Yale Daily News - Week of Sept. 11

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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 · VOL. CXLIII, NO. 2 · yaledailynews.com

Corp candidate Thomas reaches support threshold of women and other underrepresented groups are central to these critical conversations. The fact that over 4,400 alumni have signed to help me reach the ballot shows that the Yale community knows what’s at stake — and they’re willing to use every tool at their disposal to address the problem.”

Thomas — a former climate policy advisor for the respective presidential campaigns of Senator Elizabeth Warren and Washington Governor Jay Inslee — will focus her platform on fossil fuel divestment, climate action and inclusive governance at Yale, according to her website. Individual donors from Yale alumni are funding her campaign.

Yale Forward, Thomas’s primary campaign organization, works alongside Harvard Forward, a peer group that campaigns for candidates with goals similar to those of Thomas.

In August, Harvard Magazine announced that three of the five candidates endorsed by Harvard Forward won seats on their

BY VALERIE PAVILONIS STAFF REPORTER Maggie Thomas ENV ’15 has gathered enough support to appear on the ballot of the 2021 Yale Corporation election.

The Corporation — Yale’s highest governing body — typically gains new members after alumni nominate and vet candidates, but hopefuls can also seek another route: collecting signatures of support from alumni to run as a “petition candidate.”

This year, that signature threshold was 4,394, a number that Thomas reached three weeks before the Oct. 1 deadline. While a third-party election services company is verifying the tally, Thomas told the News that she is ready to run a robust campaign.

“In my lifetime, a woman has never qualified for the ballot via petition,” Thomas said in a Sept.

8 press release. “On the heels of the 50th anniversary of co-education at Yale, I hope we can continue to make Yale a more inclusive institution where the voices

Board of Overseers, which consists of 30 members and has operations that parallel those of the Yale Corporation.

Harvard Forward co-founder Nathán Goldberg told the News he was excited about Thomas’ candidacy.

"Yale Forward's success in placing climate expert Maggie Thomas on the ballot shows undeniable momentum for climate justice among Ivy League alumni, especially following Harvard Forward's big win in Harvard's board elections last month,” Goldberg wrote in an email to the News. “If it can happen at Harvard, it can happen at Yale, and we're confident that we'll soon see more schools use democracy as a tool to advocate for better governance and climate action."

Until now, the only woman to land on the ballot for the Yale Corporation was Heidi Hartmann GRD ’74, who ran in 1985 as a petition candidate but lost the general election. Thomas said her status as the second

Demand spikes for off-campus housing

RYAN CHIAO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Typically, 84 percent of undergraduate students live in on-campus housing, or about 5,100 students.

BY JOSE DAVILA IV AND TALIA SOGLIN STAFF REPORTERS The number of students living in off-campus housing spiked this year, following the University’s announcement of social distancing guidelines and restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many Yalies held off on planning for the fall semester until President Peter Salovey’s allschool email about the University’s fall plan arrived in inboxes

on July 1, pushing their decisions on enrollment and housing until a much later date than usual. After Yale’s announcement that it would welcome only first years, juniors and seniors back to campus in the fall, many students quickly pursued off-campus housing in New Haven. Their reasons for doing so varied, including a desire to save money, set their own standards for coronavirus-related behavior and guarantee that they could live with their friends, after

being warned that some housing arrangements made earlier in the spring would be altered.

In a typical year, 84 percent of undergraduate students live in on-campus housing, or about 5,100 students. This year, only 1,821 students are living on campus, meaning only 36 percent of on-campus housing capacity is filled, according to Yale Director of Media Relations Karen Peart.

An additional group of about 1,530 enrolled students are living in off-campus housing, said Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun in an email to the News.

Normally, only about 970 students live in off-campus housing.

That works out to a 79 percent increase in students living off-campus when the estimated 200 unenrolled students who are also living in New Haven are included, according to Peart.

The 79 percent increase does not include sophomores who are enrolled and living off campus in New Haven, because they are categorized by the university as being enrolled remotely. According to Peart, about 15 percent of SEE OFF CAMPUS PAGE 4

woman to reach this milestone is “pretty meaningful” for a young alumna such as herself.

Thomas will run against a variety of candidates, includ-

ing former Knoxville Mayor and former United States Ambassador to Poland Victor Ashe ’67, SEE THOMAS PAGE 4

COURTESY OF MAGGIE THOMAS

Maggie Thomas ENV '15 was a campaign advisor for Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Faith groups adapt to social distancing guidelines

BY SYLVAN LEBRUN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER From Saint Thomas More to the Slifka Center, Yale’s religious centers have reimagined a host of programming to comply with the University’s public health guidelines and meet the needs of students who are spread across the world this semester.

After going remote in the spring, Yale faith leaders have had time to refine their approaches to pandem-

ic-era spiritual life. The University has closed physical prayer spaces on campus for the fall and restricted in-person gatherings. Similar to the latter half of the spring semester, religious programs will take place almost entirely online, with a few potential socially distanced exceptions. Religious leaders are working to prepare engaging online programming that recreates the traditions of in-perSEE FAITH PAGE 4

DANIEL ZHAO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Yale’s religious centers have reimagined their programming this semester to comply with the University’s public health guidelines.

Grab and go dining options New Haven preps for election cause uptick in waste

BY MADISON HAHAMY AND ROSE HOROWITCH STAFF REPORTERS Plastic waste overflowed from the tiny trash bin outside of Davenport’s dining hall, forcing the residential college to place a large dumpster beneath the tent that was set up in the courtyard.

The COVID-19 pandemic

has forced Yale’s dining halls to switch to pre-packaged, graband-go meal options, leading to increased waste from larger meal portions and single-use containers. Students have less control over the food they receive, and many throw away some that does not fit their preferences.

SEE FOOD PAGE 5

LUKAS FLIPPO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Residents can vote absentee by mail or drop their applications or ballots in drop boxes found at 200 Orange St.

BY BRETT JENNINGS AND SEAN PERGOLA CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS

COURTESY OF OLEKSII ANTONIUK

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced Yale’s dining halls to switch to pre-packaged, grab-and-go meal options rather than the typical buffet-style dining fare.

CROSS CAMPUS THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1991.

350 students and University workers protest dining hall budget cuts. They end their sevenday hunger strike by eating cake in the Beinecke Plaza. Two thousand students signed the YCC petiiton protesting the budget cuts.

As the November general election approaches in the midst of COVID19, New Haven residents and Yale students have the opportunity to cast their votes using absentee ballots or in-person voting.

The state of Connecticut has

INSIDE THE NEWS BUSINESS After a quiet six months

in New Haven, local establishments are enjoying the business brought by the thousands of local university students returning to campus as area colleges reopen for the fall semester. Page 6 CITY

adopted new regulations governing voting to accommodate for public health and safety concerns, and the voting process in New Haven has shifted accordingly.

Most significantly, the COVID19 pandemic has been added to the list of permitted reasons for requesting an absentee ballot, meaning that anyone registered

AACC RETREAT The Asian

American Cultural Center will attempt to cultivate the same meaningful conversations and connections that usually occur at their annual Asian Retreat online this year in early October.

Page 7 UNIVERSITY

to vote in the state of Connecticut can vote absentee in this election.

Although in-person voting will remain open, state and city officials have encouraged residents to vote absentee, if possible.

“We do expect [absentee ballots] to be an uptick this year due to people’s concerns,” said New Haven City Clerk Michael Smart.

“We are asking folks to download and return their applications soon so our office can get ahead of the rush.” Additionally, the Connecticut Secretary of State’s office intends to mail an absentee ballot application to all registered voters in the state.

Residents can vote absentee by mail or drop their applications or ballots in drop boxes found at 200 Orange St. These drop boxes are regularly checked by the city clerk’s staff and have curbside and disability-accessible options.

Absentee ballots can be requested as late as one day before Election Day, but to apply, a voter must register in advance.

Although New Haven City Hall

WHIFFS & WHIM As COVID-19 reshapes performance and college extracurriculars, Yale’s two worldrenowned senior a cappella groups are trying to develop plans for the year.

Page 9 ARTS

SEE VOTING PAGE 5 COVID DASH

Yale's COVID19 dashboard received an “A” from “We Rate COVID Dashboards," which judges universities’ COVID-19 dashboards in an effort to improve transparency for college communities.

Page 10 UNIVERSITY

PAGE 2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION GUEST COLUMNIST SUDE YENILMEZ

G U E S T C O L U M N I S T J O R D A N N A PA C K T O R

A shattered illusion

Yale, please close

E

very morning, I woke up to the same email. “We regret to inform you that the U.S. Department of State Consulate in Istanbul was unable to approve your request for an expedited Visa application appointment.”

I was not alone. Thousands of international students received the same message over and over again during the summer.

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only transformed the way the world looks today, but also the way we conceive of it. For me, the pandemic shattered my illusion about life in the U.S. Soon after I received my admissions letter, the hard reality hit.

I come from Istanbul, Turkey.

As cliche as it might sound, the U.S. is still seen as the land of freedom and opportunity in a lot of countries around the world. I was no stranger to this concept. I’ve dreamed of going to an American university since I was nine years old. I could receive a well-rounded liberal arts education at one of the world’s most prestigious universities, and become the hero of one of the success stories I had heard so frequently growing up.

However, starting in March, my dream of America began to disappear. As the pandemic escalated and the number of cases started to increase rapidly, U.S. embassies all around the world stopped their visa services. New York became the deathbed of more than 20,000 people. The world was in shock.

The superpower everyone looked up to was caught off guard and simply lacked the mature leadership to properly respond to the 21st century’s biggest crisis.

As international students, we faced one serious question: “Should we go?” We asked ourselves: Would it be safe to travel to and stay in the U.S.? Was it financially and mentally worth going there? Would we receive adequate health care in a system that discriminated even against its own citizens of color? These questions were filled with false assumptions and unrealistic expectations, but worst of all, panic, fear and disappointment.

In the midst of this uncertainty, the Trump administration passed another ruling. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced on July 6 that the U.S. Department of State would not issue visas to students enrolled in schools that were fully online for the fall 2020 semester.

This was the final blow. I had spent my whole life working to get into a renowned American college and now I wouldn’t even be able to enter the country to receive the education I had worked so hard for. It was then I realized that I had always missed one significant component of those inspiring success stories: They were one in a million. Those stories didn’t tell us about the thousands of immigrants that had to leave the U.S. — many of whom I know back home — because of hostility and

discrimination or how much they had struggled in this land of supposed freedom and opportunity.

Even after I received my visa and arrived at JFK Airport, I grew more and more critical of my original illusion. I was worried, but not about my health or well-being — even though I had spent 11 hours with my mask on in a cramped plane full of people.

I was worried because one immigration officer alone could still find a way to not let me in. My voice was shaking as I answered his questions. Why was I coming to the U.S.? Would Yale offer in-person classes? Could I provide any evidence for this? I was very careful while choosing my words. One minor mistake or misunderstanding could cost me everything.

As I was being interrogated, American people and even officers throughout the airport were taking their masks off. This was frustrating not only because they were breaking the simplest rule of the pandemic, but also because the Trump administration — claiming to protect the U.S. from the virus — had instilled so much fear and anxiety into international students’ lives.

The idealized American life that is advertised in books, movies and inspirational stories is deceitful. The line between America’s glory and its ugliness is very thin. Your race, ethnicity and religion determine which side of that line you fall on before you even have a chance to display your talents and intelligence. The lie of the American Dream might sound obvious to Americans, but to foreigners, it still can come as a surprise.

It is ironic that one of the main elements of a successful college application is our contribution to society. Especially for international students, the society we strive to become a part of is not even ready or willing to accept us.

While Yale tries to foster an inclusive and diverse environment, the American society around it makes it seem like that’s not even possible. In a country that was built by immigrants, this simply should not be the case.

This is not just about the Trump administration — it’s about the America he represents. Donald Trump is undeniably the embodiment of everything wrong in American society. However, racism, greed, discrimination and violence existed long before him and will continue to do so even after him.

If Joe Biden is elected, maybe I won’t have to take in-person classes just to stay in the country. But this is not and should not be about one man. I now can only wonder: Will I be the one that “makes it” or will I fail and go home? And is going home even a failure at all?

SUDE YENILMEZ is a first-year in Berkeley College. Contact her at sude.yenilmez@yale.edu .

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W

hen coronavirus cases first began surging across Connecticut in mid-March, my coworkers and I were told to keep our distance from each other and wipe down workstations frequently. There were 12 of us, crowded into a small room at the top of the Sterling Memorial Library. One of us had just returned from a weeklong cruise. Another had been out sick earlier in the month with a fever and cough. I was eight months pregnant.

We tried our best — pulling the desks further apart, cleaning surfaces, rationing our limited supplies of hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes. In retrospect, such efforts seem naïve and futile. Measures that would prove effective, like masks and proper ventilation, weren’t even on our radar. Now, I can say that Yale should have closed sooner, that we wasted our time worrying about shared surfaces instead of shared air, that employees with COVID symptoms should have been paid to stay home, with or without a positive test. But it was still March. We didn’t know what we didn’t know.

Yale no longer has that excuse.

On August 31, the University opened its doors to more than half of its student body, a move that will inevitably condemn a number of those students to contracting a potentially lethal virus. This is not speculation. It is fact. The administration knows this, which is why they have “The Plan.”

According to “The Plan,” students will be tested semiweekly and the University will perform contact tracing. Never mind that such a testing schedule falls short of the recommendations made by the Yale School of Public Health.

Never mind that some unenrolled students living off campus will not be subject to semiweekly testing. Never mind that contact tracing, already a difficult practice, will be further complicated by the very nature of campus culture. Yale has tuition money to collect. Yale has a reputation to

protect. Yale has a Plan.

It is a bad plan. At colleges across the country, coronavirus cases are surging. Some, like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have already closed.

Although Connecticut has recovered from its pandemic peak of more than 2,000 cases a day in late April, the numbers are beginning to rise again. The University of Connecticut recently reported 58 new cases on its Storrs campus. Its plan for reopening? Regular testing and contact tracing.

History, science and common sense indicate that another, more severe outbreak in the fall and winter is likely. Coupled with the seasonal flu, health experts fear a “twindemic,” an epidemic of both influenza and coronavirus that will overwhelm hospitals and leave victims of one illness susceptible to the other. Testing twice a week, contact tracing and relying on the good behavior of college students is not nearly enough to combat these rising tides.

But it will not be the administration that drowns in the wake.

Instead, hourly staff, temporary workers and the broader New Haven community will assume a disproportionate amount of the risk. Those of us at Yale who cannot work remotely will return to poorly ventilated, decades-old buildings where we will interact directly with students, faculty and other staff. Custodial and dining hall workers will find themselves sharing spaces with maskless individuals. City residents working in the shops, restaurants and cafes surrounding the university will be exposed to hundreds of undergraduates returning from hot spots across the country. Baristas, waiters, cashiers, salesclerks, Uber drivers, delivery workers — who will provide testing, contact tracing and healthcare for them?

What about our families, roommates and neighbors? Most students will return to their dorms at night. But the rest of us live in communities with and among other people. We call

New Haven and its surrounding towns home. And those homes are vulnerable. Thirteen percent of the Greater New Haven population lives below the poverty line. One in 20 adults are without health insurance. For better and for worse, Yale is inextricably interwoven with New Haven. The virus doesn’t need to travel far to infect people outside of the university walls. All it needs is one sick or asymptomatic student to step outside.

I know that there are many people with good intentions working in the upper echelons of the Yale administration. Faced with an impossible situation, burdened by institutional inertia, demanding constituencies and conflicting expectations, the administration is trying to make the right decision. But this is not the right decision. This is a myopic solution to a long-term crisis that threatens the most vulnerable among us. It is not in the best interest of university employees.

It is not in the best interest of New Haven residents.

And, ultimately, it is not in the best interest of Yale students. When cases spike, when the University is forced to close its doors again and return to fully online operations, I expect that the students will be blamed.

But a global pandemic cannot be resolved on an individual level.

Its resurgence will not be the fault of a freshman attending an off-campus party or a junior going on a date. It will be the fault of an administration that did not want to take responsibility for itself, an administration that decided to gamble the well-being of its staff and its community on the chance that a campus full of college kids won’t exchange germs.

For now, Yale has avoided making the hard choices. All it asks is that we make them instead.

JORDANNA PACKTOR is a library assistant at Yale Sterling Memorial Library. Contact her at jordanna.packtor@yale.edu .

G U E ST C O LU M N I ST CA L E B D U N S O N

Moral mathematics I

’m from the Austin neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago, a community decimated by decades of discrimination and disinvestment. I became aware of that at a young age as I traveled downtown to elementary school every day and saw the rundown buildings and boarded-up corner stores transform into sleek new housing developments and trendy restaurants as I got further away from my neighborhood.

Witnessing the deep inequality in my city turned me into a political firebrand by the time I became a high school freshman. At every opportunity, I researched structural inequalities like mass incarceration, educational achievement gaps and disinvestment in communities of color. For class assignments, I put together radical policy proposals, calling for complete divestment from private prisons, increased funding for under-resourced schools and the expansion of social assistance services across the country. I wanted to change the world, and as I set my sights on higher education, I knew I wanted to use college to gain the knowledge and power to do it.

In mid-February, I learned that I had been admitted to Yale. This was it. This was my chance to change the world. But my dream of Yale was just that — and no dream exactly lives up to our expectations. Now that I am here in person, I realize that my presence here is itself a moral tradeoff.

A couple of months later I found myself participating in Yale’s Cultural Connections preorientation program. In one of the program’s first workshops, a critical history tour, I learned about Yale’s past ties to the American slave trade and colonialism, as well as its present ties to police brutality and climate change. With this information, I was left questioning whether by attending this university I had made myself complicit in the actions of a school that has damaged so many communities, the very communities I vowed to help in the years before I arrived.

After the tour, group discussions began, and I asked an upper-

level student about her relationship with the University. She said that while she couldn’t control Yale’s history or current actions, there are ways she can, and does, hold the University accountable for its practices. She also said that it’s nearly impossible to enact reforms from the outside of an institution. “I have to have access to power to make change, and my Yale degree will open the door to that power,” she said.

In the moment, that idea proved reassuring. But now, as I arrive on campus and complete my first days of college, it has lost its resonance.

WITH THIS INFORMATION, I WAS LEFT QUESTIONING WHETHER BY ATTENDING THIS UNIVERSITY I HAD MADE MYSELF COMPLICIT IN THE ACTIONS OF A SCHOOL THAT HAS DAMAGED SO MANY COMMUNITIES, THE VERY COMMUNITIES I VOWED TO HELP IN THE YEARS BEFORE I ARRIVED Theories of change tend to be uncertain, and the once alluring thought of leveraging an institution such as Yale to create change has now become troubling to me.

To Yale, I am an investment in their future, with the expectation that my fame, success and donations will keep the University going strong for years to come.

My presence as a student, much like the rest of my Yale peers, gives this ancient institution life and power and conflicts with my goal to help disadvantaged communities. In being on campus, I also implicitly submit to the belief that individuals with power and influence are some of the only people capable of driving significant change, thus abandoning my faith in the power of community and collective action.

But even so, my choice of college was constrained by public perception. Americans recognize and often yield to the power of prestige. And even if I were to reject that notion, I would be one small drop of water pushing against a wave of entrenched convictions about higher education. The only way to turn the tide would be for top students across the country to abandon distinguished colleges and universities at once. Unlikely.

Nevertheless, Yale has a robust network of activist and service organizations, and all of them share a common goal of working to better the world. But, as admirable as the work is, it feels akin to a game of moral math, best described by this question: Will doing good outweigh the bad things I’ve done? At Yale, that question might be phrased as “Will joining this club or volunteering with this organization — or leading this protest or pursuing this career — be enough to justify my presence at this university?”

Every day, we as Yalies should strive to come out on the positive side of our moral equations. And, as everything we do in our lives will in some small measure be owed to Yale, we will always find ourselves calculating our own moral standing in light of the institution that has shaped us.

CALEB DUNSON is a first year in Saybrook College. Contact him at caleb.dunson@yale.edu .

PAGE 3

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION Danger in performance T

he novel coronavirus has produced a new litmus test for one’s character. Besides trust and kindness, we now also want our friends to believe in science. Over the last week, I’ve begun to see many friends again after a long, long summer. Many of them have expressed a new social dynamic — the choice to see a friend isn’t just about scheduling or closeness or friendship, but also a crucial new factor: How safe has this friend been?

Of course, attention to safety makes sense. Perhaps setting down firm boundaries — “I won’t see you in person if you continue to do x activity” — might encourage people to adopt safer behaviors.

But as with any other type of social shaming or pressure, there are inevitable drawbacks. One friend mentioned to me that she wouldn’t be visiting another friend. “I saw her Snapchat stories this summer and she definitely wasn’t distancing,” she said. “She pretends she’s being safe at school, but it’s just performative.”

There is no perfect way of encouraging others to adopt better social behaviors. At Yale, we tend to pressure others through condemnation of wrongdoing, rather than sympathy and guidance towards better actions. This attitude manifests itself in gossip, cancel culture and exclusion: “Anyone who goes to a party this semester is cancelled!” Suddenly, there is a huge social pressure to appear as though you are being careful and safe.

But what are the consequences of using shaming as our tool instead of empathy? A strong social pressure to “seem safe” may have the opposite effect we want it to. Instead of genuinely changing their behaviors, our classmates may put on a facade of safety. This leads to a more concerning, but accurate distinction for people at Yale: instead of “safe” versus “unsafe,” most will split between “safe” and “performatively safe.”

What happens when people are performatively safe? Performative safety is somewhat akin to performative activism — you do enough such RABHYA you are not MEHROTRA that an obvious troublemaker (i.e.

Untitled you don’t go to parties), but you still act dangerously under a veneer of doing good.

The costs of performative safety are dire. Suddenly, pretending you wear a mask with friends when you actually take it off the minute you see them, or denying that you hooked up with someone outside your bubble can mean the difference between life and death. The effects ripple far beyond your friend circle — too often, they’ll affect the people who are most vulnerable in communities around us.

Instead of shaming, we ought to look at the underlying reasons why people act the way they do. Many people are desperate for human connection, and moral shaming is not going to change their desire for this basic need. Sure, some people are purely selfish, but they are the exception, not the norm.

I want to be clear on one thing — in no way am I endorsing unsafe behaviors. But the next time someone near you expresses a desire to act in a way you deem unsafe, I would encourage you to pause the judgement first, and ask them why. More often than not, going to a party is not about the cheap alcohol or sticky dance floors. So instead of worrying about what students cannot do, we ought to focus on what we can do to meet the very real need of human connection.

RABHYA MEHROTRA is a junior in Morse College. Contact her at rabhya.mehrotra@yale.edu .

GUEST COLUMNIST ELAINE LOUDEN

The liberties you aren’t owed F

or the past six months, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought many of the underlying social problems in the United States into the spotlight. In addition to thinking about the issues of systemic racism, police brutality and health inequity, I have also been continually returning to the concept of bodily autonomy.

The bottom line is that bodily autonomy is a human right. In the U.S., however, it has historically been awarded only to those with power and privilege. What makes the pandemic different is that it has placed restrictions on bodily autonomy for all Americans for the first time. We all are required to quarantine, wear masks and adhere to social distancing regulations.

The fact that so many white Americans are upset over these restrictions is incredibly ironic.

White America has taken away bodily control and dehumanized minority groups for centuries.

WHEN A LAW PREVENTS PEOPLE FROM RECKLESSLY HARMING OTHERS, IT IS A JUSTIFIABLE LAW, NOT AN AFFRONT TO ONE’S PERSONAL LIBERTIES While many may be familiar with the idea of bodily autonomy in the debate surrounding a woman’s right to choose, when it comes to COVID-19, we often struggle to identify the role it plays in public health law. In fact, outlandish

and hypocritical claims to bodily autonomy have everything to do with why this pandemic has been left unchecked and has wrought havoc on the health, economy and political stability of the U.S. In looking back on our history, we can see how bodily autonomy has never been fully guaranteed for minority groups. This history exposes the complete hypocrisy of contemporary discourse around public health regulations and how they limit our personal freedoms.

Starting with the mass genocide and forced relocation of Indigenous people and the subsequent exploitation of Black Americans in slavery, oppressive institutions have taken medical rights and bodily control from millions.

The field of gynecology was created by a physician who violated his patients’ bodily autonomy. The “Father of Modern Gynecology,” J. Marion Sims, experimented on enslaved women, who were unable to consent to the procedures he performed. Without anesthesia, he investigated the surgical process of repairing postpartum vaginal tears. Sims later wrote textbooks and garnered acclaim for his work in the field.

Another notable abuse of bodily autonomy was the Tuskegee Study, in which the U.S. Department of Public Health denied Black men antibiotics for syphilis and inhumanely observed as their disease progressed to death.

There has also been a history of eugenics in the U.S., in which Black and Latina women have been sterilized without medical consent. Sterilizations have also been performed on incarcerated men and women, disproportionately impacting people of color.

The story continues today.

There is a nonprofit called Project Prevention that gives money

T

his summer, I have spoken to many of you in the midst of your Yale journeys. You have told me about your hopes and fears, about the excitement of being a Yalie and about some quintessentially Yale memories you are making.

You have also candidly shared with me how you are thinking about the coming year and how you are wondering if it even makes sense to continue your Yale experience for now.

According to a News survey, more than half of you say you are either likely to take a leave of absence this year or are unsure about the decision.

Those of us in the alumni community can only imagine the kind of decision this is for you. Of all the challenges any of us endured, none involved facing a Yale experience that is so drastically different from what had been just a few months prior. And many of us, too, remember how rich our Yale experience was precisely because of those uniquely Yale moments that cannot easily be lived on Zoom or six feet apart from one another. At the same time, those of us who are now alumni have also learned how swiftly all the years fly, not just the Bright College Years.

If your long-term plan is to complete your Yale education, remember that a year deferred from Yale is a year that will need to be made up later. A year deferred is a year seeking opportunities outside Yale when there are relatively few and returning to spend additional time at Yale once opportunities become more numerous again. As a recruiting lead to Yale for a global technology company, I know from my work how rare “off-cycle” fall and spring internships are in this industry even when the economy is doing well.

Moreover, a year deferred may also be a year delaying other things you might want in your lives — continuing your education, progressing in a professional or other endeavor, even starting a family. It may currently seem — and it may well be — that there is time enough to spare a year here or there. Whatever your present selves tell you about extra years you may have, do your best to ask your future selves of even just 10 to 15 years

ahead for their thoughts, too, hard as this might be.

Having said this, a year deferred need not be a year delayed. Is there something you absolutely see yourself doing in the future, regardless of whether there had been a pandemic or not? If so, now may just be the time to at least start doing that if you can. Some of the most iconic and creative undertakings have, perhaps unsurprisingly, emerged from the depths of challenging times. In these moments, creators have — at last! — found themselves with the critical time and absence of distractions to immerse themselves wholeheartedly in something that calls to them.

Whatever you do, try not to fill a gap year just for the sake of filling it because this time of your life is especially transformative.

In a 2013 TED Talk, University of Virginia clinical psychologist Meg Jay observed that 80 percent of life’s most defining moments happen by age 35.

Most of you, however, may find understanding your future selves elusive, and with that elusiveness undoubtedly comes confusion and worry. For those of you like this, you owe yourselves some soul searching: what is it that you are seeking in your Yale education, and why? If you are taking a year away from in-person or online Yale coursework but not quite sure what you will be doing in the meantime, would it be better to just continue your Yale education?

For all the changes over the years, the core of a Yale liberal arts education remains: to build a rigorous understanding of yourselves and the world around you.

Some of your peers came to Yale with this self-understanding already underway. But for the vast majority of you, this is your purpose at Yale above all others.

Spend the time now to figure out what you like, what you’re good at and what the world is looking for — both to decide your professional goals, and even more so, to decide the causes that you will let into your lives.

Even with the best made plans and the most well-tuned discovery, the unexpected can still happen. I am certain that few if

any of you imagined last fall that we would be in the throws of the present situation. Likewise, my graduating class remembers all too well what it is like to have plans dashed. Graduating into the depths of the Great Recession, many members of the Class of 2008 experienced challenges that included seeing opportunities and employers disappear and wondering if a not-so-great start would have lingering effects later.

But on the whole, our class learned how to make the most of challenging circumstances. We taught ourselves and one another how to persevere and, ultimately, emerge stronger. Even though all of this came to pass right as we were finishing our time at Yale, many of us still leaned on one another for the support that saw us all through to the other side.

While we would have wanted better circumstances, we were above all determined to make the most of the situation.

If tribulations of Yalies who have come before you are any indication, you will look back and want to know that you made this year count. So before you fully immerse yourselves in whatever path awaits this fall, make sure it is the right path for you. If you worry that a path other than the one you chose at first may be the right one, reach out and talk to someone — advisers, your dean, family, friends, Yale alumni — and see if you can pivot. There is still time to have these conversations. And through it all, remember to take care of yourselves and to make sure your fellow Yalies do, too.

This energy of the Yale spirit has seen Yalies through challenging times at Yale before, and that same energy will see you all through now.

For those of us already on the other side of the Yale experience, we hope you reach out to us if we can help in any way this year. We know that, one day, you will do the same for those who follow you.

BRAD GALIETTE ’08 is Secretary of the Yale College Class of 2008, Class Agent for the Yale SOM Class of 2011, recruiting lead to Yale for a global technology company and former Director of Finance at the News.

Contact him through the Yale Alumni Directory or Cross Campus.

ELAINE LOUDEN is an MPH candidate at the School of Public Health. Contact her at elaine.louden@yale.edu .

Nowhere to go

GUEST COLUMNIST BRAD GALIET TE

Students, make this year count

to men and women with substance use disorders to receive sterilizations or long-term contraceptives.

As recently as 2017, a Tennessee judge offered reduced prison sentences to men and women who received vasectomies or birth control implants. Time and time again, our society has decided to control the bodies of people who have been deemed inferior.

The cruelty and indecency that have been forced upon minorities are simply incomparable to the social distancing guidelines written to keep us safe. The plight that Americans feel when they have to put on a mask to head to the supermarket pales in comparison to the harm and abuse that public health law has inflicted for so many years.

It defies imagination that Americans would protest government mandates designed for our protection. In light of centuries of oppressive public health practices, these protests make a mockery of our own history.

At the center of public health law is the idea of risk. Public health is collective, and it must be achieved through the coordinated actions of everyone within a society. If certain individual actions — such as refusing to wear a mask, going to a house party or ignoring a 14-day travel quarantine — put others at risk, it is the responsibility of a government to create laws to ensure the population remains healthy.

After a long history of controlling the bodies of the oppressed, people with power and privilege are losing access to bodily autonomy for the first time. When a law prevents people from recklessly harming others, it is a justifiable law, not an affront to one’s personal liberties.

T

hrough email updates from Yale, Instagram stories and texts from friends, I watched students return to campus. Even though I had chosen to take a leave of absence this semester, I still felt reassured by the rigorous testing and quarantine procedures that had been promised. And as far as I can see, the University has delivered. The low number of positive cases so far suggests that perhaps things really can be kept under control. But in all of these statements from Yale, what’s missing is the emphasis on the greater community around us: New Haven.

As students at Yale, we hold certain privileges and responsibilities in New Haven. We often hear about the “town-gown” divide that exists at most prestigious universities, but it was only during my first year that I became familiar with the less than symbiotic relationship the institution has here. During one of the first protests I attended, a New Haven climate rally, I learned that Yale owns about $2.5 billion of tax-exempt property but pays about $5 million in annual property taxes (in addition to a voluntary payment of around $12 million a year). Some argue that The Shops at Yale do more to gentrify than to provide economic value to the city and that Yale should invest more in the city beyond its boundaries. Others argue, however, that Yale’s tax-exempt status helps New Haven receive more state and federal aid.

People often ask me how I find living in New Haven, considering its reputation for having a “high crime rate” and significant homeless population. I tell them that I love it, because to be honest, I’ve learned a lot from Yale in just one year, but I’ve learned just as much, if not more, from New Haven. Yale and its students take a lot from New Haven, often without giving the same amount back.

During the pandemic, the divide stretches even further. Returning Yale students have guaranteed testing, healthcare and housing, but while Yale did provide frontline workers with student dormitories over the summer, the difficulties facing more vulnerable groups, such as New Haven’s homeless population, are glaring. Communities of color have also been hit the hardest in New Haven. Early in April, 43 percent of people hospitalized for COVID-related issues were Black.

As students cross state borders or take international flights to return to school, I’ve noticed some friends —

thankfully, not at Yale — breaking quarantine orders and even traveling.

I tried to empathize with them — after all we’ve been through a MIRANDA all lockdown (in SinJEYARETNAM gapore, our “circ u i t - b re a k e r ” lasted about Crossing two and a half the Aisle months), and this would be their second two-week quarantine on top of that.

I get that it’s hard being cooped up, especially right now — you’re young and university is supposed to be the time of your life, right? But, ultimately, I just ended up frustrated at my friends’ audacity in taking these measures so lightly. If there are second and third waves of the pandemic, they will likely still have a place to return to, but others may not be so lucky. In my case, I’m very fortunate that Singapore has maintained low community cases for long enough that we can go back to work and socialize in limited numbers and with masks. But even here, we owe our relative safety to frontline workers and our relative freedom to the sacrifice of our migrant workers, whose lockdown under unremittingly bleak dormitory conditions and isolation from the community continue on, so that we can go out.

Right now, our freedom, our ability to go where we want when we want, comes at a cost to someone else. We owe it to our communities to be as cautious as we can be.

I may be warning against a storm that never comes, and I hope I am, but the emphasis on protecting New Haven from Yale, rather than Yale from New Haven, is lacking. Yale has long had a complex relationship with its city, as had its students (I previously wrote about the uncomfortable elitist attitudes some of us hold), but it is ever more crucial to highlight that right now. We need to invest more in New Haven, as an institution and as individuals, for the long term.

And please, before you consider throwing a party, traveling or taking a risk with your health, consider that for some, that risk includes having nowhere else to go.

MIRANDA JEYARETNAM is a sophomore in Pierson College. Contact her at miranda.jeyaretnam@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 4

FROM THE FRONT

“Environment conservation without stagnating development is the objective of our government.”

PINARAYI VIJAYAN CHIEF MINISTER OF KERALA

Thomas prepares for Corp run THOMAS FROM PAGE 1

PAULA PINEDA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Thomas attained enough votes to appear as a Corp candidate for the May election.

Yalies move off campus OFF CAMPUS FROM PAGE 1 Yalies declined to enroll this semester, including 30 percent of sophomores. Another 1,700 students are studying remotely.

Local apartment buildings saw changes in demand and business practices due to the Yale reopening plan and the growth of students looking for off-campus housing.

“We saw a crazy surge in calls over the summer,” Edward Anderson, leasing manager at New Haven Towers, said in a call with the News. “Parents were trying to grab anything. It was a hot market after a slow period… It was frantic stuff.”

New Haven Towers is not usually considered an undergraduate address and houses more to Yale New Haven Hospital residents and staff. Elm Campus Partners, which leases Yale-owned apartments on behalf of the University, only rents to Yale affiliates but not sophomores in accordance with Yale College policies.

This year, the normal leasing season was extended from May until August as the season was defined by personal circumstances based on travel restrictions and enrollment status, Troy Resch, managing partner of Elm Campus Partners, told the News in an email.

Robby Hill ’24, originally a member of the Class of 2023 who decided to not enroll in classes for the fall semester, is living in New Haven with other Yalies.

“For me, New Haven provided a lot more flexibility in terms of my plans, especially back in mid June and early July, when I wasn't entirely sure whether I was doing a leave of absence or trying to take classes,” Hill told the News in an interview. “New Haven seemed like an option where, should I want to do something else like find an internship, I would be able to and, should I want to go back to classes, if things loosened up in the spring or even in the fall, then I would be in close proximity to campus where I would have the option to commute into class and perhaps not face the same sort of stringent social distancing guidelines in a residential college.”

Other students decided to rent houses or apartments with Yale

friends elsewhere. Students on financial aid, however, can only receive housing refunds if they are enrolled in-residence in New Haven — meaning that option was only accessible to those who could pay.

The influx of students living off-campus has raised health concerns due to a fear of student behavior in a city and state that have successfully reduced the number of cases from April highs, in addition to worries that students are worsening an existing housing crisis in New Haven.

In some other cities with significant university presences, the return of students has led to rising COVID case counts, though many of those universities have less restrictive social distancing requirements and less comprehensive testing plans than Yale’s.

In many cases, those counts have been driven by off-campus populations less bound by university restrictions.

At Yale, off-campus students are required to sign and adhere to the same campus compact and behavioral restrictions as on-campus students. Students know, however, that enforcement will inevitably be less effective outside of the residential colleges.

And unenrolled students in New Haven are not required to adhere to most aspects of the compact, though they are forbidden from hosting or attending parties with more than ten people.

After the University’s July announcement, and the subsequent rush by some students to secure off-campus housing, other students took to Twitter, urging their classmates to be thoughtful when considering whether or not to return to the city.

Some emphasized the potential health risk to New Haven posed by the return of undergraduate students and urged students not to return if they planned on flouting social distancing regulations.

Others argued that New Haven’s Black and brown residents, and those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged, are already at higher risk from the virus than most Yale undergraduates.

Others students urged their classmates not to sign last-minute leases citing the city’s ongoing housing crisis.

RYAN CHIAO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Local apartment buildings saw changes in demand due to the Yale reopening plan and the growth of students looking for off-campus housing.

“Feeling [very] sympathetic to the desire for Yalies to live with their friends off campus in New Haven while also [very] concerned about the consequences of an explosion of Yalies seeking housing on New Haven’s existing housing crisis, one alum wrote on Twitter on July 1, in a tweet that garnered upwards of 200 likes.

Aidan Houlihan ’22, who signed a lease in pre-COVID February, decided to live in New Haven though he ultimately chose to take the semester off. One of his housemates is in the same position; the other six are enrolled in-residence.

Houlihan said that anecdotally, it seems like students who pivoted to living off-campus this summer did so to escape harsher restrictions on campus, which worries him.

“Yale can’t police all of Dwight Street,” he said.

Houlihan, a Ecology & Evolutionary Biology major, is working remotely for the Peabody this semester. On the side, he’s been making UberEats deliveries on his bike, working mostly downtown and in the Orange Street and East Rock neighborhoods, typically for several hours a day.

“The amount of Yale masks I see around people’s necks, walking on the sidewalk, is stupid,” he said, citing clumps of students walking in groups of three or four sans masks.

Sidney Velasquez ’24, a sophomore who is not in New Haven this semester, said she did not want to potentially contribute to rising rent prices for New Haven residents.

“I think especially right now,” she said, “when you have people that are already losing jobs and can’t afford their housing, the fact that a bunch of students are moving into neighborhoods at a higher rate is going to make it even harder.”

Velasquez added that being from Los Angeles, she has observed similar dynamics in how students at the University of Southern California affect regular residential housing in downtown LA. Michael Piscitelli, New Haven’s economic development administrator, said that the city is conducting a survey to understand the market effects of more undergraduates living off-campus but that no data was available yet. He added that the city had worked with commercial landlords to prepare them for additional students.

Mark Abraham, the executive director of DataHaven, a public data nonprofit, said that overall, rents have remained relatively stable in New Haven throughout the pandemic. That does not necessarily mean that there have not been smaller shifts neighborhood-to-neighborhood, he said — but those changes would be hard to measure. And most people move from apartment to apartment every year or two. If students are moving into new areas of New Haven, it’s hard to say where the people they are replacing are living.

In the spring, Yale will welcome sophomores back to campus, while most first years must return home.

Olivia Tucker contributed reporting.

Contact JOSE DAVILA IV at jose.davilaiv@yale.edu and TALIA SOGLIN at talia.soglin@yale.edu .

who on Sept. 1 became the first petition candidate in 18 years to make it on the ballot. Both Thomas and Ashe told the News they will continue collecting signatures until the Oct. 1 deadline, gathering support for the May election.

In the coming weeks, Thomas and her team are planning events with alumni from the Yale Club of Chicago and the Yale Club of Dallas. On Sept. 24, they will host their “Plan to Win” event, during which Thomas will outline her campaign strategy. Thomas said there is a “dead period” of about eight months until elections, so she and her campaign manager Scott Gigante GRD ’23 said they will focus on maintaining alumni engagement.

Although a petition candidate has not made it onto the

Yale Corporation in more than 50 years, Thomas is still certain about her chances.

“I do think that we can win,” Thomas said. “I think that we are going to run the largest grassroots campaign that Yale has ever seen for this office. And I personally am really excited to see that come to fruition. I do think that Yale alumni are recognizing and are willing to use every tool at their disposal to affect the institution that shaped their lives, and I think they do that out of a real love of a place like Yale, and a desire to see Yale succeed and be the place that they want to see in the world.”

In the 2020 Yale Corporation election, 18,135 alumni voted out of a total pool of about 146,000 eligible voters.

Contact VALERIE PAVILONIS at valerie.pavilonis@yale.edu .

Religious centers adapt programming

DANIEL ZHAO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Some churches in the New Haven area are holding in-person services, but those institutions are not affiliated with Yale.

FAITH FROM PAGE 1 son meetings and takes advantage of online technologies to reach new audiences.

“Religious and spiritual groups offer a way for students to be in [a] community during this time of self-isolation and discuss how to find meaning in the midst of this uncertainty,” wrote Father Ryan Lerner, chaplain of Saint Thomas More, in an email to the News. “I think students — and perhaps all of us — are looking for ways to connect with each other and with a higher power during these turbulent times. We want to make sure that we’re present to that reality, listening closely and responding to that need.”

Saint Thomas More’s usual programs — including prayer and study groups, liturgies, social activities and the weekly Mass — will also take place online.

Though Father Lerner said the transition to virtual programming has been largely successful, he stated that leading a communal service like Mass over Zoom is challenging. Current regulations also prohibit the traditional Eucharist — the taking of bread and wine that is part of many Catholic services.

Jessie Cheung ’24, a Yale first year and Christian, voiced similar concerns regarding the importance of physical group presence.

“You can’t have worship, which is a big part of my faith,” Cheung said. “Everyone singing together — you really can’t do that over Zoom.

There’s a limited instrument capability, the sound quality isn’t great.

It’s one of the things that can’t be adapted.”

Some churches in the New Haven area are holding in-person services, but these institutions are not affiliated with Yale.

Several of Yale’s religious leaders told the News that feel that their teachings are particularly relevant during the pandemic. According to Rev. Sumi Kim, coordinator of Buddhist Life, Buddhism’s focus on a healthy approach to the “change and impermanence” in our lives is an especially salient lesson in these turbulent times.

The Yale Buddhist Sangha is offering a weekly program of meditation workshops, discussions, and lectures — all taking place over Zoom. Rev. Kim told the News that she has been surprised by how smoothly meditation workshops have translated to this online format.

“It’s easy to sit in front of your computer and just listen to the audio, then re-engage sight when it’s time to do that.”

Still, some religious services rely heavily on communal music and meals, such as the Jewish Shabbat. Most religious services, discussion groups and fellowships

run by the Slifka Center for Jewish Life will take place online. But for the upcoming new year celebration, Rosh Hashanah, the Center is developing a safe way to blow the shofar — a loud horn that typically sounds off the new year — around New Haven.

“I participated in part of the Egalitarian Shabbat before my phone died,” said Edward Kuperman ’24. He watched the virtual service with a friend in the courtyard of his residential college. “It wasn’t a replacement for an in-person Shabbat, but a pretty good attempt at a substitute. People were introducing themselves and sharing.”

Rabbi Isaama Goldstein-Stoll, senior Jewish educator at the Slifka Center, told the News that attendance at virtual Shabbat services has been strong so far. She said members of the Jewish community are “grateful to stay connected … even without physically being on campus.”

To some religious groups, these circumstances have created new opportunities. Imam Omer Bajwa, director of Muslim Life, said that virtual programming allows for increased participation. He is offering weekly halaqas — study circles — on Monday nights and has replaced the usual in-person Jummah prayers with “Friday reflections” — an entirely new program for conversation and bonding.

“We have non-students and non-Yale members who are joining us, people from across the country and across the world,” Imam Bajwa said. “Typically it would just be myself as the Imam. But now, with the accessibility of Zoom, we can also have panel discussions, invite scholars and community members and activists onto the program to offer a reflection or be in conversation.”

Despite the limitations on in-person services, religious leaders and students are optimistic about the ways in which faith can continue to offer belonging and solace during this time.

John Daoud ’21, senior and peer liaison with the Chaplain’s Office, told the News he is hopeful that the religious community on campus can continue to offer productive spaces for students.

“My hope is that the Chaplain’s Office, as it always has, will serve as a place of radical love, radical welcome for every member of the Yale community,” Daoud said.

Bingham Hall, which houses the Chaplain’s Office, is being used as isolation housing for students who test positive for the coronavirus.

The Chaplain’s Office will remain closed for this semester.

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

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

FROM THE FRONT

“Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.” ALDO LEOPOLD AMERICAN AUTHOR

Officials prep for voting during COVID

DANIEL ZHAO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Shannel Evans, New Haven’s Democratic Registrar of Voters, said her team is looking into options that will make the voting process as easy as possible.

VOTING FROM PAGE 1 has Election Day registration, also known as same-day registration, this process suffered massive delays in the 2018 election, preventing many from voting.

When asked to comment on the possibility of delays, Shannel Evans, New Haven’s Democratic Registrar of Voters, said her team is working on a plan and investigating a series of options to make the voting process as easy as possible. She added that the best method to assist election officials and to ensure that votes are properly counted is to register to vote early in advance.

Another difficulty election officials are facing is a shortage of poll workers. Under normal circumstances, senior citizens make up the majority of poll workers. However, these poll workers are most at-risk for COVID-19, making the hiring process difficult for recent and upcoming elections.

Saul Roselaar ’21, co-president of Every Vote Counts at Yale, encourages young, healthy voters to sign up to work the polls. “In many places, this is a paid position and it's a really good civic opportunity,” Roselaar told the News.

To become a poll worker, inter-

ested citizens can register online.

In New Haven, poll worker positions are paid and count for community service.

In order to simplify the voting process, Roselaar recommends signing up for a voting resource online, like those at vote.org or turbovote.org, and suggests submitting your absentee ballot early. These platforms can help you check your registration status, find your polling location and set election reminders. “All three of those platforms will take you step by step through the process of registering to vote if you haven’t done that and requesting

a ballot if you haven’t done that,” said Roselaar.

Evans and her Republican counterpart, Marlene Napolitano, echoed this sentiment, advising voters to find appropriate forms online, fill them out and either mail them or bring them to 200 Orange St., along with an ID or piece of mail with a residential address listed. The office is closed to the public due to the pandemic, but upon arrival, voters can call 203-946-8035, and an official will be sent to them to complete the process. Additionally, potential voters can register at the Your Vote Matters/Don’t

Let Them Count You Out event at the New Haven Green on Sept. 19.

The deadline for voter registration is Oct. 27.

The ballot for the upcoming election will include the candidates for the presidential election, as well as elections for members of the House of Representatives, Connecticut State Senate and State House of Representatives.

The 2020 general election will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Contact BRETT JENNINGS at brett.jennings@yale.edu and SEAN PERGOLA at sean.pergola@yale.edu .

Dining option raises waste concerns FOOD FROM PAGE 1 Additionally, almost all of the choices come wrapped in plastic packaging, much of which goes from overwhelmed residential college trash bins to landfills.

The Office of Sustainability has partnered with Yale Hospitality to direct students on how to properly dispose of the waste — specifically

instructing students on how they might recycle the dining containers. But six students interviewed by the News said they or their friends were unaware of such options and had been trashing their used containers for weeks, raising concerns about how widely the messaging has circulated.

“I think that people probably know to wash it out, but what

they do instead if they’re too lazy or don’t want to wash it out is just throw it away altogether,” Brian Lin ’21 said. “I don’t think anyone is going to try to recycle a dirty container, they’re just better off throwing it away.”

The Office of Sustainability created an infographic instructing students how they can dispose of their meal containers. While stu-

COURTESY OF MELISSA GOODALL

The Office of Sustainability is working with Yale Hospitality to direct students on how to dispose of the plastic grab-and-go containers.

dents must throw away some food materials, the office encourages students to wipe down and recycle a number of items — including plastic entree bowls, yogurt cups, empty drink containers and paper bags. The Office has also told students to clean and reuse cutlery before throwing it away.

Adam Millman, senior director of residential dining, did not respond to requests for comment.

Hospitality Marketing and Communications Manager Christelle Ramos could not be reached for comment on Thursday.

According to Melissa Goodall, deputy director of Yale’s Office of Sustainability, the Office will share additional information on recycling and waste management throughout the semester. Goodall added that a lack of compostable containers forced the University to use plastic containers until such supplies are available.

“We know it is easy and tempting to just chuck everything into the bag, then throw the bag away.

This approach fills the dumpsters much faster than if the items were sorted,” Goodall wrote in an email to the News. “But waste is inevitable with this mode of food service.”

Goodall said the Office has tried to post notices about sustainability efforts in each college, but Kesi Wilson ’21 said she has not seen any such flyers in her residential college, Davenport. Danielle Esposito ’21 said she also has not noticed any such materials in Berkeley College.

Melissa Adams ’24, a Silliman College resident, said the amount of waste she and others generate concerns her.

“If I get a hot meal, I just end up picking at it and throwing it away,” she said. “If you look at the bins after a meal they’re overflowing with these boxes. The fact that it’s prepackaged means that you’re wasting plastic, and that worries me the most.”

Lin, who lives in Berkeley College, plans to conserve materials by dropping them off at the Yale Community Kitchen, a local soup kitchen that he said will reuse the cleaned containers.

He has partnered with the Berkeley Head of College, who hopes to set up a collection bin for dining containers, to further reduce waste.

Lin said his suite of three has rinsed out and saved between 100 and 150 of the plastic containers that they have received in the past

week. But not everyone has done the same.

“I know a lot of people don’t really take the time to rinse things out or even to make a point to put their plastic in the recycling bin,” Wilson said. “It does kind of bother me. I feel like I talk about it at least once a week or a couple times a week.”

Though the containers are recyclable, students have voiced concerns about the non-recyclable plastic cutlery, which many grab three times per day.

Still, Yale Hospitality has reduced its plastic usage since last spring, when dining halls first began offering grab-n-go meals.

Erin Dowling ’20 told the News that unlike now, Yale Dining wrapped fruit in plastic during the spring semester, thus producing “a pretty excessive amount of plastic wrap.”

In addition to concerns about container waste, many students also say that the prepackaged portions tend to be oversized, thus resulting in large amounts of uneaten food.

Pradhi Aggarwal ’21, for example, will often choose the meat option, but does not eat bacon.

She can’t specify that before picking up the entree, so she ends up throwing away some of the meal.

Dowling, who stayed on campus last spring when Yale sent most students home, said she gave uneaten food to soup kitchens. Similarly, Dan Robinson — who withdrew from Yale at the start of last spring semester and lived in a fraternity house off campus — began collecting extra food from his friends on Yale’s meal plan and distributing it to people living on the streets of New Haven last semester, he said.

Goodall explained that the dining halls would rather give students too much food than too little, and that the pre-packaged meals overall produced less waste than Yale’s usual buffet-style dining. The Office of Sustainability was “heartened” to hear of individual efforts to share with local food pantries, she said. The Office is working with students on Old Campus to make this an official University effort, Goodall added.

Students can choose water, sparkling water, milk or juice for drinks.

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

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

“We have to prove to the disinherited majority of the world that ecology and conservation will not work against their interest but will bring an improvement in their lives.” INDIRA GANDHI INDIAN POLITICIAN

Yale lab receives Local businesses see an uptick in sales neuroscience grant

BY MARISSA BLUM CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

YALE NEWS

Professor of neuroscience and psychology Amy Arnsten organized the grant application for the project, which involves labs across the world.

BY BEATRIZ HORTA STAFF REPORTER The Arnsten Lab at Yale has been selected as one of 16 labs worldwide to receive funding from the NeuroNex program for a project that examines how we hold thoughts in our brain for short periods of time without any stimulation.

The Next Generation Networks for Neuroscience, or NeuroNex, program is a National Science Foundation initiative that aims to capitalize on current technology to solve persisting questions in neuroscience.

The grant will award over $50 million over the next five years to four different projects studying various aspects of brain evolution. Professor of neuroscience and psychology Amy Arnsten organized the grant application for the project, which involves labs across the world and aims to iron out how the brain develops connections that allow it to represent information without having sensory stimulation.

“Usually the way research happens is you have one grant for one lab, and you are very much siloed in your own thinking and results,” Arnsten said.

“It is really wonderful and relatively rare when you have the opportunity to work with people who have all different perspectives and approaches.”

As is the case with many labs in the United States, the Arnsten lab has had to adapt in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Due to travel restrictions, the members of the project are meeting remotely to discuss their findings. Meanwhile, the lab’s research assistants have been meeting for a journal club, organized by Fenna Krienen, a trainee from a lab at Harvard.

“The [journal club] is foremost a way to discuss the latest research relevant to the project, but I think it will also be an opportunity for us to practice presenting to a scientifically diverse audience,” Krienen wrote in an email to the News.

Julio Martinez-Trujillo, a professor at the Robarts Research Institute at Western University in Ontario, helped Arnsten bring the 16 labs together for the project.

“Amy and I had several meetings, and we strategized to find people working on a specific

question,” Martinez-Trujillo said. “The plan is to allow them to go deeper into the questions they were already investigating.”

Martinez-Trujillo said the project would have great implications for future research, especially in the area of neurological syndromes.

“Working memory is the ability to represent things in the mind without [them] being in front of you. This relates strongly to [neurological] syndromes because one of the issues you see in, for example, Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia, is that the ability to remember and keep [things] in their mind for a few seconds degrades very quickly.”

When asked about the challenges the team has faced, all three scientists cited the difficulty of coordinating such a large scale project. Martinez-Trujillo said that finding collaborators is challenging, and Arnsten cited logistical challenges posed by team members inhabiting different time zones.

Still, the three researchers were emphatic about the advantages of working in a large group.

According to Arnsten, the multidisciplinary nature of the team — which includes labs that study behavioral neuroscience to transcriptional profiles and computational models — will allow for more diverse methods and analysis of data. Arnsten emphasized that these different perspectives would complement each other well.

“The fact that we started this consortium virtually may actually make it easier to develop working relationships across trainees at different institutions,” Krienen explained. “In that sense we may be on a stronger footing to take advantage of in-person interactions when they become possible again.”

Martinez-Trujillo mentioned the advantage of each lab having some independence in the project.

“It’s a unique opportunity, it’s a consortium where we keep our independence but we are aware of what each is doing,” Martinez-Trujillo said. “That allows us to be very flexible, dynamic and powerful.”

The National Science Foundation was founded on May 10, 1950.

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

After a quiet six months in New Haven, local establishments are enjoying the business brought by the thousands of local university students returning to campus.

Since Gov. Ned Lamont’s March 23 order of a state-wide shutdown of non-essential businesses, restaurants have been eager to reopen. But although they have been reopening slowly under new social distancing guidelines, many New Haven businesses have struggled to adapt to life after the onset of COVID-19. With the absence of university students, restaurateurs have found themselves feeling as though they’ve lost part of their community. For Claire Criscuolo, the owner of Claire’s Corner Copia, the return of students has filled the void left by the statewide shutdown. “[These past few months] made us realize how much we really love hugging people,” Criscuolo told the News. “It made us realize how much we miss everybody and how this community works and how much we are all together in it.”

Despite the financial and social hardships brought by the pandemic, Criscuolo has maintained a positive attitude, opting to use the free time during the store’s shutdown as an opportunity to renovate her restaurant. As an owner of a vegetarian restaurant, Criscuolo was motivated to help keep the community healthy by upgrading their air conditioning filtration systems, disinfecting their air vents and installing ion-generators.

Still, the lack of students since March has put financial pressure on many downtown businesses and left New Haven feeling oddly empty.

“At the end of the day, New Haven really relies on Yale students and Yale as a community to thrive and I think the only way we can ever get back to where we were in March is to get the University back where it once was,” said New Haven native and Yale student Sid Lewis-Hayre ’22.

J O I N P & D

The most adaptable desk at the YDN

Like Lewis-Hayre, other Yalies and Elm City residents who remained in New Haven this summer said this summer felt eerily quiet. When asked whether or not he’s noticed restaurants employing new strategies to bring in business, Lewis-Hayre mentioned the rise in popularity of socially distanced outdoor dining. Many downtown restaurants — especially those located on College and Crown Streets — have found success moving many tables outdoors with the help and approval of city government officials.

George Koutroumanis, owner of Yorkside Pizza, said he saw a loss of sales not only because Yale students moved out of New Haven in March, but also because of the absences of visitors, such as tourists, prospective Yale athletes and high school campers over the summer. He added that the unusual empty city left many searching for a sense of normalcy.

“With the Yale students and the Yale faculty disappearing, we were down close to 70 percent [of normal business],” Koutroumanis said.

“We’re really intertwined with the community, with Yale, with athletics, with education. Usually, people come here with their families to celebrate getting into a fabulous school like Yale, and we love being a part of that celebration.”

Luckily, with the return of students starting in mid-August, business owners have been happy to see an uptick in business. Kelsey Cote, a representative from Blue State Coffee, expressed her excitement for students’ return to campus. The coffee shop chain, which closed down its four New Haven locations in midMarch, slowly began the process of opening three of their four shops with newly implemented social distancing measures in May. Cote noted that, as a business with a customer base that is largely made up of members of the Yale community, their locations have seen an uptick in sales since the start of classes.

Restaurants and other non-essential businesses began Phase Two reopening on June 17.

Contact MARISSA BLUM at marissa.blum@yale.edu.

ERIC WANG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

With the absence of university students, restaurateurs have found themselves feeling as though they’ve lost part of their community.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

NEWS

“Vanity is as old as the mammoth.”

W. L. GEORGE WRITER

City launches emergency housing fund AACC moves annual

YALE DAILY NEWS

The fund will provide direct financial assistance to tenants and homeowners facing income loss due to COVID-19.

BY TALIA SOGLIN STAFF REPORTER New Haven announced a housing relief fund last week, with the hopes of providing much-needed aid to renters and homeowners during the coronavirus pandemic.

The emergency program, called the Coronavirus Assistance and Security Tenant Landlord Emergency Program, or CASTLE, is funded with $800,000 from New Haven’s CARES Act allocation. The fund will provide direct financial assistance to tenants and homeowners facing income loss due to COVID-19. The aid comes shortly after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a national eviction moratorium for those who make under $99,000 a year that extends through Dec. 31.

“Thousands of residents of our city are struggling due to loss of income, and it is imperative that we address this before it creates an even greater crisis,” Mayor Justin Elicker said at a press conference last week live streamed by the New Haven Independent.

To qualify for the newly announced program, residents must prove that their income was disrupted by the pandemic and that they make no more than the area’s median income. Though Connecticut has not yet seen waves of evictions like in some other parts of the country, the state’s own eviction ban in October loomed over low-income residents until the federal moratorium through the end of the year was announced. Still, many are facing financial hardship that they do not expect to end in December.

Another pot of money for rent-

ers, the state’s Temporary Rental Housing Assistance Program, is already oversubscribed.

The emergency program will be carried out by the Livable City Initiative, New Haven’s housing code enforcement agency.

But attorneys with the New Haven Legal Assistance Association recently raised concerns about the agency. In an Aug. 19 letter to Serena Neal-Sanjurjo — the director of New Haven’s Livable City Initiative, the city agency responsible for implementing the emergency response — NHLAA attorneys Yonatan Zamir and Sarah Mervine laid out concerns about how the LCI manages housing inspections and records. The New Haven Independent first reported on the letter last week.

“In the midst of a public health crisis in which our homes should be the safest place for families to shelter, it is more important than ever that our city’s housing code enforcement system is effectively and expeditiously functioning to assure that tenants are protected from conditions that threaten their health and safety,” the letter states.

Mervine and Zamir suggested a number of solutions to what they described as “critical shortcomings” in the LCI’s code enforcement.

Their proposals included keeping an electronic call log of each caller to the agency to help tenants prove that they reached out for assistance; creating a searchable online database of landlord registries, oversight programs and property code violators; and an online system for tenants to file housing code complaints. The final two suggestions were also recom-

mendations from Elicker’s transition team report earlier this year.

The attorneys also proposed regulations to require landlords to fix violations within a set amount of days and determine how many times a landlord may fix the same violation without facing consequences. They also asked for the LCI to end its current practice of allowing landlords to claim that they have complied with the housing code without a followup inspection.

The attorneys noted that though the pandemic has increased pressure on the LCI, tenants are also at increased risk from housing code violations due to the pandemic.

“These conditions — mice and cockroach infestations, bedbugs, leaks, cracked windows, mold and insufficient smoke detectors — are difficult in normal times, but unbearable when a family is told to shelter in place, and most schools, libraries and other public spaces remain closed,” they wrote.

The Legal Aid attorneys received a response from Neal-Sanjurjo on Aug. 25, which they provided to the News.

The LCI “fully agree that during this unprecedented time, we are experiencing a heightened sense of urgency for housing code calls and complaints,” Neal-Sanjurjo wrote.

“However, LCI staff has continued to work consistently during the Emergency Order and respond to constituent concerns as part of our normal course of business.”

In the letter, Neal-Sanjurjo wrote that the city was in the process of transitioning its online database and reporting processes to a system called “Municity” and suggested that the new system would improve those processes.

She wrote that the system would be up and running by the end of the year.

Neal-Sanjurjo added that the attorneys’ recommendations for additions and clarifications to the LCI’s voicemail — including that it state that the caller has reached the LCI and provide callers with a person to contact should they not receive a follow-up to their complaint — would be implemented “as soon as possible.”

In an email to the News, Mervine wrote that the attorneys did not feel that Neal-Sanjurjo’s response addressed their concerns, as it did not respond to most of the numerous substantive problems listed in their letter.

The director wrote more broadly that the city would “review and consider” the attorneys’ recommendations “as we continue to improve our operations and effectiveness in serving the residents of New Haven.”

Neal-Sanjurjo did not respond to a request for comment Friday afternoon.

Tenants or homeowners in need of assistance can call the CASTLE hotline at 203-946-7090 or email castle@newhavenct.gov.

Contact TALIA SOGLIN at talia.soglin@yale.edu .

Asian Retreat online

BY BROOKE ALVIAR STAFF REPORTER

While kayaking and roasting marshmallows on a campfire are difficult experiences to transpose to Zoom, the Asian American Cultural Center will attempt to cultivate the same meaningful conversations and connections that usually occur at their annual Asian Retreat online.

This year, the retreat will be held virtually from Oct. 1 through Oct. 4. While the traditional three-day retreat has included many outdoor activities, the AACC has chosen to adapt the event to an online format due to the ongoing pandemic.

Center Director Joliana Yee noted the current challenges that are reflected in this decision in a start-of-the-year welcome email.

“These last few months have been challenging in more ways than one and I think it’s safe to say that these challenges will not dissipate with the start of a new semester,” she wrote.

Yee also gave the assurance that the AACC will “continue to create space for community (un)learning, unpacking, healing, transforming and thinking in critical, expansive ways about race.”

The retreat works toward these goals by exploring shared histories, celebrating communities and collectively building knowledge around ways to challenge social inequities.

As is tradition, the AACC invites Yale undergraduates and graduate students who trace their heritage to Asia and the Asian diaspora to apply, especially encouraging those in underrepresented groups to take part in the retreat.

The AACC began running the retreat in 2018, and 2020 marks its third ever and first virtual retreat. Perry Wang ’22, a peer liaison for the AACC, reflected, “Surface level, this year’s retreat is going to be completely virtual.

In past years, we’ve gone off cam-

pus to nearby areas. We’ve also stayed overnight in those locations which allowed us to participate in a full day’s worth of activities and programming.”

He noted that connecting virtually will be an interesting challenge, given that most of the retreat activities in the past are physical, such as relay races, group exercises, playing board games or eating meals together.

“My favorite moments of the AACC retreat were kayaking on the lake and sitting around the campfire at night” said Cam Do ’21, who attended the retreat last year.

Other activities included team-building balance beam walks and hikes through the woods. Still, she expressed hope that meaningful experiences will still be had virtually.

“Though we will not be able to recreate these activities online, I am confident the retreat this year will still be a success as it remains a space to share stories related to our Asian identity and foster a close-knit community among the students attending,” she said.

Wang has a similar vision for this year’s retreat. He cited his confidence in AACC leadership, which he said has “prepared and adapted” for the online experience.

The retreat is one of many events that will be and have been held virtually by the AACC, whose physical building is closed for the foreseeable future.

In her email, Yee called attention to the retreat and also highlighted a “Welcome Back” event series occurring throughout September.

“It is my hope you will see that the AACC community extends far beyond the geographical boundaries of our building and that students like yourself are truly the heart of it all,” she wrote.

The AACC will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2021.

Contact BROOKE ALVIAR at brooke.alviar@yale.edu .

RUIYAN WANG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Normally, the AACC hosts its annual fall retreat in an outdoor setting. But this year, COVID-19 has forced it online.

Chinese diplomat rule unlikely to pose problems for Yale

BY VALERIE PAVILONIS STAFF REPORTER Per a new State Department directive, Chinese diplomats must now seek permission before entering American college campuses, but experts say that this move will not be of great consequence to Yale.

On Sept. 2, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters that his department must grant senior Chinese diplomats permission before those officials can enter college campuses or meet with local government leaders. He added that this action is a move of reciprocity directed at Beijing, which he said already has systems in place that bar American diplomats and visitors from similar settings in China.

Still, Yale’s Vice President for Global Strategy Pericles Lewis told the News that he does not think that the State Department’s announcement will affect Yale or its relationship with Chinese academia.

“Yale has been engaged with China longer than any other western university,” Lewis wrote in an email to the News. “Our relationships are focused on the interests of Yale scholars working in China or on Chinese matters, on students at Yale from China and on other Yale students who study abroad in China. Our joint work with Chinese university partners

is already governed by an array of regulations, so I don’t think this State department requirement will affect that.”

Senior lecturer at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia Stephen Roach told the News in an interview that the new directive will likely not affect Yale, especially since in-person meetings have been put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Still, Roach went on to say that the new directive is “another installment in a very crass political campaign” by President Donald Trump to create issues between Washington and Beijing, a relationship already strained by the origins of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China. Since the pandemic began, Trump and his followers have, on many occasions, described the coronavirus as the “China virus,” prompting pushback from Chinese officials.

“These are threats, but they’re not evidence-based threats,” Roach said. “The same is true of the threat to ban visits of diplomats. It’s intimidation, but again it’s not based on any hard evidence that any diplomat has done anything against the United States during an official visit to our country or to any college campus.”

Roach added that tightening restrictions to Chinese diplomats fits alongside other moves by the Trump administration to cast

YALE NEWS

The State Department’s directive probably won’t affect Yale or its relationship with Chinese academia, Pericles Lewis said.

China in a critical light — from the attempted banning of the popular Chinese messaging app WeChat to the debate over whether or not the video app TikTok should be removed from the United States because of Chinese involvement and security concerns.

According to Roach, these moves are done in an effort to demonstrate to American voters that the Trump administration is doing everything in its power to contain Chinese influence. He cited an April post in Politico detailing the “Corona Big Book,” a strategic document

drawn up by political consultants for mostly Republican senators, which says that in the case of the pandemic, the optimal political response for President Trump is to attack China.

The State Department did not directly respond to a request for comment. Still, the department’s press release on the issue emphasized the need for reciprocal action voiced by Pompeo last week.

“The United States insists on reciprocal access to educational and cultural institutions for U.S. diplomats around the world,” a

Sept. 2 release reads. “These new requirements on PRC diplomats are a direct response to the excessive restraints already placed on our diplomats by the PRC, and they aim to provide further transparency on the practices of the PRC government. Should the PRC eliminate the restrictions imposed on U.S. diplomats, we stand ready to reciprocate.”

Yale first began collaborating with China in 1835.

Contact VALERIE PAVILONIS at valerie.pavilonis@yale.edu .

PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

ARTS Virtual Venue:

COURTESY OF HADASSAH KRIGSMAN

COURTESY OF OLIVER SHOULSON

Gabrielle Barnes, Harry Castle and pj frantz

BY PHOEBE LIU STAFF REPORTER Yale student musicians often showcase their work at venues on campus and beyond, but the coronavirus pandemic flatlined live performances for the duration of the semester. Each week for the month of September, the News will feature recent student-released music to provide a platform for discovery aside from a stage.

Gabrielle Barnes “2020” “Got so many words to say, yet I can’t speak / and what’s the purpose of life if I can’t breathe,” sings Gabrielle Barnes ’22 in her new song, “2020,” which was produced by collaborator Jane Watson.

Thus far, 2020 is marked by COVID-19, TikTok and protests against police brutality. Barnes wrote “2020” in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. The song explores how the year’s events affect the world.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt collective grief or collective trauma in a way that I felt it this summer,” Barnes said.

“2020” opens with recordings from protests that Barnes and her friend helped lead in Freeport, Connecticut. Interspersed throughout the song are protest chants — “We want justice, we want peace!” — from Barnes, her friends, the first Black mayor of Freeport and others.

Barnes found “love and acceptance” through the protests she organized and participated in, she said, with so many participants finding common ground in the collective disavowal of injustice.

Barnes’ song reflects some of the joy that came out of these protest experiences.

Much of Barnes’ recent songwriting has been inspired by alternative and R&B music, particularly artists like Solange and Blood Orange. While she would typically explore both music and grief in her Yale communities — like the Afro-American Cultural Center, or the a cappella group Shades of Yale — the pandemic kept her from these spaces. Instead, she found emotional release in solitary writing. Writing helped her work through feelings she struggled to articulate and helped her grieve the loss of life from the police killings and the pandemic.

“So I was thinking, like, what’s the purpose of life, if you could just be killed unjustly? And never get justice?” Barnes said.

According to Barnes, she incorporated TikTok into the song because the social media app gave young people a platform from which to reckon with cultural appropriation — many TikTok

dances made famous by white women are inspired by the way Black women have danced to rap and similar genres for a long time. The dancing in the music video, choreographed by Silver Liftin ’22, visually represents this reckoning.

“I’m not saying don’t dance to those dances. I’m just saying that when Black people are [dancing to rap music], it’s seen as threatening,” said Barnes. “But when white people do it, it’s fun.”

Harry Castle “(Mostly) Songs About Boys” Composer, tenor and musical director Harry Castle GRD ’21 grew up training to be a classical composer. Ensembles including the Da Capo Chamber Players and chamber ensembles of BBC Symphony Orchestra have played Castle’s music. Until recently, writing for musical theatre wasn’t part of his “serious musical vocabulary” — he did it for fun.

Castle is now studying composition and musical theatre writing at Yale. Castle’s album “(Mostly) Songs About Boys” is a collection of musical theatre songs that are, as the title suggests, mostly about boys.

According to Castle, the direct vocal style and use of the vernacular lend immediacy to musical theatre compositions.

Castle is drawn to the genre for this immediacy, and for its ability to tell complex stories through both speech and song.

Song titles include “Done With You,” “Your Man” and “Hometown Hercules.” Each of the album’s eight songs is inspired by a different character. Castle said the songs are driven by each character’s narrative — he considers a storyline and a character’s feelings before he can compose a song. “(Mostly) Songs About Boys” was Castle’s first foray into producing music.

He sang and played violin and piano on the album. Family and friends filled in on cello and clarinet. Everything else? Castle explored instrumental sounds made by synthesizers, sequencing and “a lot of YouTube videos.”

Now, Castle is working on a full-length musical about queer joy that explores what it means to be queer and married. pj frantz “woah” and “hey” 2020 has not left much room for joy.

But PJ Frantz ’22 released two songs — “woah” and “hey” — that are “upbeat and groovy and happy.”

Though Frantz started writing “woah” in New Haven when everything around him felt “cloudy and rainy and depressing,” the finished song is anything but. “hey” has a similar summery vibe. For Frantz, the songs provided some happiness in a year filled with tragedy.

Frantz has been writing primarily acoustic music for years. After a hiatus, he came to Yale and spent many nights in the Hopper College music studio exploring music and electronic music production with other Yale musicians. Some of them — Jason Altshuler ’23, Max Lukian ’20 and Abby Walker ’23 — contributed to “woah” and “hey.”

Using more electronic aspects in his music has given him more of an artistic identity. He describes his music as a “cool niche” between pop, R&B and “maybe a little bit of folk and jazz.”

“I have so much control over the sounds I’m creating,” Frantz said.

Altshuler — who plays guitar and bass for many Yale artists and is featured on both “woah” and “hey” — said that Frantz’s music has a special texture that combines electronic synth-based textures with real instruments.

“It’s fun because [Frantz] is a fantastic producer and makes things sound awesome,” Altshuler said. “Since a lot of it is electronic, it’s nice to add that live tone with the realness that feels like music being played by people.”

Frantz is building towards an E.P. that will contain “woah,” “hey” and other songs that are “more nuanced” and less happy-go-lucky, he said.

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

COURTESY OF PJ FRANTZ

NHSO fellowship supports underrepresented groups in classical music

BY SERENA PUANG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER As a child, Aurora Mendez lived a mere train ride away from Carnegie Hall. From the age of four, she wanted to play violin — but there were few music programs for young students in the Bronx. Each month, her grandma sacrificed part of her social security check to help pay for Mendez’s classical violin lessons.

Today, Mendez is a Harmony Fellow at the New Haven Symphony Orchestra (NHSO). The Harmony Fellowship is a two-year program that provides career development and community engagement opportunities to groups underrepresented in classical music. Through the fellowship, Mendez helps provide the public music programming she lacked as a child to students in New Haven.

The Harmony Fellowship was established by a team at the NHSO including CEO Elaine Caroll, Marketing Director Katie Bonner Russo and Education Director Caitlin Daly-Gonzales.

“The classical music world is asking itself a lot of questions right now, in terms of what music we are playing, who is on stage, who gets the voice at the table, and who’s in the boardroom,” said Daly-Gonzales. “It’s a predominantly white field, pretty much since its inception. There are so many musicians of color out there who are talented and deserve to be heard, and not just as a musician, but in life.”

While planning the fellowship program, the team discussed systemic issues which decrease access to music programming and developed career development plans to help overcome these issues. In 2017, the NHSO received a grant from the American Orchestras’ Futures Fund to officially establish the fellowship.

Since its inception, the Harmony Fellowship has expanded to provide opportunities for underrepresented conductors, administrators and board directors. Through the flagship fellowship for underrepresented musicians, fellows get opportunities to rehearse and perform with the orchestra, take private lessons from an orchestra mem-

ber and receive a professional development stipend and coaching.

“More than colleagues, we’ve become this Harmony/NHSO family,” said Mendez. Her time with the fellowship introduced her to invaluable mentors who provide insights while she makes career decisions. “I got my undergrad degree in violin performance, and I’ve also played with several orchestras,” she continued.

“The best education I’ve ever received has been when I’ve sat in rehearsals with these titans.”

Through working with the NHSO musicians and conductors, Mendez feels she has picked up on nonverbal cues and interpretive nuances in music she never would have otherwise. Additionally, she

studying with members of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Germany.

In addition to career development, Harmony Musician Fellows are placed into string quartets of two fellows and two rostered orchestra members. Before the pandemic, these quartets performed short concerts paired with conflict-resolution workshops geared toward elementary-aged students.

“A string quartet is such a great way to learn about conflict because there’s no conductor — it’s just the musicians themselves,” explained Daly-Gonzales. “If there’s anything that they want to try, they have to talk it out amongst themselves.”

The quartet acts out potential conflicts for the kids. For example, a violinist in

COURTESY OF ALASDAIR NEALE

believes that having an orchestra on her resume “vouching” for her has helped her access a new level of career opportunity.

“Before I started my fellowship with the symphony I sent my application to a B-class orchestra in the U.S. My application got rejected immediately,” Mendez said. After becoming a Harmony Fellow, she applied for a workshop at the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. With the fellowship on her resume, she was immediately given an audition. Now, she’s

the group might want to play a song from Moana, while the rest of the group wants to play Ed Sheeran. Then the quartet models how to resolve the conflict by talking it out in front of the students.

For James Keene, one of the fellowship’s inaugural fellows, community outreach involved repeated visits to Wilbur Cross High School, which has an 88 percent minority enrollment. During visits, quartet members taught students to compose classical music. At the end of the year, the

class took a trip to a professional recording studio, where the quartet recorded each of the students’ creations.

Keene said that the students “view performers themselves to be these dry, boring, most-likely elderly white people that are just really unwelcoming.” The opportunity to see a relatively young person of color play classical music — and have fun doing it — humanized classical music for the youths. Many of the students he worked with even came to future NHSO concerts on their own accord.

Harmony Fellows also combat language barriers. Many of the students they work with are English language learners and first-generation Americans who speak more Spanish than English. Fellows with Spanish-speaking backgrounds, such as Mendez and Keene, are able to address students in Spanish and translate for their fellow quartet members.

“Their eyes just lit up,” said Keene, about speaking to students in Spanish during workshops. “It took them completely off-guard. They looked so happy.

And you know, they kind of like almost visibly relaxed a little bit too.”

Due to COVID-19 related restrictions, the NHSO extended 2020’s Harmony Fellowships for a year. While in-person community outreach has been suspended, fellows have transitioned to digital outreach. Mendez is currently translating the educational portion of the NHSO website and creating Spanish-language videos introducing the musical instrument families.

This year, the NHSO is seeking two more fellows, a violinist and a violist. Successful applicants are not only outstanding players, but have a history of working within their communities and a vision for community engagement in New Haven.

Applicants from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in classical music — including but not limited to those from diverse racial, ethnic, socio-economic and geographic backgrounds — are strongly encouraged to apply.

Contact SERENA PUANG at serena.puang@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

Senior a cappella groups change long-held travel traditions

COURTESY OF WHIM ‘N RHYTHM

BY SHARLA MOODY CONTRIBUTING REPORTER As COVID-19 reshapes nearly every interpersonal activity on college campuses, Yale’s two world-renowned senior a cappella groups, the Whiffenpoofs and Whim ’n Rhythm, are trying to develop plans for the year.

The Whiffenpoofs, a group that this year will be celebrating its 111th anniversary, typically performs well over 200 concerts a year.

The group famously spends a year touring the world and visiting members’ hometowns.

Tavi Wolfwood ’22, the group’s business manager, said COVID-19 threw their “plans into chaos.” But even with public health concerns and travel restrictions, the group hopes to create music and perform as safely and frequently as circumstances allow.

“During the first semester, we’re focus-

ing on producing digital music, recording our album, and reimagining staple Whiff events, such as Monday nights at Mory’s, to take place online,” Wolfwood said. He added that the Whiffenpoofs are exploring options for a mostly virtual semester, but the group is hopeful for the possibilities of local touring and an outdoor concert series in 2021.

Members of the Whiffenpoofs take a yearlong leave of absence to tour. This year, that has stayed the same — one singer dropped the ensemble after touring plans changed, but none of the group’s remaining members are enrolled in courses at Yale.

Members of Whim ‘n Rhythm, an all-female senior a cappella group, also said COVID-19 forced them to adjust their plans.

“COVID definitely impacted the second half of our year a lot,” said Joanna Wu ’20, Whim ‘n Rhythm’s outgoing business manager. “For the health and safety of our group and the public we decided as a group to cancel our spring tour in March originally planned for California, as well as our annual on campus Jam in April, and our post graduation world tour.”

According to Claire Davidson ’21, Whim’s current business manager, the group also cancelled all domestic and international tours for the 2020–2021 season. This was a particularly difficult decision, since this school year marks the group’s fortieth anniversary. But, in order to protect the New Haven community the members call home, they decided to implement a fully-remote performance model.

“While we would love to make promises of rescheduled tours, Whim is making decisions strictly on the basis of what is the safest possible choice for the group and our community,” Davidson said. “We don’t yet know what the world will look like this next year and would rather commit to goals that we can concretely achieve, regardless of how coronavirus develops.”

Unlike the Whiffenpoofs, Whim ‘n Rhythm members do not take leaves of absence, but

rehearse during the school year. The group tours during breaks and after graduation.

According to Davidson, most of Whim’s singers chose to continue taking courses and making music, per usual.

Catherine Cerise ’22, an incoming soprano in the a cappella group, said she is disappointed that the pandemic has made it more difficult to get to know the other members.

Without rehearsals and practices, the tightknit cohort has fewer opportunities to connect. Cerise said that even if a vaccine is available before the group’s summer world tour, she worries that the experience will still be less than ideal.

Still, both groups have managed to produce new music during the pandemic. According to Wolfwood, the Whiffs are recording an album and pursuing various virtual music projects.

The Whiffenpoofs also released a virtual-concert video on its Instagram and YouTube accounts of new members singing a rendition of “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” a 1939 song written by Eric Maschwitz and Manning Sherwin.

According to Wu, Whim ‘n Rhythm was able to learn new arrangements, “sing old solos for each other; contribute to a huge virtual performance of our alumni song ‘Hammond’ with over 200 alums; and release a full length studio quality album on iTunes and Spotify, called ‘Phoenix.’”

Wolfwood is hopeful that, despite the circumstances, the group will make the most of its time.

“This certainly isn’t the Whiff year that any of us hoped for or expected, but we’re all trying to work together to make the best of a really tricky situation and make the year into something that can still be the life-changing Whiff experience that we all hoped for,” Wolfwood said.

The Whiffenpoofs were founded in 1909.

Whim ‘n Rhythm was founded in 1981.

Contact SHARLA MOODY at sharla.moody@yale.edu .

Carnegie Museum's first-ever online exhibit features Yale alum

BY FREYA SAVLA STAFF REPORTER This summer, Yale alum Rachel Rose ’09 presented her video work “Lake Valley,” which launched the Carnegie Museum of Art’s first-ever online exhibition series.

The museum’s digital exhibition series highlights its film and video collection.

With this exhibition, the Carnegie joins a number of artistic institutions increasing the online accessibility of their video works. Currently on view is a piece from Doug Aitken, titled “migration (empire).”

“The moving image is one of the things that’s really relevant right now — we can all indulge in something that’s filmic from our houses,” Aitken said. “With a more traditional art structure a museum would have to wait for an exhibition, but now we can just share these pieces, like they’re fluid.”

Brooke Eastman ’16, Rose’s communications representative, said that the Whitney Museum of American Art and Baltimore Museum of Art have begun similar initiatives. She noted that increased accessibility allows museums around the world to connect with audiences in their homes during the current pandemic-initiated closures.

The pandemic initiated shifts in artistic consumption, and online exhibition series like the Carnegie’s seek to honor and participate in this shift, keeping art accessible to those who wish to view it.

Both Rose and Aitken noted art’s transition to virtual space — Rose said that during her quarantine, she found herself looking at live concerts on YouTube, such as iPhone recordings of Drake and Robyn performing in stadiums and

Celine Dion singalongs in subways.

“I was shocked by how relic-like these videos now felt. What I felt when I saw these concerts was ecstasy, sadness, loneliness, togetherness all at once,” Rose said. “Sound and images cut in time can provide shape to a feeling, a state of being — one that can be complex to articulate any other way.”

“Lake Valley” is an eight-minute video work that received great acclaim when it premiered at the 2017 Venice Biennale. It was created by layering film, collage, video footage and hand-drawn animation. Featuring a chimeric animal’s search for a connection, the piece highlights themes of loneliness, dreaminess and longing for personal connection.

Rose began “Lake Valley” when she was 28. Interested in exploring ever-evolving notions of childhood and adulthood, Rose researched 19th-century children’s stories and the structure of nuclear families.

She noticed that loneliness was a prominent theme in early children’s stories; a child’s ascent into adulthood was usually marked by a sense of isolation.

Aitken’s work, “migration (empire),” was first exhibited in 2008. It played on the museum’s façade during “Life on Mars: 55th Carnegie International” — a contemporary art survey exhibition that explored what it means to be human in the world today. In a series of vignettes, the video features wild North American migratory animals inhabiting roadside motel rooms across the United States. Though the work is not new, Atiken sees contemporary valances in the animals’ relationships to location.

“It’s a surprisingly timely piece, and very pertinent to the idea that we find ourselves contained within our houses,

COURTESY OF RACHEL ROSE AND GAVIN BROWN’S ENTERPRISE

working from home,” Aitken said. “We find ourselves anchored to place in a way we have never been before.”

Aitken said that humans have created a nomadic society with an abundance of hotels, airports and highways, yet we find ourselves unable to use these spaces.

“We’re like the animals in the work, contained in these synthetic spaces,” Aitken said.

Aitken said that art doesn’t need to be physical or material. It can be an idea, a sound or something electronic, viewable from a home desktop.

“Perhaps one thing we can try to see out of this pandemic and this moment of societal shift is the way we see culture can be liberated,” Aitken said. “We should not only make art within the formats of the past, but we should make new formats now.”

Contact FREYA SAVLA at freya.savla@yale.edu .

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

“We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.” ALDO LEOPOLD AMERICAN AUTHOR

YDS establishes anti-racism task force

BY JOHN BESCHE STAFF REPORTER Amid the national reckoning surrounding police brutality, Yale Divinity School Dean Greg Sterling established an anti-racism task force that will explore YDS’s history of racism in hopes of implementing forward-thinking changes.

Sterling announced to the new body in an Aug. 17 letter to the divinity school community that he felt “aghast when [he] saw” George Floyd’s murder, a crime he said society has witnessed too many times. In the letter, he wrote that he felt it was necessary to update the community on administrative work and future plans regarding racism. He also announced that faculty, staff and students would make up the new task force, which will consider strategies for addressing racism against Black community members at YDS as well as Latinx, Asian and indigenous individuals. “[The task force brings] much needed consideration in the way white supremacy and the racial character of life in the West impact what we do in a university,” committee co-chair and theology pro-

fessor Willie Jennings told the News. “The divinity school at one level wants to be a part of that and we see ourselves as crucial to that end. We want to understand as deeply and as carefully as possible the architecture of the problems we are inside of.”

Task force member Donyelle McCray — assistant professor of homiletics at the school — said that the group is still in its preliminary stages of work. Sterling said in the August letter that when the task force does convene for the first time next Friday, it will examine racism in a variety of settings that can occur in “thoughtless and subconscious” ways.

Jennings noted that in the months preceding the presidential election, society is seeing “the deep sickness” that composes the American social and political landscape. He added that Christian theologians have an obligation to respond to such injustices, given Christian institutions’ racist pasts.

“Racial condition grows out of Christianity. You don’t have to know a lot to understand that the current political situation shows forms of Christianity that are deeply entrenched in white supremacy; those of us involved in

theological education feel an enormous responsibility to respond to that,” Jennings said. “We object strongly to the idea that Christianity can only be imagined inside conservative social agendas.”

Laura Nasrallah, who co-chairs the committee with Jennings, said that her academic work investigates Christian complicity in white supremacy and also looks at the potential utility of the faith for facilitating conversations around race.

As academics, Nasrallah said she and Jennings intend to conduct research to confront racism at the Divinity School and at the University at large.

Jennings added that he hopes to conduct what he termed a “serious audit” of Yale’s history of racism and its complicity with white supremacy. He said peer institutions have undertaken similar work. Jennings cited Princeton Theological Seminary’s project that analyzed how its school benefited from, was involved in, and, at times, expressed opposition to the institution of racism. Jennings said that he hopes Yale, like Princeton, will pursue a full audit of its history.

Before looking at such broad

DAWN KIM/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Yale Divinity School formed a task force in the wake of nationwide protests regarding police brutality. goals, Nasrallah said the task force must first meet and figure out the committee’s priorities. She said she hopes that they will be able to pursue long-term, rigorous work in lieu of “cosmetic fixes.”

“We do not imagine ourselves doing the regulatory work of implementing various things,” Jennings said. “My sense is that our recommendations will be

taken very seriously and discussed extensively beyond this immediate season. The urgency of this moment can only be honored if we sustain the work beyond the next few months.”

The task force plans to convene for the first time on Sept. 18.

Contact JOHN BESCHE at john.besche@yale.edu .

Yale’s COVID dashboard earns “A” from critics, professors

BY ROSE HOROWITCH AND MATT KRISTOFFERSEN STAFF REPORTERS Universities hosting students on campus need more than mask stockpiles and grab-and-go meals.

Sleek and informative COVID-19 dashboards have been developed around campuses to deliver necessary information and have become crucial to demonstrating a school’s commitment to safety.

And just like Yale Dining’s signature “Turkey Rachel,” which students have raved about on Twitter and other social media platforms, the University’s dashboard has received similar praise — including an “A” rating from the Twitter account “We Rate COVID Dashboards.”

The account, which was started

by Yale School of Medicine professors Howard Forman and Cary Gross, judges universities’ COVID-19 dashboards in an effort to improve transparency for students, faculty and other members of college communities across the nation. They are also launching a website this week.

“We’re really basically in the middle of a large, uncontrolled experiment with universities across the country all taking different approaches to the common problem of this new virus,” Gross

told the News. “The decisions that these university leaders are making … can have a profound impact on the physical health of their communities and their institutions, and I know they’re also concerned about the financial well-being of their institutions.”

Yale’s dashboard, they wrote on Twitter last week, “may not be the prettiest one, & it runs very long, but it hits most essential features.” Since then, the University has refurbished its dashboard — adding more information tables, breaking down the testing numbers between students living on- and off-campus and including a percentage bar for isolation room capacity.

When asked about the new updates, the two professors wrote on their Twitter account that Yale still receives an “A” rating — though “their actual score did tick up to 11” out of a possible 13 points.

Yale leads most of its peer institutions in its COVID-19 dashboard rating. Massachusetts Institute of Technology received a “B-” last week. Columbia University earned a “B+” that same day. Vassar College — a liberal arts college in New York’s Hudson Valley — bested the University with an “A+” on Sept. 4.

Still, grade inflation is not at play for Forman and Gross, they said. Their rubric rewards dash-

boards for regular updates and a website look that is easy on the eyes and penalizes colleges for muddying up data. Colleges also receive points for things like presentation, which data they release and reporting testing result lag time. Once a point total is calculated, grades are then allotted from 0 — “FAIL” — to 13, which the professors dubbed an “A++.”

“I don’t know if Ford Motor has a dashboard like this,” Gross said. “But colleges have a responsibility as entities that are teaching about health, science, truth, leadership, health justice and equity, they have a distinct responsibility to be clear about what they’re doing and not to obfuscate the truth about the important decisions they’re making.”

He added that though some schools do not have the resources that Yale does to create a professional webpage, the real issue is commitment to transparency.

The schools have the testing program data, Gross said, and have a responsibility to disseminate it.

“We think that outsiders and insiders should know what the school strategy is and how the institution thinks they are doing,” the “We Rate COVID Dashboards” website will state when it launches in the coming week. “We also think that viewing trends and [the] current state [of affairs] can help

communicate urgency and allow everyone to take ownership of the current state.”

Yale’s revamped webpage includes the level of risk that COVID-19 poses to campus. The University is currently experiencing low to moderate risk, with viral cases infrequent but the indicators for increased or potentially increased transmission.

The University now plans to update the site with numbers from the asymptomatic testing program each weekday morning, Tim Pavlis, associate vice president for strategy and academic business operations, wrote in an email to the News.

Pavlis explained that the changes to the site came as the asymptomatic screening program became routine and the University adjusted to the flow of incoming data. Yale does not plan to further change the content of the site, but the school may work on the layout to make it easier to understand, he said.

New Haven is currently seeing low rates of COVID-19 transmission. Should its numbers rise, it is possible that the University can create a bubble, due to its frequent testing. But, if Yale begins to mimic the worsening surrounding area, students may have to return home, according to Dean of the Yale School of Public Health

Sten Vermund.

That decision would be made

by University President Peter Salovey and his team, with help from the Public Health Committee, Pavlis said.

Vermund, a member of the committee, explained the criteria for shifting between risk levels on the dashboard. One indicator of risk is the prevalence of COVID-19 in the surrounding area.

Other indicators of risk include the number of students infected and in isolation; the number potentially exposed and in quarantine; and testing positivity rates, Vermund said.

Forman added that the coming weeks are crucial for assessing whether Yale can avert an outbreak.

“If we’re able to keep this completely tamped down in the next three or four weeks, my confidence will go up to 100 percent,” he said. “If we start to see a slow increase in the next three or four weeks then my confidence will decline dramatically.”

As of Tuesday, seven students and four staff have tested positive for COVID-19 since the beginning of August.

Contact ROSE HOROWITCH at rose.horowitch@yale.edu and MATT KRISTOFFERSEN at matthew.kristoffersen@yale.edu .

Yale buys historic townhouses on York Street

LUCAS HOLTER/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

The purchase of the adjacent townhouses at 168-170 York St. amounted to $2.85 million.

BY JOSE DAVILA IV STAFF REPORTER Over the summer, Yale increased its real estate holdings on the corner of Chapel and York Streets with a purchase of two residential-commercial properties on York.

In total, the purchase of the adjacent townhouses at 168-170 York St. amounted to $2.85 million. The buildings, which had been owned by Mary Tirozzi and Joseph Goodwin through a company called Hot Dog of New Haven, LLC, are historically significant.

Currently, each townhouse is three stories tall and has five living units.

The properties also include two local businesses: Salon J, a full service salon, and 168 York Street Cafe, one of Connecticut’s oldest gay bars. The recent purchase adds to the University’s portfolio of commercial and academic properties on the corner and in the Chapel West section of Downtown New Haven.

“Joe and I owned the building for 27 years, and I wanted to take our money off of the table,” Tirozzi told the News in an interview. “It was just time to sell. After 27 years of

being a landlord, you’re done. Yale approached us so we struck a deal.”

The townhouses, which are a part of the same building, were built around 1870 and are contributing properties to the Chapel Street Historic District.

The National Register of Historic Places’ documentation for the address notes that the single building is six bays wide and that one entrance to the building was altered in the 20th century.

According to city assessors’ office records, the combined appraised value of both properties is $809,600 with 170 coming in at $427,100 and 168 at $382,500.

Those evaluations of the properties have not changed since at least 2016, according to the city records.

Goodwin and Tirozzi, both real estate agents, bought the building for $475,000 in November of 1993.

Already friends, Goodwin and Tirozzi knew the then-owner of the building, Jimmy Bombard, and happened to be in the “right place at the right time,” she said.

Bombard was also the founder of The Pub Cafe, the forerunner to 168 York Street Cafe that opened in 1976 and was originally located where Book Trader Cafe now stands. The Pub, as it was called, moved around the corner to 168 York after a fire in 1978. It replaced a biker bar known as Inside Out at the address.

In 1993, Bombard wanted to leave the area and Goodwin, who had been working at The Pub since 1985, stepped up to buy the building with Tirozzi, she said. The renamed 168 York Street Cafe opened on

Christmas Day of that year and was nicknamed “The Gay Cheers.”

The cafe is now known for its laid-back atmosphere and theme nights, including the annual Dragapalooza. Last year, the fundraiser collected over $3,000 for local youth projects.

Next door, and celebrating its tenth year in business at the address, is Salon J, where a team of ten runs a salon for men and women. The owner, Jennifer Patton, opened the business in March of 2010, according to the salon’s website. In addition to cuts, coloring, extensions and waxing, the salon also offers bridal services.

Patton could not be reached for comment on this article.

Both businesses are open under state coronavirus protocols.

Goodwin and Tirozzi were looking to sell the townhouses and knew that Yale would be interested in the properties because they are “right on campus,” Tirozzi said. The coronavirus pandemic did not play into the decision to sell as Yale and the owners had already been negotiating prior to the virus’ arrival.

“When I bought the building all of my intention was that my retirement would be the sale of my building,” Goodwin said. “I knew, having grown up in New Haven, that the only one who would give me what I was looking for at the time would be the University.”

Goodwin and Tirozzi rented the apartment units to many Yale students and staff over the years. Tirozzi said that she would miss meeting people from all over the world.

With the purchase, Yale now owns properties located on York St 142 York, 146 York, 148 York, 150 York, 166 York, 168 York, 170 York, 1126 Chapel, 1142 Chapel and 1156 Chapel. The only properties on the corner of Chapel and York that Yale does not own are 1144 Chapel, which houses Hull’s Art Supply, and 1155 Chapel, the home of Anaya Sushi & Ramen and The Workshop Salon.

Besides the purchase of 168170 York Street, other recent purchases include 1142 Chapel and 166 York in a $3.8 million deal with a holding company owned by Pike International’s Shmully Hecht in June 2019.

166 York is a three-story townhouse similar to the one next door and hosts York Street Noodle House.

1142 Chapel, on the other hand, was torn down by Yale after an Oct. 2019 demolition order from city Building Official Jim Turcio. It now sits empty as a grassy lot. At a Historic District Commission meeting in December, Yale representatives said they did not have any specific plans for that address. Yale paid $14,090.62 in taxes on that property for Fiscal Year 2019-20.

“The property will currently continue to operate as is and remain on the tax rolls,” Director of University Media Relations Karen Peart told the News in an email.

For the 2020-2021 fiscal year, the combined tax bill for 168-170 York totaled $25,995.46.

Contact JOSE DAVILA IV at jose.davilaiv@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 11

NEWS

“I don’t flatter myself — I’m not a scientist, I’m not a conservation expert.” EDWARD NORTON AMERICAN ACTOR

Low Strung releases third album “Low Strung III”

COURTESY OF LOW STRUNG

“Low Strung III” is the product of four years of work. The idea was first proposed by Benjamin Fleischacker ’17 in 2016.

BY WEI-TING SHIH CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Despite the coronavirus pandemic that led to the cancellation of many musical events and performances, Low Strung — a self-described group of “classically trained musicians turned rock-cello rebels” — continues to share music with the world.

On Monday, Low Strung released their third and newest album “Low Strung III,” which is available on music streaming platforms. The album features 11 arrangements, including wellknown songs such as “Daddy Lessons” and “Hey Jude.” The rock and pop genre songs featured in the album were performed by Low

Strung in several domestic and international tours.

“The album was not constructed in a way that was cohesive, but we later realized that all of the songs in it have to do with love,” said Sofia Checa ’20, an arranger and the album producer. “But I think that is fitting, as the album just comes down to the love we have for Low Strung, and the love we have for each other.”

“Low Strung III” is the product of four years of work. The idea was first proposed by Benjamin Fleischacker ’17 in 2016, when Checa was a first year student. According to Checa, the start of the album production process was full of experimentation — no one in the group knew how to use a studio or

recording software.

Over the course of four years, Low Strung has become wellversed in album production. There was no strict deadline for the final product, so group members devoted as much time as was necessary.

To begin, group members selected songs and arranged them.

The recording stage mostly took place in the Lumry-Wengerd Studio of Silliman College. This was done in sections, and no more than three musicians played cello at the same time to maximize available space. The editing process was extensive, encompassing much of the album’s production time.

“A lot of the early work was difficult,” said Matthew Udry ’22, Low Strung’s music director. “We

had to even throw away some of the stuff we had been doing before because it just wasn’t good enough. It’s taken time to get into the swing of things.”

By 2019, more than half of the album was recorded, and the other half only needed minor alterations.

That summer, a sound engineer from the Czech Republic assisted the group in mixing and mastering. By 2020, “Low Strung III” was undergoing final preparations.

“Albums are a way to commemorate the group,” Udry said.

“Albums are just as much for our audience as they are for us. We want to remember the music we made. We think it’s an incredible thing to have a final product where we can listen to ourselves and our

friends, and to have that forever.”

According to Low Strung’s president, Giacomo Glotzer ’22, the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic has affected the group, as with many other musical groups. For a time, Low Strung group will operate primarily as a social organization.

Low Strung has faced the cancelation of scheduled tours and events.

The group originally planned to tour in Germany in March of this year, but decided against the trip.

According to Glotzer, many musical artists have been forced to reckon with the realities of reduced performance opportunities.

“Support your musicians,” Glotzer said. “They are really struggling right now. Every orchestra, no matter how big — like the New York Philharmonic or the Chicago Symphony Orchestra — is really struggling. Orchestras don’t have a rainy-day budget.

They are always underfunded. And now COVID-19 has made everyone cancel every single concert for the foreseeable future.”

Although the pandemic put Low Strung in a difficult situation, the group still plans to continue engaging with their audience through digital means.

Many of the group’s members are not living on campus. However, according to Checa, Udry and Glotzer, one of Low Strung’s defining characteristics is its tight-knit sense of community.

“Low Strung was, in complete seriousness, the best thing that ever happened to me,” Checa said.

“The musical experience has been incredible, but the best part has been the friendships I have made. I feel super lucky that I found a family in this group.”

The group has previously produced two other albums: “Low Strung” in 2007 and “Quadruple Moon” in 2014. Depending on the global health situation, Low Strung hopes to reschedule their planned Germany tour to 2021.

Contact WEI-TING SHIH at wei-ting.shih@yale.edu .

Yale Cabaret, CCAM explore new forms of storytelling

COURTESY OF JOHANNES DEYOUNG

Last weekend’s event, hosted by the Yale Cabaret and the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM), featured three speakers who shared their visions for stage-storytelling in a digital age.

BY OWEN TUCKER-SMITH CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Members of the Yale community gathered on Saturday to discuss emerging technologies that could be applied to theater during a pandemic that limits close-contact performances.

The event, hosted by the Yale Cabaret and the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM), featured three speakers who shared their visions for stage-storytelling in a digital age.

They discussed proposals ranging from at-home prop design to LED costumes with motion sensors.

Yale School of Art professor Justin Berry explained how creators can use both virtual and augmented reality to create interactive stories.

The two forms of reality are distinct and have their own purposes. Virtual reality, he said, exists primarily for entertainment. It puts the user in a sometimes uncomfortable state of seclusion. Augmented reality, unlike virtual reality, is not com-

pletely immersive. Instead, digital elements are “layered” atop a view of the real world.

“With virtual reality, you’re isolated, and you have a headset on which puts you in a world by yourself,” Berry said. “It’s fairly profound that you can lose agency relative to the world. One of the ramifications of that is: people who are not comfortable in their body sometimes don’t want to put on a headset that’s going to obscure their ability to see the world.”

On top of providing digital and socially distant options, Berry said virtual and augmented reality alter the social norms of human interaction.

“In augmented reality, you have two people wearing headsets, and they’re seeing different things in what they otherwise think is a shared world,” Berry said.

“They create a new kind of power dynamic that, as a culture, we don’t really have a great vocabulary for working our way around.”

This social phenomenon is what

Berry calls “the empathy engine.”

Users seeing the world from a different point of view develop a greater understanding of new perspectives.

Overall, Berry said, virtual storytelling requires students and mentors to scrap storytelling conventions, and to rethink how time and narrative are related. When students ask Berry how to integrate recognizable storytelling elements into virtual stories, he asks: why include these elements at all?

“When you’re dealing with a medium that’s interactive, you’re not dealing with straight lines that go in one place, you’re dealing with clusters or nodes or networks of the activity that can feed back in on themselves,” Berry said. “The opportunity here is to reimagine what a story can be and how it can be told.”

Toni Dove, a New York-based interactive artist who CCAM director Dana Karwas introduced as “a pioneer,” also spoke at Saturday’s event. Dove’s work centers on “making human-operated

machines that tell stories” and engages motion-sensing to create interactive user experiences.

Dove showed the attendees several of her projects, including the “Dress That Eats Souls.” The LED dress, which the New York Times dubbed “a towering robot of sorts,” responds to users’ movements, captures their image and displays it. It also speaks to and instructs the user. Pieces like the dress, she explained, are not only art but historical artifacts.

Dove has also staged immersive film experiences. She doesn’t enjoy the sense of isolation that comes with the classic virtual reality headsets, she said, and so gravitates toward massive screens that cover the walls, floors and ceilings of a space.

While Berry and Dove showed participants cutting-edge technologies and softwares, Jennifer McClure — a lecturer at the School of Drama and the Properties Supervisor at the Yale Repertory Theatre — came to her presenta-

tion with a cardboard box, some masking tape and a few plants.

McClure spent the day playing with her Zoom screen, figuring out how to create a computer screensized performance set. She put her laptop inside the box, taped up one of the flaps, and fixed her greenery to the box’s bottom edge.

McClure explained to the group that fidgeting with Zoom backgrounds, small cardboard props and print-out sets could allow for theater groups to perform from their bedrooms.

“This is literally my laundry bag,” McClure showed the crowd.

“My meshy gauze laundry bag. If I use it, it could look like a curtain. These are super old, basic tricks to frame your space and frame your window.”

The CCAM’s programming will continue on Thursday with their Technology and Social Justice Series.

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

PAGE 12

THROUGH THE MASK

F

irst years are now navigating the already intimidating world of college with a new challenge: masks. Our facial expressions are a large part of interacting and bonding with others, but now that form of communication is blocked in social settings. Having to interpret words simply through tone and the occasional eyebrow movement, we constantly face masked expressions. Here are a series of photos that uncover those beautiful and bright expressions. REGINA SUNG reports.

YALE DAILY NEWS ¡ FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 ¡ yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020

Apocalypse in California — coming to you soon // maya weldon-lagrimas

change. A second search will reveal rising temperatures are a result of the exacerbation of natural resources, burning of fossil fuels, and factory farming — all of which trade human lives for profit.

Climate change is not the only crisis of the summer perpetuated by capitalism. The worst effects of the COVID-19 pandemic would have been avoided if countries decided to shut down their economies sooner and more decisively. Racist police play a major role in the prison-industrial complex. Our economy wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for slave labor that has led to the racialized caste system we are still fighting to dismantle.

Despite what you may be thinking, I’m not a Marxist. I am a fan of freedom and capitalism — to a certain and albeit rather large degree — which have famously given us affordable moving vehicles, new medicines, and seven pairs of underwear a week.

But we are seeing this system slowly kill us. And we aren’t doing anything about it. As we have learned this summer, knowledge partnered with inaction is the greatest hypocrisy. And all members of elite academic institutions are the greatest hypocrites.

We love to cite Yale’s growing rates of POC, LGBTQ+ and FGLI admits, their generous financial aid packages or their groundbreaking COVID saliva test. However, these citations grossly undermine the ways in which Yale still perpetuates cycles of privilege and complicity in a broken system. The fact of the matter is that Yale is an elite institution that, according to Time Magazine, enrolls more students from the top 1 percent than the bottom 60 percent. Yale is a corporation that denies the New Haven community $150 million in property taxes through legal loopholes. It is where wealthy people recruit armies of nerds to optimize the algorithms that allow capital to build on itself — a self-perpetuating, exponential process. No matter how you spin it, Yale and other elite universities are centuries-old tools of the bourgeoisie that have a tight grip on resources, capital, and political structures of our world.

Don’t get me wrong, I am no exception to this hypocrisy. While

California burned, while my siblings inhaled dangerous amounts of smoke, while my Grandma’s power shut off, I flew high above the fires to a coastal town. Here, the air is clean. Here, the power stays on. Here, I go back to school to network so that I can land a triple-digit salary out of undergrad.

Oh, was I supposed to say go back to school to take classes and learn?

Sometimes the lines get blurred when you’re born into a system built on the axiomatic principle of self-interest.

The only reason I am writing this article now is that I watched ash fall from the sky. Because we have let things get so bad that the elite bubble of protection Yale and my middle-class life have provided is starting to deteriorate. People have been displaced and dying for years, yet my sense of urgency has only arisen since we were sent home, we couldn’t party, or go to our internship in New York. Once again, I AM the problem. And most likely, so are you. Even now many of us can still escape to the shelter of Yale’s gothic dorms, an off-campus apartment, or second home. But this summer should’ve shown us all that this escape won’t last long.

We are used to hearing that we are the next leaders, the next innovators, the next big thinkers. I like to believe this is true. But with this responsibility comes the biggest choice of our lives. We can turn this ship around or become the illustrious captains that lead the world straight into the sun.

Yes, we will have to give some things up. We have to give up that internship at Morgan Stanley to work for a climate non-profit. We have to give up our dreams to own a penthouse in New York City and start dreaming about owning an apartment in DC so that we can wake up every morning and give our legislators a piece of our mind — or become legislators ourselves. We have to give up this climb to the top of a sinking ship and start bailing it out from the bottom. It will be messy. It will be dirty. It will be grimy. But it is our moral imperative to do so.

Contact MAYA WELDON-LAGRIMAS at maya.weldon-lagrimas@yale.edu .

// ALEX TARANTO

When I walked outside of my house in Stockton, California on a late-August afternoon, it was 115 degrees outside. White flecks of ash swirled down from the sky and settled on all open surfaces. The smoke was toxically dense and turned the sun from a pure, blinding white to a deep, radiating scarlet. In case you didn’t know, California is burning. It’s been an apocalyptic summer for everyone, but the Golden State has officially reached the fiery gates of hell.

I write to you from the breezy New York coast, but when the fires began, I was back home in the Central Valley of California and fire surrounded us on all sides. But this was only the icing on top of our end-of-the-worldcake. Before the fires hit, California was already facing a record-breaking drought, heat waves, and rolling blackouts (AKA, large energy companies turning off air conditioning).

Not to mention the ever-present backdrop of a global pandemic and a national racial reckoning.

California’s apocalypse has been a long time coming. Our rate of warming has been three times greater than the global average. The rising temperatures are a direct cause of heat waves and droughts. Studies have also shown that with every degree the temperature rises, the drying effects are exponential, leaving endless agricultural fields parched and primed to be burned. Many fires have also been caused by lighting strikes, which also increase with a warming climate.

According to a U.C. Berkeley study, every 1.8 degree change in temperature increases lightning strikes by 12 percent. The culmination of these effects has resulted in the 10 largest fires on record in California occurring in the past 20 years, according to The New York Times.

The rolling blackouts have also been a direct product of unsustainable energy demands. When people run their air conditioning during heat waves, California’s energy grid is pushed to a breaking point. This creates dangerous living conditions for people at risk of heat stroke. A quick Google search makes it crystal-clear that California’s many crises are highly connected to climate

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND DERRIDA

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// VICTORIA LU

// BY GAMZE KAZAKOGLU

“I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them, not necessarily the way they happened.” Spoken from a typical Lynchian smoke, red curtains, femme fatale doppelganger main character, and a strong disturbing soundtrack, these words of Fred from David Lynch’s “Lost Highway” (1997), seemed to be Lynch himself narrating his fascination with revealing our secrets and desires through classic cinematic tropes and abstract imagery. Lynch is best known for directing films like Eraserhead (1977), The Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986), and Mulholland Drive (2001). Film critic Pauline Kael celebrates lynch as “the first popular Surrealist” with his unique cinematic style, dream-like film state, and finicky soundtracks.

A neo-noir film, Lost Highway is very broadly about a musician, Fred Madison, (Bill Pullman) beginning to receive tapes of him and his wife Rene (Patricia Arquette) in their home. The fact that this tape-receiving happening to Fred is particularly striking, given he hates to be recorded and tells the police they consulted for the mystery to be resolved that he likes to remember things in his own way. Yet, another videotape suddenly makes Fred convicted of murdering his wife. Given their problematic marriage, whether or not he did is left to the audience’s interpretation. At the middle, the protagonist suddenly shifts: staying in his prison cell with no contact from the outside world at all, Fred abruptly disappears and is replaced by a young mechanic Pete (Balthazar Getty). No explanation is provided. Innocent of murder, Pete is released and leads a different life though eventually with the same woman carrying a different name: Alice Wakefield (Arquette again).

What touched me in Fred’s words was their pure honesty. Paradoxically opposing the idea of the film itself in a film, Fred refuses to be videotaped because the memory is his ultimate escape from reality. An imaginary character, Fred is perfectly aware of the imaginary world he creates. He doesn’t lie to himself unlike real characters who mostly tend to do. He deliberately makes his reality in his own way. Thankfully, the fascinating cinematic world tears us apart from the neat and tidy truths of our lives — the clothes we wear, the habitual way we talk. An integral part of society, most films are nonetheless frustrating with their perfectly-organized structures, nonexistent awkward pauses, carefully-crafted jokes and arguments, and satisfyingly finite conclusions. Fantasy worlds of fantasy people are quite complicated to enter, given they require escaping and living less realistically. Films are powerful enough to create their own language of signals: we know what to expect when a little child is walking alone in a forest at night.

We understand how prosperous a family is if they have two children, a dog, and a two-story house. Maybe, everything shouldn’t be this crystal clear. Nowadays, we are still uncertain about the relationship between words and their meanings since Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher, thought of their arbitrary relationship- the signifier (words) and the signified (meaning)- for the first time in the late 19th century. Any given text still contains irreconcilably contradictory meanings rather than being a unified, logical whole for all of us — even though Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher, proposed the idea years ago. How come are we so certain of the cinematic language? It seems either the self-assurance of the relationship between films and their signals is excessive, or

our mindsets, shaped by western intellectual traditions, failed us all once again. Are we surprised? Not really. Are we frustrated? Pretty much. Maybe it’s the same frustration that makes people like David Lynch to deconstruct all of that and explore why we feel these things.

Examining Freudian themes and sexual desires, Jungian archetypes that are embodied in our minds so deeply, Lynch fearlessly dives into all of these themes, which sets him apart from all Hollywood directors. Manipulating the classical elements of a film to explore how films manipulate us, Lynch deconstructed the cinema in this masterpiece — though his magnum opus, “Mulholland Drive” (2001), came four years later.

I was inspired by Fred’s handsome words especially after having lost the opportunity to do many things thanks to the outbreak of COVID-19. Sometime during April or May (or was it still March?), I was burrito-wrapped in a blanket in my dark bedroom, a screen constantly displaying a film to entertain me, or merely just to pass the time. Ironically, Fred gave me a new sense of reality — “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life,” as Oscar Wilde once said. I confronted the harsh truth of the way I’ll remember my Senior Day: leaving my high school quietly someday in March, never to come back again. At least, not as a high schooler. Thinking back, I slowly registered the things I’ve missed. No traditional Senior Day: coming to school in a wedding-like grandiose car convoy, boasting a parade of rainbow colors, appalling onlookers amusingly with water guns in front of inside-joke posters hung all around, displaying a film shot by our class, listening to poignant speeches full of memories by our peers and teachers… No prom and no ball, which both used to be held in the most splendid places in our school and a hotel by the Bosphorus. Naturally, no after-party only among us students. No class of 2020 holiday. No interrail with my close friendship squad we’ve been planning for years. No...

Even though I was immensely grateful that my loved ones and I were healthy, these lost opportunities didn’t cease to torment me. Pouring myself into one book after a film, an edX course after a Coursera, visiting online museums, minimizing human contact, I recognized I was numbing myself in order not to face the anxiety of a fatal virus and the things it cost me. Blocking my sorrow deep deep down, I knew but wasn’t conscious of how afflicted I would be if I heard even the slightest mention of any of these. I was tendentiously choosing to perceive and remember things my own way, so when I looked back, all I was going to see was a charade of book and film characters in the settings of magnificent art pieces throughout history. Honestly, it was much more pleasant than the dark shadow of COVID-19 and constantly feeling its dreadful cold breath on my neck. Yet, this didn’t change the fact that Fred — a shifted, runaway personality deliberately trying to escape reality due to feelings of inadequacy in his love life — mirrored me terrifically. Dropping laggardly back to my emotions, I, for the sake of my life-long pursuit of balance, decided maybe it was better to go with: “I like to remember things my own way. How I self-consciously choose to remember them, not necessarily the way they happened.”

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

ONLINE THIS WEEK: WKND RECOMMENDS Blue light glasses.

ARE YOUR FRIENDS WEARING MASKS? Simi Olurin ’23 reckons with changes in her social life during the pandemic.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND AWAY

I Volunteered As Tribute: The Untold Stories of Gap Year ’25s // BY IVANA RAMIREZ

Between Kelly Guilfoyle’s Effie-Trinket-like RNC speech and the unresolved murder hornets subplot, 2020 is continually resembling a poorly written dystopian YA novel. As main characters emerge from behind Zoom screens, background characters are pushed to the distant horizon of the story’s landscape — doomed to frame the arc of those at the center of attention.

That’s us.

The unnamed tributes who disappear after the 10 seconds of The Hunger Games, the citizens that are definitely not Divergent, the random teenage boy in The Maze Runner: the gapyear students of 2025.

Not unionized enough to appear as a cohesive entity, the gap-year Yalies of ’25 have instead faded into a myth told by those on campus this semester. We were rumored to belong at one point, but too intangible to be of much importance to Yale’s main characters — a passing thought as classrooms appear slightly underfilled. Now, after (metaphorically) raising our hands to sacrifice our education in the interest of protecting our communities and ourselves, we have volunteered as tributes to help keep Yale a safe place.

Much like a dystopian novel with an oddly large and passionate fandom, a twist in pointof-view can serve to keep audiences engaged and enthralled. So, in a jealous attempt to distract from the main characters of ’24, who are currently enjoying a flurry of Yale Instagram posts dedicated to their unprecedented diversity, “gappies” are prepared to take back the plotline.

Naturally, any so-bad-it’s-good dystopian novel needs a few adventurous (and maybe even slightly reckless) young teenagers. The Dauntless faction of Yale, these students-slash-characters dare to push physical limits or even discover an unknown strength along the way. Enter, the venturesome gappies.

From the Czech Republic to New Zealand, these background characters are keeping busy while overcoming the pandemic. Some plans include:

“From January to July, through a program sponsored by the U.S. Congress and German Bundestag, I will be doing an exchange semester in Germany with a host family and host school.”

— Paula Toranzo “In two weeks, I’ll join other gap year students in the U.K. for Art History Abroad where we will travel around to different cities studying art, music, poetry, etc.”

— Hope Keithahn “Over the past few weeks, I have started flight training to earn a private pilot license. I have been piloting Cessna-172s over Smith Mountain Lake in southern Virginia.”

— Victoria Smithson

Donning government-mandated masks as uniforms, these YA characters appear adventurous enough to get invited on the main character’s pivotal journey. Unfortunately, their leg of the trip just so happened to be postponed a year. ***

While some background characters are brought along with the main characters to jump off trains or something, others stay behind to advocate for the change that everyone wants to see. As the off-brand Katniss Everdeens of the story - without their bows and arrows and (probably) their two sexy boyfriends, these characters remain in their hometowns to fight systemic injustices:

“I’m spending the next year serving with City Year Boston as a corps member in a Boston public school.

City Year Boston is very intentional about centering social justice in its mission, and so employing anti-racist and abolitionist teaching practices in my work is going to be a major goal!”

— Sophia Burick “I’m working with a nonprofit in North Denver that works with families in some of North Denver’s most pollution-vulnerable neighborhoods….

As the most polluted zip code in the nation, you have a lot of environmental racism in that community.”

— Quinn Evans “In the fall, I’m writing letters to prisoners as an intern for the San Francisco DA’s office; the current DA runs on the platform of decreasing mass incarceration.”

— Sarah Feng

Instead of being the maze runners and leaving their safe havens, these gappies make a point of improving their communities before getting to New Haven. Though their stories aren’t usually included in the main plot of the book, the country could never rise from rebellion and start anew without their dedication to equity and fairness. *** Perhaps the most relatable background character trope, however, is the feeling of being left behind.

While everyone else is experiencing the adventure that is stepping foot on Yale’s campus for the first time as a student, gappies chose to watch from afar,painstakingly observing what could have been.

The Primroses of Yale; these gappies know what it’s like to observe plot-moving events happening to other characters. Whether separated by six feet or 6000 miles, the distance between these students and a regular school year feels insurmountable:

“The air here [in California] is really smoky and I can’t go outside that often, so seeing people sitting in the Yale courtyard with everything sparkling makes me jealous of everything right now.”

— Molly Weiner “I want to get my hopes up that I’ll have that normal [college] experience, but I can’t. It doesn’t feel like I’m actually going to get to go to Yale.”

— Pia Baldwin Edwards “Most of my friends decided to go ahead with their freshman year of college, which has made me the odd one out. Social media has only exacerbated this feeling.”

— Vivian Tong

// MALIA KUO

***

While the main characters are off saving the world, background Yalies are feeling the brunt of their decision. Clearly (though voluntarily) missing out on the first-year experience, ’25s almost tasted a Victor’s Village meal but were met with a mouthful of scraps instead. Though most seem happy and relieved with their decision to take a gap year, underlying feelings of jealousy and anxiety continually resurface for this unique class.

With inevitable love triangles (names undisclosed), daunting yet vague government policy (AKA all of Salovey’s pre-August emails), and the banding together of young people for justice (Universal Pass/Fail, anyone?), the similarities of 2020 to a teenage dystopia are too many to count.

Fortunately for everyone, the tributes of the class of 2024 had quite a few individuals who wanted to volunteer their time, first-year experience, and education for the greater good. As a result, all of “Panem” and its factions are better off for it — even if the maze of pandemic problems and precarity still feels ever-shifting.

Contact IVANA RAMIREZ at ivanasbook@gmail.com .

ONLINE THIS WEEK: WKND RECOMMENDS Drunk Jenga.

WHICH WAY IS POTTY COURT? Alexa Pulido Rodriguez ’24 recounts her sweaty move-in experience.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B4

WEEKEND AGAIN

Saving Christina Christina Saving It all goes back again.

In New Haven. Late July. Ninety degrees.

Hot and steamy. I’m walking down College Street. On my right is Sterling Memorial Library. On the lawn of Cross Campus playing Frisbee, nobody. Out of WLH through the fibers of sunshine skateboarding and scootering, nobody. Along with me walking, nobody. I am all alone. The only living being around at Yale. Or am I at the relics of a former civilization?

I walk past Hopper’s empty dumpster and cross Elm Street. The blinking traffic lights tell me I only have five seconds. Cars and buses wait for me, their front lights staring through my body. In front of these reemerging traces of humans, I suddenly become aware of my gait.

I straighten my back and try to walk like a Big Man, as if I own this campus. Nope. The locked northeast gate of Old Campus promptly rejects me. It doesn’t open as I push my entire body against it, as if I don’t have any physical weight.

I don’t physically go here anymore. My head starts to stare down. I feel an outsider’s humbleness, as if I’ve invaded this place, like a rat in Manhattan, like the first time I visited Yale as a tourist when I was 13 — what am I thinking? I go to Yale after all, and I’m here on a mission. To retrieve the belongings of Josh and Louie, my friends and roommate/neighbor who wisely do not trust Yale Storage and Shipping. If I’m truly traversing through some relics of civilization, I’m also here to be a gravedigger to retrieve others’ personal history.

I lift my head and walk toward Phelps Gate.

Across the street is an avocado-green food truck selling vegan food. Walking past me are Yale staff talking on their phones. They all wear the same Yale Blue t-shirts, with the head of an angry white bulldog covering their right nipples. The word “Yale” doesn’t appear on their shirt, as if emphasizing they are only here to work temporarily and therefore don’t deserve the badge of honor yet. On the elevated roadside in white chalk: FUCK YALE HEH. Behind these words is a sprinkler, ready to sprinkle whoever doesn’t also FUCK YALE HEH.

HEH? Enter Old Campus. The million-year-old Mr. Woolsey stares at me through his statue.

The monsters atop the door frame of Bingham C peek their heads out from behind their newly donned black curtain and poke their tongues out to breathe. Below these monsters, a mildly dusted window reflects my masked face. I look around and see my entryway door unlocked, propped open by a trash can. I head over and dial Josh on FaceTime.

“Save Christina!” Josh says the moment he sees the whiteboard on the first floor. Hanging by the dim staircase, it shows the names, phone numbers, and the smiley faces representing the eight FroCos, along with a bag of condoms and lube. The smiley faces flutter in the wind, unable to escape a Yale whiteboard after their Yale graduation. “Save Jordan too,” Josh suggests. Christina is our FroCo, and Jordan is her suitemate who always barges in during our FroCo meetings. I clench Christina’s smiley eyes and carefully tear the face from the wall.

Christina’s smiley face winces. Josh reminisces about the tea and quesadillas Christina and Jordan made on Saturday duty nights. Hot and salty. I clench Jordan’s smiley cheeks and carefully tear the face from the wall. Josh reminisces about our FroCo group plus Jordan hiking to East Rock last September. I carry the two smiley faces upstairs and put them in Josh’s suitcase. They’ll no longer be thrown out when the next class moves in.

It doesn’t take long to pack up Josh and Louie’s stuff. Thinking about how to kill some time in this place I used to live in, but now am merely visiting, I head upstairs and reach the top floor.

There’s a suite, its door propped open by a trash can. I know nobody who lived here, and was never bold enough to just walk in and make friends with them. Now everybody has been evicted. I can go in and, with no consequence, learn the lives of the residents—when the residents are no longer present, ironically.

Wind blows through the window and shuts the ajar door.

Do I go in? *** The door opens without resistance. Empty.

The only word you can think of. Everything has been removed. No furniture. No posters. No books.

No leftover GHeav sandwiches or Junzi. No dirty laundry. No empty beer cans.

No humans.

You can see through the long hallway of this 10-pac, as if seeing through the lives of whoever used to live here.

You stand in front of the wall that blocks off two symmetrical singles. Both desks sit in front of the windows against this communal wall.

// BY TONY HAO

The beds are squeezed in between the desks and the opposing walls. Looking from outside, the wall looks like a butterfly’s spine, where the antennae and wings unfold —the symmetrical desks, windows, floor. You have never been to any top floor suite before, and this is your first time seeing a Yale bedroom with a slanted ceiling. Curtainless windows open on the roof and hang right above the bed. You imagine whoever lived there waking up by natural sunlight right above their face every morning. The first thing to greet them would be the blue sky, or even a bird that happened to fly by the roof. How come I never got to live here my first year, you think.

You move forward to the common room.

Nothing in the middle. The table, gone. The jackets in the closets, gone. The TV monitor, if it ever existed, gone. A brown couch humbly sits in the corner under the slanted roof.

Your fingers flit on top of it — dust. A shattered mirror barely holds together on the wall. You stand in front of it — your frame also shatters.

Your masked face, your dark blue Yale t-shirt, your hands, your legs, all shatter, barely holding together.

You recall your most quintessential night at Yale: you went to play basketball with friends from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. on a Saturday night, then back to the common room of their suite, a common room just like how this empty one used to look. You poured everyone some beer, and everyone poured out their life stories. Sipping the ice cold beer, you and friends talked about Plato and Socrates, you heard how one friend regretted breaking their high-school S.O.’s heart, you confided how you struggled with your family, your friend told you their life dreams. The bubbles in the beer fizzled in your mouth. All your friends had studied Symposium, and the conversation definitely felt like it at the beginning, until it all turned personal. You all felt too tired at 5:30 a.m., but you wanted this talk to last forever. You thought your friends were the most awesome people in the world: intellectual, kind, vulnerable, determined. You wanted to be their lifelong friend.

You wonder if a quintessential Yale night has ever happened in this common room you are in right now.

If yes, you also wonder if the best friends back then are still together.

A hidden hallway extends from the common room next to the broken mirror.

You head over and turn left.

A door wide open. // PHOTOS BY TONY HAO Another connecting suite. The common room. Chaos. All furniture pushed to the corner of the room. Cardboard boxes stacked on top of the couch. Paper delivery bags strewn on the floor. Empty Styrofoam boxes vomited out. A Biden campaign poster on the ground. A wooden table steps a leg on it. A dusty teddy bear sits a few feet away and watches.

Two desks sit against the opposite wall.

Takeout boxes crawl all over one desk. Plastic forks and used paper napkins hide under a few boxes. A row of cans occupy the other desk.

Beer. Ginger ale. Double-shot espresso. Neatly aligned in a straight line. Evenly spaced. The

wooden storage chest, unlocked, engraved is “CIVILIAN—PRIBAG” on the front. On top of the table scatter a quill pen and some ink, a box of Mickey Mouse chocolate, a bottle of Febreze, a birthday card, a WebsterBank flier, and some handouts. Under the quill and the Mickey Mouse chocolate is a piece of paper: “Welcome to English / William Shakespeare.” On top of everything lays an Eileen Myles poem: The cat is in the bag I leave the bag where it is so the cat can get in it and dream for a very long time while the rest of my building purrs A penny lies on the floor in front of the chest.

To the right of the chest, an iron sits yet to be unplugged. Behind the iron, a kettle barely fits between the wall and the open door, as if reverse-propping the door from being fully closed. Above the chest is a black clock, stopped. At 10:25.

On your left is the bed. A queen-sized bed with blue, wrinkled bedding and a white blanket, folded to one side, as if the sleeper just left.

Buried in the soft, fluffy bed is a black pair of headphones. In front of the bed is a TV. You walk around to the other side of the bed.

An inside-out red sweatshirt is spread out on a corner of the bed. You want to pick it up and revert it. But just before you touch it, your hand jerks back, as if touching a layer of glass that blocks you from these pre-apocalyptic artifacts. Your eyes follow the sleeve of the shirt, to the ridge of the folded blanket. Underneath it is A s il v e r swor d Gleaming under the sunlight. Lying in the middle of the bed. Its golden hilt presses down the soft blanket. Its tip almost slits open the pillow.

White blanket. Blue beddings. No spraying stain of blood.

A preserved knightship.

Next to the bed by the wall is a black metal shelf. A half-empty bag of tortilla chips and a box of English breakfast tea. Next to a glass vase with one giant plastic leaf. Next to a pile of undone laundry. At least five months’ old.

No longer smells. Next to a wooden basket of bottles of booze. Unfinished wine, openseal champagne. The burgundy-colored liquid appears bottomless in the dark green glass bottles.

Behind the window, Yale’s castle-esque architecture completes New Haven’s skyline.

A thin slice of cloud goes to hide behind Phelps Gate. A black bird flits through the blue sky.

The bird stops and lands in front of the neighboring room’s window. It peeks inside and sees nobody. A vintage Paris poster hangs right next to Batman’s twisted face. A pencil sketch of a gondola that looks like a Gucci handbag. A B/W photo of a Swiss village. A grey metal lamp with five lightbulbs poking outward like Medusa. A white clock high on the wall, also stopped. At 10:10. A bit earlier than next door.

coffees yet to be opened. All have expired.

The fridge has disappeared. Along with the things inside. Iced tea. Diet coke. More beer.

Leftover Papa John’s. The last tuna salad sandwich with the floppy whole wheat bread from Durfee. That was supposed to be consumed late at night. All disappeared. Along with the intended consumers.

Where did they go?

Did they really voluntarily leave? Or has another civilization raided this place, kidnapped its occupiers, and terminated the civilization of the occupiers?

Of every Yalie?

Are you visiting a stranger’s suite, or a museum of an extinct people?

Tiptoeing through this raided common room, you are surprised to find two unraided adjacent single bedrooms. You peak in from outside: the left room brightly lit thanks to the window in the slanted roof above the bed, the right room dark, the left occupied by an unmade double bed, the right by a large table piled with books and papers, the left room has a large fake plant, the right a bronze soccer player statue. With the reverence of visiting the MET, you walk into the left room.

In front of you is a large vintage

Below the clock, a mirror reflects the opposite wall. A blue-and-white illustration of the Empire State Building. An oil painting of a European rural house, with orange roofs and red flowers. Hanging above a blue twin-bed mattress and a wooden desk. A stack of books on the left. A pile of ID cards in the middle. A deck of cards and a stack of flashcards on the right. A test scored 89/100. And the bronze soccer player statue.

The bird knows that it just witnessed the relics of an ex-life, or an absence of life. It attempts to reconstruct the life of the room’s habitant from what it just saw. So do you. You and the bird reconstruct two dramatically different lives, only separated by one wall. And 15 minutes. Two frozen clocks apart. *** “Is Christina’s suite unlocked?”

Josh asks me as I head back downstairs. I look to my right: her suite is right here. The suite in which I played Rose, Bud and Thorn with my FroCo group for 10 straight days during Camp Yale. The suite where I sipped tea and ate grilled cheese every Saturday night.

The suite in which Josh and I and friends hid to surprise Christina when she was named a Rhodes Scholar. I turn right toward the dark wooden door.

The door opens with the same squeak as the last time I opened it in March. Nobody else is here, but the common room is left as if the vibrant actions halted just as I walked in. A black down jacket dangling on the back of the couch. A green book from the library resting on the couch’s armrest. Whoever left it there quit studying to join the socializing crowd. A stack of clothes piled up on the end of the black futon, as if making space for people to sit. On the window sill, the green bonsai extends its leaves towards the sun. In the fireplace, melted candles. On the coffee table, a half-empty bottle of hot sauce, its lid loose. An open jar of jam.

A swiss knife. A pair of scissors. A row of Christina’s mugs.

I recognize all of them. Which one did I use the last time I came here to sip tea and eat grilled cheese?

The black one — was I the one who put it at this exact spot on the coffee table?

Was I part of the history of the last day in this suite?

In the middle of the coffee table lies the unfinished puzzle my entryway was working on. Eighty percent of it is complete. The finished puzzle would be a flock of birds flying in the blue sky. The monocolor blue pieces— nobody knew which part of the puzzle they belong to—are neatly laid in the box of the puzzle.

When the puzzle is finished, where will the birds go?

I study the puzzle with my continued reverence as if visiting the extinct civilization museum. A roll of trash bags stands on top of the birds. I want to remove it. But a layer of invisible glass blocks me, the spectator, from the artifacts. But I was there when my entryway was completing the puzzle! I am observing my own history! Why am I not allowed to restore it?

I extend my right hand and pick up the roll of trash bags. The moment my fingertips touch the white plastic, the invisible glass shatters.

The boundary between the collective forgotten history and our personal history is breached.

Whatever happened the last night everyone was in Christina’s suite, the moment this March our personal histories froze, is saved.

I text pictures of what I see in her suite to Christina. She loves them.

After being raided by coronavirus six months ago, Christina’s place will be raided again by Yale dorm movers before long to make room for new residents next year. Christina’s puzzle, mugs, futon, mug, hot sauce, will all be thrown away, along with the headshots of the other six FroCos on the first floor whiteboard, along with the top floor mystery residents’ vintage storage chest, quill pen, Mickey Mouse chocolate, Eileen Myles poem, sword, unfinished wine, soccer player statue, flash cards, Batman poster, the 89/100 test, and the stopped clocks.

Along with everything left behind yet to be packed.

Maybe the memories, too.

The trivial memories. The ones you don’t realize their significance during their occurrence.

Like the fridge and the leftover food and everything in the empty suite that has already disappeared.

Old things in these suites are thrown away so that new people can move in with their new things and form new memories.

Only to be forgotten later as well.

Until someone random—a stranger, or even a bird—walks by. And walks in.

And remember what they see.

To save these memories.

Contact TONY HAO at tony.hao@yale.edu .

// ANASTHASIA SHILOV

ONLINE THIS WEEK: WKND RECOMMENDS Going on vacation.

WHAT’S THE LAST THING THAT SHOCKED YOU? Lauren Moore ’24 describes the community she’s gained in Morse College.