Yale Daily News — Week of Sept. 3

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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · VOL. CXLIII, NO. 28 · yaledailynews.com

Despite flooding and outages, Yale forges ahead with classes

BY ROSE HOROWITCH STAFF REPORTER

COURTESY OF MATTHEW MEYERS

Water seeps through the carpet in Bass Library on Wednesday night due to the remnants of Hurricane Ida.

After more than a half foot of rain pounded Connecticut late Wednesday into Thursday morning, Yale continued with the second day of classes despite ongoing power outages in several classroom buildings and residential colleges.

Remnants of Hurricane Ida slammed parts of the Northeast, including New Haven, late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning. By 8 a.m, once the storm had cleared, the power remained down in numerous campus buildings, according to an email sent to faculty and students on Thursday morning from Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun; Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Tamar Szabó Gendler; and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Lynn Cooley.

Specifically, classroom buildings up Hillhouse and along Prospect Street — including A.K. Watson Hall, Henry R. Luce Hall and Rosenkranz Hall — did not have

Yale-NUS College to close in 2025

YALE DAILY NEWS

National University of Singapore will restructure curriculum into “New College,” removing Yale’s name from the often-contentious joint liberal arts college.

BY ROSE HOROWITCH STAFF REPORTER

According to an NUS statement, the new program will allow more Singaporean students to access a joint liberal arts and specialized education. Cohorts will double from 250 to around 500 students, and students will learn the common curriculum and be able to access more pre-professional offerings.

Yale-NUS College was founded in 2013 with a mission of collaboration to provide a liberal arts education in Asia. But controversy clouded its creation, particularly due to the authoritarian government that rules the island nation

Yale-NUS, an often-controversial collaboration between Yale and the National University of Singapore, will close its doors in four years.

This July, NUS President Tan Eng Chye GRD ’89 declared his intent to establish the “New College,” which will merge YaleNUS College with the NUS University Scholars Programme, an existing interdisciplinary initiative. Yale’s name will be removed from the institution.

Students in McClellan Hall moved to Omni McClellan Hall on Old Campus an email on Friday stating that the students will be relocated to the Omni Hotel for “at least the first

BY JULIA BIALEK STAFF REPORTER On Friday afternoon, Yale University sent undergraduate students who were slated to live in

SEE MCCLELLAN PAGE 5

SANYA NIJHAWAN/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The change, announced five days before the start of the fall semester, is affecting 49 students in mixed-college housing.

and restricts some speech. Since its inception, Yale-NUS has been primarily funded by the Singaporean government. Yale repeatedly drew ire from critics who claimed it did not clearly articulate guidelines for free expression and nondiscrimination, and for putting its name on an educational institution beyond its control. But Pericles Lewis, vice president for global strategy and Yale-NUS’s founding president, said that Yale was pleased with the collaboration and was not the proponent of its dissolution.

Salovey similarly underscored Yale’s pride in the partnership.

“Yale takes great pride in the accomplishments of Yale-NUS College—a pioneering partnership between two leading universities to create a residentially based liberal arts college,” University President Peter Salovey wrote in a statement. “In the eight years since the College admitted its first class, it has become one of the most highly selective institutions of higher SEE YALE-NUS PAGE 4

would be closed for the remainder of the day. The sites at the Schwarzman Center and 150 York St. would continue operating.

People who could not reschedule a canceled test would not be penalized for the delay in adhering to their testing schedule, she wrote.

Melanie Boyd, Dean of Student Affairs, wrote in a campus email that Yale’s central messaging systems were working unevenly as of Thursday morning, and potentially causing communication challenges. The deans confirmed that classes would continue, but that courses held in the affected buildings should meet over Zoom or be rescheduled to another time.

In a 1 p.m. follow-up email, the deans clarified that classes should not take place in the affected buildings for the rest of the day, regardless of whether the power came back on. They added that people should only enter the buildings, some of them research facilities, to retrieve items and secure equipSEE FLOOD PAGE 4

FAS Senate gets faculty input on in-person teaching

BY MADISON HAHAMY AND ROSE HOROWITCH STAFF REPORTERS In-person learning at Yale is back for the fall semester — but not all faculty are on board with what they say is a unilateral policy that ignores social distancing guidelines or those with vulnerable family members.

Last week, University officials sent a memo to faculty that allows them to teach remotely for the first week

if it is “impossible” to teach in person; however, longer-term accommodations remain hard to come by, prompting some faculty concern.

The FAS Senate recently sent out a survey to faculty, which will close this Friday, that allows them to anonymously share their opinions regarding in-person teaching.

“We have heard concerns from some faculty and we wanted to SEE CLASSES PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS

The University Provost clarified accommodation policies and mask guidelines ahead of the term’s start.

Admin stands behind in-person classes

BY ROSE HOROWITCH STAFF REPORTER In a Thursday panel, University leaders outlined the layers of public health precautions Yale will take for the fall semester, designed to limit coronavirus infections to no more than five percent of the student body throughout the 180day period.

Last spring, the University announced plans for a fall semester that would more closely resemble a standard term and said that the semester would be between “10 and 90 percent normal.” Since then, ninety-six percent of students and about 90 percent of faculty and staff are fully immunized against COVID-19. But due to the emergence of the highly transmissible Delta variant, the University has added in testing, contact tracing and masking protocols, as well as restricted social gatherings.

CROSS CAMPUS

INSIDE THE NEWS

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 2020.

SUMMER

Yale libraries expanded their reach across the globe this year due to the COVID-19. Students studying remotely, though unable to use library spaces, recieved access to nearly all library materials through various services provided by the University.

power for much of the day. Several residential colleges — specifically Benjamin Franklin, Silliman, Pauli Murray and Timothy Dwight Colleges — also did not have power as of the email update. An email from Timothy Dwight Head of College Mary Lui explained that there are standing flood waters in Yale’s Central Power Plant and that entryways G and H in the college experienced particularly severe damage. Some students in those entryways were relocated to temporary housing due to a ceiling leak, University spokesperson Karen Peart told the News.

By 4:30 p.m., power had been restored to all campus buildings except for Dow Hall, Dunham, Tsai CITY and Warner House, according to a Yale Alert. There is no timeline for the power to come back on in those buildings, the alert continued.

Madeline Wilson, Director of Yale’s COVID-19 Testing and Tracing Program, wrote in a 12:15 p.m. email that testing sites at 60 Sachem St. and 109 Grove St.

Read a recap of stories published online in the News this summer: the School of Drama went tuition-free, Yale hired a new Chief Investment Officer and more.

Page 6-7 RECAP

KAREN LIN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

In a Thursday town hall, University leaders expressed optimism for the term but left open the possibility of a more transmissible variant emerging.

On Thursday, one day before Yale welcomed the first-year class to campus, University President Peter Salovey held a town hall with Yale’s health and safety leaders to explain just

SCHWARZMAN

The Schwarzman Center opened its doors on Wednesday, and students will now be able to experience the center’s many gathering spaces and arts offerings.

Page 9 ARTS

COVID

Yale recorded more positive COVID-19 cases this term than the corresponding period last fall as students return to in-person classes after 18 months of remote instruction.

Page 9 UNIVERSITY

how typical the fall term might be and comment on additional COVID-19 possibilities for the semester.

SEE ADMIN PAGE 5 MAYOR

Karen DuBoisWalton has ended her campaign for New Haven mayor, leaving incumbent Justin Elicker as the sole Democratic candidate.

Page 13 CITY

PAGE 2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION “Me” in mental Health care’s melting pot health M O

ne of the most pivotal and — tragically — controversial topics surrounding the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo was that of mental health. Two especially prominent figures in their respective sports, Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka, made headlines as they dropped out of the running for their sports.

Critics were quick to denounce or even ridicule them for failing to perform up to expectations, and while the world pulled together to defend the athletes, there was still a vocal minority that continued to shame them for putting their mental health above their duty as athletes. And when Sha’Carri Richardson finished last in the Prefontaine Classic 100 Meter after being disqualified from the Olympics for testing positive for marijuana — a substance she claimed to have used to deal with the death of her biological mother — internet discourse boiled with snide comments about her attitude and talent. One such outspoken critic was sports radio host Ben Maller, who called Biles “selfish” and “the biggest quitter in sports” on his “The Ben Maller Show.”

As I watched the sports events of the summer unfold, I was struck by the common theme that unified these female athletes. Although they each had unique circumstances surrounding their withdrawal or disqualification from the Olympics, they were all prominent public figures with lofty, excited expectations from their large followings. And, in the painful context of their mental health, they each struggled with hateful commentary that took the women’s performances for granted and refused to regard them as actual human beings. At the end of the day, the core of the online hatred seemed to stem from a certain entitlement the public felt toward the athletes’ performance: The athletes “owed” them something in return for the support they had received over the years. This kind of reasoning, I fear, detracts from and mutates the original spirit of sports.

Games and sports have long been an integral part of society, providing an outlet for individuals to hone their bodies and skills, and test their limits while providing a communal space of entertainment for spectators. The entertainment — that obligation to please the crowds — should never come at the expense of the athlete’s health, whether it be physical or mental.

On the individual level, the top priority is almost never to please others, but instead to improve, challenge and train one’s own body and mind. It shouldn’t spark public and widespread rage for an athlete to confess about their struggles with mental health; it should foster thought-

f u l , sy m pa thetic conversation about public spotlights and the pressure it can impose on athletes, even as that spotlight BIANCA opens up aveNAM nues for huge n u m b e rs o f Moment’s fans. And those conversations Notice have certainly been started.

More and more people have begun to step forward to offer their support for these women.

These conversations need to be candid, open and understanding if we ever want to welcome an age of athletics where fans are true supporters who will stick through the thick and thin, and athletes can compete at peak condition with their minds at rest.

And maybe these conversations can be applied to us as well — college students just now starting a new semester after a year of online classes and social distancing. Our situation — weekly problem sets, midterms, essays, extracurriculars — is generally more mundane than the average Olympian’s, and we don’t have billions of people watching our every move, ready to cheer or boo or criticize. But we each have our own world of problems, our own set of expectations we have to meet, and all of this has an impact on our mental health.

I feel as if I am also, somehow, an athlete in life. I have the internal motivation to educate myself and become someone I could respect, but there is also the external motivation of meeting societal or even familial expectations. Recently, too many of my decisions have been impacted primarily by those external motivations. For me, the critical audience was in my head, hounding my choices and pressuring me to perform. But if there’s anything I learned from the Summer 2021 Olympics, it was that it’s okay to treasure and prioritize yourself, to reflect on the balance between your internal and external motivations.

Ultimately, without a strong internal motivation focused on the self, it can become too difficult to continue at all when external motivation betrays you.

Sometimes continuing on your current path can hurt you and keep you from embarking on future journeys, and that’s when you need to take a step back and breathe.

BIANCA NAM is a sophomore in Saybrook College. Her column, titled “Moment’s Notice,” runs on alternate Wednesdays. Contact her at hyerim.nam@yale.edu .

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any who have worked within the emergency medical service, or EMS, for any period of time would agree that EMS is imperfect. As a former emergency medical technician, or EMT, who worked for over five years servicing rural and suburban areas of Massachusetts, I can personally testify the dire state of our country’s 911 call force. As stated in the Institute of Medicine’s report on the future of emergency care in the United States, while EMS has made strides over the past few decades, “underneath the surface, a national crisis in emergency care has been brewing and is now beginning to come into full view.”

Just over a year ago, our nation’s emergency services joined hands with the greater medical community to address the COVID-19 pandemic. From New York City to Lake George, Louisiana, to Santa Clara County, California, tens of thousands of EMS providers worked tirelessly to provide lifesaving interventions and transportation services for the critically ill.

While we thank these providers with salutes during parades, discounts at shopping centers and accolades during conversation, society fails to support them with a living wage. The average EMT wage is less than $40,000 a year, which is comparable to the wage of an Amazon delivery driver. While both services are certainly important and necessary, one would think that the added risk of caring for the health needs of a community would award a higher salary.

Comparatively, other civil service workers such as firefighters and police officers not only earn substantially more — with starting wages of $50,000-60,000 — but have the added benefit of competitive retirement packages and pensions offered by the municipality. In order to receive these same benefits, many of my coworkers in the private industry regularly worked over 90 hours a week to meet their financial, retirement and personal needs.

The result was burnout. The American Ambulance Association conducted a survey in partnership with Avesta that was managed by

the Center for Organizational Research at the University of Akron. In this study, published JOSEPH i n 2 0 1 9, WILLIAMS the center found Contemplating that there is a 30 perhealth cent turnover rate for full-time EMTs and a 24 percent turnover rate for paramedics.

This translates to about 100 percent turnover within a four-year time period.

Why might this be the case?

Aren’t emergency medical services and medical companies deserving of the same wage and same benefits? Aren’t the educational requirements similar?

The answer to this question is multifaceted. While a high school diploma and certificate training are the minimums for all civil services, they are not federally considered equal. EMS is not considered an essential service by the federal government, and therefore, it does not receive the same financial support that police and fire services do. EMS is not prioritized, and the evidence is in the money. In New York City, for example, approximately $321.1 million was designated to emergency medical services in 2019, whereas four times that number — $1.4 billion — was designated for “Fire Extinguishment/Emergency Response.”

Consequently, communities have been forced to adapt. When one surveys the country for EMS and ambulance services, you will find structures that range from private for-profit, private nonprofit, volunteer, municipality, fire department-operated and arrangements of these options.

The simple explanation for this is that the industry at large is less developed. EMS is relatively young, starting in the 1960s and 1970s, whereas some of the other civil services have been around for hundreds

of years. The political bodies that fought for fire and police salaries and pensions had more uniformity than those that exist in EMS — EMS is relatively decentralized.

However, the infancy of EMS awards malleability. EMS as it stands today is very different than it was 20 years ago — ask any senior paramedic at your local 911 service; they will attest to this reality.

One area of growth that municipalities could benefit from while increasing funds to EMS workers would be a shift from focusing on acute disease and injury prevention to a broader public health focus.

Best said in “The Formation of the Emergency Medical Services System” by Manish N. Shah, associate professor of pediatric neurosurgery at the University of Texas: “EMS has the unique characteristic of caring for patients in their homes at unscheduled times. As a result, EMS providers can provide public health interventions, such as screening for diseases and injuries and evaluating home environments, notifying physicians and public health officials of identified deficiencies, and educating patients and family members on disease prevention during emergency responses.”

As the United States continues to battle COVID-19, with upwards of 100,000 hospitalized and over 1,300 deaths on August 31 alone, building the infrastructure for a field public health workforce has never been more necessary. Boston, one of the leaders in the direction of our nation’s EMS, has done just this with their Boston EMS Community Initiative.

The community must stand strong in supporting our EMS providers. Our state and federal governing bodies should recognize that EMS workers and the industry have the capacity to service our community with vital, lifesaving public health initiatives and therefore need greater funding allocation.

JOSEPH WILLIAMS is a MPH candidate in the Yale School of Public Health. His column, titled “Contemplating health,” runs on alternate Thursdays. Contact him at joseph.williams@yale.edu .

GUEST COLUMNIST SHI WEN YEO

When the dust settles Y

ale-NUS occupies a very strange place in Singapore. Quite literally, its campus is nestled in the heart of the National University of Singapore, NUS, but its buildings are starkly different from the rest of the university’s imposing, brutalist structures. Walking through the campus when I was a high-schooler, I remember marvelling at the elegant wooden structures cascading throughout the library, the manicured lawns which were as neat as a pin, and the breezy white towers housing the storied suites. I remember thinking to myself, how this place seemed like a fever dream, too good to be true.

Indeed, it was too good to be true. After a brief ten years of existence, NUS announced last week that it had admitted its last class, and that after the class of 2025 graduates, YaleNUS would cease to exist. The phrase “cease to exist” here is intentionally vague, because it is contentious about what exactly is going to happen to the college. A statement from President Salovey clarifies that the intention is “to merge Yale-NUS College with its existing University Scholars Program in 2025 to form a new and larger liberal arts college that will not bear Yale’s name”. Whether it is really a “merger” or a dissolution is still unclear and the technicalities of what will happen to the campus, its faculty is also up in the air.

In any case, the shock announcement was quickly followed with reactions of shock and outrage from members of the Yale-NUS community, with many condemning how sudden and “top-down” the decision seemed. Many took to petitions and Facebook to air their grievances and share what their college experiences meant to them.

At the moment, what seems very plainly evident is how quickly and swiftly the administration announced the decision, which basically forced students to, overnight, come to terms with the fact that their college was about to be erased from existence. The sheer lack of student involvement and participation in this discussion was also extremely lamentable. Most importantly though, there is a lingering sadness and anger that no amount of graduality or student involvement could ever have resolved, caused by the innately destructive act of erasure, the erasure of an entire community of learners and scholars.

As a Singaporean student studying at Yale, I want to disclaim here that I certainly do not represent the voices of the YaleNUS students themselves. I cannot even begin to comprehend or represent the feelings of outrage that they must be feeling. But as someone who has been blessed with the privilege of experiencing an excellent liberal arts education here in the U.S., a big part of me clings to a firm conviction that while Yale-NUS might not exist in name anymore, the idea of a liberal arts college in Singapore is not completely extinguished. And this extremely unfortunate development could even give us an opportunity to build back better.

Many commentators online have chimed in to argue why an exclusively Singaporean education, and exclusively Singaporean ownership could be a good thing for the college. Indeed, I personally do not know whether it would have been a good thing, in the long term, for the only liberal arts college in Singapore to bear Yale’s name. I think that while it was beneficial for attracting a large international student body and shoring up the

college’s reputation in the early years, the college has evolved beyond needing that extra global stage. Having external influences on the way the college is managed and taught could have adverse long run impacts on its flexibility to tailor to the local context. Shorn of its international obligations and associations, I think it is a good opportunity to start thinking about how the college can stand on its own two feet. It can build an even more solid foundation in the teaching and learning of Singaporean and Southeast Asian issues.

Aside from teaching and learning, I think this offers an important outlet for grooming local academics. While Singapore has long shone as a center for science and mathematical research, there is a dearth of local academics in humanities and languages. Liberal arts colleges are biomes where research in these areas flourish, and so I think the formation of a more “Singaporean” liberal arts college presents a valuable opportunity to groom local academics in those areas.

That Yale-NUS existed and was so suddenly dissolved is nothing short of an unspeakable tragedy, especially for the communities directly impacted.

Nothing will ever change that.

But I like to think also that there are also some legacies and best practices that will be inherited and co-opted into a future edition of the school. Suites, dining halls, overseas immersion experiences, all of it. That its existence was not in vain, and that its dissolution does not precipitate a collective amnesia of what it meant to have a liberal arts college in Singapore.

SHI WEN YEO is a junior in Morse College. Contact her at shiwen.yeo@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

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“There is a kind of latent omniscience, not only in every man, but in every particle.” RALPH WALDO EMERSON AMERICAN POET AND ESSAYIST

Ethnicity, Race and Migration to hire two tenure track positions

BY MADISON HAHAMY STAFF REPORTER Yale’s Ethnicity, Race and Migration Department plans to hire two tenure track assistant professorships beginning in the 2022-23 academic year — one in Latinx studies and one in Native American and Indigenous studies. Multiple departmental faculty hailed the move as a muchneeded result of years of student and faculty work building the program and fighting for its recognition.

The Latinx studies professor will join a field at Yale comprised of professors Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Albert Laguna, Stephen Pitti and Ana Ramos-Zayas, while the Native studies professor will join Ned Blackhawk on faculty. Both hiring searches have started will continue throughout this year, and both positions have an anticipated start date of July 2022.

“We are just thrilled to have two new junior colleagues in the dynamic and expansive fields of Latinx and Native Studies,” Latinx Studies department chair Ana Ramos-Zayas wrote in an email to the News. “To us, this shows how the dedication and struggle of ER&M students and faculty over the last several years has paid off. Yale ER&M is on its way

to gaining a national reputation as a leading scholarly and pedagogical hub for studies of ethnicity, race, migration, and all their complex intersections.”

The hiring searches come after 13 professors withdrew from the program in 2019, citing a lack of support from the broader university. Those same faculty rejoined months later after the University formally obtained five permanent faculty positions for the program.

Both of the hires will work under the larger ER&M major, as there is no formal Latinx or Native studies program. The hires will, however, allow for more courses in their respective areas, increase faculty representation and help meet student demand.

Albert Laguna, chair of the Latinx studies search committee, wrote in an email to the News that the major is one of the “fastest growing” at Yale, with classrooms “overflowing with students.” The new position, he added, will help strengthen the program even more.

Potential hires will go through a series of interviews, campus talks and recruitment dinners.

Ned Blackhawk, chair of the Native and Indigenous studies search committee, agreed with Laguna, noting that ER&M recently

went through “some dramatic stages of development,” referring to the 2019 withdrawals and protests that accompanied them.

Blackhawk said that currently, there is a particular challenge since most professors affiliated with the program have appointments in multiple departments and are expected to serve in some capacity in each program and major that they are affiliated with.

“All of that labor falls disproportionately on fewer shoulders than it should,” he said, adding that one of the needs of the growing Native American undergraduate field at Yale is a larger number of faculty leaders, who can “educate, mentor and guide [the program] into its fuller forms.”

Blackhawk is currently the only Native American FAS faculty member, as well as the first tenured American Indian at Yale, a challenge he said he has navigated “for quite some time.”

According to Blackhawk, this search is “an attempt” to expand his field of Native American studies, which he said will allow recent graduates to join “a very vibrant, global field of intellectual and academic concern,” and one that other schools, such as Duke University, are also engaging in.

YALE DAILY NEWS

Latinx studies and Native American and Indigenous studies at Yale under ER&M will each receive one new faculty member.

Matthew Makomenaw, director of the Native American Culture Center, emphasized how important Native faculty on campus can be, both for representation and course variety.

“I think it’s great, the investment into searching for someone to teach Native studies,” Makomenaw said. “I feel good about that. It will be really good for our community … and will really strengthen it all around.”

Tamar Gendler, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, noted that

the two hiring searches were two of 23 being conducted across the FAS humanities division this year. Other searches are occurring in African American studies, American studies, English, film and media studies, French, German, history, history of art, Italian studies, music, religious studies, Slavic studies, and Spanish and Portuguese.

Contact MADISON HAHAMYat madison.hahamy@yale.edu .

Tweed adds four Florida routes

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The new leisure routes are a departure from previous business hub destinations.

BY ISAAC YU STAFF REPORTER Escaping New England weather just got easier.

In early November, TweedNew Haven Airport will begin nonstop flights to and from four airports in Florida — Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa and Fort Myers — in a bid to attract Connecticut residents craving beaches and warmer temperatures. The routes, which were announced on Aug. 19, will be serviced by the Houston-based low-cost carrier Avelo Airlines.

Avelo, which currently operates a hub in Burbank, California, designated Tweed as its East Coast base earlier this summer.

“For decades people have been asking for more service out of [Tweed],” Tweed Director Sean Scanlon wrote on Twitter. “So proud to work with a great team to finally make new service a reality!”

Before the Florida routes are added, however, Tweed may once again be temporarily left without commercial flights, as it was last winter. Last November, American Airlines announced its decision to withdraw services from Tweed. American Airlines currently operates daily flights to Philadelphia International, but has not announced formal plans to continue service at Tweed past Sept. 30, when the pandemic-related federal stimulus dollars that are currently

funding the route run out. At time of publication, the airline has not sold tickets at Tweed for dates after Sept. 30.

Still, Avelo CEO Andrew Levy’s promise to remain for “decades to come’’ may offer long-term stability for the airport, which has struggled over the last two decades to attract new routes and airlines.

The airline’s 147-seat Boeing 737s will fly five days a week each to Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale, plus three and two flights a week to Tampa and Fort Myers, respectively. Tickets to all four cities will begin at $59, according to Avelo email advertisements.

Florida was the top choice destination for travellers in an online poll marketed towards New

Haveners with 6,000 respondents, Levy said at a press conference in August. The Sunshine State’s “wide appeal and low price points” make it the perfect first step for the airline, he added. Washington, D.C. was also mentioned as a possible future destination.

The airline and airport have already begun the hiring process for the 100 New Haven-based employees, including pilots, flight attendants and other operations positions.

Avelo’s arrival at Tweed is a crucial part of the $100 million investment deal announced last spring between the airport authority and management partner Avports, which has operated Tweed for two decades and also manages airports in Detroit and upstate New York. This deal would end New Haven’s annual subsidy to the airport, lengthen the runway to accommodate larger jets and build a new terminal in East Haven.

Those expansions still require approval by the City Plan Commission and Board of Alders this fall. However, many local officials, including Mayor Justin Elicker, have already voiced their support for the plans.

To accommodate the new flights, Tweed officials asked the City Plan Commission for approval on several more immediate projects, includ-

ing a $5 million renovation of the current terminal and new parking spaces. During the commission’s August meeting, City Plan Director Aicha Woods supported the move as an economic boon to the area, an argument echoed by other officials as well as business leaders.

“We… want to think about the role in growing jobs and opportunities for New Haven residents, and also opportunities for residents to travel,” said Woods.

Some residents, however, attended the hours-long meeting to oppose the expansion. According to the New Haven Independent, some argued that the expansion would damage the area’s wetlands and exacerbate climate change. These residents, many of them from Tweed’s surrounding Morris Cove neighborhood, have long opposed expansion of any kind. This summer, they organized as the “10,000 Hawks” to oppose the deal.

Still, the Floridian routes are not necessarily contingent on the wider expansion, Scanlon told the Independent, and will begin even if the renovations are not approved

by November.

Tweed-New Haven was renamed after airport director John H. “Jack” Tweed in 1961.

Contact ISAAC YU at isaac.yu@yale.edu .

Payne Whitney removes reservations, expands access to facilities

BY MELANIE HELLER STAFF REPORTER As of Monday, Aug. 30, students hoping to run, lift or swim at Yale’s Payne Whitney Gymnasium no longer need to book their exercise sessions in advance — as long as they are vaccinated and masked.

Last spring, students had to sign up for a time slot to exercise in the cardio or strength sections of the Israel Fitness Center and to swim laps in the third-floor pool. But with nearly all of Yale’s student population fully vaccinated — 98 percent, according to the University’s published data as of Tuesday evening — the gym’s reservation system is no longer in effect. Many of the other facilities in the 14-story space, such as the basketball courts at the Lanman Center, are reopening after being closed for 18 months.

According to restrictions listed on the gym’s website, the facility will only be open to fully vaccinated Yale students, faculty and staff. Masks are still required unless individuals are actively swimming, drinking or showering.

“As Yale faculty and staff reactivate their [Payne Whitney] memberships, we will be verifying vaccinations records on-site to ensure

they are fully vaccinated,” Ryan Hagen, associate athletic director for Payne Whitney Gymnasium and campus recreation, wrote in an email to the News.

By Sept. 7, all recreation spaces — including the Israel Fitness Center, Lanman Center, third-floor pool and fifth-, sixth- and eighthfloor activity spaces and studios — will be open. Several of these spaces were open this summer on a reservation-based system and remain open now. However, the Payne Whitney website specifies that the Brady Squash Center will remain closed until at least Oct. 1. While towel service will be suspended this fall, locker rooms and locker rentals will be available starting on Sept. 7.

Because vaccination is required for entry, everyone can participate in all activities, including contact games like basketball scrimmages.

During much of the pandemic, the multipurpose Lanman Center was used as a field hospital and vaccine clinic. Now, the space is back to housing hoops.

Hagen, who joined Yale Athletics this past July after working at the University of New Haven since 2013, said his department’s challenge continues to be “providing wellness opportunities

for our community while placing public health at the forefront of decision making.” Anthony Diaz, who was previously the senior associate athletic director of Payne Whitney Gymnasium administration and physical education, retired in August.

Hagen said that last spring, reservations for the pool and strength training typically hit capacity, while cardio reservations were typically only about 60 percent full. Students can easily run outdoors, he noted, while swimming and strength training require access to specialized equipment. With only 15 students allowed in each space per hour, gym reservations often had to be made several days in advance.

“It was tough [in the spring] to get an appointment and inconvenient to have scheduled one so far out,” Rachel Blatt ’23 told the News.

For the first time since the pandemic began, residential college gyms are also allowed to reopen this semester. According to Yale Environmental Health and Safety, both vaccinated and unvaccinated students can work out in their residential colleges, but only vaccinated students can play contact activities.

Ninety-eight percent of undergraduate students are vaccinated.

At the residential college gyms, students are allowed to exercise without a face covering if they are alone in the facility, but Yale’s rules specify that masks must be worn if another person is in the gym.

When there are multiple people there, students must maintain a 6-foot distance. With more exercise options on campus, Yale students are taking advantage of some renewed flexibility.

“I will definitely work out more at my residential college gym because it’s closer and more convenient than walking to Payne Whitney,” Blatt, who is in Silliman College, said.

For more information and updates, visit Yale’s Sports and Recreation website and Instagram.

Contact MELANIE HELLER at melanie.heller@yale.edu .

JESSIE CHEUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Payne Whitney Gymnasium is no longer requiring reservations but will only be open to fully vaccinated students, faculty and staff.

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

"Congress' passing of the omnibus spending bill without reading it shows more than anything why they can't be trusted." NEAL BOORTZ AMERICAN RADIO HOST

Flooding and outages persist into Thursday, most classes go on FLOOD FROM PAGE 1 ment. Due to ventilation concerns, they should not remain in the areas, the email continued. But the deans added that students in residential colleges that lost power could remain there.

The deans asked instructors to “be accommodating” to students who would face challenges arriving to class prepared. Boyd wrote that students experiencing flooding or the loss of connectivity could participate in classes from Sterling or Bass Libraries or another classroom.

The Yale Native American Cultural Center wrote on Twitter that it is open to all Yale students affected by the power outages.

The power outages began late last night and affected buildings and those in them through the morning. Peart said that no injuries among students have been reported due to the storm.

At around 12:10 a.m. on Thursday, all 14 of Yale’s residential colleges and Old Campus lost power.

Between approximately 1:30 a.m. and 2 a.m., power had been partially or fully restored to Benjamin Franklin, Berkeley, Ezra Stiles, Grace

Hopper, Jonathan Edwards, Morse, Pauli Murray, Pierson, Saybrook, Trumbull and parts of Old Campus.

Some colleges subsequently experienced further outages.

At 1:35 a.m., the University sent out a Yale Alert. The message urged students to stay in their rooms unless the water level required them to evacuate. It included a Facilities hotline that students could call.

Rooms in entryways G and H of Timothy Dwight College were badly damaged, according to Lui’s email. The college’s fire alarm went off at 3:30 a.m. Thursday was likely due to an electrical short caused by flooding, Lui wrote.

Yale Facilities declined to comment early Thursday morning.

New Haven Director of Emergency Operations Rick Fontana has been in “frequent and consistent communication” with Yale emergency services, New Haven spokesperson Kyle Buda told the News.

Buda noted that Diamond, Concord and Ashland Streets were partially closed due to downed power lines. As of 11 a.m., at least six cars had been towed after driving around barricades onto flooded streets. Power outages had affected

around 230 buildings, including commercial and non-Yale residential buildings, Buda said.

Heads of college in the affected residences updated their students in the morning, urging them to stay in their rooms except to get food and water.

Laurie Santos, head of Silliman College, emailed college members and advised them to stay in their rooms pending further information.

The dining hall had put out a “light continental breakfast” for students who needed food, she added.

In Pauli Murray, Head of College Tina Lu explained that the dining hall had pastries and limited bottled water for students for breakfast. Lu advised students to wash their hands in the showers, as the sinks are powered by motion detectors. In her 7:30 a.m. email to Murray students, Lu explained that she would pass on any emergency messaging she received from the University, but that she had not heard anything.

“Please exercise care as you leave your rooms,” Lu wrote in the email. “I am not sure where there is flooding and I don’t know how dirty that water is and obviously I don’t know which doors are safe

JAMES RICHARDSON/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Thirteen residential colleges experienced flooding, including the basement of Jonathan Edwards College, pictured above. without power. If you leave be super careful.”

According to an email sent by Yale Hospitality on Thursday morning, dining halls in Timothy Dwight, Franklin, Pauli Murray and Silliman colleges will be open for lunch, but are expected to be open again by dinner. The affected students were asked to eat lunch in Steep Cafe, Com-

mons and the Bow Wow for lunch, and all other students were asked to eat meals in their respective colleges, if possible.

New Haven County issued a flash flood emergency warning last night.

Julia Bialek contributed reporting.

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

Yale-NUS to shutter in four years

ASHA PRIHAR/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Although Yale-NUS will not shutter immediately, it will no longer accept new students starting this year.

YALE-NUS FROM PAGE 1 The original affiliation agreement allowed NUS or Yale to withdraw from the collaboration in 2025.

Beginning in 2018, the National University began restructuring its academic offerings. NUS and the Singaporean government expressed that they wanted to offer more spots to Singaporean students; previous cohorts included a large number of students from countries across the globe, Lewis explained. This summer, the Yale-NUS governing board, to which Yale appoints six members, discussed Tan’s plan with him, and agreed to serve as an “informal partner” of the New College, Lewis said.

The National University has announced its intent four years in advance to allow all current YaleNUS students to complete their studies, the statement added.

The current Governing Board and administration will continue their role until 2025, and current students will receive the same educational offerings, financial aid and degree that previous cohorts did.

Lewis will join the planning committee for New College at the request of Salovey and Tan. Once the college has opened, he will volunteer on its International Advisory Committee. Yale representatives will have no oversight of the New College.

The college had frequently come under scrutiny for issues of academic independence and free expression.

Lewis explained that the National University of Singapore is an autonomous university, but that it is largely funded by the government.

The Singaporean government places strict limits on citizens’ freedoms. Under Singaporean law, homosexual acts in public or private are criminalized and can carry a penalty of two years of jail time.

The government has banned certain books and films, and requires protesters to obtain a police permit. Additionally, the country was ranked 160th in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index, out of 180 assessed countries.

While students within the college protested restrictive laws and engaged in civil disobedience, the school’s literal and figurative placement within the National University of Singapore was often difficult to forget. An event set to show a banned film at the college garnered headlines in 2014. In 2016, a member of the Yale-NUS governing board publicly defended Singapore’s sodomy law. Most recently, in 2019, the Yale-NUS course “Dialogue and Dissent” was canceled.

Alfian Sa’at, course instructor and Singaporean playwright, was told that the course was insufficiently academically rigorous and could

pose a legal risk to the students.

Lewis subsequently investigated and did not find evidence of government coercion, but a Yale professor and prominent lawyer disputed his findings.

Still, Lewis said that questions of academic freedom were not a factor in the decision to close Yale-NUS. “The NUS people and the government have been very supportive of academic freedom at Yale-NUS,” Lewis said. “We’ve been very satisfied with the ability of Yale-NUS students and faculty to exercise their academic freedom and have a really great experience there. That has not been a problem from our point of view.”

More than 200 faculty members from Yale have planned programs or visited the campus since its inception. Some current Yale faculty members, including Yale-NUS Dean of Faculty David Post, are posted in Singapore on a long-term basis. Others serve as visiting faculty for one or two semesters. These faculty members will likely return to Yale throughout the next four years, Lewis said.

In a statement, Yale underscored that the merger will not result in lost jobs. Tenured Yale-NUS faculty will move to a new NUS department. The National University will honor contracts of non-tenured faculty, and staff will be transferred to New College or another NUS location.

Though Lewis acknowledged that “relationships evolve,” he added that Yale-NUS alumni will continue to be involved in the Yale community, and that there is the potential for joint graduate programs and shared research.

He emphasized the close collaboration that placed Yale-NUS at the nexus of Yale and the National University of Singapore, noting that the common curriculum included both Western and Asian texts and that Yale-NUS had three residential colleges.

“Given our great pride in YaleNUS College and our love and respect for the faculty, students, and staff who compose its extraordinary community, we would have liked nothing better than to continue its development,” Salovey wrote. “I want to offer my best wishes for the new college and express our gratitude for the generous support of the Government of Singapore in making it possible for us to partner in the creation of a model of liberal arts education that is regarded as one of the most innovative in the world—one whose DNA will live on, we trust, in new and exciting ways.”

Yale-NUS generally receives around 8,000 applications per year.

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

Memo prompts faculty discussion on return to in-person teaching needs to teach remotely, have avenues to make such requests.”

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The FAS Senate recently sent out a survey to faculty that allows them to anonymously share their opinions regarding in-person teaching.

CLASSES FROM PAGE 1 get a more holistic view of the faculty regarding in person teaching this semester,” Valerie Horsley, chair of the FAS Senate, wrote in an email to the News regarding the survey.

According to its COVID-19 dashboard, Yale College has reached a 98 percent vaccination rate among students, but the risk of breakthrough infections remains present.

In response to concerns, University Provost Scott Strobel sent out an Aug. 25 email to faculty members, allowing for certain exemptions to in-person teaching and clarifying Yale’s policies.

The memo allows faculty to teach remotely for the first week if it is “impossible” for them to teach in person and outlines procedures for accommodation requests. The memo also allows instructors to remove their masks provided they maintain a 12-foot distance from their students.

“It is clear that we are about to begin another unusual year and that there's some degree of uncertainty brought about by the fluid nature of the pandemic,” Strobel wrote in an email to the News. “[The] policy clarifications made it clear that faculty who are either at exceptionally high risk for COVID, or those who have short-term

Policy development Kathryn Lofton, Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean of humanities, told the News that the policy memo was “the result of ongoing work by the public health committee.”

Horsely also said that the Senate also expects that some faculty in more precarious job situations, such as instructional faculty, will be less likely to request accommodations through the formal process. The anonymity of the form, Horsley hoped, will allow for them to be represented.

Horsley added that the memo was “helpful” for faculty concerned about the Delta variant and that the senate will be advocating for “flexibility policies for faculty that have concerns regarding in person teaching (either for themselves or someone in their immediate family) and a means of requesting these concerns that supports faculty.”

Yale has long planned to hold in-person classes this fall. In a March 29 email to the Yale community, President Peter Salovey and Provost Strobel wrote that, should the public health conditions allow, faculty would be teaching in-person, a plan that was again emphasized later this summer, despite the

emergence of the Delta variant and resurgence in caseloads after the initial announcement.

“Private arrangements for remote instruction with individual instructors are not permitted,” Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd wrote in the later email.

Faculty accommodations The University currently allows instructors to submit an application for accommodation if they are at an exceptionally high risk for severe COVID-19 infection due to an underlying condition. The Office of Institutional Equity and Accessibility assesses whether remote work might be possible. If instructors have a high-risk household member, the separate Medical Review Committee chaired by Yale Health Chief Medical Official Jennifer McCarthy decides whether to grant them an accommodation.

One nontenured faculty member who requested anonymity due to job precarity told the News that his request to move his classroom location to allow for social distancing, currently in a windowless room in the basement, was denied, alongside his request for temporary remote instruction due to an immunocompromised family member. He added that he is now able to “act at my own discretion

during the first 1.5 weeks of class” following Strobel’s memo.

Strobel told the News that it was too soon to tell the number of faculty accommodation approvals, and did not comment on the number of accommodation requests.

Other professors, such as professor Joanne Freeman, professor of American history and of American studies, aired their grievances on social media.

“Given the circumstances in one of my classrooms,” Freeman wrote, referencing a computer program that calculates the risk of catching COVID-19 in locations including classrooms where everyone is masked and fully vaccinated, “I’m ‘dangerously high risk.’ And I’m not happy about it.”

Freeman did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Strobel’s memo also encouraged instructors to be as accommodating as possible to students who could not attend class in person.

The memo extended Yale’s Crisis Care Assist program through Dec. 31. The program allows an additional 10 days of backup child- or eldercare for those struggling to care for a dependent due to the pandemic.

Contact MADISON HAHAMY at madison.hahamy@yale.edu and ROSE HOROWITCH at rose.horowitch@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

FROM THE FRONT

“Worry - a God, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse; it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair gray.” BENJAMIN DISRAELI FORMER BRITISH PRIME MINISTER

Students living in Omni to make room for isolation housing MCCLELLAN FROM PAGE 1 part of the semester,” as McClellan Hall may be used for COVID19 isolation housing. Students impacted by the change met the announcement with a mix of understanding and frustration.

The sudden change — made just five days before the Sept. 1 start of the fall 2021 semester — comes after McClellan Hall was originally intended to be a mixed-college housing offering for upperclassmen who wanted to live on campus with friends in other residential colleges.

According to Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd, Arnold Hall, which is located at 304 Elm St., was originally intended to serve as the only isolation housing for undergraduates. But in response to early testing data and the unpredictability of the Delta variant, the University decided to increase isolation housing capacity to ensure there will be enough isolation space in case of a spike in positivity rates as students arrive on campus.

“With apologies for the very short notice, I am writing because I will need to relocate you, along with all the other students living in McClellan, to the Omni Hotel for at least the first part of the semester,” the email from Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd read. “The university may need to use McClellan as isolation housing. I hope to be able to offer you your original room later in the semester.”

Boyd told the News that the 49 students who were supposed to be housed in McClellan will get single rooms in the Omni on three designated floors, with priority on friends being placed near each other. The University will pay for the room, but not for incidentals such as room service or dry cleaning.

Boyd explained that they chose to use McClellan Hall as additional isolation housing because it impacted the smallest number of students, making note of the fact that she feels terrible that any students at all are impacted by the change. Boyd is working in close contact with the impacted students to make the situation as “livable” as possible, such as setting up a lounge in the hotel to serve as a common room.

“We completely recognize that this is disruptive and short-notice — I feel terrible that this situation has come to pass,” Boyd told the News.

COURTESY OF GOOGLE STREET VIEW ©2021

As of Aug. 30, no definitive timeline has been established for the relocated students' return to McClellan Hall.

“But out of a list of bad options, this was the one that enabled us to be sure that we could house people if we need more isolation housing as students arrive to campus.”

According to the email sent to the students, while it is possible that the impacted students may be able to move into their McClellan rooms later in the semester, no timeline is set in stone. Boyd explained to the News that the University does not know whether or how long they will need the extra isolation space. She added that the positivity rates will determine how long the extra isolation capacity is needed and thus how long the students will have to stay at the Omni.

During the housing process in the spring 2021 semester, McClellan Hall was advertised to students as part of the solution to the higher-than-normal housing demand — which resulted from the increased

number of students who took leaves of absence during the pandemic.

Students affected by the move to the Omni Hotel expressed varying reactions. One of them, Laz Vazquez ’23, explained that the change “comes as a surprise” but emphasized that it is a minor inconvenience at worst in comparison to the other sacrifices people have had to make in response to the public health challenges brought on by the pandemic.

After taking a leave of absence, Alexis Ball ’24 was placed in mixed-college housing because of her late decision to claim on-campus housing. Overall, Ball explained feeling anxious — after taking time off, she already felt nervous about returning to campus, and the last minute and unorthodox change to her housing arrangements only made her feel more unsettled.

Ball explained that she feels grateful that the University is allowing the students to stay near campus and is paying for a “very nice hotel.” But she also noted that the idea of living in a hotel that is far from central campus makes her feel isolated from her residential college, dining halls and the main academic buildings.

Unlike Ball and Vasquez, Hank Michalik ’24 had already moved into his room in McClellan Hall when he received the email last Friday about being moved to the Omni.

After already settling into his room and with only a two-day warning, Michalik has to pack his things and move into a hotel, while the possibility of a mid-semester move back to McClellan looms over him.

The day after the Friday email, Michalik emailed Boyd on behalf of himself and around a dozen other students impacted by the move out of McClellan, writing “we are col-

lectively outraged by this unjust and apathetic decision.” The email focused on the isolation of living in a hotel, the last-minute alteration to housing arrangements when Yale had months to plan for student returns to campus and the increased risk of exposure to COVID-19 that comes with living in a public hotel.

In response to the email, Boyd invited the students to meet to discuss how they can work together to mitigate the disruption and support the students. While Michalik would have preferred not to move out of McClellan Hall in the first place, he said that he and other students are now most concerned with certainty about the timeline.

The Omni Hotel is located on 155 Temple St. Contact JULIA BIALEK at julia.bialek@yale.edu .

In town hall, admin discuss COVID in semester ahead ADMIN FROM PAGE 1 “What we’ve really learned in the past year and a half is that the decisions that we make, as individuals and as communities, have a huge impact on how these viruses spread,” said Linda Niccolai, epidemiology professor and head of Yale’s contact tracing program. “It’s so clear that our individuals and collective decisions make a huge difference.”

The University’s current protocol requires in-person classes, in which vaccinated faculty members can remove masks if they maintain a 12-foot distance from students, as well as weekly testing for vaccinated individuals throughout the month of September. Unvaccinated individuals must continue with twice-weekly asymptomatic screening throughout the semester. Approximately three percent of the University population received an exemption to the mandate for medical or religious reasons.

Three of Yale’s public health professors created mathematical models of what public health interventions would keep less than five percent of the student body from contracting COVID-19 during the semester, Epidemiology Professor Albert Ko said. With the country likely at “the peak of the Delta wave,” the University decided to keep up its asymptomatic screening program for the first month of school and reinstated its masking policy to limit asymptomatic breakthrough spread, Ko explained.

Vaccinated students who are found to be close contacts of someone who tests positive must comply with masking requirements and receive three tests over a fiveday period, according to Niccolai.

They do not need to quarantine.

Unvaccinated close contacts must be quarantined for 10 days.

Last year, the University found that outbreaks largely stemmed from off-campus gatherings, Niccolai said.

The University has also placed restrictions on gatherings. Before Sept. 20, gatherings are limited to 20 people indoors or 50 outdoors.

Additionally, Yale has prohibited high-aerosolization activities including playing woodwind or brass instruments, singing or vigorous exercise indoors. Vaccinated students can eat indoors without distancing, but dining hall occupancy will be limited.

University COVID-19 Coordinator Stephanie Spangler also advised students to order takeout or delivery from New Haven restaurants until the city’s vaccination rates climbed.

Last year, none of the infection clusters were tied to classrooms or laboratories, Niccolai said. This year, the University is offering in-person classes for all undergraduates with no virtual option — even if students or faculty in a particular class contract COVID-19. Although the default Faculty of Arts and Sciences policy for lectures is that they must be recorded, that is not the case for seminars, due to privacy reasons.

This means that some students in isolation for COVID-19 will need to keep up with as many as 10 days of class work without attending class.

“In most situations, if we do detect COVID among students or faculty in a classroom, classes would not need to be moved online,” Niccolai said. “But every classroom is different in terms of its size, location and space.”

A large number of clusters could lead to “extenuating circumstances” like last year’s online classes or more restrictive quarantines, she added. Contact tracers have added additional questions to their interviews to determine which on-campus

YALE DAILY NEWS

Before Sept. 20, gatherings are limited to 20 people indoors or 50 outdoors. activities are leading to outbreaks, Spangler said.

Like Niccolai, Salovey clarified that “no single public health condition changes our policies,” as the University receives guidance from the state and CDC, and adjusts its policies accordingly. The Public Health Committee chiefly tracks case numbers, hospitalization rates and viral sequences to monitor the state of viral spread and determine if a new variant is emerging, Dean of the School of Medicine Nancy Brown added.

Ko dubbed the query as to whether a more transmissible, more virulent variant that could escape vaccine-mediated immunity would arise the “billion-dollar question.”

“We’re certainly creating the ideal situation to test that question,” Ko

said, noting that large swaths of the global population are unvaccinated and experiencing substantial viral spread. “I unfortunately wouldn’t be surprised if we’re going to encounter another variant, and especially one that escapes protection by current vaccines, within the next year.”

The experts emphasized that vaccines are highly effective at protecting against severe outcomes of COVID-19 including hospitalization and death. But, they said, there is still some uncertainty over how effective it is at preventing transmission of the Delta variant.

Director of the Yale Institute for Global Health Saad Omer explained that the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will meet next week and will likely recommend

booster shots as vaccine-mediated immunity wanes. The organization already advises immunocompromised people to receive an additional dose of the vaccine.

Yale Health is preparing supplies and procedures to offer a booster shot to members of the Yale community, Salovey said. Niccolai added that officials are also prepping for a flu vaccination push once this year’s flu shot becomes available.

The University is currently at a yellow alert level, reflecting low to moderate risk, and has seen 39 positive cases within the last seven days, according to its COVID-19 dashboard.

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

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

SUMMER RECAP

“In omnia paratus.”

RORY GILMORE GILMORE GIRLS

$150 million gift makes the Yale School of Drama tuition-free

COURTESY OF DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA

The school has been renamed the David Geffen School of Drama in honor of the donor.

BY ROSE HOROWITCH AND ANNIE RADILLO STAFF REPORTERS After a $150 million gift from entertainment magnate David Geffen, all present and future graduate students at the Yale School of Drama will receive a tuition-free education, the University announced on Wednesday.

The gift, which the University believes is the largest in the history of American theater, will finance tuition for the 200 students studying across 10 degree and certificate programs. The school will go tuition-free starting in the 2021-22 academic year.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the drama school did not admit a new class for the upcoming academic year, but has fully subsidized a fourth year for all enrolled students. In recognition of his

gift, the University has named the school for Geffen. The naming rights will last in perpetuity, University President Peter Salovey told the News.

“People tell us that they can’t imagine that getting trained at the David Geffen School of Drama was going to be financially possible for them,” James Bundy DRA ’95, the school’s dean, said in an interview with the News. “We’re confident that the message that the school is tuition-free will enable people to imagine themselves training here, as we can imagine them training, and that that will lead to an increasingly socioeconomically diverse student body that more truly represents the fabric of the nation and the world that we tell stories about.”

Yale is currently courting additional funding from potential

donors to construct a new facility for the school. The efforts are part of the capital campaign, a fundraising push each University president undertakes once during their tenure, which will launch on Oct. 2.

The drama school is currently spread across 10 buildings. Salovey said that he hopes to construct a new facility to bring students and professors from the school’s different programs together under one roof, as well as provide them with a state-of-theart theater.

Once the University reaches an initial fundraising threshold of $65 million, it will hire an architect to plan the new building, Salovey said.

Geffen is a fixture of the American entertainment industry, producing films, constructing rosters

of recording artists and bringing plays to Broadway. He amassed his fortune as a music industry executive, establishing bands including Nirvana, Queen and the Eagles. Geffen also founded Asylum Records, Geffen Records and Geffen Pictures. Additionally, in conjunction with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, he co-founded the DreamWorks SKG film studio.

Geffen has a long history of donations to universities. In 1995 he donated $5 million to the Westwood Playhouse — now the Geffen Playhouse — at the University of California, Los Angeles. Since then, Geffen has given more than $450 million to UCLA’s medical school — which was renamed the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA — making him the single largest benefactor for the University of California system. In 2015, Geffen donated $100 million to the Avery Fisher Hall of the Center for Performing Arts in New York. He was granted naming rights to the David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center in perpetuity.

Geffen is philanthropically committed to the arts and to higher education, Salovey said. His donation to the School of Drama brings the two causes together.

“Yale is well known for having one of the most respected drama programs in the country,” Geffen said in a YaleNews article. “So, when they approached me with this opportunity, I knew Yale was the right place to begin to change the way we think about funding arts education. ... Removing the tuition barrier will allow an even greater diversity of talented people to develop and hone their skills in front of, on, and behind Yale’s stages. I hope this gift will inspire others to support similar efforts to increase accessibility and affordability for arts education at colleges and universities across the country.”

Geffen first became involved with Yale as the instructor of an arts management seminar during the 1978-79 academic year. Since then, Geffen has stayed connected to Yale, Salovey said.

While the University approached Geffen about making a gift, it was Geffen’s idea that his money should go towards making the school tuition-free, Bundy said.

“People from modest financial backgrounds often feel the arts aren’t an option available to them,” Salovey said. “They can’t take on a lot of debt, they can’t take the risk involved in an artistic career. By using this gift to go tuition-free for every drama school student forever, we are really opening the school, we are making the school more accessible to all kinds of people from all walks of life.”

University leaders announced the gift in a Wednesday morning Zoom call with the drama school community.

A student at the School of Drama, Sarah Cain DRA ’23, said the call was “pretty shocking, pretty exciting, pretty early in the morning,” adding that she teared up a bit when she heard the news.

As a student entering her final year at the school, Cain said she is no stranger to conversations about financial aid. She called these conversations “very tricky” and stressful. This gift makes the process far less stressful, according to Cain.

“This gift is truly extraordinary — not just for current students but for all future students,” Cain said.

“This removes one of the biggest barriers of entry to this program and will hopefully lead to a more accessible and inclusive school.”

Yale began offering graduate education in theater in 1925.

Contact ROSE HOROWITCH at rose.horowitch@yale.edu and ANNIE RADILLO at annie.radillo@yale.edu .

Yale selects Matthew Mendelsohn ’07 to lead Investments Office

BY ROSE HOROWITCH STAFF REPORTER After an international search, Matthew Mendelsohn ’07 will succeed David Swensen GRD ’80 as chief investment officer and steward the second-largest university endowment in the nation.

Me n d e l s o h n j o i n e d t h e Investments Office in 2007 as one of Swensen’s proteges. He most recently oversaw Yale’s venture capital investments, which comprise more than a quarter of the endowment.

The University began the search for Swensen’s successor in May, when the pioneering investor died after a nine-year battle with cancer. A seven-member search committee conducted an international search before ultimately deciding on an internal candidate. Mendelsohn will assume the helm of Yale’s endowment on Sept. 1.

“With Matt, it boils down to his having a rare combination of qualities: extremely high talent, a superb work ethic, impeccable ethics, deep experience in the Yale Investments Office, a natural ability to lead, and strong personal ties to Yale dating back to his undergraduate days,” University President Peter Salovey wrote in an email to the News.

Under Mendelsohn’s leadership, Yale’s venture capital portfolio has returned an annual average of 21.6 percent over the past decade, far above the S&P 500 and relevant private equity benchmarks. He also helped manage Yale’s domestic and foreign equities, absolute return and natural resources asset classes, Salovey wrote in an email to the Yale community. Under Swensen, Mendelsohn worked with Yale’s external managers. He also co-taught an endowment management course at Yale’s School of Management from 2013 to 2018.

As head of the endowment, Mendelsohn will have to respond to calls for more ethical investments and greater diversity within the endowment management industry. In October 2020, Swensen wrote a letter demanding that managers hire more diverse employees and claiming that Yale

would do the same. In April, the University unveiled new standards for divesting from fossil fuel companies. Mendelsohn affirmed his commitment to the principles Swensen put forward, stating that the office “need[s] to do better ourselves” as well as seek diversity among its investment partners. The best ideas emerge from a “diversity of opinions, perspectives and lived experiences,” he told the News.

“Though we will evolve to face new challenges, the future will no doubt rhyme with the past as we build off of a strong foundation,” Mendelsohn wrote in a statement. “ Looking ahead, we will build on the office’s longstanding allegiance to ethical investment practices and develop a diverse team of internal and external investment managers as we seek to continue Yale’s legacy of investment success.”

Swensen came to Yale in 1985, when the University had a $1 billion endowment. Over the next few decades, he diversified the portfolio — embracing venture capital and private equity — and grew the endowment to its most recent reported value: $31.2 billion as of June 2020. Mendelsohn told the News that the chief lesson he would take from Swensen’s tutelage is that investing “is all about people” — that aligning with strong partners and treating them with respect will produce good results.

“Matt has the qualities you would expect of someone mentored by David Swensen,” Benjamin Polak, economics professor and chair of the search committee, wrote in an email to the News. “That starts with integrity and a dedication to the mission of Yale. Like David, Matt is analytically rigorous and disciplined. Like David, Matt approaches each investment opportunity from first principles, and he is a great judge of character. Like David, Matt has a clear moral compass. Like David, Matt is a team builder and a mentor, an investor and a leader.”

After Swensen’s death in May, the University appointed a committee to search for his successor. Alex Banker GRD ’80, a director at the YIO, served as the interim Chief Investment Officer for the search’s duration.

YALE NEWS

Mendelsohn will succeed David Swensen GRD ’80, who had served as Mendelsohn’s mentor since 2007.

Along with Polak, five current and former members of the Yale Corporation Investment Committee, which oversees the endowment, and one SOM professor made up the other search committee members. The committee worked in conjunction with David Barrett Partners, an executive search firm.

Salovey gave the committee the option of putting forward a slate of candidates or making a clear recommendation, he said in a June interview with the News. The committee ultimately chose to recommend Mendelsohn as its sole candidate, Salovey said. The Yale Corporation then voted to approve Mendelsohn for the role.

Swensen had met Mendelsohn at a Berkeley Fellows event, when the latter was a senior in Yale College, and hired him after graduation. Prior to Swensen’s death, the famed investor shared opinions on investors in the industry and people within his own team with Yale’s Investment Committee, Salovey explained. Mendelsohn was one of a few internal candidates that Swensen identified as a potential successor, the Wall Street Journal reported.

But Salovey said that Swensen’s comments did not comprise a concrete list of potential successors. Swensen shared people that

he admired, but never “pointed to someone” and suggested them, Salovey said. Swensen also shared the progression of his illness with the Investment Committee, and how to triage in the event of an emergency medical situation.

Charles Skorina, who runs a recruiting firm for chief investment officers, said that Mendelsohn is an “obvious choice.”

“It screams out at you,” Skorina told the News. “He’s the right age, he’s working in the right area — private equity and venture capital, they’re premier areas — he has plenty of time. He’s well-liked … So culture, institutional memory, tradition, degrees, experience, age, it all fits.”

Charley Ellis ’59, former Investment Committee chair and close friend of Swensen’s, explained that venture capital requires “disciplined thinking,” and that Swensen would not have given someone responsibility for venture capital investments unless they were “really good at the kind of disciplined thinking that was the center of the Yale investments program.”

Mendelsohn’s next challenge is to determine how long the “Yale model” for investment will continue to be the best, Skorina said, adding that investments in venture capital and private equity will continue to gen-

erate better long-term returns than those in public markets do. But investors need a system to decide which managers to invest with and they need access to the best managers; it is unclear exactly how Yale will fare without Swensen, Skorina added.

But investors are generally obligated to keep their money in venture capital or private equity for between five and 10 years, Skorina said. The makeup of Yale’s endowment is therefore unlikely to drastically change in the coming years, even under new leadership, he added.

Both Salovey and Ellis explained that Swensen was guided firstly by risk management, and secondly by return achievement — meaning that he was willing to slightly diminish returns to gain greater security for investments, Salovey explained. Ellis analogized risk management to someone competing in the Indianapolis 500.

“Finishing first is the second-most important,” Ellis said. “Finishing is more important. Anytime you’re in a difficult, complicated, fast-changing and particularly dangerous place, risk management is really important.”

Like Swensen, Mendelsohn hails from the Midwest.

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

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

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SUMMER RECAP

“Long ago he formed an ideal conception of omnipotence and omniscience which he embodied in his gods. Whatever seemed unattainable to his desires — or forbidden to him — he attributed to these gods.” SIGMUND FREUD AUSTRIAN NEUROLOGIST

Donald Kagan — former classics, history professor and dean — dies at 89

BY MADISON HAHAMY STAFF REPORTER Donald Kagan, Sterling professor emeritus of classics and history, former dean of Yale College — and just about everything in between — died on Aug. 6. He was 89 years old.

Born in Lithuania in 1932, Kagan grew up in New York, where his family emigrated after his father’s death. He graduated from Brooklyn College in 1954, then achieved a Master’s degree from Brown University and a Ph.D from the Ohio State University shortly thereafter.

Kagan spent the better half of the 1960s as a faculty member in the history department at Cornell University, and it was there that, after watching Black students occupy university buildings to demand the formation of an Africana Studies Center and protest racially motivated incidents, the formally liberal Kagan became much more conservative after Cornell agreed to start a Black studies program.

“Watching administrators demonstrate all the courage of Neville Chamberlain had a great impact on me,” he said in a 2002 Yale Alumni Magazine article, calling the experience “disillusioning.”

While at Cornell, he once debated William F. Buckley, Jr. ’50 and represented the left in favor of the welfare state. Decades later, he guided a group of undergraduate students to found the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program at Yale, whose faculty he joined in 1969, and on campus he was known as a staunch defender of conservative values.

He also vigorously defended studying Western civilization.

A $20 million gift to the University by businessman Lee Bass ’79, intended to establish an interdisciplinary program focusing on Western civilization, was motivated by a 1991 speech Kagan gave lauding the academic discipline. Bass would later ask for his money back after years of intense debate over the need for the program and Bass’ own stipulations. Kagan said he regretted the loss of the program.

“Donald Kagan was Yale’s least politically correct professor and hence, among his students, one of its most loved,” Robert A. Lovett Professor of History John Gaddis wrote in an email to the News.

Indeed, students of all political persuasions flocked to his over-

flowing classes, classes that are still fondly remembered decades later.

Akhil Amar ’80 LAW ’84, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, only took one of Kagan’s classes while at Yale, and he still remembers the opening lecture of the course: “Miltiades and the Battle of Marathon.”

“He taught me to care about something that happened 2,500 years ago and 5,000 miles away,” Amar said. “That’s a charismatic teacher, who can get into your head even if you’re not someone who does ancient Greek history, and I don’t. He taught me what it was to be a scholar.”

Steven Calabresi ’80 LAW ’83, professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and one of three co-founders of the Federalist Society — an organization of conservatives and libertarians that advocates a textualist and originalist interpretation of the United States Constitution — took Kagan’s ancient Greek history class during the first semester of his first year, later calling it “the most life-changing class I’ve ever taken.”

Kagan told the class, when discussing Pericles’ funeral oration of Athenians, that the oration should be a lesson to anyone who chose to go into politics — “wrap yourself in the glory of your ancestors,” he said, similar to what Pericles urged fellow his Athenians to do.

Calabresi named the Federalist Society after Kagan’s words, calling the organization one “wrapped in ancestors’ glory.”

Kagan was known for inviting students to the front of the classroom during his lectures to form a hoplite phalanx — a military formation used in Ancient Greek battle. John Hale ’73, director of the Liberal Studies Program at the University of Louisville, remembers during the height of anti-Vietnam protests at Yale, Kegan opened the windows during one lecture about revolution in Athens to “allow revolutionary voices into the room for a change.”

“I always felt [his classes] were a conversation,” Hale, who maintained a close relationship with Kagan long after his own graduation, said. “If we were a different set of people, he might say different things. It made those classes a much more living and lived experience than some classes can be, and we all admired him for that.”

Scholarship was another core tenet of Kagan’s life, and he is perhaps best known for his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War, though he also wrote several other critically acclaimed books. In an interview with the News, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger — who said that he admired Kagan “enormously” — called the chronicle a “penetrating understanding of human motivations.”

“There was a day of speeches about my work, and he came as a friend of mine,” Kissinger said, “but he spent a lot of time criticizing aspects of the foreign policy with which I had been associated.

But he did it in a way that still made me feel proud that he came.”

Kissinger paused and then added, “in a way, a part of my world has gone with him.”

In 2002, President George W. Bush ’68 awarded Kagan the National Humanities Medal. He later delivered the 2005 Jefferson Lecture, which the National Endowment for the Humanities describes as “the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.”

Kagan was a fierce fan of sports. Kissinger and Kagan, who have been friends for over 30 years and are both Yankees fans, would frequent Yankee Stadium, where Kagan would talk incessantly through and about the game.

At Yale, he would attend football games, similarly keeping a “running commentary” on the action. Both Penelope Laurans, former head of Jonathan Edwards College and special assistant to the president, and former University President Richard Levin specifically remember how both Kagan and Sterling Professor Emeritus of the Arts Vincent Scully, often sat next to each other at the games. The two, whose political views could not be more different, fiercely disagreed on everything — except their love for Yale football.

Former University President Benno Schmidt noted that Kagan, up until his 60s, would even play football with the Timothy Dwight intramural team, as he was Master of the residential college for two years.

“Donald Kagan was a legendary figure in Yale history

YALE NEWS

Kagan served as Sterling professor emeritus of classics and history and was a former dean of Yale College.

– opinionated and outspoken, but deeply loyal to the institution to which he dedicated his career,” said Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Tamar Gendler. “He was a fiercely devoted teacher of undergraduates.”

Kagan had a short stint as Dean of Yale College from 1989-1992 during the administration of President Benno Schmidt, though he ultimately stepped down — alongside Schmidt —amid controversy over a plan to reduce the number of faculty amidst a budget crunch. His views on the primacy of the study of Western civilization did not help matters, as Schmidt said that a contingent of leftwing faculty opposed Kagan “vigorously.”

He even briefly stepped in as acting director of athletics from 1987-1988 and served as the department chair of classics — receiving the Phi Beta Kappa DeVane Medal for teaching and

scholarship and the Byrnes/ Sewall Teaching Prize.

“He cared deeply about Yale, and about the academy generally,” Schmidt added, noting his various positions throughout all domains of the University. “Even though he was critical of it at times, he loved it very dearly.”

Just this past June, Kagan was honored yet again by the government of Greece, who bestowed upon him the Order of the Phoenix at a ceremony at the Greek Embassy in Washington, D.C., for his work as a Greek history scholar.

“He just seemed undimmed, so happy, so sharp, so connected, so physically fine,” Hale said. “I know that he was still firing on all cylinders, still keen and alert and enjoying life.”

Kagan retired from Yale in 2013.

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

Barbara Tonry, women’s gymnastics founding and only coach, dies at 84

YALE DAILY NEWS

Tonry guided the Yale women’s gymnastics program since its inception in 1973.

BY BENNIE ANDERSON CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Longtime Yale gymnastics head coach Barbara Tonry died last week at the age of 84.

Tonry, the first women’s gymnastics coach in Yale history, died of cancer on Monday, July 12. She had led the program for its entire existence, since the team’s beginnings in 1973. Under her leadership, Yale captured 16 Ivy League championships. A member of the U.S. Gymnastics Federation Hall of Fame, Texas Hall of Fame and the National Tumbling and Trampoline Hall of Fame, she was the longest-tenured coach in NCAA gymnastics.

Yale Athletics announced her passing on Tuesday evening, and tributes and condolences from former players, Yale coaches and other Division I gymnastics programs followed.

“Barb spent nearly 50 years pouring her heart and soul into the program, and into every single one of us,” former Yale gymnastics captain and recent graduate Charlotte Cooperman ’21 said. “She paved the way for so many women at Yale, believed in us more than we could ever believe in ourselves and taught us what it means to dedicate your life to something you love.”

Before she started coaching, Tonry was a successful gymnast herself. She competed collegiately

at North Texas University, where she graduated in 1961, and won the first women’s national AAU trampoline championship. She won the national AAU tumbling championships nine times, meanwhile, and was a 10-time All-American.

Don Tonry, Barbra’s husband and the former Yale men’s gymnastics coach, passed away in 2013.

He started at Yale in 1962 and initially coached men’s gymnastics at the club level. Don Tonry then led the team from its promotion to varsity status in 1973 until 1980, when the Athletic Department demoted four teams — men’s gymnastics, along with volleyball teams and the water polo squad — to club status as a cost-cutting measure.

The Yale women gymnasts now host and compete in an annual tournament called the Don Tonry Invitational, which the Bulldogs last won in February 2020. The victory at home, just a month before the COVID-19 pandemic canceled Ivy League competitions for four athletic seasons, ultimately marked the second to last tournament Tonry coached in Yale’s John J. Lee Amphitheater.

The couple was instrumental to the Yale gymnastics program as well as to the sport at a national level — the two co-wrote the “Sports Illustrated Guide to Gymnastics”. Barbara Tonry also served on national councils, including the U.S. Gymnastics Federation Hall of Fame Selection Committee and the National Association for Intercollegiate Gymnastics.

Alongside her impressive competition and coaching awards, another lasting piece of her legacy stems from the influence she had on players and colleagues. Cooperman described Tonry’s impact on the Yale program as “immeasurable.”

“Some of my favorite memories with Barb come from sitting in her office after practice talking and listening to her stories about the history of this program,” Cooperman said. “Each conversation reiterated her selfless attitude towards her work and reminded me of everything she did not only for us to be able to be here today, but also for future generations of YGT to continue to grow and succeed.”

In the program’s early seasons, Tonry often clashed with the athletic department, fighting for an equal footing for Yale’s women’s gymnasts. When the Ivy League organized the first women’s gymnastics tournament in 1977, Yale at first barred the team from competing.

“They said that it was too far,” Tonry told the News this past winter for a feature on her 48 years at Yale. “It was in New Jersey. …

They said it was too expensive. If you could imagine an Ivy League team being told it couldn’t compete in the conference championship, it would be kind of mind-boggling.”

Tonry, who remembers being “captivated by their tenacity” upon meeting her student-athletes in the 1970s, credits members of the 1977 team for protesting the initial decision. The Athletic Department permitted the team to compete, and Yale went on to win the first-ever women’s championship meet.

Director of Athletics Vicky Chun spoke to Tonry’s life in a University press release.

“She devoted her life to the creation, development and success of [the women’s gymnastics] program,” Chun said. “For nearly five decades, she prioritized the student-athlete experience and helped hundreds of Bulldogs achieve greatness at Yale and beyond.”

Tonry was the longest-tenured active head coach at Yale. In recent years, she helped Yale win back-to-back Eastern College Athletic Conference championships in 2017 and 2018 and a pair of Ivy team championships in 2018 and 2019.

“If ever Yale had a coach to match the spirit of our Bulldog mascot, it was Barbara,” former athletic director Tom Beckett, who led the department from 1994 to 2018, told YaleNews.

In 2018, Tonry was named the USA Collegiate National Gymnastics Head Coach of the Year.

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

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY c h r e a rs discover h ling e s e r Yale a e effects of psychedelic drug

COURTESY OF UNSPLASH

BY VERONICA LEE STAFF REPORTER Yale researchers found that a single dose of the naturally occurring psychedelic compound psilocybin can cause structural changes in the brain that counteract symptoms of depression.

In a paper published in the journal Neuron on Aug. 18, researchers at the Yale School of Medicine presented evidence that administering this drug to mice resulted in an approximately 10 percent increase in neuron size and density in the frontal cortex of the brain. Led by postdoctoral associate Lingxiao Shao and associate professor of psychiatry and neurosci-

ence Alex Kwan, the team found that this “structural remodeling” occurred within 24 hours of the drug administration and persisted for one month, indicating that psilocybin made long-lasting changes in the brain.

“Psilocybin is fascinating because it has an incredibly short half-life, which means that it gets out of the body quickly and yet has long-lasting behavioral effects,” Kwan said. “We’ve seen that psilocybin can be effective in treating depression and other neuropsychiatric disorders. In this study, we wanted to investigate this mystery by observing individual connections in the mouse brain.”

Psilocybin is a naturally occurring substance that is produced by

a species of fungi — thus the nickname “magic mushrooms.” Part of a larger category of psychedelics called classic psychedelics, which includes LSD and mescaline, psilocybin works by stimulating serotonin 2A receptors in the brain, according to the paper.

Effects of the drug include visual hallucinations, distortions of reality, euphoria and what some call “spiritual experiences.” However, Kwan and his team are more interested in how the human brain functions after the effects of the drug have already worn off. Psilocybin and other classic psychedelic drugs have long been recognized for their potential as therapeutic drugs to treat disorders like

depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I was inspired by Dr. Ronald Duman, who studied ketamine’s effect on [neuron] spine density,” Kwan said. “However, we chose to use psilocybin because it is so well-studied clinically.

There is currently a large phase two clinical trial investigating the effects of psilocybin on major depressive disorder.”

However, psychedelic research was not always so popular.

Although research into psilocybin and other related drugs began in the 1950s and ’60s, the federal government’s war on drugs during the 1970s stigmatized psychedelic drugs and made them illegal. The federal government declared them Schedule I drugs, meaning that they have a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use.

However, Kwan and other researchers interested in psychedelics have worked to revive the psychedelic research field, even in the face of tight regulations.

“There are certain risks with a high dosage psychedelic experience, for example increases in heart rate and the possibility of precipitating psychotic episodes, particularly in those predisposed to them,” Albert Garcia-Romeu, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said. “However, we take the proper screenings and precautions so that the dosage sessions are safe for participants.”

In this study, Kwan and his team sought to use a mouse model to better understand the changes the human brain undergoes during psychedelic experiences.

Manoj Doss, postdoctoral research fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, commended the large sample size of 82 mice and the roughly equal distribution between male and female mice in the study — something that Doss said is often overlooked in psychedelic research.

“In this study, the male mouse brains experienced a smaller effect from the dose of psilocybin,” Doss said. “This may point to some heterogeneity or variability in terms of how psilocybin and other psychedelics affect the brain and create long-lasting changes.”

In the future, Kwan and his team hope to investigate the exact mechanisms by which psilocybin increases neuron size and density. Kwan also hopes that this research will help identify new compounds that may have even better properties than psilocybin in treating neuropsychiatric disorders.

Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies Natalie Ginsberg ’11 expressed her excitement about where the field of psychedelic research is headed.

“This is totally changing the approach to therapy for PTSD and other mental illnesses,” Ginsberg said. “Psychedelics can also greatly impact people’s connections to nature and to each other.

We also hope to see psychedelics decriminalized, making them more safe and accessible to those who can be healed by them.”

Psilocybin was classified as a Schedule I drug by the United States in 1970.

Contact VERONICA LEE at veronica.lee@yale.edu .

Yale experts weigh in on challenges in achieving global vaccine equity

BY ANJALI MANGLA STAFF REPORTER Global health experts came together this summer at a panel hosted by the School of Medicine to discuss the ways in which global vaccine distribution efforts have succeeded and how they have fallen short in terms of equity.

Yale’s Department of Internal Medicine hosted a Clubhouse event in June in order to answer questions on achieving global vaccine equity, advancing global health and the significance of efforts to do so. The speakers were Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health; Kaveh Khoshnood, associate professor of epidemiology and Kristina Talbert-Slagle, associate director of the Institute for Global Health. The conversation covered ongoing issues surrounding the global distribution of vaccines and the challenges facing the equity of this process among different countries.

“As long as the virus is going around, nobody can be perfectly or reasonably safe because of the instant probability of variants emerging,” Omer said in an interview with the News. “History will judge us, and part of what we will be judged on is what we were doing when low- and middle-income countries had dismally low vaccine uptake, substantial supply and access issues around vaccines and so on and so forth. For both of these reasons, it is a global health problem.”

Omer listed three strategies to employ in order to achieve global vaccine equity.

First, he believes that the administration should consider scaling up the manufacturing of vaccines to up to eight billion doses per year, for the next couple of years.

He also said that to ramp up global vaccine production, the United States

REGINA SUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

also needs to make sure companies receive government funding for vaccine development work with other companies outside of the country. And finally, Omer believes that the United States should be donating more vaccines to low- and middle-income countries.

“Right now, in low- and middle-income countries, it is the supply that is the main issue,” Omer said.

Under the Biden administration, the United States, which currently has a surplus of vaccines, has pledged to distribute 500 to 600 million vaccine doses to lowand middle-income countries. 75 percent of these doses go to COVAX, an alliance formed by various groups including the World Health Organization and Gavi. The remaining 25 percent of the vaccines will go to countries on the basis of expert recommendation, which Omer says is “a reasonable formula.”

Omer added that other high-income nations in addition to the United States can do more to help the cause of global vaccine equity.

“I think we have been giving the E.U. a little too much of a pass, so it’s not just the U.S,” Omer said. “Other economies could be doing substantially more than what they have been doing.”

Khoshnood added that the term global health refers to caring for the health of everyone around the world, but the way governments currently operate “does not adhere to those principles.”

According to Khoshnood, the WHO has recommended that at least 40 percent of the global population be vaccinated. And in order to reach this goal, a much greater contribution is required by high-income countries, Khoshnood said.

But some high-income nations, such as Canada, lack the infrastructure needed for vaccine development. Khoshnood believes that in those cases, the United States can be doing more to combat vaccination challenges in other countries by sharing its expertise and resources to support vaccine manufacturing infrastructure.

“With this pandemic, we are being reminded over and over again how interconnected we are, globally,” Khoshnood said, emphasizing that global vaccination is especially crucial with the advent of highly transmissible variants. “In order for you to accomplish the health of your own population, you have to make sure this pandemic is under control everywhere else, not just in your own country because it’s going to come back and we’ve been observing that over and over again.”

If a very small percentage of the population is vaccinated against COVID19, then the virus has a much greater opportunity to evolve and mutate into new highly contagious variants, according to Khoshnood.

“It is very likely, unfortunately, that we are going to see new variants,” Khoshnood said. “These new variants could potentially be much more virulent and disease-causing. We don’t have a choice, we have to make sure every other population is vaccinated.”

Sheela Shenoi, associate director of the Office of Global Health and moderator of the talk in June, said that to achieve vaccine equity globally, a combination of vaccine supply, infrastructure and access is necessary. Shenoi also noted that it is also especially important to address vaccine hesitancy.

“Vaccine hesitancy, unfortunately we’ve seen this in our own country, has contributed to lack of control and rising case rates and unnecessary and preventable mortality. We need to address that in other countries as well, because even if we address all the other challenges, we will not be successful.”

According to Khoshnood, high-income countries exhibit higher levels of vaccine hesitancy than low-income countries. He added that getting vaccinated is a privilege.

Additionally, Shenoi urged countries to battle misinformation related to the vaccine. She said that it is especially difficult to do this when people are more concerned about their individual freedoms than public health.

The event ran for about an hour, according to Shenoi.

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

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 9

“Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.” THEODOR ADORNO GERMAN PHILOSOPHER

Yale Schwarzman Center opens its doors

BY MARISOL CARTY STAFF REPORTER Sept. 1 marked the long-awaited opening of the Yale Schwarzman Center, or YSC, commencing with lunch for Yale undergraduates in the Commons dining hall for the first time since 2017.

The Schwarzman Center is a student union offering spaces for community gatherings and the arts.

The center’s facilities build upon three tenets: collaboration, wellness and belonging. The center, originally known as “Commons,” closed for renovations in 2017 following a $150 million gift from Stephen Schwarzman ’69 in May 2016.

“The activation of lunch in Commons, seating in The Underground, and grab-and-go service at The Bow Wow marks a busy start to the process of bringing the center’s spaces online,” YSC Executive Director

Garth Ross said in an interview with the News. “We’re so grateful to our partners in Yale Hospitality for these achievements. And we look forward to activating the entirety of the center in coming months as the University’s COVID guidance allows, and to seeing it further come to life with performances, events and dining with students, faculty, staff and our friends across New Haven and beyond.”

According to YSC marketing and communications director Maurice Harris, the center encourages interdisciplinarity, and every space encourages Yalies to design new ways to take advantage of offered features.

YSC’s focal point is Commons, the University’s historic dining hall that first opened in 1901. The now-renovated space preserves its long wooden tables and chandeliers, complemented by a new PA system, air conditioning and projection screens.

COURTESY OF FRANCIS DZIKOWSKI

Students were introduced to the Schwarzman Center on Wednesday and will now be able to experience the center’s gathering spaces and arts offerings.

On Wednesday, diners were introduced to a novel method of food selection: a plated meal from one of four themed stations. According to Yale Hospitality Marketing and Communications Senior Manager Christelle Ramos, meals at Commons are different from the “all-you-careto-eat” style of residential college dining halls. This supports Yale Hospitality’s 2019 Food Organic Waste Reduction Initiative.

There are two cafes, located in YSC’s Underground area, which will open at a later date. These shops are named Elm and Ivy as tribute to “Elm City,” or New Haven, and the Ivy League. Elm is an all-day cafe with gelato and brewed coffee, while Ivy serves “late night pub fare” in the evenings. Yalies over 21 years of age can come to The Well, a dimly lit pub carved into the building’s granite foundation and serving beer from Handsome Dan-shaped beer taps.

Harris said that the name applies not only to the room’s appearance but also to its mission of wellness. The room is devoid of TVs and meant to be a place for free-flowing conversation.

Another just-opened snack shop in The Underground is The Bow Wow, unofficially replacing Durfee’s convenience store. Here, students can use lunch swipes to pick up snacks such as sushi, kombucha, and seaweed, and they can also purchase toiletries and Yale merchandise.

Durfee’s is closed this year and Ramos said she was “uncertain” if it would ever open again.

YSC is primarily a space for arts in addition to community building, and

its arts offerings begin in Commons, where exhibitions can be displayed on screens. Ramos described the connections of food with art by explaining Commons head chef David Kuzma’s meticulous care with each meal.

Visitors can experience student and professional art in two galleries. In coming months, students can request these spaces to display their work or book performing arts venues via YSC’s website.

The Underground hosts a theater and dance studio. The theater is Yale’s only proscenium theater — a type of ancient theater where a rounded stage juts out to the audience — and viewers watch from four small booths with fireplaces called “inglenooks.” The dance studio, on the other hand, includes pan-tilt-zoom, or PTZ, cameras that swivel in several directions, AV systems, mounted speakers and a drop-down projection screen — adapted to the post-Zoom world. The space is currently used as a COVID-19 testing site.

“The studio is gorgeous; they’ve put a lot of time and energy and money into it, which the dance community is really grateful for,” said Nora Faverzani ’23, co-president of Yale Dancers. “The hope is that as the need for testing declines, the studio can be used for dance — there’s a lot of places you can do testing but not a lot of places you can dance.”

In the past, graduate students were typically excluded from Commons.

An appeal from three student governments — the Yale College Council, the Graduate and Professional Student Senate, and the Graduate Stu-

dent Assembly — sparked the concept of a center bridging boundaries between undergraduate, graduate and professional students at Yale.

On the center’s second floor is the Annex, a naturally-lit hallway with alcoves for students to meet. The Annex includes a graduate student lounge and will house a satellite location of Silliman’s Good Life Center beginning in October.

Alexa Vaneghas ’20, a Woodbridge Fellow at the Good Life Center, said that graduate and professional school students often find the GLC’s residential college location inaccessible.

She looks forward to the GLC’s new reach and envisions other campus wellness centers in the future.

“It’s impossible to think about student life without also thinking about wellness,” Vaneghas wrote in an email to the News. “Creating a Good Life Center in YSC not only emphasizes the communal nature of student life, but also helps create a campus culture that promotes wellness as a fundamental, accessible human right.”

On the third floor is The Dome, a performance space that is equipped to serve any artistic purpose and exemplifies YSC’s call for creation and innovation. It includes a sprung floor, a PTZ camera, projection screens and a performance space in the center of the room. Harris is eager to see Yalies bring their creativity to the room.

Commons is open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. for lunch daily.

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

In-person classes begin with COVID-19 still looming

BY JULIA BIALEK AND JORDAN FITZGERALD STAFF REPORTERS Yale has recorded more positive COVID-19 cases this term than the corresponding period last fall as students return to in-person classes after 18 months of remote instruction.

This year, during the seven-day period before classes started, 11

undergraduate students tested positive for COVID-19, nine living on campus and two living off, according to the COVID-19 dashboard. Over the past seven days, from Aug. 24 to Aug. 30, 31 University-affiliated individuals have tested positive for COVID-19, including 16 students and 15 staff and faculty members — up from six total cases between Aug. 23 to Aug. 29 last fall.

YALE NEWS

University officials are closely watching the Delta variant and how it may affect instruction and other plans.

All Yale students, faculty and staff are required to be vaccinated and wear masks indoors, allowing campus to more closely resemble its pre-pandemic self. Prior to the start of classes, the University reached a 98 percent vaccination rate among undergraduate students — a percentage nearly double the national rate due to Yale’s vaccination mandate.

Vaccination rates for graduate students, faculty and staff have reached 97, 92 and 90 percent, respectively.

Still, undergraduates began the semester with a risk of contracting COVID-19 as the Delta variant creates uncertainty about the state of the pandemic on campus. In a town hall last week, University officials and public health experts commented on the uncertainty of how well the vaccines protect against transmission of the Delta variant but said they plan to have classes remain in person even if its members or faculty contract COVID-19.

But the pandemic has already thrown a wrench into the University’s housing plans, as it prepares for the possibility of a spike in positivity rates

following student arrival to campus.

Five days before classes began, the 49 students who were supposed to live in mixed-college housing in McClellan Hall were notified that they will be indefinitely moved to the Omni Hotel in order to increase isolation housing capacity on-campus should there be a need for it. Currently, the University has 74 percent of its isolation housing capacity free.

According to Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd, the length of the students’ stay in the hotel will depend on whether and how long the extra isolation space is necessary, which will be determined by the student testing data collected over the next few weeks.

Despite these risks and protocols, students expressed gratitude for the ability to return to in-person classes.

“After more than a year of taking classes online, to physically be in a room with other students and to see people filling the streets, walking to class and interacting felt surreal,” Victoria Vera ’23 told the News of her first day of classes.

“Even with everyone wearing

masks, it almost feels like Yale was approaching normal again.”

Similarly, Natasha Ravinand ’24 told the News that she feels “really grateful” to return to New Haven for in-person classes after her gap year, during which she counted down the days until she could reunite with friends and professors.

In a welcome email sent to undergraduate students on the first day of classes, Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun stressed that even amid the excitement of the return to campus, public health should be at the forefront of the community.

According to the CDC, COVID19 cases are up 14.3 percent in New Haven County since Aug. 1. The county falls under the CDC’s “high transmission status” category, which means there are more than 100 positive cases per 100 thousand residents, or a positivity rate greater than 10 percent.

Contact JULIA BIALEK at julia.bialek@yale.edu and JORDAN FITZGERALD at jordan.fitzgerald@yale.edu .

City kicks off new wave of pandemic restrictions enforcement

BY OWEN TUCKER-SMITH STAFF REPORTER New Haven businesses will face an additional layer of scrutiny in the coming weeks as the city kicks off a new wave of pandemic restrictions enforcement.

For the past several weeks, officials have educated local businesses on how to comply with the citywide mask mandate that has been in place since Aug. 8. But now, establishments that are seen not following the mandate or other safety protocols could face hundreds of dollars in fines, and, if the infringements continue, a forced shutdown, city officials shared at a Wednesday morning press conference. This means business owners will be responsible for requiring that patrons wear masks while inside.

“Businesses were notified properly, and given posters and even masks, so that we can support reopening,” New Haven Health Director Maritza Bond said at the press conference. “While we do support reopening, we will not tolerate individuals that disregard the lives of the larger population. It is a tough position that I’m in. … We have to think about the health and well-being of the overall population that we serve.”

Bond said the crackdown would start Thursday morning. Discipline

can happen on multiple levels: first, establishments will be met with a verbal warning — the city has issued 28 of those already. Then, they will get a written warning — Bond said there have been two so far. After the written warning, businesses will be fined $100 per infraction, meaning that one visit could result in a several hundred dollar fine if inspectors notice multiple people without masks.

Members of the New Haven Fire Department will be present at the enforcement visits, officials noted.

At the press conference, New Haven Deputy Chief Fire Marshall Jen Forslund said the department would help the city set occupancy limits.

New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker joined Bond in saying the rising level of enforcement is the result of a rapid uptick in cases and hospitalizations over the last two months, both in New Haven and the state as a whole.

Connecticut’s positivity rate has increased tenfold since July 1, when it was 0.43 percent; now, it has risen to 4.65 percent. During the same period, the number of hospitalizations statewide jumped from 37 two months ago to 363 on Tuesday.

Elicker stressed that the Elm City must remain vigilant and continue to raise the city’s vaccination rate. The city’s 430 pop-up clinics and government canvassing efforts since February have helped keep

vaccination rates steadily above the national average.

As of Monday, just under 69 percent of eligible New Haven residents have been vaccinated, Elicker said, compared to 53 percent nationally.

“It is clear that if you get vaccinated you are much, much more protected from getting COVID,” he said at the press conference. “It could not be easier to get vaccinated.”

The city continues to prioritize publicizing the efficacy of COVID vaccines, Elicker said, but he also said that it also needs to continue convincing Elm City residents that masks are an important and effective mechanism against the spread of the virus.

“I’ve received one or two emails from people that cite a couple of studies that say that masks are not effective,” the mayor said. “The overwhelming majority of studies indicate that masks are very, very effective.”

If the city does shut down noncompliant businesses in the coming days, it will mirror actions it took earlier on in the pandemic. In the summer of 2020, at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic, Bond said the city shut down over 13 businesses for COVID restriction infringements.

It is important that the public does not become complacent,

Bond said. She added that assuming that the worst of the pandemic has passed is inadvisable. Indoor activity and the return of university students to the Elm City could increase infection rates.

Enforcement of the restrictions will include monitoring New Haven’s nightlife, which is expected to rise in the area surrounding Yale, officials said. In response to questions on the feasibility of enforcing mask mandates at nightclubs, Bond said it is the responsibility of the establishment to enforce mask mandates, and that they should contact the city to brainstorm ways to ensure compliance.

On Wednesday, Elicker also spoke about the recently

announced vaccination and testing policy for city employees. Each worker is required to either be fully vaccinated by Sept. 27, or submit to weekly testing.

“Employees will have 24 hours to correct the situation by either getting tested or uploading their vaccination information” if they are found to not be in compliance after that date, Elicker said. “If they do not do that, they will be deemed unable to work and be put on unpaid leave.

Almost 100 percent of cases in New Haven are of the Delta variant, Elicker said at the press conference.

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

JESSIE CHEUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The crackdown is a result of a tenfold increase in hospitalizations since July 1 and includes warnings, fines and potential business shutdowns.

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

“If you have everything under control, you’re not moving fast enough.”

MARIO ANDRETTI FORMER RACE CAR DRIVER

Yale football second in Ivy poll

ALISIA PAN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Quarterback Griffin O’Connor ’23, running back Zane Dudek ’22 and six of the Blue and White’s top seven tacklers from 2019 will return to the gridiron in 2021.

FOOTBALL FROM PAGE 14 almost the same conglomerate of teams as they did during the 2019 season. But two notable out-of-conference changes were made: Yale will first travel to Lehigh on Oct. 2 to take on the Mountain Hawks before making the short trip two weeks later to the University of Connecticut to battle the Huskies for the first time since 1998. Yale will not face Fordham or Richmond this year.

Back in 2019, the Bulldogs had one loss to its record: a 42–10 collapse at the hands of the Dartmouth Big Green, which was the lowest point total of the Bulldogs’ season in what looked to be a lethal blow to Yale’s chances of securing an Ivy League championship. A week later, a muchneeded comeback victory against Richmond lit a spark under the Elis that burned even brighter as the second half of the season progressed.

Yale scored a game average of more than 50 points in the four games after Richmond — offensive mastery put on full display during the penultimate week of the season in a 51–14 victory over Princeton, handing the Tigers only their second loss of the season.

Needing a win against their Cambridge rival to close out the season as Ivy League co-champions, the Bulldogs found themselves facing a daunting 17-point fourth-quarter deficit at The Game. In what was a double-overtime, four-and-a-halfhour instant-classic that saw everything from half-time protests to dramatic onside kick recoveries, the Elis snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and secured a share of the Ivy League title alongside Dartmouth.

That Ivy League title was the Big Green’s 19th Ancient Eight crown, the

most by any team in the Ivy League.

Of the defensive players taking the gridiron for Dartmouth in 2021, only fifth-year safety Niko Mermigas and nickelback John Pupel took snaps in the starting lineup two years ago.

The Blue and White are set to take the field against the Big Green and try to avenge their 32-point loss on Oct. 9, the fourth week of the season.

Princeton, meanwhile, returns eight players who earned All-Ivy League honors in 2019. Among those top performers coming back for the Tigers include All-Ivy League defensive back Delan Stallworth and linebacker Jeremiah Tyler who spearheaded one of the Ancient Eight’s most productive defenses two years ago. Yale and the Tigers will face off in the penultimate week of the season — Nov. 13 — just as they did two years ago.

“We have a group of guys that have worked really hard over these last 18 months,” Princeton head coach Bob Surace said on media day. “We have a lot of guys who love football that took this year off because they want to be with their teammates, they want closure and they want to see how good our team can be.”

The Bulldogs’ 2021 season will be capped off by The Game, which will take place at the Yale Bowl on Nov. 20.

Harvard returns eight of its starters from 2019, consisting of three offensive players and five defenders, as the Crimson looks to bounce back from a disappointing 4–6 campaign.

Yale will kick off the 2021 season at home against Holy Cross on Sept. 18.

Contact JARED FEL at jared.fel@yale.edu and NADER GRANMAYEH at nader.granmayeh@yale.edu .

Yale LHP drafted by Giants HANDA FROM PAGE 14 baseball head coach John Stuper said. “They all improved, but what Rohan did was off the charts. In all my years in baseball, I have never seen a velocity jump like [that]. I’m really proud of him. I think he could move [up] quickly.”

Handa is the 37th Yale baseball player who has been drafted since Stuper took control of the program in 1992. Four Bulldog baseball players were selected in the MLB Draft in 2019, including Simon Whiteman ’19, who currently plays for San Francisco’s Double-A affiliate. Across the bay in Oakland, Kumar Nambiar ’19 was another Indian American Yale pitcher who was drafted by the A’s and currently plays for their Low-A affiliate.

Back in March, Handa discussed his time away from New Haven in an interview with the News. The Charlotte, North Carolina, native had been working with Tread Athletics and Dynamic Sports Training in Houston to improve. He remained remotely enrolled at Yale and took four classes in the spring while coaching his old high school’s junior varsity team.

“The goal was always to get drafted,” Handa told the News in a phone call from his Rookie Ball posting in Arizona. “I honestly couldn’t be more thankful for my agents, coach Stuper simply putting my name out there. Obviously Tread Athletics has been a huge help as well. It's been tremendous.”

Handa’s draft stock started to really take off earlier this year during the Atlantic Coast Conference’s baseball tournament, which was hosted in his hometown of Charlotte last spring, when he threw an extended bullpen organized by an advisor. According to Handa, scouts from around 15 teams attended his bullpen. Among those scouts was Arnold Brathwaite, the Northeast supervisor for the San Francisco Giants.

Besides watching his bullpen, Brathwaite got the opportunity to talk to Handa. While the talk only lasted for 10 minutes, the conversation inspired Brathwaite to dig into the Yale lefty’s background.

“I think the combination of the stuff and the person,” Brathwaite said when asked about what impressed him the

Volleyball team to open season VOLLEYBALL FROM PAGE 14 In December 2019, the Bulldogs (0–0–0, 0–0–0 Ivy) split the Ivy League champions title with Princeton (0–0–0, 0–0–0 Ivy) after a narrow 5-set match that marked their 11th championship crown. Shortly afterward, a tie-breaker game for the NCAA tournament bid resulted in a loss against the Tigers. The Elis were undefeated at home during the 2019 season.

Last year, the team found itself split between on-campus students and those who took time off. This posed a difficult and unusual challenge for the Bulldogs as they attempted to stay in shape during their time without playing together. Five students took a leave of absence for at least one semester last year. While most team members were on campus in the fall, only four were on campus in the spring to run practices. Compounded by the quick-changing phases of Yale’s COVID-19 practice policies last year, the team has their work cut out for them as they attempt to integrate two classes of players that have yet to compete at the collegiate level — 2024 and 2025.

Team captain and outside hitter Ellis DeJardin ’22 told the News last year that she is “not worried” about integrating a large number of new players into the team but acknowledged that the dynamic might be different from what it normally would be.

Despite this challenge, Appleman expressed her confidence in the team’s bond and ability to

most about Handa after first meeting him. “Obviously the stuff speaks for itself from where he was at a year and a half ago to where he is now. But you know just [the] person too and the work he put in, and just having a plan and understanding what he needed to do to get where he wants to go. And that’s always a good combination.”

Before selecting Handa, Brathwaite said that the Giants wanted to make sure that they got different looks at him before making the decision to draft and sign him. Brathwaite told the News that in total, five different people from the organization ended up scouting him.

Some of these evaluations came during Handa’s 2021 season in the New England Collegiate Baseball League, a summer league for college baseball players. The 6-foot-3 pitcher played for the Mystic Schooners and threw a total of 17 innings in which he struck out 25 batters to the tune of a 0.52 ERA.

The Blue and White’s season openers will take place against Hartford, Syracuse and Quinnipiac this weekend. bring players of all years together.

In a call with the News, she was especially happy with the leadership demonstrated by seniors such as DeJardin, outside hitter Kathryn Attar ’22 and right-side hitter Ashley Dreyer ’22.

“There are a lot of new faces, but my leadership group is doing a fantastic job,” Appleman said.

“They have taken people under their wings and really showed them the ropes.”

This year, the Bulldogs will welcome five new first years onto the team: middle hitter Gigi Barr ’25, libero Bella Chan ’25, setter Carly Diehl ’25, outside hitter Emma Shadwick ’25 and outside hitter Mila Yarich ’25. Many of them have not only garnered all-state and

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

COURTESY OF ROHAN HANDA

Handa, who originally matriculated in the class of 2022, is currently activated on the Giants but has yet to make his professional debut.

Women’s soccer falls to Quinnipiac W. SOCCER FROM PAGE 14

COURTESY OF YALE VOLLEYBALL TEAM

Handa drew on his two-seam fastball, slider, changeup and a developing splitter. Scouts have called both his slider and fastball “plus” pitches.

The repeated evaluation and his strong performances ultimately culminated in his MLB Draft selection in July. Late in July, MLB.com reporter Jonathan Mayo reported in a Tweet that Handa had signed with the San Francisco Giants for a bonus of $347,500.

Handa told the News he is currently on a two-term leave of absence from Yale, but his contract with the Giants gives the organization his MLB rights for several years. The former Yale pitcher is currently activated on the Arizona Complex League roster for the Giants but has yet to make his professional debut.

Handa’s agents are Nick Chanock and Lenny Strelitz of Wasserman.

toric lead coming into the series against Quinnipiac, a number of factors have changed. This year’s team features only nine returning players and 17 players who have not completed a season at the collegiate level due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While Yale hired Martinez as an assistant women’s soccer coach in January 2019, this game marked her second match as the head women’s soccer coach.

Yale Athletics promoted Martinez on Dec. 3, 2019.

The Blue and White have four more weeks to prepare until their

first Ivy League matchup against Princeton.

“We're really positive going into those games. We know we're a good team, we play good soccer, we move the ball well, we're just looking to accomplish all those things,” Welch told the News from the pitch after the team’s Friday 3–2 overtime defeat to University at Buffalo.

The Bulldogs will take on Oregon State at Reese Stadium this Friday at 7 p.m.

Amelia Lower contributed reporting.

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

national accolades, but also All-Academic honors. For example, Yarich has earned AAU All-America and All-Academic honors.

“I want to see the chemistry of the team. I want to see us doing the skills that we’ve worked on correctly,” Appleman said about the beginning of the season. “I want to see us going out there and enjoying the sport again. The excitement about volleyball is what I am looking forward to.”

The Bulldogs will host Hartford for the first match of their season on Friday, Sept. 3 at 1 p.m.

Contact ÁNGELA PÉREZ at angela.perez@yale.edu and WEI-TING SHIH at wei-ting.shih@yale.edu .

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

In the first 45 minutes, Yale forced six corner kicks, three more than Quinnipiac, and Welch made three saves to the Bobcats’ two.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 11

“I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.” CHARLES DARWIN ENGLISH NATURALIST

Alumni still upset over Corp voting change

YALE DAILY NEWS

After the Yale Corporation ended the petition process to join Yale’s governing board, alumni have continued resistance efforts.

BY ROSE HOROWITCH STAFF REPORTER Many Yale alumni have protested the University’s decision to end the petition process to gain access to the Yale Corporation trustee ballot — leaving officially nominated candidates as the only options for voters — with some notable efforts aimed at withholding donations and negatively affecting the University’s finances ahead of the upcoming capital campaign.

Last spring, the Yale Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, voted to get rid of the petition process for the Corporation ballot.

While an official committee of Yale alumni and administrators nominates one or more candidates per year, the petition process allowed non-nominated candidates to vie for a Corporation seat. Within the past two years, the petition process’s popularity grew, with several alumni campaigning to push Yale to change on issues of transparency and environmental stewardship.

The Yale Corporation argued that it abolished the petition process because it had begun to mirror recent political campaigns, a similarity which the Corporation said could harm its governance by linking trustees to outside organizations, as well as discouraging qualified candidates from running.

Trustees must be neutral arbiters and open to compromise, it wrote in a May 25 statement.

But many alumni were incensed at the decision and have continued to protest it even months later.

A GoFundMe opposing the change has raised more than $13,500 from around 70 donors to fund ads against the decision. Other alumni are contemplating suing Yale or the trustees, or lobbying the state to revise Yale’s charter and revoke its nonprofit status, said Andrew Lipka ’78, who had planned to run as a petition candidate for the 2022 election.

Yale’s capital campaign is set to publicly launch Oct. 2. The campaign, which each president launches once during their tenure, relies primarily on alumni donations.

Still others, like Lipka, have pursued more official channels, trying to collaborate with senior administrators to convince them to reverse their decision. Lipka argued that the abolition of the petition process particularly harms potential candidates who have served Yale but who are not “titans of industry [or] money-men.”

“That’s the very constituency that alumni would recognize in an election, in a fair election, as being the qualified ones,” Lipka said. “So therefore it’s a continuation of this

wincestuous behavior where this cadre of insiders seeks to continue their all-out dominance.”

In May, when the trustees announced their decision, it received immediate and fierce backlash. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences Senate published a statement of concern condemning the decision. In early June, the Wall Street Journal featured an opinion piece opposing the move.

At the time, Felicity Enders ’94 wrote that she was “especially outraged as a Black woman,” because the change meant diverse voices would be less likely to be heard.

“I’m disappointed in Yale for not incorporating alumni voices in an open and transparent fashion,” Enders wrote in a September email to the News. “I feel they have created an echo chamber without opportunity for outside voices. I love Yale and continue to expect the best from this institution.”

Nate Nickerson, vice president for communications, said that University President Peter Salovey and the trustees respect that some alumni oppose the decision, and that the trustees have signaled a desire to be closer to the alumni and exchange views with them.

Former senior trustee Catharine Bond Hill GRD’ 85 said that commentary has “quieted down” in the months since the announcement of the end of the petition process, and that the Trustees have not discussed further reforms to the process.

Lipka added that he has spoken with senior Yale administrators and tried to tell them that alumni concern over the decision is out of love for Yale. He feels the lines of communication are open and can see a scenario in which the petition process is reinstated or the election process is further reformed, he said. In a June interview with the News, Salovey indicated that further reforms to the election process might be possible as the Alumni Fellow Nominating Committee listens to feedback.

Jennifer Ebisemiju Madar ’88, chair of the Alumni Fellow Nominating Committee, said that the nomination process will not change for the 2022 election, but that the committee will proceed with its annual review of its mission and processes. The Alumni Fellow Nominating Committee solicits nominations from alumni.

Composed of Yale administrators and alumni volunteers, it can nominate up to five candidates for the Corporation ballot. Last year it nominated one candidate, David Thomas ’78 GRD ’86, who ultimately defeated a petition candidate, Victor Ashe ’67.

The committee is emphasizing efforts to inform alumni of the nomination process, Madar added.

“The volume of commentary has slowed, but there are alumni who continue to share their thoughts with us,” Madar wrote in an email to the News. “We pass their comments along to the trustees, who acknowledge the breadth and depth of alumni sentiment, both for and against their decision, and we appreciate their passion as well as their care and concern for Yale.”

The pro-petition alumni-run GoFundMe will finance three editorials in the Alumni Magazine, the first of which will run in mid-September. The full-page advertisement will be titled, “Not Your Voice, Not Your Yale.” It calls on Yale to rescind its decision and lower the petition signature threshold, which had been set at more than 6,000 alumni signatures.

Comments on the GoFundMe centered on making the alumni’s presence known and felt by Yale, with a particular emphasis on hitting the University in its pocketbook.

“The University administration is not stupid, and no doubt they believe that despite protests in reaction to their fiat, the alumni have no legal influence,” wrote Lindsey Kiang ’63 LAW ’68. “A calculated and rational decision by the administration, to be sure. So may I suggest that the media statement for which we’re donating observe that if we alumni are not worthy of being heard, then perhaps our donations are similarly unimportant. As for me, there are many other non-profit organizations, and much more needy ones, right here in my own community as well as in the wider society.”

Paul Mange Johansen ’88 stopped conducting interviews for Yale admissions after the decision and has stopped giving the University, but will likely start up again if Yale reverses its decision. Frank Hotchkiss ’64, who organized the GoFundMe, echoed this sentiment.

Bond Hill explained that her experience in institutional management has taught her that changes make some people unhappy, and their response is often to withhold donations.

“But I would hope that if they’re committed and love Yale, that they realize all the incredibly good things that Yale is doing and will continue to support endeavors that they think are important,” Bond Hill said.

Lipka added that he opposes efforts that will harm Yale in the long term, including withholding donations, removing Yale from one’s will, suing the University or trying to convince Connecticut to revise Yale’s charter to alter its nonprofit status. Still, all of those efforts are ongoing, he said.

More than 1,000 alumni have reached out with support and to request guidance on how to move forward, Lipka said. He advised them to “keep their voice alive, to let the administration know that this is not going to go away … that we take our disenfranchisement seriously and we’re not going to forget about it,” Lipka told the News.

The Alumni Fellow elections are held each spring. Six alumni fellows are elected to the board, and 10 successor trustees are appointed by outgoing members.

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

Class of 2025 arrives on campus

BY AMELIA DAVIDSON STAFF REPORTER Yale’s class of 2025 arrived on campus last Friday as one of Yale’s most diverse classes of all time, as well as its largest incoming class in recent history.

The first-year class contains 1,789 students, which is about 200 more than a typical incoming class. The increase can be attributed to a record-high 335 students who opted to take gap years after originally being admitted to the class of 2024.

The class of 2025 is one of the most diverse in recent years: 51 percent of the class is comprised of United States citizens who identify as students of color, and students come from 48 states and 68 countries. Fifty-five percent of the class is female, as compared to 48 percent for the class of 2024, and 63 percent of the class attended public schools, down slightly from 67 percent for the class of 2024.

“The members of the Admissions Committee were blown away by the level of academic s t r e n g t h , e x t ra c u r r i c u l a r accomplishment, social commitment, and personal resilience our applicants displayed this year, despite the countless pandemic-related hardships and disruptions they experienced,” Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan wrote in a statement.

“Selecting the class from such a large group of applicants was daunting, but we maintained our commitment to thoughtful, whole-person review, and I am confident that this group of new students is exceptionally well prepared to thrive at Yale.”

The class of 2025 was admitted to Yale with a record-low 4.6 percent acceptance rate after Yale saw soaring application numbers in part due to virtual outreach and the elimination of its standardized testing requirements.

Despite the large number of 2024 admits who took gap years, Yale admitted a typical number of students during its early and regular decision processes for the 202021 application cycle.

Yale’s decision to keep admit levels the same has resulted in Yale’s largest class since just after World War II. “Over the past 18 months, the faculty and staff of Yale College have shown ingenuity, perseverance, and commitment to providing a Yale undergraduate education in challenging circumstances,” Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun wrote in a press release. “They are all looking forward, as I am, to welcoming this large and diverse group of new students to campus.”

Over 50 percent of the class of 2025 is receiving a need-based financial aid award, with awards averaging $61,500 — up $6,400 from the average award for the class of 2024. Sixteen percent of students in the class are the first in their family to attend college, down from the 19 percent of students in the class of 2024.

The class of 2025 also includes a record-high 131 students who applied to Yale through QuestBridge, a national nonprofit that matches low-income students with selective colleges.

Mark Dunn, director of outreach and communications at the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, told the News that the class of 2025 is “unlike any other that’s arrived at Yale” due

to its large size and its admission during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But even with the challenges of the pandemic, Yale was able to admit a class full of similar students to years past, Dunn wrote in an email to the News.

“In the most important ways, this class is exactly like the classes that have arrived at Yale in previous years,” Dunn wrote.

“These new students are curious, ambitious, committed to their communities, and are open to having a transformational experience at Yale.”

In addition to publishing a complete profile of the class of 2025, the Yale Office of Undergraduate Admissions for the first time published a combined profile that includes demographic statistics about both the class of 2024 and the class of 2025.

“TOGETHER, THE CLASSES OF 2024 AND 2025 ARE AN ESPECIALLY EXTRAORDINARY GROUP OF ACCOMPLISHED YOUNG PEOPLE WHO HAVE PERSEVERED THROUGH THE COUNTLESS DISRUPTIONS OF THE PANDEMIC TO ARRIVE AT YALE READY TO THRIVE IN ALL THE FACETS OF ON-CAMPUS LIFE,” QUINLAN TOLD THE NEWS. Dunn told the News that the admissions office has frequently thought about the two classes together due to the large number of students who took gap years.

“Together, the classes of 2024 and 2025 are an especially extraordinary group of accomplished young people who have persevered through the countless disruptions of the pandemic to arrive at Yale ready to thrive in all the facets of on-campus life,” Quinlan told the News. “Since March of 2020, these students have taken many varied paths to reach New Haven, and I am delighted that they are all finally together in this special place.”

Certain changes made during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as virtual outreach initiatives and the elimination of standardized testing requirements, remain in place for the 2021-22 admissions cycle.

The early admissions deadline for the class of 2026 is Nov. 1.

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

YALE NEWS

The class of 2025 is one of the most diverse in recent years and the largest incoming class in recent history.

PAGE 12

THROUGH THE LENS

L

ast Friday, Aug. 27, Reese Stadium hosted the first Yale game to occur since March 12, 2020. Yale women’s soccer took on the University at Buffalo.

Although there were visual reminders of the pandemic, the competition proceeded normally.

Fans were in the stands.

A broadcast team announced the game for ESPN+.

There were moments of celebration. First-year midfielder Ellie Rappole ’25 scored two goals for the Bulldogs in the first half, including a backheel in front of the net.

And there were moments of distress. Buffalo converted a penalty kick and, then, scored again to tie the game in the second half.

In overtime, Buffalo scored the golden goal to win, 3–2.

WILLIAM MCCORMACK reports.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 13

NEWS

“It’s the price of success: people start to think you’re omnipotent.” BEN BERNANKE AMERICAN ECONOMIST

Mayoral race sees big changes administration neglected. With Elicker in office, DuBois-Walton said, communication between police leadership and the rank and file continued to deteriorate amid a national reckoning on race that placed law enforcement throughout the country under increased scrutiny. She also criticized the administration’s budgeting decisions, in light of Elicker’s unprecedented double budget proposal.

Despite DuBois-Walton’s best attempts to make herself a formidable candidate against a popular mayor, straw polls conducted by ward committees among New Haven Democratic groups consistently leaned in Elicker’s favor.

YALE DAILY NEWS

After a long summer of campaigning, Karen DuBois-Walton has dropped out, leaving incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker as the sole Democratic candidate.

BY OWEN TUCKER-SMITH AND ÁNGELA PÉREZ STAFF REPORTERS New Haven’s mayoral race sparked in the early summer months, just as hordes of Yalies emptied campus. The temperature shot up. So, too, did the intensity of the Democratic primary.

Karen DuBois-Walton, who became Elicker’s first major challenger in his quest for reelection when she entered the race in March, immediately made a splash in the race. The head of Elm City Communities, New Haven’s Housing Authority, raised an unprecedented sum of donations in her first month of fundraising.

Then, at the New Haven Democratic Town Committee meeting on July 27, DuBois-Walton unexpectedly announced her departure from the race.

“I wanted to run a campaign for equity and justice — a campaign that works to transform what’s possible in New Haven in a way that our forebears here have done so many times,” she said. “It has become evident that the city is not ready for that kind of leadership.”

Earlier in the summer, DuBois-Walton had lost most of the city’s Democratic Town Ward Committee straw polls, picking up only four out of 25.

Minutes after that announcement, Elicker accepted the party’s nomination.

“I’m proud of our city and how we’ve responded to this crisis

that none of us have experienced in our lifetime,” the mayor said at the Town Committee. “We’ve done so in a way that follows the science but that invests in equity … I am so grateful that you have given me the opportunity to continue leading the city.”

Elicker faces a vote in the city’s primary election on September 14, which he is primed to win, followed by a general election on Nov. 2. He could face off against one of several Republican candidates.

Summer campaigning Be fo re D u Bo i s -Wa l to n ’s announcement, the hot summer days were filled with door-todoor campaigning.

Elicker centered his campaign around the achievements of his first term, touting a prompt response to the COVID-19 pandemic and his handling of the Elm City’s budget crisis. The mayor took an active role in the fight for a statewide tiered Payment in Lieu of Taxes program. That program, which saw a victory in June and helped ensure that the city could pass Elicker’s proposed “Forward Together” budget without the tax hikes or cuts to city services required by his “Crisis Budget”, ensured the state would provide additional funding to municipalities with high quantities of tax-exempt property.

DuBois-Walton’s campaign called for increased attention to police accountability, an issue which she claimed the Elicker

A Republican challenger For months, New Haven resident Mayce Torres’ candidacy in the Democratic primary failed to gain traction. But on July 22, as first reported by the Independent, Torres changed her party affiliation to Republican, meaning she could potentially still face off against Elicker in a general election.

However, to qualify for the Republican primary ballot she will have to file a petition with at least 129 signatures from local Republicans.

The more cemented Republican candidate is John Carlson, who earned the support of the New Haven Republican Party.

Carlson has focused his campaign around improving poor test scores in the New Haven Public School system, criminal justice and promoting fiscal responsibility in City Hall.

“Unlike the Democrats, I won’t handcuff the cops,” Carlson said at a local Republican convention, according to the Independent. “I’ll let the cops handcuff the criminals.”

Elicker’s team has used the presence of “a serious Republican challenger” in several campaign emails as a motivator for donations.

“We can’t be complacent — we’ve got a serious Republican challenger for the first time in years,” Elicker’s campaign manager Kim Agyekum wrote in an email to supporters. “Raising the funds necessary to defeat our serious Republican challenger requires support from residents just like you,” she wrote in another.

New Haven Republicans will decide who will challenge the Democratic nominee on Sept. 14.

Contact OWEN TUCKER-SMITH at owen.tucker-smith@yale.edu and ÁNGELA PÉREZ at angela.perez@yale.edu .

In-person admissions tours to take place

BY AMELIA DAVIDSON STAFF REPORTER As the Yale Office of Undergraduate Admissions kicks off its 20212022 admissions cycle, admissions staff are planning a return to in-person tours while still continuing some modes of virtual outreach.

The admissions office has held all outreach initiatives, including campus tours, online since the COVID-19 pandemic hit campus in March 2020.

But in a new step forward, the admissions office is planning to resume in-person tours on Oct. 4, barring any changes in the public health situation. The office will continue to hold all information sessions and other outreach presentations online after such efforts proved successful last admissions cycle.

“Last year, we had tremendous success in connecting with students and parents virtually,” Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan told the News. “And the plan this year that the admissions team has come up with takes some of the best practices from last year, but connects it with a broader strategy of who we want to be connecting with. … We have come up with a really sound plan that I think allows us to connect with a lot of students.”

The admissions office plans to offer in-person tours six times a day, six days per week, up from the number of in-person tours hosted during the admissions cycle of pre-pandemic years. Each time slot will offer two tours for twenty people each. In accordance with public safety guidelines, all visitors will have to sign up for tour slots in advance to keep the numbers low.

All tours will be offered out of the Yale Visitor Center on Elm Street, rather than out of the admissions office, which previously held tours.

The admissions office will remain closed for the time being. According to Yale Visitor Center Director Nancy Franco, the Visitor Center will be closed to the general public so that it can serve solely as the host site for admissions tours. The Visitor Center staff hopes to re-open the building to the public early next year or once public health conditions allow, Franco told the News.

Debra Johns, an associate director of admissions and the team leader for hospitality, told the News that admissions office staff have been planning the return to in-person tours since the beginning of the summer. The admissions office has worked closely with the University-wide COVID-19 Review Team to ensure that the tour plans abide by all university health and safety policies.

“There is no true substitute for walking around campus, seeing buildings, hearing about Yale from our amazing tour guides, or feeling the Yale community buzzing with energy,” Johns said. “The staffs at the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and the Visitor Center knew we needed to return to offering those opportunities as soon as we safely could do so.”

On top of on-campus tours and information sessions, admissions officers also visit various locations throughout the country during a typical admissions cycle. When the pandemic hit, the admissions office moved all information sessions and presentations online, and saw immense success. In the first nine months of 2020, 47,000 prospective students registered for joint virtual events featuring Yale, as opposed to around 8,500 prospective students throughout the entirety of 2019.

Public safety is the primary reason that Yale is only holding virtual information sessions and outreach presentations this fall, Mark Dunn, the director of outreach and communications at the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, told the News. But after the success of 2020, the admissions office is seriously considering keeping virtual elements to their outreach strategy even after the pandemic subsides.

In addition to virtual standard information sessions, the admissions office plans to conduct more targeted outreach initiatives over the course of a five-week period beginning Sept.

13. Admissions officers will host virtual presentations for specific geographic regions, as well as presentations with specialized topics, such as STEM and performance arts.

The admissions office also plans to take advantage of virtual outreach to connect with students who might not typically be able to visit Yale’s campus. Admissions officers will host sessions specifically for prospective students from small towns, and will talk about the transition from a rural area to an urban area like Yale.

Finally, Yale plans to continue hosting joint virtual events with peer institutions such as Harvard, University of Virginia, University of Chicago and more. The admissions office has hosted such events throughout the spring and summer, and they are often attended by thousands of prospective students, Dunn said.

Although the admissions office will conclude most targeted outreach efforts in mid-October, the office plans to continue in-person tours year-round as in years past, so long as the public health situation allows.

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

University revamps harassment policies, accessibility services discrimination and harassment.

We also assessed how the university’s resources for accessibility were communicated.”

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

University administrators announce new developments for addressing discrimination, harassment and accessibility.

BY ZAPORAH PRICE STAFF REPORTER Last month, University administrators announced, via a campus-wide email, myriad changes and new initiatives for addressing discrimination, harassment and accessibility on campus.

New developments include a consolidated policy against discrimination and harassment, more language surrounding informal resolution and investigation processes, an online reporting form for incidents that may occur and more. The changes and initiatives come after a 2019 external review and report on Yale’s responses and resources regarding racial discrimination and harassment and a 2020 report from the President’s Committee on Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging.

Advancements related to accessibility were also highlighted in the school-wide email, such as a new website and additional staff in Student Accessibility Services.

“Yale’s mission is advanced by fostering an environment of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, so that each one of us can participate freely and fully in the pursuit of excellence that defines our community,” read the Aug. 2 email from the Office of the Secretary & Vice President for University Life, which is headed by Kimberly Goff-Crews ’83 LAW ’86. “As part of the ongoing and wide-ranging efforts around Belonging at Yale, we have reviewed existing policies, reporting processes, resources, and staff that support the work of preventing and addressing concerns of

Progress towards discrimination and harassment In April, the News reported on the efficiency of two primary University systems — the Office of Instiutional Equity and Accessibility, and Discrimination and Harassment Resource Coordinators, formerly called Deans’ Designees.

Some students and former employees criticized a lack of awareness and transparency pertaining to those resources, saying that monthslong OIEA investigations often ended with unsatisfactory outcomes.

Per the Aug. 2 email, the University has updated and clarified information on the OIEA’s role and procedures. The office’s website now outlines a process that includes an initial discussion with an OIEA staff member, pointing towards resources related to the inquiry and possible resolution without the need of an investigation. In the case that further investigation is warranted, the OIEA has listed steps such as interviewing parties or witnesses and discussing findings and recommendations with “appropriate individuals and offices.”

Additionally, the OIEA has hired Diane Cornelius Charles, who joined staff as the Associate Director in July. In an email to the News, Elizabeth Conklin — associate vice president for institutional equity,

accessibility, and belonging — wrote that there is an active search and hiring process for an Equity and Access Representative for the OIEA. Conklin added that the Aug. 2 email was also sent to incoming students, with many discrimination and harassment resource coordinators presenting information during University preorientation programs this fall.

“We are committed to ongoing awareness activities for students, staff, and faculty regarding the policy and resources,” Conklin wrote in an email to the News.

Progress towards accessibility The unveiling of changes and further policies regarding discrimination and harassment coincided with the launch of a new website that consolidates accessibility resources for Yale community members.

Around March, Joaquín Lara Midkiff ’23 served on the working group to vet a centralized and more robust display of resources related to accessibility on campus.

Midkiff, who serves as the president of the Disability Empowerment for Yale group, described “several conversations” and “long meetings” with Yale IT staff where he and others gave feedback about the website’s beginning stages. Once launched, Midkiff called it a “pretty remarkable” resource for students, graduates, staff and visitors.

“One of the amazing things is the ticketing system, anyone can report a menagerie of accessibility con-

cerns,” Midkiff told the News. “If I’m in my residential college and my lift won’t work to get to the dining hall in a wheelchair, I can go to one site, give my claim and it’s sent to the right facilities people.”

The website features a form for community members to report a disability-related accessibility barrier and also lists information regarding campus access, accommodations and affinity groups.

In her email to the News, Conklin noted the four new SAS staff members and expressed excitement about the office’s expansion, which she said would enable the University to continue facilitating individualized accommodations for students with disabilities and working to remove barriers.

While Midkiff, who has advocated for increased SAS staff in the past, said the office’s expansion was “on the right path”, the future of accessibility at Yale for him meant the expansion of community spaces.

“There’s this whole other dimension [of] disability as a community and identity,” Midkiff said. “Highlighting and investing in future success as a community of people, advocating for a persons with disabilities cultural center … if the University is really interested in growing that, they should invest in community building spaces.”

The Disability Empowerment for Yale group was founded in 2016.

Contact ZAPORAH PRICE at zaporah.price@yale.edu .

MLB Phillies 7 Nationals 6

MLB Giants 5 Brewers 1

W. SOCCER No. 8 Georgetown 1 Dartmouth 1

SPORTS

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

Yale looks ahead to 2021 season FOOTBALL

COURTESY OF YALE ATHLETICS

The Yale football team received six first place votes in this year’s Ivy League preseason poll, two votes behind Princeton and five votes ahead of Dartmouth.

On Sept. 18, Yale football is set to defend their share of the Ivy League crown when they return to the Yale Bowl for the first time in 665 days.

Despite losing a number of key players at the end of the 2019 season, the Bulldogs enter the year ranked second in the annual Ivy League preseason poll.

With a host of new faces eager to make their Ivy League debut in a few weeks, exhilaration and excitement has swept across every locker room in the Ancient Eight. Meanwhile, newsrooms emanate with uncertainty as they try to predict how teams will perform heading into this new year.

This uncertainty has revealed itself in this year’s Ivy League preseason poll, voted on by a panel of 16 media members from across the league.

Yale earned second place honors — receiving six first place votes and trailing only Princeton with eight.

Dartmouth, who won a share of the

Ivy title in 2019, was voted third with just one vote. Columbia was picked to finish seventh, yet received the remaining first-place vote.

Quarterback Griffin O’Connor ’23 will lead Yale this year as he prepares to take over the starting role after Kurt Rawlings ’20, the reigning Bushnell Cup recipient for offensive Ivy League Player of the Year, graduated last year. The Bulldogs will also return linebacker John Dean ’22, who will serve as Team 148’s captain, and running back Zane Dudek ’22.

“Every single day is extremely important to our success,” Dean said during Ivy League football media day on Aug. 16. “We take every day in front of us as the most important day that we can possibly have going forward.

And we’re going to train during [preseason camp] in the same exact way as we've been training in the past.”

The graduating class of 2020 featured a number of pivotal Bulldogs.

Captain JP Shohfi ’20 led the team in receiving yards, and trailing right behind him was receiving-mate

Reed Klubnik ’20. The electrifying duo combined for 2,014 receiving yards, 18 touchdowns and over half of Team 147’s completions in 2019, each averaging over 100 receiving yards a game in the process. O’Connor will therefore have to lean heavily on wideout Mason Tipton ’24 and the pass-catching ability of Dudek, who were third and fourth on the team in receiving yards, respectively.

In addition, 24 new Bulldogs will be joining Team 148. Highlighting that group are several 3-star-rated players: tight end Luke Foster ’25, offensive tackle Andrew Weisz ’25 and defensive tackle Ikenna Ugbaja ’25. Ugbaja was a top-30 ranked defensive tackle in the country coming out of high school. Wide receiver Jay Brunelle ’24, another 3-star recruit, transferred from Notre Dame this past year and is set to make his Yale debut.

“We’ve had to make a lot of replacements between the end of the 2019 season and now. Many of the guys that made a lot of great plays for us over the years have graduated,” head coach Tony Reno said. “With that said, I feel like we have a great core. Offensively, we’ve got a core of players who have been on the field for us before, who have developed physically, mentally and emotionally in the last year and a half. I'm excited to see them compete.

“And then defensively, we've got a great group of guys who, in a very similar fashion, have continued to grow and develop. We've got some players that span all four classes, outside of the incoming first years, that have helped us win games. So we’re all excited to see the progress they've made and how well they play together as a collective unit.”

The Blue and White will play

Men's soccer to host first games this weekend

SEE FOOTBALL PAGE 10

LUKAS FLIPPO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The Yale volleyball team, three-time defending Ivy League champions, aim to continue the dominance they showed in the fall 2019 season.

After honing its skills since the start of preseason in early August, the Yale volleyball team will have its first chance to showcase its skills this weekend in New Haven. The

VOLLEYBALL Blue and White is set to face off against Hartford and Syracuse on Friday and Quinnipiac on Saturday.

The season will start with the Yale Invitational this weekend at John J. Lee Amphitheater before beginning Ivy play Sept. 24 against

Brown. The 14 conference games form part of the 23 total matches the team will be playing this season.

Among the opponents the Elis will face this weekend is Syracuse, who managed to shatter the Bulldogs’ perfect record in 2018 in the first round of the NCAA tournament at Penn State.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to get to the floor of the John J. Lee Amphitheater. We’re the Blue and White,” Yale volleyball head coach Erin Appleman told the News. “We’re excited to get out there and compete.”

STAT OF THE WEEK

SEE VOLLEYBALL PAGE 10

533

“I’m excited to see where all of our hard work and love for each other is going to get us this season.”

ALEXA PITTS ’25 YALE FIELD HOCKEY GOALKEEPER

Former Yale pitcher signs with Giants

BY EUGENIO GARZA GARCÍA STAFF REPORTER On July 12, Yale left-handed pitcher Rohan Handa was selected by the San Francisco Giants in the fifth round of this year's MLB First-Year Player Draft.

HANDA Handa’s selection was the culmination of a monthslong story that captivated scouts due to the Yale lefty’s rapid rise.

When he started at Yale, Handa’s fastball was sitting around

83 to 85 miles per hour, but by the time of his selection, his primary pitch was averaging between 93 to 97 mph. The new San Francisco Giants player only threw one full season during his time at Yale due to the COVID19 pandemic, which shortened the 2020 season and completely canceled the 2021 season.

“After our 2021 season was canceled, I told all my pitchers that since they were not going to be pitching, it would be the perfect time to work on improving their velocity,” Yale SEE HANDA PAGE 10

COURTESY OF ROHAN HANDA

Former Yale left-handed pitcher Rohan Handa was selected with pick 146 in the 2021 MLB Draft.

Yale falls 4–0 to Quinnipiac

BY HAMERA SHABBIR STAFF REPORTER After a difficult first half marked by four goals, Yale women’s soccer lost 4–0 against Quinnipiac in their second game of the season.

W. SOCCER

BY WEI-TING SHIH AND ÁNGELA PÉREZ STAFF REPORTERS

W. VOLLEYBALL VCU 3 Tulane 2

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

MEN’S GOLF TWO-DAY TOURNAMENT AT COLGATE Yale men’s golf begins competes against Colgate in Hamilton, N.Y. this weekend at Seven Oaks Golf Course. The two day-tournament, the Alex Lagowitz Memorial, will include a total of 54 holes — 36 on Saturday and 18 on Sunday.

WOMEN’S TRACK & FIELD EMMA VASEN ’22 NAMED CAPTAIN Yale women’s track and field athlete Emma Vasen ’22 was chosen by her teammates as the program’s new captain, Yale Athletics announced this week. Vasen holds Yale’s indoor shot put record of 48 feet and 3.5 inches, which she set in 2020.

BY JARED FEL AND NADER GRANMAYEH STAFF REPORTER

M. SOCCER Holy Cross 3 Manhattan 2

The Bulldogs (0–2–0, 0–0–0 Ivy) traveled to Quinnipiac’s (2–0–0, 0–0–0 MAAC) Soccer & Lacrosse Stadium in Hamden on Sunday for their first match against the Bobcats in almost seven years. Since 2009, the Bulldogs have won all three of their games in the local rivalry, with the latest having been played in 2014. Over 300 people attended the game, which occurred at noon and was televised on ESPN+.

“Considering we have only been together for 10 days previous to this last weekend, we did some really great things against Buffalo and Quinnipiac,” forward Tina Teik ’25 told the News. “We have a lot to build on as a team and we will find our rhythm soon as we continue to learn and grow together.”

Within the first minute, Bobcat midfielder Selena Salas scored a goal assisted by forwards Rebecca Cooke and Courtney Chocol. Moments later, Teik forced a save from the Bobcat goalkeeper Meaghan Phillips. In the fourth minute, goalkeeper Annie Welch ’25 made the first save for the Blue and White on a top-right shot from Chocol, who scored

minutes later in a 10th-minute goal. Two minutes after an 11th-minute save from Welch after a shot by Salas, Cooke scored Quinnipiac’s third goal with an assist from midfielder Markela Bejleri.

Seven fouls occurred between the 13th and 30th minute — three by Quinnipiac and four

by Yale — until Emily Loney scored the Bobcats’ fourth goal of the game. By the end of the first half, the Bulldogs had committed 12 fouls to the Bobcats’ three. Also in the first 45 minutes, Yale forced six corner kicks, three more than Quinnipiac, and Welch made three saves to the Bobcats’ two.

“It’s tough to dig out of any hole, let alone three goals in the first 15 minutes of the game.

Quinnipiac is an athletic, gritty,

well-coached team who I think will win a lot of games this year,” head coach Sarah Martinez told Yale Athletics. “I believe in our group and I know when we start clicking, we will produce some fun soccer to watch.”

The second half did not feature any goals from either team despite more aggressive play from the Bulldogs. While the Elis lagged three shots behind the Bobcats’ eight in the first half, both teams shot seven times in the second half. Welch completed five successful saves in the second to keep a clean sheet in that half, but the Bulldogs were unable to score any in return to the Bobcats four opening strikes.

Despite the Bulldogs’ hisSEE W. SOCCER PAGE 10

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

After a difficult first half, Yale women’s soccer lost to Quinnipiac, 4–0, in their second game of the season.

NUMBER OF DAYS BETWEEN YALE’S FINAL ATHLETIC COMPETITION BEFORE COVID-19 CANCELLATIONS AND THE BULLDOGS’ FIRST GAME OF THE 2021–22 SCHOOL YEAR.

WEEKEND FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

Inside Out: On Finding Queerness in Quarantine // BY ELIZABETH HOPKINSON

// DORA GUO

PAGE B2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND QUARANTINE

// BY ELIZABETH HOPKINSON

Sophie Kyle Collins ’23 told me about a poem they wrote in ninth grade. In the piece, the speaker describes having relationships with people of all genders. It would be years before Sophie Kyle identified as queer, but that knowledge was already right there in writing.

“It always keeps coming up if you look at the record. It’s something that kept getting written down and then forgotten,” they said.

“Like I have this really weird memory of filling out a form my first year at Yale and clicking that I was LGBTQ, or whatever it was.”

For a moment, I forgot that I’m the one doing the interviewing “I did the same thing!” I butted in. “I even requested a PL from the LGBTQ+ resource office. I completely ghosted them after one meeting.”

“Yeah, oh my gosh,” Sophie Kyle continued. “It was so weird, like closing my eyes and clicking this thing on a form. It’s not something I ever could have said out loud. It was like I was glancing sidelong at the truth, but never actually looking at it.”

It’s been three years since Sophie Kyle and I came out to a Yale Qualtrics form. Since then, we’ve held on as life flipped inside out.

Before the pandemic, Gen Z was already the most openly queer generation to grow up in the United States. Separated from our peers and our normal routines, some of us found that we could keep our eyes open for long enough to see our queerness clearly for the first time. In an era of TikTok, Zoom, and solitude, young people are telling new stories of queerness and self-discovery.

I spoke with four students who came to new understandings of their sexuality and gender over the past 18 months. Each one of them had been thinking about their gender or sexuality for years, but it took the radical life disruption of the pandemic for them to examine those thoughts head on. “I think the biggest way the pandemic affected my queer journey is just making me sit with it. Without the fast paced life of school and given so much time for self reflection, I was forced to look some of these questions in the face,” said Veronica ’24*.

Bella Back ’21 thinks they’ve known they’re nonbinary since they were a child, but they didn’t embrace that idenity until the past few months. “The pandemic gave me the chance to introspect and really question in a way that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise,” they told me.

The pandemic sped up the questioning

that Sophie Kyle was already doing around their gender. “Everytime you’re alone you go into some thoughts,” they said. “And then you get back to other people, and it gets cuts off. It renews the performance. I think it’s unprecedented to go this long without it renewing.

You go to bed and you’re alone, and you might let the performance fall away for 12 hours, but we went like 500 million hours.”

It’s shocking to think I spent years working the same thoughts about my sexuality over in my mind. I’ve had crushes on people of different genders since high school, mostly ones I ignored or explained away as friendship. I did not hide this out of shame, more so confusion. These thoughts and feelings were like a painting that was too big to see all at once. I was left cross-eyed stealing sidelong glances at the brushstrokes, never able to make sense of the whole.

The pandemic gave me time and perspective to put these fragments together. One day, probably when I was lying in my childhood bedroom in the middle of a March afternoon, I ended up on gay TikTok. I have no way of knowing what that first queer video was, only that TikTok kept showing me more. At the time, I had a long-distance boyfriend, and I barely left my house.

The stakes of exploring my queer indenty felt as low as they ever could. Passive curiosity gave into eager scrolling. Some videos were explicitly gay, clips of couples or comedy bits about coming out. But most showed queer women living slightly prettier versions of my own life. I learned that being queer could mean listening to Girl in Red, or wearing thrifted clothes, or having a picnic in a wildflower field.

Social media helped Veronica feel like she could belong in the queer community, even if they didn’t have precise ways to label and define their identity. It also gave her space to try out new pronouns by switching up her Instagram bio or Zoom name. Bella feels like online posts gave them an early glimpse into the joy of being nobinary. “It’s not an identity I accepted easily,” they told me “Seeing other amazing nonbinary folks on social media helped me to see the identity as a beautiful part of myself rather than something to dislike.”

Perhaps it is privileged and a little silly for queerness — with its history of mar-

WKND RECOMMENDS The Commons rotisserie chicken.

ginalization and struggle — to be reduced to internet aesthetics. But these posts are also promises of joy and belonging. When I scrolled through the rose-filtered clips on my own feed, it felt for the first time like something good could come of being attentive to my queerness.

Before the pandemic, Daniel ’24* couldn’t imagine telling anyone that he was bisexual. “Growing up, it didn’t feel like there was space for me to not be straight,” he said.

“But at the start of the pandemic, as I started spending more time on TikTok, I just started seeing all these people expressing themselves in different ways. I saw there was space for me.”

Sophie Kyle explained that the internet gave them the vocabulary to talk about and understand queerness. “I’d be lying if I didn’t say the internet isn’t the reason I know what sexuality is,” they told me. But unlike many young people, Sophie Kyle chose to scale back their social media use during the pandemic. While exploring their gender, “it was a real vindication, to be logged off social media and away from campus. No adult could accuse me of just being a trend.”

I wish I could say the same. But at this point, it feels impossible to understand my queerness without the context of other queer people and other queer stories. I sometimes feel like I can’t embody this identity without constantly positioning myself for validation, negotiating the right of the queer community to exisit and my own right to belong to it. Maybe this is why I’m writing this as an article, not an essay. Maybe this is why I’m writing this at all. Outside my own mind, the story of how I came to know myself in this way feels too strange to stand alone.

Being back on campus and a few steps closer to normalcy, the whole idea of “coming out” feels tedious. I’m more secure in my sexuality now than I could’ve ever imagined, so much so that I forget some people close to me don’t know this part of me yet. Still, the idea of telling people makes me feel like a confused high schooler all over again.

Daniel shares some of my nerves around sharing this new identity with others. “It’s exhausting to tell everyone in my life,” he said. “It’s still so hard to get over that hurdle. I feel like each time I’ve told someone, though, I get better at that.” Returning to

campus after a gap year, he’s worried that he has too high expectations, especially when it comes to being as confident and proud as the queer social media creators he watched throughout quarantine.

Victoria is also anxious about exiting her tight-knit quarantine bubble, where she was able to control how she shared and expressed her identity. They don’t know how they will continue their path of self-discovery and acceptance now that they’re back in classes following a gap year.

After graduating in May, Bella can’t count on the supportive atmosphere of Yale’s campus. “Navigating a workplace that by and large doesn’t recognize my gender identity as legitimate has been particularly challenging,” they said. “but I am so grateful for the last year and a half and the place of self-acceptance I was able to come to before graduating.”

While the re-opening of campus brings some apprehension, it is most of all a cause for celebration. “My whole life, this is something that I’ve been hiding about myself,” Daniel said. “And now I really want to make it a part of my identity. I want people to see it when they see me.”

He told me that his journey with queerness paralleled the stages of grief, a progression from denial to acceptance. But at the end of our conversation, when I asked him what being queer means to him, Daniel defined his queerness as having more to do with joy than loss. “It’s kinda cheesy,” he said, “but earlier in the summer, I saw a quote from Ocean Vuong about how queerness is often thought of as deprivation, but for me, it saved my life; I really resonated with that.”

Emerging from this time of hurt, it gives me hope to think of queerness as abundance, as life, as the opposite of loss. I keep returning to something Sophie Kyle said, that finding a home in queerness is a means of connecting with one’s humanity.

“Becoming authentic, I surely think that is a do or die thing,” they said. Because what is living as only a fragment of yourself? I’d say it’s hardly living at all. *Names have been changed to preserve privacy.

Contact ELIZABETH HOPKINSON at elizabeth.hopkinson@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND TOGETHER

Portraits of Home Yalies share their favorite places on campus— both hidden gems and crowd favorites— and reflect on what makes them so special.

“The Divinity School is my favorite place to go and be at peace with myself, especially on stormy nights.” - Keenan Miller ’24

“Strolls with friends and runs — always frantic, usually to class — make the trek up Prospect Street a campus treasure.” - Jacob Cramer ’22

WKND RECOMMENDS Strong hurricane preparation.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND HOME

“I really looked forward to the flowers blooming this spring (especially the magnolias!) during a weird virtual semester.” Gemma Yoo ’23

“Harkness Tower, both the trademark of Yale and my residential college, is a constant source of awe for me and my suitemates, leaving us utterly amazed that we’re all here together at this university each time we see it outside of our windows.”

- Jacqueline Kaskel ’24

“The Divinity School is hands-down my favorite spot on campus, the absolute best place to take naps, and the perfect area to start working on a new [News] article!” - Rafaela Kottou ’24

WKND RECOMMENDS Committing ourselves to the fight against the climate crisis. Pass the Green New Deal now!