Yale Daily News - Week of Oct. 7, 2022

Students rally for abortion access Students bemoan cold snap

Trans, reproductive healthcare sought on Kavanaugh anniversary

BY YASH ROY STAFF REPORTER

More than 200 students rallied on Cross Campus on Thursday to demand that Yale provide expanded reproductive and transgender healthcare.

The protest was staged against the backdrop of a nationwide debate over abortion access and on the four-year anniversary on the confirmation of alum Brett Kavanaugh ’87 LAW ’90 to the United States Supreme Court. Students at 50 universities across the country also participated in a national day of action organized by the Young Democratic Socialists of America and Graduate Students Action Network.

Advocacy groups at Yale are calling on the University to provide contraceptives, pregnancy tests, abortion care and hormone therapy to all students free of cost.

“This is not just a protest,” Caitlyn Clark ’23, co-chair of Yale’s YDSA chapter said. “This is the beginning of a campaign, a struggle between us and the University, between us and the politicians who claim to care about abortion rights but do nothing to codify abortion rights

BY SARAH COOK STAFF REPORTER

A particularly chilly start to October has many students wondering about heating in the College’s residential buildings.

As temperatures earlier this week dipped into the low 50s, with Monday’s highest temperature recorded as 55 degrees, students living in Pierson, Jonathan Edwards and Silliman Colleges as well as McClellan Hall on Old Campus reported a lack of heat. Several said that they have reached out to administrators with little action taking place.

Carly Benson ’24, who was annexed to McClellan Hall from Berkeley College,

Endowment

0.8 percent growth worst since 2009, but ahead of peers

BY EVAN GORELICK STAFF REPORTER

The University’s endowment grew 0.8 percent for the 2022 fiscal year, its lowest percentage return since 2009.

The annual return was slightly positive despite volatile financial markets and a declining median college endowment nationwide. Still, it represents the University’s lowest return since the Great Recession, when the endowment tanked by nearly 25 percent.

at decade-low

After accounting for $1.6 billion of spending distributions to the University’s operating budget, the endowment ultimately dipped to $41.4 billion for the 2022 fiscal year.

“In such a volatile year for the world’s fi nancial markets, we are pleased to have protected Yale’s capital,” Matt Mendelsohn, Yale’s chief investment o cer, said in a University press release. “That said, we expect challenging times ahead as rising interest rates, inflation and the geopolitical environment provide sti headwinds.”

The announcement starkly contrasts last year’s, when Yale posted its highest rate of return in decades, driven in part by record-breaking venture capital gains nationwide. The staggering 40.2 percent return drove total assets to a new height of $42.3 billion, cementing Yale’s as one of the

largest university endowments in the world.

Though not all of Yale’s peer institutions have released their endowment returns yet, the ones that have done so generally reported numbers lower than Yale’s.

Dartmouth’s endowment returned negative 3.4 percent, Cornell’s negative 1.3 percent and the University of Pennsylvania’s a flat 0.0 percent.

According to the press release, Yale pursues an investment strategy that balances risk and reward across multiple asset classes, including public equities, marketable alternatives, leveraged buyouts, venture capital and real assets.

The past year — Mendelsohn’s first as CIO — has strained most of Yale’s investments, and current market forecasting does not provide

Slavic Dept. grapples with Ukraine war

BY MIRANDA WOLLEN STAFF REPORTER

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has forced Yale’s Slavic Languages and Literatures Department onto its toes.

Class programming has been updated, archives have been lost and the Department as a whole has been placed under a spotlight as the conflict carries into the new school year.

“Russia’s war in Ukraine has had huge personal and professional consequences for all of us in the Department,” Department Chair Edyta Bojanowska wrote in an email to the News. “Many of us have been flooded with emails asking for help and have served as clearing houses directing scholars, artists and students to various resources.”

When the war began in the winter of 2022, faculty in the Department knew they had to respond with clarity and force. The Department held town halls, called for the confl ict’s end and o ered a list of ways to help from the Substack of history professor Timothy Snyder. As the conflict carries on, the Department continues to adjust its programming in response.

In the spring, the Department held a town hall to discuss the impact of the war on members of the Yale community, including those

CS50 alters pay, avoids sta strike

BY ALEX YE STAFF REPORTER

Undergraduate sta for the University’s largest computer science course have won an increase to their maximum weekly pay after threatening a strike.

The change was made after over 30 undergraduate learning assistants for the introductory lecture CPSC 100 — more commonly known as CS50, after the original course taught by David Malan at Harvard College — penned an email on Sunday to course and department administrators explaining their grievances over a new payment system introduced at the beginning of the school year.

“The CS50 sta is requesting swift and decisive action on changing our pay system to establish proper compensation for the work we are doing, avoid additional staff losses to alternative work options, and preserve the passion of the CS50 workforce in the future,” the letter reads.

The letter gave administrators one week to respond. Inaction, the letter reads, would leave sta with “no choice but to take further action in the form of a work stoppage.”

The system introduced for the semester — implemented across all departments that employ ULAs — stipulated that ULAs would only be paid at a uniform weekly rate for a maximum of 7.5 hours, replacing the hourly rate used in previous years.

That maximum, the letter states, disincentivized ULAs from providing necessary support to students. According to the email, ULAs for CS50 were hired in the spring and were told at the time that they would be paid at an hourly rate. The

Three colleges, other dorms have no heat until Oct. 15

Lucas Holter, Senior Photographer

CATHERINE

SOPHIA

OPINION

In defense of the Western canon

Last spring, after a year braving the seemingly endless cycle of readings and papers, I finally completed Yale’s Directed Studies curriculum.

I approached DS with some trepidation. A rigorous humanities sequence, DS promised to thrust me through the Western canon — a few millennia of writings from Ancient Greece to World War II — in just one year. My first year of college, no less! Furthermore, I was aware that I was entering an academic sphere dominated by white men. As a multiracial woman, I certainly wouldn’t see myself refl ected in the texts outside of the occasional feminist thinker (a welcome reminder that women do, in fact, exist outside of their role in starting wars between the Greeks and Trojans). None of the readings would reflect my ethnic background.

Yale’s Directed Studies program looks like a vestige of a former time. As intellectual trends of the world move from tradition to innovation, from humanities to STEM, a year-long course on musty Western thought seems not only impractical, but also out of touch. In the name of progress, shouldn’t we just let these dead men die?

Having shut my final DS book, I’m here to tell you that we should keep the study of the Western canon alive.

DS has been criticized for its Eurocentrism, its dearth of diverse voices and its retreading of familiar literary ground. In a phrase, it tells the story of the West. Yet the story of the West, I believe, is entirely inseparable from the story of the world.

The second semester of DS also tells the story of how modernity comes into being. Why does global civilization look the way it does? How did we get here? These questions are at the core of Yale’s liberal arts education, a tradition that is flickering out in many ways. A humanistic understanding of the past seems obsolete in a world barreling towards a mechanized future. But as we move forward, there has to be a place in our institutions for the recognition of what it means to be human, in all of its beauty and terror.

Modernity, for better and for worse, has been dominated by Europe and its outgrowths that compose the Western world. Western enlightenment engendered both democracy and imperialism. Western technology included both the printing press and the atomic bomb. Western nations secured the rights of some men while systematically denying the rights of others. Western progress concluded not in utopia, but in the near destruction of itself in two world wars. The influence of the West is certainly not due to any inherent Occidental superi-

ority, but is rather an inescapable and often tragic fact in world history. The exact mode of telling the DS story is certainly arguable (perhaps Plato could lose a week or two on the syllabus), but the story itself is essential.

Our final Historical and Political Thought reading was Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” Arendt herself was a student of the Western canon, and the ability to understand her references feels like the reward for the year’s work. She writes before launching into her own astute analysis of modernity: “We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion.”

We must acknowledge the atrocities of Western history. We must study non-Western canons in addition to DS. But the Western canon is central to modernity, a foundation of the very world we live in.

As Arendt writes, “this is the reality in which we live.” In pursuit of a better future, we cannot ignore the past. It is only by grasping the past that we can grasp who we are in the present, and more importantly, what we can do next.

The story does not end here. Arendt’s thought is not the period ending a sentence written in blood; World War II is not the twisted “telos,” the end goal, of Western progress. DS ends in a question mark. The answer can only be found in understanding the question, in recognizing the books and battles, the brilliance and bloodshed, that led up to the conclusion of DS’s story. And so, in the name of progress, we cannot let the Western canon die.

ARIANE DE GENNARO is a sophomore in Branford college. Contact her at ariane.degennaro@yale.edu .

Rural students are people too.

LETTER 10.4

Three things you need to know about me: my entire family’s income does not exceed

$50,000 per year, I live in a town with fewer than 2,000 people and, by many senses of the word, I am a redneck. I fix cars, drive trucks, go fishing and handle livestock.

While the “Redneck Dilemma” was not targeted specifically towards the low-income rural students at Yale, its publishing represents the greater issue of the existing disparity between the perception and reality of rural students.

I was shocked when the “Redneck Dilemma” was published by the News last week. My expectation was a humorous well-intentioned jab at rural Tinder and perhaps the online dating scene as a whole;

Instead, I read a not-so-thinly veiled classist rant that revealed the author’s frustrations with her hometown. The author guides readers through the dating culture of her hometown in rural Montana, taking on the tone of a researcher who observes the courting rituals of low-income, rural men. She dubs them “Montanus idiotus” in the article.

The author analyzed a Tinder profile of the so-called “Montanus idiotus” with noticeable venom: “Perhaps it was the not-so-subtle bloody fingers and proudly grubby cheeks, sure markers of a blue-collar worker with a hunting hobby.” While we are running on the assumption that blue-collar workers aren’t people, we may

also extrapolate that some 60 million people in the United States are somehow less human because of their income. I do not believe that the author was choosing to make this claim. However, it is the implicit assumption of creating a new species name for low-income, rural people.

As the author presents her research on the world of Montana Tinder, the participants are further dehumanized in the speculation on their mating calls and rituals which are deemed “primitive” during the article. The entire premise of Tinder could be criticized for its primal nature, so the specific usage of this qualifier for low-income rural Tinder users demonstrates a stark bias.

In describing the typical blue-collar, rural man, the author painted a bleak portrait of a bigoted, racist, homophobic misogynist. This is a far reaching and damaging stereotype. These abhorrent qualities exist in rural communities as they exist everywhere, but it is a markedly false blanket assumption that being rural entails these characteristics. I have found rural people to be overwhelmingly intelligent, compassionate, encouraging and respectful to all people.

In truth, I take far less issue with the article itself than with the willingness of the News to publish such a piece without revision or clarification.

The News, as a publication reflective of the Yale community, has evidenced the work that must be done to remediate elitist biases

GUEST

within the university culture. How can we allow issuing of content like “The Redneck Dilemma” without caring about who this may impact?

Publications like this decrease the unity within the student body, perpetuating stigma that makes rural students feel like exotic pets of Yale.

The Queen dies and remains exactly that: dead. The Crown refuses to recognise the atrocities committed during her reign, and instead stoically canonises her. The world becomes torn up between royalists that adore her memory and those that continue to su er the e ects of colonialism. None of this works to move the needle an inch in any direction. Eventually, the world moves on. If the Queen can die and we remain oppressed, when is the point at which we receive justice? If the Queen can die and we remain oppressed, does there truly exist a movement to free the colonised world? Some may argue that it is too soon to say, but I think that we are moving too slowly. The emptiness that I felt observing the events of the past fortnight is not a positive omen.Here is perhaps, our biggest chance to date to bring injustice into the light. No more pretence, no more hesitation. The mixed feeling for the crown that was so carefully instilled within me now rests in the grave at Windsor Castle. I can only hope that we, like Queen Elizabeth, will get what we deserve.

HANNA DEBORD is a sophomore in Benjamin Franklin college. Contact her at hanna.bebord@yale.edu .

Yale, take a stand for reproductive justice

In the fall of 2018, during my first semester at Yale, hundreds of students protested the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh ’87 LAW ’90 to the Supreme Court. They spoke out about sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh by his peers, Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez ’87, fearing the impact that Kavanaugh’s confirmation would have on the millions of Americans whose bodily autonomy could be stripped by the overturn of Roe v. Wade. It was not the first time that Yale students protested the Supreme Court nomination of an alumnus. 27 years prior, in 1991, students rallied against the appointment of Justice Clarence Thomas LAW ’74 amidst the testimony of Anita Hill LAW ’80, chronicling her experience of sexual misconduct at the hands of Justice Thomas.

But Yale remained silent, and both were appointed anyway. Together, alongside three other justices, they overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

Four years after the Kavanaugh protests, 26 states have either banned or restricted abortion access. Many of you are from these states and know what these laws entail. Healthcare providers could face second-degree felony charges punishable by life in prison for providing abortions. Those seeking abortions are forced to carry unwanted and even non-viable pregnancies to term, even if these pregnancies are life-threatening.

One study estimates that maternal deaths will increase by 24 percent as a result of abortion bans. For Black mothers, deaths are estimated to rise by 39 percent. Reproductive justice is an issue of racial justice and class warfare. Forcing people to give birth against their will in a country without universal access to healthcare is a direct attack on the working-class, who will su er the most.

Although Connecticut stands at the forefront of pro-choice legislation, for many students legal protection is not enough. One major barrier stands in the way — the cost of healthcare.

Currently, Yale students who opt-out of the Yale Hospitalization/Specialty Healthcare coverage to avoid the annual $2,756 charge face major challenges accessing reproductive and gen-

der-affirming healthcare. Birth control methods like oral contraceptives or IUDs are up to the students’ external health insurance. For many, this can mean hefty co-pays that prevent them from accessing necessary contraceptive care. For those seeking abortions, Yale Basic only provides referrals for abortions, but will not cover the costs of receiving one.

Gender-affirming healthcare on Yale Basic is even bleaker. Yale Basic does not cover the cost of hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Referrals require a letter from a mental health professional, meaning the problem of long wait times at Yale Mental Health & Counseling is confounded into the arduous process to access HRT. Wait times to receive HRT through Yale can be dangerously long. One student (who requested to remain anonymous) was told in August 2022 that the next available appointment was March 2024.

Most gender-a rming healthcare is covered by Yale Specialty Services, but only on a reimbursement model that requires students to front the costs themselves, which can frequently run into the thousands of dollars. This is a massive barrier to access, even if it is technically covered.

Yale Basic’s lack of coverage for reproductive and gender-a rming healthcare is a safety issue. Students may fear retaliation or abuse from their families for seeking abortions or gender-affirming healthcare, which becomes traceable through parents’ health insurance.

The U.S. has the most expensive healthcare system in the world, and students are paying the price. Amidst the abortion bans and anti-LGBTQ+ laws passing across the country, this price can be life or death.

This Thursday, Oct. 6, Yale students will rally on Cross Campus at 3:00 p.m. as part of a nation-wide day of action for reproductive justice. We will stand in solidarity with students at over 50 schools in 27 states to protest the anti-democratic decision made by only five people that robbed bodily autonomy for hundreds of millions of people.

We demand that Congress codify the right to abortion and freedom of gender expression into law, and that President Biden declare a public health emergency to make abortion pills available by mail in all states.

We demand that Yale Health provide access to abortion pills and pregnancy tests to all students and that Yale Basic guarantee $0 co-pays for birth control, IUDs, abortions and HRT.

We demand Yale Health change the reimbursement and counselor letter model for gender-a rming

healthcare to up-front coverage and informed consent.

Finally, we ask Yale University to meet with student organizers to develop a plan to financially support abortion funds and publicly take responsibility for its institutional silence.

Some will say that reproductive justice is “too political” for Yale to get involved. Is it “too political” when a 10-year-old rape victim is forced to travel from Ohio to Indiana to terminate the pregnancy? Is it “too political” when a woman in Texas is forced to continue a miscarried pregnancy because the abortion procedure necessary to remove the dead fetus has been banned? This is not a partisan political issue. This is justice and injustice, freedom and oppression.

We cannot remain silent. We cannot let our rights be stolen from us. 50 years ago, students just like us organized for the right to an abortion, and they won. We have won before, and we will win again.

The petition is available online.

CAITLYN CLARK is a senior in Pierson college. She is an organizer of a Yale rally as part of the national day of action for reproductive justice, and the co-chair of the Yale Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter. Contact her at caitlyn.clark@yale.edu .

THIS IS NOT A PARTISAN POLITICAL ISSUE. THIS IS JUSTICE AND INJUSTICE, FREEDOM AND OPPRESSION.

War forces Slavic Studies onto its toes

residing in Russia and Ukraine. In particular,the Department has lost access to many of its Russian-housed archives, affecting dissertation plans for its graduate students.

The conflict’s continuation into summer and fall presented further issues to the Department, including the difficult decision to hold their St. Petersburg Summer Program entirely on campus in New Haven.

Director of Study Abroad Kelly McLaughlin told the News that after the U.S. Department of State issued a “Do Not Travel” advisory for Rus sia, the Study Abroad department immediately modified its Russian language program into a domestic one. The Do Not Travel advisory for Russia is still in place.

A statement made by the study abroad office last spring announced that students would not be able to move their applications to another Yale Summer Session Program Abroad. The Russian summer study abroad program, which was canceled last year, is being moved to the Black Sea coast of Georgia, where students will instead immerse themselves in Georgian culture and learn the basics of the language.

Summer ended, but the conflict — and its complications for the Depart ment — did not.

The Department is offering 44 courses this fall, 26 in the Russian Program of Study and three in the Ukrainian. Students and faculty alike have faced added stressors in teaching and learning usual sub ject material as the invasion looms in the background.

Bojanowska, however, noted that the Department did not have “to scramble to react to this crisis unprepared.”

Since its inception, the Department has taken care to cover empire and colonialism in Russian and Soviet culture, as well as an emphasis on Rus sophone cultures rather than a monomaniacal focus on Rus sia alone. Students are taught to critique and investigate famous Russian works of art, rather than simply accept their nationalist nature, Bojanowska explained.

“We cultivate a transnational approach in both our research and teaching,” Bojanowska said. “Again, this is not something that we began doing in the spring of 2022. We embraced this vision long ago, which is why, when the war hit, we were ready to meet the intellectual and ethical challenges of the historical moment.”

Nevertheless, Bojanowska told the News that the Department has had to modulate some of its cur riculum in response to the conflict. She emphasized that departmen tal faculty are striving to decenter their approaches to the study of the region and to “dislodge Russia from its hegemonic position in our field’s epistemologies.”

The Department already offers “Russia Between Empire and Nation,” a course on Rus sian and Soviet imperialism. This spring, the class will be adjusted from a seminar to a lecture in anticipation of increased student demand.

Bojanowska added that the Department is working to increase its focus on Ukrainian history and pro test culture. She noted that one basic Russian grammatical lesson incor porated “the fraught political impli cations behind two different Russian prepositions used to say ‘in Ukraine’ ... showing how each is associated with different political claims about [its] status.”

English-language Russian culture classes have also been deeply affected by the conflict.

Bojanowska teaches a lecture course called “Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’,” a popular offering within the department and Yale College’s

biggest literature course, with over 100 students.

This year, Bojanowska explained that she has centered her lectures around “direct connections between the novel and what is in the news,” using the text as to consider current sociopolitical issues.

Bojanowska insisted that the Department’s solution to the conflict was not to “‘cancel’ Russian culture,” but rather to reorient and adapt it to fit into today’s world. She added that she hopes more, not fewer, students will now attempt to understand Rus sia’s culture and history.

“I can think of no bet ter immunization against the

Kremlin’s propaganda: to know that some supposedly invio lable ‘truths’ may actually be culturally constructed myths,” Bojanowska stated.

Bojanowska admitted, however, that the Department still sees the potential to go further in address ing the conflict.The Department is currently looking for a special ist in non-Russian Eastern Euro pean languages and cultures and is attempting to install in-person instruction of the Ukrainian lan guage at the University.

Faculty in other departments are also finding ways of respond ing to the conflict.

“Personally, I decided to cre ate a new general survey of Ukrainian history, HIST 247, which is an open course,” Pro fessor Snyder told the News. Snyder noted that the first lecture has already garnered more than 400,000 views, and that the course is only the sec ond lecture survey on Ukrainian history being taught in the U.S. The Slavic Languages and Lit eratures Department is housed in the Humanities Quadrangle at 320 York Street.

Contact MIRANDA WOLLEN at miranda.wollen@yale.edu .

Dorms without heat as weather cools

wrote to the News that no one on her floor has heat. Benson added that a student on her floor called facilities, who told them they would not get heat turned on until Oct. 15 because the “power plant needs to reroute.”

“It’s kind of hard to focus or do any thing because of that,” Benson wrote to the News. “Everyone in McClellan is irritated because we were already sad about being annexed and now we are sad and cold. You would think with the price of tuition we would be getting heat.”

“Yale isn’t very good at being a landlord,” she added.

The University was unavailable for comment at time of publication.

Sein Lee ’24, who lives in Silliman College, said she has recently faced temperatures as low as 55 degrees due to a lack of heating. Lee filed a work order that was later terminated; She and two other students reported being told that heat in their buildings would not be turned on until Oct. 15.

Upon calling facilities about her situation, Lee was told to try buying warmer clothes.

State law requires that residen tial buildings be heated to at least 65 degrees. Colder temperatures, it states, are “injurious to the health of the occupants.”

Lee described her situation as out rageous, noting that portable space heaters are prohibited in living spaces at Yale, except when issued in emer gency situations.

Zaharaa Altwaij ’25, who lives in the basement of Silliman and said her bed is adjacent to a window, wrote to the News that she has fixed a blanket between her window and screen as temporary insulation.

“My roommate and I have been wak ing up several mornings feeling con gested which sets a bad mood for the rest of the day,” Altwaij wrote to the News. “I have been doing all of my homework under my covers because everywhere else in the suite is even colder.”

The University’s four power plants generate and distribute heating, chilled water for air conditioning and electric power.

Contact SARAH COOK at sarah.cook@yale.edu .

“True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.”

One of the Slavic Department's responses to the conflict is to try reorienting and adapting the presentation of Russian culture in class to fit into today's world / Zoe Berg, Senior Photographer

Students across campus reported

living

heat

buildings remains

Lucas Holter, Senior Photographer

Rally calls for better trans, repro. healthcare

into law or provide easier access to reproductive health.”

Yale, protest organizers said, is uniquely responsible for repro ductive rights advocacy because three of the justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade — Kavana ugh, Clarence Thomas LAW ’74 and Samuel Alito LAW ’75 — are alumni of the Law School.

The protesters’ list of demands calls on the University to break its institutional silence and take accountability for the justice alums by both expanding health care access on campus and direct ing funds towards reproductive and trans rights advocacy groups.

Renewed advocacy around reproductive justice was first sparked in May when a draft to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision was leaked, indicating the likely curtailing of abortion access. Another protest was staged during alumni reunions in June by class mates who graduated with Kava naugh from Yale College in 1987.

Organizers also read aloud state ments from several of alumni who knew Kavanaugh personally while at Yale, including Dr. Carrie Baker ’87.

“What the hell are we doing here?” the statement from Baker read. “How are we producing people who are taking away our long-stand ing constitutional rights?”

While the national abor tion debate has historically been framed around cisgender wom en’s rights to reproductive care, Yale organizers link the causes of reproductive and transgender rights together.

“There is no way to truly achieve reproductive justice with out trans justice,” explained Anika Seth ’25, who co-organized the protest and is also a staff reporter for the News.

Advocates nationwide say that transgender individuals face heightened challenges access ing abortion care due to discrim ination and inconsistent medical knowledge about gender transi tions — challenges that are partic ularly prevalent for people of color and low-income individuals.

Organizers — who unveiled a list of demands in an op-ed pub lished by the News on Tuesday — urged students to sign their peti tion and contact members of the Yale administration to indicate their support for the demands listed in an opinion piece pub lished by the News.

The demands include increased access to reproductive and trans gender healthcare access, specif ically forms of birth control and hormone replacement therapy.

University spokesperson Karen Peart directed the News to Yale Health’s website, noting that abortions are covered for students even if they are on Yale Basic.

However, the website lays out that only the referral is covered. More over, Peart told the News that gen der transition services are acces sible to all students even if they are on Yale Basic. However, Yale Health’s website says that only students on Yale Healthcare have access to transition services.

According to the campus groiup Reproductive Health Equity Now, students who are currently on the

Yale Basic Plan currently face copays that range from $10 to hundreds of dollars when accessing abortion pills, birth controls, non-oral con traceptives, IUD costs, pregnancy tests and other abortion procedures.

Protester Flora Ranis ’24 called the University’s cur rent state of healthcare options “absolutely reprehensible.”

“We have billions of dollars in our endowment,” Ranis said at the protest. “It is feasible for us to decrease healthcare costs and pro vide reproductive health care and basic human rights to our students.”

Clark explained that many stu dents are not able to opt into Yale Premium — which includes greater

access to reproductive healthcare — because of its $3,000 price tag.

Protesters look to other universi ties that have taken recent action on abortion access; The state of Cal ifornia recently required its higher education system to expand repro ductive healthcare options.

Students who rallied at Barnard College on Thursday announced that Barnard had agreed to their list of demands and would provide abortion pills to all students starting in 2023.

Organizers at Yale also demand that the University cover the costs of hormone replacement therapy, guarantee a maximum wait time of four months and switch to an implied consent model of care, in

which prospective patients do not need a letter from a therapist to begin transitional therapy.

At the rally, one trans student — who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for their personal safety — recounted their experience with Yale Health denying them access to care.

“Yale is denying healthcare to some of the most vulnerable mem bers of the student population, especially trans students of color,” the anonymous student said.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization was decided in June of 2022.

Contact YASH ROY at yash.roy@yale.edu .

Endowment return ahead of peers but lowest in decade

much optimism for the coming year.

“The outlook for next year is cloudy,” School of Management professor Jacob Thomas wrote in an email to the News. “The first three months that have gone by so far are not encouraging for the kind of assets Yale holds.”

Nevertheless it is important to consider the performance of the market and of other univer sity endowments, Thomas told the News.

Data released by Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service esti mates that the median college endowment fell 10.2 percent during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022.

“It has been a challenging fiscal and calendar year for most asset

classes,” Rutgers Business School professor John Longo told the News. “In this context, the per formance of Yale’s endowment is quite impressive.”

Over the ten-year period ending in June 2022, Yale’s average per annum endow ment return was 12.0 percent, exceeding the mean return for college and university endow ments by an estimated 3.4 per cent over the same period.

According to Longo, though, the appropriate comparison for Yale is not colleges and uni versities in aggregate. Instead, Longo said, Yale’s endowment is better compared to other large university endowments with illiquid assets and top external managers.

“Many university endowments recorded low positive returns, and several experienced negative returns for the 2022 fiscal year,” School of Management profes sor Geert Rouwenhorst wrote in an email to the News. “Yale invests for the long run, and it is important to take a long-term perspective.”

In the 2020 and 2021 fiscal years, Yale earned 6.8 percent and 40.2 percent, respectively. Rouwenhorst noted that, over this span, Yale’s endowment grew by more than $10 billion, even after making sizable contri butions to the University budget.

The Yale Investments Office is located at 55 Whitney Avenue.

Contact EVAN GORELICK at evan.gorelick@yale.edu .

new payment policy resulted in some staff stepping down in order to pursue other computer science jobs that they perceived to be less work for the same pay, the email reads.

This development comes against the backdrop of the Uni versity’s wider expansion plan in the engineering and science fields as well as computer science’s increasing popularity among the student body — a trend that the ULA letter contends was threat ened by the payment cap.

In a response on Monday, Dean of Undergraduate Edu cation Pamela Schirmeis ter wrote that the department would immediately increase the weekly cap on pay. The cap, she explained, was introduced to help undergraduate learn ing assistants balance between their jobs and coursework.

“As you continue your ULA duties, I urge you to be mindful of the potential conflict of interest and to spend less than 10 hours per week when possible, and certainly not more,” Schirmeister wrote.

Schirmeister explained in an

email to the News that the choice to switch from weekly, hourly time sheets to the stipend system was made because of the unsustain able administrative burden on the departments that use many ULAs.

Head ULA Jessie Cheung ’25 said the head ULA staff antici pated that many ULAs would have quit in the coming weeks had pay ment policies remained the same.

“I think the [ULA] team is very excited that this was changed,” Cheung said. “It's one of the big gest computer science classes at Yale… and it's modeled after Harvard's CS class, which is defi nitely their largest CS class. All of our work is very intense.”

CS50, which requires no prior programming experience, covers topics including abstraction, algo rithms and data structures as well as programming languages such as C, Python and SQL. The course serves as an introduction to many other courses in the computer science curriculum and is commonly taken by both majors and non-majors.

Unlike other computer science classes at Yale, however, CS50

ULAs are required to hold a twohour section as well as lead office hours and grade assignments. The

lectures are streamed live from Harvard, and students are respon sible for completing weekly quizzes and programming assignments.

At Yale, CS50 enrolls over 200 students per year, who have access to a team of about 40 undergraduate learning assis tants.

“The course leans really heav ily on the [ULAs],” said CS50 stu

dent David Bloom ’25. “They have an insane amount of office hours.”

Head ULA Harry Jain ’23 said that finding out about the fixed rate was “demoralizing” for many ULAs, who work nine to 10 hours each week.

Jain said that much of the ini tial frustration arose because staff members were forced to spend time managing and limiting their hours rather than helping students.

“I think we all had hope and faith that it would work out,” Jain said. “It was a slow realiza tion that action was needed on our part.”

CS50: Introduction to Com puting and Programming was first introduced at Harvard in 2007.

Contact ALEX YE at alex.ye@yale.edu

Yale's

Yale organizers like the causes of reproductive and transgender rights together / Zoe Berg, Senior Photographer

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Yale doctors combat emerging allergy epidemic through early exposure

BY KAYLA YUP AND JESSICA KASAMOTO STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

A team of Yale researchers dis coIntroduce peanuts to a young child and their chance of devel oping a peanut allergy later in life goes down by 80 percent.

That’s the strategy under pinning the new Pediatric Food Allergy Prevention Program at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. Heading the program are pediatric allergists Steph anie Leeds and Julie Flom. The two recommend early exposure to allergens, especially for chil dren with eczema, with the aim of preventing the development of food allergies.

“We often see patients where we feel like there might have been an opportunity to prevent food allergy, or might be opportunities going forward,” Flom said. “So the idea of being able to apply this research to our populations and make a difference is exciting.”

Their program was launched this fall and is currently operating through internal referrals from pediatricians at Yale. They are collaborating with food allergy dietician Julia Munoz, working directly with families to curate an infant’s diet to manage or prevent allergies.

In recent decades, there have been increases in the number of chil dren diagnosed with food allergies, the number of common food aller gens, the frequency of allergy-re lated emergency room visits and the severity of allergic reactions.

Rather than treating allergies, Leeds and Flom hope to prevent them entirely.

The two main reasons why a patient would be referred to this program include a strong family

history of allergies or a history of eczema. In particular, the doctors singled out severe eczema as the biggest risk factor for the devel opment of allergies.

“Exposure [to allergens] through skin before the gut promotes allergic sensitization rather than tolerance,” Leeds said. “So the idea is to bypass that and get the food in early through the gut so that you develop a normal immune response to the food.”

The dual allergen hypothesis states that sensitization to aller gens happens through skin. As the biggest immune organ, the skin serves as the body’s first bar rier of defense. However in cases of severe eczema — a “defect in the skin barrier” — environmen tal agents like allergens are able to break into the skin.

When immune cells in the skin “see” the allergen, they may perceive the allergen as a problem, Flom said, but if the allergen is ingested through the gut first, the body is more likely to learn how to tolerate it.

“We’re definitely going to be following the literature to think about later ages, but right now, we’re focused on that first year, when foods are first being intro duced into the diet,” Flom said.

This idea is supported by the groundbreaking LEAP study from King’s College. In the study, the authors followed 640 infants with either eczema or a severe egg allergy — or in some cases, both.

Half of the infants were assigned to avoid peanuts until 5 years of age, while the others had peanuts introduced into their diets earlier.

The infants who were intro duced to peanuts before 5 years had a 1.9 percent chance of developing a peanut allergy, while the other group had a 13.7 percent chance of developing a peanut allergy.

Before the LEAP study, the World Allergy Organization’s recommendation was to delay introduction of allergenic foods until kids were a few years old. The LEAP trial inspired a par adigm shift, providing evi dence for the superiority of early introduction. To translate this research into actual clinical practice, pediatricians are typi cally on the frontlines, discuss ing both knowledge and risks with patients.

“As allergists, we all are aware of the updated guidelines about early introduction, but we sort of felt like we wanted to create a clinical initia tive that would bridge knowledge gaps for both pediatricians and the community at large,” Leeds said.

Leeds had previously worked with pediatricians in the Exten sion for Community Health Out comes program, focusing on food allergy management and preven tion. She emphasized the impor tance of partnering with pediatri cians, who are the entry point for helping parents with early feeding and dieting for their children.

Munoz, a registered dieti tian affiliated with the program, joined the Yale New Haven Hos pital Pediatric Allergy team in 2020. Munoz said she has always had an interest in nutritional con siderations for disease preven tion and found this program to be a rewarding experience.

There is a tremendous amount of fear and misinformation sur rounding infant feeding and food allergies, even within my own professional sphere,” Munoz wrote in an email to the News. “I am grateful to be able to pres ent evidence-based recommen dations to my peers, patients and their caregivers.”

Munoz’s clients within this program typically fall into two categories: pregnant people or families with young infants.

When working with a preg nant person, Munoz helps to create a balanced, diverse and nutrient-dense prenatal diet. In addition, Munoz will go through common allergens with the fam ily and help them devise a dietary plan for the child, introducing and maintaining these common aller gens in their diet.

When working with families with young infants, Munoz will assess a child’s risk for developing allergies by analyzing family his tory and the presence of eczema and devising a dietary plan from there. While there is no default list of allergens to introduce first, egg and peanuts are typically the ones they recommend to start intro ducing in the diet first.

In addition, for some patients with a strong family history of food allergies — for example, in a household where an older sibling

has a food allergy — it can be dif ficult to introduce these allergens into the child’s diet. The program aims to design practical strategies to combat this, such as introduc ing the food in the allergist’s office or at a grandparent’s or other close relative’s house.

“While [the LEAP study] focused on peanuts, the data provided the framework for introducing and maintaining other top allergens in an infants’ diets,” Munoz wrote. “We are hopeful that in years to come there will be more research look ing into tolerance development at this young age that can be weaved into our practice.”

Using the LEAP trial as a model, the potential end point for this program would be between ages 5 to 6; however, they may opt for longer depending on the patient. Over 10 percent of the U.S. population has food allergies.

Contact KAYLA YUP at kayla.yup@yale.edu and

Yale-led study reveals habitat loss threats for 91 African carnivores

BY ESMA OKUTAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

A new study raised fresh concerns of habitat loss for 91 African carnivores that are listed as “least concern” by conserva tion groups.

Nyeema Harris, a professor of wild life and land conservation at the Yale School of the Environment, found evi dence that the species’ geographic ranges are at risk of shrinking. Her study, titled “Socio-ecological gap analysis to fore cast species range contractions for con servation,” evaluates geospatial models to demonstrate the risks in various Afri can regions.

“Species distribution maps are com monly used to inform our understand ing of spatial patterns of biodiversity that in turn govern our research and conservation priorities,” Harris told the News. “We aimed to improve the information gleaned from these maps for a very important group of animals in an increasingly dynamic geography.”

Harris explained that the research compiled different ecological and exter nal variables, including assets such as bio diversity and threats such as human land modification, to determine the available conservation capacity for carnivores.

Overlaying these factors allowed the team to identify when threats exceeded assets, signaling a risk of contraction in certain areas. They concluded that the carnivores had an average of 15 percent of their range areas at risk, with some hab itats indicating degradation threats as high as 70 percent.

“As an advocate for data-driven management and decision making, I focus on producing generalizable quantitative findings and on develop ing data-centric approaches, such as the one featured in this project,” said Gabriela Nunez-Mir, assistant profes sor of biological sciences at the Univer sity of Illinois Chicago and a collabora tor on the study.

The inclusion of distinct variables in range mapping with a data-driven approach in this study led to the forma tion of a new method of assessing spe cies’ populations and ranges.

Another collaborator on the study, human ecologist Daniel Mwamidi, pointed to his firsthand observations of carnivore population decline in southern Kenya as both a reflection of the data and the main source of his interest in this study.

“Carnivores are part of our commu nal lives and are deeply embedded in our culture and thus these species are an important facet in my community as well as other communities across Africa,” Mwamidi said.

He described areas in Kenya that were named after carnivorous species,

explaining that locals used to associate the abundance of carnivorous species with the prosperity of the region.

Mwamidi pointed to the shrink ing populations of carnivores such as spotted hyenas and dwarf mongooses which, he explained, could be seen on a daily basis by these communities in years prior.

“Spotted hyenas and dwarf mon gooses are classified as least concern in the IUCN’s red list of species and as such, does not reflect the reality on the ground,” Mwamidi noted.

In addition to bringing attention to threats of habitat loss for these species, the study emphasized the need to ana lyze human interactions with animals, mentioning some examples of indige

neous African communities that have close cultural ties with carnivores.

Harris, too, said that a deep under standing of diverse cultural perspectives and different forms of knowledge, living and communication is integral to study ing ecosystems and animal populations in relation to local communities.

“Local communities in Africa are better placed to be major stakeholder for future conservation strategies of carnivores because they are the ones who interact [with] these species,” Mwamidi agreed.

The study was published on Sept. 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Contact ESMA OKUTAN at esma.okutan@yale.edu.

Yale professor wins Harold C. Urey Prize in Planetary Science

long columns of air transporting moisture from out of the tropics — that are often behind extreme precipitation events. His study of these water dynamics has helped track changes in Earth’s hydroclimate over time, Serena Scholz, first year postdoctoral student in Lora’s lab, noted.

ane-saturated atmosphere. One such paper investigated a dynamic set of jet stream movements, better known as Rossby waves, that were responsible for months-long storms on Titan.

BY HANWEN ZHANG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

The atmosphere of Titan holds more methane than the ground itself — which, in Earth terms, would be the equivalent of having more water molecules concentrated in the air than the sea.

The study of these kinds of atmospheric processes has earned assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences Juan Lora the 2022 Harold C. Urey Prize in Planetary Science. The award, which recognizes leadership and “outstanding achievements” by an early-career scientist, was given to Lora by the American Astronomical Society last month. A focal point of Lora’s

research has been Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

“It’s a really nice ... surprise,” Lora said. “I have a memory of the first time I … sat in on the Urey prize talk ... so to now be in a position to give this talk … it’s kind of amazing.”

Lora, who joined Yale’s faculty in January 2019, has devoted his research to Earth’s paleoclimates and Titan’s atmosphere. Using numerical climate models, his lab has observed a variety of weather-related phenomena occurring in terrestrial bodies throughout the solar system.

“Yale is lucky to have Juan,” J. Michael Battalio, a postdoctoral researcher in Lora’s lab, said.

Lora focuses on the phenomena of atmospheric rivers — narrow,

While some of Lora’s work has contributed to the earth sciences community, his research has also taken him into the reaches of space. Lora entered college focused on the study of astrophysics, but shifted his focus specifically to Titan in graduate school. During that time, he wrote and programmed the Titan Atmospheric Model — one of the “best developed, most reliable climate models that we have for Titan,” according to Battalio.

Lora has spearheaded atmospheric studies of Titan, the only other terrestrial body in the solar system with a stable body of liquid, and leads efforts to shed light on its atmospheric cycles.

“We basically try to understand what is going on in the climate of Titan, the atmosphere and how the surface and the atmosphere interact,” Lora said.

To that end, Lora’s lab has worked to determine everything from the amount of methane precipitation to the location of storms on Titan. Some of the lab’s most recent publications provide crucial insights into Titan’s meth-

Lora appreciates the collaborative, cross-planetary research efforts of his lab, noting that “it’s all about the same types of physics, maybe operating in slightly different environments or slightly different ways.”

By exploring such a vast diversity of terrestrial bodies, the team can add valuable insights to our understanding of Earth. For example, Lora expects the parallels between Titan’s methane cycle and its water counterpart here on Earth to help scientists better understand the changes in our own climate.

“Oftentimes, we can sort of glean some ideas from one [terrestrial body] to inform the other,” Lora said.

The lab’s work will be put straight to use within the coming years.

Lora is co-investigator of NASA’s 2027 Dragonfly mission, a project that will explore the chemistry and habitability of Titan. By providing insight and forecasts of local weather conditions, Lora’s research will play an immediate role in the mission’s success.

The first Harold C. Urey Prize was awarded in 1984.

Contact HANWEN ZHANG at hanwen.zhang@yale.edu .

Observatory hosts viewing of brightest Jupiter in six decades

BY MARIA KOROLIK STAFF REPORTER

Yale’s Leitner Family Observatory and Planetarium hosted this semester’s first public observing night last Tuesday.

The viewing coincided with the brightest magnitude Jupiter has been seen in the past 59 years. Around 60 people came to look through the six-inch and eight-inch diameter telescopes to view targets such as Saturn and the double star Albireo, the second brightest star in the constellation Cygnus the Swan.

“I love getting questions and seeing people really interested in astronomy on public nights,” said Julia Levy ’25, an observing assistant at Leitner. “Asking people questions and socializing is truly the best part of the experience.”

Levy explained that her main job at the observatory during public nights consists of helping to set up the telescopes and focusing them on targets throughout the night. In addition to looking at Jupiter, she also set the telescopes up to look at the double star Albireo.

Jupiter was especially bright this week due to it being in opposition — meaning that it is opposite from the Sun in the sky — putting Earth directly between Jupiter and the Sun. This positioning in itself is not rare, occurring once every 399 days, according to Michael Faison, the director of Leitner Family Observatory and Planetarium.

The reason why Jupiter was the brightest this week since it has been in 1963, however, is because it was close to its perihelion point — when it is closest to the sun in orbit — making it slightly brighter than it otherwise would be when in opposition.

“It’s kind of like the supermoon,” Faison said. “It gets hyped up, but it doesn’t look that different than it usually does. It’s just that the full moon always looks amazing, and so

when people make a point to go look at it, they are amazed.”

Faison runs and maintains the observatory and planetarium, as well as teaching classes there. He also runs two major outreach programs from it: the Tuesday public night viewings and the Yale Summer Program in Astrophysics for high school students. He noted that he is also hoping to launch a summer camp for middle school students in the New Haven area on astronomy and space science.

Faison said that he hoped to open the planetarium theater again this semester to the public and do public shows. The observatory and planetarium were both closed starting March 2020 due to the pandemic.

Although the observatory reopened for public observation in 2021, the planetarium is still closed to the public.

He mentioned that he also plans to host special events like public lectures and movie nights in the observatory and planetarium, as well as work on a tutorial series for Github and Youtube on “Budget Astrophysics” where he will teach projects to the general public.

“Seeing Albireo in its full beauty and Jupiter’s four bright Galilean moons just absolutely consolidated my love of the subject,” said Robin Tsai ’26. “I wouldn’t fall short of calling it personally transformative.”

Unfortunately, Levy mentioned, Jupiter was somewhat hazy this

week due to atmospheric disturbances and city lights. Moreover, the telescope wasn’t focused on just Jupiter, but also its four largest moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

Levy said that originally the telescopes were focused on Saturn because it was low and bright — the optimal condition for viewing at the beginning of the night. However, she still said that this Tuesday “really was the best” she’s ever seen Jupiter.

The observatory will host public nights every Tuesday this semester from 8 to 9:30 p.m., weather permitting.

AMAY

Connecticut increases SNAP eligibility, benefits

BY SADIE BOGRAD AND HANNAH QU STAFF REPORTERS

44,000 Connecticut residents may now be eligible for food assis tance benefits under a state change to SNAP, the Supplemental Nutri tion Assistance Program, which went into effect on Saturday.

SNAP is a federal program that provides low-income families with monthly additional money for food in the form of an elec tronic benefits transfer (EBT) card. Recipients can use the money on their EBT cards at most food retailers, including some farmers markets.

This update, which Gover nor Ned Lamont announced on Sept. 28, increases the maximum monthly gross income for Con necticut SNAP recipients from 185 percent to 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Monthly SNAP bene fits will also increase by an average of 12.46 percent due to the annual federal cost-of-living adjustment, which accounts for yearly growth in the price of food. Some advo cates from emergency food service providers applauded these changes but worried that they will not fully address the needs of New Haven residents, especially since food insecurity nearly doubled in Con necticut in 2022.

“This was a way … to maximize the help that individuals are receiv ing or can be eligible to receive,” said Dan Giacomi, SNAP program administration manager at the Connecticut Department of Social Services. “SNAP is something that touches all the communities here in the state … I think we as a commu nity should be looking at any policy or program that we can do or uti lize or implement to be able to help these individuals to feed themselves and feed their families.”

Increased income limits

In order to be eligible for SNAP, most applicants must meet two requirements. First, their income must not exceed the gross income limit. Second, their gross income minus expenses — which includes childcare, housing and some medi cal costs — must not exceed the fed eral net income limit, which is 100 percent of the federal poverty line.

The updated policy raises Con necticut’s gross income limit from 185 percent to 200 percent of the federal poverty line — or from $4,086 to $4,625 monthly for a family of four — the maximum allowable under federal law. Gia comi explained that this change

“smoothes out” benefits, so that people whose income increases will not lose their SNAP benefits, so long as their expenses still keep them under the poverty line.

“Enacting this flexibility up to 200 percent allows us to have those individuals that perhaps are work ing or have some small amount of income that previously would have denied them for assistance,” Gia comi said. “So when you’re look ing at a state such as ours that per haps has higher than average shelter expenses, for example, now we’re going to determine whether or not the individual is going to receive assistance rather than being outright denied based on their gross income.”

In addition to making 17,600 additional households potentially eligible for SNAP, according to cal culations from the Department of Social Services, this change sim plifies program administration.

Giacomi noted that the SNAP income cap used to be aligned with the “HUSKY A” income limit, which determines whether families with children are eligible for Med icaid, until the Medicaid limit was raised to 201 percent of the federal poverty limit with the expansion of the Affordable Care Act. Realign ing those numbers makes it eas ier for Connecticut residents and DSS eligibility workers — of whom there are about 800 statewide — to identify what assistance they are eligible for.

“If you have an individual that is applying, by and large, they are applying for all of the assistance that they perhaps are eligible for,” Giacomi said. “When you have your guidelines or your income limits aligned, it allows you to more easily explain to individuals why they qualify or do not qual ify for programs. And it also helps eligibility workers to be able to quickly refer to what the income limit is across programs.”

SNAP recipients are automati cally eligible for some other state and federal benefits, like the National School Lunch and School Break fast Programs and the Connecticut Energy Assistance Program.

Better benefits, but unmet needs SNAP recipients in Connecticut will also see an average increase of 12.46 percent to their monthly benefits. Giacomi said that this increase occurred because of the federal government’s annual costof-living adjustment.

The US Department of Agricul ture bases SNAP benefits off of its “Thrifty Food Plan,” which their

website defines as the cost of gro ceries needed for a “healthy, bud get-conscious diet for a family of four.” The cost-of-living adjust ment is meant to account for the growth in the price of food over the last year.

Giacomi said that SNAP allot ments to recipients are the same across the 48 contiguous states, and the state does not have control over them. Benefit levels are higher in Alaska and Hawaii because of the cost of food in those areas.

Dr. Phillip A. Boone, pastor of the Cathedral of Higher Praise, which runs a food pantry in Fair Haven, said he was supportive of the increased benefits.

“Inflation has gone up, so what ever extra money you made, you lost,” Boone said. He added that wage growth has not matched the prices of consumer goods in recent years.

However, Steve Werlin, Exec utive Director of Downtown Eve ning Soup Kitchen (DESK), wor ried that even with the expansion of SNAP, people on the program still often rely on emergency food services. He noted that most peo ple who come to DESK are also already enrolled in SNAP.

“The amounts are still far below what is going to be needed,” Wer lin said. “If those SNAP benefits were enough, why would they also be coming to us?”

32,950 New Haven residents, or 24.58 percent of the city’s population, were SNAP recipients as of January 2022 — the fourth highest percentage among all Connecticut towns.

Werlin said he considers SNAP and the emergency food service as com plementary at this point. The real ity is that, according to Werlin, even with SNAP, people are relying on what used to be emergency food ser vices on a weekly or monthly basis.

Werlin said that although emer gency food services will likely always be necessary, he would like to see a day where SNAP is suf ficient for families to meet their nutrition needs.

“The road to ending poverty is through forms of financial assis tance like SNAP,” Werlin said. “It is not through community based organizations like DESK. DESK provides a number of important services. We do this because we have to, because our federal pro grams are otherwise failing.”

Similar to Werlin, Boone felt that his food pantry service has become a chronic service rather than a crisis service.

“We would like to think that we live in a place where everyone has

An estimated 17,600 families across the state of Connecticut may become newly eligible for food assistance.

all the means and the ways to get healthy food to live and survive, but it’s not that way,” Boone said.

A preliminary dataset released by the nonprofit DataHaven shows that the percentage of Connecti cut adults who say they did not have enough money to buy food has nearly doubled during the past year.

Mark Abraham, the Executive Director of DataHaven, suggested that the increase of food insecu rity is partially due to the expira tion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC), which provided large advance payments to nearly all U.S. fami lies with dependent children each month beginning in July 2021 and ending in December 2021.

“That was a large amount of funding for families that allowed them to purchase extra childcare or healthy food,” Abraham said. “That’s something that many people have been advocating to continue in the future.”

Abraham suggested that to alle viate the problem of food insecu rity, the state can consider improv ing its tax policy and tax credits, and building more affordable housing and better transportation systems to help households reserve more of their budget for food.

Accessing assistance

According to Giacomi, there are three ways of applying to SNAP. Applicants can apply online, mail in a paper application or com plete an application in person at one of the 12 field offices state wide. Many local nonprofits can assist residents with the applica tion process.

Usually, Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents (ABAWDs) can only receive SNAP benefits for 3 months out of a 36 month period if they do not meet ABAWD work requirements. Connecti cut has waived the ABAWD time limit since 2009 due to the unem ployment rate and has waived all SNAP work requirements due to the pandemic.

Once a resident sends in their application, one of the 800 state workers will start the review pro cess, conduct telephone inter views, enter their information into an online system, make determi nations and mail them an Elec tronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card.

Once the applicants receive SNAP benefits, they will roll over month to month as long as they continue purchasing with the EBT card. Benefits are expunged from the card if no purchase is made in at least 9 months. Most house holds are on a 12-month certifica tion period and will receive a form at the end of the cycle to confirm their eligibility.

Giacomi said that there are around 2000 stores in Connecti cut that can redeem SNAP bene fits, including farmers markets, corner stores and large retailers. Since the pandemic, SNAP ben efits can also be used online at many stores.

The overall food insecurity rate in Connecticut in 2022 is 17 percent.

Contact SADIE BOGRAD at sadie.bograd@yale.edu and HANNAH QU at hannah.qu@yale.edu.

Family Weekend returns in person after COVID-19 hiatus

BY SARAH COOK, BRIAN ZHANG AND AHAAN BHANSALI STAFF REPORTERS AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Families will be wandering Cross Campus and college courtyards in the coming days as Family Weekend makes its return to in-person pro gramming for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Per tradition, Family Weekend fea tures a slate of faculty lectures, tours, panels and student performances running from Friday, Oct. 7 to Sunday, Oct. 9. This year’s event will coincide with the Yale vs. Dartmouth Bowl on Oct. 8. Visiting parents are invited to a complimentary brunch beforehand as well as to the game itself for the price of discounted admission tickets.

“We’re so thrilled to be laughing alongside our [own] families and audi ences’ families this year,” Chesed Chap ’25, a member of the sketch comedy group Red Hot Poker, told the News. “I’m so excited our first show of the year gets to be shared with the people the Yale community loves the most.”

Friday’s events feature six open faculty lectures, including English professor Stephanie Newell’s lec ture on the voices of women in Nige rian popular literature. Woo-kyoung Ahn, a professor of psychology, will be lecturing on confirmation bias and improving the way we think in order to live happier lives.

The weekend will also feature a range of cultural, performance and sporting events.

In addition to the football game against Dartmouth, the women’s ice

hockey team will play against McGill University this weekend.

On Saturday, La Casa Cultural House will be hosting the LatinXcel lence showcase in conjunction with the Schwarzman Center, featuring visual art, written pieces and per formances from Latinx groups. The event commemorates Latinx Heri tage Month.

Moreover, family weekend will give parents and new students an opportunity to experience the breadth of musical and vocal talent within the campus community, pre senting a variety of a cappella, com edy, band and sketch performances organized by the Yale Undergraduate Production committees.

The Yale Dramatic Association began the Government Inspector, its first show of the semester last night. Its run will continue until Sunday. The , directed by Leo Egger, is a political satire by Gogol and is being staged at the Iseman Theater. Although it is currently sold out, additional seating will be available just before doors open each night.

Josh Vogel ’23, a member of the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus — or SOBs — one of Yale’s 17 collegiate a cappella groups, described family weekend as a riveting experience for both the parents watching and the newly tapped members performing for the first time.

Vogel told the News that every a capella group is putting on a family weekend concert and that some groups will even be hosting joint performances.

He added that the SOBs will be

holding a family brunch on the day of the concert to foster a more intimate atmosphere for the visiting families and immerse them in a cappella cul ture and history.

A cappella groups are not the only clubs looking forward to the first unmasked, in-person family weekend performances since COVID-19.

Chap’s sketch group told the News that they took special care in pre paring material and pop culture ref erences curated to the diverse audi ences who will be watching them this weekend. They coined their upcom ing family weekend performance “The Baby Show” after their new ly-recruited members.

Yale Concert Band is also having a concert Friday Oct. 7 at 7:30 p.m., and they will also perform with Yale Glee Club and Yale Symphony Orchestra in the Annual Family Weekend Gala Concert at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday in Woolsey Hall.

Strictly Platonic, a student band, is also putting on a family weekend con cert in the Grace Hopper courtyard on Saturday Oct. 8 at 7:30 p.m.

William Min ’25, a bass player in Strictly Platonic said the band is excited to perform this weekend as they have not had the chance to play for their parents live before. The band, he said, is excited to build upon the “momentum” from their pre vious performances — and revealed that it has been learning “throwback songs” for more senior members of the audience.

James Licato ’25, a guitarist in the band, added that he looks forward to performing in the Hopper Courtyard,

as it is his residential college. Audrey Hempel ’25, the lead singer, also told the News she is feeling “a bit more nervous” because her mom is attend ing the performance, though she is excited for her to see them perform.

“All family and friends are wel come (though no enemies please)!” Mary Ben Apatoff ’24, the director of musical improv group Just Add Water, wrote to the News. “Excited to share laughs, fun, and games — from songs made up on the spot to a full-length improvised musical — with the Yale community and beyond. Most looking forward to my parents laughing at my jokes. Thanks, mom! Thanks, dad!”

Within the greater New Haven community, Governor Ned Lamont is hosting Businesses of Color United, an event to celebrate local artists, music and business owners at 50 Orange St. at 6 p.m. on Friday.

In an email to the News, Assis tant Dean of Yale College Joliana Yee explained that family weekend offers an important and accurate glimpse into Yale College life for parents, with their student standing beside them as their “guide.”

According to Yee, the events offered this year will not differ significantly from those of pre-COVID-19 years, but the goal is to give families the chance to experience Yale firsthand in a way that virtual programs can not “replicate.” She added that there will be livestream options for all of the key speaker events for those who were unable to attend in perso

Last year, family weekend was moved online in a departure from pre vious plans to provide hybrid options.

“Even though a majority of our audience members will be attend ing in-person, it is my goal to con tinue making Family Weekend events accessible to those who might not be able to travel to New Haven for the weekend or face challenges with nav igating the ongoing pandemic safely,” Yee wrote in an email to the News.

Head of Morse College Catherine Panter-Brick told the News the fam ily events are her “favorite events,” and she said she is “absolutely thrilled” to have Family Weekend back in person this year.

Panter-Brick, who is the chair of the council of heads, said that each residential college has a reception on Saturday or Sunday morning.

“It was really important for us to have on the schedule a family recep tion so that we have the presence of the residential colleges,” PanterBrick said. “It’s like the college being home within Yale. So I think it’s just a matter of opening the house and being very welcoming.”

Dean of Yale College Pericles Lewis wrote to the News that he is excited to expose families to the rich overlap ping of academics and social life at the University.

Parents can register online for family weekend here, and the full schedule is available via the event’s designated website.

Contact SARAH COOK at sarah.cook@yale.edu, BRIAN ZHANG at brian.zhang@yale.edu and AHAAN BHANSALI at ahaan.bhansali@yale.edu.

COURTESY OF HOUSE DEMOCRATIC OFFICE

“Of all ghosts, the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.” ARTHUR CONAN DOYAL

WRITER

JE college crowns Tulip Princess in revived tradition

BY BEN RAAB AND YURII STASIUK CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS

Dignity, grace, resiliency, internal beauty, vibrancy and fortitude — the spirit of the tulip. These values guide the Tulip Princess pageant, which returned to Jonathan Edwards College this week a decade after it was dis banded amid controversy.

The Tulip Princess Crowning began as an annual event around

2006, but it has not been held since 2012. The Crowning revival — which happened on Sunday — was spearheaded by JE College Council member Joanna Ruiz ’25, who said she became interested in bringing back the tradition after a deep internet dive into the his tory of JE College.

“I am obsessed with Ameri can small town stories and tradi tions, and I know JE is not a town, but you know, it’s mine,” Ruiz said

in introducing the event. “I read everything you could possibly know about JE on the internet, and then I found out about the tradi tion. So I brought it to [JE College Council] … and they were all super on board with it.”

JE embraces the symbol of the tulip due to the college’s tulip gar den, which blossoms every spring. Ruiz said that there were many controversies in the past around Tulip Princess Crowning which

may have led to its hiatus, but added that traditions change and adapt to times. This year JE Col lege Council got rid of the con troversial elements by making the event gender-neutral and focus ing on internal beauty, instead of appearance, with the title going to the JE student who most embodies the “spirit of the tulip.”

JE students had several days to nominate their peers for Tulip Princess and vote in the first round. The three people with the most votes proceeded to the sec ond round of voting, held in per son on Sunday, Oct. 2, during the “Great Awakening” picnic — a picnic commemorating the leg acy of Jonathan Edwards, a key figure in the First Great Awaken ing of the 1700s.

Anna Martinelli-Parker ’24, president of the JE College Council, told the News that 20 people were nominated for the Tulip Princess and the competi tion was intense.

Despite a tight time frame for voting, 246 JE students — more than half of the college — voted in the first round. The three victors — Cam Bell ’23, Adam Levine ’25 and Peter Nelson ’26 — proceeded to the final round of voting.

Cliques and camps gathered as some nominees held mini-cam paigns for the crown, while oth ers had friends and fans cam paigning for them.

Nelson spent his campaign posting on Instagram and talking to people around the college about his candidacy, he told the News. He had a lot of fun campaigning — for him, the competitive spirit was there, but the competition was not very stressful.

But Bell said his efforts were less purposeful, telling the News he was surprised to learn that people campaigned for him.

“Somebody texted me by acci dent,” Bell said. “They’re like, ‘Hey, vote for Cam, I think he has a good shot.’ I was like, ‘I don’t

think I was supposed to see this, but thank you.’ I’m not cam paigning, but if you campaign for me, thanks.”

Levine, who was formerly a staff writer for the News, said that the Tulip Princess Crown ing was a cute and silly tradition that he hopes JE College contin ues to uphold.

Levine said that he was hon ored to represent the sopho more class in the final round of voting and believes got to the final round because he is very friendly with all his fellow Spi ders — a nickname for members of the JE community.

“I think I’m a fairly vibrant person,” Levine said. “I always try to be high energy … and be there for people.”

At the end of the picnic, Bell was announced as the win ner of the crown. In his inaugu ral speech, Bell said his victory was only thanks to everyone who voted for him.

“I believe that we all embody all of these characteristics and we all can be Tulip Princesses,” Bell said. “The tulip is a phototropic plant that grav itates toward the sun. Although it’s not always sunny in New Haven, the community of [Jonathan Edwards College] is so bright.”

Martinelli-Parker said that Jonathan Edwards College Council planned the event in a span of only several weeks and thus time for voting was limited.

Still, she said, it ended up being a fun event for everyone, so she would not do anything differently.

“This is something that the whole college got very excited about,” Martinelli-Parker said. “It’s definitely a tradition worth bringing back so we will defi nitely be doing it next year.”

Jonathan Edwards is one of the smallest residential colleges with around 400 undergraduate students.

Contact BEN RAAB at ben.raab@yale.edu .

Contact YURII STASIUK at yurii.stasiuk@yale.edu .

ER&M class bakes for Hurricane Fiona relief

BY ELENA UNGER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

The Program on Ethnicity, Race, and Migration held a bake sale on Cross Campus last Friday, raising $1,710 for relief efforts in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic follow ing Hurricane Fiona.

The bake sale was organized by Ximena López Carrillo, a lecturer in the ER&M department and the stu dents in her first year seminar, “Lat inx Activism in the United States.” At the sale, students solicited donations and sold a host of traditional Latin American treats including vanilla and chocolate conchas, mantecadas, alfa jores and Mexican ponche.

“The students have made all the decisions and mobilized others to help, I have only facilitated coordi nation and distribution of tasks,” López Carrillo wrote in an email to the News. “They deserve all the credit for this, and we should definitely keep an eye on them because they will do great things at Yale.”

Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico on Sept. 18, leaving more than 100,000 citizens devoid of shelter, food and electricity. As of Sept. 30, 44 percent of LUMA Energy customers — the island’s primary energy provider — remained without power, including major medical facilities.

Fiona reached the Dominican Republic one day later, on Sept. 19, causing significant damage to physical and technological infra structure. Over 2,000 homes were destroyed and over 12,000 people were displaced as of Sept. 26.

“Many of our students and even faculty and staff come from the very communities who will bene fit from this bake sale,” ER&M chair Ana Ramos-Zayas wrote in an email to the News. “We have family in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Repub lic, Cuba and other communities in the path of the Hurricane. This is something close to who we are and what we do.”

When students introduced the idea of a bake sale to the depart ment, Ramos-Zayas told the News, she initially expected “some small gesture” but was “really proud” of what the students achieved.

Norma Mejía ’26, who helped run the bake sale, noted that the event was not only an opportunity for her and her peers to help others, but a chance to celebrate their own respective cultures.

“Most of us in the class are His panic so we enjoy all these tradi tional desserts,” Mejía said. “We collectively came together and pitched some of our favorite treats.”

According to the funds dis tribution report, 70 percent of the proceeds will be donated to Puerto Rico, which was more severely affected by the hurricane.

The remaining 30 percent will

be donated to relief efforts in the Dominican Republic.

Half of the donations going to Puerto Rico will go to Junta for Pro gressive Action, a Latinx nonprofit based in New Haven that is working to resettle Puerto Ricans displaced by Hurricane Fiona. The other half of proceeds will go to Techos Pa’Mi Gente, a Puerto Rican organization that works to construct weather proof homes.

The 30 percent of total funds going to the Dominican Republic will be donated to Abrazos de Esperanza, which is collecting sanitary items and food for affected families.

The bake sale’s financial success was accompanied by a strong sense of community among ER&M faculty and students.

“Everybody in the class, we all just came together,” said Michaell Santos Paulino ’26, who played a central role in organizing and run ning the bake sale. “The fact that a professor initiated the conversation and then invited the class to join in, I think that was really unique.”

López Carrillo expressed her gratitude for Ramos-Zayas’ support, saying it illustrated ER&M’s “philos ophy of fostering scholarly work that also engages with social issues.”

Before organizing Friday’s bake sale, students in López Carillo’s Lat inx Activism seminar have previ ously partnered with Junta for Pro gressive Action and Comunidades Unidas to improve local LatinX voter representation.

“In a sense, ERM is a prod uct of solidarity. Solidarity and struggle are at its very core,” Ramos-Zayas wrote.

López Carillo was appointed as a lecturer in the ER&M Department in Spring 2022.

Contact ELENA UNGER at

“Our feet are planted in the real world, but we dance with angels and ghosts.” JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL AMERICAN ACTOR

BEN RAAB AND YURII STASIUKI/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER Jonathan Edwards College crowned Cam Bell ’23 as its first Tulip Princess since 2012.

COURTESY OF BENJAMIN HERNANDEZ

Students in a first year seminar collaborated with ER&M faculty to raise $1,710 for hurricane relief in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

Field Hockey beats Quinnipiac Bulldogs win 3426 over Howard

close the game out in the fourth quarter and we did that.”

“The offense was able to estab lish a solid running game,” offen sive lineman and team captain Nick Gargiulo ’23 said. “The defense played physical and was able to force two key turnovers.”

Howard didn’t quit fighting — the Bisons answered back with a one-yard touchdown run by quar terback Quinton Williams and a four-yard score by running back Ian Wheeler within the same min ute of play in the final quarter, nar rowing the margin to 27–20.

Williams completed 23 of 42 for 226 yards, and Howard running back Eden James led the Bison in rushing 50 yards on six carries. Wide receiver Kasey Hawthorne caught seven passes for 112 yards, and linebacker Christain White led the Bisons with a high of four tackles, a sack and a forced fumble.

The Bulldog defense, though, picked off Bison quarterback Quin ton Williams twice. Defensive back Dathan Hickey ’23 made a play on the sideline to tackle Williams, and line backer Hamilton Moore ’23 tipped a screen pass to force a turnover. Moore led the defense with a total of 12 tackles; both defensive backs Wande Owens ’23 and Miles Oldacre ’23 added seven sacks. Defensive lineman Reid Nickerson ’23, linebacker Joseph Vaughn ’23 and defensive lineman Adam Raine ’23 also had sacks.

Next Saturday, Yale will face its next Ivy league opponent, Dart mouth, in its second game of the sea son at the Yale Bowl.

Howard University is a histor ically Black university located in Washington, D.C.

Nolan Grooms ’24 added 130 yards on 16 carries.

“The game turned out great for us as a team,” Peterson told the News. “We didn’t execute to the best of our abilities, but we played hard and stayed true to our techniques and preparation to get the win.

Howard opened the scoring with a 31-yard field goal by kicker Aaron Bickerton with just under six minutes in the first quarter.

However, the Elis were able to turn things around in the sec ond quarter as their offensive line began creating holes for their rushing attack.

“They like to set up things with their run game,” Howard head coach Larry Scott said to Bison Athletics. “And their quarterback [Grooms] can hurt you with his legs and his arm.”

Running back Joshua Pitsen berger ’26 scored on a 25-yard run to open the second period. Over the course of the game, Pitsenberger amassed 87 yards on nine carries.

That score seemed to spark the Bulldogs’ offense, as they drove down the field a few minutes later to set up a 42-yard field goal by

Jack Bosman ’24. Less than three minutes later, Grooms found tight end Jackson Hawes ’24 for a seven-yard touchdown pass to give Yale a 17–6 lead. Bicker ton added Howard’s second field goal of the game as the first half ended, kicking the ball 27 yards and bringing the score to 17–6.

Just over a minute after halftime, where both the Howard and Yale bands performed, Grooms ran 54 yards to score a touchdown on the first drive of the third quarter.

“The offense was able to estab lish a solid running game,” offensive lineman and team captain Nick Gar giulo ’23 said. “The defense played physical and was able to force two key turnovers.”

Howard didn’t quit fighting — the Bisons answered back with a oneyard touchdown run by quarterback Quinton Williams and a four-yard score by running back Ian Wheeler within the same minute of play in the final quarter, narrowing the mar gin to 27–20.

Williams completed 23 of 42 for 226 yards, and Howard run ning back Eden James led the Bison in rushing 50 yards on six carries. Wide receiver Kasey Hawthorne caught seven passes for 112 yards, and linebacker

Elis call for PayneWhitney Sauna to reopen

She cited twelve purported health benefits, including decreasing stress, improving both heart and skin health, strengthening the immune system and aiding mental health. In addition, Gerwe argued that as the second-larg est gym in the world by cubic feet, Payne Whitney ought to have a sauna, a feature that in today’s age is “a vital component of a quality gym”.

In addition, Gerwe also pointed out the cultural significance of sau nas around the world as a rea son for keeping one in the gym. She explained that they have a his tory dating back thousands of years ingrained in many cultures around the world, including her own.

“I grew up in Moscow, and saunas are very culturally important to me, not to mention the same for many Nor dic, Indigenous and other cultures, all of which are represented by students here,” Gerwe wrote to the News.

As of Saturday, Oct. 1, the peti tion had received over 990 sig natures from students who share Gerwe’s opinions.

Gerwe included a section on her petition for students to add any additional comments or thoughts they had in regards to the sauna.

“It makes no sense to have more changing rooms,” Costanza Mancini ’25 wrote to the News. “Every time I go to the changing room, there’s me and one or two other people and all empty space and empty lockers and benches. The sauna would actually be a much more useful space for our mental and physical health.”

While Mancini focused on ques tions of practicality and disputed the need for more changing rooms, oth ers seemed to care more about per sonal enjoyment.

Bryson Gates ’26, who runs for Yale’s varsity cross country team, admitted that he did not feel a strong need for a sauna, but still thought that the space would be nice to have.

“If we desperately need a chang ing room, then it is probably neces sary because a sauna is mostly a rec reational thing, but I lowkey want a sauna,” Gates said. “I feel like when it’s cold, getting in there would be nice.”

Payne Whitney administrators have yet to respond to the petition, so the sauna’s fate continues to hang in the balance.

Contact TRISTAN HERNANDEZ at tristan.hernandez@yale.edu and PETER WILLIAMS at peter.williams@yale.edu .

Christain White led the Bisons with a high of four tackles, a sack and a forced fumble.

“I thought our team played well,” Gargiulo said. “We set ourselves up with an opportunity to close the game out in the fourth quarter and we did that.”

The Bulldog defense, though, picked off Bison quarterback Quinton Williams twice. Defen sive back Dathan Hickey ’23 made a play on the sideline to tackle Williams, and linebacker Hamilton Moore ’23 tipped a screen pass to force a turnover.

Moore led the defense with a total of 12 tackles; both defen sive backs Wande Owens ’23 and Miles Oldacre ’23 added seven sacks. Defensive lineman Reid Nickerson ’23, linebacker Joseph Vaughn ’23 and defen sive lineman Adam Raine ’23 also had sacks.

Next Saturday, Yale will face its next Ivy league opponent, Dart mouth, in its second game of the season at the Yale Bowl.

Howard University is a histor ically Black university located in Washington, D.C.

Contact BETSY GOOD at betsy.good@yale.edu

“I thought our team played well,” Gargiulo said. “We set our selves up with an opportunity to

Swim & Dive prepares for Blue and White meet

finished off the season in the same mercurial vein, ranking 24 in the nation at the NCAA Championship.

Ancient Eight rival Harvard beat the Bulldog squad at the League Championship with the Blue and White finishing second overall. The team will be looking to get even this season in their bid to bring home their first Ivy League Champion ship since 2017.

The men’s swim and dive team also have much to look forward to this season. For one, they will be looking to build upon their 5–4 record, which placed them third in the Ivy League last season.

The Bulldogs will also be keen to track the development of swim mer Noah Millard ’25, who drew the limelight last season for set ting a new school record en route to a second-place finish in the 200 Freestyle at the Ivy League Cham pionship. The Melbourne native

“I’m excited to see how strong we are after the preseason mov ing into competition, and to see how the strengths and weak nesses of this year’s team com pare to last year’s,” said swim mer Ray Wipfli ’25.

Debuting this weekend will be the Bulldogs’s new recruits, with the team on the look out to see how they mesh in. Other fresh faces include two assistant swimming and diving coaches who joined the team over the summer.

Coming from the Univer sity of Tennessee, Joey Reilman held his school record in the 200 freestyle and 100 backstroke. Returning to Yale, Dani Korman will be rejoining Bulldog coach

Jim Henry’s staff after a stint at the University of California, Berkeley. Korman had previously spent three seasons, from 2012 to 2015, as an assistant women's coach at Yale.

“We all really miss the seniors that graduated last year. They were great lead ers of the team and I wish they didn’t have to go,” said diver Hayden Henderson ’25. “But I’m also super excited to see the freshmen compete this season. 2026 is a great class and they have a lot of poten tial. I think that we’re going to have a great year.”

Dive will begin the exhibi tion this weekend at 2 p.m. while swim will follow at 4 p.m.

Contact PRANAVA DHAR

Contact AMELIA LOWER at amelia.lower@yale.edu

YALE ATHLETICS

The Bulldogs will host the University of Massachusetts, Amherst on Sunday during family weekend at Johnson Field.

COURTESTY OF DAVID SCHAMIS

Next Saturday, Yale will face its next Ivy league opponent, Dartmouth, in its sec ond game of the season at the Yale Bowl.

YALE ATHLETICS

“It

JESSIE CHEUNG/ STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Payne Whitney administrators have yet to respond to the petition, so the sauna’s fate continues to hang in the balance.

Police release photos of alleged York Street hate crime assailants

BY YASH ROY AND SOPHIE SONNENFELD STAFF REPORTERS

The New Haven Police Department has released pho tos of five individuals who they believe were witnesses or sus pects in an alleged hate crime that took place outside Daven port College in early September.

This move comes after police hit an apparent dead end in a month-long investigation that was initially marred by miscom munication between NHPD and the Yale Police Department.

“The identification through these videos is very important,” NHPD Chief Karl Jacobson said at a Friday press conference. “It’s helped us with numerous cases with homicides, shootings, everything so it’s really import ant we get this out.”

The photos were taken by a city-owned camera on the Broadway parking lot. Police said the suspects appeared to drive off in two white pickup trucks and a gray or silver Hyun dai Genesis.

The incident, which took place just after midnight on Sept. 3, left a New Haven resident — identified publicly as “Franklin” — with a broken jaw.

Franklin had been walking with his partner and two other friends when at least two white men hurled antiBlack and anti-Latino racial slurs at him on York Street. The assailants then physically assaulted and beat Franklin until he fell into the street.

While the assault occurred in a spot downtown under both Yale and New Haven cameras, technical issues prevented these cameras from capturing license plates or other identifying details of the suspects.

Images of the vehicles and license plates were “distorted” due to distance from the cam eras, NHPD Assistant Police Chief Bertram Ettienne said.

When asked if YPD was con cerned that NHPD took almost a month to release the photos to identify suspects and wit nesses, Campbell told the News that he understood that NHPD had many active investigations which may have led to the timing of the release.

“They’ve got a lot going on here,” Campbell told the News. “Even though we would have loved to have done it sooner, we under stand that as serious as this is, they’re dealing with a lot.”

When asked about the delay, Etti enne told the News that the depart ment wanted “to be cautious with the release of information” to ensure that people are not wrongly implicated.

Ettienne added that the NHPD also plans to release footage of the incident soon, and will do so once the investigators have finished sifting through it.

“We want to be cautious with releasing footage,” Etti enne added, saying that the NHPD wants to make sure that any individuals shown were likely involved in the incident.

“The last thing we want to do is release video of footage that is not clear or of someone who was not involved being wrapped into this unnecessarily.”

While the initial confronta tion was not captured on camera, Ettienne said they are able to see two to three individuals assault ing the victim.

In addition to the NHPD and YPD camera footage, the NHPD is also working with cell phone foot age from a civilian. Jacobson said that even a “snippet” of a video footage from civilians will be use ful for the investigation, encour

aging people to send anything they might have.

Campbell mentioned the suc cess YPD investigators found when they released images of the perpetrators who vandalized the Kline Biology Tower with racist and anti-Semitic graffiti last year.

“We hope that through these pictures and information that we provide, we know that someone out there will recognize these indi viduals,” Campbell commented at the press conference. “We believe that we can bring true justice and solve this incident and help the

anxiety and the frustration that the entire community is feeling.”

Elicker too joined in the appeal, asking for the public’s help to identify the suspects.

“Hate has no home in New Haven, discrimination has no home in New Haven and we will not tolerate it,” Elicker said at the press conference.

Jacobson was confirmed unanimously by the Board of Alders on July 5th, 2022.

Local teachers’ union receives $75,000 grant to lobby for increased funding

BY AVA SAYLOR STAFF REPORTER

A local teachers’ union will hire a professional organizer to advocate for the increased state funding they hope can address teacher shortages.

The New Haven Federation of Teachers received $75,000 from its nationwide parent organization, part of a total $1.5 million granted to 27 chapters around the country.

The new grant program aims to support teachers’ unions and community engagement in grass roots work. In New Haven, the funding will primarily be used to boost advocacy surround ing progressive revenue, equita ble school funding and expanded resources for community schools at the state level.

“Our students’ learning condi tions are our working conditions, and our students’ living conditions are their learning conditions,” said NHFT President Leslie Blatteau, who trav eled to Washington, D.C. to accept the award. “Everybody — teachers, stu dents, family members — is feeling the impact of decades of underfunding in urban districts like New Haven.”

The grants are part of the Amer ican Federation of Teacher’s Pow erful Partnership Initiative, which provides direct assistance to AFT affiliates, community organizations and parent groups looking to engage in education-based advocacy.

Public schools in New Haven cur rently face chronic underfunding and teacher shortages in the aftermath

of the COVID-19 pandemic. At last week’s NHPS board meeting, Super intendent Iline Tracy announced a district-wide shortage of 81 teach ers.

The district currently employs approximately 1900 teachers across its 44 schools.

Blatteau said her organiza tion plans to use the grant to hire an organizer that will meet with stakeholder groups and compile their concerns, as well as help lobby state lawmak ers to boost school funding in urban districts.

“Ultimately, we want to improve teacher retention and educational experiences for our students, and a lot of those problems are rooted in economic issues,” Blatteau said.

The New Haven Federation of Teachers intends to collaborate with community partners Recovery for All Connecticut and Students for Educa tional Justice on this project.

Alex Kolokotronis, an organizer at Recovery for All, emphasized the partnership’s common goal of elim inating existing discrepancies in school funding.

“Urban school districts need to receive a greater share of money in order to provide an equitable edu cation,” Kolokotronis said. “Con necticut schools are mainly funded through property taxes, so [students at] urban schools receive an educa tion that is not up to par with what wealthier schools can provide.”

This is not the first time these organizations have joined forces to combat educational inequities. Ear

lier this year, Recovery For All orga nized a rally for school staff, par ents, students and union members to advocate for increased funding for New Haven Public Schools.

“When this opportunity came up to do a more in-depth part nership, we went for it,” said Norma Martinez, organizing director at Recovery for All. “The students and the teachers are on the frontlines of this disinvest ment. We want to build a strong coalition in New Haven to advo

cate for life-changing policies and legislation for the people that need it the most.”

The New Haven Federation of Teachers aims to capitalize on this continued partnership to ensure the most effective possible use of the Powerful Partnership Initiative funding, Blatteau said. For these organi zations, this work is more cru cial than ever.

“We have shared experi ences and shared values,” Blatteau

said. “But now, we need to have shared action. We are losing our teachers, and too many of our high school students don’t have teachers in the subject areas they need to graduate high school. We have reached a tip ping point, and we’re ready to organize and fight.”

The American Federation of Teachers was founded in 1916.

Contact AVA SAYLOR at ava.saylorr@yale.edu .

Wi-Fi outages impact student learning and classroom experience

BY PRANAVA DHAR STAFF REPORTER

Daniel Spielman ’92 wasn’t expecting to win $3 million dollars.

But the “Oscars of Science” called, and the Sterling Professor of Com puter Science was informed that he had won the 2023 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, one of the most prestigious awards in his field.

The Breakthrough Prizes, awarded on Sept. 22, were estab lished in 2012 by a group of entre preneurs and philanthropists including Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg. Laureates in the three categories — mathematics, funda mental physics and life sciences — each receive a $3 million award.

“I didn’t see it coming because the Breakthrough Prize has always gone to people who are much more on the pure side than I am, and I’m really, you know, part time pure mathema

tician, part time computer scientist,” Spielman told the News.

Spielman was recognized for his contributions to theoretical com puter science and mathematics, including in spectral graph the ory, the Kadison-Singer problem, numerical linear algebra, optimiza tion and coding theory, according to the prize’s website.

The professor is no stranger to acclaim; he was awarded the 2008 Gödel Prize with collaborator ShangHua Teng for work on smoothed analysis of algorithms. Their work established a novel mathematical framework to better study the behav ior of algorithms in the real world, beyond traditional methods.

In 2014, Spielman, along with col laborators Adam Marcus and Nikhil

Srivastava GRD ’10, received the George Pólya Prize for their work on the proof of the Kadison-Singer con jecture, a long-standing unsolved

problem with far-reaching applica tions in areas such as network science and quantum physics.

In 2015, Spielman and Teng once again shared the Gödel Prize for a series of papers on near ly-linear-time Laplacian solv ers, a set of algorithms that helped resolve an outstanding open prob lem in linear algebra.

Spielman is also affiliated with the statistics and mathematics departments; on Oct. 14, he will launch Yale’s Kline Tower Insti tute, a data science initiative, and serve as its director.

“I’ve always liked pure math, but the things I’m most excited about are usually motivated by an appli cation somewhere,” Spielman said. “For me, the strangest thing is, there’s a lot of mathematics that I read that to me is very obviously useful, or in an applied sense, but the people who did it, don’t think

of it that way. It was interesting to them for entirely different reasons.”

Teng, a long-time collaborator and close friend of Spielman, recounted the latter as having been a star math ematician ever since his years as an undergraduate at Yale.

Moreover, Teng commended Yale’s role in producing a wonder ful scholar who is also an eloquent writer — sometimes found lacking in academia.

“Dan has three things that set him apart as a scientist: excel lent taste in choosing problems, remarkable problem-solving skills and persistence,” Teng said.

“Beyond answering existing open questions, he is a thinker who can envision new emerging questions at the frontiers of science to guide the coming generations.”

Spielman will formally accept the prize at a gala award ceremony, which traditionally features casts of

performers and presenters. Notable attendees of prior ceremonies have included figures such as Pierce Bros nan, Lupita Nyong’o DRA ’12 and Lionel Richie.

Marco Pirazzini GRD ’27 described Spielman’s colleagues’ reaction to the award announcement as merry, with a feeling that few other scientists — or people — could have been more wor thy of such an accolade.

“We joked about it during our meeting, but then, it was business as usual,” Pirazzini said. “The best part about Dan is that the only thing he really cares about is the math. He is not after any accolades. He just likes to think about problems.”

Spielman graduated summa cum laude from Yale in 1992, with exceptional distinction in Com puter Science.

“Sometimes being your most authentic self involves accept ing others for who they are.”

COURTESY OF LESLIE BLATTEAU

New Haven AFT will receive a grant to advocate for better funds to combat chronic underfunding and teacher shortages.

Contact YASH ROY at yash.roy@yale. edu and SOPHIE SONNENFELD at sophie.sonnenfeld@yale.edu.

YASH ROY/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER New Haven police continue to search for individuals they believe attacked a Latino man outside Davenport College.

New Peruvian restaurant opens downtown

BY KHUAN-YU HALL STAFF REPORTER

Chacra is bringing Peruvian cui sine to downtown New Haven, opening its doors last week.

The upscale restaurant and pisco bar is located on Temple Street — across from the Omni Hotel — in the heart of downtown New Haven. City officials gathered with Walter “Jeffer son” Vera last Friday at the storefront to celebrate the restaurant’s opening.

“A lot of the dishes are really authentic, from Peru, and most of my kitchen staff are also Peruvi ans,” Vera said. “We contemporize the cuisine and blend it to make innovative dishes … We have a lit tle bit of everything.”

Chacra represents a new adven ture for Vera, who has been a pres ence in the New Haven food scene for 20 years, first working as a server and rising through the ranks to become a restaurant manager. Now, he will be taking on yet another role, that of owner and proprietor.

Chacra’s expansive menu includes nine types of ceviche and 16 varieties of pisco, a brandy native to the wine making regions of Peru and Chile, as

well as classic dishes like lomo sal tado, pollo a la brasa and yuca frita.

The restaurant has a modern feel, with large floor-to-ceiling glass windows supported by a grant from the city’s New Haven Facade Improvement Grant Program. The Facade Improvement Grant Pro gram has invested about $150k into the facades of local businesses over the past five years.

Vera arrived in New Haven about two decades ago when he came from a job at the Yale Club in New York to work at Mory’s Temple Bar, where he worked for a few years before arriving at Pacifico Restaurant. At Pacifico, Vera said, he started as a server and worked his way up until he became the assistant manager and then the general manager. Eventually, Vera left Pacifico and spent some time as the manager of Barcelona Wine Bar.

The restaurateur credits his experience in these many dif ferent roles for having brought him to the point of being ready to open his own restaurant.

“Every place I worked, everyday I would learn something from every body,” Vera said. “No matter what position you have in this industry,

customers will come give you feed back. Everyday is a challenge, and everyday you learn something … I also went to school for business man agement, so you put it all together, the restaurant industry and college, and it makes a perfect combination.”

Ward 1 Alder Alex Guzhnay ’24 shared that he was moved by Vera’s story and his success given that Vera, like Guzhnay’s parents, is an immigrant from Ecuador.

Speakers at Chacra’s rib bon-cutting ceremony empha sized the restaurant’s prime loca tion in downtown New Haven.

“This is one of the key locations not only for downtown restaurants, but really a key location, a linchpin location for all of New Haven, for New Haven restaurants,” said Car los Eyzaguirre, the city’s deputy economic development admin istrator. “Anybody who takes this space is taking up one of the most highly visible spaces in the city, one of the places that sees the most foot traffic, that really is a forward facing restaurant in the city.”

Mayor Justin Elicker echoed Eyzaguirre’s emphasis on the col laboration between private business

owners and the city government that made Chacra possible.

“This is a real partnership, this is such a good example of a partner ship between the City of New Haven and local restaurants,” Mayor Elicker said. “The grant of $31,500 from the

MINIPNG brings a piece of New York to Audubon St.

BY SARAH BEN TKHAYET CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Fun, fashionable and funky — MINIPNG is the newest fashion retailer on Audubon Street.

The brainchild of Connecti cut designer Eiress Hammond, MINIPNG sells clothing, hats, shoes, jewelry and handbags. Some are vin tage pieces, while others are hand made by Hammond herself.

Hammond opened the store front in September, an extension of a passion for fashion that began just out of high school, when her earliest designs went viral on social media. MINIPNG, Hammond says, brings a piece of New York to Connecticut, particularly the “super colorful, fun and crazy,” side of the city.

“The store is basically a showcase of what I learned in New York,” Ham mond said. “When people walk in, it makes them feel like they’re some where that’s not in Connecticut. And that’s exactly what I want.”

As a 19-year-old pre-law student at Wittenberg University in Ohio, Hammond looked to connect with her artistic side, beginning to exper iment with painting on clothing. Her first-ever design, “In the City,” was a tank top embellished with abstract faces. Proud of her design, Ham mond decided to post it to her Insta gram page — a post that kickstarted her career in fashion design.

Hammond’s post went viral, with thousands of people asking how they could get their hands on her design. She decided to turn to Depop, an online platform that allows individ uals to buy and sell pieces of cloth ing. Once she began selling her tank

tops, she recalls receiving as many as 50 orders a day.

“It was super overwhelming, but it was also great,” Hammond said.

Looking to expand her reach, Hammond started organizing popups in New York — even the first of these events sold out.

On top of her commercial suc cess, Hammond was also able to form valuable connections within the city, particularly with the organizer of Hester Street Fair, an independent arts market. This connection allowed her to continue selling her designs at the event throughout the pandemic.

However, Hammond said that she also faced several obstacles on her designing journey. One of which was online fashion retailer Aliex press stealing one of her designs — her very first tank top. Fortunately, by June 2020, she was able to get a pro-bono lawyer to help her fight back and enforce the copyright that she had placed on her designs. She also took to social media, posting a video about her experience that went viral and garnered her further support. Eventually, Hammond won the case in court and Aliexpress took the design down.

Inspired by her designer friends who had stores in Manhattan and Brooklyn, Hammond began her search for the perfect location for her own store, but was faced with a new wave of challenges. She recalled not being taken seriously as a young woman of color, receiving judg ment from real estate owners as she searched for a space for her business.

“When I was looking at spaces, it would be kind of like, ‘You’re the one looking at the space?’” she said. “I

just had to work twice as hard in let ting them know how serious I was.”

One property Hammond was looking at in Manhattan fell through at the last minute. However, after moving to New Haven in order to be closer to her hometown of Middle town, CT, she discovered the open space at 77 Audubon St. on her way to Good Nature Market.

Noticing a for-sale sign, Ham mond decided to call the number and started working on bringing her idea for MINIPNG to life.

As the store has opened its doors, Hammond said she was proud of how

the space had come together. Vic toria Zapata Quintero ’26 praised MINIPNG for its “unique style” and “one of a kind” vintage pieces.

Hammond said that she wanted to create a space where even non-customers felt comfortable and welcome.

“I have kids from [Educational Center for the Arts] across the street and they’ll come on their lunchbreak and just chill out on the couch and that’s fine with me,” Hammond said.

MINIPNG is focused both on the sustainability and the afford

ability of its products. All items in the store are second-hand, Ham mond said, “and there’s a huge range of pricing … from $5 to $200.” Alex Guzman Caceres ’26 voiced her support for MINIPNG’s attention to affordability.

“They had a sale on Saturday and I was able to get so many pieces for $50,” she said. Hammond formally founded MINIPNG as an LLC in 2020.

Contact SARAH BEN TKHAYET at sarah.bentkhayet@yale.edu .

Yale’s overlooked special divisional major

BY KINNIA CHEUK CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

For students dissatisfied with the regular major options offered at Yale College, there remains an oft-overlooked alternative: the special divisional major.

The special divisional major does not belong to any department or have uniform prerequisites or core courses. Instead, with the approval of the Director of Undergraduate Stud ies, two or more faculty advisers and the Committee on Honors and Aca demic Standing, students design their own majors, allowing them to focus on academic interests that can not be met by an existing depart mental or special major. Students in the major have to complete at least 13 term courses, or 14 if they work on a two-term senior essay or project.

“I want first years in particular to know that they have options,” Tulsi Patel ’23, who is a part of the program, said. “They can make Yale fit them. They don’t have to fit to Yale.”

As one of Yale’s only two spe cial divisional majors, Patel designed her major in Digital Age Studies, in which she studies technology from different per

spectives, mainly focusing on its sociocultural impact.

While she acknowledged that Yale offers many different fields of study, she said she found existing majors restrictive.

“[There are] very few fields that are focusing on the present and the way it’s shaping us,” Patel said. “A lot of stuff we learn is from when we look back at history and go, ‘Oh, this is what happened.’ But there’s stuff happening right now that we need to be aware of so we can protect the future.”

Patel found that there were indi vidual courses from vastly differ ent departments at Yale that viewed society from a current technologi cal perspective. To her, the most ful filling experience was incorporating these diverse classes and studying the Internet broadly in ways that would not be possible within the confines of an existing major. Courses included in her curriculum range from “Ethics of the Internet: Data, Algorithms, and Society” to “Interactive Design and the Internet: Software for People.”

Hannah Cevasco ’24 is pursuing a special divisional major in Computa tional Biology. Unlike Patel, versions of Cevasco’s major exist at other uni

versities like Stanford and MIT. Pur suing the major was just specializing in an established field that Yale did not already have, she said, instead of carving out a path herself.

Cevasco hopes that Computa tional Biology becomes a department at Yale in the near future.

While she was on the Committee on Majors, Cevasco helped approve a new track for Computational Biol ogy & Bioinformatics in the Molec ular Biophysics and Biochemistry major. The Committee on Majors, which consists of University faculty, Yale College Dean’s Office adminis trators and undergraduate students, is in charge of considering proposals for establishing new majors.

However, Cevasco admitted that she would still have chosen the special divisional major over both this MB&B track and declaring an Molecular, Cellular, and Devel opmental Biology major with the certificate in programming, even if these options were available to her a few years ago. She said that she values the flexible and person alized learning experience that the special divisional major offers.

“I’ve been able to take classes from a variety of departments

including CS, MB&B, BENG and S&DS, whereas if I tried to double major in MCDB and CS, I would’ve had to take a lot more prerequi sites and core courses that basically would have taken up my entire time at Yale,” Cevasco said.

The special divisional major requires the submission of an appli cation, including letters of support from faculty advisers, to the Com mittee on Honors and Academic Standing. Students may apply to the major at any time from their fourth term of enrollment to one month after their seventh term of enrollment begins.

Dean Sarah Mahurin, the director of undergraduate stud ies for the major, wrote in an email to the News that prospec tive majors should set up a meet ing with her to discuss how best to approach the application pro cess, including strategies for pro posing a curriculum with breadth and depth comparable to other majors within Yale College.

When crafting her major, Cev asco referred to the Computer Sci ence and Molecular Biology major at MIT and the Biomedical Com putation major at Stanford as guid

ance, then recreated a similar cur riculum based on Yale’s classes.

During her preparation pro cess, she consulted multiple peo ple, including Amit Kaushal, the executive director of the major at Stanford, people in the bio technology industry and faculty members at Yale, in order to put forward a proposal that she was confident Yale would accept.

Cevasco said that Yale’s faculty members, especially Dean Mahurin, have been a great resource in help ing her achieve her academic goals in the major. However, she noted that a huge challenge has been find ing more specialty classes that truly tackle computational biology at Yale, as most Yale artificial intelli gence or machine learning courses, for example, are not specific to bio logical applications.

Both Patel and Cevasco believe that the special divisional major and its benefits could be more publicized at Yale.

Application forms for the major are available at the Timothy Dwight College Dean’s Office.

Facade Improvement Program is going to support not only this restau rant but the whole block.” Chacra is located at 152 Temple St.

Contact KHUAN-YU HALL at khuan.hall@yale.edu .

“History

like a ghost. It is as dead as alive”

KHUAN-YU HALL/CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Local restaurateur Walter Vera is taking on a new project with Chacra, an upscale Peruvian restaurant.

SARAH BEN TKHAYET/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Fun, fashionable and funky — MINIPNG is the newest fashion retailer on Audubon Street.

TENNIS

MEN'S SOCCER PENN BREAKS BULLDOG

season

TRAVEL TO ITA TOURNEYS

Elis outlast Howard in first home game

BY AMELIA LOWER STAFF REPORTER

The Yale football team (2–1, 1–0 Ivy) prevailed over Howard (1–4, 0–0 MEAC) in a historic matchup as the teams met for the first time ever in the Harmony Classic, a game organized by the Connecticut NAACP to inspire fellowship across college campuses...

This Sunday’s game only added to the Bulldog’s recent winning streak. Despite the drizzle, the team finished the match with a score of 34–26, emphasizing their rushing attack and gaining a total of 366 yards on the ground to the cheers of 9,200 people.

“It was an amazing opportunity for the Yale community to have such an outstanding group of football players,” Yale head coach Tony Reno told Yale Athletics. “It was two amazing institutions playing the game of football.”

After a decisive 38–14 win against Cornell the Saturday before, the Elis were fi red up for their return to New Haven and their home turf. Running back Tre Peterson ’24 had a game-high 144 yards on 12 carries, and quarterback Nolan Grooms ’24 added 130 yards on 16 carries.

“The game turned out great for us as a team,” Peterson told the News. “We didn’t execute to the best of our abilities, but we played hard and stayed true to our techniques and preparation to get the win.”

Howard opened the scoring with a 31-yard field goal by kicker Aaron Bickerton with just under six minutes in the first quarter.

However, the Elis were able to turn things around in the second quarter as their o ensive line began creating holes for their rushing attack.

“They like to set up things with their run game,” Howard head coach Larry Scott said to Bison Athletics.

Students advocate for reopening of PWG sauna

“And their quarterback [Grooms] can hurt you with his legs and his arm.”

Running back Joshua Pitsenberger ’26 scored on a 25-yard run to open the second period. Over the course of the game, Pitsenberger amassed 87 yards on nine carries.

That score seemed to spark the Bulldogs’ o ense, as they drove down the field a few minutes later to set up a 42-yard field goal by Jack Bosman ’24. Less than three minutes later, Grooms found tight end Jackson Hawes ’24 for a seven-yard touchdown pass to give Yale a 17–6 lead. Bickerton added Howard’s second field goal of the game as the first half ended, kicking the ball 27 yards and bringing the score to 17–6.

Just over a minute after halftime, where both the Howard and Yale bands performed, Grooms ran 54 yards to score a touchdown on the first drive of the third quarter.

BY TRISTAN HERNANDEZ AND PETER WILLIAMS CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS

The Payne Whitney Gymnasium sauna closed during the pandemic and hasn’t opened since. Grace Gerwe ’25 wants to change that.

On Sept. 25, Gerwe started a campaign to garner student support for bringing back the sauna. She emailed 1,500 people and, due to a restriction on the number of emails to be sent in one day, created a separate email address to reach more people concurrently.

“Basically, I want a sauna,” Gerwe wrote to the News. “I work out every day and would use it all the time back home. I looked for one here last year and found out that it was closed because of COVID-19 — understandably

— but now that restrictions are easing up, when I looked again, I was told it was being converted to changing rooms. This is a huge shame, because saunas are incredibly good for physical, emotional and mental health.”

The News was unable to confirm whether the saunas are indeed slated for conversion. Payne Whitney administrators did not respond to multiple requests for a comment.

Two days after starting the campaign, Gerwe sent out an email to all undergraduate students advocating for her cause. The email included a link to a petition for students to sign, where Gerwe delved deeper into her reasons for preserving the sauna.

SEAN KAY

Elis fall to Princeton, beat Quinnipiac

BY BETSY GOOD STAFF REPORTER

The Yale football team (2–1, 1–0 Ivy) prevailed over Howard (1–4, 0–0 MEAC) in a historic matchup as the teams met for the first time ever in the Harmony Classic, a game organized by the Connecticut NAACP to inspire fellowship across college campuses. This Sunday’s game only added to the Bulldog’s recent winning streak. Despite the drizzle, the team finished the match with a score of 34–26, emphasizing their rushing attack and gaining a total of

366 yards on the ground to the cheers of 9,200 people.

“It was an amazing opportunity for the Yale community to have such an outstanding group of football players,” Yale head coach Tony Reno told Yale Athletics. “It was two amazing institutions playing the game of football.”

After a decisive 38–14 win against Cornell the Saturday before, the Elis were fired up for their return to New Haven and their home turf. Running back Tre Peterson ’24 had a game-high 144 yards on 12 carries, and quarterback

Bulldog season to start with a splash

BY PRANAVA DHAR STAFF REPORTER

Yale’s swim and dive program will kick off their season with a showcase of intra-squad rivalry this family weekend.

The Yale men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams will open their season at the Blue & White Exhibition on Friday, Oct. 7. The scrimmage will take place at the historic Robert J. H. Kiphuth Exhibition Pool in Payne Whitney Gymnasium, where two squads drawn from the roster will be pitted against each other in a friendly compe-

tition. It will overlap with Family Weekend — which runs from Friday, Oct. 7 to Sunday, Oct. 9.

“No pressure, yet it’s also high pressure because of the parents here this weekend,” said diver Aidan Thomas ’25.

“I need the pressure though. I haven’t felt it for almost seven months now, since March.”

Both the men’s and women’s teams will follow up the exhibition with a scrimmage against the University of Delaware on Oct. 22. Afterwards, they will kick off their Ivy League season at home against Brown on Nov. 4.

The competitive swimming and diving season runs from November through February, culminating with the Ivy League Championship in February and the NCAA Championship in March.

“The exhibition is more of a developmental thing — it’s supposed to give us a good idea of where we are, and where we need to be for the season,” said Thomas.

The women’s team hopes to rekindle their form from last year’s regular season, which they ended with a perfect 9–0 record.

“We beat all the other Ivy League teams in the competition so that is always a good result,” men’s cross country runner"

COUERTSY OF DAVID SCHAMIS

The Bulldogs faced the Howard Bisons for the first time in history at its home opener and left the turf with a 34–26 victory

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

Field Hockey continued Ivy League play with a loss to Princeton while rallying to beat Quinnipiac in overtime

VAIBHAV SHARMA/SENIOR

RYAN

WEEKEND

A LAST LOOK AT A HIDDEN HIPPIE HIDEOUT

// BY POE EIC QUAH

Group W Bench, which fashions itself as “the oldest running head shop on the planet,” is an unmistakable sight along Chapel Street –– so unmistakable that it stopped me in my tracks while I rushed from SigChi to High Street one hazy Friday night. I tried making sense of what was going on in this curious establishment, but my friends were now far ahead of me, and so I promised myself to see what lies beyond the harem pants and crystal piggy banks of the storefront some other day.

Learning that the store will be up for sale soon, I recently decided to check it out after finishing class. The sky was not hazy, and neither was my state of mind, so I thought I would be able to find a birthday gift for a friend that afternoon.

Entering the store, I felt like I was transported into a hippie outpost from the Haight-Ashbury district in the Sixties. Relics like Grateful Dead merchandise and “Make Love, Not War’’ postcards sustained the illusion of a countercultural time capsule. This was only punctuated by more contemporary o erings like a glossy print of Aunt Sandy’s Medical Marijuana cookbook and a ‘moveable and poseable’ Jesus of Nazareth action figure.

This seemed to be the perfect place to get a gift, and a terrible place for a bad trip.

Though it only takes up two lots, Group W Bench has the material expanse of a Baroque cathedral. However, in addition to finding marbled saints and wooden crosses, which the store does offer in many varieties, you will also find paraphernalia from other beliefs – Mexican calaveras, Hindu dancing Shiva statues, and Tibetan Buddhist thangka paintings. Everything you can imagine, along with the things you can’t, live here.

I was drawn to the small keepsake boxes near the backroom, where the owner Ra ael came in and out of every few minutes. He seemed to be busy stocking up the vintage postcard racks. So I turned to the woman at the counter, Amy, for some questions about the boxes and the store.

“Yes, they’re all handcrafted,” Amy answered while opening up the wooden boxes, showing me what they look like inside.

I revealed my admiration for the store’s expansive collection, and to that, Amy told me that the store had been around since 1968. The store moved to its current location on Chapel Street soon after its establishment and remains the only one of its kind in New Haven to this day. I had been to many stores like this in New York’s East Village, but none

of them could boast a collection as eclectic as this.

“I can tell you that we have been here longer than many of []. Many of the things you see here are from Raffael’s personal collection. He was really into African masks for a while, and he got into the Buddhas you can see there,” Amy told me, pointing to a row of Buddha figures on a cabinet.

The store seems to cater to some common needs in uncommon ways. Got a midterm tomorrow that you need to pass? Get some crystals near the counter to manifest the Fail away. Need stationeries? Get Jumbo pencils and nose-shaped sharpeners here. Broke your last weed pipe? Choose from the many on display at the counter. It is the oldest running head shop on the planet after all.

Everyone who came in seemed to find something that they wanted. Everyone but me. There was simply too much to see, let alone choose from. Every couple of seconds, I would find another Frida Kahlo piece on the wall or Balinese mask tucked in between reclining Buddhas. I went back to Amy in resignation and admitted that I could not decide on what to get.

“A lot of customers get overwhelmed when they come here for the first time,” Amy assured me.

“Take your time, I’ll be here if you have any questions.”

I have to admit that I was quite intimidated by some of the signs found in the store at first. Around the shop displayed “No Photos” and “No Cellphones” stickers, a “Go f**k your #selfie” sign on an antique mirror, and another at the counter that read “The customer is always right, there is a Santa Claus, & Republicans really care.” But these signs are not meant to scare people off. Or maybe they’re for a specific type of customer: those who come in with their friends only to crowd around every reflective surface for geotagged selfies.

If you do decide to spend some time in the store, put your phone in your pocket and take the liberty to immerse yourself in the store’s cozy and mellow ambience. The smell of burning incense, the sound of calming psychedelic rock songs and the welcoming presence of the store’s friendly staff make for easy respite from campus. Though the fate of the store is uncertain, as long as its doors remain open, why not take a look inside? The Bench fits everyone.

Paradiso

Halfway through the evening and night, I found I was behind on work.

So with the face of fear in sight, I faced responsibilities I once had shirked.

From the stairs outside Sterling Library, I began my voyage feeling aloof.

A swipe of my ID but I still was wary, ‘Til I found myself under the golden roof.

I hastened myself to the elevators in back, One more swipe and my journey carried me

To the Slavic Reading Room, not the Stacks. Studiously ducked heads were all I could see.

I found my alcove and joined the silent crowd. Laptop open, phone away, notebook out, Working here, feeling inexplicably proud, I realize this is the ethereal Yale many tout.

Lost in a CS pset, time slips away, Head down, loving the grind, Until, far too soon, I hear a voice say It’s time to leave this heaven behind.

“The time is 11:45. The library and all Library services close in fifteen minutes.

Thank you.” Is it that swift, the great Fall? I’m expelled from these holy limits.

Seasonal Scaries

Purgatorio

Things packed away, riding the elevator

The slow descent begins

The quiet first floor reveals the hour’s later.

Time to pay for a procrastinator’s sins.

And then the descent continues some more, Not into the cool night air

But instead sinking ‘neath the floor

Wondering what awaits me down there.

One floor under, the tunnel awaits,

Far removed from the pearly gates.

A pset’s late I deserve this fate.

Head scrapes the ceiling, I hate this feeling,

Sanity layers peeling,

In every which way, I find myself reeling.

There’s nothing here.

It’s all just dull.

Not joy, nor fear,

Just a purgatory full.

On and on the tunnel goes.

As I descend, my gait slows.

But alas I descend some more.

I finally arrive, beneath the floor.

Inferno Awash in fluorescence.

I stumble in.

There’s a murmur, but it’s indistinct.

The monotony of readings, of essays, of psets

Derprive this place of its passion.

This is Bass,

Home of Satan, the Great Inferno

Where we go when we finally must learn-o.

But my descent doesn’t end here,

No, we fall even further.

Another layer beneath the Earth.

Natural light — or at this hour, Darkness — no longer exists.

Just fluorescence

That blinds the soul.

Lower-floor Bass, we’re near the end.

But the time is grim, Work must get done.

So I o er a prayer,

As I reach the seventh layer.

Single chair, single desk, single light.

We call it: “Depression Cubicle,”

Deep in the belly of the beast, Final resting place of the deceased.

Contact ANDREW CRAMER at andrew.cramer@yale.edu .

Does the cold make you sad?

I grew up in Alaska, so I guess you could say I’m pretty accustomed to the cold. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. Even so, despite enduring 18 long Alaskan winters I’ve always found that there’s something about the cold that makes me feel like the weather. It’s not acutely “sad” per se, it’s that feeling that can only really be articulated by *hmph*: pensively disgruntled. It’s not seasonal depression, and it’s not that I don’t like fall. And still there’s something about the turning of the weather that awakens a feeling of apprehension, but I can’t quite place my fi nger on it. I’d call it the Seasonal Scaries. Like the Sunday Scaries, but instead of my GCal giving me anxiety, it’s the weather app and that crispness in the air. You can already feel the sense of foreboding permeating the chilly air. It hints at the even colder temperatures that I know are inevitably in the near future.

We’ve reached the first week of October and it’s the Sunday night before the descent into the weekdays of stark winter. I don’t want to say goodbye to the reckless weekend of summer. I’m hungover from the intoxicating freedom that characterizes June, July and August. But a pounding headache isn’t what alerts me of that fact, it’s the frigid air. The cold means that I have to move on from the romance of summer. It wakes me up like jumping into a near frozen lake. It gets the senses tingling. In the wake of the muggy first few weeks of school when everything feels coated in a film of perspiration and the lingering heat of summer, our senses are dulled –– but the cold wakes

them right back up. You feel your skin tingling under the touch of the wind, you rub the bleariness from your eyes, you smell the earthy scent of fallen leaves. The cold is piercing. Breathtaking. Jarring. It’s a reality check that manifests in hats and mittens, in bright pink noses sniffling beneath woolen scarves and disposable masks. It’s a reminder of what’s to come that materializes in chapped lips and the sound of your hands as you rub them together –– like rustling parchment –– in a futile attempt to fend off the chilly breeze.

The cold keenly informs me that I’m alive. It’s a shocking reminder as I leave Bass library, buttoning my coat against the sharp breeze caressing my face and arms. The fact that I feel my bones shivering on my way to class brings me back into this corporeal world of lampshades and co ee mugs. I’ve found it’s easy to forget about the rest of the world when you spend hours in the comforting warmth of academia, getting lost in colorful abstractions. There’s something so humanizing about being cold that is astonishingly humbling.

The cold doesn’t make me sad, it makes me thoughtful. Maybe that’s why I’m getting the Seasonal Scaries. Autumn loves the East Coast, and the people here reciprocate that affection for good reason. But it does make me realize that summer has sadly come to an end and the real world calls us back. So I guess it’s not the cold itself that makes me sad, but rather everything that it implies.

// JESSAI FLORES

The Pop Purist

// BY ANABEL MOORE

This month, Lila Drew’s music is featured on Spotify’s “late night vibes” and “night pop” playlists. Indeed, listening to her music feels like stepping into a rainy night at home, toes curled under a warm blanket of synth, muted bass and carefully chosen snare. Certain songs are a solo evening, others best enjoyed with friends and a cocktail. Her voice is soft and clear: “maybe I’ll try and let it go, no / I think I could take care of you now,” she sings on her newest single, “Bad Juice.” Her songs personify both self-soothing and the intimate navigation of self and other.

Lila Drew – or, to Yalies, Lila Hauptman ’24 – is not a trendy, girl-next-door artist sprinting to churn out bubbly, consumable hits. Instead, she is a deeply personable student-singer-songwriter, a self-identifi ed “fi re” chef and American Studies major who just happens to have spent her sophomore summer touring Europe opening for Oh Wonder (who sought her exclusively). A junior in Saybrook College who boasts over 380,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and who splits her time between Los Angeles, New Haven and London, she’s penned two full-length studio albums, the first of which will be released next month. It’s never entirely clear where Lila’s feet are rooted, but this seems to be a part of the magic of both her persona and sound.

With a deep repertoire of EPs, singles, and a notable collaboration with GoldLink in “faded/2am,” each of Lila’s songs possess a timeless, old-school quality. Despite the emotional intensity of some of her lyrics – a notable verse from “Locket” paints Los Angeles as a “sadist’s paradise” – her style can only be described as a purist’s take on the rapidly modernizing discipline of accessible pop. She does a lot with very little; her voice is a refreshing escape into an unencumbered, ad-free world of raw listening.

It’s a world Lila’s worked hard to curate, having spent a gap year after graduating high school in 2019 working on her music. When the pandemic hit, she doubled her creative e orts, throwing herself into album production without access to a studio. The pandemic “gave her a lot of time to think about what [she] was making,” and she credits lockdown with making her music “a lot better.” According to Hauptman, she tried to take the advice of her favorite musicians, drawing inspiration from both their creative processes and various genres. The fruits of this time are evident in her music, despite her writing “a lot of songs that no one will ever hear.”

Her favorite artists are constantly changing. She fell in love with both indie pioneer Elliott Smith and 90s R&B, and is “obsessed” with the creative genius of the 1975’s Matthew Healy. She pays equal homage to classic paragons of musician-songwriters: the Rolling Stones, Prince, Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen.

In some ways, Lila appears to be a 21st-century Renaissance woman: a successful touring musician but also pure Yalie who, like so many others, “has a lot of weird interests” (and who eventually would like to “write a book and live in the forest.”). She also has a terrific sense of humor; Lila describes herself as “like every other girl” who “listens to her indie during the day and her true crime podcasts at night.” It is refreshing to encounter an artist who herself emanates the same classicism as her music. Nothing about Lila, nor her music, seems forced, though the amount of care and e ort she puts into her work is palpable.

In New Haven, Lila co-hosts WYBC’s Two Pretty Best Friends, a radio show that airs every Tuesday, with Samuel Brody ’24. The show is a means, she says, to still “feel involved

at school” despite the litany of events and goals related to her budding musical career. She acknowledges her path is untraditional, saying she “could have done what other people who like to sing do, joined an a cappella group or something.” But what she has managed to do instead is remarkable. Lila puts a finger on the indiscernible, late-night feeling that can only be described as a wish for a mug of nostalgia.

When asked what she might say to a younger Lila, though, her response is simple: “respond to my texts.” Then: “that was a really good one-liner, I can’t even lie.”

Contact ANABEL MOORE at anabel.moore@yale.edu .

Panera Et Circenses

Panera is a peculiar beast. It is a fast food chain with the pomp of an upscale shoe store. It is a sandwich joint dressed in the scenery of an airport cafeteria. It is the counterpart, the rival, the pricey contemporary of Starbucks, the cafe renowned for their annual obsession with pumpkins. Together they are twins. Panera is the Romulus to Starbucks’ Remus in the story of the American fast-casual empire. Like twins, each one is different despite the identical roles they play. Unlike the money vacuum that sucks you into a Starbucks cafe with the promise of a quick, one-stop treat, Panera is where you go when there are no more options left. Panera is where you find yourself wanting to see the world blur past you beyond the window — or when you feel the urge to spend $20 on a grilled cheese meal.

The Panera at Yale, which sits across from the art museum and a few storefronts away from — would you look at that — Starbucks is the perfect place to munch on a giant chocolate chip cookie while ignoring the crumbling infrastructure of your study habits and academic performance. Did you wake up 40 minutes late to your senior English seminar? Eat one of Panera’s broccoli cheddar soups. Have you skipped your Computer Science lecture all semester and now the midterm is tomorrow? Have one of Panera’s many flatbread pizzas. Did you get another pesky email about the sauna soon-to-be locker room in Payne Whitney? Have an everything bagel — whatever that means.

At Panera, the world can be falling apart as quickly as one of their sandwiches, but at least there is some comfort in knowing that everyone is there for the same reason you are. That man in the suit? He just joined the Panera Sip Club and does not know how to unjoin it. The woman eating her sandwich o her gigantic Norton anthology? She has to read all of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in the 20 minutes she has between working at the Marx Library and her British literature seminar. Panera is a circus of people trying their best at ignoring the worst, and there is nothing wrong with that. When the world ends, Panera will be there with a plate of the most expensive sandwich you will ever eat from a chain restaurant. It is homely, it is reliable, it is like a childhood friend made out of avocado on toasted rye.

What is Panera if not the first rung on the ladder of affluence? For almost $25, one can experi-

ence a small, carbohydrate-filled bite of luxury.

Panera is where the good life flashes its ankle and enchants you with hibiscus iced tea. It is a colosseum of carbs and in the center a cornucopia of sandwiches. Perhaps it is expensive not just because the ingredients are organic, but because to eat at Panera is to experience eating a bread bowl. Think of Panera like the Olive Garden of sandwich shops. It is expensive, but just enough that it is affordable for everyone — and also it has bread … lots of it. Its name also embodies its status as an upper-crust bread-exclusive fast food joint. How can one go wrong with a name like Panera Bread? The word “panera” seems to be referring to the uncommon Spanish word for breadbasket, and maybe the Latin word for bread, “panem.” So, Panera Bread really just means “bread breadbasket bread.” It is a bit redundant when you think about it, but it does make some sense. Breadbaskets have lots of loaves in them. Lots of loaves can make sandwiches, and what does Panera Bread — i.e. Breadbasket Bread — sell? Exactly. Panera plays chess and we are the gluttons on the board.

Panera is the odd, baguette-shaped pillar holding up the American pantheon of restaurant chains. Imagine that thousands of years from now, some future archeologist will find the remnants of an ancient Panera. Will they wonder what kind of civilization were we to have invented plastic flatware and cutlery upon which to eat bread and nothing else? Will they look at the Starbucks logo on the cups from a combination — no doubt — Panera and Starbucks, and will they see that green mermaid as the ancient American goddess of bread? Will she be named Panera? Or will Panera only exist in our hearts? Whatever it is, that silly little sandwich store will be there as we cross our Rubicons and seize our days.

At Panera, history ends and begins with a sandwich. It is there where you can come and see and conquer, even if it is just to distract yourself from the eight-page midterm paper you have due in two days. And there will be bread. Oh, there will be bread.

jessai.flores@yale.edu .

Contact

Growing up in New Haven’s Wooster Square, colloquially known as Little Italy, Claire Criscuolo picked up a thing or two about making hearty, home-cooked meals. Last week, the restaurant she’s owned and operated for most of her life, Claire’s Corner Copia — a staple for Yale students and locals, located right down the Green — turned 47 years old.

In 1975, a newlywed Claire and her husband, Frank, found themselves “struck by how restaurant food was so different from [their] food at home.” On visits to Frank’s native Gloucester, Massachusetts, the two frequently ate at a restaurant named “The Raven,” where she enjoyed authentic food made with fresh ingredients. Dreaming of daily trips to the market and food that “tastes like you made it,” Claire and Frank opened a restaurant of their own soon after.

The two met in a bowling alley parking lot. Claire and her friend, Roseanne, were driving downtown in her red Volkswagen when Roseanne noticed a car at the bowling alley — the car belonged to John, who, as Claire put it, “she was stalking, basically.” Roseanne made Claire pull into the spot and “think of something” to say, suggesting she ask about a car for sale in the lot.

She was telling the owner, her future husband, that she was thinking of upgrading, when John suddenly ran over to them and said, “You two are my favorite people — you should get married.” After some uncomfortable laughing and conversation, Frank asked Claire to go out for a cup of co ee. When she said she didn’t like co ee, he asked her to go out for a cup of tea.

“We started dating, and I know it sounds crazy — that love at first sight thing — but I just liked him immediately,” she said.

The restaurant was popular early on, but she recalled moments where it was “dismal.” During the 1970s, New Haven was “a boiler pot ready to explode” because of the high levels of injustice and danger. For a few years, business stalled after Yale closed its gates. When things turned for the worse, Mr. Goodman, the restaurant’s dairy and eggs distributor, told her she didn’t need to pay him anymore: She could use the money for rent payments. Little by little, the place began to bounce back.

She attributes being “put on the map” to News writer Terry Hawkins ’78, who wrote that Claire’s had “smoothies with a cure for hangovers as big as Idaho” after witnessing a fellow student bring a smoothie to class every day. Business boomed. The rest is history.

Claire is a legend, but more importantly, she’s humble. Beyond her kind smile and the greetings she shoots at regulars whenever they walk through the door, she’s got a sense of openness that invites people into both the restaurant and into her world. This is the third time I’ve interviewed her for the News, but when I talked to her for this piece, we instantly found several parallels in our lives. We both first became vegetarians in college — okay, technically I’m pescatarian. We both came from immigrant families, struggling early on with cultural assimilation. Most importantly, we both feel compelled to do good in the world because of our experiences growing up among economic hardship. A faith in God encourages both of us to do good in the world.

“There’s a motto I have on the wall, on the so t — I don’t know if you’ve seen it. But it reads the basic principle: ‘The only compelling reason we’ve been given more love than we need, more food than we need and more resources than we need is so that we may share it with those who have been given less,’” she says after I ask about how she tries to live her values.

“They used to say, ‘Claire, just because you hear of a problem doesn’t necessarily mean it’s God whispering in your ear.’”

She’s got the motto stamped into her heart, memorized word-for-word. The restaurant’s commitment to this message is unquestionable: As long as they’ve been afloat, they’ve partnered with countless community organizations and charities to uplift those in need, including New Haven Reads.

She grew up poor, but happy. She noted that being poor in the 50s was different from being poor today, as the cost of living has increased and girls in school must now pay for activities like sports. Her experiences seeing childrens’ poverty in the city and as a former nurse at the Connecticut Mental Health Center have motivated her to help them through community service.

“I really want to focus my money more on ways that I can lift children out of poverty, because, again, I wish I could help everyone,” she tells me. “But children, if we want a better future, then our children need to have a better childhood. Right?”

Aside from the influences of her own childhood, she’s been motivated to act by the experiences of her restaurant family. After one employee told her about

the stresses she faced growing up poor, with little supplies to clean her clothes and wash herself, she better understood the realities of poverty hygiene. Then, she joined a partnership with the Yale Child Study center to raise supplies to promote children’s hygiene.

Claire may be the restaurant’s namesake, but she places the whole team at the heart of the operation.

Employees at Claire’s tend to “stay for two weeks or for two years,” popping up as familiar faces whenever a customer drops by. As she took me back into the kitchen, which I’d only peered into from time to time whenever I stood in front of the register to order, she heralded a mixture of laughter, groans and jokes when she called everyone to gather for a photo. They share the restaurant’s mission just as much as she does.

Looking ahead, she’s still got a list of things the world should look forward to.

“I’m looking forward to not having hunger in our city. I’m looking forward to better outcomes in school, more than anything in the world,” she told me decisively. “Probably, I’d give up anything I own if I could just have immigration reform above everything, even above food.”

Leaving Claire’s, decked out in sprawling pumpkin displays in honor of autumn, I knew it’d only be a matter of days before I returned. That week, she recommended snickerdoodles and the rice and lentil salad as menu favorites, but her favorites tend to change every week. What remains unchanged is Claire’s warm smile and unflinching commitment to the city, both as a purveyor of good eats and benefactor to those most in need.

Contact MEGAN VAZ at megan.vaz@yale.edu .

How do I search for truth in a place that feels so separated from reality?

// BY ZOË HALABAN

This past winter, as a senior in high school, I realized I had grown out of my space. I felt enclosed by my daily habits: the subway ride to school, the blocks I would walk, the hours I would spend in bed contemplating doing my busywork. The only thing I wanted to do was leave home and go to Yale. My dream had come true — I was going to a beautiful, intellectual utopia. Perhaps that made the anticipation worse.

Finally, I made it to Aug. 21. My family and I overloaded our Subaru and pulled up to Phelps Gate. My suitcases, a cluttered curation of myself, were quickly unloaded into my L-shaped bedroom. I hung up an Edward Hopper poster that reminds me of my mom and loaded my rented mini fridge with hummus snack packs: my lifeline for late night study sessions.

As I made my room mine, it became clear to me that no decor or familiar taste of packaged preservatives would connect me to what I now understood as my “other life.” Something about entering the abundance of Yale felt permanent and grand. However, I had no definition for the feeling of pressure Yale’s distinct presence provided, until I stumbled upon William Blake.

My humanities seminar took a trip to the Yale Center for British Art to look at William Blake’s “Jerusalem.” One panel, in particular, portrayed a curious man under a gothic archway. It resembled plenty of the passages I

have taken on campus, whether it be in the HQ courtyard or under the Davenport portico.

As I stared at the brilliant pieces, the docent explained that Blake believed that to enter the gothic was to enter truth. I imagined how Blake would’ve relished in young minds’ drunkenly skipping through the gothic wonderlands of Branford and JE –– at 2 a.m. on their way to GHeav ––presenting the most honest versions of themselves. But it also struck me that Yale is the blueprint for finding truth in the gothic; I finally had evidence for the pressure of veritas that has trailed me in my period of adjustment.

There is no other campus that, in my opinion, feels more like an enclosure than Yale. In our residential colleges, we are hugged by gothic architecture that is only accessible via swipe — unless you’re in Morse or Stiles, in which case I apologize for the FOMO. We struggle with outdated, extremely heavy doors that lead to stories of buildings that boast significance, creating boundaries and emphasizing the grandeur of knowledge that is offered to us. The extraordinary architecture is meant to inspire us and connect us to a history of thinkers that came before us; it contains Yale’s most extreme attributes within tight boundaries. We are somehow expected to feel as if it is ours alone to enjoy.

As I experience many Yale firsts, this otherworldly, private place does feel inspiring. It impresses me most when I’m

walking to the library late at night, while no one is on campus except for the people who are within the same enclosure. However, this explicit definition of place also means less fluidity for myself. I am here now. I am not going anywhere.

As I settle in, I am acutely aware of the boundary that is naturally created between those who are “in” our Yale community and those who aren’t. I do not know if I have gotten used to the abundance of Yale, and I don’t know if I ever will. Yale will stay a separate place in my mind forever — just as it is architecturally intended to be. But, I have also begun to curate my own space within the sprawling campus. Though I do not yet understand the extent of Yale’s treasures, I have allowed some experiences to help.

Only seven weeks in, my life at home feels more relevant than it will in a few months down the line. I am attempting to be conscious of Yale as an enclosure as I make space for myself here. Having the unique opportunity to make a home also comes with the decision to be flexible: hosting people in your suite, leaving campus to teach young kids. When I arrived late August, the gothic architecture presented a barrier to building anything new. However, as I grow into life at Yale, I continue to find places where truth transgresses the past.

Contact ZOË HALABAN at zoe.halaban@yale.edu