado and Christian McClease, alongside Erik Patchkofsky, the director of athletics for New Haven Public Schools, are helping in the fight against

COVID-19. They have been hosting vaccine clinics at high school athletics events and tryouts, as well as launching ad campaigns to target the city’s youth. According to McClease, the reason so many of his peers remain unvaccinated is due to misinformation.

“Other students are just afraid.

They don’t want COVID in their body,” McClease said, referring to a misconception that the vaccine contains the live virus.

In order to reach members of the community affected by misinformation, organizations such as the Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center and the Community Action Agency of New Haven have been working to educate the public about the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. Of the 46,000 vaccine doses the center has administered, over 20,000 of them have been at pop-up locations in partnership with various businesses and nonprofits around the city.

T h e Co m m u n i ty Ac t i o n Agency of New Haven — an organization aimed at bringing people out of poverty — has also instituted a call center where volunteers call residents of the city and answer their questions about the COVID-19 vaccination. Amos Smith, the CEO and president,

YALE NEWS

The city has partnered with community outreach organizations to promote education about the vaccine and provide access to all residents. also mentioned the need to target young people the most.

“We are in the middle of one of the worst public health crises in our lifetime,” Smith said on Tuesday.

The Community Alliance for Research and Engagement, an organization focused on health equity among New Haven residents, has also been working to combat vaccine-related misinformation. Prior to the pandemic, the group worked to increase confidence in the flu vaccine. Now, they have added the COVID-19

vaccine to their messaging. As they are not vaccine providers, they work closely with the Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center, Fair Haven Community Health Care and other health organizations to administer vaccinations.

Recently, the city opened a new COVID-19 testing site funded by the Department of Public Health on 60 Sargent Drive, open six days a week.

Contact MARIA KOROLIK at maria.korolik@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 4

FROM THE FRONT

"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” MICHELANGELO ITALIAN PAINTER

University lifts 20-student cap on in-person organization meetings

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

New gathering rules for club sports were also announced on Wednesday in an email from Migdalski.

GROUPS FROM PAGE 1 ate meeting is scheduled for this Sunday, Sept. 26, and we are eager for YCC members to once again be able to meet in person.”

Diba Ghaed ’24, the director of events for the YCC, further added that this change “signifies an anticipated return to a more normal Yale and a revitalization of student life.”

“These updated policies open the door to new opportunities for all student organizations,” wrote President of the Yale Debate Association Alexander Gordon ’22 in an email to

the News. “I look forward to resuming many in-person activities while continuing to uphold public health and safety guidelines.”

Daevan Mangalmurti ’24, the co-president of Dwight Hall Socially Responsible Investment Fund, said in an email to the News that he, too, is excited about the possibilities that these new rules open up.

“At DHSRI, we appreciated the release of the updated rules and especially of certain changes that make it easier to engage with partners outside of Yale — like those pertaining to travel and short-term visitors,” he said. “Moving forward, those

changes will help us achieve our goal of more frequent SRI-focused events and a revitalization of our relationship with other college SRI funds.”

He noted, however, that there will be challenges ahead with regard to in-person activity.

“It remains to be seen, of course, how viable the rules on gatherings will be, and how much the university will do to support organizations seeking to return to activities as commonplace as weekly meetings,” Mangalmurti wrote. “There are a limited number of spaces for clubs on Yale’s campus, and greater and more dedicated support will be

extremely helpful if student organizations are to remain healthy and active this year while still operating within pandemic guidelines.”

New gathering rules for club sports were also announced on Wednesday. According to an email to club sport captains sent by Tom Migdalski, the director of club sports, undergraduate intramurals and the outdoor education center, club sports will also be allowed to apply for exemptions from the 20-person and 50-person capacity limits. Exemptions can be granted if a team has met all other COVID-19 guidelines and if the exemption ben-

efits students by allowing Yale teams or their opponents to host additional attendees at a practice or game.

Galal also noted that this shift does not go so far as to permit full in-person events, and therefore, “the status of in person YCC events for the general student body is still in flux.”

Despite these changes, the regulations on organizations involving children and youth will still be required to meet virtually.

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

Preregistration, TF shortages ‘chief factor’ behind capped courses

YALE DAILY NEWS

Noting larger undergraduate class sizes, professors cast a dark outlook on teaching fellow allocations in the years to come.

FELLOWS FROM PAGE 1 admitted five graduate students in U.S. history. … It really could be a big big problem in the future if there has been any sort of major change [in Yale’s policy regarding teaching fellow allocation].”

Gage teaches “The American Century,” a survey course of 20th century American political history that, until this year, was available to anyone who wanted to take it. Although the department was initially able to assign additional teaching fellows, Gage ultimately had to cap the course because demand exceeded the number of fellows she was assigned.

Previously, Yale administrators indicated confidence in their ability to accommodate the increased class sizes for the 2021-22 school years, including by shifting resources towards introductory classes. In

some cases, that held true: Assistant professor of economics Cormac O’Dea and professor of American studies and history Mary Lui said that they were able to accommodate the influx of students with an adequate number of teaching fellows in their large introductory courses.

But for classes that did need to be capped, an insufficient number of qualified TFs was the central issue, according to Schirmeister.

“The chief factor is the number of qualified TFs,” Schirmeister wrote. “We may have students willing to serve as TFs, but if they are not qualified to teach the course in question, it is preferable to keep enrollments lower than to create new sections.”

Schirmeister confirmed in an email to the News that the new registration system is at least partly to blame.

“This year because of the new preregistration system and an imperfect understanding of how the drop/add period would affect final enrollments, we began from a conservative position, focusing first on sequential and required courses,” Schirmeister said in an email to the News. “Were we to have appointed TFs of any kind based on the early numbers, we would have had very small sections, because once sections have met, it’s very difficult to reshuffle them.”

Because students could register for up to 10 courses, Schirmeister said, many courses that originally had high demand ended the registration period with fewer students.

Assistant professor of political science Ian Turner ultimately had to lower the enrollment cap for his “Game Theory and Political Science” course after struggling to

find additional teaching fellows for the course.

“Know that I, and several others in Political Science tried very hard to find a replacement Teaching Fellow but were ultimately not able to,” Turner wrote on Canvas to registered students. “I have no control over the enrollment cap or waitlists.”

Alexandre Debs, director of graduate studies for political science, acknowledged in an email to the News that the department faced a cap on teaching fellow resources, which led them to make “hard choices.” Although he said that the department feels supported by the GSAS more broadly and supports the new registration system, Debs noted that additional resources allocated towards teaching fellows would be helpful.

“They are essential for the unique Yale undergraduate experience,” he added.

For some, the ramifications of teaching fellow caps are more immediate. Mira Debs, executive director of education studies, had to cap her “Foundations in Education Studies” course due to TF availability, meaning that approximately 25 to 30 students, many of whom were first years, were turned away.

Since the course is foundational to the Education Studies Program, Debs told the News that she is concerned about how students interested in either the scholars program or the certificate will be able to complete all of the requirements or if they will be deterred from the study.

Receiving enough TFs has always been a problem, according to associate professor of history Marci Shore, and the existing cap of 18 students per section in her European intellectual history course was already less-than-ideal.

“Smaller sections would give the undergraduates a better learning experience and the TFs a better teaching experience,” Shore wrote in an email. “It's hard for me to understand what use of university resources would be a higher priority: teaching is the thing we do at the university.”

Schirmeister, whose office oversees TF affairs, advocated for switching to a preregistration-only process for choosing classes to better allocate TFs. “Were we to rely strictly on a preregistration system, we would not encounter the same volatility at the start of the term,” she wrote in an email. “We hope to refine the process of moving TFs to the courses that need them and for which those TFs are qualified to teach as we develop a better sense of the relation between the drop/ add period and final enrollments.”

According to the GSAS website, most doctoral candidates at Yale will be a teaching fellow in one to four courses during their time at Yale.

Contact MADISON HAHAMY at madison.hahamy@yale.edu and ISAAC YU at isaac.yu@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

PAGE 5

“Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. ” ABRAHAM LINCOLN AMERICAN PRESIDENT

‘From brass to grass’: New chapter for Yale Armory site

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The Yale Armory originally housed the Yale Artillery Battalion and later served as home to Yale’s club polo and equestrian teams.

ARMORY FROM PAGE 1 the newly-built Tsai Lacrosse Field House and Reese Stadium.

"Construction is currently underway at the site of the former Yale Armory," Yale Deputy Athletic Director Ann-Marie Guglieri wrote in an email to the News. "This endeavor will change the space into a grass training field which can be uti-

lized by many different teams, programs, groups and students at Yale."

Guglieri declined to answer follow-up questions on which teams will utilize the new field.

The grass field will be 2.8 acres, according to the New Haven Independent’s report on the City Plan Commission meeting during which Yale’s site plan application was approved in

August 2019. During construction on the Tsai Lacrosse Field House, the site of the armory across the street was used as a construction staging area, the Independent reported.

The Yale Armory was the first University-affiliated armory in the United States. It was built in 1916 for the Yale Artillery Battalion, the predecessor to the Yale Army ROTC group, and it was

completed shortly after V-E Day. Even after the end of World War I, Yale remained an officers' training camp and a militarized university for several years. It also became the only civilian college to offer artillery training. Much of this was done in the former Yale Armory, though the facility was also used for cavalry practice.

Back in the early 20th century, the Yale Armory was well-

equipped and well-maintained.

The Harvard Crimson reported in 1917 that the features were "the most modern in every respect."

The Armory consisted of a 160-by-220-foot main building with a drill hall and gun sheds, along with stables that could house at least 120 horses. The Armory also had a harness room, a blacksmith shop, lavatories, lockers, showers, lecture rooms and assembly spaces.

However, physical decay became noticeable in the facility after decades without renovations. In April 2000, the polo and equestrian teams that used the armory filed a petition to gain varsity status, as well as a "Proposal for the Reconstruction and Support of the Yale Polo and Equestrian Center," which was a part of the armory. This report detailed the Armory's deteriorating conditions and called for immediate improvements.

Years later, according to an article in the News, the teams remained "frustrated because the administration [had] not shown any signs of proactive financial support for the project."

"The hope was that the University would provide the momentum, [but the administration says] we need to start the ball rolling," then-polo captain Michael Dawson '04 told the News.

After sitting dormant during the 2010s, Yale demolished the armory in early 2019 after the city cited it for a safety violation. That August, Yale lead planner Jeromy Powers and other members of the Yale staff presented a proposal to replace the former armory site with a new natural grass field. They received unanimous approval from city commissioners. Now, with the new Tsai Lacrosse Field House open across the street, construction is underway.

Yale has not yet announced the new field's expected date of completion.

Contact WEI-TING SHIHat wei-ting.shih@yale.edu .

Two New Haven Officials consider runs for secretary of the state SECRETARY FROM PAGE 1 sect, and how race, ethnic and economic disparities can have a great impact on both,” Bond said.

“Like public health, when left unprotected, voting rights suffer most in communities of color and economic disparity.”

In response to a question about how she would balance a statewide campaign and her current post at the city’s Health Department, Bond said that the health care infrastructure she had built and the high vaccination rate in New Haven would be effective against COVID-19. She added that should she need to take a leave of absence from her campaign, she would create a transition plan well in advance.

Most supporters at the event were Bond's former colleagues, friends and family members.

They said they supported Bond for her energy, New Haven roots and experience in public service.

They also praised her work as health director, saying that they felt safe during the pandemic and had easy access to vaccines.

M i c h a e l L i c a m e l e , wh o worked with Bond when she was Bridgeport’s health director, supports her because “she’s got the energy for this job and the executive experience which is definitely transferable to the Secretary of [the] State.”

Some supporters expressed opinions on what they would like to see Bond do in the position.

John Brannelly of Fairfield said that he hopes Bond will oppose voting restrictions, which have taken place in other cities, and that the state would implement early voting.

Bond confirmed to the News that she would continue Merrill’s vision of expanding voting accessibility and economic opportunities. However, when asked about what specific policies she plans to adopt, Bond did not provide a clear answer.

She said that she will continue developing her platform in the coming months.

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The two New Haven officials have their eyes on the soon-to-be-vacated seat of Denise Merrill, who has held the position for three terms.

“Due to her history of outstanding public service, I have every confidence that Maritza Bond will be a State leader who will make sure that Connecticut is known for its access to the basic right of freedom in the Democratic Republic: the vote,” Harp wrote in a press release in support of Bond.

Darryl Brackeen Brackeen has focused on voting rights and economic justice since launching his exploratory committee in August. Since the summer, he has been on a statewide listening tour, mostly talking to voter registrars and town clerks.

Brackeen is in his fourth term as alder and has served since being elected in 2014. He currently

chairs the Health and Human Services Committee. He has also worked as a nonprofit executive and a national surrogate and Connecticut state advisor for the Biden-Harris campaign.

“What I’ve learned is that people of the state are … openminded despite what the insider political class may be setting up,” Brackeen said in an interview with the News.

In terms of voting, Brackeen said that Merrill has “paved the way for the next phase of where Connecticut can go and should go.” The next phase, in his view, is to make voting more accessible to active overseas military members and citizens with disabilities. He also hopes to tap into the 535,000 unregistered voters in the state.

Brackeen also claimed to be the “only working-class candidate in the field.” He told the News that this informs his economic policies.

“The whole term of ‘working-class’ is based on [an] economic worldview in which I believe,” Brackeen said. “Unlike my fellow colleagues on this exploration, I simply can’t hide in the ivory towers of Hartford. I literally have been doing the hard work alongside the poll workers, alongside the voter registrar, alongside the city town clerks that I would be partnering with to improve the systems of our elections statewide.”

When questioned about the state of the race and Bond’s announcement on Wednesday, Brackeen stated that he wel-

comes “any and all individuals who feel like they have something to provide to the citizens of the state of Connecticut” into the race for secretary of the state. He has not yet officially announced his candidacy.

Jackie James, who served as a Ward 2 alder and Democratic Town Committee chairwoman, told the New Haven Register that she plans to launch a campaign for the position, but she has yet to file for an exploratory committee.

The 2022 Connecticut general election will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 8.

Contact HANNAH QU at hannah.qu@yale.edu and TYUS SHERIFF at tyus.sheriff@yale.edu .

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

ARTS Colorful Calder sculpture returns to Beinecke Plaza

BY ANNIE RADILLO STAFF REPORTER After residing in the Yale University Art Gallery sculpture garden for three years, American sculptor Alexander Calder’s sculpture “Gallows and Lollipops” was moved back to the Hewitt Quadrangle — commonly known as the Beinecke Plaza — on Sept. 8.

Before construction for the Schwarzman Center began in August 2018, the sculpture was disassembled, removed from the plaza and reinstalled at the sculpture garden. But for decades prior, “Gallows and Lollipops” stood on Beinecke Plaza, where its steel plates and eye-popping colors stood against the white-grey marble grid of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The sculpture, which Calder created in 1955, was first given to the University by anonymous donors in 1975. The sculpture is a mobile — a type of sculpture invented by Calder that is made of hanging components that move in response to air or other stimuli. Now, it returns to the plaza after a threeyear absence.

“Because the Calder was removed for much of the renovation, many students may be seeing it for the first time this fall,” said Garth Ross, executive director of the Schwarzman Center. “With its reinstallation on Hewitt Quadrangle, the Calder invites interpretation from a new generation of thinkers.

It’s a conversation starter positioned right next to a Center designed to bring people together to share a broad range of experiences and ideas.”

The sculpture is visible across Hewitt Plaza as students approach Memorial Hall. According to Mark Mitchell, Holcombe T. Green curator of American paintings and sculpture, the artwork animates the space with a “levity and playfulness” characteristic of the artist’s work. Not only is it painted red, blue and yellow — starkly contrasting the plaza and surrounding buildings,

which are shades of white and gray — but the sculpture also spins in the air.

Lucy Mulroney, associate director for collections, research and education at the Beinecke, said the plaza has “really come alive” with the reinstallation of the sculpture.

“I absolutely love seeing everyone sitting and talking, eating lunch, even holding class outside on the plaza around the Beinecke — the playful Calder sculpture adds a pop of color to the scene and conveys that this is a space for everyone to enjoy and linger in,” Mulroney said.

Calder’s early work was marked primarily by brush drawings and illustrations as well as projects using sheet metal and wire. When Calder moved to Paris in 1926, he began creating works from wire in three-dimensional portraits.

In October 1930, Calder visited Dutch abstract painter Piet Mondrian’s studio where he took inspiration from the artist’s atmospheric installation. Calder then invented kinetic sculptures — now called “mobiles,” a term coined by artist Marcel Duchamp — and created “Gallows and Lollipops” in this style.

Some of Calder’s early mobiles were powered by motors, but over time, he turned towards sculptures without motors that responded to natural stimuli like air.

“Gallows and Lollipops” moves in response to air currents in the Beinecke Plaza. Mitchell said the result is a joyous one.

“As his art does in public spaces all around the world, Calder’s colorful, playful mobile brings its staid surroundings to life,” Mitchell said. “It’s the first one on the dancefloor — whirling, waving and swaying — and it breaks the ice, inviting us to join in.”

Prior to its donation to Yale, the sculpture was known as “Lollipops” or “Lollypops.”

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

RYAN CHIAO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Vox Church holds first-ever service at the Westville Music Bowl

BY GAMZE KAZAKOGLU STAFF REPORTER On Sept. 12, Vox Church — a multisite nondenominational Christian church in New Haven — celebrated its 10 year anniversary by holding a church service at the Westville Music Bowl. The event brought together nearly 2,500 attendees from the Church’s 10 congregations across Connecticut and Massachusetts.

The church service lasted 90 minutes and included an episode of “corporate worship,” in which church attendees sing together. It included representatives from all of the Church’s congregations, with over 200 volunteers helping to organize the event. At the event, organizers spoke about the Church’s recent work in the community and donated items to teachers and children.

“Being a multi-sited church is extremely rare — to have all the eight of our locations to come together. I think for our entire church to be together for the service was extremely special to every single one of us,” Mike Schnepp, executive pastor of Vox Church, said in an interview.

The repertoire for the service consisted of around seven songs, including Vox Church originals such as “Grateful” and soon-to-be-released “Loyal,” as well as pieces written by other artists, according to Bru Hickey, the director of the central system — which oversees event operations and the volunteer team.

Church staff members and volunteers conducted the music for attendees. According to Schnepp, this “beautiful mix of music” was created “with the soul and aim of using it [the music] to glorify the name of Jesus.”

As part of the event, Vox Church also highlighted their recent community service initiatives including assistance given to local ministry partners. Organizers said that the Church has worked on over 50 community service projects in the past two months.

The Church emailed panlists, broadcasted their 10 year anniversary on social media and reached out to

volunteers at their different locations to spread word about the service.

“We could not have this happen without the volunteers,” said Hickey. “They were ready to do anything from cutting the pizza to getting all the coffee ready to handing out our welcome pack to people. We had so many people in our community wanting to be a part of it, just serve our church and love all the people we welcomed on that day.”

As part of the anniversary celebration, volunteers wrote appreciation letters to the Church’s members, dropped off gifts to teachers and schools and shoes to children in need.

A communion followed at the end of the event. For Justin Kendrick, lead pastor of the Vox Church, the communion was a reflection upon both challenges encountered during the pandemic and “the greats of God in the last two years to walk with us through these challenges.”

“At Vox Church, we are really grateful people,” Kendrick told the News in an interview. “We are grateful for our city, we are grateful to be a part of New Haven, and we feel that [the] best is yet to come.”

Vox Church was founded in 2011 in New Haven.

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

COURTESY OF IAN CRISTMANN

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

ARTS

BY MAIA DECKER STAFF REPORTER For the first time in over 18 months, Yale’s Directed Studies program is reconvening in person. After virtual classes for the entire past academic year, professors and students are back to the classrooms and lecture halls.

Directed Studies, or DS, has remained a staple in Yale’s humanities education since it was created after the Second World War. The program consists of biweekly seminars in each of three subjects: Literature, Philosophy and Historical and Political Thought. According to the program’s website, it is designed to be an “intense interdisciplinary introduction” for first years on the seminal texts of Western and Near Eastern cultures.

“It’s been extremely energizing to be back with students and colleagues, and to meet students from last year who I’d never been in the same room with,” wrote Professor Benjamin Barasch ’09, a Humanities lecturer who teaches Historical and Political Thought, in an email. “I have found the level of class discussion to be as good as ever — engaged and intense.”

Many students in Yale’s incoming class of 2024 decided to take gap years due to online classes. Anne Gross ’25, a student in this year’s DS cohort, wanted to avoid enrolling in the program virtually. She decided to take a second gap year due to the pandemic and prolong her Yale experience.

“After several weeks of extreme angst, I decided to take a second [gap year] because I want it to be in person both for classes and for the social experience of being in college,” said Gross.

Now that classes are in person, Gross has been able to engage with the DS community outside of seminars and lectures. She described her peers as “very smart, thoughtful and reflective.”

She said that meeting people in DS occurs mostly outside of class time — at meals or before lecture begins — and that these connections often begin from the “common ground” of studying similar readings together.

Lukas Bacho ’25 agreed that small talk before and after seminars was the “best way” to make friends. He added that meals are a great way to meet people outside of strictly academic settings.

DS Director of Undergraduate Studies Katja Lindskog said the previous year’s cohort — a “brilliant, supportive, courageous group” — was shaped by two experiences: the “uniquely difficult experience” of learning together during the pandemic and contending with the divide between students on campus and those fully remote.

“It was interesting to see how they worked hard to bridge that divide, and I think they ended up doing that magnificently by the end of the year,” Linkskog said.

Alex Dong ’24 enrolled in DS online last year. He said that unlike his other lectures, the smaller DS seminar classes translated well to online platforms.

For Dong, the main drawback of virtual classes was the lack of a collaborative environment.

“Reading and discussing Plato’s Republic in my childhood room at home is different from reading in Sterling Memorial Library, being surrounded by my professor and peers in an ornate Yale classroom and taking the occasional trip to the Beinecke,” Dong said.

Jean Wang ’25, who was entirely virtual for her first semester and gapped spring semester, participated in DS from her bedroom in Suzhou, China, with seminars lasting past midnight.

To create a sense of community, Wang founded a meme page on Instagram called @ds.memes_. The page, which featured content from various cohort members, allowed students to connect and communicate with each other.

“There is something beautiful and austere about the texts that also helped me persist through the remote semester,” Wang said. “I did feel far away from everyone, but our intellectual proximity to each other helped me make friends despite the physical distance.”

Lindskog said this semester has gone smoothly, apart from a few challenges in gathering the “full cohort” outside of lectures

Directed Studies community members reflect on return to campus and seminars. Lindskog also said the cohort is one of the largest: around 123 students as opposed to the usual 105.

Lindskog noted that even though students are excited about opportunities such as film screenings and Beinecke visits, most are happy “just be in classrooms getting to know each other” and debating Plato’s views “on how a state should be run.”

Ruth Yeazell, literature professor and Sterling Professor of English, said that her Zoom classes were more satisfying than she expected, but meeting in person has brought a new kind of “electricity in the air.” Yeazell also arranged an outdoor meeting with students from last year and said she enjoyed meeting them in person.

DS seminars and lectures take place in the new Humanities Quadrangle.

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

COURTESY OF ANNE GROSS

BY TANIA TSUNIK STAFF REPOTER An exhibition called “Publication & Prejudice” comparing more than 20 versions of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” from Yale’s collections is currently on view virtually.

Through the online exhibit, curator Emma Brodey ’21 aims to create a way for audiences to explore how the physicality of a book influences their reading experience.

“Publication & Prejudice,” which was first publicized last spring, traces the journey of the book’s publication from its first edition to the most recent one available in Yale’s collections.

Brodey created the exhibition as part of the Student Research at Yale University Library exhibit project — an initiative that provides one rising senior with curatorial training and culminates in a student-produced library exhibition using materials from the Yale Library collections.

“This exhibit brings together two things I find absolutely fascinating: Austen studies and the history of the book,” Brodey said. “Joining those two interests made the process wonderfully fun for me, but I also hope it will have a benefit for anyone who looks at the exhibit. It is a way to stress the importance of materiality in a modern world and to show how publishing adjustments can change the reading experience.”

Brodey conceived of this idea in a seminar she took during her sophomore year, “Art of the Printed Word,” taught by Richard Rose, a printer at the Yale School of Art. In an essay assignment, she compared the 1832 Philadelphia publication of “Pride and Prejudice” with the 2010 Belknap-Harvard annotated edition. Over the next year and a half, Brodey continued to reflect on how publishers treat and present the same text in different ways. Eventually, it became the leading theme of her exhibit.

Nancy Kuhl, curator of poetry in the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, advised the project. Kuhl brainstormed with Brodey about how she could use the collection’s objects to illustrate her ideas and arguments in a compelling way.

Exhibit compares 20 versions of ‘Pride and Prejudice’

“Working online required changing some of our work processes but the payoff is the opportunity to share [Brodey’s] excellent exhibition with a large online audience that might never visit New Haven to see it in person,” Kuhl said. “Besides, her detailed research and thorough knowledge made our work easy.”

The exhibit was originally supposed to take place in person, but the pandemic brought a change of plans. From March 2020 to April 2021, Library Exhibits Technician Sarah Davis and Library Exhibitions Program Manager Kerri Sancomb co-managed the exhibit’s online planning. Davis also designed the website hosting the exhibition.

Davis noted that shifting to Zoom at the beginning of the pandemic was initially unfamiliar for all members. But this

spurred “creative thinking and planning,” allowing the team to adapt specific tasks and activities successfully into the virtual experience, Davis said.

For example, the Case Layout and Item Review is usually a day-long meeting during which the curator lays out all selected items. The curators converted this into a virtual session where photos of items were arranged in to-scale case outlines via a Microsoft Publisher document.

According to Brodey, the online format impeded the process, since she was unable to observe the physicality of her chosen books in person — including aspects such as the “wear and tear,” notes in margins or students’ annotations.

Instead, Brodey relied on digital scans, which felt “ironic” in light of her project’s focus on materiality. Nevertheless, Kuhl said she was deeply impressed with Brodey’s ability to adapt her thinking to meet the challenges of this new situation.

Another related challenge was to analyze the sheer quantity of material available in the University libraries.

“The goal of the exhibit was not to be comprehensive — it is impossible because there’s just so much material in the collections,” Brodey said. “It was more to pull out some

of the salient examples of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ editions at Yale that show something interesting and unique about the way that Austen has been represented physically.”

Still, there were advantages to the virtual format. Davis noted that while physical exhibitions have a finite amount of display time, an online setup does not need to have a set end time. The format also allowed curators to both add supplemental information with links to related materials and improve accessibility with text voice overs, screen magnifiers and closed captioning on videos.

“I hope that viewers will be inspired to think about how Austen’s novels and all the other books we read are changed by the physical ways we interact with them,” Brodey said. “That’s what I find most exciting about the exhibit: this idea that books don’t just live on their own in some abstract world of great literature. They’re constantly evolving, and the way we understand them can be completely altered without changing a single word of the text.”

Digital collections of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library are free and open to the public online.

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

COURTESY OF SARAH CURTIS

PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Yale professors, admin weigh in on biopharma settlements, opioid crisis

BY BEATRIZ HORTA STAFF REPORTER Yale School of Medicine professors and Yale administrators have taken steps to help address the national opioid crisis through standard-of-care treatments at the medical school and contributions to ongoing conversations about how Connecticut should allocate settlement funds from Purdue Pharmaceutical — a now-dissolved company owned by the Sackler family, a historical Yale donor.

In a large-scale process spanning 15 states, major pharmaceutical companies around the country have been settling lawsuits with the Department of Justice over the promotion of Oxycontin, one of the United States’ most dangerous legal opioid painkillers. One of the companies the DOJ investigated was Purdue Pharmaceutical, which was previously headquartered in Stamford, CT. Yale School of Medicine professors and Yale New Haven Hospital staff have piloted a number of initiatives to address the opioid crisis.

Professors at the Yale School of Medicine emphasized the school’s focus on developing standard-of-care treatments and preventative therapies which can be replicated across the country, as well as providing education to clinicians across Connecticut on the most updated treatments.

“Opioid-related hospitalizations have been on the rise for a number of years,” David Fiellin, professor of medicine, emergency medicine and public health, wrote in an email. “To address this we have created an Addiction Medicine Consult Service.”

According to Fiellin, who is also director of the Yale Program in Addiction Medicine, this includes regulations on the administration of opioids through a stew-

ardship committee and the use of a “controlled substance agreement” for those who will require opioids for a longer period of time.

Associate professor and Medical Director of the Addiction Medicine Consult Service Melissa Weimer explained that one of the main causes for the recent rise in opioid use disorder, or OUD, is the ingestion of illicitly manufactured fentanyl, or other synthetic opioids. These opioids are more addictive than prescribed ones and are procured more easily. According to Weimer, while prescription opioids can cause overdoses and contribute to the problem, they are not the main cause.

“What is not well appreciated by the public is that other complications of drug use such as infective endocarditis, osteomyelitis, pneumonia, renal fail-

University spokesperson Karen Peart wrote that there is a platform embedded into the electronic medical record system which allows clinicians within Yale Medicine to perform risk assessments and to be well informed before administering any strong painkillers to patients.

In an email to the News, the hospital’s chief of psychiatry, John Krystal, wrote that the Yale Psychiatry Department is working on digital preventative interventions for adolescents, as well as creating large-scale clinical trials to explore different treatments for patients with OUD. “Yale has created new standards designed to expand access to quality treatment for opioid use disorder in specialty and general medical settings (primary care, emergency departments, hospitals, HIV clinics) using medications that decrease overdose rates by 50%,” Krystal wrote.

the pain-relieving benefits of opioids outweigh the risks and can give the patient the best therapy available.

According to him, doctors should take a rational and patient-specific approach, which evaluates the risks and benefits of administering the drug and continues to reevaluate as treatment progresses.

“A decision to prescribe an opioid should be viewed as a therapeutic trial, not a commitment to ongoing therapy,” Tobin wrote in an email to the News.

“When used rationally, carefully, and in a risk-benefit framework, opioids have the potential to be useful tools in medicine.”

In 2021, many companies were investigated by the DOJ over their possible involvement in the opioid epidemic through the marketing of their signature drugs. Most prominent among these was Purdue Pharmaceutical, the creator of Oxycontin.

COURTESY OF DATA HAVEN

ure and other complications can occur with injection drug use and non-fatal overdose,” Weimer wrote in an email to the News. “[Yale New Haven Hospital has] seen a rise in all of these conditions.”

Associate professor of medicine Daniel Tobin explained that while it is important to be careful with opioids, universally banning them is not a solution. He believes that in some cases,

Despite denying any culpability in the crisis, Purdue Pharmaceutical was dissolved on Sept. 1, and its owners — members of the Sackler family — were forced to pay over $4.5 bil-

lion in settlement payouts.

The Sackler family declared bankruptcy after this dissolution, and the settlement money will go to over 15 states.

Making donations to several academic institutions over the years, the Sacklers have donated money to create tenured positions at the Yale School of Medicine and have a namesake institute associated with the departments of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, Physics and Engineering.

“Members of the Sackler family have provided gifts over the years to support research at Yale in a number of academic disciplines,” Peart wrote to the News. “The university is not accepting new gifts from members of the Sackler family.”

According to Peart, Connecticut will receive 15 percent of the settlement funds over the next 18 years. The state will create an “Opioid Settlement Remediation Advisory Committee” in order to receive input and make decisions on how to best allocate the money.

She also explained that faculty and experts from the School of Medicine will be participating in these discussions and making recommendations on the best programs related to prevention and treatment for state investment.

“Opioids are potentially helpful but dangerous medications that should be used only when non-opioid therapy can’t achieve treatment goals,” Tobin wrote to the News. “To achieve this, both patients and prescribers need to be aware of the potential risks and benefits and informed consent is critically important.”

The Sackler family had an estimated estate of $11 billion in April.

Contact BEATRIZ HORTA at beatriz.horta@yale.edu .

Yale researcher leads branch of HIV research collaboration

BY ELIZABETH WATSON CONTRIBUTING REPORTER A new initiative called the HOPE Collaboratory, which is funded by a $26.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and contains a program co-directed by a professor at the Yale School of Medicine, could bring the world a step closer to finding a cure for HIV. Priti Kumar, an associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, has been named the co-director of a branch of the HIV Obstruction by Programmed Epigenetics, or HOPE, Collaboratory. Kumar’s laboratory works in conjunction with a multitude of researchers under the umbrella of a flagship NIH program, Martin Delaney Collaboratories for HIV Cure Research. The HOPE Collaboratory includes researchers from across the world.

“The exciting part about HOPE is that it is a huge enterprise with 15 research groups, different countries, different continents, many groups coming together and really focusing on this one goal, which is to cure HIV by silencing and inactivating it,” said Melanie Ott, one of the three principal investigators of the collaboratory and director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology.

In many cases, individuals diagnosed with HIV are treated

through antiretroviral therapy, but because of HIV’s ability to exist in a latent state within cells, it often returns once the treatment is removed from an individual’s system.

Currently, HIV is considered an incurable disease — which is where collaboratories like HOPE play an essential role.

“HIV is a particularly tricky one,” Susana Valente, another of the collaboratory’s principal investigators and an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at the Scripps Research Institute’s Florida campus. “It’s very smart. It evolves quite rapidly. It’s a hard nut to crack, but I think we are in a great place now with this collaboratory to address a lot of questions and try to make a really big advance in terms of progress in the cure for HIV and in the functional cure or eradication altogether.”

Studying HIV can be especially challenging because as a human virus, it can only infect and express fully in human cells, according to Kumar. This aspect of the virus has made studying its pathogenic effects in other animal species difficult. Kumar is set to play an important role in this project through research conducted at her lab.

Kumar’s lab has developed a method of generating human immune systems in mice to cre-

YALE DAILY NEWS

ate “humanized mice.” These mice could provide a venue for testing possible HIV cures created by other labs in the collaboratory. These potential applications are what caused Kumar to be recruited for the project.

“Scientists from Gladstone, Scripps and Rockefeller were put-

ting together a collaboratory to use CRISPRs and similar gene therapeutic mechanisms to cure HIV,” Kumar said. “They found my lab to be an excellent platform to fit in because we can test their molecules. We can use our delivery systems, and we can essentially come together to develop the

next generation of biologics that can potentially be used to target the provirus, the virus that’s sitting in the genetic material.”

Kumar will participate in other aspects of the program as well. The HOPE Collaboratory has adopted the motto of “block, lock and excise” to describe its approach toward finding a cure for HIV. The goal is to “block” the virus by preventing it from replicating and then “lock” the virus in this silent stage so it cannot resume activity. The last step is to “excise” it from the body with strategies developed by Kumar’s lab using CRISPRs, which are molecules used to modify organisms’ genes. “[Kumar] is really the one who is instrumental in spearheading this research focus and is one of the leading authorities in modifying and using gene therapies to tackle HIV,” Ott said.

Valente also highlighted the importance of Kumar’s contribution, in saying that she is “an amazing investigator” and already has a lot of helpful tools for this kind of research in her lab, such as the humanized mice and CRISPR technology.

Approximately 37.9 million individuals were suffering from HIV as of 2020, according to HIV.gov.

Contact ELIZABETH WATSON at elizabeth.watson@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

Yale astronomer leads team in the study of an ultra-hot Jupiter

BY NICOLE RODRIGUEZ STAFF REPORTER An international collaboration, led by a Yale astronomer, studied an exoplanet of similar size and mass to Jupiter with significantly higher surface temperatures.

The planet, TOI-1518b, belongs to a category of gas giant exoplanets, commonly referred to as ultra-hot Jupiters, that are characterized by their high atmospheric temperatures and orbital proximity to their host stars. It was initially detected in late 2019 by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, which has aided in the discovery of other exoplanets. Samuel Cabot GRD ’24, a graduate student in Yale’s Department of Astronomy, along with colleagues at other institutions, studied the exoplanet in detail after its initial detection with the help of Yale’s Extreme Precision Spectrometer, EXPRES, which peered into its atmosphere.

“We saw that [TOI-1518b] was a great target, so that’s when we decided to observe [it] pass in front of its star, which is called a transit,” Aaron Bello-Arufe, a Ph.D student at the National Space Institute, told the News. “We can observe how the light of the star filters through the atmosphere of the planet as a planet passes in front, and we used Yale’s EXPRES spectrograph, which … allows us to resolve the unique signature that each gas in the atmosphere of the planet has.”

According to Cabot, TESS constantly observes and maps large proportions of the sky, noting everytime a star in its view grows

dimmer — possibly signalling the transit of a planet. Once these exoplanets are confirmed, astronomers conduct further surveys with spectrographs on ground-based

“It’s important to emphasize the power of EXPRES because [it] was designed with the goal of searching for and measuring the masses of smaller planets but,

planets reach such high temperatures by closely orbiting stars with surface temperatures thousands of degrees higher than theirs.

On these planets there is a large

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

telescopes. Cabot and his group followed up on TESS’ findings in August of last year.

The team employed the help of EXPRES, which was developed

by Yale astronomer Debra Fischer and her group, which allowed them to separate the light emission of the transit into its color components. This spectrographic study confirmed the existence of the planet and the trace metals in its atmosphere.

thanks to its stability and very high resolution we’re also able to use it to study the atmospheres of planets like TOI-1518b,” Bello-Arufe said.

Ultra-hot Jupiters have temperatures upwards of 3,000 degrees, which is cooler than the majority of the stars in the solar system, according to George Zhou, a professor at the University of Southern Queensland and an author of the study. These

fluctuation between dayside and nightside temperatures, with a 1000 degree difference or higher.

Little is known about the atmospheres of ultra-hot Jupiters, and exoplanets in general, according to Zhou. However, studying this planet sheds light on the way global climate models work on these types of planets because astronomers can both hypothesize and measure the conditions on the surface.

Like other ultra-hot Jupiters, TOI-1518b orbits its host star in close proximity, with an orbital period of 1.9 days. At the moment, an explanation of its position in the system and origin has yet to be determined, but there are plausible theories. Cabot explained that ultra-hot Jupiters like this one could have formed near their host stars or further away from it and eventually migrated inwards.

He said researchers are currently attempting to determine which path is more likely.

TOI-1518b’s misaligned orbit could potentially provide insight on the planet’s origins. The Earth’s solar system exists in a well-aligned plane with the rotation of stars and planets within a disk. However, this particular planet has a misaligned orbit, according to Zhou. It is in retrograde orbit, rotating in the opposite direction of the spin of its star. He suggests that this could indicate that the planet did not initially form in the close surroundings of the star.

“We think what happened is that this particular planet experienced some kind of a pinball interaction with the planets that were formed around it, or with nearby passing stars,” Zhou explained. “And got kicked in its current orbit and, over time, that orbit went from a comet-like ellipse into a very, very close hugging planet orbit that we see today.”

The paper was published on Aug. 25 in the arXiv Preprint Repository.

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

Black children more likely to be physically restrained in emergency departments, study finds

BY JASMINE SU CONTRIBUTING REPORTER A recent study from the Yale School of Medicine found that Black children are more likely to get physically restrained in emergency departments than children of other races, even after accounting for socioeconomic factors.

The study, published in the journal “JAMA Pediatrics” this month, found a disparity in physical restraint use between Black non-Hispanic children and white non-Hispanic children, where Black children were 80 percent more likely than white children to be physically restrained during emergency department visits. Researchers used seven years of data from 11 different emergency departments in New England — amounting to over 500,000 pediatric emergency department visits. The study highlights the urgent need to address structural and implicit racism in hospitals, its authors said.

“Even when we controlled for people coming in with the same mental illness and the same problems, just being Black alone significantly increases your risk [of getting physically restrained at emergency departments],” said Ambrose Wong, a physician-scientist in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Yale and senior author of the study.

Black adults are also more likely to be physically restrained than other racial groups in emergency departments, based on a previous study also conducted at the School of Medicine. The new study showed that this racial disparity is even wider among children than among adults.

Black children are 80 percent more likely than white children to be physically restrained in emergency departments, according to the study.

Physical restraints are meant to prevent harm to patients and medical staff. They are used on agitated or aggressive patients as a last resort, only after other attempts

to verbally calm and understand the patients have failed, according to Wong. However, when alternative measures do fail, patients are strapped down to their beds at the wrists and ankles. The process usually involves

While the threshold to use physical restraints on children is higher than it is for adults, interpersonal racism can implicitly influence how medical staff behave around Black children, according to Destiny Tolliver ’12 , lead author of the study.

ver said. Black children are sometimes brought into the emergency department by the police. Studies have long shown that Black communities are overpoliced and the use of handcuffs by law enforcement resembles the use of physical restraints in the medical world, Tolliver, citing that both have the same appearance of control.

Structural racism can also play a key role, Wong said. He cited that a lack of secure housing, lower income, less access to

ANASTASIA SHILOV/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

five to six staff but can involve up to ten or twenty staff, depending on the situation, Wong said.

“There is a tremendous impact, what we call ACEs, Adverse Childhood Experiences, or psychological trauma that happens when we physically and or pharmacologically restrain children,” according to Marc Auerbach, a professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine at the School of Medicine.

“My concern is, are we trying a little less hard to verbally de-escalate Black kids?” Tolliver said. “Are we feeling a higher perception of threat with Black kids? Those are examples of interpersonal racism that could lead us to shorten these steps that are supposed to stop us from needing physical restraints.”

The perception of Black children as “difficult to control” goes beyond the medical setting, Tolli-

mental health resources and childhood trauma associated with these experiences can all put Black individuals at a higher risk of agitation, which is often accompanied by symptoms of depression, grief, irritability and nervousness.

Policies and regulations on the use of physical restraints in hospitals have always existed.

Currently, staff at Yale New Haven Hospital go through an

eight-hour class on de-escalation when they start their jobs and attend additional four-hour trainings every subsequent year, according to Lawrence Siew, the medical director of the YNHH Children’s Emergency Department. Clinical staff also receive training on the use of physical restraint every other year. In the last five years, however, there has been a shift in focus for hospital training, according to Auerbach.

“Our shift now has been not ‘there’s an agitated patient, how can we restrain them?’ but [rather,] ‘there’s a patient who’s starting to show signs of impending agitation, how can we intervene and do either environmental de-escalation or activities-based de-escalation?’”

Auerbach said.

Pediatric medical staff across YNHHS are now being trained to identify early signs of agitation, such as boredom, and prevent these signals from escalating to aggressive behaviors, according to Auerbach. In 2019, the YNHHS also started hiring so-called “milieu counselors” in emergency departments, who are responsible for understanding patient triggers and for helping patients who show signs of aggression.

Moving forward, the research team will work to understand how they can reduce the use of restraints for all kids, according to Tolliver.

Tolliver added that the team is also considering a qualitative research study to better understand medical staff members’ perception of “threat and what is happening institutionally or in the clinical moment that leads to the use of restraint.”

Physical restraints have a history of causing patient deaths in psychiatric wards, with an estimated one to three deaths every week across the nation in 1998, according to the Hartford Courant.

Contact JASMINE SU at i-shin.su@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

THROUGH THE LENS

O

n Saturday, Yale’s chapter of the fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha gathered on Cross Campus for a performance, where I was captivated by an entire new layer of the group’s focus on character empowerment and uplifting brotherhood. Their clean choreographed stepping, loud chants and beautiful display of unity were absolutely moving.

The space, community and people were a “solace for mutual respect and understanding,” said Jaelen King ’22, Zeta Chapter president of Alpha Phi Alpha Incorporated. “It’s different from a lot of organizations because it’s a space that can be embracing and comforting but at the same time, challenging in a way that allows you to be better.”

Speaking to King provided insight into the core values of the fraternity. Its members created a powerful atmosphere beneath the steps of Sterling Memorial Library that I truly believe has never been created before. The gentlemen of Alpha Phi Alpha beautifully energized Yale.

REGINA SUNG reports.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 11

“A false friend and a shadow attend only while the sun shines.”

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN FOUNDING FATHER OF THE UNITED STATES

Bekenstein ’80 appointed senior trustee of Yale Corporation

BY PHILIP MOUSAVIZADEH STAFF REPORTER Joshua Bekenstein ’80 is the newest senior trustee of the Yale Corporation, the University’s highest governing body.

Bekenstein has served as a trustee since 2013, where he was the chair of the Corporation’s School of Medicine committee and Development and Alumni Affairs committee. The senior trustee is selected by University President Peter Salovey in consultation with the other trustees on the Corporation, and Bekenstein will be succeeding Cath-

arine Bond Hill GRD ’85, who served in that role from 2018 until the end of her most recent term on June 30.

“Josh Bekenstein brings a lifelong love for Yale to his role as senior trustee, as well as exceptional long-term service to the university,” Salovey wrote in an email to the News. “From the time of his appointment as a trustee in 2013, he has lent superb judgment, true collegiality, and sustained focus to the work of the Board.”

Bekenstein spoke with the News about his past service on the Corporation, what he hopes

YALE NEWS

In his new role, Josh Bekenstein ’80 will oversee the University’s upcoming capital campaign.

to achieve in the role of senior trustee and what he considers to be the most significant challenges facing the University in the coming years.

“It’s really the job of the senior trustee, to listen to the other trustees, and coordinate with Peter [Salovey] to make sure that we spend our time together effectively, talking about the most complex, biggest issues University has, so that the Board will be aligned with management,” Bekenstein said. “And once the decision is made, you know, you need the Board and the management team to be all focus[ed] and agreed on the direction.”

He further described the role of the senior trustee as an interlocutor between the trustees and their varied concerns and the President’s Office, while also keeping the group “organized and structured.” Crucial to the role of senior trustee is understanding the relationship between the Board and the management of the University, Bekenstein said.

“The relationship between the Board and management is fascinating, because on the one hand, the Board is ultimately responsible for the big decisions, whether it be a university or a hospital or for profit business,” he explained.

“But obviously, the Board isn’t

running the business, or the hospital … the university is being run by the management team. And so it’s very important to have the right level of involvement.”

Bekenstein pointed to his predecessor, Hill, as a model for a successful senior trustee. In recognizing the true role of the Corporation, Hill kept the group focused on the important longterm strategic issues of the University, rather than micromanaging every issue that appeared on their radar, he said. This is especially difficult in an era when the news moves much faster due to the internet — so that element of the Senior Trustee’s role is particularly important, he added.

In particular, Bekenstein commented on the way the Board approached the issue of the pandemic.

“The management team did an amazing job, I think of getting Yale open, keeping it open, keeping it open safely and dealing with everything,” Bekenstein added.

“And we as trustees … didn’t try to micromanage … in any way.”

In an email to the News, Hill further described the role of a senior trustee in maintaining the balance of roles between administrators and the Board.

“The senior trustee works with the president to ensure that

the Board is working effectively to support the university’s mission and priorities,” she wrote.

“The senior trustee also works with the president and other members of the administration to help the university engage the trustees in ways that leverage their experiences and expertise to benefit the university.”

As Bekenstein enters his role as senior trustee, one of the Board’s main focuses will be the upcoming capital campaign, which is still in its silent phase but is entering its public stage in October. Bekenstein will serve as a co-chair of the campaign.

Salovey noted the significant role the campaign has in the future of the University.

“Yale’s campaign is designed to ensure the next big step forward for the university, and its conception benefited greatly from the careful consideration of the Board as a whole,” Salovey said. “As the campaign enters its public phase, having Josh actively engaged in its execution as a campaign co-chair will be of great value.”

The Yale Corporation will meet five times in the coming academic year.

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

Local vaccination campaign hopes to increase youth vaccination rates

BY SAI RAYALA AND SADIE BOGRAD STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Alongside free pizza and live music, the New Haven Health Department hosted a “Rock the Vax” event on Saturday to encourage young people to get COVID-19 vaccines.

The event took place in the 333 Valley Street Center: An Intergenerational Organization, Inc. — nicknamed “The Shack” — and is one of the many vaccination clinics held in Ward 30 throughout September. The Health Department organized the event in partnership with Griffin Health and Ward 30 Alder Honda Smith to target youth living in the ward.

According to the New Haven’s COVID-19 website, only 37 percent of New Haven teens aged 12-15 have received their first dose of any COVID-19 vaccine, and only 30 percent have received their second dose.

“When [Alder Smith] reached out to us for this partnership, we thought, this is ideal for us to be able to provide education to parents, encourage parents to get vaccinated if they’re not, but then also be able to make sure that we have the parental consent for the youth as they’re getting dropped off,” New Haven Health Director Maritza Bond told the News.

Robb Blocker, a Clinic Charge Nurse for the Health Department, said that the Department has used a variety of strategies to incentivize vaccination in the community and to “show our appreciation” to individuals who get vaccinated. In addition to live music and free food, other events have offered free backpacks, thermometers and gift cards. Carolyn Kinder, interim executive director of the 333 Valley Street Center, noted that these incentives lead to higher attendance on weekends particularly, when students do not have school and parents often do not have to work.

The Health Department has also encouraged vaccination through methods such as social media messaging and billboard and mobile advertising. Ward 30 resident Jerrell Meritt told the News that he regularly distributed flyers around the neighborhood and went live on social media to encourage others to attend vaccine clinics. Smith has tagged residents individually on Facebook to personally ask them to get their vaccines.

Bond has also orchestrated partnerships with New Haven Public Schools and organizations like City Angels, a nonprofit baseball academy, to directly engage youth in vaccine campaigns.

“It starts with the community and it ends with the community,” Bond said. “We want to engage the community to be part of this process so that we can be able to influence others.”

Despite these attempts, some vaccine skepticism persists in the New Haven community.

Blocker said that the rise of the Delta variant has prompted many people to get vaccinated but that there is still a small cluster of residents who are wary of the vaccine.

He believes that the community needs more education and conversations about the vaccine in order to improve vaccination rates across the city.

Smith also said that vaccination requirements to enter certain settings can play a role in incentivizing young individuals to get vaccinated. Ward 30 is currently planning to hold events for both young and elderly residents at the Shack in order to foster intergenerational partnerships. COVID-19 vaccinations will be required in the community center, which Smith said had encouraged some young people to change their mind about the vaccine.

Other residents discussed the importance of being direct and honest with people who have not been vaccinated. Merrit said that he had conversations with the

SAI RAYALA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Ward 30 Alder Honda Smith, health director Maritza Bond, Robb Blocker and Carolyn Kinder (left to right) stand inside the center during the event. young kids in his neighborhood that have been hesitant in the past, but usually “come around” to getting vaccinated.

“You’ve got to talk to them straight up,” Meritt said. “You know, you’re gonna have some symptoms [from the vaccine], but not as bad [as if you had COVID].”

According to the New York Times Coronavirus tracker, 66 percent of the New Haven population is fully vaccinated as of Sept. 20.

Contact SAI RAYALA at sai.rayala@yale.edu and SADIE BOGRAD at sadie.bograd@yale.edu .

New Italian restaurant Villa Lulu opens on College Street

GOOGLE MAPS

Villa Lulu, the creation of famous New Haven restaurateur Moe Gad, brings contemporary Italian cuisine to College Street.

BY LUCAS GIMBEL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER New Haven’s newest Italian offering opened last week in downtown.

Villa Lulu, the product of seasoned restaurateur Moe Gad, opened on Wednesday at a ribbon-cutting ceremony outside of the restaurant’s location at 230 College St. The modern Italian eatery, which boasts a diverse menu of pastas, salads and classic Italian entrees, is Gad’s second restaurant on College Street and his third in the Elm City.

The new restaurant opens in a Yale-owned location that was occupied by Queen Zuri’s New Orleans Delicacies until 2019. Gad, an Egyptian immigrant who moved to New Haven in 2006, also owns Pacifico, a tapas bar a building down from Villa Lulu, and Tomatillo, a Mexican joint on Broadway. None of Gad’s restaurants, in New Haven or elsewhere, are Italian. With Villa Lulu, he decided to break that tradition.

“There was a need for an Italian restaurant in downtown New Haven,” Gad said.

Some of New Haven’s more famous Italian restaurants — pizzerias Sally’s and Pepe’s, which have been tourist destinations for decades — operate half a mile off campus in the Italian-predominant Wooster Square neighborhood, Gad said. He hopes Villa Lulu will find its niche in the downtown area.

To start Villa Lulu, Gad reached out to former Tarry Lodge head chef Dennis Markovich. Tarry Lodge, a longtime destination for upscale Italian food that is

located across from Davenport College on Park Street, closed in June, leaving Markovich on the hunt for new opportunities.

Markovich, who was born in Belarus, fell in love with Italian cooking after immigrating to the U.S. as a child. And at Villa Lulu, he is putting his skills to the test.

“It’s not your typical pizza-pasta place,” Markovich said, emphasizing his goal for Villa Lulu to be sophisticated but comfortable. “We wanted to make something different … [yet] keep it classic.”

As such, his menu centers Italian classics like bucatini amatriciana, veal marsala and chicken scarpariello. But each dish has a modern twist. Markovich highlighted Villa Lulu’s octopus as an example of this — a staple of Italian cooking that he has modified with local ingredients.

Like Markovich, Lauren Zucker, associate vice president at the University’s Office of New Haven Affairs, is bullish about Villa Lulu’s future.

Zucker mentioned that Yale, which owns the space occupied by two of Gad’s restaurants, Pacifico and Villa Lulu, has had a “long and fruitful relationship” with Gad after working with him for over 17 years.

Zucker said that Gad’s businesses have helped advance the University’s community investment agenda.

Villa Lulu alone, she said, is expected to create around 20 jobs for the city.

Gad told the News he is excited to be launching his newest venture at a Yale-owned location.

During the pandemic, he said crucial investment from Yale during a difficult period proved to him the value of their relationship. Last spring, Gad said, this support kept Pacifico afloat. With Yale’s help, Gad was able to reopen the restaurant for outdoor dining in May after a short closure.

Despite the lingering difficulties of the pandemic, Gad is energized about Villa Lulu and about his future in New Haven.

“What I love about this town is that every year, I get a new customer,” Gad said.

Villa Lulu is open Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays from 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. It is closed on Mondays.

Contact LUCAS GIMBEL at lucas.gimbel@yale.edu .

PAGE 12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

“I don't Twitter, I don't MyFace, I don't Yearbook.” BILL BELICHICK PATRIOTS HEAD COACH

Men’s soccer team downs BC 2-0

Gianchandani wins for eighth time W. GOLF FROM PAGE 14 ment. We were physically and mentally stronger and able to last longer than the other teams out there. The pin positions were very tricky but we were able to stay patient and work hard until the very end.”

Yale won the tournament by three strokes over host Boston College. The tournament consisted of three rounds played over two days with the best four scores of each team’s five members counting for each round.

Yale’s team this week consisted of Gianchandani, Alexis Kim ’25, Sophie Simon ’25, Coco Chai ’23 and Kaitlyn Lee ’23. Amy Zhang ’24 competed as an individual.

There are nine golfers in total on the squad.

“I really enjoyed representing Yale for the first time this week,” Simon said. “There was definitely a little added pressure now that I am playing as part of a team, but thankfully I got off to a strong start in the first round. It is such a great feeling to begin the season on a win and it definitely gives us some momentum going into the Princeton Invitational.”

Kim had a solid first outing with the Bulldogs, finishing tied for second place, only four strokes behind her teammate Gianchandani. Simon also had a great first tournament — she was eight strokes behind the leader and placed tenth overall.

Over all three rounds, the Elis led the field in total birdies with 37 and eagles with two as well as par-four and par-five aver-

ages of 4.13 and 4.93 strokes per hole, respectively.

“I’ve been looking forward to competing with them since last spring,” Lee said. “Over the past year I was able to play in several individual tournaments, but competing with my teammates at Yale brings out a new kind of excitement. Being able to feed off of each other’s energies and having that extra support system of positivity and encouragement fuels a new level of competition.”

The women’s golf squad looks to build on its success when they travel to New Jersey to compete in the Princeton Invitational this Saturday and Sunday.

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

LUKAS FLIPPO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

In 2019, the Blue and White fell to Boston College 3-0 in the opening round of the NCAA Division I men's soccer tournament.

M. SOCCER FROM PAGE 14 ball downfield. As the Eagles’ goalkeeper stepped up, Carroll tapped the ball to Zahiroleslam, who had easy work to tally his fifth goal of the season.

In front by two with just eight minutes remaining, the Bulldogs weathered a flurry of shots by the Eagles to maintain the clean sheet.

For Okpoye — the only senior on the roster — the game celebrated a long journey back to the pitch. Okpoye’s years on the Yale squad have been marked by a

series of injuries, including lower body surgeries and a concussion, he told the News postgame.

Okpoye said that defeating the Eagles in his return felt like “poetic justice” — he last donned the Blue and White in November 2019 when the team fell 3–0 at Boston College.

The Bulldogs visit No. 20 Akron this Saturday at 7 p.m.

Contact DREW BECKMEN at drew.beckmen@yale.edu and ALESSA KIM-PANERO at alessa.kim-panero@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF LAUREN HARLING

Rookie Alexis Kim ’25 (left) finished tied for second at the women’s golf team’s first tournament since March 2020.

Yale XC seeks to stand out in Beantown

Yale earns first win of season W. SOCCER FROM PAGE 14

YALE ATHLETICS

The Yale cross country teams are looking to use Beantown to prepare for November regionals.

XC FROM PAGE 14 This year, the field consists of schools like Santa Clara, Duke, Columbia and more. The NCAA Division I Cross Country Northeast Regional Championships, which occur two weekends after the Ivy League Cross Country Championship, also take place at Franklin Park this fall. The best teams from that race advance to the NCAA National Championship, so the Yale teams are hoping to use Beantown to prepare for regionals in November, according to Miranda.

“This course should be a good preview of what we can expect [at regionals] — the goal is to qualify regionals to nationals,” Miranda said.

Men’s runner Cade Brown ’23 told the News how he has a personal goal for Beantown — he is hoping to bounce back from a recent knee injury with this race.

“I was one of the unlucky few who did not get the chance to race at all during the past 18 months, so I just want to prove to myself that I can still be a valuable part of the team,” Brown said. “I definitely want to take this opportunity to improve my position overall.”

Looking ahead to the rest of the season, the men’s team has one of its deepest teams so far —

there are seven first years and 10 sophomores on the roster of 26 runners. These young athletes have started to leave their mark: Sean Kay ’24, Varun Oberai ’25 and Elon Abergel ’25 placed second, third and fourth on the team, respectively, at HYP. “We’re all really proud of them because they seemed to have all really stepped up, both on the course and in the locker room, keeping the positive culture we’ve been building,” Miranda said. “I really think the underclassmen presence on this team is a huge part of our success so far.”

There is also significant depth on the women’s team, which features a strong veteran core and a number of talented younger runners. The team has five first years and nine sophomores, according to the team’s official Yale roster. This year has been unprecedented in that there are several sophomore athletes who are competing at a collegiate level for the first time as a result of seasons canceled last year due to the pandemic. Still, Taryn Sheehan, Yale women’s cross country head coach, spoke positively about the team’s camaraderie.

“The team chemistry this year has definitely been very exciting,” Sheehan told the News.

“It’s been great to see them all together. There’s been a lot of

energy. It’s been competitive, but in a very healthy way. The [runners] are doing a great job at making each other better at practice every day.”

Sheehan also praised individual performances on the team from HYP, especially from the upperclassmen. She noted that senior captain DeLay, who competed at the U.S. Olympic Trials over the summer, “came out strong and will be defending her Ivy title this fall.” Sheehan also mentioned that “this has been a big year” for senior Zoe Nuechterlein ’22 and applauded the performance of Maddie Ghazarian ’22, who she said competed in her first race in five years at HYP. “We're looking [forward to] using our depth and each other to our advantage,” Sheehan said about the upcoming race in Boston. “The goal will be to run as a team and continue to progress throughout the race.”

According to the most recent U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Regional Rankings released on Sept. 20, the Yale women rank ninth in the Northeast Region, while the men’s team sits in 15th.

Contact WEI-TING SHIH at wei-ting.shih@yale.edu and YUSUF RASHEED at yusuf.rasheed@yale.edu .

SJU made an effort to stay on the attack, with a wide shot made by Frederique St. Jean, a high shot by Jessica Garziano and an attempt by Emily Purtell, saved by Yale goalkeeper Annie Welch ’25. In the 38th minute, midfielder Rebeka Róth ’25 made an attempt on goal after another corner kick by Yale.

Finally, in the 44th minute, forward Emily Yin ’22 took the ball up the middle of the field and passed to forward Alanna Butcher ’25 on her right, who avoided a defender and crossed the ball to forward Mia Grillo ’22 inside the 18-yard box.

Grillo then made a one-touch kick to top shelf, earning Yale its first goal of the game.

“Defeating a strong team like St. John’s felt amazing and, of course, really good to finally get our first win,” Grillo said. “We’ve deserved it for a while now [and] a win like that took all 31 of us to be bought in.”

The Bulldogs started out the second half with Teik taking a shot, saved by Lipkins. In the 50th minute, Welch saved another shot on goal by SJU’s Garziano. A few minutes later during a free kick on a foul, Laureano made an off-angle direct hit into the upper corner on the opposite side of the goal, raising Yale’s tally count to two and marking her first goal of the season and third of her collegiate career.

In the 61st minute, a series of turnovers led to three wide shots: one by Yale defender Nana Yang ’25, the second by Thunderbird Brooke Boyd and the final by Bulldog defender Giana Pittaro ’23. Yet, the scoreboard remained at 2–0.

In the final five minutes of game play, officials issued yellow cards to Grillo and Winkler. Winkler closed out the match by blocking an SJU attempt on goal in the final minute.

“We finally clicked and had a great team win,” Teik said.

“Every player contributed and we got a result.”

By the end of the game, Yale took six corners, in comparison with SJU’s two, and Welch made a total of two saves.

After a series of losses, the Bulldogs’ win against St. John’s comes at a critical point, with conference play commencing next weekend and games against Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth and Cornell in the coming month.

“As Ivy League play starts, it’s a new season,” Martinez said. “It was great to get some momentum and confidence heading into conference play.”

Yale will face Princeton on Sept. 25 at Princeton Stadium in New Jersey for its first matchup in Ivy play.

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

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

The game was head coach Sarah Martinez’s first win leading the team since she took over in December 2019.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 13

NEWS

“When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.” THOMAS PAINE POLITICAL THEORIST

Elicker prepares to face off against Carlson

JESSIE CHEUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Elicker set to face off against the first Republican candidate for New Haven mayor since 2007.

BY SYLVAN LEBRUN STAFF REPORTER For the first time since 2007, a Republican — New Haven Republican Party Chair John Carlson — will be on the ballot for New Haven’s mayoral election this November, challenging incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker.

Elicker announced his bid for reelection in January, touting his administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Two months later, Karen DuBois-Walton, president of Elm City Communities, launched an exploratory committee and later a full-fledged campaign for the Democratic Party nomination. After months o f s p i r i te d ca m pa i g n i n g , DuBois-Walton dropped out of the race in late July, leaving Elicker to accept the party nomination.

New Haven’s Republican Party nominated Carlson to challenge Elicker at a committee meeting on July 22. Carlson is a 52-yearold public school teacher who has been the party chair since last year. Carlson, like Elicker, has partnered with New Haven Democracy Fund, which provides

public financing for candidates who abide by their fundraising guidelines. Carlson had received a total of $29,148 from the Democracy Fund as of the Sept. 15 meeting. In comparison, Elicker had received around $61,000 in grants and matched donations, according to Democracy Fund Administrator Alyson Heimer.

“I feel it’s important to bring two parties — two working parties — back to the city so that we have a true democracy,” Carlson said. “A one-party rule is not good for the city. Almost all of the seats go completely unchallenged, and I want to change that.”

New Haven had its last Republican mayor in 1953.

Carlson’s Platform Carlson told the News that his original plan was to run for Ward 6 alder, a seat currently held by Carmen Rodriguez, but he then decided that he could “impact change to a much greater extent” by challenging Elicker for mayor. This competition, Carlson said, is already bringing to light certain issues that he believes were previously going unaddressed by Elicker.

In particular, Carlson’s campaign is centered around the recent trends of increasing violent crime in New Haven. He is calling for a greater police presence in the city.

“I would hire more officers, increase patrols, make officers more visible on their patrols and install dash cameras in all NHPD vehicles,” Carlson said. “It’s better for the officers and better for the public if everything the police do will be recorded. … the good police, the solid majority of police, can be relieved knowing they don’t have to worry about false accusations.”

On Tuesday, the Board of Alders Public Safety Committee voted to authorize the purchase of 147 new dashboard cameras and 825 new body-worn cameras for NHPD. In addition to fighting crime, Carlson told the News that he hopes to reform New Haven’s public education system. He said too much money is invested in the Board of Education’s administrative offices, and he believes some of those funds should instead be diverted into making sure that no students are left behind in the classroom.

Carlson also contested the city’s mask mandate in indoor spaces, for which the Elicker administration recently launched a crackdown. Carlson claimed that he would not “force” them unless required by the state or federal government.

In a statement to the News, Elicker pushed back against Carlson’s suggestion.

“It’s important not to politicize masks or other science-backed policies,” he wrote. “We implemented the city mask mandate because the science is clear that masks significantly impair the spread of COVID. And we are seeing results as our cases go down.”

Contributions from the New Haven Democracy Fund Both Elicker and Carlson have received financing for their campaigns from the New Haven Democracy Fund, the Elm City’s public elections financing program.

According to Heimer, who spoke at the fund’s Sept. 15 meeting, contributions between $10 and $390 from registered New Haven voters are eligible to be matched by the fund. Grants are also awarded based on the fulfillment of specific criteria, including limits on campaign expenditures.

“Carlson submitted 229 names of registered New Haven voters who gave more than $10 and less than $390, the maximum allowed contribution,” Heimer said. “We went through and matched those contributions, according to our guidelines. And because he has raised more than $5,000, and also has received contributions that qualify from over 200 individuals, we are going to give him the grant, which is worth $20,000.”

In addition, Democracy Fund guidelines necessitate that candidates participate in at least one public forum. The fund is in the midst of organizing a debate between Carlson and Elicker, for which Heimer

gave the tentative date of Oct. 19 at the Shubert Theater.

The mayor told the News that he looks forward to the debate as an opportunity to address questions that are on the minds of New Haveners. He also said that the existence of a serious Republican challenger indicates a positive trend in local democratic participation.

Elicker’s second term agenda items Elicker’s campaign for reelection has primarily consisted of ongoing door-knocking efforts across the city; similarly, Carlson said that his strategy is to “pound the pavement.”

Like Carlson, addressing gun violence is at the top of Elicker’s platform. However, he disagrees with Carlson’s assertion that increased policing is a fundamental solution to this problem. He told the News that his team is taking a “multi-pronged approach” that includes investing in outreach workers, youth programming, reentry centers and mental health services.

“While we have increased police walking beats and reinstated the shooting task force to solve shootings, it’s important to underscore that these challenges around violence cannot be addressed in the long-term through policing, but must be addressed by confronting the underlying issues stemming from systemic racism and the underfunding of services,” Elicker wrote to the News.

Other agenda items Elicker mentioned include increasing opportunities for affordable housing, addressing the city’s racial wealth gap and appropriating funds from the American Rescue Plan.

New Haven’s municipal elections will take place on Nov. 2.

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

Yale extends weekly testing policy through October

BY SELIN NALBANTOGLU CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The University has extended its COVID-19 testing requirements for all students through the month of October.

Melanie Boyd, dean of student affairs and associate dean of Yale College, announced in a Sept. 15 email that mandatory testing for all students will continue through the month of October. The University had originally planned to maintain its testing requirement — weekly for fully vaccinated students and twice a week for partially vaccinated or exempt students — through the month of September. The testing requirement was extended as a precaution, following weeks of low rates of infection within the Yale community, according to the emails.

“We expected that there would be some sporadic cases on campus,” Boyd wrote in an email to the

News. “The goal is to avoid outbreaks and the community has done that so far.”

According to the University’s COVID-19 dashboard, approximately 99.2 percent of Yale undergraduates are vaccinated. The University as a whole is currently at a yellow alert level, which means a “low to moderate” level of COVID19-related risk. On the day of Boyd’s email, there were no positive COVID-19 tests, according to the dashboard. There were eight positive tests for students — two undergraduate and six graduate and professional school students — from Sept. 15 to Sept. 21, the most recent available weekly data.

In her email, Boyd attributed the University’s ability to continue holding in-person classes and programming to students’ cooperation with the COVID-19 guidelines. The administration decided to extend the testing mandate because of its effectiveness at curbing outbreaks.

Spangler said that the University made the decision to extend the weekly testing requirement for vaccinated undergraduate students based on advice from public health experts.

“These experts have found that regular monitoring for what are often asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic infections among vaccinated individuals is an important measure to prevent further transmission of COVID19 in our campus community,” Spangler wrote to the News.

As such, the extension of the testing policy is not indicative of a higher incidence level of positive cases, but rather a precaution which will allow the University to lessen other restrictions, Spangler said.

Both Boyd and Spangler also commented on the impact that the flu season may have on Yale’s COVID-19 testing guidelines.

According to Boyd, the current

testing mandate is reviewed regularly and is subject to change.

“Given overlapping symptoms, flu season may lead to an increase in symptomatic testing and we are planning for that,” Boyd wrote. “Students … should continue to monitor for mild symptoms — even mild symptoms are cause to self-isolate and schedule a symptomatic test, which is available every afternoon at Rosenfeld [Hall]. If symptoms persist after a negative test, students should contact Student Medicine.”

One student, Max Bamberger ’25, said that extending the testing mandate helps him feel safer interacting with their peers.

“I feel much safer hanging out in groups and meeting new people with the knowledge that everyone I’m interacting with (as well as myself) has tested negative recently,” Bamberger wrote.

In her Sept. 17 email, Spangler

also included information about flu season at Yale. The University is offering flu shots to all members of the community through the “Find Your Flu Shot Tool.” She wrote that all students are required to receive their flu shots as a part of the Community Compact that they signed over the summer before coming back to campus.

The extension of the testing requirement comes amid shifting guidelines on events and gatherings — while the broader capacity limit on campus gatherings remains at 20 people for indoor gatherings and 50 people for outdoor gatherings, the University relaxed restrictions for student groups on Sept. 22, lifting capacity requirements altogether in some situations.

Students can schedule their COVID-19 tests through MyChart.

Contact SELIN NALBANTOGLU at selin.nalbantoglu@yale.edu .

M SOCCER Providence 3 Brown 0

M SOCCER UConn 1 Dartmouth 0

SPORTS

W SOCCER Princeton 4 Delaware 0

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

MEN’S SOCCER: Bulldogs blank BC M. SOCCER

LUKAS FLIPPO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The Bulldogs defeated Boston College 2–0 in their second match of the year at Reese Stadium.

The Yale men’s soccer team blanked Boston College 2–0 on Tuesday night at Reese Stadium, extending its home win streak that began in fall 2018.

The Bulldogs (3–2–0, 0–0–0 Ivy) played their second home match of the season under the lights at Reese Stadium, picking up a convincing 2–0 result against the Eagles (3–3–1, 0–0–0 ACC). After controlling the pace of the game for much of the first half, the Blue and White converted on a chance in the 36th minute as forward Paolo Carroll ’23 finished a pass from midfielder Sigfus Arnason ’23. Yale fans had a second reason to cheer soon thereafter, as 2020 captain Enzo Okpoye ’22 returned from injury for his first game of the season. In a slower-paced second

F HOCKEY (OT) No. 9 Maryland 4 Princeton 3

FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE goydn.com/YDNsports Twitter: @YDNSports

FOOTBALL BULLDOGS HOST CORNELL After falling to Holy Cross, Yale football returns to the Bowl for its first Ivy game this weekend. The Elis host Cornell, who fell to VMI last week, Saturday at noon. For more, visit goydn.com/ YDNsports.

SOCCER PRINCETON, AKRON AWAIT ELIS Yale women’s soccer starts Ivy play at Princeton Saturday, while the men’s soccer team plays at Akron, the 20th-best NCAA D-I men’s soccer team in the United Soccer Coaches’ ranking.

BY DREW BECKMEN AND ALESSA KIM-PANERO STAFF REPORTERS

F HOCKEY Syracuse 1 Cornell 0

half, Carroll picked up an assist in the 83rd minute on a breakaway.

The Brazilian forward passed to his teammate and forward Kahveh Zahiroleslam ’24, who tapped the ball into the open net to seal the victory.

The contest against the Eagles was a rematch of the Elis’ final game they played before the pandemic. In 2019, the Blue and White fell to Boston College 3–0 in the opening round of the NCAA Division I men’s soccer tournament.

Two years later, the Bulldogs came out on top while securing their first shutout of the season.

“I thought we played really well in the first half, but I think in the second half we needed to do a better job keeping the ball and have a little bit more composure and maturity,” Yale head coach Kylie Stannard said standing on the pitch postgame. “But [I’m] incredibly proud of how we just dug in and grinded it out. The

shutout is huge for us because it is something that we value.”

Yale retained control for much of the first half. Forwards Carroll and Eric Lagos ’24 pressured a shaky Eagles’ defense to help maintain possession in the opposition’s half. The Bulldogs earned five corners before eventually finding the back of the net in the run of play. In the 36th minute, Zahiroleslam whipped the ball across the field with the outside of his right foot to find Arnason, who fired the ball across the face of the goal and connected with Carroll, who calmly slotted it past the Eagles’ keeper for his fourth goal of the season.

The Elis showed off a new defensive lineup in the shutout. Defender TJ Presthus ’25 moved from the left side of the defense to the center — his natural position from his days at Columbus Crew Academy — to play alongside Jeremy Haddock ’23. Playing at left back, first-year defender Gelber Lemus ’25 started his first collegiate game to round out the back line alongside right back Jake Schaffer ’24. Presthus commanded the defense with Haddock en route to the clean sheet.

The Elis also held their opponent to zero shots in the first half.

“It’s what we aim to do every single game, and it’s something that we’re super proud of,” captain and goalkeeper Elian Haddock ’23 said when asked about the shutout. “It’s really what our program is about.”

After returning from an injury sustained earlier in the second half, Carroll sparked Yale’s second goal of the match. With eight minutes left in the contest, he picked off a risky pass across the Eagles’ back line and carried the SEE M. SOCCER PAGE 12

“The joy felt by our entire team ... was something I will never forget. We’ve been getting closer and closer to putting together a full performance.”

SARAH MARTINEZ W. SOCCER HEAD COACH

WOMEN’S GOLF: Yale wins BC Invite

BY EUGENIO GARZA GARCÍA STAFF REPORTER On Tuesday, the Yale women’s golf team secured a victory in its first tournament back together as a team.

W. GOLF The Bulldogs could not have asked for a better start to their season after winning the Boston College Invitational. To add to her laurels, Ami Gianchandani ’23 continued her dominant performance donning the Blue and White, winning individual honors for the eighth time at Yale, according to the first-semester junior. The women’s golf team started hot on Mon-

day in the first round, scoring a team tournament best of 289, and they did not relinquish their lead from there. This was the first victory for head coach Lauren Harling as well as the first team win since April 2018 at the Navy Invitational, according to the third-year coach.

“After almost two years of being away from competition, there was so much excitement and buildup to this first tournament back which made it all the more special to be able to win it as a team and have individual first and second place finishes,” captain Gianchandani said. “Our toughness is what carried us through the tournaSEE W. GOLF PAGE 12

COURTESY OF LAUREN HARLING

Ami Gianchandani ’23 (third from left) took first place at the Boston College Invitational on Tuesday in Yale’s win.

CROSS COUNTRY: Yale teams WOMEN’S SOCCER: Yale defeats St. John’s prep for Battle in Beantown

BY AMELIA LOWER STAFF REPORTER

The Bulldogs won their first game of the season last Sunday in a 2–0 matchup against St. John’s University. The Blue and White will look to extend the winning streak as they head into Ivy play next weekend.

W. SOCCER The Bulldogs (1–7–0, 0–0–0 Ivy) faced the Thunderbirds (4–2–1, 0–0–0 Big East) at Reese Stadium, for Yale’s fourth home and final non-confer-

ence game of the season. The Yale women’s soccer team led throughout the game and outshot Saint John’s 10–6.

“The joy felt by our entire team on the field post-game was something I will never forget,” head coach Sarah Martinez said.

“We’ve been getting closer and closer to putting together a full performance, and today was a great showing by our team.”

St. John’s entered the game off a 3–0 win against the University of Delaware on Sept. 9 and a season of strong shooting, firing 13 shots in their previous 4–0 game against Lehigh on

Sept. 2. They also defeated New Jersey Institute of Technology on Aug. 19 and Saint Joseph’s University on Aug. 22.

The Bulldogs started off the game with a corner kick and shot by forward Tina Teik ’25 in the eighth minute. Another corner was inserted in the 15th minute by midfielder Chloe Laureano ’24, and midfielder Ellie Rappole ’25 took a shot, ultimately blocked by the Thunderbirds. Forward Ellery Winkler ’23 took another shot in the 18th minute, which was saved

by SJU goalie Naya Lipkens.

SEE W. SOCCER PAGE 12

YALE ATHLETICS

The Battle of Beantown, which is held in Boston, brings together college teams from across the United States.

BY WEI-TING SHIH AND YUSUF RASHEED STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER This Friday, the Yale men’s and women’s cross country teams will travel to Boston for the Battle in Beantown and face off against 23 other collegiate teams.

XC The Battle in Beantown is an annual race that brings together college teams from across the nation to compete at Franklin Park in Boston. The Elis will be competing in the women’s featured five-kilometer race at 3 p.m., the men’s featured eight-kilometer race at 3:30 p.m. and the combined

open five-kilometer at 4:15 p.m. on Sept. 24.

“I do expect us to continue competing for that top 25 percent of the teams ideally, so that’s where we want to shoot for minimally and then go from there,” Yale men’s cross country head coach Paul Harkins said in a phone interview with the News. “The training has been going well, and we want to see how much progress we’ve made since HYP.” The Bulldogs are looking forward to building on momentum from HYP, where Robert Miranda ’22 and Kayley DeLay ’22 both won their first races of the season at the annual trimeet against Ivy League rivals Harvard and Princeton.

STAT OF THE WEEK

SEE XC PAGE 12

4.93

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

On Sunday afternoon, the Bulldogs conquered St. John’s in a 2–0 game at Reese Stadium.

THE TOURNAMENT-LEADING PAR-FIVE AVERAGE OF THE YALE WOMEN’S GOLF TEAM AT THE BOSTON COLLEGE INVITATIONAL ON MONDAY AND TUESDAY.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

WEEKEND // ANASTHASIA SHILOV

Blank Space Sometimes, you don’t have to try to be art

// BY PHOEBE LIU Sunlight filters through the windows of Hendrie Hall and projects asymmetrical squares onto a white painting on the opposite wall. I can see the moving shadows of people outside by the parking lot as they walk toward the building’s entrance.

They’re little dark spots that grow, then shrink, then disappear.

Next to the all-white painting, someone has mounted a label that reads “effay: albino cow in a blizzard.” Below the title, the card gives the viewers more information: oil on canvas, 2017.

Four years and most — hopefully — of a pandemic later, the all-white painting hangs on. And if it weren’t for the label, no one would know that it’s there.

Square.” But unlike Hendrie Hall’s albino cow, these other paintings’ titles do not superimpose any kind of image onto the canvas. They instead allow us to project our own emotions onto it. Through our imagination, we, as viewers, make something that isn’t there into our own work of art.

But by having a title that evokes a concrete image, Hendrie Hall’s “effay: albino cow in a blizzard” removes that freedom of imagination, challenging our preconceptions of an abstract, all-white canvas.

The title tries to force us to see a cow. If you stare long enough, that is. “There’s a cow, but there’s no cow.”

“Do people notice it?”

“Not really, but I think that’s the point.”

“I like that it’s here, but I would be annoyed if I saw it in a museum. I think it’s just kind of funny.”

“I’m just surprised that it’s so clean. I wonder if every year, they take a roller or something and paint over it again.” Don’t they do that with the walls, too?

Which was immediately followed by “it’s bullshit, and you can quote me,” “I think it’s great” and “if it were in a museum, I might appreciate it more.”

Paintings like “effay: albino cow in a blizzard” aren’t unique. Several artists have created similar paintings: Kazmier Malevich’s “White on White,” Agnes Martin’s “White Stone,” Joe Baer’s “Untitled (White Square Lavender)” and Joseph Albers’s “Study for Homage to the

“It took me a year to realize that it was even there. Usually, when I’m walking through here, I’m just focused on where I’m going and don’t look around.”

Maybe it’s a painting for reflection — after all, white reflects all colors.

“I think it’s art, and I’m sure the artist had a purpose behind having a blank or white canvas. I just look at it and wonder, ‘why?’”

I didn’t think people would be so willing to stop and talk to me about this piece of art — music students are busy. The quotes above are from the morning of Jan. 30, 2020, when I sat on the wooden window ledge on the ground floor of Hendrie Hall facing what seemed to be a blank white canvas. I asked each passerby to take a look at the painting.

“What does it make you feel?”

I decided to do this after my friend asked me in December of 2019 to meet them in Hendrie Hall “in front of the painting,” I responded, “what painting?” She showed me. I didn’t know how to react.

Earlier that year, I listened to an episode of the podcast “99 percent invisible” called “The Many Deaths of a Painting.” It tells the story of “one of the worst crimes in contemporary art history,” where a man used a utility knife to slash the large canvas of Abstract Expressionist artist Barnett Newman’s piece “Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue.” He did this because the painting and its plainness evoked such a strong reaction. Then, a conservator, Daniel Goldreyer, was hired to restore the painting. After four and a half years, the painting was returned to its place in Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, where

a forensic test revealed that the conservator had used the equivalent of house paint and a roller to “finally and irrevocably destroy the work of art.” I looked at the little scratch marks and nicks in the otherwise-perfect wall. The albino cow stared back at me out of the white. I hope no one slashes the cow — if it even exists.

Near the end of my time in the building that morning, I asked Hendrie Hall’s security officer about the painting. She responded in the same way I did: “what painting?” I pointed it out to her on the surveillance camera screen, and we walked over together. We shared laughs and puzzled expressions.

“I don’t see any painting. It just looks like the wall,” she said.

“Is it art?”

“It could be.”

Maybe the painting isn’t meant to be art.

Or, maybe, it’s a practical administrative joke. But I wouldn’t tell you if it were; that’d ruin it. If “effay: albino cow in a blizzard” provokes such emotional and reflective reactions from those who pass by it every day, it is art — whether it’s trying to be or not.

Contact PHOEBE LIU at phoebe.liu@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND JOURNEY

// TORI LU

The Witch of the Mountain, Boundary-less Yamamba // BY CLAIRE FANG The title of this marvelous and intriguing anthology, “Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch,” edited by Rebecca Copeland and Linda C. Ehrlich, hints at the sheer scope and breadth of its content. Both prose and poetry (both translated from English to Japanese, and from Japanese to English) are on offer in this thorough exploration of the yamamba’s travels, from the Noh theater to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Voices from across the oceans and across disciplines (actors, professors and poets) intermingle and speak to each other through a variety of mediums such as interviews and commentary. The essays are fascinating, accessible and deeply informative, and the short stories build on each other to paint a wonderfully multifaceted picture of the yamamba: “like the natural stronghold that contains her — rocky ridges and soft glens — she is alluring, nurturing, dangerous, vulnerable.”

Our introduction, “Locating the Yamamba” by Noriko T. Reider, defines

the yamamba and highlights her fundamental ambiguity (“One half of the yamamba’s genealogy goes back to goddesses, and the other half to oni.”

Oni are analogous to demons, can change gender and form, and sometimes attack humans). Once equipped to understand what role the yamamba played (and still plays) in cultural imagination, readers can dive into “Yamamba on the Noh Stage,” an interview conducted by Ann Sherif with Uzawa Hisa and her daughter Uzawa Hikaru, performers of the Noh play “Yamamba,” where a young dancer meets a real yamamba. Highly illuminating, the conversation yields insights on the Buddhist and philosophical viewpoint on the yamamba, and the unique qualities of performing a play about performance itself, about “performing Yamamba for Yamamba.” The final work in this anthology is also an interview: “Dancing the Yamamba: With Yokoshi Yasuko.” It serves as a fine conclusion and a response to the earlier interview, bringing in the voice of a contemporary dance artist performing in the West. The anthology ends by emphasizing the transgressive role of the yamamba and highlighting how the yamamba figure continues to inspire artists today.

Three short stories in this anthology focus on encountering the yamamba’s terrible, enigmatic or revealing smile. Two of those three center around a chance confrontation with the yamamba. “Blue Ridge Yamamba” by Rebecca Copeland and “An Encounter in Aokigahara”

by David Hollo-

way explore how the originally Japanese yamamba interacts with individuals outside of Japanese culture. Finally, “The Smile of the Mountain Witch”

by Oba Minako brings in the yamamba’s own perspective — a particular yamamba raised in human civilization, who lives and dies among humans.

Much like how the second interview responds to the first, these stories also are engaging in a conversation with each other about the yamamba.

Each has a unique perspective; “Blue Ridge Yamamba” depicts how the yamamba emancipates a woman trapped in an unfulfilling marriage, stressing the gender-transcendent nature of the yamamba. “An Encounter in Aokigahara” has the suicidal protagonist, K, take pity on the seemingly old and frail figure of the yamamba and from that pity regain the will to live, only to be attacked by her as she ceases to cry for help. And “The Smile of the Mountain Witch” illustrates the childhood of a yamamba born into the village, born into a gender-restrictive role but still with powers beyond that of an ordinary human woman.

“Yamamba’s Mountains”, a poem by Linda C. Ehrlich, reveals the core intention of the entire anthology itself: to find the yamamba, even though the yamamba is inherently nomadic.

“What is beyond understanding must be understood.

What is understood must never be forgotten.”

The yamamba’s body is not a human body, and does not follow the laws that govern human bodies. Still, artists and authors and actors attempt to capture the movements of the yamamba, to describe the yamamba in ways we can understand, even if that understanding is necessarily limited.

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

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND SONGS // RACHEL ZHU

Views From the Summer of a Migratory Bird // BY GAMZE KAZAKOGLU “On a planet nearby, All the things I’ve forgotten of Each like separate memories Are calling me back from their places” — Universe Reconstruction, Büyük Ev Ablukada This was the song that came up on shuffle as I was returning to my home city, Istanbul, this past June, and for the first time in my life, I felt like a song can express you better than you can ever express yourself. I knew that it wasn’t only going back home for me because as Heraclitus once said, “You cannot step into the same river twice, for other waters are continually flowing on,” since the only constant is change. But it just always feels like I’m going to different worlds culturally, socially, language-wise and of course physically, all across the North Atlantic Ocean.

I knew I was going to be bombarded with questions from family and friends like “How is life in America?” (which I never know how to answer), similar to ones I receive about Turkey at Yale. I won’t lie, it often feels quite empowering, sort of adopting the role of the wing-sandaled messenger god Hermes, but it is always confusing to find an answer to what to do with an identity on flux that is inside of me. Back home, I’m an abroad kid talking in a Turco-English hybrid language.

Here at Yale, I’m an international struggling with English and trying to adapt to American culture. At the moment when “Universe Reconstruction” came on shuffle, with a sudden sparkle of inspiration, I decided to stay in Turkey for the entire summer (everything was remote anyways) and embark on a musical odyssey and see where my memory would take me: to decide what to keep with me and what to leave behind.

Out of habit, I continued with the songs that I used to listen to in America. Because I knew that my dad would already know artists like Sufjan Stevens, Simon & Garfunkel and Elliott Smith (because I still maintain my childhood belief that he secretly knows everything), I decided to save the ones we always listened to together for him and opened them for my mom instead on our car trips. By the end of the summer, even though she doesn’t understand what they say, she turned to me one day and said: “I’ve learned these songs now, I will listen to them when you are gone and remember these moments.” At that instant, I knew that going forward I could only listen to

those songs with her or alone. When Herman Dune’s “My Home is Nowhere Without You” started to play, I turned to her and said that this should be our song then. Her smile was even more beautiful to simply be a dream as the sunshine illuminated our faces. This was one of the moments I knew I would carry with me forever.

When I went to the third house that my dad had moved into in two years, I found a very pretty sea view waiting for me on the balcony. I secretly wished he would still be in that house when I came back again. The house was different, but our routine was the same: I stole a few things from my dad’s Tolstoy, Kundera and Yalom collections, we cooked some vegan pastries, we traveled to my favorite district, Kadıköy (which is also where he spent his entire childhood), we went into some indie shops that had decorations from all across the world and we had beer and fries in our favorite communist cafe. I again inquired things about his past and love life to make him uncomfortable and see the shy smile he always tries to hide. Though, what made these moments familiar rather than a distant memory or a novel experience was of course the music on the background: our bipolar mood in the car, which swings between either Malmsteen, Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Guns N’ Roses or Max Richter, Mozart, Schubert, Armand Amar, Karunesh and other kinds of meditation sounds. Ironically, as we passed by the beautiful forests of the turquoise Aegean coast that would soon perish in the Mediterranean wildfires, we were listening to Ludovico Einaudi’s “Burning” from his “In a Time Lapse” album.

When I went back to my mom’s again, I couldn’t wait to see which shade of purple, pink or blue my airy childhood friend’s hair was, as they change it every month. Out of a coincidence, we ran into each other during the crazy quarantine period of early 2020 and linked back at that instant. I was once again drawn into their world that consisted of selftaught Chinese to study in China, the addiction of watching old, dusty or indie festival films and clothes with various alphabet letters and anime-characters. As they couldn’t go back to their university due to China’s travel restrictions, their obsession with neo-Turkish psychedelic rock increased, which echoes the voice of being trapped in a country where human rights and life quality decrease day by day. We listened to the voice

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of loneliness as we looked at the Tarot cards under a smoky red light to “create the bonding atmosphere” within our friend group: “Beautiful things Quickly die, leave and decay Expectations Pull you to their own swamp I hope not even a dust of me remains in this place I hope that no one remembers me in this place” (Dust, Jakuzi) At that moment, I wondered if it was beginning to listen to these songs back in the day that made me such an individualistic person. How does music influence a person and a generation’s character? Later, I passed by the old record stores, second-hand booksellers, thrift shops, chaotic Middle Eastern bazaars, stinky bars that serve drinks to underage children, the longing voices coming from the taverns, 1000-year-old historical silhouettes from the Byzantine and Ottoman past and hopped on a ferry to watch the free seagulls that flew across the gray-blue sea in the tangerine sunset. Cem Karaca’s adenoidal voice from the 1970s accompanied me as I remembered my childhood thrill and hope for the future when Gezi Park protests, a wave of demonstrations and civil unrest to contest the development plan for Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park, erupted back in 2013 on my way to the area. Karaca was deploring the conventionality of the class divide within society. While artists like Karaca became the voice of protest, rebellion and hope as they depicted the idiosyncratic views of everyday people and the life of a collective society, it felt like Jakuzi and others reflected the inner world and dichotomies of an individualistic generation-Z persona of the 21st century: The boss came, slapped my back, and said “forget the novels” “You’re a worker, stay as a worker,” he said, “wear your overalls” (Mechanic Apprentice, Cem Karaca) It was funny to have cheap ’90s-00s Turkish pop along with trippy electro and house together as the background music at the highlight of my holiday, since when one travels to the Mediterranean coast with friends in the summer, this incompatible combination is doomed to happen. The

sound of music mixed with that of the salty waves and plied between the bonfires of the beach clubs and our dances in trance under the starry night sky. It was simply paradise, yet, all of a sudden, I found my eyes searching for my high school friend whom I don’t speak to anymore. I remembered our holiday in these exact places and, for the first time, confessed to myself how I still miss him. I’ve filled my fingers with new memory rings, surrounded myself with different faces, got a new tattoo on my belly, acquired the archetypal woman haircut that marks the transition from childhood to adolescence and it has been two years now. Maybe my tendency of rushing to move on became an artificial suppression mechanism that I did not have a control over anymore. Maybe that was also the reason why, even if I went to the other corner of the world, America, how our fragmented friendship was going to remain somewhere inside me for a long time.

When I hopped on the plane on my way back to Yale, I began to listen to my “Last Moments” playlist once again as I watched the cotton-candy clouds resting on the most hopeful shade of blue.

As the moments of memory and contemplation hit me all at once, I decided to play “Universe Reconstruction” to let it guide me once again. It is always mesmerizing to see which part of something we pay attention to when our perception changes, which maybe explains why somehow only these lines stayed with me this time: “I have to start from somewhere Pictures, faces, riddles whose birthday was it today The guitar I forgot in the taxi, the key to the house They constantly haunt my dreams Bread crumbs in the forest The noise of the day, the consolation of love whose problem is this who is not at home Are all the illusions that I imagine mine I will find them all One by one I will put them back to their places One by one” Contact GAMZE KAZAKOGLU at gamze.kazakoglu@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SETPEMBER 24, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND READING

// ELIZABETH WATSON

It is the Book, and Juliet is the Kindle // BY ANNIE SIDRANSKY Three years ago I won a Kindle in a raffle, and I was disappointed. I’d vaguely hoped to win a gift card, but then my name came up as the grand prize winner and I felt like an absolute fraud going to pick up my prize. I was a physical book person. I liked the feel of a hardcover in my hands and wanted to watch my progress as I turned a page. A Kindle was something I would never use — I re-gifted it later that week.

This past spring I was on a leave of absence, and in all of that glorious time I had, I decided to read… a lot. On average I was reading about two or three books a week, and the stacks of books I had sitting on my desk were enough to rival the height and instability of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

It was hard to keep up with my trips to the library, so it only took a gentle suggestion from the internet and an Amazon gift card to prompt me into buying a Kindle. And what a life changing purchase that was.

Any book I wanted, right at my fingertips.

The ability to run errands with an entire library in my purse.

A built-in dictionary for words I didn’t know.

It was waterproof.

There was even dark mode.

I’d seen the light. As have many others.

Mahesh Agarwal ’24 got his first Kindle as a birthday present when he was in the 5th grade, and he’s used one ever since. He enjoys the convenience of an e-reader as well as the physical ease of holding it while reading. As a longtime Kindle user, he’s also been able to see the developments in infrastructure surrounding e-books. Apps like

OverDrive and Libby, which allow public library users to borrow e-books for free, have expanded the accessibility of e-reading.

And e-books themselves haven’t just become more accessible — they’ve made reading more accessible as well. “I have a friend who grew up in Liberia where there are not many physical books, and so the internet for him has been a huge resource in bringing reading to people who didn’t have it before,” said Agarwal.

It’s not just novels that have become easier to procure online either. All three of the students I talked with said that regardless of their general preference for e-books or physical books, they’ll at least sometimes get textbooks online. Online textbooks are nearly always more affordable than physical textbooks, and are sometimes even free. It’s also less strenuous to carry a laptop than a brick around in your backpack.

Still, despite the wonders of an e-reader and e-books in general, I haven’t completely switched over. The beauty of my bookshelf is something I’ll never be able to let go of. The undiluted joy I feel when browsing a bookstore is irreplaceable. The convenience of directly highlighting, note-taking and drawing pictures (i.e. little happy faces) with my own hand makes buying the physical versions of my school books common sense.

This isn’t a debate as black and white as the printed words on a paper.

Sean Pergola ’24 described the capability of physical books to tell a story beyond the written words inside their pages. When you hold a book you’ve read before, you can

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reminisce about where and when you first read it. Picking up a Kindle, NOOK or iPad is unlikely to provoke such memories.

Physical books also allow for new stories to be created through annotations. Pergola described a used copy of Kant’s “Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals” he bought for a class, which ended up having four or five different sets of annotations in different colored pens. It was a story in and of itself, seeing how other people interacted with the same text. Used books hold so much possibility in this regard, in addition to being easy to find. “The concept of that is absolutely amazing,” said Pergola.

Sofia Diggins ’25 spoke to the significance of annotations in physical books as well.

“It’s almost like a diary when you annotate a book,” she said. Looking back on her annotations in books allows her to reflect on her mindset and thinking from when she was reading. It also reminds her that “any book is possible to read,” an idea which she reflects upon fondly when thinking back to her reading of “A Tale of Two Cities” in 9th grade — a book which she annotated every page of and still owns.

Agarwal said that he finds it easy to annotate e-books, and that it’s nice to be able to see all of his notes in the same place. Annotating e-books tends to be a more individual experience, though, because they are never “used.”

Kindle does allow readers to see commonly highlighted passages, but perhaps e-reading could become a more social experience if it also allowed for readers to post public comments. Wattpad — a website and

app where writers can publish their original stories — enables users to post comments both inline and at the end of chapters.

Maybe if popular e-reading platforms such as Kindle enacted this feature, it could help to lessen some of the isolation physical book readers experience with e-books.

But really, this is all simply a discussion of preference. Of the three Yalies I spoke to, each one was able to talk extensively about the pros of their non-preferred medium of reading. Each side has their benefits, and how you choose to read does nothing to diminish the amazing fact that you’re reading!

Besides, who knows how technology will continue to change the definition of a book.

Maybe the blending of different forms of media will help to make books more immersive. Maybe music, virtual reality, audio recordings and things we can’t even imagine will make the e-book vs. physical book debate seem like inconsequential old news.

Maybe there will be pushback to those developments, and maybe they’ll never fully catch on. At the end of the day, though, we all just have to take a step back and realize how absolutely incredible our capacity for language and storytelling is.

If you told me three years ago that I would become a Kindle lover, I would have laughed.

People can change. Technology can change.

But no matter how the world may change, reading could never go out of style — no matter its medium.

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