Yale Daily News - Week of Sept. 18

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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 · VOL. CXLIII, NO. 3 · yaledailynews.com

School of Music makes commitments to racial equity

BY PHOEBE LIU STAFF REPORTER

push for increased Black representation within classical music.

Of the 231 students enrolled at the Yale School of Music in fall 2019, only three — just over one percent — identified as Black or African American, according to a report from the Office of Institutional Research.

And though the first African-American woman to receive a degree from Yale — pianist and composer Helen Eugenia Hagan, class of 1912 — was a School of Music student, the average proportion of Black students across the University’s professional schools is 5.65 percent, highlighting the School of Music’s proportion as relatively low.

Underrepresentation of Black voices in Western art music, the School of Music’s primary canon of instruction, stretches far beyond Yale. A 2015 report by the League of American Orchestras revealed that Black or African-American musicians comprised 5.93 percent of American youth orchestras and 1.77 percent of American professional orchestras. And institutions that teach Western art music have centered a narrative influenced by the genre’s history, which has its roots in the Western church and European aristocracy.

In interviews with the News, School of Music students and administrators explained their commitments to work against systemic racism in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer — and their

A CALL TO ACTION Choral conducting student James Davis MUS ’21, who is Black, studied mathematics and engineering as an undergraduate at Morehouse College, an HBCU in Atlanta, Georgia. Davis initially did not consider conducting as a career because, though he’s always been a musician, he didn’t see himself represented in the field.

“Subconsciously, I may have stayed away from it for that reason,” Davis said. “My hope is that the next generation of Black boys growing up don’t feel like that.”

Clarinetist Richard Adger MUS ’19 ’20 said that frustration has permeated many of his conversations with other Black musicians.

“A lot of the issues in classical music are systemic,” Adger said.

“It’s going to take time to rebuild.

And before we rebuild, we have to have tough conversations. What do we have to get rid of? What do we have to knock down?”

The killing of George Floyd in May initiated nationwide protests against police brutality. The movement has led to a push for increased Black representation in several areas of American society, including classical music spaces long-filled with white individuals and dominated by Western European influence. This cultural dominance is exemplified by the household-name status of individual composers like Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and

YALE DAILY NEWS

Underrepresentation of Black voices in Western art music stretches far beyond Yale. the relatively unregarded musical contributions from other areas of the globe — like the ragas of Southeast Asia.

“The classical music field needs to take a look in the mirror,” Davis said. “And I think these recent killings and shootings are forcing classical music to do that.”

Soon after the protests began,

Yale Dining rolls out new app

BY VALERIE PAVILONIS AND ZULLY ARIAS STAFF REPORTER AND STAFF ANALYST

LUCAS HOLTER/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale Dining will update the weekly menu each Thursday by 10 a.m. for the following Sunday through Saturday. many prospective Yale students take the time to thoroughly research the dining offerings, how we customize meals for students with dietary restrictions, food allergies, religious guidelines and more.”

Yale Dining will update the weekly menu each Thursday by 10 a.m. for the following Sunday through Saturday, according to Ramos. The app includes information on how Yale Hospitality has adapted to the COVID-19 pan-

ican colleagues and friends at YSM and throughout the world.”

The statement promised to question the institution’s policies and “seek understanding and insight that prevents all vestiges of racism in [the school’s] work,” while also renewing its commitment to SEE MUSIC PAGE 4

Survey shows first years support social movements

BY ROSE HOROWITCH STAFF REPORTER Yale Hospitality created a new dining app designed to better serve their new menu this year and address the bugs of the previous interface.

In mid-August, the University revamped its dining website, which offers allergen information and dining hall occupancy. In addition to the new website, Yale Hospitality launched the new Transact Mobile Ordering app which can accommodate new features — including pre-ordered meals — and display meals a week in advance. The app had a soft launch in August, allowing students to download it, but officially launched for orders last Friday. The old app did not display sufficient information for students with dining restrictions, according to Christelle Ramos, Yale Hospitality marketing and communications manager.

“Our previous site was passé, out of date and did not respond to emerging needs,” Ramos wrote in an email to the News. “In recent years,

school administrators, faculty and students began to think about how they could incite change within their institution, wanting to fight against systemic racism and for racial equity.

On June 1, School of Music Dean Robert Blocker issued a statement to the YSM community expressing solidarity with “African-Amer-

demic. It also allows students to order grab-and-go meals and sends them a notification when the meal is ready for pick-up — storing data on what they have enjoyed in the past to allow for quick reordering..

For nearly 10 years, Yale Hospitality has had an app displaying menu data. But since its creation, the app had remained largely the same.

University students have long SEE DINING PAGE 4

Throughout the summer, incoming Yalies marched.

One of those marchers was Ruhi Khan ’24, who demonstrated in May to support Black Lives Matter in her predominantly white hometown of Newark, Delaware. The march was peaceful, she said, and she was “moved” to see that many non-Black people like her — Khan is Indian — had come out in solidarity with the movement. During that procession, one of the onlooking police officers asked to take the microphone, Khan said, and in front of the crowd, he asked if attendees could keep it peaceful and safe; his daughter was marching.

Activism was a major topic of this year’s first-year survey, which was sent out by the News to learn more about the incoming Class of 2024. In March, Yale announced that it had admitted 2,304 stu-

dents to the newest class of Yalies.

But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 341 students elected to take gap years as of Sept. 1, up from just 51 in the previous cycle. The anonymous survey — which was sent to 1,207 matriculating members of the Class of 2024 and accepted submissions between Aug. 31 and Sept. 2 — received 471 responses, for a response rate of 39 percent.

While the 471 students who responded to the survey answered questions about their residential colleges and their thoughts on Yale’s plan for the pandemic, many students also shared their opinion on politics.

Khan was not the only firstyear student to march. Others in her class also took to the streets and to social media to stand against police brutality. And while several first years interviewed by the News have differing opinSEE ACTIVISM PAGE 5

Yale Corporation petition candidates take part in Yale Chicago panel

BY MADISON HAHAMY STAFF REPORTER

COURTESY OF MAGGIE THOMAS

The Yale Club of Chicago hosted a virtual panel discussion with Thomas and Ashe — two petition candidates running for the Corporation’s alumni fellow position.

Maggie Thomas FES ’15 and Victor Ashe ’67 are running against one another for a seat on the Yale Corporation, but on a Tuesday panel, they focused on their shared goal: increased transparency and accessibility for the Corporation’s election process.

The Yale Club of Chicago hosted a virtual panel discussion with Thomas and Ashe — two petition candidates running for the Corporation’s alumni fellow position.

The Yale Corporation, the University’s principal governing body, holds elections once a year to select an alumni fellow, filling one of six positions

CROSS CAMPUS

INSIDE THE NEWS

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1975.

Polls opened for Yale College Council elections on Thursday and will close tonight. Learn more about the presidential and vice presidential candidates: Abey Philip '22, Matt Murillo '22, Aliesa Bahri '22, Reilly Johnson '22 and Carlos Brown '23.

Page 6 UNIVERSITY

The News reports that a string of burglaries continues as the police report the theft of belongings of four dorm rooms in Silliman. One police official says capturing the suspect will be "a matter of luck."

YALE COLLEGE COUNCIL

that become vacant after staggered six year terms. The ballot can also include candidates nominated by the Yale Alumni Association committee, as well as candidates who successfully petitioned. Individuals in the latter group must receive signatures from three percent or more of the eligible voting population.

As of Sept. 8, both Thomas and Ashe claim to have reached that threshold, which this year sits at 4,394 signatures.

“As active and engaged alumni, we hope that the event will give attendees an insight into Yale Corporation alumni elections,” wrote event organizers Liz Adams ’78 and David Applegate ’75 in an email to the News, “as well as the opportunity to hear from the

POSTCARDS

The Postcards from Confinement project, which began in May, offers faculty, students and alumni the opportunity to record a musical performance for those in quarantine or the medical field.

Page 9 ARTS

SURVEY

In an anonymous survey sent out to the class of 2024, firstyear students largely showed confidence in the University’s COVID-19 protocols despite the ongoing pandemic.

Page 10 UNIVERSITY

two petition candidates, Maggie Thomas and Victor Ashe.”

The candidates answered questions from an audience of about 25 Zoom attendees as well as the panel’s moderator Alexandra Newman ’05, president of the Yale Club of Chicago.

Thomas, who previously worked on both the Washington Governor Jay Inslee and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren presidential campaigns, is running as a part of Yale Forward, an organization formed by alumni concerned with Yale’s response to the climate crisis. She emphasized that although her platform stresses the need for Yale to be a leader in climate action, she also SEE THOMAS PAGE 5 HUBBLE

The research team behind Project AMIGA — Absorption Maps In the Gas of Andromeda — has just unveiled the most comprehensive survey of Andromeda galaxy's circumgalactic medium, or CGM, to date. Page 13 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

PAGE 2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION GUEST COLUMNIST KAHLIL GREENE

Let’s keep going Y

ale College Council campaign season started this past weekend, which means you’ve been flooded with a wave of GroupMe messages, Instagram stories and Facebook posts from candidates. After the millionth statement that begins with “My name is,” and ends with “please vote for me,” you might be compelled to shut down all of your social media for the week.

When this happens, fight the urge. I request this not for my sake, but for your own.

During my campaign for YCC President in the spring of 2019, classmates who stayed involved with the candidacy process pushed me to form coherent and comprehensive plans to address the issues they faced. I had to earn their trust to earn their support. I committed to bold ideas to help the campus community, and because of these public commitments, I was responsible for enacting them throughout my term.

This is the importance of the election season.

This past year, we felt the results of the student body choosing their representatives wisely. The YCC’s radical impact on the student experience has been indisputable. Case in point: check your transcript from last semester.

Our progressive effectiveness as an organization began with the 2018–19 administration, but was fully achieved this year, as I guided the YCC with two of my campaign promises: first, to “[be] more responsive to contemporary campus concerns” and second, to “increase our interactions with the campus community.”

In short, our YCC affected more sudents because, last year, we pledged to work alongside more students. For example, the Universal Pass/Fail proposal wasn’t just implemented because of policy reports and speeches. It was achieved because we leveraged the organizing efforts of #NoFailYale and the dozens of other campus organizations that sponsored the policy. Similarly, the YCC and the Endowment Justice Coalition gained an audience of the dean of Yale College, the director of administrative affairs, and Yale’s chief investment officer to advocate for divestment largely because of the strategic protests that occurred at and around the Yale-Harvard game.

And in the same vein, our “Yale Together” campaign raised over $55,000 for racial justice nonprofits because we carried out the initiative with a coalition of over 80 student organizations.

Fittingly, our campaign slogan was “Let’s keep going.” It was meant to convey a specific message: The YCC before ours was a successful student government, but by working with student activists and more student groups, our administration would be more successful than any previous one.

We kept to our word. We kept going.

Soon, though, every single person serving on the YCC will give up their roles. What happens next? Will the organization keep going?

Well, that’s up to you.

As the University struggles to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic, high-level decision-makers are more malleable and accepting of creative ideas and reasoned advocacy.

While it is my hope that administrators include more and more students in these discussions, right now, their instinct is first and foremost to consult the student body’s elected representatives. YCC members have to advise, argue and advocate to everyone with authority at Yale, from your professors to President Salovey.

Knowing that the new YCC representatives will have this power and responsibility, don’t you want to ensure your representatives actually represent you?

If so, you should engage with YCC elections as much as possible.

My predecessors, Sal Rao and Heidi Dong, wrote a beautiful op-ed about the need for students to run for YCC positions. Of course, as I have mentioned, students can fight for what they believe in both inside and outside of student government. But no matter where you are, I urge you to make sure that those in YCC positions still embody the changes you want to see on campus.

With over 100 candidates in total in this election, it is clear that there is a ton of interest in student government. This is because the YCC has not only been very successful, but also very visible. We are one of the few student groups that can still operate entirely in a virtual environment, and we’ve made sure to host numerous welcome events and information sessions for all interested students. This is also the first election season where YCC Affinity Networks have conducted outreach to students from underrepresentedgroups on campus.

While high interest and diversity are great, ensuring a leader’s policies actually benefit the communities they claim to represent is far more important.

The only way you can do this is by paying close attention to the issues these candidates point out and the solutions they offer to fix them.

Forums like the YCC-YDN debate tomorrow will require the candidates to lay bare all of their plans and proposals. But even these structured events have limitations and may not provide all of the information you want personally before casting your vote.

So, you must take initiative. Don’t scroll past the campaign statement that shows up on your feed.

Read it. Comment on it. Question it. Critique it. Email candidates to ask what they will do for you.

Direct-message them to understand how they will better student government for years to come. Most importantly, vote at the end of this week.

You must actively engage with the election process to make sure the YCC’s success continues in the way you need it to.

Now, it’s up to you to make sure we keep going.

KAHLIL GREENE is a senior in Timothy Dwight College. He is the president of the Yale College Council.

Contact him at kahlil.greene@yale.edu .

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NEWS’ VIEW: Bahri for President, Johnson for Vice President I

n this year’s long-awaited Yale College Council elections, we have been presented with a number of impressive candidates, each of whom envisions a more equitable and just university. After much deliberation, we, as the managing board of the News, are excited to endorse Aliesa Bahri ’22 and her running mate Reilly Johnson ’22 for YCC president and vice president. As a team, they bring the depth and breadth of experience and thoughtful policy Yale needs during an unprecedented year of crisis.

During their campaign, Bahri and Johnson have often lauded their “30-page platform,” a testament to their preparedness and experience in student government. The two of them have collectively headed both the first-year and sophomore class councils. Bahri has also served as YCC policy director and Johnson as a YCC senator. They tout a track record of success; from working to make free menstrual hygiene products available in the residential colleges to creating the cultural center shuttle line, to establishing walk-in hours at the mental health center and accomplishing many other substantial policy achievements.

We have confidence that a YCC headed by Bahri and Johnson would be ready to govern on their first day. Considering their combined four years of experience in student government, they have an intimate understanding of how to achieve real change. We especially appreciate their experience in light of the fact that elections were delayed — the new YCC will not have the usual three months of summer to prepare for the school year. When the managing board asked Bahri what she would do in her first week, she said that she would expand Yale’s Safety Net Program to provide critical funds to students impacted by the COVID19 pandemic and work to expand the University’s current healthcare network. It is this immediate, urgent support that Yale students need.

Bahri and Johnson’s platform is filled with progressive, but also practical, policies that could be implemented within the span of their one-year term.

We are excited about their plans, which include hiring more mental health providers, making Election Day a University holiday and ensuring that Yale will cover the cost of flights home in an emergency.

In spite of our endorsement, we still have concerns about some aspects of Bahri and Johnson’s campaign and platform.

Bahri and Johnson’s oppo-

nents compellingly argued that the two offered no outside perspective on the YCC as students who had served on student government since arriving at Yale.

Especially compared to their rival ticket, Abey Philip ’22 and Matthew Murillo ’22, Bahri and Johnson seem less inclined to take risks and challenge the University administration. Additionally, because of the rigidity of their platform, students have raised legitimate concern over Bahri and Johnson’s ability to maintain flexibility and respond to student input.

Bahri and Johnson also plan to establish YCC liaisons to activist groups on campus such as the Endowment Justice Coalition.

The YCC leadership should take care to ensure that this structure does not lead the YCC to overshadow the work of grassroots organizers and take credit where others have invested time and effort. We hope that the plans to further incorporate the YCC into existing organizations and movements will uplift those working on the ground.

Philip and Murillo offered compelling reasons for their campaign. They explained how their identities as first-generation and low-income students have motivated them to run, giving them a deep understanding of the needs of Yale students and the ways in which Yale’s policies directly affect more vulnerable community members. Philip and Murillo offered far-reaching reforms in health care policy to make Yale a fairer campus for all, including expanding health care coverage to students taking leaves of absence.

Having grown up in New Haven, Murillo brings lived experience to the duo’s New Haven plans. Philip and Murillo made repairing Yale’s relationship with New Haven a huge part of their platform, seeking to bridge the divide between students and New Haven residents. In addition, Philip brings a wealth of experience and achievement in his past roles on the YCC. Some of the accomplishments that he frequently cited throughout his campaign included creating the $100,000 Student Green Innovation Fund and serving as a founding member for the Universal Pass (UP) movement last spring.

However, Murillo has never served on YCC, nor has he attended a YCC Senate meeting. This is especially worrisome considering that one of the tasks of the VP is to oversee the senate. We were also concerned by the pair’s admission that some of their signature policies, such as a restructuring of Yale’s health insurance plans, could not be realized

fully within their term and might take a number of years to implement. This includes their proposal to switch Yale’s health insurance plans from an HMO to a PPO model, which is more flexible but also comes with higher costs. We were also looking for more details about their plan to phase out the daytime Yale shuttles to reduce competition with New Haven public transit. Without a clear plan to replace shuttle lines, an additional burden would fall on students who rely on the shuttle to travel across campus.

Carlos Brown ’23 beautifully said that he is “running for vice president, not co-president,” which is why he decided not to run on a ticket. In the YDNYCC debate, he made the compelling claim that he sees the role of the VP as a facilitator for campus activists and organizations, not a microphone that dominates their voices. Once in office, Brown hopes to give YCC senators a larger role in setting policy initiatives based on his own frustrations serving on the council last year. He plans to be an advocate for BIPOC students in the YCC and expand options for the study of Indigenous languages. We are also excited to hear that Brown hopes to appoint a dean for Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) students as well as establish a MENA cultural house.

Our concern lies with the fact that Brown missed half of the senate’s 14 meetings, although we appreciate that he clarified to the News that some of these were excused absences for other extracurricular commitments. Moreover, unlike all the other candidates, Brown is a sophomore and has less experience in Yale student government than the competing tickets. If he doesn’t win this cycle, we encourage him to run again next year, when he can combine his campus activism — such as serving as a founding member of the Universal Pass movement — with an additional eight months of experience.

Unlike in past years, we were pleased to see the YCC’s top positions fiercely contested, generating lively and productive debate on substantive policy issues among impressive candidates. The choice to lead our student body is one we should all take seriously: Change at Yale often begins with the YCC. We look forward to a year of progress, despite the challenges we currently face.

This week, vote — our community depends on it.

The News’ View represents the opinion of the majority of the managing board of the News.

AMANCHARLA: In need of essentials E

very day during this pandemic, I never cease to be amazed at how quickly and how drastically health care is being revolutionized. However, despite so much scientific progress, the health care field has neglected certain crucial sectors. Growing divides between so-called “essential” and “nonessential” health care are fueling social stigmas against mental health and reproductive health.

“Essential” health care is what we normally think of in a hospital — emergency room medicine, cardiology, the intensive care unit. But “nonessential” health care is a more murky category. The specialties that fall under “nonessential” health care vary. Historically, however, it has consistently included reproductive health care and mental health care.

While we have come a long way in understanding the science of these two areas of medicine, there are still pervasive gaps in how we view them relative to other sectors.

Policymakers especially have used the pandemic to support their own political agendas for health care, pushing to the side what they deem “nonessential.”

In states like Texas and Oklahoma, abortions were banned during the peak of the pandemic except for lifesaving procedures. As a result, some had

to travel over 800 miles across their state to receive the urgent care they needed.

But this divide isn’t just something that happens somewhere far removed from us at Yale. As students around me struggled with understanding how to access mental health resources or birth control pills, I realized that the distinction between “essential” and “nonessential” health care permeated heavily into the Yale bubble. After hours of scouring the Yale Health website and weeks of trying to obtain appointments, I — along with so many of the people I know here — just gave up. Students are being blocked from accessing their basic health care needs.

In the admissions process, Yale boasts about how many of its students use mental health services. However, two barriers have prevented students from following through with obtaining this care.

First, students seeking these services often lose heart after not receiving a preliminary appointment until weeks or months later. Mental health issues are often urgent, and the lack of resources in such a large institution is a pressing concern. Also, students who have received care have felt abandoned by those tasked to help them, reporting that the tight schedules of the few health care

providers make it difficult to establish personal connections.

While baseline services are critical, we have to start delivering quality resources that all students are always able to acquire.

Access to contraceptives, namely birth control, is equally as challenging. Students have puzzled over insurance policies and methods to access them through Yale Health. On top of the lack of information on birth control pills, appointment availability is also scarce. So, most students end up obtaining them elsewhere, if at all.

Yale is no exception to what we see happening in the country at large. We still have a long way to go in terms of fully incorporating mental health and reproductive health into the schema of “essential” health care. The lack of resources dedicated to these programs, the dearth of health care providers and the inaccessibility of information are evidence of the social stigma we have to actively resist.

Although the pandemic has amplified preexisting divides in health care, it also gives us a chance to recognize and address these concerns, too. We have to be advocates for the health care we need and deserve.

NISHITA AMANCHARLA is a junior in Saybrook College.

Contact her at nishita.amancharla@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 3

NEWS

“In a zombie apocalypse, I expect insane things to happen.” CHANDLER RIGGS AMERICAN ACTOR

CS department adds new certificate

ZOE BERG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The certificate aims to make programming accessible for students with interests in a variety of fields.

BY SANCHITA KEDIA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER As the demand for programming classes continues to rise, the Department of Computer Science has added a new programming certificate, which aims to make pro-

gramming accessible for students with interests in a variety of fields.

All undergraduates who are not majoring in computer science or a computer science joint major are eligible to complete the certificate. To receive the certificate, students must complete a prereq-

uisite course as well as five requirements, among them an introductory programming course, a data structures course, an advanced programming course, a programming elective and an applications or algorithms elective.

“Programming — and com-

puter science broadly — is now an important or essential tool in many, many disciplines,” wrote computer science professor Benedict Brown in an email to the News.

“We want to make sure all students have the opportunity to develop their programming skills whether or not they are CS majors.”

Previously, students looking to accrue a degree in computer science needed to double major in computer science and their other subject of interest if a joint major did not already exist. The programming certificate gives students the opportunity to learn programming and apply programming skills to their interests without majoring in computer science.

Computer science professor and Programming Coordinator Stanley Eisenstat told the News that his department was interested in creating a programming certificate after hearing about the certificate in data science. They proposed the idea to Dean Marvin Chun and then proceeded to design the certificate.

According to Eisenstat, five students have already registered for the certificate, including four seniors and one junior. Many other students, including Samhitha Josyula ’23, are considering the certificate. Josyula said she appreciated how much easier it would be to finish the requirements of the

certificate without having to double in computer science courses during future semesters.

“As someone who has always been intrigued about computer science in relation to my primary field of study (biology), the certificate provides me with an additional track to further my computer science skills without the pressure of double majoring in fields,” she wrote.

According to Brown, the certificate differs from the computer science major in that there is less of a focus on the theory and systems concepts required for the major.

Due to this difference, Eisenstat and Brown said they expect there to be changes to the certificate in the future in terms of the courses offered.

“It’s still [in the] early days, so we’re keeping a close eye on how things develop,” Brown wrote to the News. “There’s a pretty good range of options already, but a larger faculty would let us broaden the choices and better meet the demand we’re seeing from students.”

Students can register for the certificate until the end of the fourth week of their last semester at Yale.

Contact SANCHITA KEDIA at sanchita.kedia@yale.edu .

Janet Lindner to retire in December

BY MADISON HAHAMY AND ROSE HOROWITCH STAFF REPORTERS After more than 20 years at Yale, Janet Lindner, vice president for human resources and administration, will retire in December.

University President Peter Salovey announced her leave in a community-wide email on Monday, writing that Lindner made the University a more safe and inclusive environment. During her tenure, Lindner oversaw the hiring of a new police chief, helped coordinate Yale’s tricentennial celebrations and most recently has led University changes amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“I am grateful to Janet for all that she has accomplished for Yale,” wrote Salovey. “Her knowledge of the university, appreciation for the people within our community, skill at consensus building, and ability to focus on the importance of our work — even in the most challenging of times — make her a remarkable colleague.”

Salovey added that he would soon begin a search for Lindner’s successor. He will do so in collaboration with Senior Vice President for Operations Jack Callahan.

Lindner began working for the University in 1997 and has occu-

pied a number of positions across campus, including associate vice president for administration and public safety and deputy vice president for human resources and administration.

In 2017, Salovey asked her to assume her current post, putting her in charge of staff recruitment, diversity initiatives and employee relations. She also oversees most of Yale’s administrative operations, including the police, security operations, transportation and housing.

In the Monday email, Salovey praised Lindner’s commitment to diversify Yale’s workforce. In the past decade, Lindner has worked to more than double the proportion of University managers from historically underrepresented groups.

“She has worked tirelessly to foster an inclusive and respectful culture at Yale,” Salovey’s email reads. “She often notes that how we approach our work every day can make a lasting difference and transform our community.”

Before starting at Yale, Lindner served as New Haven’s chief administrative officer under the DeStefano administration.

Notably at the University, Lindner led the hiring efforts of a new police chief in 2010. This year, she supervised an outside assessment

of Yale’s policing efforts, which, Salovey writes, is now leading to tangible action on the part of Yale.

In an announcement after a March 2020 report, administrators, including Lindner, wrote that the University’s private police force has committed to limiting police response to calls unrelated to crimes, training in de-escalation techniques, and requiring officers to stop instances of excessive force by their colleagues.

But student groups, including Black Students for Disarmament at Yale, have said this is not enough to combat racism within police forces — arguing that the Yale Police Department should be abolished, not reformed.

Lindner also prioritized a variety of environmental initiatives, such as a ridesharing program and the transition of Yale’s vehicles towards more sustainable fuel.

“I will long remember both her serious commitment to sustainability as well as her more lighthearted effort to include the beloved image of Handsome Dan on each shuttle,” Salovey wrote.

Lindner has been appointed to a variety of leadership positions for both her work at Yale and the city at large. She is the executive sponsor of the Future Leaders of Yale affinity group, serves on the United

YALE DAILY NEWS

Janet Lindner serves as vice president for human resources and administration.

She will retire in December after over 20 years at Yale.

Way of Greater New Haven’s board of directors and is a fellow of Saybrook College.

Lindner also served as an adjunct instructor — teaching on how to manage people in higher education as well as financing and budgeting for nonprofit managers.

She was previously a board member and officer of the Mory’s Association.

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

FGLI peer mentorship groups extend reach to sophomores

BY SERENA PUANG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER When Vanessa Cheng ’24 started her first year at Yale earlier this month, many questions weighed heavily on her mind: What classes should I take? How can I manage my time? What Yale College resources should I use?

Last week, Cheng discovered the newly expanded first-generation, low-income peer mentorship groups — a program designed to help answer these questions.

The program was founded last year

exclusively for first-year students but was expanded to include sophomores as well. Potential students are identified through a list provided by the admissions office and sent an invitation to the program.

The peer mentorship groups are a part of the FGLI Community Initiative, a collaboration between the Yale College Dean’s Office and the Poorvu Center. The groups, which each have five students, were created to help navigate the “hidden curriculum,” the social expectations and norms that often go unsaid at elite institutions,

according to the peer mentorship groups’ website.

“As a first-generation student, I have very few experiences to refer to,” Cheng said. “There’s a lot of small questions that I’m afraid of asking because I’m worried. What if I come off as someone who’s just really silly?”

This year, the program was expanded to sophomores in hopes of providing community while the class of 2023 is away from campus. Besides connecting students to academic resources, mentors advise students as they

YALE DAILY NEWS

The peer mentorship groups are a part of the Community Initiative.

choose majors and make summer plans. Compared to last year, the program has more than tripled in size with 271 students placed into peer mentorship groups, compared to approximately 80 students last year.

The FGLI peer mentorship groups originated out of a desire to expand the First-Year Scholars at Yale summer program into the school year — both focus on community building and offer an introduction to resources provided by the University. Each group of five is composed of a mix of students who participated in FSY and those who did not.

Groups are led by upperclassmen Academic Strategies Mentors who also identify as FGLI. In meetings, which occur twice a month, mentors spend the first 20 minutes introducing students to campus resources or presenting curricula that the program provides. Topics include Yale Health and Safety Net, homesickness, navigating financial aid and pre-professional development.

Students also have the chance to raise their own questions and talk about other challenges they face.

According to Jorge Anaya ’19, the coordinator of the FGLI Community Initiative, groups are meant to do more than pass along information. The FGLI-specific groups foster community, and peer mentorship highlights the “social capital” each student has and their ability to spread knowledge.

Anaya went on to add that stu-

dents often do not realize they have social capital because “it’s seen as a given.” Anaya said that FGLI students must “stick together.”

“We have to share knowledge, but students already carry knowledge, and that’s something worth sharing,” he said.

The program has been more popular than expected. When the FGLI peer mentorship groups opened to sophomores this year, Karin Gosselink, co-supervisor of the program, expected about 60 students to sign up, she said.

Instead, over 135 sophomores requested to participate.

“That really shows students that the kinds of questions and experiences they have are not just isolated to them,” Gosselink said.

“They are things that everyone goes through.”

The program has placed every student who expressed interest, but due to overwhelming popularity, mentors have had to take on more responsibility than anticipated. The program hired additional mentors to help with the sophomore influx, and most mentors work with at least two groups.

Apart from the FGLI peer mentorship groups, academic peer support is available to all students. Resources through the Academic Strategies Program are also available to students year-round regardless of FGLI identity or ability to participate in the programs.

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

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 4

FROM THE FRONT

“I'm addicted to avocados, and I'll put them with anything, particularly chillies. Can you imagine if they became extinct? That would be like the apocalypse, no?” GAEL GARCÍA BERNAL MEXICAN ACTOR

School of Music grapples with representation MUSIC FROM PAGE 1 constructing a “welcoming environment for African-American colleagues — and indeed all people of color.”

That day, the School of Music published a post that stated “Black Lives Matter. Here, everywhere.” The post announced the institution’s June 2 participation in Black Out Tuesday and #theshowmustbepaused, a collective action to protest racism in the music industry. Facebook comments on the school’s posts called for immediate and concrete action steps, like programming works by Black composers and diversifying faculty. Various student groups also began drafting letters to the administration in response.

STUDENTS VOICE CONCERNS

By June 5, a group of School of Music students sent a letter to Blocker and the broader community. The letter stated that “two of our key roles as artists are to uplift communities and improve the human condition: as members of the YSM community, we expect our beloved school to take a firm and decisive anti-racist position.” The letter demanded that the School of Music issue a statement with specific measures to amplify BIPOC voices and “decentralize whiteness” within the institution.

Composer Frances Pollock MUS ’25 helped write the aforementioned letter, as well as several other letters from smaller cohorts of School of Music students from particular fields of study. She was moved by the way her community, in the middle of a pandemic, came together over Google Docs to demand change in their institutions.

The letter proposed several possible action items: curricular reform, programming reform, a celebration of Black History Month, mandatory anti-racism education, community leadership and institutional accountability.

Composer Joel Thompson MUS ’20 ’26, who is Black, said he and his white colleagues have bonded over the fact that they are “victims of their education” — and that they have “rarely, if at all” studied a Black composer in theory or history classes.

Curricular reform suggestions included diversifying faculty, hiring from the New Haven community and requiring each student to take a Music Department course in ethnomusicology or a course in Yale College’s Department of African American Studies.

Thompson acknowledged that it is much easier to diversify the student body than to diversify the faculty and administration — but the School of Music needs to diversify its faculty in order to diversify its curriculum and make Black students feel welcome, he said.

The letter’s authors also suggested the creation of a community liaison to break down barriers between the School of Music and New Haven.

They also called for representative concert programming, which prioritizes the work of composers that represent a population’s diversity. They demanded programming works

by Black composers at concerts for both the Yale Philharmonia and Yale in New York, a chamber music series that performs at Carnegie Hall.

Adger and Pollock both said

that, while diverse programming should be a goal, attitude and intention are even more important — one or two individual composers cannot represent the totality of Black musicians’ experiences.

“When things are being tokenized, it’s very apparent to the marginalized group,” Adger said.

He added that the conversation should be about uplifting voices, not about the School of Music “doing better.”

Pollock said part of the effectiveness of representative programming is determined by wh e t h e r u n d e r re p re se n te d musicians can actually participate in that concert program. If not, she said, it implies that “it’s okay for a few people to represent a whole demographic rather than letting every demographic participate.”

COMMITMENTS TO RACIAL EQUITY School of Music administrators responded to the letter the following week. Blocker said he and others in the institution’s leadership — Associate Dean Michael Yaffe, Deputy Dean Melvin Chen, Senior Executive Assistant to the Dean and Chief of Staff Stefanie Parkyn — received many letters, both signed and anonymous, asking for actionable change.

According to Blocker, the School of Music’s first statement was an immediate emotional response to Floyd’s murder. Even before the initial Facebook posts, School of Music faculty began drafting a set of action items to be released on June 14.

“We all felt a strong desire to look at the school, decipher what was already in the works, what we wanted to accomplish and release a statement in a timely manner,” Yaffe said.

On June 14, the list of action items in an official commitment statement titled “YSM Commitments to Racial Equity.”

Blocker said that the statement, of which he was the main author, incorporated ideas of many faculty members and students, but was not a direct response to any of the letters he received.

The statement’s action items included recruiting from historically Black colleges and universities, mandatory anti-racism training, an expansion of the Ellington Jazz Series, a proposed student orchestra committee for representative programming, observation of Black History Month, expanding the Music in Schools Initiative, plans to appoint a Director of Student Life and the establishment of a faculty resource fund directed toward engaging more musicians of color.

The statement also elaborated on the School of Music’s Strategic Planning Initiative, which consists of several committees “for which issues of diversity and inclusion are priorities.”

Although it is unclear what the initiative will do in the immediate future, the committees have begun to meet.

Pollock was happy to see overlap between the School of Music’s statement and the letters she helped write.

Blocker too felt encouraged that the sentiments reflected in student letters deeply reflected those of the school’s leadership.

Some of the plans, such as the School of Music’s increased effort to recruit from HBCUs, were already underway before

the school released its statement. Director of Alumni Affairs Donna Yoo MUS ’09 has been exploring HBCU partnerships since fall 2019. She has helped form the HBCU Partnership Initiative Committee, which draws members from students, alumni, faculty and staff. So far, the committee has waived the school’s $150 application fee for HBCU applicants and plans to hold workshops on recording high-quality audition tapes.

Yoo said increasing outreach and awareness that Yale has a tuition-free music school is the first step. Most conservatories have high tuition prices, making them inaccessible to many.

Yoo’s committee is also planning recruiting visits to HBCU campuses once coronavirus-related risks lessen.

According to Yoo, diversifying the student body rather than just the applicant pool is crucial and will work in tandem with the school’s other action items.

Davis, a member of the HBCU Partnership Initiative Committee and the only current School of Music student who attended an HBCU, stressed the need to make Black students, especially those from non-conservatory backgrounds, feel comfortable at the historically white institution.

Although Adger felt that he and other Black students did not have the opportunity to contribute to the school’s statement, he said the best action item is the expansion of its Music in Schools Initiative. This initiative works with predominantly Black and Latinx students in New Haven Public Schools and helps alleviate gaps in access to music education.

According to Yaffe, the Symposium and Music in Schools Initiative are funded by the Class of ’57 endowment. Funding for other initiatives comes from concert funds and the regular school budget. And plans are still in their beginning stages, subject to delays and changes. For example, plans for the Black History Month celebration are expanding into a longer-term project to extend beyond February.

Pollock said although institutions “don’t have a great track record of carrying through with their promises of diversity, it was really encouraging this summer to see people actually taking practical steps in the right direction.”

MOVING FORWARD Pollock, Davis and Adger agreed that only time will tell whether the commitments will create any lasting change within the school — and the classical music field, in general.

“Audiences, a lot of times, will look like the stage,” Davis said. “If we want our audiences to be different, the stage needs to reflect that.”

And even though Davis said that it was important for Black musicians to have role models in the field to show that it can be accessible to them, others emphasized that race is only one factor in a musician’s multiplicitous identity.

The student letter stressed that although the current moment demands a focus on Black students at the school, its writers desire to see “equitable representation for all BIPOC moving forward.” This includes the large proportion of Asian and Asian-American students enrolled — aside from white stu-

COURTESY OF YALE SCHOOL OF MUSIC

YSM Dean Robert Blocker issued a statement to the YSM community expressing solidarity with Black colleagues at Yale and around the world. dents, they are the most represented racial group at the School of Music.

Composer Soomin Kim MUS ’21, said that while she understands the importance of highl i g h t i n g u n d e r re p re s e n te d voices, the intention for doing so is important.

“I don’t like being forced to talk about being a woman, or being Korean,” Kim said. “No one’s racial or gender identity has to be at the forefront if they don’t want it to be.”

Thompson said that if he were to “write a piece about birds,” people might see that as a political statement — as his choice not to write about police brutality or the movement for Black lives. He said he’s expected to “write Black music, whatever that means.”

“It’s the nature of our society that my identity as a Black man, an identity as a woman or any other marginalized [identity] is inherently political in this country,” Thompson said.

Davis, Adger and pianist Hilda Huang ’17 MUS ’20 stressed the importance of self-awareness in fighting the racism ingrained in Western art music.

Huang noticed that she has recently received more requests to perform works by Black, other POC and non-male composers.

She sees this as evidence that the field is becoming more aware — and said that it needs to continue in this direction.

Thompson expressed optimism about the school’s attempt at self-awareness. He said that several of his professors have already incorporated the music of Black musicians, including Aretha Franklin and George Walker, into their curricula

since the School of Music began classes on Sept. 8.

In 2014, Thompson wrote “Seven Last Words of the Unarmed.” Each of the choral composition’s seven movements quotes the last words of an unarmed Black man killed by police. The piece’s final movement sets the text “I can’t breathe” to music. These were the last words of Eric Garner, when New York Police Department officers choked him in 2014 — and later George Floyd, when he was killed by Minneapolis police earlier this year.

Audiences stayed far from the work when it was first written — perhaps, according to Thompson, for fear of alienating classical music donors, or because programming the piece was perceived as an “overt political act.”

But this year, on June 4, Carnegie Hall and the Yale School of Music shared performances of Thompson’s work. Several Facebook comments on the School of Music’s post sharing Thompson’s composition called for the school to program it in the 202021 academic year. Thompson suggested that the piece’s reception reflected a perspective shift in classical music.

“I hope that this year is causing an interrogation of our curriculum, our pedagogy and our value system when it comes to music education,” Thompson said.

Blocker agreed: “As we continue to engage and combat racism at YSM, Yale and beyond, I am hopeful that our actions will be carefully calibrated to substantially change our culture rather than enhance our image.”

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

Ordering meals on the go? There’s an app for that DINING FROM PAGE 1

RYAN CHIAO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

University students have long had an interest in developing their own apps, restricting the University from being the only source of food information.

had an interest in developing their own apps, restricting the University from being the only source of food information. One such entrepreneur, Erik Boesen ’24, said he is one of many undergraduate students looking to develop the go-to competitor of Transact Mobile Ordering.

Boesen said his app will try to emphasize aesthetics by featuring a calendar on the home screen.

He hopes to allow students to click a day on the calendar and view its dining options. Yale’s app has users click “next” to view the menu of each following day.

“I kind of have a natural inclination to want to make data be free in a way,” Boesen told the News. “I really wanted to take the information that is kind of now locked away a little bit in that website and make it a little more publicly available.”

Boesen’s new app will work on

both Apple and Samsung devices, and he estimates it will drop in about a month. Ideally, he said, the app will update meals in accordance with Yale Dining’s official site.

Students who worked on alternative apps said the old Yale Dining app often glitched.

Some students created their own apps in the past as alternatives, including Yale Menus and Yale Dining Plus for iOS and Android products, respectively.

Eric Foster ’20, Yale Menus developer and the News’ former publisher, said Yale Dining’s old app was difficult to use and slow to update. Boesen said the Android version often crashed when users looked for information on Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin, two colleges that did not exist when it was first developed.

“It was revolutionary for its time, as I understand. Yale was pretty much the first university to have a system like this where they had an app that

could show you which dining options were available,” Boesen said. “Since then, it’s kind of degraded.”

Yale Menus included a Tinder-like feature in which students could like or dislike to indicate whether they enjoyed a meal.

Foster, who developed the app, said that he hopes the University will soon take advantage of this data on which meals students prefer.

“If you have food allergies or other restrictions, Yale Menus can warn you that a particular dining hall might not have much you can eat at a particular meal — and crucially, it warns you before you use your swipe to enter the dining hall and are forced to eat there,” Foster wrote to the News.

Hospitality worked with colleagues at Yale Internal Communications to design the new app.

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

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

FROM THE FRONT

“We are living on the brink of the apocalypse, but the world is asleep.” JOEL C. ROSENBERG AMERICAN-ISRAELI AUTHOR

First years interested in activism, survey says ACTIVISM FROM PAGE 1 ions on the numerous movements that made headlines over the summer — and continue to do so — one thing is clear: many members of the newest batch of Yalies, from Delaware to Utah to California, consider political and social activism to be a core concern.

ACTIVISM AT HOME In Corpus Christi, Cynthia Sutanto ’24 attended two “strictly non-violent” Black Lives Matter rallies that focused on spreading awareness of police brutality. Additionally, the events provided a platform for Black artists to share their thoughts on the movement, Sutanto wrote in an email to the News.

“I chose to be a part of these rallies to stand in solidarity with members in my community who are affected by police brutality,” Sutanto wrote.

“I believe these events are an important way to inform the general populace about racial inequality. The large amount of media attention that rallies/protests gained put pressure on lawmakers to make a change.”

Still, Sutanto noted that she perceives much of the current activism as performative, and hopes that activists will go beyond social media and into politics to advocate for change.

Jamarc Simon ’24 told the News that he “100 percent support[s] the Black Lives Matter movement,” saying that the country is moving in the right direction. While Simon added that he is “a little iffy” about the Defund the Police movement, he said that he supports better training for police officers and fully supports protests against police brutality.

From the survey results, most students have similar feelings.

Nearly three-quarters of first years who responded to the News’ survey, or 74 percent, were “very supportive” of the Black Lives Matter movement, while 17 percent were “somewhat supportive.” Respondents answered similarly when asked whether or not they supported protests against police brutality.

But distributions differed when students were asked if they supported the Defund the Police movement: just 34 percent were “very supportive,” while 11 percent and 12 percent of respondents were “somewhat unsupportive” and “not at all supportive,” respectively.

25.3 percent of first years who answered the survey said they had participated in a protest against police brutality this summer, and 49.9 percent said they weren’t able to attend a protest, “but wanted to.”

Even though Matthew Miller ’24 was not able to go to any protests for very long because he has family members who are at high risk for COVID-19, he told the News that he does wholeheartedly support Black Lives Matter and defunding the police.

“I do feel very strongly about the matter, being Black, so I want to be a part of the change,” Miller wrote in an email to the News. “The idea of defunding police was new to me but it makes so much sense — I’m also a very big mental health awareness advocate and often police do not properly respond to delicate mental health crises.”

Other students told the News about how sentiment for police reform has made its way past the sidewalks and streets and into their homes. For the first time, Mahesh Agarwal ’24’s immigrant parents are considering anti-Black racism, and

Agarwal himself has learned about “nitty gritty issues” such as broken-windows policing.

For Agarwal, critically examining law enforcement is a crucial method of reform.

“I love that we're questioning a core aspect of society,” Agarwal wrote to the News. “Does our criminal justice system need to look exactly the way it does now or could we imagine a more effective system? I don't like the idea of pitting people against each other or burning everything down. I see issues through a policy lens rather than an ideological one.”

Gabe Ransom ’24 told the News that while he already cheered on movements to reform the police, the shooting last week of a teenager with autism near his home in Utah brought the issue closer to home.

“It was especially powerful for it to happen right next to my house, because most of the incidents that everyone talks about are Atlanta, Minneapolis, Ferguson, places that are not close to me,” Ransom said. “It always sets in a little bit more when it’s your community.”

POLITICAL LEANINGS Similar to past years, the incoming class skews heavily liberal, with 32 percent and 46 percent of respondents saying that they were “very liberal” and “somewhat liberal,” respectively. Very few students identify on the other side of the political spectrum, with just 7.9 percent and 1.3 percent of respondents calling themselves “somewhat conservative” or “very conservative,” respectively.

Opinions on social acceptance based on political leanings also

varied. A far greater proportion of liberal-leaning respondents answered “yes” when asked if they thought their political views would be accepted on campus, whereas the majority of conservative-leaning students answered either “no” or “unsure.”

These results line up with Suanto’s impression of the political landscape among first-year Yalies, based on the interactions she’s had during her first two weeks on campus. While most of her peers lean left, she said, she has also made friends with students whose views lean centrist or right. And while her left-leaning peers tend to be very vocal about their beliefs, the more center- or right-leaning students have been less so.

“These students tend to not broadcast their opinions because they fear being ‘canceled’ by other Yalies,” Sutanto wrote. “I believe this trend is problematic because it stifles the potential for productive political discourse. In order to actually change the minds of students (who are ultimately the future of this country), there needs to be a willingness to and acceptance of listening to a wide range of opinions.”

For Simon, Yale’s political environment is a welcome change — his high school community, he said, did not generally hold the views that he does. The “good thing” about Yale, Simon said, is that it seems like a safe space to voice one’s opinion, and he does not think that “people will condemn you for your political views.” Still, he said that he is biased in this particular case,

because the overall campus political tone matches his own.

Han Choi ’24 shared a view similar to Sutanto and Simon.

“I think we can all agree that the Yale student body is definitely super liberal and left-leaning,” Choi said. “To me and to other students … just meeting people in my res college, I’m starting to see that there’s a lot more people with differing views, like not that far to the left, but I actually think that most people would be accepting of views even on the other end of the political spectrum.”

AT YALE, ACTIVISM CONTINUES Before Choi came to Yale, he joined a police reform advocacy group in his hometown of South Pasadena near Los Angeles.

While his local police department did not grapple heavily with the issues criticized within the Los Angeles Police Department, Choi said, he and his group looked into the police handbook and looked for ways to increase transparency and accountability.

Even though Choi’s activism took place in his hometown, survey results indicate that almost half of first-year students — 46 percent — plan to engage in activism while at Yale. And while 36 percent of students are unsure of their plans, only about 18 percent said that their time at Yale will not include activism.

Multiple students interviewed by the News said that while activism at Yale did not play a major role in their decisions to matriculate, they appreciate what they perceive as the University’s

broader culture of advocacy. For Sutanto, her interests lay in the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project and the Yale Prison Education Initiative, both projects run through Dwight Hall and both address issues she cares about.

“While activism did not specifically influence my decision to come to Yale, I did love the sense of community that Yale has,” Sutanto wrote. “Yalies are almost always willing to go the extra mile to support one another and their New Haven community. In the face of great racial inequality and a pandemic, Yale students make a point to not be complicit.”

Miller echoed Sutanta, saying that student activism and the general passion for social movements has influenced him.

While activism will not be his main focus while at Yale, Miller said, there remain issues that he wishes to fight for.

“I do plan to participate in political activism, much to the chagrin of my mother who told me that when I get to school, I just need to ‘keep [my] head down and do [my] work,’” Miller wrote. “I don’t think I would have ever considered myself an activist until I saw the change other Yalies were trying to create and realizing I could participate as well.”

Students from the Class of 2024 come from all 50 states, in addition to Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, and 72 countries.

Contact VALERIE PAVILONIS at valerie.pavilonis@yale.edu and ZULLY ARIAS at zully.arias@yale.edu .

ZULLY ARIAS/PRODUCTION & DESIGN STAFF

Corp candidates speak on transparency THOMAS FROM PAGE 1

YALE DAILY NEWS

The candidates answered questions from an audience of about 25 Zoom attendees and Alexandra Newman ’05, president of the Yale Club of Chicago.

prioritizes inclusive governance and endowment justice.

Ashe, who was previously the Mayor of Knoxville, TN and a U.S. Ambassador to Poland, is running a campaign that calls for broad internal changes to the Yale Corporation, including more transparency. Both he and Thomas agreed that the Corporation must adjust its election process and government structure.

Ashe pointed out that he and Thomas, as petition candidates, have garnered the support of nearly 11,000 alumni, which he said was close to 60 percent of the average alumni turnout for trustee elections.

“11,000 alumni who want change,” Ashe said, adding that the Yale Corporation “ought to ask themselves what’s going on and why.”

Both candidates also called for an end to the Board of Trustees policy of sealing meeting minutes for 50 years. For her part,

Thomas said that her unsuccessful attempts to access records from 50 years ago make her question whether the Corporation permanently locks away materials, despite their professed standards. Both candidates also agreed that the threshold for signatures for a petition candidate should be lowered.

Thomas summarized all of these changes under her platform tier of inclusive governance, adding that barriers such as these explain why so few petition candidates run and even fewer win. Before Ashe and Thomas, an alum successfully petitioned onto the ballot 18 years ago and the last such candidate to eventually win a spot on the Yale Corporation was William Horowitz ’29 in 1965.

After the event, Thomas added in an email to The News that both she and Ashe hope to reduce the financial barriers that restrict many individuals from funding campaigns.

“To gather this many signatures

online, as we have done, or by direct mail as Victor has done, is a full time job,” she wrote. “Reducing the signature requirement would be one way to remove the influence of money in this election and dramatically broaden the type of candidate who can appear on the ballot.”

Unlike petition candidates, the Yale-nominated candidates typically do not campaign and rely on Yale to spread information about their ideas to alumni. Still, both Thomas and Ashe said they feel the need to actively campaign for the election, a process Ashe thinks may put his Yale-nominated opponents at a disadvantage.

Both campaigns plan to continue attending panels like the Tuesday event at the Yale Club of Chicago with the hope of talking to as many eligible alumni as possible.

The voting deadline for all eligible alumni in the 2020 election was Sunday, May 17 at 11:59 p.m. ET. Contact MADISON HAHAMY at madison.hahamy@yale.edu .

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

YALE COLLEGE COUNCIL Candidates talk health care, YCC structural reform in Tuesday debate

BY LUCY HODGMAN, AIDEN LEE AND SYDNEY ZOEHRER CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS Yale’s COVID-19 health care policies and Yale College Council structural reform took center stage as candidates for YCC president and vice president Candidates debated their platforms ahead of the elections on Thursday and Friday.

On Tuesday, two presidential and three vice presidential YCC candidates participated in the debate, which was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 300 participants watched the event which was hosted by Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Daily News Sammy Westfall ’21 and Grace Kang ’21, the vice president of the YCC. Due to COVID-19, the election, which was originally scheduled for the spring of 2020, was postponed to the fall semester to facilitate a more equitable campaign season. This year, Aliesa Bahri ’22 and Abey Philip ’22 are running for president, while Reilly Johnson ’22, Matt Murillo ’22 and Carlos Brown ’23 face off for the vice presidency.

While Bahri-Johnson and Philip-Murillo are running as tickets, Brown is running solely for vice president.

“We hope that the debate provided a resource for students to learn more about the leaders who will be serving as a liaison between the student body and administration,” Kang said.

The debate was divided into two sections, one for vice presidential and the other for presidential candidates. Candidates had the opportunity to open with a two-minute statement before answering questions posed by Kang and Westfall. Candidates were also asked to provide “yes” or “no” responses to a series of rapid-fire questions, before the floor was opened to audience members’ queries.

Philip and Murillo’s campaign centered around seven pillars — including YCC structural reform and the relationship between the University and the city. Still, the most prominent of the pillars is the proposal to expand health care access by shifting Yale Health coverage from a Health Maintenance Organization model to a Preferred Provider Organization model. A PPO model would allow students to receive health care coverage at facilities beyond Yale Health, they explained. In addition, the ticket’s platform has placed a large emphasis on ensuring environmental sustainability and supporting first-generation low-income students.

Bahri and Johnson advocated a platform directed toward a “just, equitable and safe Yale,” empha-

sizing issues ranging from sexual assault prevention and diversity of mental health care providers to supporting the Endowment Justice Coalition’s efforts to divest from Puerto Rican debt.

Brown, who is running for vice president independently, has centered his campaign on reforming the YCC Senate, improving Yale’s mental health infrastructure and defunding the Yale Police Department.

The vice presidential portion f the debate started by exploring the difference between the tickets’ levels of experience. At the outset, Johnson stated that “this race is often framed as outsider activist versus establishment insider,” referring to the Philip-Murillo ticket and her ticket, respectively.

To rebut that point, she claimed that her experiences bridged the gap between the perceived dichotomy — citing her experience as an advocate for No Fail Yale and writer for the intersectional feminist publication Broad Recognition, in addition to her experience in the as the Sophomore Class Council president and an Ezra Stiles senator.

She argued, “I think experience is important for efficacy, and it is an important demonstration of how effective I will be in office.”

Meanwhile, Murillo, the only candidate with no experience on the YCC, countered that lived experiences mattered more than previous involvement in student government, citing that he grew up “10 minutes down the road in West Haven.” He went on to say that he identifies as a “first-generation low-income student of color that understands firsthand the tangible consequences of YCC policy.”

Brown, despite being the only sophomore candidate, emphasized his support for grassroots movements on campus in addition to his work as a Davenport senator.

“I don’t need to debate my involvement. I named No Fail Yale,” he said. “I came up with the phrase ‘Universal Pass,’” referencing the student-run movement that changed Yale College’s grading policy to an entirely Pass/Fail system due to COVID-19.

He added that his record “strikes a balance” between lived experience and work with the YCC and emphasized his perspective as “enough of an outsider to know what needs to be changed and enough of an insider to know how to get things done.”

All the campaigns also addressed issues of sexual misconduct on college campuses.

Johnson stated that hers was “ the only platform that addresses issues faced by student-athletes,

international students and problems of sexual misconduct.”

Later on, an audience member asked about Murillo being a member of a fraternity on campus. In response, Murillo acknowledged that “there is a fundamental issue with fraternities” and argued that he was an “active speaker in coeducation” while involved with Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. He added that he and Philip have been reaching out to “gender minority groups” on campus throughout their campaign.

The topic of restructuring the YCC brought about heated debate, with Murillo stating that in the past, YCC has “failed to include outside voices because [the Council is] focused on expansion within the YCC rather than bringing in voices” from preexisting student groups.

While all candidates agreed that there are necessary changes to be brought about within YCC, the disagreement was over how to achieve these ends.

Murillo and Philip asserted that separate task forces for large issues should be brought under the umbrella of YCC, but Johnson disagreed.

“Rather than bringing outside voices in, why not help those who are outside? We can go to them and send policy representatives to their groups,” Johnson argued.

Murillo stated that Johnson’s perception was a “bizarre misunderstanding of how the organizations want to be incorporated into YCC.” During the presidential portion of the debate, Philip agreed with his running mate when discussing environmental justice groups, like the Yale Student Environmental Coalition.

He said that “we should stop infiltrating these student groups … we do not want to send YCC members to their meetings, taking their ideas and implementing them ourselves.”

But Bahri maintained her ticket’s position stating that “if we want to talk about centering the work that [student organizations] do then we shouldn’t be making separate task forces when they are the ones who do the work best.”

A point of contention arose surrounding benefits of focusing on long-term versus shortterm planning. Johnson and Bahri stressed the importance of qualification and ability to start work immediately, especially in relation to Philip and Murillo’s long-term plan to restructure Yale’s health care system.

“There [is] room for long term plans, but if you do not have short term plans you are not equipped to take office on Friday,” Johnson said.

During the debate, Siddarth

YALE DAILY NEWS

Shankar ’22, an audience member, asked if Philip felt that switching Yale Health from an HMO to PPO model would be realistic given that the objective of HMO is to keep care local to Connecticut.

In response, Philip reassured him that the ticket had spoken to Paul Genecin, director of Yale Health, and Ariel Perez, assistant manager of Member Services, about the switch. Philip said that both administrators said the plan was feasible. He also argued that “other universities have already [made the change] like Harvard and Columbia, who go through Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield and Aetna.”

Philip also emphasized that the change “is essential to provide more health care access to students outside of Connecticut because no student should go without health care.”

For Danielle De Haerne ’22, an undecided voter, the debate was an important factor in determining her decision.

“I was not certain of who I wanted to vote for beforehand, but the debate helped me settle completely on Aliesa and Reilly,” she said. “Aliesa’s statement on expanding Safety Net to cover technology, health care and — [to make it] available to students on leaves of absence — was also incredibly impactful to me as a student who relies on Safety Net and is personally frustrated by its shortcomings. [These are] shortcomings that it seems Aliesa’s platform will be addressing from the get-go.”

Natasha Ravinand ’23 asserted that Bahri and Johnson’s ”prior experience in the YCC, their strong track record, and their comprehensive policy platform make them the strongest candi-

dates in the race.”

Sarah Grube ’22, for her part, was “very impressed with Abey and Matt’s idea of transitioning Yale Health to a PPO, rather than an HMO.” She emphasized her personal investment in the policy, adding that “this has been a big issue for [her] as an out-ofstate student who relies on her parent’s insurance.”

Although first years, under normal circumstances, would not have matriculated at Yale in time for the debate, the delayed election meant that many could attend.

“This was my first debate, so I was just surprised by the whole process,” said Aderonke Adejare ’24. “I want to see Yale help students ... financially by reducing or eliminating laundry costs, [by being] more sustainable — especially now that we are more reliant on to-go meals — and defunding or abolishing [Yale Police Department], and providing more mental health resources. I think Carlos Brown and Aliesa Bahri would help to accomplish this goal.”

Chloe Adda ’22, who is running unopposed for events director, did not participate in the debate.

YCC Elections will be open on YaleConnect for all students from 9:00 a.m. on Sept. 17 to 9:00 p.m. on Sept. 18. All YCC positions are up for election including president, vice president, events director and two senators from every residential college.

Contact LUCY HODGMAN at lucy.hodgman@yale.edu, AIDEN LEE at aiden.lee@yale.edu and SYDNEY ZOEHRER at sydney.zoehrer@yale.edu .

CANDIDATE PROFILE: Aliesa Bahri ’22 and Reilly Johnson ’22

YALE DAILY NEWS

BY AMELIA DAVIDSON STAFF REPORTER Citing a policy platform with 30 sub-sections and a total of eight student government titles between them, Aliesa Bahri ’22 and Reilly Johnson ’22 say they are prepared to take on the respective roles of Yale College Council President and Vice President.

The decision to run as a pair came naturally to Bahri and Johnson, as they served together as president and vice president, respectively, on the First Year Class Council, and then reversed roles on the Sophomore Class Council. Bahri, the current YCC policy director, and Johnson, former Ezra Stiles College Council president, have also both served in the YCC Senate, with Bahri as an

associate senator and Johnson as a senator.

“We decided to run together because we felt that combined, we had a pretty robust knowledge of policymaking at Yale and activist culture at Yale,” Bahri said. “Combined between Reilly and I, we have served at every level of student government leadership. And we’ve probably tackled just about every campus issue, and if we haven’t tackled it, we do have a plan to.”

According to Bahri — who, if elected, would be the fourth female YCC president in the past two decades — student government experience is especially important this year, because unlike in years’ past, elected students will not have the summer to prepare for the term.

Instead, they will start the job effec-

tively immediately after the votes are tallied. Bahri said that even without these summer months, she and Johnson have already cultivated important relationships with administrators through their prior roles.

Although they both highlight their prior experiences in their platform, Bahri and Johnson want to make it clear that the two are not “establishment” candidates. They say they are running on a platform of reform: one that includes internal changes to the YCC that would involve eliminating the policy director position in favor of a committee-based model that could involve students in and out of the YCC. Bahri and Johnson also want to draw on their experience in organizations outside of the YCC to foster more collaboration between the council and other activist communities at Yale.

“I think the most distinctive difference between us and our predecessors is that we’re going to center organizations that have never received the attention of the YCC to the extent that they deserve,” Johnson said. “We’re going to center organizations tackling, for example, Yale paying its fair share to New Haven.

We’re going to center organizations like Black Students for Disarmament, we’re going to center organizations like [the Endowment Justice Coalition]. Not only are we going to collaborate with them, but we’re going to amplify them and lend them the institutional power the YCC has built up since we were founded in 1972.”

Their platform is split into three sections: “ideas for a just Yale,” “ideas for an equitable Yale” and “ideas for a safe Yale.” Within those sections, the

platform is subdivided into a total of 30 different issues that the two plan to tackle.

To create a more just Yale, Bahri and Johnson hope to engage in more social justice movements on campus. They want to address what Bahri calls the “moral atrocities” for which Yale is responsible, pointing to the Yale Police Department and the investment of the endowment. They say they plan to support efforts to defund and dismantle the Yale Police Department, support the Endowment Justice Coalition and support initiatives to ensure that Yale is paying its fair share to New Haven.

To create a more equitable Yale, Bahri and Johnson are focusing on “tackling lines of marginalization including gender, LGBTQ+ status, income, race, ethnicity and disability,” according to Johnson. This involves increasing funding for technology and dining subsidies, forming committees focused on diversifying academic curriculums and fostering counselling and mentorship for students who are not living in New Haven.

With regards to safety, the two are promoting initiatives meant to keep students safe during this global pandemic. They plan to disseminate information regarding testing guidelines and ensure students out of state are still receiving proper support and guidelines from Yale. They also want to push for the diversification of the staff of Yale Mental Health and streamline the process of scheduling telehealth appointments. “[COVID-19] has changed our priorities … it’s never been clearer that students facing financial insecurity, housing insecurity and food

insecurity need our support, and they need it badly,” Johnson said.

“And that is the role of the YCC under Reilly and Aliesa, it’s prioritizing student needs.”

According to Bahri and Johnson, they have created a policy platform that plays to their strengths and their ability to collaborate. Although the two stressed that they have the utmost respect for standalone candidates, they feel that their partnership is “stronger than the sum of the parts,” Johnson said, and they encourage voters to cast their ballots for them as a team. Of the five candidates for president and vice president, Carlos Brown ’23 is the only one who is not campaigning with a running mate.

In speaking to the News, Bahri also addressed her and Johnson’s statuses as female candidates. There have only been three female YCC presidents in the last 20 years, and Bahri said she feels that she and Johnson are often subject to scrutiny not applied to male candidates. Bahri said they frequently receive the label of “snakes” or “power-hungry.”

“Reilly and I are running because we genuinely care about student government, and because we feel like we are good at our jobs and want to keep doing it because we want to make a difference at Yale. And we’re no different from other candidates in those intentions,” Bahri said. “So I really hope in this election that regardless of who wins, our candidacy is considered fairly by our peers.”

Voting for YCC elections will take place on Sept. 17 and 18.

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

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

CANDIDATE PROFILE: Abey Philip ’22 and Matthew Murillo ’22

BY AMELIA DAVIDSON STAFF REPORTER Abey Philip ’22 and Matthew Murillo ’22 are using their experiences as first-generation low-income students to run on what they call the most progressive and intersectional platform the Yale College Council elections have ever seen.

Philip and Murillo, if elected, would be the first FGLI ticket to lead the YCC. Both point to their FGLI identities as the main reasons for why they decided to run. Philip has served as a YCC Senator, the vice president of the Benjamin Franklin College Council and a sustainability liaison.

Murillo has never served on the YCC. This summer, both of their family’s suffered from unforeseen health care costs and job loss associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. They said that this exposed many of Yale’s pandemic shortcomings. They decided that heading the YCC was the way that they could reform Yale’s health care system and remove institutional barriers for FGLI students and students of color.

“Our skin is in the game,” Philip said. “Because, if we don’t pay attention to these policies, our families are hurt, we are hurt and our fellow students are hurt. And that kind of skin in the game isn’t usually seen within traditional YCC candidacies. Because at the end of the day they can leave Yale, and nothing will happen, but if we leave Yale, we don’t have health insurance. We’re still food insecure.

We’re still housing insecure. We have to pay attention.”

While the two have centered their FGLI identities prominently in their campaign, Philip also pointed to his identity as a queer person of color as an important factor influencing his candidacy. He said that FGLI students and queer students of color are significantly underrepresented within the YCC, and Philip hopes to remove barriers to entry for such students if elected.

Murillo grew up in West Haven, just 10 minutes away from Yale’s campus, and points to his experience living in the area as a unique qualification for serving as vice president.

“When the student body leaves over the summer, I’m still here,” he said. “I’m still the one that sees the after effects of certain Yale policies that directly impact the city.

And I want a voice in [the YCC] that can … push Yale and push Yale policies towards bettering the city and towards making closer connections that don’t have adverse effects.”

The two have divided their platforms into seven pillars: health care and the COVID-19 response, the defunding and dismantling of the Yale Police Department, protection and empowerment of FGLI students, sustainability at Yale and in New Haven, the support of women, gender minorities, and queer and transgender students, YCC reform and Yale’s relationship with New Haven.

The two told the News that they wrote out their entire platform in a 40-page document, and revised it at least seven times. They said each pillar has been heavily researched and includes specific

implementation plans.

The aspect of their platform that Philip and Murillo stress the most is health care reform. Both have had to deal with unforeseen health care costs, and Murillo’s family contracted COVID-19 this summer, with his parents spending significant time in the hospital. They say that their experiences have taught them that Yale’s health care system is, in their opinion, not adequate to protect FGLI students when those students are not physically on Yale’s campus.

They wrote a detailed plan to change the system entirely and met with Yale Health Director Paul Genecin to ensure that their plan was feasible.

“Because we care so much about our communities — whether it is [the] New Haven community, queer communities, low income communities — because we’re in these communities every single day, we took the time to research — meticulously research — every single one of our policies,” Philip said. “ It’s very easy to write down bullet points and platitudes. But we have to care about these policies because if we don’t care about these policies then it’s our communities that are hurt.”

Philip and Murillo also emphasize intersectionality in their platform. When drafting policies for their candidacy, Philip’s rule was that “if it’s not intersectional, it’s not a good policy.” Philip cited his past successes in the YCC — such as subsidized laundry materials, which both help FGLI students and make laundry more sustainable — as indicators that he can create pol-

COURTESY OF ABEY PHILIP

icies that tackle multiple issues.

Philip and Murillo call their platform the most progressive that the YCC has ever seen. They say that they are tackling issues — like health care — that the YCC had previously shied away from because of feasibility concerns. But Philip and Murillo said that they have talked to the relevant administrators, done the research and that their plans are feasible — and necessary — for the moment.

Murillo told the News that often the FGLI communities “are advocated for, but we’re at a point where we need to be represented at the decision making table.”

When asked why he decided to run for YCC office, Philip said that often students run for YCC positions for “clout or resume building.”

“But our communities are on the line,” he said. “It’s as simple as that.

If we don’t win, and if we don’t get our policies at the forefront of the administration and at the forefront of the YCC, then we’re not going to get health care. … We’re going to still be food insecure and housing insecure. We’re never going to be able to advocate for our communities in as prominent a position as YCC president and [vice president].

We’re in it because it matters. We can’t afford to wait. We can’t afford to stay on the sidelines. And we’re running for our lives.”

Voting for YCC elections will take place on Sept. 17 and 18.

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

CANDIDATE PROFILE: Carlos Brown Jr. ’23

BY AMELIA DAVIDSON STAFF REPORTER A sophomore without a running mate, Carlos Brown Jr. ’23 argues that his unorthodox campaign for Yale College Council vice president makes him the ideal candidate for these unorthodox times.

Brown said he was scared when he declared his candidacy on Sept.

11, the formal start date of YCC campaigns. He only made his decision to run the weekend prior, after speaking with close friends and praying for guidance. Brown served as a senator this past year, meaning he lacks the experience on the YCC Executive Board which is typical of many YCC leaders. Still, he said his background makes him qualified to run for vice

president, whose main role is to lead the YCC Senate.

“I really wanted to bring a very specific message about the importance of the role of vice president and the unique role of vice president, not just as kind of like a tie-on of the president, but someone whose job is to make sure the YCC is running the way it should,” Brown said. “And I felt like running that way, running as a candidate without a president, intentionally was a way to bring attention to that issue and really make sure that we’re evaluating candidates on their merits, not their associations.”

Brown said that before the campaign period, a presidential candidate — whose name he did not reveal to the News — approached him about joining a ticket. He ultimately decided to

COURTESY OF CARLOSFORYCC.COM

remain unpartnered, as he wanted the vice president position to be viewed as its own role, independent of the president.

Brown is now urging Yalies to “split their ticket” by voting for a president from one of the joint tickets and for him as vice president.

“I think the vice presidency needs its own attention because it’s a unique role,” Brown said. “And I ran as an independent, and giving people an option to select someone who’s not on a ticket, I think that we’re making the rest of the election more democratic, we’re encouraging people to make decisions which respond to the role.”

Brown points to various aspects of his identity as reasons he should be elected. As a sophomore, Brown says he can speak to the perspective of those who are not on campus and those who have done nearly half of their Yale career online. And as a Black man, Brown says he can share the perspective of what it is like to be Black on Yale’s campus — a perspective he says is especially necessary during this national moment of racial reckoning.

“I think it’s important to be bringing diversity to the YCC’s top leadership, diversity of thought, in a way that comes directly from differences in experience,” Brown said. “I think it makes us stronger when we have more perspectives at the table.”

Reforming the YCC Senate is Brown’s main goal. Unlike other candidates, Brown did not roll out his campaign with a long platform —

instead, he initially delivered his ideas through social media graphics and Instagram story Q&A’s. He released a longer platform on Sept. 15, four days into the campaign period, that centered around YCC Senate reform and also included initiatives to support BIPOC at Yale and reform Yale’s relationship with New Haven.

When speaking to the News, Brown said the Universal Pass debate sparked his desire to reform the Senate. Brown was a leading UP advocate, and he said that the debate and accumulation of perspectives that led to the adoption of Universal Pass exemplified how the Senate should run. But he said that right now, the Senate functions as a top-down model, adopting resolutions set by the president and vice president and rarely debating and formulating ideas on its own.

If elected, Brown said he wants the first meeting of the Senate to set the priorities for the year. He wants senators to decide the plan for the year based on issues important to them.

Brown credits 2018–2019 YCC President Saloni Rao ’20 with this model, as she too began her term by allowing senators and student leaders outside of the YCC to set priorities for the year.

“There are senators who are super passionate about sustainability, senators who are super passionate about racial justice, senators who are super passionate about addressing these problems that are getting very critical to our time, to right now, and they all come from different experiences,” Brown said. “I think pulling ideas

from 28 people versus pulling them from two is a great way of kind of getting the year started.”

In talking to the News, Brown acknowledged that his platform does not contain as many detailed policy proposals as those of the other candidates. Still, he said this choice is intentional, allowing senators more leeway to shape YCC policy. He said he wants to “be flexible and reactive, and really respond to the needs of the moment.”

Brown talks a lot about “the moment,” saying that the public health and social justice changes demand a candidate like him. He says his vision for the YCC, of an emphasis on senators as opposed to a topdown approach, makes him qualified to help the Council adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I don’t feel like just having accomplishments is a justification to have the job,” Brown said. “I think you need to look at how people have led in times of crisis. How people have risen to the occasion. You need to look at how people interact with their communities, how they listen to people, how they end up in student groups, I think is an important factor. And so if you expand your definition beyond checking all the main boxes — experience, positions, things like that — I think you’ll see that the role of vice president is much more holistic.”

Voting for YCC elections will take place on Sept. 17 and 18.

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

CEC docks votes from Bahri, Johnson after ticket violated election rules

BY AMELIA DAVIDSON STAFF REPORTER As students voted for the next Yale College Council President and Vice President on Thursday afternoon, the Council Elections Commission found that Aliesa Bahri ’22 and Reilly Johnson ’22 violated its campaign rules by sending out a mass email to a sorority panlist.

The allegation was reported to the CEC on Thursday by Bahri and Johnson’s opponents Abey Philip ’22 and Matt Murillo ’22, who are also vying for the student council presidency and vice presidency, respectively.

Philip and Murillo also informed the News about the allegations and requested that the News rescind its endorsement of Bahri and Johnson, which was announced on Thursday. The Commission has instructed Bahri and Johnson to amend their candidacy statements to include an apology and announced that they will lose 55 votes each.

On the morning of Sept. 17, Bahri had sent out an email to members of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, of which she is a member. The email, which was obtained by the News, urged Kappa members to vote

for Bahri and Johnson and to share graphics on social media and tell others to vote for them. The CEC guidelines state that promotional emails must be sent out in batches of 10, to no more than 100 people total, and that the CEC must be cc-d on all emails. Bahri’s email was sent out to 55 people all at once and did not copy the CEC. “Today, I accidentally emailed 55 sorority sisters all at once,” Bahri’s statement reads. “Upon realizing my mistake, I immediately self reported and forwarded it to the CEC. This in no way reflected intentional violation of the rules, but nevertheless we pledge to be more careful in the future about correspondences.”

Current YCC Vice President and CEC chair Grace Kang ’21 verified that Philip and Murillo reported the issue to the CEC first, nearly one hour after the email went out.

Bahri then reported it herself 30 minutes later. She told the News she was unaware it had already been reported when she reported it herself.

She also argued that this “slip up” is not generally reflective of her character or competence.

Still, Kang told the News that as much as Bahri says that “this is acci-

dental rule breaking,” she is “not entirely sure it is.”

“They definitely know that you’re not allowed to email more than 10 people at a time,” Kang said. “These are rules that they are very aware of, especially Aliesa and Reilly, who have been planning their campaign since probably last year, internally.

I think the bad part is, ... that it does look really bad for Aliesa and Reilly because one, they knew that they were going explicitly against the rules, and they decided to do it anyway. And they framed it as an accident, which I don’t think it was.”

Bahri and Philip both told the News that they respect the decision and punishment from CEC, which Kang chairs.

Bahri also told the News that she regretted that this would impact Johnson, her running mate, as she said this was “my slip-up.”

Kang told the News that this year has had an unprecedented number of CEC violations but declined to share exact details aside from the fact that Bahri and Johnson are the only officer candidates currently on the ballot who have violated CEC guidelines.

Bahri and Johnson have previously violated the guidelines. Bahri previ-

ously violated rules by posting her campaign flier on the YCC’s official Instagram page. The CEC deemed that incident to be an accident, and no disciplinary measures were taken.

“We want to elect leaders, and part of being a leader is understanding that there are rules that you need to follow,” Kang said.

“Whether you’re breaking these rules [by] accident or not, at the end of the day, you are still breaking rules. I’m not sure if it was lack of attention or lack of integrity, but it is disappointing to see so many rule violations this year.”

Kang told the News that it is “pretty common” for candidates to report the CEC violations of their opponents. When reporting to the News, Philip and Murillo alleged that Bahri’s email was a violation of mass email guidelines and also a violation of endorsement guidelines. They argued that using the Kappa panlist was tantamount to an endorsement from the sorority.

Upon convening, the CEC found that the email did violate mass email guidelines, but it did not count as an improper endorsement, as the email came from Bahri herself, not from Kappa members.

In their note to the News, Philip and Murillo requested that the News “revoke its endorsement of Aleisa and Reilly to uphold [the News’] integrity as an ethical publication” and release a statement “acknowledging Aliesa and Reilly’s infraction and notifying the student body of the revocation of the endorsement.” The two also notified the Yale Student Environmental Coalition, which previously released an endorsement of Bahri and of Murillo.

“At end of the day, it’s making sure that the election has integrity, and making sure that everyone is following the rules and everyone has a fair shot at winning the race,” Philip said, when asked by the News why he chose to report the violation. “Because for far too long, the barriers of entry to the YCC have been extremely high for ... Matt and [my] communities, especially high for the intersections with ... queer people, low income students and students of color.”

Voting for YCC officer positions will close Sept. 18 at 9:00 p.m.

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

PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

ARTS Danna Singer ART ’17 takes students on a cross-country journey to learn photographic storytelling

BY PHOEBE LIU STAFF REPORTER In April, photographer Danna Singer ART ’17 won a Guggenheim Fellowship, which offers grants to artists and intellectuals in order to enable a year of scholarship or artistic production. Singer planned to use her grant to drive around the United States and photograph “transient spaces” like motels to represent the struggles of America’s working poor.

Not only did she continue her trip despite COVID-19, but if it weren’t for the pandemic, Singer would not be teaching “Photographic Storytelling” this semester.

Singer has redefined remote work. She teaches her class from wherever she happens to be — her car, a lake, the side of the road or even a Starbucks parking lot — and shows her students the process of telling a story through photographs as she embarks on a mission to do so.

“We are all working on something together,” Singer said. “I can relay my struggles and successes and be available in a way that is different from a classroom setting.”

Singer is an accomplished photographer. This year, Singer’s work was published in the New York Times Magazine on Sept. 11 and in the New Yorker on April 2.

Her photographs have appeared in exhibitions around the world.

According to Vy Tran ’21, a student in her class, Singer approaches teaching not by bestowing her knowledge but by encouraging sharing and understanding. The virtual room brings together students and auditors in dif-

ferent locations and from varying photography backgrounds, and Singer emphasizes the importance of each individual contribution.

“It’s a community of people and a community of photographers,” Singer said.

During Tuesday’s class, Singer shared some of the struggles she experienced this week while taking pictures. The class discussed the anxiety associated with asking to take pictures of strangers.

“Hopefully, the students will feel less alone in that struggle the next time they approach a stranger, and their interactions will result in greater connections and pictures,” Singer said.

Tran commented on Singer’s ability to be open and vulnerable with her students. Last week, each of the course’s students brought a photograph they wish they had made. Tran, who is not an art major, appreciated Singer and teaching assistant Dylan Hausthor ART ’21 listening to each student’s interests and recommending artists accordingly.

“It shows that the ongoing process of art itself is like a very shared and welcome community,” Tran said.

Singer agreed. “The great thing about photography is that most art has similar concerns, right?”

Singer appreciates the locational freedom of online learning in other ways as well. Singer said when there is no longer the structure of a physical classroom, “there’s something about a Zoom atmosphere that makes the conversation more relaxed.”

“It’s very grounding … because it’s not like a professor

COURTESY OF ALLISON MINTO

in a classroom teaching and lecturing in front of a camera on Zoom,” said Tran. “It’s more of a person who is doing photography teaching us how she does it and showing us things that she really likes looking at and learning about.”

Even so, Hausthor worries that once the class begins “crit” — critique sessions in which students’ photos will be formally evaluated by everyone in the virtual room — the lack of physicality in the photographs may remove a dimension of a photograph’s impact.

Throughout the course, students will explore questions implicated in photographic storytelling: How does photography present truth? Should it present truth? Can it?

Hausthor emphasized the need to be intentional about the types of images the class discusses because storytelling can be complex and political. “We have to sit in that discomfort to get something,” he said.

Tran agreed, citing the history of photography as a white and male-centric discipline. Singer also noted the subjectivity of a photographer’s eye.

“Some photographs are posited as truths because they are made in a certain way,” Singer said. “When you’re framing something, you’re privileging one thing over the next, so truth-telling has been filtered through the eye of the photographer.”

This course was first taught in fall 2019 under the title “Introduction to Visual Storytelling.”

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

COURTESY OF DANNA SINGER

Blue-Light College Years: First years learn ‘Bright College Years’ from behind a screen

BY WEI-TING SHIH AND BRYAN VENTURA CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS In a time when the coronavirus pandemic has profoundly altered the conventional Yale first-year experience, the University has turned to digital alternatives in an attempt to keep traditions alive during unprecedented times.

One of Yale’s oldest traditions is its Opening Assembly, when the incoming class and their families gather in the ornate Woolsey Hall. The ceremony’s defining moment in the minds of many Yalies is the singing of “Bright College Years,” Yale’s alma mater — the first time they wave their white hankies.

Because safety restrictions led to the cancellation of the in-person musical experience, Yale College Arts is curating an “Introducing the Class of 2024” video to replicate it. They encourage first years to submit footage of themselves singing the anthem by Oct. 1. The compilation of recorded videos will be publicly released in coming months.

“During [COVID-19], it’s especially important to underscore to the incoming class that our community is still here,” said project leaders Jay Mehta ’24, a would-be sophomore on a gap year, and Ben Kramer ’23. “This is us saying that we’re still here for you. We were always here for you. Welcome to Yale!”

Mehta and Kramer are actively involved in Yale’s arts scene. The

two reflected on the contrast between their first-year experience and that of the class of 2024, and sought to “find open and equitable ways to involve this incoming class in a meaningful way.” This inspired the “Bright College Years” video project.

The organizers reached out to Associate Dean for the Arts Kate Krier, who along with Administrative Coordinator of the Arts Daisy Abreu helped set the project into motion.

Mehta and Kramer are receiving video and audio editing support from Virtual Choir — a company Yale contracted to create virtual musical performances for extracurricular groups impeded by pandemic-related safety restrictions.

“Yale has been incredibly inventive in creating virtual alternatives for activities that would be traditionally held in-person, and provided ample suggestions and guidance to performance groups in particular, whose activities are acutely impacted by the restrictions on in-person gatherings,” said Mehta and Kramer. “We’re all improvising right now. We’re glad Yale has taken the lead on adapting, and we’re both hoping to see new and inventive ideas come out of the student body as well.”

Yale College Arts provided first-year students with sheet music, example tracks for all four vocal ranges, singing guides and instructions for how to successfully record and submit videos for the project.

Melody Gebremedhin ’24, who has already submitted her singing video, said the process wasn’t difficult. “I listened to the tracks over and over to be able to get it, and the sheet music was definitely helpful too,” she said.

Gebremedhin expressed that, in an increasingly virtual world, this experience did not deviate from her new day-to-day normal. A virtual college alma mater was “just another virtual thing.”

“I think learning it online without any guidance is a little bit hard, but I think doing the song online is a good alternative for sure,” said Charnice Hoegnifioh ’24, who is also participating in the project. “Yale is doing a good job to try and keep traditions alive.”

The organizers also realize the equipment barriers that can make participation difficult. They encourage students who require equipment access to reach out to them via email.

Mehta and Kramer hope that engaging first years in this project will invite them to participate in Yale’s creative culture and take on initiatives of their own.

“We hope this project serves not only as a way to involve the frosh, but also as a way for the frosh to introduce themselves to the Yale community,” they said.

“Bright College Years” was written in 1881.

Contact WEI-TING SHIH at wei-ting.shih@yale.edu and BRYAN VENTURA at bryan.ventura@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

Virtual Venue: Wacomo, Coup(e) Del Mar and Ale Campillo

BY PHOEBE LIU AND XAVIER BLACKWELL-LIPKIND STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING 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.

Coup(e) Del Mar “Tambora”

COURTESY OF ADAM WISEMAN

Wacomo “She Said” and “IRWUTBH” Lucas Wiseman Angulo ’23 — who produces music under the name Wacomo — has a multifaceted musical style.

“My parents introduced me to all types of music early on,” Wiseman Angulo said. He began taking bass guitar lessons at age 11, and soon after joined a band. But he quickly became fascinated with bands like Skrillex. This fascination led to his discovery of electronic music production.

Wiseman Angulo studies architecture and economics and plays on Yale’s rugby team, but wants to pursue music as a career. He spends all his spare time making music. Wiseman Angulo has released five songs, three of which are collaborations with musicians from across the globe, some of whom he met on the internet. Wiseman Angulo said he values this collaborative process both musically and socially.

But Wiseman Angulo also feels proud of the songs he produced independently. For his recent independent release, “She Said,” he sampled “some random dude on the internet.” His sixth and newest single, “IRWUTBH,” is influenced by house music.

Wiseman Angulo plans to focus his yearlong leave of absence on making music.

“It’s an interesting exercise because I’m forced to make 100 percent of the songs I produce, without the input of anyone,” Wiseman Angulo explained. He characterized the pandemic as both an “opportunity to really focus on my music at an individual level” and a barrier to the collaborative process he values.

Pilar Galvan ’22 — stage name “(ama)Dea Del Mar” — sings and raps in the band Coup(e) Del Mar. Other members of the group are her brother Sebastian Galvan ’20, a “self-taught rapper, singer, [and] producer;” Karin Nagano ’20, a classical pianist; Arthur Hwang ’21, a vocalist and current Whiffenpoof; and Edgar Guzman, a jazz drummer, producer and graduate of Bard College.

Galvan describes the ensemble’s work as “unorthodox,” but today, the group prioritizes music that is both “personal and relatable.”

“We want to break musical expectations,” Galvan said.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the group “had a lot of music on the back burner.” With the extra time, they hope to “produce more” and share this music. Coup(e) Del Mar recently released a debut EP, “Tambora,” which is structured as an homage to Mary Shelley — the author of “Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus.” Each of the four songs examines an “aspect of navigating what feels like an apocalyptic world,” just as Shelley chronicles a monster’s existence in a society that fears him. In a way, Galvan notes, “the album is about coming into oneself as a BIPOC during this time of turmoil.”

Perhaps the clearest example of the group’s unorthodoxy is “Doggie Paddle Blues,” a song on the new EP. It begins with a piano solo by impressionistic composer Maurice Ravel and slowly adds layers of complexity: a throbbing beat, string melodies and vocals. Slowly, the sounds distort and fade, and the song ends as simply as it began.

COURTESY OF DASHA GLADKO

Ale Campillo “Leaping” For Ale Campillo ’22, writing, performing and listening to music has helped them escape reality since their preteen “goody-two-shoes” days. Campillo describes their music as a combination of dream pop, R&B and indie rock, citing the influence of alt-pop women like Lorde, Lana del Rey and Grimes.

“I felt like I could rebel through this other world that was magical and different,” Campillo said.

Campillo’s debut EP, “Leaping,” is a bildungsroman.

The EP contains three songs — “Blue Fountain,” “Joshua Trees” and “Leaping” — that track Campillo’s journey coming to terms with their queerness.

The first song, “Blue Fountain,” is the most melancholy of the three, opening with the lyrics “blue fountain, I’m drownin’.” Campillo said the song is about “being sad about who I am and not fully accepting it, seeing elements of myself that I like but also elements that I don’t like.”

“Blue Fountain,” which is sung in Spanglish, also embraces Campillo’s Latinidad. They wanted to write music that was “not super Latin in vibe, but Latin in spirit.” Campillo explained that the song offers another dimension to Spanish speakers — it engages in wordplay only people who speak both languages can understand.

Campillo wrote the album’s second song, “Joshua Trees,” on a visit to Joshua Tree National Park in the summer of 2019. “It was there that I was able to find clarity about myself,” Campillo said.

They added that the song transitions to the final track, “Leaping,” which is about entering the future without hesitation.

Campillo emphasized a lack of queer and trans representation in the music industry and hopes that people can hear their voices amplified through Campillo’s music. They realize that the power of music lies in its ability to represent stories and experiences.

Campillo’s upcoming song, “Noche de Fuga,” will draw even more on their identity as a Mexican American and Cuban American.

COURTESY OF COUP(E) DEL MAR

Contact PHOEBE LIU at phoebe.liu@yale.edu and XAVIER BLACKWELL-LIPKIND at xavier.blackwell-lipkind@yale.edu .

School of Music sends sonic “postcards” during pandemic

BY MARISOL CARTY STAFF REPORTER At a time when there are many reasons to express negativity, the Yale School of Music community found a way to instead show gratitude to those fighting on the front lines of the pandemic.

The Postcards from Confinement project, which began in May, offers faculty, students and alumni the opportunity to record a musical performance for those in quarantine or the medical field.

The “postcards” are also publicly accessible on the School of Music’s YouTube channel. Each performer made their postcard unique.

“As a New Yorker living at home during the final months of the school year, unquestionably the city’s most deadly period of the pandemic, I knew how much gestures like these postcards would mean to people who had been surrounded by suffering and destabilizing uncertainty,” said pianist Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner MUS ’20. “It was a personal statement: ‘from my heart to yours.’”

Dean Robert Blocker and professors Thomas C. Duffy and Benjamin Verdery designed the project. In an email, the School of Music encouraged members of the community to participate.

Yale musicians chose pieces to perform with special intention.

Violinist Kate Arndt MUS ’19 ’20 ’26 dedicated J.S. Bach’s “Violin Sonata No. 3 in C Major Mov. 3” to healthcare workers — specifically her aunt, who is a nurse. She said the piece’s calming mood made it a perfect choice for grounding listeners’ emotions.

“It’s a really meditative piece,” Arndt said. “I think Bach is healing in some way. I chose this piece because I thought other people could also feel the connection to that meditative state.”

Pianist Chuang-Chuang Fang MUS ’20 and Sanchez-Werner also dedicated their postcards to healthcare workers. “My uncle works as a cardiologist in Illinois, and I heard many terrifying stories from him during the pandemic,” Fang said. “Therefore, I decided to

make a postcard and dedicate it to all the medical workers who were in the fight against the virus.”

Sanchez-Werner’s selection — Robert Schumann’s “Widmung: Liebeslied” — translates to “Dedication: Love Song.”

“When I played it for the postcard, I thought of it as a dedication to the brave, selfless medical workers saving lives on the front lines, and as a song of love to the families of those [who lost lives] from this terrible pandemic,” Sanchez-Werner said. “It was also meant to honor my fellow graduates who had to celebrate from confinement.”

This project is an example of how musical performance groups, including those at the School of Music, are adapting to reach audiences at a time with no live concerts.

“There have been many successful and creative online initiatives and events that aim to bring performers and listeners together during this period,” said Aaron Jay Kernis MUS ’83, professor of composition at the School of Music whose postcard featured an original composition titled “Elegy (for

those we lost).” “A lot of artists of all sorts have, as a continuation of their creative and expressive work, found ways to bring their need to create and share through whatever medium possible to their audience and to the world.”

Fang mentioned that the project is one of the best ways for musicians to share music these days.

Recorded performances are of higher quality than live broadcasts and can reach people in any time zone.

Sanchez-Werner echoed Fang, noting that the project reaches international audiences while also broadening the school’s collegial-

ity with the New Haven community.

“In times of crisis, I believe artists have a responsibility to use their abilities and platforms to foster unity and raise morale,” Sanchez-Werner said. “Our turbulent situation has caused artists to blossom imaginatively in many ways not previously used for reaching audiences.”

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

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

“The probability of apocalypse soon cannot be realisitically estimated, but it is surely too high for any sane person to contemplate with equanimity.” NOAM CHOMSKY AMERICAN LINGUIST

First years believe Yale can handle COVID-19, according to survey

BY JOHN BESCHE AND ASHLEY QIN STAFF REPORTER AND STAFF ANALYST In an anonymous survey sent out to the class of 2024, firstyear students largely showed confidence in the University’s COVID-19 protocols despite the ongoing pandemic and no unified directives to combat it at the federal level.

The survey was sent to 1,207 students in the class of 2024 on Aug. 31. It closed on Sept. 2 with 471 responses, a 39 percent response rate.

Yale, like many college campuses, shut down in March to prepare for an ongoing pandemic that has since killed nearly 200,000 Americans. Yale ultimately decided on July 1 that it would partially reopen with stringent public safety protocols in place, raising the possibility of an outbreak in the fall.

Before the semester began, outbreaks at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Syracuse University and the University of Notre Dame made national headlines, instilling concerns among some incoming first years — 46 percent said these outbreaks made them nervous about coming to campus. One first year commented that public health concerns kept him from traveling to New Haven altogether.

“The pandemic is the sole reason that I have decided to study remotely this semester,” Zach Auster ’24 said. “I was not going

to endanger my health and the safety of others by traveling cross country. The recent outbreaks at other campuses only strengthened my confidence in that decision as they showed that no matter how rigorous the protocols in place, coronavirus outbreaks can and will spread on campuses.”

First years said by and large that Yale’s protocols are fair, with only 7.5 percent saying they were “too strict” and 9 percent answering “not strict enough.”

Jamarc Simon ’24 said that he does not think Yale’s protocols are too strict, but “just right” because —per the rules — students are tested twice weekly and can go out into New Haven.

For all students enrolled and living in New Haven, twice weekly COVID-19 testing is mandatory, and protocols limit the size of social gatherings. Even with these measures in place, 6.2 percent of respondents thought it was likely that they will get COVID-19.

“I work with the University of Utah’s COVID response, so I have seen firsthand that people who never expected to get COVID end up getting it, and that strict measures are necessary to keep the spread of the virus to a minimum,” said Gabe Ransom ’24.

“I think that it is best to always assume that you are infectious and take the appropriate steps to protect those around you with that in mind.”

Auster added that Yale’s policy lacks a “true line in the sand” for

violations of its community compact. In his opinion, students who forgo masks or choose to party should be sent home as these choices have wider implications for public health.

Still, 86 percent of first years said that they believed if they were to get sick, Yale would have the resources to adequately care for them.

15 percent of respondents think it is “highly unlikely” that they will become infected with the virus — more than twice the percentage of those who believe they will likely get COVID-19.

The majority of respondents were confident in Yale’s protocols and attitudes toward social distancing: 53 percent of respondents found it “unlikely” that they would contract the virus.

Still, students will now have more freedom as they were released from arrival quarantine last week, creating more opportunities for exposure to the virus.

Kesi Wilson ’21, a Davenport FroCo, said there has been “recklessness as much as there has been adherence to policies,” and that first years will occasionally congregate in large groups on Cross Campus or in front of residential colleges without masks.

“In those cases, FroCos across colleges have been mobilizing to break them up,” Wilson said.

“Overall though … it really comes down to the level of individuals and how much they feel a communal responsibility to follow the rules in

YALE NEWS

Yale, like many college campuses, shut down in March to prepare for an ongoing pandemic that has since killed nearly 200,000 Americans. order to keep people safe.”

Monitoring adherence to COVID restrictions comes as an additional obligation to FroCos, whose job even in non-pandemic times is primarily to keep first years safe. These efforts are aided by the newly appointed Public Health Education for Peers, or PHEPs, in each residential college.

One FroCo commented on the social implications of the COVID protocols they are asked to enforce.

“It’s definitely hard to essentially tell a first year to put their social life on hold, but we have

seen first years violate some parts of the community compact — thankfully usually at less serious levels,” said Berkeley FroCo Brian Lin ’21. “The current situation is a matter of public health, and we try to make that very clear. it’s a collective effort to keep everyone safe, and thus, we face collective consequences.”

Yale has reported 12 student cases of COVID-19 since Aug. 1.

Contact JOHN BESCHE at john.besche@yale.edu and ASHLEY QIN at ashley.qin@yale.edu .

Yale faculty propose strategies to address racism in medicine

YALE DAILY NEWS

Faculty at the Yale School of Medicine have proposed a new framework to combat racism in medical education.

BY SYDNEY GRAY STAFF REPORTER As the Black Lives Matter movement, racial tension and police brutality became frequent parts of the national dialogue in recent months, faculty at the Yale School of Medicine proposed a new framework to combat racism in medical education.

The article “Blackface in White Space: Using Admissions to Address Racism in Medical Education” was written by psychiatry resident Neintara Anderson, assistant professor of emergency medicine Dowin Boatright and professor Anna Reisman. The essay calls upon the medical admissions

community to use both novel and existing tools such as admissions essays, questionnaires and interviews to screen candidates for racist beliefs. The essay was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine on July 28.

“It has always struck me as incredibly unfair, and infuriating, that academic medical institutions would freely admit people with racist attitudes or who are grossly uninformed on matters of race, and then expect their BIPOC community members to do the labor of ‘reforming’ these individuals,” Anderson, the lead author of the essay, wrote in an email to the News.

The authors write, “We propose a more direct way to address racism

in medical training: stop admitting applicants with racist beliefs.”

The authors list historical and modern-day examples of racism in medicine as the impetus for this project. Citing a 2016 study where approximately half of all white medical students and residents endorsed at least one false statement about biological race, such as the misconception that Black people have more collagen in their skin than white people, the authors of the essay underscore the prevalence of racism in medicine.

Even in 2020, as issues of race are closer to the forefront of national consciousness, Reisman pointed to a blatant example in her profession: a medical student from the University of Minnesota defacing a George Floyd mural on Aug. 18.

“A medical student! A future doctor announcing to the world (and to his future patients) that he’s racist. How can any of his future patients who are Black feel assured that his racism won’t affect how he treats them?” wrote Reisman.

To address these challenges, the authors provide a list of specific steps that committees may take to admit racially conscious candidates. Among the first steps is the use of a short questionnaire to identify “significantly uninformed individuals” who are incapable of respectfully engaging with minority peers and patients. The authors also suggest the potential of surveys informed by social psy-

chological principles to assess candidates’ explicit and implicit biases.

Additionally, the essay’s authors highlight the importance of altering existing evaluative criteria like application essays and interview questions to more directly prompt candidates to consider race. For example, they suggest that essay questions require applicants to reflect on their own racial identity or respond to passages from prominent scholars on race and medicine such as Dorothy Roberts.

The contributors also advocate for the use of multiple mini-interviews where applicants rotate among different rooms, responding to prompts that detail discriminatory practices: What would you do if a professor suggested that race is biological? If an attending told a patient not to take a racial slur as a personal affront?

“Racism on the wards is so commonplace as to be expected as a matter of routine,” Anderson wrote in an email to the News. “Simply in my own experience, I have heard attending physicians telling others not to take the n-word ‘so personally.’ I’ve been told Black babies are ‘more hardy,’ and I’ve been told that Latinx people ‘exaggerate’ their pain … Racism is simply part of the fabric of institutional medicine in the United States.”

The contributors enumerate other modifications that medical school admissions committees may implement. They state that interviews of candidates by BIPOC

community members could be useful to more accurately evaluate applicant attitudes about minority patients. This approach provides a voice to underrepresented individuals and grants them more control over the future of their care. These interviews will also help to pinpoint applicants’ racial attitudes, create a more holistic view of each candidate and transform the medical profession into a more inclusive field.

The authors of the study hope that this essay will push the medical community to hold students and residents to a higher standard of racial awareness.

“People can certainly learn and grow when it comes to anti-racism,” Anderson wrote. “But we assess for so many other qualities as part of the medical admissions process that it seems the only reason we would not assess racial attitudes or awareness is because we are afraid to confront and counteract the racism we routinely welcome into our ranks.”

The authors are currently working in collaboration with several institutions to pilot and review the impact of some of the approaches outlined in their essay.

In 2016, the Yale School of Medicine created the Internal Medicine Diversity Committee to retain and recruit minority students and faculty.

Contact SYDNEY GRAY at sydney.gray@yale.edu .

Students adjust to new daily health checks

BY ALEX ORI CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Along with the universal methods to help curb the spread of COVID19 — like mask-wearing, social distancing and testing — Yale students returning to campus have another safety measure to grapple with: daily health checks.

The survey first asks participants whether they will be coming to campus that day. Then the survey lists COVID-19 symptoms, including headache and fatigue, and asks whether participants are experiencing any of them. Students must fill out the form daily as mandated in the community compact, or they run the risk of facing disciplinary action. A member of the Yale Testing Team who requested anonymity for privacy reasons said that she sees the value in the daily checks.

“It promotes individual accountability,” she said. “I know having to remember to complete a daily health check and getting tested twice a week can seem like an added burden, however in a sense it promotes integrity.”

In some cases, non-compliance to the health checks can result

in students being denied access to campus. According to the Yale Community Compact Enforcement document, after seven consecutive days of missed checks, “the student’s access to all parts of campus other than the student’s on-campus residence will be restricted.”

In addition, a Health and Safety Leader, an administrator in charge of offering COVID-19 guidance in place at each Yale division, will refer non-compliant students to the Compact Review Committee.

There, the committee will determine whether or not to revoke the student’s permission to keep living on campus. After three consecutive days of not filling out the health check, students will be referred to their HSL for a discussion.

A University spokesperson did not respond for a request to comment.

Students are not the only ones who need to complete the checks.

According to the Statement of Expectations for Faculty and Staff, Yale is “asking all members of the community to complete a daily health check on the days they come to campus and to stay home if needed.”

“By completing that less than a

minute survey saying yes, I do have a cough, you could have potentially saved someone else the trouble of possibly being exposed,” the testing worker said.

Still, some students have pointed out concerns that the daily health check system is less than reliable.

Haley Sabol ’24 said that she noticed a flaw in the daily health checks.

“The symptoms are so generic.”

“They ask you if you’re tired,” she said. “Like, yeah, I’m tired. I’m a college student.”

Meili Gupta ’24 also said she believed that there could be improvements to the checks. She mentioned that additional information might be key to solving Sabol’s concern.

“The only way I’d see them being more effective would be if they had a comment section for people to elaborate on other health factors that might affect your symptoms,” Gupta said. “[As it stands,] I don’t think it’s entirely informative, if it’s just yes or no question.”

Yale is not the only university employing these health checks. The University of Notre Dame requires students to complete a daily survey regarding their symptoms. Instead

of simply checking “yes” or “no” to a list of symptoms, Notre Dame requires students to track each individual prodrome. Notre Dame uses the health surveys to determine which students require testing. If students have symptoms for two consecutive days, they are mandated to receive a test.

“I think that they are useful.

However, the lack of consistency

in students filling them out makes them hard to be really useful,” said Natalie Daskal, a first year at Notre Dame. “They are only as useful as people make them.”

When Yale students do not fill out the survey, they receive a reminder at 12:30 p.m. the following day.

Contact ALEX ORI at alex.ori@yale.edu .

DAVID ZHENG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The daily health check survey lists COVID-19 symptoms, including headache and fatigue, and asks whether participants are experiencing any of them.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

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NEWS

“Once we start believing that the apocalypse is coming, the amygdala goes on high alert, filtering out most anything that says otherwise.” PETER DIAMANDIS ENGINEER

Schola plans for virtual year

BY OWEN TUCKER-SMITH CONTRIBUTING REPORTER This semester, the 24 members of Schola Cantorum — a chamber choir at the Institute of Sacred Music — will not hear one another’s voices in-person. Whether they will cross the Atlantic for their European summer tour is questionable. But the ensemble’s members are as busy as ever.

“We’re kind of flying by the seat of our pants,” said Rhianna Cockrell MUS ’21, a student manager for Schola Cantorum. But even amidst uncertainty, her fellow chorus members are taking on new artistic projects. “They’re recording albums, some of them are working on social justice projects. One of my colleagues is working on writing a novel.”

Typically, the academic year begins with Schola’s intense audition process — one of the most selective in the country — followed by twice-weekly rehearsals, where members prepare four to five projects until December.

“It’s treated like a professional choir, which it is in many ways,” said David Hill, the chorus’ principal conductor and a professor of choral conducting at the institute.

Because the chorus is composed of students, commitment is not full-time, but Hill said the standard is incredibly high.

Cockrell said in-person rehearsals often bring ensemble members together and referred to the chorus as her “main Yale family.” But with public health guide-

lines restricting in-person singing, the family’s weekly meetings must be reimagined.

At last week’s opening meeting for the ensemble, members went through the usual introductions and icebreakers, but then grappled with the limits of virtual rehearsals. It is imperative for choral singers to hear one another in order to create a cohesive sound. Hill said that even if the choir were to sing over Zoom, hearing one another would be impossible.

“If we were actors, everyone knows ‘it’s my turn to speak now,’ but you can’t do that with music.

Everyone is in it together,” Hill said.

Still, the group is planning a plethora of engaging events.

Cockrell and Hill said the ensemble hopes to release recordings.

Cockrell said they hope to host a variety of guest speakers to present lectures on vocal technique and musical styles.

“Before the pandemic happened, Schola’s social media presence was pretty run-of-the-mill,” said Edward Vogel ’TK, who runs social media for the group. “Now that we’re in such a unique situation, it’s offered us an approach to grow our presence. We’ve been able to come up with a lot more content that focuses on the community that is Schola, so it’s much more member-centric.”

Since the pandemic began, their social media has featured a Virtual Concert series as well as the weekly “New Haven Sings,” which features New Haven

music groups outside of the Yale community. In the spring, the group’s Instagram account ran a series called “#membercrushmonday,” which dove into different members’ backgrounds and academic interests.

“It’s great to be able to focus on the members that make up the community, rather than the community made up of members,” Vogel said. “People forget that these are just kids that are going back to the library after rehearsal.”

These members’ outside projects are not always music-related. For some, it’s recording an album. For some, it’s writing a novel. For Cockrell, it’s a colloquium project that interrogates the appropriation of Black spirituals by white performers.

Hill expressed concern about the quality of virtual performances. But as he spoke over Zoom, he noted that the movement of his lips was matching up well with the sound of his voice.

“Music doesn’t sound great over Zoom,” Hill said. “But it’s getting better. And Zoom is really trying hard to make it work better.”

Hill said the music world has potential to learn from socially distanced performances. In the U.K., where he lives, regulations allow certain orchestras to perform, as long as musicians perform with sufficient distance between them.

“The playing is actually sounding amazing because of it,” Hill said. “Why? Because everyone is trying harder to ensure they’re

COURTESY OF JOHN WOOD

Typically, the academic year begins with Schola’s intense audition process, followed by twice-weekly rehearsals. together. There are all sorts of things coming out of this, which might make the musical landscape a new one, and a different one and hopefully, a more mature one.”

Cockrell said she hopes that after the pandemic, the music community will ensure events are accessible virtually, since many people are unable to attend in-person performances for either financial or physical reasons.

“There’s always been an issue in the Western classical music industry with accessibil-

ity,” Cockrell said. “I’m hoping that once directors become more familiar with the process of live streaming, they’ll be able to make them accessible on the internet for free for people who otherwise might not be able to experience that music.”

The ISM also hosts ensembles like Yale Camerata, the Battell Chapel Choir and the Marquand Chapel Choir.

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

Accessibility a ‘mixed bag’ during pandemic

BY GIOVANNA TRUONG STAFF REPORTER An increasingly virtual world has created a mixed bag for students with disabilities — exacerbating accessibility issues in some cases while simultaneously allowing for more flexibility.

Online instruction can often make course material — from lectures to readings — non-accessible to certain students for a variety of reasons, such as the need to look at screens for long periods of time due to class format. But while virtual learning creates specific challenges for students with disabilities, it also allows for greater flexibility as students complete courses and attend meetings from home, according to Disability Empowerment for Yale President Mafalda von Alvensleben ’23 and founder and Co-Chair of Divine Abilities Ben Bond DIV ’22.

Both von Alvensleben and Bond said they hope the University will work to accommodate students with disabilities and remember the benefits of online learning this semester as they plan the future of instruction at Yale.

“Physically speaking, it’s a lot less stressful,” von Alvensleben — who identifies as having a physical disability — said of getting to class. “I hope that the option of attending events online through Zoom remains because I think it allows for a lot more people with disabilities to attend more events without having to be at the physical space.”

Director of Student Accessibility Services Sarah Scott Chang

wrote in an email to the News that her office has been receiving different kinds of requests since the University moved instruction online.

Specifically, she said students face challenges including increased screen time and poorly recorded audio quality.

“We are not seeing many requests related to the physical space, but are seeing many novel requests because of the new online environment,” she wrote.

Von Alvensleben noted that online environments often pose challenges for some of her peers.

She said that a lack of in-person interactions may negatively impact people with mental health-related disabilities.

She also pointed out that Yale does not universally provide captions for its lectures, adding that many classes’ PDFs are not compatible with screen reading software. For students with sensory impairment, the lack of such an option can make completing readings all the more challenging.

Still, other students may struggle in classes that require students to have cameras on during the course, according to Bond. “[For] a number of my colleagues — members of our group who are on the spectrum — having a camera on them at all times is a sensory overload to the point where they cannot function within the classroom,” he said. “I don’t think professors or administrators are even aware that that’s an experience that people are having.”

Bond said specialists at the Poorvu Center are teaching professors how to make their classes

DANIEL ZHAO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Online instruction can often make course material inaccessible to certain students for a variety of reasons. more accessible, and University librarians are working to make accessible documents.

Digital Projects and Technology Librarian Graziano Krätli, who works at the Divinity Library, is part of this effort. He trains and supervises student employees who check course materials in Canvas for digital accessibility and fix them as needed.

“It’s tedious work, but it’s important because it allows students who may have difficulty reading these documents in [a] PDF, Word or PowerPoint format to listen to them with the help of a screen reader,” he said.

Krätli added that “the Univer-

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sity has made a significant effort and also a financial commitment to address diverse abilities in the student population,” citing the creation of the Student Accessibility Services office and the hiring of sign language interpreters each semester.

Chang also noted that SAS has noticed requests for test accommodations decrease as professors rethink how they evaluate students this term. She added that new assessment methods are affording some students better chances to display their full knowledge and that this is providing “more equitable classroom environments.”

Bond said professors have

also started accepting written responses as a form of discussion section participation, something he said has benefitted his peers.

“I am hopeful that an unintended ramification of this shift to remote learning will be greater accessibility in the future for students with and without a disability,” Chang wrote. “Many aspects of university life are being re-examined and adjusted, and these adjustments often provide greater accessibility for all students.”

DEFY was founded in 2016, according to the group’s website.

Contact GIOVANNA TRUONG at giovanna.truong@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 12

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Chan Zuckerberg Initiative awards Yale researchers with grants to study neurodegeneration

BY BEATRIZ HORTA AND MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO STAFF REPORTERS Three Yale researchers have been awarded grants by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, or CZI, to research neurodegenerative diseases — disorders characterized by the molecular unraveling of the central nervous system, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

The three researchers are among 30 pairs of scientists being funded by the initiative to conduct research as part of the Neurodegeneration Challenge Network, or NDCN, which aims to connect professionals from different disciplines and to encourage collaboration between more experienced scientists and those who are at earlier stages of their careers. As such, neuroscience professor Pietro De Camilli and assistant professor of cellular and molecular physiology Hongying Shen GRD ’13 will be joining forces on a project that studies how dysfunction in the metabolism of mitochondria and lipid transport proteins might instigate neurodegenerative disorders. Elsewhere at the medical school, associate professor of genetics and

neuroscience Marc Hammarlund will collaborate with Gulcin Pekkurnaz, assistant professor of neurobiology at the University of California, San Diego, to explore pathways governing energy balance in healthy neurons and how defects within them can lead to these illnesses.

“I was surprised [to receive this grant] because the CZI awards are usually highly competitive,” Shen wrote in an email to the News. “I was very delighted that I can be part of [this] collaborative, science community.”

According to the CZI website, awardees were selected based on the scientific quality of their teams, the transformative potential of their proposals and the possible outcomes that they could ignite. Pekkurnaz, who echoed Shen’s surprise, added that the grant was pivotal in bringing their scientific plans into fruition.

“We all can have great ideas,” Pekkurnaz wrote. “But without the funding support, they just stay as dreams.”

The CZI was co-founded in 2015 by pediatrician Priscilla Chan and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The initiative focuses on four core areas: education, social justice, science and community initiatives. According

to their website, the initiative was established to promote collaboration and community-driven solutions for different kinds of challenges, including the eradication of diseases. When it comes to neurodegenerative disorders, the fact that there is currently no effective cure makes them a top scientific priority.

“While there has been significant investment in neurodegenerative disease research, our understanding of the underlying cellular mechanisms and basic biology of most of these disorders is limited,” the CZI website reads.

“The goal of the Neurodegeneration Challenge Network is to bring together outstanding, innovative, forward-thinking scientists from different disciplines, into a collaborative network to work together on questions related to the basic cell biological mechanisms of neurodegeneration in the context of human disease biology.”

Even though the three Yale-associated research projects have slightly different focuses, their interests are all fundamentally related to the mitochondria — little structures within cells that play a fundamental role in generating the energy that sustains life.

YALE NEWS

According to De Camilli, in contrast to other cellular components, mitochondria do not dialogue with surrounding structures through membrane trafficking — a process of biochemical signaling that relies on tiny sacs called vesicles. Instead, they retain a certain degree of autonomy. This is due to their evolution from bacteria that invaded cells billions of years ago and eventually became the mitochondria we are familiar with today.

Even though mitochondria function somewhat independently from the other parts of the cell, De Camilli said they are still able to sustain constant communication with other cell structures, especially with the endoplasmic reticulum — a network of membranes that is involved in the production of proteins and lipids. This observation sparked his interest in the mechanisms that enable this intricate interaction between these organelles.

“I am studying the role of proteins implicated in this cross-talk, and more specifically proteins that tether the ER to mitochondria and mediate exchange of lipids between the two organelles,” he said.

According to De Camilli, it is important to study mitochondrial function within the context of neurodegenerative diseases because defects in mitochondria have been linked to cell degeneration and death.

“In most tissues, cell death can be compensated by cell renewal,” De Camilli wrote. “Neurons, however, last all life, and if they die they cannot be renewed.”

Knowing that mitochondrial defects can culminate in the death of brain cells raises the question of how

they become dysfunctional in the first place. A better understanding of the mechanism by which mitochondria break down would help paint a clearer picture of how neurodegenerative disorders arise.

“Mitochondrial deterioration is the hallmark of aging and age-related neurodegeneration,” Shen wrote to the News. “It would be of great importance to dissect the exact mitochondrial perturbations and the metabolic pathways that would eventually lead to [neurodegenerative] diseases.”

According to Shen, even though human genes code for different metabolic enzymes, our primitive understanding of them is a testament to the insufficient attention that has been placed on unpacking their biological role in disease development.

Building upon evidence that has shown that mutations affecting lipid metabolism may be connected to neurodegenerative disease, Shen hopes to shed light on how lipids are metabolized, regulated and distributed within the cell.

Hammarlund and Pekkurnaz, the other Yale-associated duo that has been granted an award, will also research how mitochondrial failure is linked to neurodegeneration through a different lens. Through the use of mouse and invertebrate systems, they will try to understand the pathways that maintain constant energy levels in typical neurons to shed light on how defective energy balance can contribute to neurodegeneration.

“A better understanding of how neurons regulate their spatiotemporal energy balance will help us discover how they become faulty in neurodegenerative diseases,” Pek-

kurnaz wrote. “This project focuses on in vivo cell-biological cross-species studies, and such studies have the best potential to identify mechanisms that function outside the laboratory in human health and disease.”

Pekkurnaz’s lab at UC San Diego focuses on the different roles played by mitochondria on many cell types.

Despite their nickname as “the powerhouse of the cell,” mitochondria can carry out other cell-specific functions too, including stabilizing the concentration of calcium ions within cells and influencing neurotransmitter metabolism. Researchers in Pekkurnaz’s lab use interdisciplinary approaches to study the metabolic processes of the cell in typical and atypical conditions.

Hammarlund’s research, on the other hand, focuses on neurons themselves. He studies how neurons decide their fate, in addition to neuronal circuits and axon regeneration, and uses these mechanisms to understand how they come into play during neurodegeneration.

In both collaborations, scientists will be leveraging their own expertise and experience to collaboratively uncover different pieces of the neurodegeneration puzzle.

According to the Burke Neurological Institute, somebody in the United States develops Alzheimer’s disease every 65 seconds.

Contact BEATRIZ HORTA at beatriz.horta@yale.edu and MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO at maria.pacheco@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 13

Yale team unearths COVID-19 testing protocol using sewage

BY TAMAR GELLER STAFF REPORTER Yale scientists have discovered an unconventional method to test for COVID-19 at a large scale. The key lies in your sewage.

Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering Jordan Peccia and his team have discovered how to test for COVID19 using viral traces in sewage.

This method allows scientists to predict trends in COVID19 outbreaks and has informed Connecticut COVID-19 health guidelines throughout the pandemic. The results of the study, which were posted on medRrxiv on June 12, are awaiting publication.

“By sampling wastewater, we can sample disease rates of certain populations,” Peccia said.

“Our work in New Haven includes a sample of 200,000 people. If we do that everyday, we get a pretty good picture of what the outbreak looks like.”

Engineers and public health officials have known for decades that wastewater can be used to track viruses and the use of drugs.

In the past, it was used to identify polio vaccine traces to determine how many people were vaccinated.

When, in early March, Yale administrators met to discuss Yale’s COVID-19 response, they realized that there was potential to expand testing capabilities by taking advantage of wastewater. As the outbreak started to grow exponentially in New York City, they initially thought to test

the wastewater from trains coming from NYC. Peccia quickly put together a team with the capability to conduct PCR tests, a common method of COVID-19 testing.

When the lockdown first started, Doug Brackney, a virologist at the Connecticut agricultural experiment station and assistant clinical professor at the Yale School of Medicine, left his work on vector-borne diseases and joined Peccia’s team.

He was responsible for trying different approaches to extracting the virus RNA from the sewage. “Early on, it was really hard to get testing, so this was a very useful tool in detecting the virus in the community,” explained Brackney. Although the lab can’t draw a direct correlation between the amount of viral RNA in the sewage and the number of people infected, they can paint a clear picture of the spread.

Since then, Peccia and his lab have significantly scaled their efforts in the past six months.

Samples arrive at the lab four days a week from many cities in Connecticut, including Norwich, New London, Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven. They cover close to a million people on a weekly basis.

The data they extract from the sewage samples has been paramount in confirming state testing data and observing outbreak trends. Recently, the lab detected an uptick in cases in Stamford, and that data was the basis for the stricter health guidelines released by the city.

“The process includes a lot of

centrifuging and mixing clear liquids together and not so clear liquids together,” explained Alessandro Zulli GRD ’26, a doctoral student in the lab. “We use a fume hood because the smells are terrible.”

Peccia’s lab works with “primary sludge,” a sewage sample that comes straight from the processing plants, which enables them to get a lot more detail about the RNA copies. They process the samples in batches and extract the number of RNA copies per milliliter of sludge.

The changes in the amount of RNA per milliliter of sludge indicate the viral activity trends of the communities they are sampling.

On average, it takes less than two days to process the sewage and obtain results. “When you flush the toilet,” Zulli explained, “it takes about eight hours to get to the plant and then another four hours to process it. Depending on when we pick up the samples, we can usually get the data in about 36 hours.”

The lab is currently completing analysis at a very large scale, as it seeks to represent 1 million people in Connecticut. It is also possible to scale down the testing and test wastewater from college campuses, nursing homes and potentially schools.

Especially in nursing homes, this could be extremely helpful to determine if there are

asymptomatic carriers in the community.

According to Peccia, this technology has the potential to answer a lot of questions about the pandemic. How widespread was hydroxychloroquine use? Did opioid or illegal drug use rise during the lockdown? When a vaccine is developed, how m a n y people

will actually receive it?

Peccia’s lab is located at 9 Hillhouse Ave, New Haven, CT. Contact TAMAR GELLER at tamar.geller@yale.edu .

ANASTHASIA SHILOV/STAFF ILLUSTRATOR

Landmark study illuminates new features of Andromeda’s halo SUSANNA LIU/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

BY ALEXA JEANNE LOSTE CONTRIBUTING REPORTER New spectrographic data from the Hubble Space Telescope suggests that the halo of the Andromeda galaxy is already overlapping with that of the Milky Way. The research team behind Project AMIGA — Absorption Maps In the Gas of Andromeda — has just unveiled the most comprehensive survey of Andromeda galaxy’s circumgalactic medium, or CGM, to date. The CGM is the region of diffuse gases extending beyond the inner disk of a galaxy. The study, published in The Astrophysical Journal on Aug. 27, used ultraviolet data from Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph to shed light on the complexities of the galactic structure. Samantha Berek ’20 co-authored the study at the University of Notre Dame during the summer after her junior year at

Yale as part of the Research Experiences for Undergraduates, or REU, program.

“Project AMIGA is the first project that’s been able to really understand diffuse gas and how it interacts with the other components of galaxies and influences the galaxies’ evolution,” Berek said. “We now know that the CGM is huge. Andromeda’s extends about halfway to the Milky Way, which means that it probably bumps up against our own CGM. We knew that our two galaxies were going to merge in billions of years, but we didn’t know that they’re already interacting this much.”

Berek, who worked on the study as an undergrad, shared about how she got involved through the REU program funded by the National Science Foundation, which allows students to apply to do research over the summer at different universities. She was matched with the lead

author of this study, astrophysics research professor Nicolas Lehner of the University of Notre Dame.

Berek spent the summer working as a co-author on the publication, as well as engaging in academic, professional and social opportunities at Notre Dame.

The team used a technique called quasar absorption line spectroscopy. A quasar is a bright celestial body that functions as a lightbulb in the background of the galaxy, allowing astronomers to study the properties of the gases of the galaxy in the foreground.

Lehner explained that for galaxies that are farther away, there are typically only a couple of quasar sightlines available, resulting in a lack of information about how the properties of the gases change across the galaxy’s radius. With the Andromeda’s relative proximity and larger area in the

sky, the researchers were able to collect data from 43 sightlines at a multitude of perspectives, providing an in-depth look into the characteristics of its gaseous halo.

“We think that gas at a large radius away from a galaxy can be a fairly significant component of mass,”astronomy professor Marla Geha said. “We often call this missing matter or missing baryons, and so understanding both how much gas is in galaxies and what its chemical composition is, is quite important.”

Co-investigator Bart Wakker of the University of Wisconsin-Madison postulated that the gas in the surrounding halo of the galaxy could represent twice as much material in the universe as the matter within the galaxy. This provides support for the emerging paradigm in astronomy that most of the matter in the universe is not within

galaxies, but beyond them.

The future direction of the project is to look beyond the halo and explore processes occurring in the inner region of the Andromeda.

“It has become much clearer as time passes that galaxies are not just the light that’s come from the stars,” said Lehner. “It’s the light that comes from the stars, but also all the things that we don’t see around the galaxy. So if you want to understand galaxies, you should not just study what’s happening in the disk of galaxies, where all the stars and planets are, but you need to really understand its halo.”

The Andromeda galaxy is our closest galactic neighbor at approximately 2.5 million light-years away and is comparable in size to the Milky Way. Contact ALEXA JEANNEE LOSTE at alexa.loste@yale.edu.

PAGE 14

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

THROUGH THE LENS

T

oday’s paper on Friday, Sept. 18, marks the last issue produced by the Yale Daily News Managing Board of 2021. The year did not end the way it was expected to: with the entire team in the building together, smiling and laughing, staying up until 2 a.m. perfecting their final issue, feeling sentimental and relieved. Maybe there would have been some tears, many hugs and a mini celebration when our Managing Editor clicks the button to send our last ever set of pages. Instead, the 45 of us are sitting at our computers, cities and oceans apart because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Still, the nostalgia and the love remains, and I could not be more proud of this fantastic board of editors for their historic year.

-Sammy Westfall, Editor in Chief of the Managing Board of 2021 MIKI CORNWELL, ALISIA PAN AND NICOLE WANG report.

WEEKEND

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

“I PERSONALLY DON’T FEEL SAFE

ON CAMPUS” // Madison Hahamy

// LILY DORSTEWITZ

First-year counselors navigate the unexpected role of enforcing public health guidelines As a first-year counselor, Grace Kang ’21 lives in Saybrook College with the rest of on-campus and first-year Saybrugians. During Camp Yale, she met with her first-years nightly over Zoom to prepare them for the start of classes. They played socially distanced dodgeball, and she and other FroCos anticipated water balloon fights in the future. Even duty, the thrice-weekly events hosted by FroCos on party-heavy nights, has started back up again virtually.

In this sense, the responsibilities and overall experience of being a FroCo this year closely resemble those of counselors in the past. However, in others, it also diverges with significant, even risky, implications, according to interviews with six FroCos across six residential colleges. While a few FroCos spoke of a largely positive experience so far, six said they felt underqualified, unsafe, confused and frustrated with what they claimed were broken promises and misrepresented contractual expectations surrounding their responsibility as first-year counselors.

In July, 98 accepted FroCos for the 2020–2021 school year and 27 past FroCos signed a petition addressed to Yale College Dean Marvin Chun, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Hannah Peck and Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd, detailing their concerns about expectations for the upcoming year.

“We do not feel that living on-campus would be the safest option for personal, mental, and physical health purposes,” the petition read. Ultimately, their central demand, the ability for FroCos to live off-campus, was rejected.

“I acknowledge that you did not sign up to be FroCos during a pandemic,” Chun wrote in his July 7 response, “and so the residence requirement puts many of you in the position of having to make a difficult choice.”

ORGANIZING EFFORTS

FroCos for the 2020–2021 year heard of their acceptance to the program in March, months before Yale’s July 1 announcement officially detailing plans for the hybrid fall semester.

Before Yale’s announced its COVID-19 reopening plan, the March 19 contract that they were sent did not describe expectations of additional responsibilities or anything COVID-19 specific, other than the fact that spring FroCo training would be postponed until the fall.

In the July 1 email sent to all FroCos, Boyd and Peck provided additional

updates to FroCos, “We know that the plan for this fall is not what you imagined when you applied for a FroCo position. But we also know the many excellent reasons you applied to be a FroCo in the first place — and that the warmth and guidance you can give the firstyears are all the more necessary, and so may be all the more rewarding.”

Later in the email, they wrote that, in thinking about whether or not to continue to stay on as a FroCo, seniors should remember that “you each are students first.”

The email proceeded to answer a variety of questions that FroCos had raised, including how the new policies affect financial aid’s interaction with compensation (they don’t), how FroCo compensation might be affected by working remotely (a 12 percent reduction), how housing might work (new housing assignments) and whether FroCos could live off campus, a major point of contention (the answer was no). Working as a FroCo remotely is only an option for students with health concerns or familial responsibilities at home, according to the email.

“We are sorry if that wasn’t clear earlier. It had not occurred to us that any of you would want to live off-campus in New Haven — that option is one you already gave up, choosing instead to accept the role of FroCo,” Boyd and Peck wrote. “Even with this year’s social distancing, your physical presence is a core responsibility. Plus, we have heard from generations of FroCos of the deep bonds they form in living and working together.”

For many accepted FroCos, including Irene Vázquez ’21, this decision on off-campus living, the culmination of a rigorous petitioning effort on the part of both current and former FroCos, came as a disappointment.

Vázquez initially applied to be a FroCo both because she wanted to give back to the Berkeley community and because she was counting on the room and board reduction. FroCos living on campus receive reduced room and board as compensation, which this year ranged from $7,936 to $11,337, depending on residential college and FroCo group size.

When it became clear that on-campus life would be drastically different than that of a normal near, Vázquez decided that she wouldn’t feel safe in the dorms. “At that point, they said we wouldn’t be required to enforce the Community Compact and wouldn’t be required to have in-person contact

with first years,” she told the News, referring to Yale’s COVID-19 regulations for students. “It felt accommodating, like it would include the ability to move off campus.”

And so, according to Vázquez, she and many others started searching for off-campus housing and applying for leases. Some students, she said, had already signed leases by the time the July 1 email came out. Ultimately, the Yale College Dean’s Office told those students they should find subletters for the fall.

In response to the July 1 email, a coalition of 125 FroCos from current and previous years, as well as some individual college heads and deans, circulated a petition addressing their concerns about their new roles in the pandemic.

The five-page petition, which primarily outlined the request for an off-campus option for FroCos, also discussed the 12 percent compensation reduction for remote FroCos, as well as discrepancies between the implicit and explicit expectations of FroCos. “We understand that the university will be taking all precautions possible to reduce the risk of transmission and ensure the safety of on-campus students while preserving as much of the in-residence experience as safely possible,” the petition reads. “We, however, reserve the right to make that decision regarding our safety for ourselves, a decision that has been provided for every other Yale College student, particularly upper-class students. A personal choice for safety and a choice to serve as a FroCo should not be mutually exclusive.”

On July 7, in response to the petition and Zoom meetings with FroCos, Chun sent an email to all 2020–2021 firstyear counselors. “For fundamental reasons, I regret that I cannot accommodate your central request. FroCos must live on campus among the first-years,” he wrote. “There are many practical reasons for this, but most critical is your role as mentors. The faculty and student leaders who commit to living on campus together with the students are essential to the residential college system. Without this presence, the colleges would be mere dorms or apartments, not communities.”

Chun acknowledged the validity of many considerations raised in the petition, such as the fact that FroCos did not sign up to live on campus during a pandemic. He ultimately wrote, “I have faith that you will each make thoughtful decisions that are best for you. We

often say that you are students first and foremost, and FroCos second.”

Vázquez, in addition to being heavily involved in the petitioning process, also sent emails and corresponded personally with Boyd and Chun. “I would like to move off-campus for xyz reasons, want to be there for first years, but I don’t feel comfortable in dorms,” she wrote to multiple YCDO administrators. “[The YCDO] handled it quite callously, not recognizing concerns people had about moving into the dorms.”

Although without a medical reason, she offered to be a remote FroCo, but the YCDO denied her request.

Vázquez ultimately quit, deciding that the dorms weren’t a good option, and without the income from the FroCo position, she couldn’t afford off-campus housing. She is currently at home in Houston.

Vázquez was not alone in her choice. According to a current FroCo, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, the debate over working off campus or remotely led many to quit.

“Our team’s understaffed right now,” he told the News. “Instead of the typical eight to 10 FroCos [in each residential college], we’re down to five to six [FroCos] … We didn’t understand why we couldn’t live off campus if our contractual obligations were all remote, but we realize now that that’s because they expected us to keep an eye on on-campus happenings.”

In an email to the News, Boyd wrote that some FroCos who chose not to re-accept the position “may have been influenced by the new parameters of the role.” According to Boyd, while there are fewer FroCos this year, there are also fewer first years, and the average ratio has worked out to be just under 14:1, the same as last year.

A CONFUSING CHAIN OF COMMAND

Normally, duty is held in a FroCo’s suite and consists of quesadillas, pancakes, Taco Bell (sometimes a combination of all three) and games. Attendees often come in waves, bookending the beginning and the end, but the food is almost always gone by the end of the night — duty ends at 2 a.m. This year, even though party-heavy nights are a thing of the past (or supposed to be, at least), duty still continues, with residential colleges trying to host virtual game nights, icebreaker sessions and more.

SEE FROCO PAGE B2

PAGE B2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BALLOON

FROCO FROM PAGE B1 According to Boyd and Chun, most FroCos are living in the colleges and sharing their first years’ experiences, “from tornado warnings to courtyard karaoke.” In addition to the usual enforcement of regulations barring alcohol and drugs, this year, FroCos are also responsible for holding students accountable to the Community Compact. The compact requires students to maintain six feet of distance from individuals outside their suites, among other COVID-19 related regulations.

A supplementary document in the July 1 email sent to all FroCos stated that “FroCos will not be expected to have any in-person interactions with the first-years … It will not be the role of the FroCos to enforce social distancing or physically engage with students in emergency situations.”

An updated contract sent to FroCos on July 18 contained some shifts in the language surrounding enforcement expectations for FroCos. While the document from July 1 explicitly stated that FroCos would not be expected to act in an enforcement capacity, their contract did not. “[FroCos should] immediately address any first-year violations of the Undergraduate Regulations and the Community Compact, and report such violations to the head/dean/appropriate body,” the updated contract stated.

“FroCos are not expected to intervene in-person, they can often intervene virtually and productively in non-disciplinary ways. In situations where the behavior cannot be ended or resolved though the FroCos’ virtual engagement, FroCos should work with their Deans and/or the Public Health Coordinator, as appropriate, to assist. Your college’s Public Health Coordinator will be a good resource to support any students struggling to live up to their Community Compact commitments.”

When they arrived on campus, all FroCos interviewed by the News said that they did not expect enforcement of public health guidelines to be one of their main responsibilities. Some did not expect it to be a responsibility at all, pointing to Yale’s emails from the summer. FroCos also cited confusion — which is still ongoing — over the proper mechanisms for enforcing and reporting violations of the compact. Now, though, FroCos feel expected to enforce the compact in person, despite Yale’s assurances otherwise.

“The unspoken expectation that we didn’t realize is that we also have to be in-person to keep an eye on whether or not [first years are] social distancing, and gently remind them when they’re not following the community compact,” the anonymous FroCo said. “That was something that … is nowhere to be found in our contract, but it became clear that it’s expected of us.”

The FroCo added that, when he tried to report violations of the Community Compact to Public Health Coordinators (PHC), as obligated by the contract, the advice from the PHC was often: “If you feel comfortable, go down there.

Because we don’t have the bandwidth to do that right now.”

In interviews with the News, FroCos gave conflicting information surrounding enforcement expectations of Yale’s COVID guidelines, noting confusion as well as a shifting chain of command and, in some cases, no chain of command at all.

“Responsibility-wise, [enforcing the Community Compact is] not our role.

We’re not supposed to physically intervene to shut stuff down,” said Sam Essig ’21, a FroCo in Grace Hopper. “The PHC is supposed to do that, but we’re figuring out alternatives because I don’t think that’s their responsibility either.”

A female FroCo, who requested anonymity so as to not affect her relationship with her first years, gave a different perspective of how FroCos should be enforcing Yale’s guidelines.

“I was under the impression that I wouldn’t have to police first years’ compliance with the Community Compact. I had originally thought our PHC would be the one to handle that,” she said. “I also thought that if I witnessed an interaction I was concerned about, the PHC would be the one I would contact. The most recent communication that we’ve gotten is that the FroCos are going to be the first point of contact when there are concerns about the community compact — more of an enforcement responsibility than I had expected.”

The communication that she described was an email from Boyd sent to all FroCos and PHCs on Saturday, Sept. 5, entitled “For this weekend: clarifying PHC and FroCo roles.”

FroCos interviewed by the News described multiple incidents from the previous night, Sept. 4, that night of first years gathering without masks that required intervention.

“Last night was a challenge,” Boyd’s email began, “with many people working hard to respond to compact violations and public health emergencies. It seems the PHCs likely got the worst of it, but I recognize that there were issues all around.”

Boyd also acknowledged that both the roles and the differentiation between FroCos and Public Health Coordinators are still being negotiated.

“Collectively, we are also grappling with capacity,” Boyd wrote. “We simply do not have the resources to react in the moment to every possible policy violation.”

The email detailed the chain of command: FroCos are the first mode of response, in a virtual capacity, then PHCs, in an in-person capacity. After that would be Yale Security and, if all else failed, the Yale Police Department.

The FroCos and PHCs are described as “immediate response teams,” a dramatic shift from the July 1 email to FroCos, which emphasized that FroCos would serve a mentoring, not disciplinary, role.

The anonymous female FroCo mentioned that she and other FroCos in her residential college recently had to intervene to stop a first-year gathering — an intervention that happened in-person. “We’re hoping to bring it up with our PHC,” she said, adding that “it unfortunately seemed out of the scope of the responsibilities of her role.”

According to Boyd and Chun’s email, PHCs respond to medical and public health emergencies and support undergraduates struggling to live up to the commitments they made in the Community Compact. “PHCs respond in person, but always maintain social distancing. ... Over these first few weeks, the PHCs, FroCos, and Yale Security have been working together to figure out how best to align their different capacities and roles in this new environment.”

For the anonymous male FroCo, however, the new enforcement expectations add a damaging dynamic to the relationship between the first years and the FroCos. “What’s hard is that rather than now being leaders and people who offer support and only intervening when [they’re] doing things that are illegal, we also need to intervene because of health and not following a Community Compact we were never meant to enforce,” he said.

“It puts us at risk and breaks the trust they have in us as community builders and leaders.”

According to three FroCos interviewed by the News, the Yale Police Department told all FroCos that YPD officers would not be enforcing social distancing, adding another layer of confusion. In Boyd’s Sept. 15 email sent out to all FroCos and PHC’s, however, Yale Police were mentioned as the final link in the chain of command.

When asked how this chain of command would realistically work — if YPD was not enforcing the Community Compact — the anonymous female FroCo paused for a few seconds. “I do believe that we were told that YPD would not be involved in enforcement,” she said.

University spokeswoman Karen Peart did not respond to a request for comment on YPD’s role in enforcement.

None of the FroCos interviewed by the News expressed confidence in their understanding of how this chain of command works.

In their email to the News, Boyd and Chun said that Yale is “guided by public health research into effective harm reduction,” and for many violations, offering support, education, and coaching will constitute the entire response. “More serious or repeated violations will go to the Com-

pact Response Committee, a non-disciplinary body that can require additional education, training, or other interventions; the CRC can also limit or deny access to campus if it deems this is necessary to protect the broader community. Extreme cases of community endangerment will be referred to the Executive Committee.”

BROKEN PROMISES

For Grace Kang, the Saybrook FroCo, the role has been immensely rewarding, and her first years have inspired her every day. Being on campus also adds a meaningful dimension to the FroCo job, she said. Even so, Kang told the News, “I personally don’t feel safe on campus.”

“We as FroCos can do our best job when we’re on campus with our frosh.

There’s no denying the general sentiment with FroCos that when first years throw parties or people go out of the residential colleges, we all feel uncomfortable and worried that an outbreak will inevitably happen on campus,” Kang said. “It’s unclear if the FroCos are the ones responsible for breaking apart large groups or PHC’s or police.”

For the anonymous female FroCo, this confusion affects her confidence in her own abilities to carry out the implicit and explicit FroCo duties expected of her. When asked if she felt equipped to perform her role, she said no.

“I would like some more guidance on the support structure and I would like some more clarity as to who I’m supposed to be relying on to back this up for us,” she explained. “So I can feel confident that I can do this effectively.”

“I think there’s a really large sense of broken promises,” the other anonymous FroCo said.

Vázquez tied the lack of clarity surrounding the expectation of FroCos back to the petitioning effort to allow FroCos to live off campus.

“One of the things that really bothered me about how [the YCDO] handled things was that they told us ‘you’re students first.’ So give us the same options as other students,” she said. “We’re student workers and should have the same ability to control our labor as other workers, which includes hazard pay.” Vázquez added that the petition for FroCos to receive hazard pay was also rejected.

Boyd and Chun did not address the News’ question about FroCos’ request for hazard pay in their email.

“All the different things they’ve done has been to maximize as many people on campus as possible, and whatever happens to student workers, happens,” Vázquez said. “It’s frustrating to see that desire come before making choices about mental and physical safety.”

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

// LILY DORSTEWITZ

WKND RECOMMENDS Alice’s donuts.

ONLINE THIS WEEK: CANNOLI OR SFOGLIATELLA? Jever Mariwala ’21 and Carolyn Sacco ’21 review Lucibello’s Italian Pastry Shop.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B3

WEEKEND RELISH

H T E H R E O D T I D S O N G O C // V IC TO R IA LU

// BY MADDIE BENDER Hot: having a relatively high temperature; sexy; of intense and immediate interest Dog: a highly variable domestic mammal (Canis familiaris) closely related to the grey wolf

I remember the moment I began to think about hot dogs. While deceptively similar in form, the hot dogs I’m referring to aren’t fast food items, nor is the term a synonym for “cute dogs.” It was approximately week 50,000 of quarantine and I’d gotten to the point where I’d close Instagram, think “Hmmm, I wonder what’s new on Instagram,” and immediately reopen Instagram. It was there, scrolling through the stories of people I had not spoken to since 2015, that I saw a simple poll.

On the left side, a picture of a dog; on the right side, also a picture of a dog. The dogs had names. I chose a dog. Then, a similar screen appeared with two different dogs. I’d stumbled upon the account of self-appointed King of Hot Dogs, Simon Fraser ’20.

From July until last week, Fraser, username @swissmilkchateu, has run several March Madness-style hot dog competition brackets to determine the hottest dog in the world. After three brackets (as well as a few Hot Dog King of the Court matchups); hundreds of dogs; and over 100,000 votes cast, Stanley Wiggins, a chestnut-colored dachshund, took the crown.

As the various brackets progressed, I became more and more invested in the contest. I developed favorites, had my heart broken and felt an extreme sense of validation when I voted on a dog and saw that over 70 percent of respondents agreed with me. But voting on legions of dogs, one after the other, started to feel like a cross between Tinder and that game Duck or Llama that everyone played for about three days in high school, and that felt weird and gross. So to interrogate that feeling, I pitched this story. The questions I set out to answer were both simple and sprawling: why are we so drawn to these hot dog competitions? In essence, what does it all mean?

To figure this out, I had to hear about the contest straight from the horse’s mouth. Simon called me from Madequecham Beach in Nantucket, a fact that nearly caused me to hang up the phone and cancel our interview when he told me.

I spoke to him while staring at the plants on my windowsill, which I had recently purchased on Free and For Sale. At least two of the plants came with fungus gnat infestations, and I occasionally muted my side of the call in order to smack my palm against a wall and crush a gnat that had landed there.

Based on that conversation, I’ve come to these conclusions, which are at once all true and complete subjective tomfoolery. Like an inkblot test, you see what you want to see out of the hot dog competition.

Maybe it says more about you than anything else.

The hot dog competition embodies our desperate need for competition I haven’t followed sports closely for several years, but I watched part of my friend group psychologically unravel in the months that sporting events were not televised live. I even know the words to an unofficial anthem of FC Slutsk, a Belarusian soccer team, because of the single-minded fanaticism of people who follow sports and the lengths to which they will go to get that dopamine fix.

These people, whose brains have become hardwired for competition of any kind, turned their attention to hot dogs as a last-ditch option.

Especially toward the final faceoffs, the comments section devolved into petty name-calling of one dog by the other dog’s standoms.

I also asked Simon about the uncomfortable parallels to dogfighting that I observed in the way the contest functioned.

“I think pitting them against each other on their looks is better than pitting them against each other in the ring,” he said.

The hot dog competition is a parable for natural selection Domestication is an example of artificial selection, a method by which humans have caused dogs to evolve in discernible ways over tens of thousands of years, as opposed to millions. One recent study singled out dogs’ eyebrows as a product of this kind of selection: a comparison between dogs and wolves found that all dogs, but only some wolves have a muscle to raise their inner eyebrow.

What we think happened is that the dogs with the muscle were able to communicate better with humans, through those classic “puppy dog eyes.” Humans gave those dogs more attention and food, and so eyebrowed dogs survived.

What does this have to do with hot dogs? Voting on these dogs is a kind of natural selection played out on a minute scale. “Survival of the hottest,” if you will. Because at the end of the day, natural selection is really just a popularity contest where the judge is life.

The hot dog competition is a popularity contest for your dog This is perhaps the easiest “greater meaning” to understand.

Any matchup in which people vote on something is, by definition, a popularity contest. But what complicates matters is that for many dog owners, their dog is the hottest dog in their eyes.

“It’s the almost arrogant hope that drives people to submit their dogs.

They’ll say, ‘This is the hottest dog,’ and I look at this dog and I see a 6,” Simon said.

The hot dog contest strips away

the veneer of polite society, where no one will tell you to your face whether or not your dog is truly hot. The hive mind does us all a favor by acting as a check for all the would-be dogstagram accounts for which there was no demand. I am also a hypocrite because I made an Instagram account for my cat today.

The hot dog competition is a popularity contest for you A spin on the previous takeaway. Sure, there’s self-satisfaction of your Teacup Yorkie walloping a Chow Chow in the round of 16, but non-dog owners can profit from the madness too. Being in the majority gave me smug, “told-you-so”ness; being in the minority caused me to reevaluate my priorities.

What did everyone else see in that dog that I missed? Simon agreed with this analysis.

“There’s the horror of realizing you’re in the minority,” he said.

The hot dog competition speaks to the fundamental brokenness of mankind As previously mentioned, it took on the order of tens of thousands of years to domesticate dogs. We could have left it at wolves! We had to go a step further, making mindful pairings and completely messing up the bulldog’s respiratory system and ability to give birth just so we could produce an animal that satisfies our arbitrary standards of beauty.

And for what? So in 2020, we could yet again match up dogs to come to some Platonic ideal of a hot dog.

Aren’t all dogs hot, just as they are all good boys? The hot dog contest was never about the dogs — it was about our own inability to leave well enough alone.

Contact MADDIE BENDER at madeline.bender@yale.edu .

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REFLECTIONS ON TWO WEEKS LOCKED INSIDE A GRANOLA BAR

In the months leading up to my arrival at Yale, I met students from almost all 14 residential colleges.

Every time they introduced themselves over email or Zoom, they would proudly proclaim that their college is, objectively, the best residential college at Yale. I quickly caught on to the sense of pride and competition that permeates the residential college system; however, I didn’t fully understand it until I spent two weeks locked within the walls of Morse College (which is, objectively, the best residential college).

When I first learned about the 14-day arrival quarantine that would await me when I moved into Morse, I seriously considered waiting two weeks to come; my Pennsylvania residence placed me on Connecticut’s nice list, and I could have avoided the quarantine. Now, a week out, I cannot imagine a bigger mistake I could have made. The two weeks I spent with the frosh in Morse introduced me to approximately 100 of the best people I know, and most of us shared a bittersweet sense of loss when Morse opened to the wider Yale and New Haven communities.

The class of 2024 has never been in college before — most of us only have a vague idea of exactly what we’re missing. We all enjoyed watching our virtual opening ceremony: the speeches were insightful, the a cappella performances were stunning, and of course we all loved hearing President Peter Salovey say, “OK, Boomer.” However, sitting alone in our dorms and watching a YouTube

video simply did not have the same gravitas that the ceremony should have had. Whenever we were introduced to new Yale traditions, we were reminded by upperclassmen of what those moments should have looked like: all of us first years in our pajamas with free pizza or crowding together to play games. After spending the last three months of our senior years watching the celebrations we had awaited for four years slip through our fingers, these reminders felt cruel, despite their kind intentions.

What I and, I imagine, most of the class of 2024 have learned over the past year is that we are far happier when we focus on what we do have, not on everything we’re missing.

In that same spirit, I posit that our two week quarantine was one of the most effective ways possible to form meaningful bonds with those around us, even without group movie nights or college teas.

Call it Stockholm syndrome, but something about spending countless hours every day with the same people under the same giant white tent for two weeks straight creates a pretty strong connection — one I highly doubt we would have developed under normal circumstances.

I’m not the kind of person to walk up to strangers and introduce myself.

Under quarantine, though, everyone seemed to become part of one big group, and it was easy for me to grab a seat next to someone I had never spoken to and find something we had in common. Jonathan Edwards first year Anna Martinelli-Parker

’24 told me the quarantine encouraged connections to be made, “not just in the form of individual friendships but also as a sense of community with the residential college.”

Bao Phan ’24, a first year in Trumbull explained how “some of the social pressure was alleviated and [we] were able to form closer relationships with a lot of people that extend beyond the first hello.” Even now, after almost three weeks, I feel comfortable introducing myself to the few people in my college who I haven’t yet met, with none of the anxiety that I might otherwise have.

During quarantine, I looked forward to exploring New Haven. I was excited to stop in every single coffee shop in the city and have access to food at every hour of the day, not just at designated mealtimes. I looked forward to studying somewhere other than the couch on the second floor of the Morse library. I wasn’t alone in these wishes. The consensus seemed to be that, as wonderful as quarantine had been for many first years, most of us craved space to go for a run, explore new options for study spaces and experience New Haven’s famous food scene. Many students also have friends in other residential colleges, and they were eager to see those friends in person.

Still, I remember sitting with a few friends in Morse the Sunday night before the first wave of arrival quarantines ended. We discussed our plans for our first days of freedom excitedly, but we also recognized our unexpected desire for things to stay just as they were.

We swapped schemes for keeping the gates of Morse closed for good, and while we were mostly kidding, the sentiment was real. Our worlds would explode after those first few days out of arrival quarantine, and the stakes would become higher in every way. We could no longer take solace in the knowledge that every student in Morse had tested negative for COVID-19 four or five times.

Now the whole world could enter the courtyard and common spaces that we had come to call home.

As we enter the second week of “freedom,” most first-year students have found their new routines and will continue to explore New Haven, taking runs at East Rock and meeting new people at Cross Campus.

But I know for certain that I will miss those two weeks. I will miss ordering bubble tea on DoorDash and begging the drivers to bring our food right up to the gate. I will miss nightly FroCo meetings and introducing myself, my hometown and my major on a daily basis.

I’m not sure if my feelings about the quarantine are simply my brain’s desperate attempt to pretend I don’t mind starting college during a pandemic. But I’m fairly certain that, given the circumstances, I could not have hoped for a better start to college. Ever since our senior years were cut short in March, the class of 2024 has had to look hard for silver linings.

During the past two weeks, though, the silver lining wasn’t hard to find.

Contact RACHEL FOLMAR at rachel.folmar@yale.edu .

ONLINE THIS WEEK: WKND RECOMMENDS Starting a real skincare routine.

WHO ASKED THE DOG TO STOP AGING? Claire Fang ’23 draws inspiration from the animals around her in Taiwan.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BRAMBLE

A R unner’s G uide to Yale and New HaveN

// BY ELIZABETH HOPKINSON

As we launch into the stress of a new school year that just so happens to be occurring during a pandemic, perhaps there has never been a better time to run away from our problems. Or, at the very least, run for a few miles with our problems safely tucked in the back of our minds.

Running has enjoyed a renaissance during the pandemic as experienced athletes and self-identified couch potatoes alike seek relief from the monotony and anxiety of our times. With indoor gyms closed or restricted, running outdoors has emerged as one of the safest options to stay active. Whether it’s to get some space from roommates, recover from a particularly brutal case of Zoom fatigue or balance out the excesses of quarantine bread baking, it seems like there have never been more reasons to run.

“I think that we all know about the cardiovascular and pulmonary benefits of exercise, but there are plenty of other benefits that aren’t appreciated,” wrote Dr. Elizabeth Gardner, an associate professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation and the head orthopedic surgeon for Yale University Athletics. Dr. Gardner pointed to the myriad benefits that are particularly relevant to students, such as better sleep quality, sharper cognitive function and improved mental health. Given the stresses associated with remote learning and loss of typical campus life, “All these benefits are only amplified in these unique times,” according to Dr. Gardener. “In orthopaedics we have been noticing an increase in posture-related joint pains during COVID, due to patients working and studying at home,” she wrote. “Running is a great opportunity to stretch out those muscles and joints that get stiff and tight sitting all day. It opens up the hips and the back particularly, which makes the hours of Zoom calls and class more manageable.”

STARTING OUT AND STAYING SAFE

Given that good sleep, mental well-being and opportunities to be active are all in short supply these days, some people are turning to running as a source of stability and enjoyment. Even Dr. Gardener has found herself lacing up her sneakers with newfound enthusiasm since the pandemic began: “I still don’t think that I will ever run a marathon, but I have been incredibly thankful to have had running over the last six months.”

For those who are new to running or returning to it for the first time in a while, Dr. Gardner stressed the importance of starting out slowly. “The goal of exercise in general is to be able to be consistent, and build up your endurance and enjoyment,” she wrote, so newbies should focus on developing a regular habit before setting overly ambitious mileage goals. Dr. Gardner also recommended that new runners invest in a pair of supportive shoes “that are appropriate for your feet and exercise goals” to prevent possible injuries that can arise from ill-suited footwear. Another key aspect of injury prevention is stretching before and after runs, especially “right now with so many hours spent in front of the computer for class or work.”

JOURNEYS AND DESTINATIONS

// K EY I CUI

WKND RECOMMENDS East Rock Coffee.

In addition to the ways that running can benefit your mind and body, the activity also offers the chance to seek out new places beyond campus. Michael Dolan, the president of the annual Faxon Law New Haven Road Race and an avid endurance athlete, said his runs take him all around the New Haven area. He often runs along the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail, a paved bike and foot path that can be joined near Yale Health that stretches for 58 miles across the state and can accommodate a run of almost any length. It’s a great option for a flat and fast run away from busy streets and disruptive intersections.

For Abigail Long ’22, a member of the varsity women’s cross country team, running is a way to break out of the Yale bubble and explore the geography of New Haven. “At Yale, it’s so easy to stay on campus because it is so beautiful, but running gives you a chance to see parts of New Haven that you wouldn’t otherwise see,” Long said. Many of her favorite routes take advantage of the natural oases that can be found in the heart

of urban New Haven. Beginning at Old Campus and continuing down Chapel Street brings runners to Edgewood Park, a 123-acre property with miles of trails and boardwalks raised above scenic wetlands. A run to Long Wharf, near Ikea on the other side of I-95, combines a romp through downtown with views of the Long Island Sound. Andrew Bellah ’22, co-president of Yale’s Club Running, counts East Rock as one of his favorite destinations. Located about two miles from campus, the park offers wooded trails and beautiful skyline views for those who are willing to trek up a steep ascent. For those able to venture a little further from campus, Long recommended West Rock State Park and the Malby Reservoirs, both located on the western edge of the city.

NEITHER SNOW NOR RAIN NOR HEAT

As the old saying goes, “If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a minute.” This rings true for New Haven runners, who are subject to the whims of this region’s notoriously erratic climate.

Average monthly temperatures range from 86 degrees in July to 39 degrees in January, and runners here are used to expecting the unexpected, whether that be a snow in October or a mini heat wave in February. A Texas native, Bellah admitted that New England winters took some getting used to. “Definitely invest in a good beanie and gloves so you don’t freeze your fingers off,” he suggested.

Dolan seconded the importance of proper clothing for year-round running in New Haven. He shops for gear at the Woodbridge Running Company, a locally owned business with expert staff. Long recommended always dressing in layers, especially in between seasons when the temperature can vary over the course of an evening or morning run.

Along with varying weather conditions, changing seasons also bring about shifting day lengths. In December, the sun can set as early as 4:30 p.m., meaning that evening runners either have to adapt the timing of their outings or layer on reflective clothing, as Long does.

GOING THE DISTANCE

Whether they prefer the trails of East Rock or the streets of downtown, the heat of summer or the chill of winter, runners in New Haven are united in one thing: a deep love for the sport. Reflecting on the past few months, Long said, “Running’s been awesome ... Spending 23 hours inside when that normally wouldn’t be the case, you’re able to get that one hour when you’re outside being able to see things and feel normal.” Bellah finds that running provides a necessary balance to student life. “I run because it’s a nice way to get away from the desk,” he said. “I don’t run with music. I just enjoy the fresh air and observe the world around me.”

A former college athlete, Dolan now competes in marathons and ultramarathons to build physical and mental fitness. For those who are looking to incorporate running into their lives, he said the most important thing is “to find what works for you.” He finds motivation and community through runs with the West Rock Ramblers, a local group that is free to join and open to Yale students. On campus, Yale Club Running also offers the chance to build community while logging miles. Although plans for the semester are still under discussion, Bellah said the team will find a safe way to continue connecting runners of all abilities at Yale.

So when you find yourself on your sixth hour of Zoom calls in a day, look outside your window to the trees that are just beginning to wear the golden colors of fall, the air that carries the first hints of the changing season, the roads that can take you somewhere new or somewhere that you know will bring you a familiar joy. Grab your shoes, your mask, a suitemate,a true crime podcast or simply the company of your own thoughts. Open your stride, let one foot follow the next, and whether your legs feel strong or heavy, your breath steady or straining, welcome this way of moving through the world.

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

ONLINE THIS WEEK: WHAT DID TED CRUZ SAY? Harry Rubin ’21 explains the recent frenzy over Netflix’s “Cuties.”