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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · VOL. CXXXVII, NO. 103 · yaledailynews.com

INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING

SUNNY CLOUDY

25 9

CROSS CAMPUS

Paul Fry, Luis MorenoOcampo, Charles Hill, Tom Perrotta, Yale Carillonneurs, Slava Vakarchuk, Sam Tsui, Tom Lehman, Ilan Zechory, Sarah Ruhl

TALK IT OUT THE INTERVIEW ISSUE

BUILDING COLLEGES

ANYONE HERE?

New colleges offer jobs, but raise questions on bidding process.

FIRST HEARING ON THE CITY’S BUDGET DRAWS FEW.

PAGES B1-B12 WEEKEND

PAGE 3 UNIVERSITY

PAGE 3 CITY

Fossil Free Yale threatens escalation

We made it. Spring recess might just be the most heartily embraced break of all, at least according to the collective sigh of relief we’re hearing around campus. After all the snow and all the midterms, it’s finally here. Whether you’re going to Spain or Sacramento, be safe, be spontaneous and, most of all, be glad that spring is upon us. May we return to a warmer, drier Yale.

hanging around the Elm City for a little longer, however, can join the quasi-student section taking over Buffalo Wild Wings on Church Street for the game tonight, courtesy of the Whaling Crew. Tip-off is at 8 p.m.

PAGE 10 SPORTS

Law shapes withdrawal policies

BY VIVIAN WANG STAFF REPORTER

group. Though Salovey could not be reached for comment, his statement to the News from October 2014 defended the Corporation Committee on Investor Responsibility and directed attention to the six sustainability initiatives unveiled in August, which accompanied the Yale Corporation’s decision to not divest. “[The CCIR] reasoned that focusing on fossil fuel suppliers

While students and administrators debate possible reforms to Yale’s withdrawal and readmission policies, some officials have mentioned that certain issues are a matter of federal policy, extending beyond the University.

At an open forum last Wednesday, where students were given the opportunity to voice concerns with Yale’s treatment of mental health issues, several students mentioned the financial burden of withdrawal: Students who withdraw after the first 10 days of a term may find themselves thousands of dollars in debt to a university they will not be attending that semester. Students who withdraw within the first 10 days — who are technically on a leave of absence, not withdrawn — do not face the same fees.

Administrators at the panel acknowledged the burden of such policies, but they also said that there are certain policies that cannot be changed because of federal guidelines.

“There is a legal, governmental component to all this,” English professor John Rogers, who is chairing a committee tasked with re-evaluating Yale’s withdrawal and readmission policies, said at the panel. “All students must be treated equally, for financial aid reasons and [National Collegiate Athletic

SEE FFY PROTEST PAGE 4

SEE WITHDRAWAL PAGE 6

finals are just eight weeks away from today. Let that soak in as you decide whether or not to drop that class — the deadline to do so is 5 p.m. today at the dean’s office nearest you.

Or in New Haven. Those of you

Men’s basketball heads to Harvard to battle for the Ivy title, NCAA berth.

REIMBURSEMENT PROCEDURES DIFFER ACROSS UNIVERSITIES

Before you go. Remember that

School spirit (in spirit). If you’re leaving campus early, send your good vibes to the men’s basketball team, which takes on Harvard tonight in Cambridge in a matchup that will essentially determine the Ivy League champion and, consequently, the Ancient Eight’s representative for the NCAA tournament.

IN THE BALANCE

LARRY MILSTEIN/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Fossil Free Yale has called on University President Peter Salovey to divest its assets from fossil fuel companies.

BY JED FINLEY AND LARRY MILSTEIN STAFF REPORTERS For the second time in as many weeks, Fossil Free Yale gathered outside University President Peter Salovey’s office Thursday afternoon to demand divestment.

In addition to the protest — which, in contrast to last week’s 12-person gathering, brought roughly 40 people to the steps of Woodbridge Hall — the pro-divestment student group delivered a let-

ter to Salovey’s office.

This is not the first time FFY has brought a letter to Salovey’s doorstep. In October, the group delivered over 180 signed letters to Woodbridge Hall that urged the University to reconsider divesting its assets from fossil fuel companies.

The letter to Woodbridge Hall administrators demanded a University plan to “address the multiple injustices created by the fossil fuel industry” by midnight on April 1, or risk “escalated direct action” by the

On the other side of the table.

Last night, juniors received a message from the Admissions Office about the chance to apply for a job as a senior interviewer this summer.

While some might react by being overly nostalgic about how they were the ones being interviewed not too long ago, others might enjoy talking to eager high school students about their “passions.”

You asked for it. Instead

of writing you a love song, Sara Bareilles has decided to stop by the University to teach a master class on April 3, the singer announced in a Thursday evening tweet.

Those brave enough to apply have until March 23 to submit a song sample.

“Frozen” in the flesh. Bobby Lopez ’97 and his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez are the guests of honor for the Association of Asian American Yale Alumni’s Lunar New Year Fundraising Banquet in New York City tomorrow, held, in part, to celebrate the couple’s EGOT-worthy work composing the soundtrack to Disney’s “Frozen.” Yes, that includes “Let it Go.” “Glitzy and glamorous.” Such

is the dress code for women (actually, “fabulous” is the third requirement) at tonight’s exclusive, on-the-list-only party at Harvest.

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1975 Yale buys the Delta Kappa Epsilon house for use by the Association of Yale Alumni.

Follow along for the News’ latest.

Twitter | @yaledailynews

y MORE ONLINE goydn.com/xcampus

For readmitted students, inconsistent housing outcomes

BY TYLER FOGGATT AND VIVIAN WANG STAFF REPORTERS Students readmitted to Yale College after withdrawing face a host of uncertainties. Among them: the location of their housing.

Although the deadline to apply for readmission is June 1, students must also complete a series of on-campus interviews before they can return. As a result, stu-

dents often do not receive notice of their readmitted status until a few weeks or even days before the semester begins. Their housing is therefore frequently assigned at the last minute, often leaving them to live with people and in a location they did not choose.

“I understand logically why they can’t provide housing in advance for readmitted students, but I guess it just frustrates me on a personal level,” Eugenia Zhu-

PSE discontinued for 2015–16

BY BRENDAN HELLWEG STAFF REPORTER After a 22-year run, Perspectives on Science and Engineering is ending.

With the retirement of its longtime leader, William Segraves, the former associate dean for science education at Yale College, the program will be phased out by the end of this academic year, Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway said in an email.

The selective freshman program, often seen as the scientific counterpart to Directed Studies, has been on shaky ground ever since Segraves retired on Jan. 1. A recent page update on the Yale College website stating that “the Perspectives on Science and Engineering program is no longer being offered” fueled speculation.

The program is a one-credit, year-long freshman class that meets on Fridays to introduce freshmen to a wide range of disciplines in STEM. Students write a final research paper and typically

conduct research over the summer with professors. The program makes it easier for students to receive funding and find research opportunities, said PSE co-director Sandy Chang ’88.

For nearly two decades, the program was led by Segraves, who managed logistical matters like grading, selecting students and managing teaching fellows.

With Segraves at the helm, PSE professors could focus more on teaching while maintaining their heavy involvement in research, Chang said. With Segraves gone, he added, there is nobody clear to fill the void.

“Without a dedicated person like him, I don’t see how it could survive,” said Chang, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine.

“I love PSE; I’d love to see it continue, but not with me.”

CHALLENGES FOR THE PROGRAM

PSE is meant to provide a SEE PSE PAGE 6

kovsky ’18 said. “Academically, I’ll still be a sophomore when I return, but the people I’d want to live with are going to be juniors.”

According to Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs Pamela George, who chairs the readmission committee, whether or not a student is able to enter the housing draw depends on the time of his or her withdrawal. Students who leave campus after the spring housing draw may be able to keep that

spot for when they return. The exact procedure varies by residential college, George added.

George said that while readmitted students are usually able to find housing that is amenable to them, there is room for better coordination. As the chair of the readmission committee, she only handles students returning to campus, but is not aware of students who are leaving campus in the first place.

“Because I’m not involved with withdrawn students, I don’t know who they are and what those issues [with housing] are,” she said. “I recommend that there be a closer relationship with my role in readmission and the withdrawn students, so I’m aware of them and can reach out to them and start the process even earlier. We’re still looking at SEE HOUSING PAGE 4

Carson ’73 explores presidential run

COURTESY OF GAGE SKIDMORE

Yale alumnus Ben Carson ’73, a neurosurgeon from Detroit, is exploring a presidential run.

BY TYLER FOGGATT STAFF REPORTER Ben Carson ’73 — a renowned neurosurgeon, political conservative and former member of the Yale Corporation — is formally exploring a presidential run for the 2016 election, he announced on Tuesday.

Carson, an acclaimed African-American neurosurgeon from Detroit, graduated from the University with a degree in psychology.

After receiving his MD from the University of Michigan Medical School, Carson went on to become the director of pediatric neuroSEE BEN CARSON PAGE 4

PAGE 2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION

.COMMENT “Facing a uniformed officer with gun drawn in whatever position is a daunting yaledailynews.com/opinion

Greek letters O

n Friday the 13th, Dean Jonathan Holloway sent an email to the student body: “A message about sexual misconduct and the Yale College community.” It included a letter from “The Brothers of SAE” regarding the fraternity’s violation of Yale’s policy on sexual misconduct. Cue campus buzz that lasted a couple of days, maybe even a week.

Pretty soon the conversations died down. After all, the letter contained little concrete information. There were no particulars to ground discussion. And maybe this is a good thing. Letters like this one toe a dangerous line — they may fuel productive conversation, or they may just breed gossip.

Still, Holloway concluded his email by calling on students to read SAE’s letter closely: “I urge you to read it because it contributes to discussions aimed at improving our campus climate.” Those discussions have yet to emerge in concrete ways, but they are critically important. Now is an opportune moment for discourse on reforming Greek life at Yale.

In the past year, Greek life has made waves across national headlines. In November, Rolling Stone reported on the troubling abuses of a fraternity at the University of Virginia.

At Stanford, a swimmer was accused of assaulting a woman after a fraternity party. And just last month director Kirby Dick released the documentary “The Hunting Ground,” an exposé on campus rape. Holloway’s email reminds us that Yale is not immune to this pervasive culture of misogyny and abuse.

INSTITUTIONS ARE BOGGED DOWN BY FORCES OF INERTIA The letter’s release was critical for a number of reasons. As Holloway explained to me in an email, “One of the UWC’s goals is to find ways to educate involved parties in any situation.” With the SAE incident, Holloway and other administrators felt there was an opportunity to educate the community without violating the confidentiality of parties involved in the case.

Holloway’s email also figures importantly in a case in which SAE otherwise escaped with little retribution. According to the email sent to the Yale community, the UWC’s sanctions against SAE included: “a ban on on-campus activities;” a ban on communication through university emails; a two-year prohibition on use of the SAE name in conjunction with Yale.

How to be an a cappella fangirl

Effectively, all of this means very little. Because SAE’s house is off campus, the oncampus ban EMMA barely GOLDBERG has any impact.

They can Dilemmas advertise their functions through Gmail rather than Yale email. Since the case closed last fall, the fraternity has frequently hosted parties and events. An anonymous member of the fraternity acknowledged that the UWC sanctions changed very little in the way that SAE operates.

“The sanctions themselves have basically no effect on us,” he told me.

Admittedly, University administrators are limited in their ability to place sanctions on organizations that primarily operate off campus. In SAE’s case, Yale recognized a flagrant violation of the school’s sexual misconduct policies — but administrators struggled to devise sanctions that would actually impact the fraternity’s activities.

That’s where the Feb. 13 letter factors in. It’s a call to action of sorts. We can’t feign ignorance of the fact that our community is plagued by many of the same abuses present at UVA, at Stanford, at schools across the country. And the burden is not just on administrators, but also on students to identify areas for improvement in Yale’s social and sexual culture.

At a national level, survivors and activists have floated many powerful ideas for reform. One of the most innovative and potentially effective is the move to make fraternities coed. Nearby Wesleyan University implemented this initiative last fall; university spokesperson Kate Carlisle told CNN the decision aimed to make the campus “as fair, inclusive and equitable as possible.” Yale might consider an initiative of this sort, one with large-scale impact that would demonstrate leadership at a national level.

But in the meantime, to borrow the White House and the Yale College Council’s language on the subject — it’s on us. Institutions are bogged down by forces of inertia, but students don’t have to be. We can take our superficial conversations about SAE’s letter and deepen them, using them to re-examine ourselves and our school culture.

EMMA GOLDBERG is a junior in Saybrook College and a former opinion editor for the News. Her column usually runs on alternate Mondays. Contact her at emma.goldberg@yale.edu .

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COPYRIGHT 2015 — VOL. CXXXVII, NO. 103

'DAVID' ON 'INTERNAL INVESTIGATION CLEARS YPD OFFICER IN BLOW CASE'

GUE ST COLUMNIST ADRIANA MIELE

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EDITOR IN CHIEF Isaac Stanley-Becker

experience.”

O

n Monday morning in the JE dining hall, I hovered over a friend’s iPhone to see the Whim/Whiffs list. We were jittery. And excited. And nervous.

Despite my membership in the advanced chorus at my middle school, my involvement in singing at Yale entirely consists of knowing people who sing. I also enjoy uploading pictures of my acafriends in formal attire onto my Instagram. In the past few weeks, I’ve RSVP’d to four a cappella jams on Facebook.

This week was a big week for some of my best friends. It included some heavy disappointment –– and in other cases, lots of smiley face emojis.

An hour after seeing The List, I saw one of my best friends for the first time since he’d been admitted to the Whiffs. After hugs and high-fives and “OH MY GOD”s, I said, “Wait, let’s talk about how this affects my life. I have to get a Mory’s membership now.” We laughed.

I was sort of kidding.

I wasn’t always a fangirl outside my perpetual crush on Darren Criss from Glee. (Fun fact: he sang with the Whiffenpoofs in 2013 at some benefit concert.) But it’s

not really about being attracted to people who sing. That happens to the best of us sometimes. What I enjoy most about a cappella at Yale is that there are lots of people who are very in love with and committed to what they do, and you can really tell. That doesn’t stop me from teasing them when they take themselves too seriously.

Last week, I got coffee with one of my freshman year suitemates.

We hadn’t spoken in a long time, so it was lovely to catch up with someone who knew me in the golden days of Camp Yale: When everything was shiny and gothic and endless. We gossiped about our FroCo group over lattés and discussed summer possibilities.

Then we talked about how much we’d changed in our two-and-ahalf years at Yale. I reminded her of her freshman year obsession with a cappella, which made us laugh.

She and my roommate attended pretty much every single singing dessert during our first fall. I didn’t really get their obsession. I didn’t intend to sing, so I didn’t particularly care much. That being said, she bought a Duke’s Men album and played it on loop in our common room for a month. None of us

objected.

I do, however, distinctly remember thinking the term “singing dessert” was ridiculous.

I had a comical, cartoon image of dancing cakes and pastries with faces like the candlestick and teapot from Beauty and the Beast. I imagined the desserts dancing in the form of a horseshoe.

Note for the orally challenged: The horseshoe is that half-circle shape that a cappella groups make when they perform. I don’t know why they don’t just call it a halfcircle, but apparently it needs its own name. I’m aware that it’s more or less the shape of a horseshoe, but it’s also proportionally wider; I’m just saying.

Throughout the rest of my freshman year, however, singing had little to no effect on my college life. Then one day during my sophomore fall, a friend of mine invited me to a small concert with her group, Something Extra. It was no big deal, and I had some free time, so I went. And it was really, really good.

I always got invited to concerts, but I started to pay more attention to them. So I went to a New Blue show. Then a Whim show. The Spizzwinks(?). The Alley Cats.

The Duke’s Men. It just started happening. I remember hearing a Taylor Swift mash-up by an allwomen’s group, which made me quite emotional. I started attending concerts to support people whom I hardly knew and for people whom I dearly loved.

Last week, at the Proof of the Pudding Jam, I sent Snapchats of my best friend Caitlin acting out ridiculous, cheesy skits and then cooing a lullaby. There are so many moments when our efforts on campus go unnoticed, but I got to be loud while she was onstage.

I got to clap and yell and woot and snap and appropriately celebrate someone that I love here.

For my next 15 months as an undergrad, I fully intend to continue unabashedly fangirling. I will do everything shy of dancing along in the aisles like Amy Poehler in Mean Girls. I will yell out embarrassing nicknames and make noise. I will eat the desserts. I might cry whenever a soloist performs Pretty Hurts. I don’t need to wear gloves to be in love with the spectacle.

ADRIANA MIELE is a junior in Jonathan Edwards College. Contact her at adriana.miele@yale.edu .

THAO DO/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

YOUR LETTERS opinion@yaledailynews.com

WRITE TO US All letters submitted for publication must include the author’s name, phone number and description of Yale University affiliation. Please limit letters to 250 words.

The Yale Daily News reserves the right to edit letters before publication. E-mail is the preferred method of submission.

Create separate Faculty Senates for each school

The American Association of University Professors, the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges and the American Council on Education jointly recommend that university governance be guided by the principle that “faculty representatives should be selected by the faculty according to procedures determined by the faculty.” Yale is a member of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges and the American Council on Education. Provost Ben Polak violated this shared guideline by appointing the ad hoc committee on Faculty Standards of Conduct. I urge the provost to table the committee’s draft until the FAS Faculty Senate has the time to consider it.

On the FAS Faculty Senate’s role in the process, ad hoc committee member Marina Picciotto of the School of Medicine commented to the Yale Daily News: “It doesn’t seem that it would be a democratic or representative process to have the FAS Senate responsible for a document that should address fundamental standards for every member of the faculty across many schools and many missions.”

She brings up two good points. The separate schools of Yale University have different missions, and the process of crafting Faculty Standards of Conduct should be a “democratic or representative process.”

Therefore, each school at Yale, including the School of Medicine, should establish a faculty senate to ensure that the formulation of binding standards on faculty conduct is a “democratic and representative” process.

If the Faculty Standards of Conduct contain rules and regulations rather than simply shared aspirational goals, perhaps Faculty Senates in the separate schools should tailor those rules to fit their different missions.

GLENDA GILMORE FEB. 26 The writer is the Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History.

The News’ political agenda Scott Stern’s recent take on YaleNews ("YalePropaganda," Feb. 16) was stern indeed. And he’s right. When an institution — be it the White House, the GOP or Yale — releases information about itself, ulterior motives usually override factual accuracy. Calling YaleNews propaganda, then, is like calling Pravda propaganda: it’s true, but nobody goes to YaleNews for news about Yale anyway.

This is why the Yale Daily News exists. As an independent student-run paper, the News is in a unique position to provide fair, unbiased coverage of Yale and all her imperfections. It routinely breaks stories about sexual assault, mental health reform and administrative intransigence, and long may this continue.

But what if the News has an agenda? What if beneath its veneer of objectivity there lies a host of normative assumptions that affect how it reports on controversial issues?

The News succeeds more often than not in its quest for fairness, but when it fails — and it does — we should take that seriously.

“What Does Ferguson Mean” (Dec. 5, 2014) exemplifies the News’ not-so-implicit liberal outlook. Admittedly, it appeared in the Weekend section, so perhaps some degree of editorializing was appropriate. Nonetheless, the results are disturbing to anyone who believes journalism should prioritize facts over politics.

“There was silence,” the article begins, “Dignified, mournful, resolved silence.” This is not neutral language. Right off the bat, the choice of diction and syntax provokes an emotional reaction.

It identifies protest with pathos,

with no attempt to question the walkout that took place after a grand jury’s failure to indict Darren Wilson. It is poetry, not news.

The authors move on to discuss Yale students’ various reactions to Ferguson, making sure to mention the race of each student interviewed. That’s fine, considering the nature of the story, until we come to this line: “Beckett Lee ’18, who is white and identifies as conservative, called for students to remember Wilson’s humanity.”

By casually including Lee’s political leanings, the article sends a problematic message. The only person explicitly identified as “conservative” is the one who most clearly expresses sympathy for Darren Wilson. This is not objectivity. Other than an anonymous “right-leaning” student, no other students’ political leanings are revealed in the article. This reinforces the prevailing narrative of conservatives siding with law enforcement rather than minority victims of alleged police brutality — a simplistic and unfair assumption. Moreover, the authors choose to paraphrase Lee instead of quoting him directly. We have no way of knowing whether he actually used the phrase, “Wilson’s humanity.”

The News should leave opining for the opinion page. A newspaper’s primary job is to educate its readers about the news, not cater to any one political narrative. When we allow any media outlet to unfairly spin the facts, we risk ignorance and imprudence.

For a student-run paper, the News is above average. We should be grateful for that. But it isn’t infallible. And neither are we.

AARON SIBARIUM MAR. 5 The writer is a freshman in Timothy Dwight College and a staff columnist for the News.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 3

FRIDAY FORUM

EMMA STONE “If I feel strongly about anything, I get overwhelmed with emotion.”

Going under for air I

have two papers and a problem set due today. I’m feeling whelmed, I tell myself.

Whelmed. Not over, not under, just whelmed. I realize that “whelm” has a perfectly usable dictionary definition — it is an archaic verb that means “submerge” — however, I’d like to take some linguistic liberties. I’m trying to use it as an escape from the vocabulary of stressed and busy and tired that often seem to be the only options given a situation in which my to-do list runs onto a second page.

Whelmed is my attempt to give myself a way to say a lot but not too much, more than usual but not catastrophic, at the speed limit but not over. It’s a reminder that adding more of the things I enjoy doing to the things I have to do should, at the very least, not make me less happy and hopefully will make me more fulfilled, more satisfied, more whelmed.

This past weekend, a number of things I’d approached with com-

mitment and excitement happened all at once. And I realized that as the weekend neared, rather than feel those great CAROLINE things, I felt more and more SYDNEY like I was anticipating some Selfmassive oncoming explosion Absorbed or inescapable disaster.

With half a dozen commitments in the balance, my dedication morphed into a fear of unavoidable collapse.

And of course, minor catastrophes did indeed come to pass and deadlines flew by, yet by Sunday night, fast asleep at 11:30 with three fullto-bursting days behind me, I was content. I was whelmed. And I was determined to carry that feeling into the week ahead of me. Because even on the verge of vacation, good

busy is the ideal mode of existence, and I’d nearly forgotten that.

So on Monday I got up early to cram for my Intro to Programming midterm, joyfully bombed the midterm before attending a Master’s Tea and then a lecture. I’ve spent the remainder of this week in a similar pattern, waking up an hour before my alarm because my body just knows there is so much to do, and prioritizing the things that make me feel whelmed — the pitch meetings and the poetry readings and the final project planning — over, well, midterms.

It’s a long walk from my apartment to my Wednesday morning class, so I had a while to chat with a classmate who joined me on this journey. As it stands, there’s definitely one paper on my list that I just need to get through straightforwardly and with little feeling.

“Think of it like a job,” she said, “it’s just a job and you just have to sit down, and you have to do it because it’s your job.” This advice surprised

me because this woman is one of the most passionate and dedicated people I know, so these words were unexpected coming from her mouth. And yet I knew that I had to resign myself to what she was saying, at least in part in order to make it through the assignment (which I am most certainly working on while you read this, probably on my flight home).

But even midterm essays can be whelming when I let myself spend time with illustrations at the Beinecke, when I talk through an outline with a friend, when I savor rereading a favorite passage. Perhaps then, it isn’t fair to so quickly dismiss the given definition of whelmed. When faced with the deluge, I’m not destined to drown, but to submerge myself, to allow it to wash over me, to be whelmed.

CAROLINE SYDNEY is a junior in Silliman College. Her column runs on alternate Fridays. Contact her at caroline.sydney@yale.edu .

GUE ST COLUMNIST UG ONNA E ZE

Not just a Black problem T

he past year has been a bit of a whirlwind for many Black Americans. The deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice brought issues of police brutality and race to the forefront of national media. Television shows like Empire and How to Get Away With Murder have broken new ground with their focus on African Americans in positions of political and economic power. Many blogs and newspapers have begun to write extensively on the apparent racial bias in award shows like the Grammys. What makes these conversations interesting is that people of all races have engaged in them. The consensus in most public forums has been to recognize that, while these problems adversely affect members of a select group, the responsibility to address them is shared by all. Although opinions on issues of race may differ, it is important that people of all races participate in these discussions.

Yet, many Yalies have unknowingly embraced a dangerous mindset when it comes to race on campus. Discussions of race and class have been largely isolated to cultural centers and related academic departments. The first cultural center town hall meeting last semester, despite boasting large numbers overall, was overwhelmingly attended by members of the

cultural groups affected. The disappointing attendance at the cultural center review meeting a few weeks ago only reveals the degree to which issues of race have been pushed off by the campus at large. As Monica Wang ’18 noted in her column a few weeks ago (“Navigating cultural identity,” Feb. 20), the impact of these conversations beyond the walls of LC 102 that night has been questionable at best.

WE SHOULDN’T ISOLATE DISCUSSIONS OF RACE The consequence of this temperament has been an intellectual malaise where conversations of race have been pushed so far to the fringes of campus that they have been virtually absent from mainstream discourse. Some students have tried to excuse this isolation by claiming that the only acceptable voices on these topics are those most adversely affected by these problems. Others have claimed that they do not want to crowd out underprivileged voices with their own. Still others have argued that

their silence grows out of a fear of public censure should they fail to perfectly articulate an “acceptable” opinion. All three excuses reveal a mentality where cultural groups are seen as distinct from mainstream collegiate life, rather than as constitutive of it. As students at a liberal arts college, we should find this troubling.

We have subconsciously created segregated bubbles of campus life based on race and identity. The consequence of these subconscious attitudes has been the identification of racial concerns on campus as “other.” Put more concretely, students have come to identify events at the Af-Am House as strictly “Black events,” discussions at La Casa as strictly “Latino discussions” and issues of funding at the Native American Cultural Center as strictly “Native problems.” The low attendance at the last cultural center town hall meeting can be attributed to these attitudes. I fear that this problem will only compound itself as we get further away from the events in Ferguson.

The restrictions placed on these conversations inhibit the education of students both within and outside these cultural groups. Yale’s consistent production of leaders in politics, business and academia is irresponsible if a large number of those same leaders are ill-equipped

to address issues of race. This is true for both the future lawyer who will have to navigate our country’s bizarre policy of mandatory minimum sentencing and the aspiring academic who will have to address demands for greater diversity in departments. In isolating these conversations, we prevent arguments on both sides of these issues from developing the contours and nuance needed to draw meaningful solutions.

It is easy to discuss issues of race when they mimic universally condemned periods of American history. I suspect that most people felt comfortable condemning police violence in Ferguson because the images of protestors confronting militarized police in St. Louis, Missouri resembled the images of 1960s protestors confronting riot squads in Montgomery, Alabama.

It is much more difficult to discuss issues of race when they have no clear answer. Difficulty, however, does not excuse silence. Until we begin to discuss issues of race on campus in the same way that we discuss issues of mental health and the student contribution, we will be victims of the same prejudices that we hope to erase.

UGONNA EZE is a junior in Pierson College. Contact him at ugonna.eze@yale.edu .

GUEST COLUMNIST AMALIA HALIKIAS

Run, anyone, run Y

ale is going about politics all wrong. I've had enough of prepackaged candidates and future politicians using New Haven as their next stepping stone. I want a candidate who knows the student body, who cares about the things we care about and who isn't following some 10-year plan to a senate or gubernatorial seat.

Before I begin, let me make one point clear: I have no problem with Fortney Hillman Stark III '17, the sophomore who declared on Tuesday that he will run for the Ward 1 alder seat, on a personal level. I think he’s very nice, and that his involvement in various New Haven organizations is to be commended.

I have two major concerns with his announcement this week to run for the Yale-dominated district which is currently occupied by Sarah Eidelson '12: Firstly, it’s disturbingly early to start talking about next November’s alder race and, secondly, I’m surprised that Democrats would rally behind such a prepackaged politician.

Over the course of the past few days, I have been bombarded with questions. Will the Yale College Republicans be running a candidate this year? What do we think of Stark? If no Republican enters the field, will the YCR endorse Stark over Eidelson? I don't have a problem with the questions; I have a problem with the fact that they have begun eight months before Election

Day. This is not a U.S. presidential election. There is no reason that a 19-year-old college student needs to declare his candidacy for an alder seat so early. In fact, I think an early declaration is indicative of a problematic candidate. What possible motivation is there for a local political candidate to announce his race eight months early? Stark's recent announcement is, without a doubt, a Machiavellian move. Surely, we have all noticed that Yale Democrats are not happy with Eidelson. She is a non-presence on campus and rarely attends her weekly office hour. (Not a typo. She literally sets aside one hour for her constituents a week, and then usually doesn't show up.)

By declaring early, Stark intends to garner political support and thereby squeeze his opponent out of the field. This may explain why four members of the 2015 Yale College Democratic Executive Board have already endorsed Stark's candidacy.

By comparison, Paul Chandler '14 didn’t announce his candidacy for Ward 1 alder until the end of April 2013.

Secondly, it’s fascinating to me that the Yale College Democrats would passively accept Stark as their standard-bearer. My question is: Why Fish? To put it simply, Stark is a bit of a strange choice. The son of a 20-term U.S. Congressman, Stark arrived on this campus only one short year ago. He's white, he's male, he identifies as straight.

So why have liberal Yalies rallied around him? Why have they chosen a symbol who is the epitome of the status quo? If we want to have a national discussion about political dynasties in America, we should be willing to have it on the local level as well.

For those of us who have been on campus long enough, Stark’s campaign is reminiscent of the 2011 campaign of Vinay Nayak '14 and the 2013 campaign of Ella Wood '15.

Like Stark, these two candidates were self-proclaimed "outsiders" who tried to convince us that they understood New Haven. Nayak received criticism for running as a hyper-politicized underclassman with little New Haven involvement, while Wood was forced to fend off attacks after breaking her lease, moving into a non-Yale ward and announcing her candidacy for Ward 7 alder. Similarly to Nayak's, Stark's family is politically influential. Similarly to Wood, Stark hopes to market himself as a "man of the people" while decidedly not being one.

In light of these criticisms, this past Monday’s News’ View ("Run, Fish, run," March 2) was improper.

The News should not have waded into the race at such an early stage. Will the News pen an editorial explicitly urging any other candidate to run by name? If the News' editorial board wished to make known their disapproval of incumbent Eidelson, they should

have simply come out and said it.

Instead, they published an ode to Fortney. One student characterized the News' editorial in a text to me as, “We do not endorse his wouldbe candidacy … but let's tell you all about how fantastic he is and all the things he has done in New Haven.”

(Personally, I’m looking forward to reading the next News’ View: “Warren 2016. We love you, Liz!”) I hope the editorial board will give all candidates — Republican, Democrat or Independent — a fair shake moving forward.

Yale, take my cautionary advice.

Get to know your options. Wait to see whether any qualified candidates enter the race. There are surely a plethora of potential contenders with a more accurate understanding of New Haven residents' experiences, or with closer ties to the Yale community at large. Remember, it's only March.

In the end, I guess I can’t be entirely upset that Yale students may be voting Fortney Hillman Stark III into office next November. If we like hyper ambitious, prepackaged, structurally advantaged political candidates, maybe that means Jeb Bush has a chance on our campus after all.

AMALIA HALIKIAS is a senior in Silliman College and communications director of the Yale College Republicans.

Contact her at amalia.halikias@yale.edu .

GUEST COLUMNIST NAT H A N ST E I N B E R G

Burst the physical bubble I

magine trekking across this campus as an outsider. To us students, it seems so simple. Swipe your way through here, pass down this corridor and duck across this courtyard. But I’ve recently found myself wondering how low-income populations perceive the Yale campus. It is easy to overlook that the design of campus speaks to the relationship between the city and the institution. Beyond that, the layout of a campus can influence town-gown interactions by altering and expanding the points of contact between the two parties.

My fear is that Yale has grown more insular through the construction of gated courtyards. Our inward-facing community can often inadvertently alienate this developing city of 130,000 inhabitants.

The story of the gated campus begins with Timothy Dwight V. In 1871, before he became president of the University, Dwight declared “the great quadrangle should look inward” such that “College life, so to speak, must find its center within its own borders.” He reasoned that an inward-looking campus would encourage students to focus on their studies and cultivate an intellectual community within the College. From there, courtyards began to take shape. Before this trend, Yale was porous. The campus was accessible to everyone; the brick buildings on Old Campus were surrounded not by imposing walls but expanses of grass.

Then, campus grew insular. The fortified Old Campus we know today began to take shape with the construction of Farnam Hall in the 1890s. Farnam Hall was just as much a wall as it was a building. Meanwhile, New Haven gained a large immigrant population.

Perhaps Yale officials saw these walls not only as a way to further Dwight’s vision of an intellectually introspective University but also as a response to the rising low-income and foreign communities strolling through the Elm City.

In 1919, architect John Russell Pope suggested a reversion to the open campus.

Pope, famous for designing the Jefferson Memorial in 1937, proposed an open campus with buildings centered along a Wall Street pathway — a throwback to the campus row from the 1800s. But the Yale Corporation rejected his courtyard-free blueprints, citing the overexposure. “College life should be secluded by such enclosures,” the Corporation said. The rejection of Pope’s blueprints indicates that, by the time, the administration had settled on a campus of courtyards, distinct from the city.

As Yale entered the technology age, campus security was taken up a notch. ID scanners were placed on doors, gates and entryways alike. Nowadays, to weave across campus is rendered impossible for those without an access card. Instead, Elm City residents have to walk the perimeters and make the corners that we so easily avoid. What does it imply to the community when students duck behind walls? How can Yale forge amicable relations with its surrounding citizens when it becomes a fortress? Prioritizing safety is a must, but the Yale police patrol campus day and night to achieve that end.

In addition, an insular campus perpetuates a dismissive relationship between students and locals. New Haven residents forge this city’s identity with diversity as strong as that of the Yale student body. Strong towngown relations rely on frequent interaction between students and residents.

Consider Brown University’s campus.

What amazes me about Brown is the walkability of campus both for students and locals. In fact, it is common to see Providence locals, dog leashes in hand, strolling through the main quad on weekend mornings. Buildings, of course, are secured, but the university on the whole is porous.

Yale should strive for this degree of accessibility. But digital renderings of the two new residential colleges don’t look too promising.

By creating walled courtyards, the administration sends a subtle message to students that New Haven residents have nothing to contribute to the intellectual vitality of the University. Even worse, the walled gates imply that the University needs to protect its students from the city.

In one sense, the Yale campus is already doomed by its architecture, but there are other ways for the University to open its campus to the community. Perhaps we could eliminate swipe access on college gates. This would, at least, exemplify that outsiders are let within the walls.

The administration should be applauded for granting public admission to museums, including the Yale University Art Gallery and the Center for British Art. It’s an indication that the institution stands for civic learning.

But we should keep in mind that the physical layout of the campus sends a strong message to local communities. It’s best that we make New Haven residents feel at home, at home.

NATHAN STEINBERG is a sophomore in Timothy Dwight College. Contact him at nathan.steinberg@yale.edu .

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT FFY issues ultimatum FFY PROTEST FROM PAGE 1 ignores all of the other sectors of the economy that cause carbon emissions and contribute to the problem, or the ‘social injury,’” Salovey wrote in the October email. “Should new information come to light suggesting that this view is not appropriate, then I suspect the [Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility] would reconsider the issues and bring any relevant concerns to the CCIR.” Law professor Jonathan Macey, chair of the ACIR, said the committee is in touch with FFY and is planning to meet with them soon. He added the committee is beginning to “vote proxies,” a process used by the ACIR under the CCIR’s guidance to support corporate shareholder resolutions related to climate change. This process allows the ACIR to support a proposition on behalf of the University by casting its vote remotely, rather than having to attend shareholder meetings. In addition to this initiative, Chief Investment Officer David Swensen sent a letter in September to all of Yale’s active external money managers urging them to consider the consequences of climate change in their investment decisions.

Though representatives of FFY had previously described the University’s sustainability initiatives — which include potentially piloting a carbon charge at Yale to adopting third-party verification of emission data — as commendable yet insufficient, today’s rally marked a new direction, with speakers openly criticizing the University’s effort.

“Yale has shown little interest in taking any action that may sacrifice their profits or anything that may require them to act on their supposed morals,” FFY organizer Alexandra Barlowe ’17 said. “I am angry because people’s lives are on the line and all Yale has done is throw money at sustainability,

“Compassion is a verb.”

BUDDHIST MONK AND PEACE ACTIVIST

Carson ’73 exploring pres. run mittee’s chair, told the Associated Press. “Today we begin the formal process of exploring whether or not Ben can win the presidency.”

Despite the Yale College class year affixed to his name, the prospect of a Carson campaign has garnered a minimal response on campus. Of seven students interviewed, only two said they were enthusiastic about Carson’s potential candidacy, while three said they did not know who Carson is.

“The College Republicans won’t be taking any formal stance or preference when it comes to any contested Republican primary,” Communications Director of the Yale College Republicans Amalia Halikias ’15 said. “We are excited, however, by Dr. Carson’s candidacy.”

Carson’s announcement raises the possibility of there being at least two Yale alums in the 2016 election – Carson and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton LAW ’73.

However, despite Carson’s great achievements as a neurosurgeon, some are skeptical about his strength as a candidate, noting Carson’s somewhat controversial views.

“Ben Carson recently told a reporter that being gay was a choice because some [prison] inmates go in straight and come out gay,” said Hedy Gutfreund ’18, communications director for the Yale College Democrats. “That’s pretty much all you need to know about Ben Carson.”

Longtime journalist and political science lecturer Walter Shapiro, who has covered the last nine presidential elections, said he has doubts about Carson’s viability as a serious candidate.

Shapiro said a trend has emerged of individuals running for president with agendas completely unconnected to being serious political contenders. In the case of Carson, Shapiro said, it seems more like

BEN CARSON FROM PAGE 1

LARRY MILSTEIN/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

While protesting, students from FFY shared personal stories about the effect that the fossil fuel industry has on communities. which has done a lot more for Yale’s public image than for victims of the climate crisis.”

During Thursday’s protest, students shared personal stories about the impact of the fossil fuel industry on communities.

Sebastian Medina-Tayac ’16, president of the Association of Native Americans at Yale and a former reporter for the News, spoke about the impact of oil extraction on the Piscataway Indian Nation of Southern Maryland.

“It is our elders, our languages, our lands, your land and our peoples that are at stake,” he said, prompting cheers from the crowd. “This endowment is blood money.”

The letter presented to Woodbridge Hall administrators, which was obtained by the News, stated FFY’s demand

that the University construct a plan to address how Yale will change its investment policy to account for the social harm caused by the fossil fuel industry.

FFY Project Manager Mitch Barrows ’16 added that while he cannot speculate on Salovey’s potential response to FFY’s demands, he said he does not readily see another option besides divestment.

“If the Corporation chooses to respond with a plan of action that does not include divestment, FFY would evaluate that plan based on its ability to remediate the grave social harm inflicted [by the fossil fuel industry],” he said in an email.

Contact JED FINLEY at james.finley@yale.edu and LARRY MILSTEIN at larry.milstein@yale.edu .

THÍCH NHAT HANH VIETNAMESE

surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital at age 33, making him the youngest major division director in Johns Hopkins history.

In 1987, he became the first surgeon to successfully separate twins conjoined at the head. Carson served as an alumni fellow on the Yale Corporation from 1997 to 2003.

Carson has written six bestselling books, including the 1992 book “Gifted Hands,” which was turned into a television movie in 2009.

Charles Ellis ’59, whose time on the Corporation overlapped with Carson’s, said he enjoyed the time he spent working with Carson, and added that he is an “enormously brilliant man.”

“Ben is crackerjack smart,” Ellis said. “And it’s not normal smart. Obviously he has a fabulous ability with his hands to do surgery that is out of this world delicate and fragile, on babies, particularly. But he’s really smart at understanding other people, and he doesn’t just understand what they’re saying, he understands why they’re saying it, and the background that causes them to believe the things that they’re saying.”

Carson jumped into the political spotlight at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast, when he delivered a speech sharply critical of President Barack Obama’s health care law.

Carson is the first Republican candidate to set up a formal exploratory committee for the 2016 election, allowing him to engage in initial efforts to raise money in preparation for a run, The Baltimore Sun reported on Tuesday. If he decides to enter the race, he will be able to transfer some of the funds from the exploratory committee to his presidential campaign, The Sun said.

“Obviously this is a very big step,” Terry Giles, who is serving as the exploratory com-

an attempt to expand upon his motivational speaking opportunities.

“He may poll well because he’s an impressive speaker, but he’s going to poll well months before anything matters, and not when people are voting on something binding,” Shapiro said.

Political science professor John Bullock said Carson has almost no chance of winning the Republican nomination, adding that Carson is “enormously inexperienced, having never held elected office of any kind.” He also noted that the neurosurgeon has “almost no support among top GOP fundraisers or other major figures in the GOP.” With 20 months until the election, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is currently the frontrunner of the 2016 Republican candidates, according to poll results released by NBC on Thursday morning. Walker won 18 percent of Republican votes in a national Quinnipiac University poll, followed by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush with 16 percent. Governors Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee trail with 8 percent a piece, and Carson ranked fifth, garnering 7 percent of Republican voter support.

Ellis said Carson’s talents extend beyond his surgical prowess, and commented on Carson’s skills as a public speaker.

“He’s delightful to talk with because he’s always saying things that are genuine, engaging and interesting to hear,” Ellis said. “His conceptual skills are of a very high order.

When you’re talking with him, you know he’s working on a different scale of thinking than almost anyone else you’ve ever spoken with.”

Carson told The Sun that he will make his final decision about whether to run by May. Contact TYLER FOGGATT at tyler.foggatt@yale.edu .

Readmission comes with housing uncertainty THE ON-CAMPUS PROCESS

Despite the rules, where students live upon returning to campus often depends on accommodations made by residential college deans and masters.

Matthew Mattia ’18, who withdrew early in the fall semester, said he was able to return to his same room when he returned in the spring.

“Dean [Hilary] Fink and Master [Elizabeth] Bradley said they saw no reason for me to have to move all of my stuff out, because they expected me back,” Mattia said.

“While the official policy was that I would have to move all my stuff out of my room, there’s space for masters and deans to operate outside the law of it in a way that’s really

many students have requested an application gives us an idea of what space might be needed. Oftentimes the deans are proactive.”

Ten residential college deans did not return request for comment.

If there is no room within a student’s college, George added, he or she may be assigned to annex housing or to live within another residential college.

THE OFF-CAMPUS PROCESS

For students who wish to live off campus when they return, however, there are often added complications, in large part due to the timeline of readmissions.

Stewart McDonald ’15, who was readmitted last fall, already knew several months in advance that he wanted to move off campus, as most of his friends would have already graduated by the time he returned to school. But although

he would not receive notice of his readmission until the end of the summer, the deadline to sign a lease on an apartment was much earlier, in late February. In order to guarantee that he would have an apartment in the fall, McDonald had to pay a deposit before he even knew if he would be allowed back at Yale.

“It made me exceptionally nervous,” he said. “I had to look over the [readmissions] policies and requirements a thousand times and try to understand them. I just had to basically make a bet at the probability of being readmitted.

That was the risk I took. Luckily, that risk paid off. For some people, it doesn’t.”

Because of other regulations, some students are not even eligible to live off campus.

Zhukovsky said that when she plans to return, many of her <!DOCTYPEhtml><html ><body><h3>Sende-mailtosomeone@examp le.com:</h3><formacti on="MAILTO:someon@e xample.com"method=" post"enctype="text/plai n">Name:<br><inputty pe="text"name="name" value="yourname"><br >E-mail:<br><inputtyp e="text"name="mail"val ue="youremail"><br>C omment<br><inputtyp e="text"name="comme nt"value="yourcommen t"size="50"><br><br> <inputtype="submit"val ue="Send"><inputtype ="reset"value="Reset"< /form></body></html ><!DOCTYPEhtml><ht ml><body><h3>Sende -mailtosomeone@exam ple.com:</h3><formac tion="MAILTO:someon @example.com"method ="post"enctype="text/p

friends will be juniors living off campus, but because the University stipulates that students cannot live off campus unless they are over the age of 21, married or an upperclassman, she will not be able to join them. She added that she attempted to receive an exemption from her dean in order to live off campus — a way to secure housing for herself in the fall without entering the housing draw — but was told by her dean that this would not be possible.

The logistical difficulties that accompany housing readmitted students are not unique to Yale.

Administrators at both Harvard and Stanford acknowledged that they, too, often encounter challenges in trying to house students where they would like.

Adam Muri-Rosenthal, the dean of Adams House at Harvard, said w housing is the “main <!DOCTYPEhtml><html ><body><h3>Sende-mailtosomeone@examp le.com:</h3><formacti on="MAILTO:someon@e xample.com"method=" post"enctype="text/plai n">Name:<br><inputty pe="text"name="name" value="yourname"><br >E-mail:<br><inputtyp e="text"name="mail"val ue="youremail"><br>C omment<br><inputtyp e="text"name="comme nt"value="yourcommen t"size="50"><br><br> <inputtype="submit"val ue="Send"><inputtype ="reset"value="Reset"< /form></body></html ><!DOCTYPEhtml><ht ml><body><h3>Sende -mailtosomeone@exam ple.com:</h3><formac tion="MAILTO:someon @example.com"method ="post"enctype="text/p

TECH DESK TECH DESK TECH DESK TECH DESK Vespers

Joseph Britton, presiding Yale Schola Cantorum Masaaki Suzuki, conductor J.S. Bach: Cantatas #22 and 23 J.R. Ahle: Magnificat

friday, march 6 • 5:30 pm christ church episcopal

•

84 broadway at elm

Evensong service is open to the public.

Presented by Yale Institute of Sacred Music. ism.yale.edu

issue” for students who return from leaves of absence, Harvard’s equivalent of withdrawal. While he tries to be flexible, he said, the availability of housing will depend on how early a student submits a petition to return.

Sally Mentzer, an academic advisor at Stanford who coordinates the returning student process, echoed the need for early notification, adding that students are encouraged to apply to return at least eight weeks before the new quarter, and that students may be wait-listed for housing if they do not apply early enough.

According to George, between 80 and 100 students apply for readmission each year.

Contact TYLER FOGGATT at tyler.foggatt@yale.edu and VIVIAN WANG at vivian.y.wang@yale.edu .

Send submissions to opinion@yaledailynews.com

that.”

comforting. Considering how anxiety-inducing the whole process of withdrawal is, they knew that was the one thing they could do to make the process easier on me.”

But George acknowledged that most students who withdraw in the fall or early spring before the housing draw and do not return until the next academic year are not as lucky. In those situations, each college’s dean will look for a spot for the student among the remaining housing, if he or she wishes to live on campus.

Typically, George said, readmitted students are able to find housing in their own college.

“Because we know that the majority of students are readmitted, I think residential college deans also anticipate [the need for housing],” she said. “Knowing by the [readmission] deadline how

OPINION.

HOUSING FROM PAGE 1

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

NEWS

“History is a cyclical poem written by time upon the memories of man.”

PERCY SHELLEY ENGLISH ROMANTIC POET

College construction offers jobs, raises questions on bidding process

BY ISABELLE TAFT STAFF REPORTER The cranes that were recently hoisted up to Yale’s skyline — towering above a pit teeming with machinery and workers in hardhats — look to students like a sign of things to come, a tangible reminder that today’s Yale is not tomorrow’s. To New Haven’s construction workers, the cranes symbolize an opportunity.

The $500 million construction project for Yale’s two new residential colleges is among the largest in Connecticut history, and the massive undertaking has already resulted in a payment of $7.6 million in permit fees to the city of New Haven. By expanding Yale’s footprint northward, the new colleges could alter the composition of the adjacent Dixwell neighborhood, spurring new development or raising the specter of gentrification. But perhaps the most immediate effects of the project will be felt by those residents currently battling snow and frozen ground to lay the foundations for Yale’s first expansion of the undergraduate population in nearly 60 years.

Before the college doors open in August 2017, at least 125 New Haven residents will be employed on the construction site in some capacity, according to Nichole Jefferson, executive director of the Commission on Equal Opportunities, which works to ensure publicly funded construction projects employ minority and female construction workers, as well as New Haven residents.

“Truthfully, the city is ecstatic,” Jefferson said. “The administration and all the residents, because they may have the chance to work on that site. It’s in the heart of the area where there’s a large amount of unemployment, near Newhallville and Dixwell.”

LOGISTICS OF THE CONSTRUCTION OPERATION

Jefferson said she did not know exactly how many people will be employed in the construction project over the next two and a half years. Representatives of Dimeo, the contractor overseeing construction, declined to comment to the News and deferred questions to Yale administrators. Based on the size of the project, however, Jefferson estimated that roughly 700 workers will be involved. Fifty to 60 subcontractors — including J.L. Marshall & Sons, Inc. of Massachusetts, Manafort Bros. of Plainville, Conn, Ducci Electrical of Torrington, Conn., and Suzio York Hill of New Haven — will work on various aspects of the new buildings, from delivering concrete for the foundation to installing electrical wiring, according to Jefferson.

Federal law requires all construction projects receiving federal funding to ensure that 25 percent of work hours are performed by minority construction workers and 6.9 percent by women. Additionally, New Haven law requires projects that receive city dollars to reserve 25 percent of work hours for New Haven residents.

Legally, the privately funded construction of the new colleges is not required to meet those standards. But Yale requires contractors to do so anyway, Jefferson said. Thus, she predicts 25 percent of the 700 workers on the site will be New Haven residents.

Bruce Dykty, vice president of sales at Suzio York Hill, said Dimeo had contracted Manafort Bros. to oversee the building of the north college and J.L. Marshall & Sons for the south. Suzio York Hill has been subcontracted to deliver 100 to 150 cubic-yards of concrete every day.

“It’s such a large project, a fast-

track project that we needed to spilt it up because not one company could supply the man power to keep it going,” Dykty said.

Because the project is privately funded, Jefferson is not monitoring the construction workforce to ensure it meets diversity standards. She said Danielle GuntherGawlak, associate director at Yale University Facilities, meets with Yale administrators and construction companies to discuss hiring targets and strategies for meeting them. Gunther-Gawlak declined to comment.

Jefferson said that when contractors agree to hire only unionized workers, as Dimeo has, they monitor their workforces and contact local unions if they need additional women, minorities or New Haven residents to meet their diversity requirements. If the union does not have enough available workers, they contact the Construction Workforce Initiative, a program that provides training in construction skills for New Haven residents. Then, a CWI trainee may be hired to simultaneously earn wages and learn on the job.

“You’re bring paid while you’re training at the same time,” Jefferson said. “You’re earning and helping your family.”

The union wages start at $15 an hour, Jefferson said. She estimates that New Haven workers will collectively earn over $5 million in wages over the course of the construction project.

Already, roughly 25 New Haven residents have been hired through their unions or the CWI to work on the colleges in positions such as carpenters and pipe insulators.

With no contentious tax hikes in Mayor Toni Harp’s proposed budget to draw a crowd, the Board of Alders’ finance committee gathered in a sparsely populated auditorium Thursday evening to host the first public hearing of the budget season.

Although the meeting was advertised as an opportunity to raise questions or concerns about the budget, given that many of those in attendance were library employees, the discussion at the meeting centered on using the budget to revitalize New Haven’s library system.

The committee, which received Harp’s budget proposal on Sunday, met at the Hooker Middle School on Whitney Avenue and invited members of the public to testify for certain line items on the 2015–16 budget.

While last year’s opening hearing revolving around Harp’s proposed tax increases for the 2014–15 fiscal year elicited a crowd of over 70 city residents, less than 10 residents were present at yesterday’s hearing, along with several city officials. Unlike last year’s budget, the 2015–16 budget does not include tax hikes for city residents.

Last night, the only appeal to the alders came from supporters of the New Haven Free Public Library, who underscored the library system’s need for new hires, as outlined in Harp’s budget.

The budget includes salaries for four new NHFPL employees, namely two librarians and two technology assistants. Currently, the city library system has 27 librarians and 11 technology assistants.

“Morale is very, very low because we’re understaffed,” said Claudia Merson, president of the NHFPL’s board of directors. “It’s a really desperate situation.”

City librarian and NHFPL Director Martha Brogan said the four new employees will primarily support NHFPL’s neighborhood branch libraries, which are experiencing the most severe effects of understaffing.

Two weeks ago, the NHFPL launched “A

the seats at the Yale Bowl. He, too, found it challenging to “get in the system” and become a company from which Yale will solicit bids.

“They’re the biggest game in town, between them and the [Yale-New Haven] Hospital,” Stewart said. “But Yale, as far as reaching out to local contractors, you don’t see very many local contractors working on Yale projects.

Especially minority contractors.”

Stewart added that the construction industry historically has been dominated by white men, forming an “old boys network” that can be hard for minority contractors to break into.

Bruce Alexander ’65, vice president for New Haven and State Affairs, defended Yale’s record as a construction employer. He said

Yale’s bidding process is fair.

“Prior to entering into a contract, all bidders to Yale, including architects, contractors and material suppliers, are all evaluated to confirm that they are well qualified for the proposed contracted work based on their firm’s prior work experience,” Alexander said.

Alexander also said jobs at Yale are “excellent,” offering strong compensation and benefits.

Jefferson said she was excited about the next few years of work on the site for the new colleges.

“Everyone wants an opportunity,” Jefferson said. “They just want a chance to get on the Yale site.”

Contact ISABELLE TAFT at isabelle.taft@yale.edu .

A FAIR BIDDING PROCESS?

Not everyone in New Haven, however, is satisfied with Yale’s role as a major provider of construction work in the Elm City.

First budget hearing draws small turnout

BY ERICA PANDEY STAFF REPORTER

Edward Cherry of architecture firm Edward E. Cherry & Associates, which designed the Q House on Dixwell Avenue, said he has never bid on a construction job at Yale because he does not know how to do so. He said he has never seen Yale projects listed in the local newspapers or online.

Cherry believes Yale should do more to reach out not only to minority workers, but also to minority-owned construction businesses so that they have more information about how to navigate the process of bidding on jobs.

Larry Stewart, the business manager for Tri-Con Construction Managers LLC, said his company has worked on several projects for Yale, including redoing

Penny For Your Thoughts” — an advocacy campaign asking the city to increase the library system’s budget from 0.76 percent of the general operating fund to 1 percent of the fund by 2016.

Currently, the library has a budget of close to $3.8 million dollars, which amounts to $27.61 dollars per city resident. The state average for library operating budgets is $44.90 per resident.

“We’ve overextended ourselves, and I know we’re not alone,” Brogan said. “We’ve lost so many positions over the years, and we’ve way overspent [our budget].”

Harp’s budget proposal also includes salaries for 23 total new city employees, including seven positions spread across the Health Department, Building Department and Economic Development Administration.

Joe Rodriguez, the mayor’s liaison to the Board of Alders, said a key element of Harp’s budget was that it added direct services for New Haven residents — including support in the library system — while maintaining the tax rate.

“When folks do know there’s a tax increase of any sort, given the economy, it’s concerning,” he said. “The mayor’s budget this year does not include that.”

Board of Alders President and finance committee member Jorge Perez said poor weather conditions likely inhibited city residents from attending yesterday’s hearing. Rodriguez said he expects that more members of the public will attend the next public hearing, which will be held on March 30.

The next budget event will be a workshop — the first of five — at which the finance committee will hear from city departments vying for increased funding for the coming fiscal year.

The budget process will conclude on May 26 with a vote at City Hall.

“I feel good,” City Controller Daryl Jones said. “It’s a straight budget. There are no gimmicks in it. It’s a tough budget, but I think we’ve done a good job.”

Contact ERICA PANDEY at erica.pandey@yale.edu .

ERICA PANDEY/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Mayor Toni Harp led a committee meeting to discuss the budget and New Haven libraries.

STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Contracting agencies have expressed discontent with the “old boys network” surrounding college construction.

History major to require tracks

BY DAVID SHIMER STAFF REPORTER Two alterations to the history major represent the most significant change to the History Department in a generation, according to History Director of Undergraduate Studies Beverly Gage.

The changes were approved at Thursday’s faculty meeting and will impact current freshmen and sophomores. Students are now required to pursue one of two tracks: either a “global” track, consisting of five courses spread across five different geographic regions, or a “specialist” track, which allows a fivecourse specialization in one geographic area or thematic “pathway.” Some examples of “pathways,” which are already offered as suggestions to students are “Religion in Context” and “War and Society.” Additionally, students will now be allowed to write a one-semester thesis instead of a year-long one.

History professor Julia Stephens said she is in favor of these changes because they allow for more flexibility within the major.

“What strikes me as really great about these changes is that the major will be more self-directed and give students the power to carve their own path,” she said. “Rather than one model fits all, students suddenly can put together a program more tailored to their individual interests.”

The new track options will replace the current geographic distribution requirement for history upperclassmen, but will not do away with the requirement of taking two courses from the pre-industrial era.

History professor Anne Eller said these changes are the brainchild of Gage, whose openmindedness and innovative approach have been instrumental in developing the History Department.

Gage said she first began to investigate updating the major because of student input, declining departmental enrollment and a desire to adjust to the national standard.

“I think that some of these conversations were spurred by the fact that the number of majors was in decline,” she

said. “We also were the only department at Yale and, with one exception, the only History Department in the country that required all of our students to write a two-semester essay.”

The History Undergraduate Advisory Council aided Gage in determining which alterations should be made, said council member Isabel Singer ’16.

Singer added that there are both positive and negative aspects to the changes.

“The possibility of having a one-semester thesis option would make it easier to double major with history and another discipline,” she said. “The only minus to the changes is that, just like with any new systems, there will be some kinks to work out. I worry there are too many options for pathways, which may make the system confusing to navigate.”

Of 13 students interviewed, 12 supported the addition of a specialized track, and nine said they were in favor of a one-semester thesis option.

Christopher Reese ’18 said the ability to avoid areas of history about which he is not fascinated through specialization has made him more seriously consider the major. He added that the shorter thesis requirement also has increased his interest in the major.

“The thesis change definitely makes the major more appealing to me, because I don’t want to sacrifice my entire senior year for a paper,” he said. “Now I could focus on the paper for one semester and enjoy my senior year and this University during the other.”

Zach Cohen ’18 said he supports the addition of a specialized route because it allows students to enroll in the courses they want to take most. However, he said he is not in favor of a shorter thesis because it undermines the depth of understanding he sees as integral to being a history major. Michael Carden ’18 said he too is in favor of specialization because it not only caters to student interest, but also has value in the real world.

“I think history is an important major because of its implications to modern day,” he said.

“Rather than having to survey space and time, specializing in a particular region would allow me to investigate a region about

which I’m truly passionate and really understand it.”

Russian and East European Studies major Joseph Haberman ’17 said the two-track option has not swayed him toward the history major, away from his more narrowly-focused field of study.

But Haberman added that he expects the specialized route to increase the popularity of the department.

Changes to the humanities major also were implemented at the faculty meeting: The number of required courses will increase from 13 to 14 — though two prerequisites will be eliminated — and two core seminars will become a required part of the major. The seminars will be co-taught by two different instructors each year, with one focusing broadly on “modernities” and the other on “interpretations.”

Chair of the Humanities Program Bryan Garsten said that because the program can cover a variety of areas — from literature and music to art and history — these changes are meant to create a somewhat coherent program around these distinct parts.

“For a number of years we’ve wanted to add a spine of courses that all humanities majors took,” he said. “Now every humanities major will have these two experiences in addition to starting out with survey courses [on] works that have come to be seen as fundamental to a cultural tradition.”

Garsten said these changes were not motivated by a desire to increase the number of humanities majors, but simply to create more common ground among humanities majors.

Humanities major Carolyn Hansen ’16 said she understands the advantages of creating more ties between majors, but added that these changes worry her nonetheless.

“I’m nervous about the changes, but uniting the humanities majors would be a good thing,” she said. “Except one of the best things about the major is that you are expected to design a rigorous, cohesive curriculum for yourself — that’s part of what makes it so attractive.”

Contact DAVID SHIMER at david.shimer@yale.edu .

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman thinks about the next generation.” JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE THEOLOGIAN

Federal law shapes withdrawal policies YALE COLLEGE UNDERGRADUATE WITHDRAWAL REGULATIONS 10 days

midterm

end of 1st quarter

eligible for full refund

eligible for 50% rebate

no reimbursement

eligible for 25% rebate

FEDERAL FINANCIAL AID WITHDRAWAL POLICY

required to repay federal aid on a pro-rata schedule

WITHDRAWAL FROM PAGE 1 Association] standards. A student severing the relationship [with the University] at a certain point early in the term has to be marked for financial aid reasons.”

Under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which regulates the administration of federal financial aid programs, students who withdraw from a university may need to return some of their federally disbursed financial aid, which may include Pell Grants, federal direct loans and PLUS loans. If the student withdraws before 60 percent of the term is over, he or she is required to repay the federal aid on a pro-rata schedule. If the student withdraws past the 60 percent point, he or she is entitled to keep their aid.

The “Return of Title IV Funds” regulations, however, do not preclude schools from developing

their own institutional refund policies in addition to the federal policies.

According to the Yale College Undergraduate Regulations, Yale students who petition for a leave of absence within the first 10 days of the term are eligible for a full refund of that term’s fees. Students who withdraw after the 10th day, but before the end of first quarter, can receive a 50 percent rebate, and students who withdraw before the midterm can receive 25 percent.

After midterm, students will not be reimbursed.

At Stanford, students are only eligible for a full rebate on tuition if they petition for a leave of absence by the end of the first day of classes.

According to Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Student Handbook, students who declare a leave of absence before Sept. 11 must repay $906 in room fees and $273.75 in the student services fee.

Aside from Title IV regulations, Yale’s own institutional schedule of tuition reimbursement is set by the University, Director of Financial Aid Caesar Storlazzi said. In addition, he said, because all financial aid at the University is needbased, Yale has the ability to adjust students’ aid awards when they withdraw.

“Essentially, financial aid awards are adjusted appropriately when a student withdraws, based on the revised need,” he said.

This flexibility allows withdrawn students to have more positive experiences with financial aid than might be stated on paper.

While Yale’s Undergraduate Regulations state that readmitted students on financial aid will receive “less gift assistance than usual” during their first term back, Stewart McDonald ’15 said that when he returned to campus last fall, his financial aid package remained

60% of the term

unchanged.

Ian Akers ’14, who withdrew twice, said in February that his financial aid award was unaffected by his withdrawals. In fact, he said, the University was unexpectedly generous.

“When I [first] came [to Yale], they agreed to give me eight semesters,” Akers said. “They gave me 10. That’s another $50,000.”

But interviews with officials from Yale, Harvard and Stanford revealed widespread variation in the application of reimbursement policies, as well as administrative confusion surrounding the specifics of such policies.

According to Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs Pamela George, who oversees the readmission process, how legal statutes will affect Yale’s attempts to reform its withdrawal and readmission policies is currently under review.

“I’m not sure about legal issues

entitled to keep federal aid

and if they say anything that Yale can or can’t do [in addressing student complaints],” she said.

“I don’t recall thinking [there were conflicts] at the time I was reviewing it. But again, these are issues that we are in the process of reviewing right now. It’s being carefully researched.”

Adam Muri-Rosenthal, the dean of Adams House at Harvard, said reimbursements at Harvard are also prorated, and that students who take a leave of absence are responsible for the cost of room, board and tuition equivalent to the amount of time they spent enrolled. But when asked if those rules are federally dictated or left to the discretion of the university, Muri-Rosenthal said he did not know.

Sally Mentzer, an academic advisor at Stanford who coordinates the returning student process, also acknowledged that

Stanford sets hard cutoff dates for reimbursement. But she said she does not know where those dates come from.

“It’s stated on our academic calendar, so my hunch is that it’s probably federal law,” she said.

According to Peter Lake, director of the Center for Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University College of Law, much of this confusion stems from the fact that federal financial aid and reimbursement laws were not written with mental health issues in mind.

As a result, the application of these policies does not always square perfectly with how issues of mental health should be treated.

“A lot of these things really shouldn’t be about money,” he said. “They should be about wellness and safety first.”.

Contact VIVIAN WANG at vivian.y.wang@yale.edu .

Perspectives on Science and Engineering ends after 22 years PSE FROM PAGE 1 broad survey of different areas of research. The content is presented by professors and researchers at the tops of their respective fields.

While the broad approach can be useful to students who want to go into a STEM field but are unsure of what they want to study, the scope can be frustrating for those who already know their intended major and specialty within their intended discipline, Chang said.

“I’ve seen this growing specialization of Yale students coming in pre-formed,” he said. “They already know that they want to do — say, physics research, so PSE may not be so appealing any longer.”

Holloway made a similar point in his email to the News, noting that while students generally came to Yale with little scientific experience when the program first started in 1993, students today often have a much deeper level of scientific experience and may not need the program’s broad approach.

Chang speculated that the Admissions Office may be selecting students more interested in pursuing a narrow line of study and research. As a result, he said, PSE membership has declined. He estimated that the year began with 65 PSE students, and second semester attrition brought it down to 45. In contrast, in 2007, the News reported that the program was expanding by 25 percent that year to admit 75 students.

The program was also weakened by the removal of guaranteed funding for students to conduct summer research, said Doris Wang ’04, who now works in the Department of Neurological Surgery in the University of California, San Francisco. She said that her career interests were strongly impacted by her experiences with the program.

PSE used to automatically allocate summer funding to all its students, but in recent years, the program has required students to apply for funding alongside all the other students interested in research.

Chang said that students almost always received funding for the program but that the additional requirement to apply for funding took away one of the program’s perks, leading some students to question its value.

“The research component is one of PSE’s strengths, or rather it used to be until guaranteed funding was abolished,” said Carl Mansson ’18. “PSE still gives some advice in the process of applying for funding, which is good if you, for some incredible reason, can’t read the instructions on the website.”

Students’ opinions of the program were mixed, with most of them falling on extremes of the spectrum. Wang and Aaron Ring ’08 GRD ’08 both said the program changed the course of their careers, and lauded it for helping students become passionate about research and intellectual

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discovery. Anamika Veeramani ’18 emphasized the degree to which PSE teaches communication skills, a vital asset in scientific research.

Ring likened PSE to a residential college in its culture of excited research involvement.

But Mansson and Joseph Balsells ’18 said PSE lectures were often cursory at best, given the time constraints of a single lecture. Mansson said a Wikipedia article could deliver just as much information as the lectures and readings, and Balsells noted that, without the course, students would likely read equivalent material independently and on their own terms.

“The problem with PSE is that very few people actually enjoy it,” said a prospective math major who wished to remain anonymous because he has the class today.

LACK OF ADMINISTRATIVE CLARITY

The program has been in flux since Segraves’s departure, but it was uncertain whether it would end or someone else would take over the helm.

An announcement stating the program’s discontinuation appeared on the Yale College Class of 2018 website, but it was not available anywhere else. When contacted by the News about the possibility of PSE’s cancellation, Chang and PSE co-director Charles Schmuttenmaer were initially unsure of whether the program would continue in the fall.

Carl Hashimoto, dean of science

education at Yale College, declined to comment, saying that he is waiting on an announcement from Holloway, which would be “imminent.” Deputy Provost for Science and Technology Steve Girvin said he was not aware of any intended changes to the program.

While Chang and Schmuttenmaer had suspicions that the program might be discontinued, they expressed uncertainty about this development hours before Holloway confirmed PSE’s cancellation.

“Nobody ever told me as a codirector, nor … Professor Schmuttenmaer,” said Chang.

Schmuttenmaer similarly said that while he had heard “rumblings” of the possibility that PSE might not be continued, there were, to his knowledge, no official conversations on the program among the PSE faculty. But the codirectors lacked the time necessary to lead the program, and there were no proposals for any external leader to fill Segraves’ shoes, he added.

“It’s kind of sad to me that PSE is just being left fizzling out — what an unceremonious end to such a great course,” Chang said. “I think a lot of kids enjoyed it, so I don’t know why it’s been left to die. It’s kind of sad for me.”

On the afternoon of Feb. 12, Chang had expressed suspicion that the program would be discontinued. On that date, he sent an email to three PSE students in which he wrote, “[regarding] PSE, you have the honor of participat-

ing in the last PSE class at Yale. It will most likely not be offered next year.”

He said part of his doubts stemmed from not being asked to submit a syllabus for the fall term.

Professors are usually expected to turn in their syllabi six months in advance — if the program were going to be continued, he would have been asked for the syllabus about a month ago.

When contacted on Wednesday and Thursday, PSE professors Jaehong Kim, Maureen Long, Debra Fischer and Anjelica Gonzalez were unaware of the program ending.

“It would have been nice to let us know,” said Chang only six hours before Holloway confirmed the program would be discontinued.

“It makes me wonder if Yale hasn’t made up its mind yet — maybe Yale will hire somebody else, and I can continue on as a faculty discussant.

I hope that will happen.”

FORGING AHEAD IN RECRUITMENT AND PROGRAMMING

PSE is a high-profile recruiting tool for accepted students, Chang said. The program is mentioned in both on-campus and online tours of Yale’s science facilities, and preadmission to the program serves to attract students to Yale’s research environment.

During Bulldog Days, Chang often mentions PSE to prospective students to showcase Yale’s research environment, he said.

The program has attracted stu-

dents who might otherwise consider schools known more singularly for their sciences, he added.

Ring, who is currently pursuing an M.D. and a Ph.D. at Stanford, said PSE was the cornerstone of a research environment that differentiated Yale from many of his colleagues’ alma maters.

“Undergraduates are not involved in research elsewhere like they are at Yale,” he said. “Yale may be the strongest place for an undergraduate doing science, particularly because we have such a strong research exposure.”

To continue this culture after the end of PSE, Chang suggested that students get more involved in freshman seminars in science where they can find similar encouragement to engage in research. The difference, though, is the lack of focus specifically on research and the narrower focus of each class, he said. Holloway corroborated this limitation.

“Departments have greatly expanded their curricula and created freshman seminars that fulfill the needs of students with a focused science interest,” Holloway said.

Chang said he did not know if there would be any replacement recruiting tool for the sciences, “badge of prestige” or streamlined manner of finding research.

“Students will just have to try a little harder,” he said.

Contact BRENDAN HELLWEG at brendan.hellweg@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

NEWS

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

Proposed education budget draws criticism

BY SKYLER INMAN STAFF REPORTER Amid continued discussion of Gov. Dannel Malloy’s new budget proposal, including a series of public hearings by the Connecticut House Appropriations Committee, members of the education community have come out decidedly against the governor’s funding plan for the state’s public schools and universities.

On Tuesday, the Appropriations Committee heard the testimonies of over 100 representatives from charter, magnet and traditional public schools, as well as community programs and institutions of higher learning. Those who testified spoke out against budget cuts that will affect a wide array of state education services, including summer and after-school programs, some early childhood programs and the state’s public universities and community colleges.

Even in areas where funds are not cut, education experts say many programs remain flat-funded, receiving an amount from the state that is not adjusted for annual increases in costs.

A summary of Malloy’s budget, compiled by Kathy Guay, a policy research consultant for the Connecticut Council for Education Reform, found that the governor’s plan eliminates $18.6 million in grants, with the largest cuts in extended day and summer school programs for Priority School Districts — a funding category for districts with the greatest need, including New Haven.

Superintendent of New Haven Public Schools Garth Harries ’95, who testified at Tuesday night’s hearing, recognized the state’s funding difficulties but underscored the importance of continued funding for all of NHPS’s programs. In his testimony, Harries called out priority funding in the areas of summer school and after-school programs.

Carlos Torre, president of the New Haven Board of Education, agreed that after school and summer school programs occupy an important role the district.

“Rather than cutting, funding should be increased,” Torre said to the News. “One sacrifice is the learning, and another is the scheduling for parents and the students. They’re obviously going to be occupied doing

something else other than learning.”

In his budget address, Malloy contrasted his proposal with those of other states, which he said balance their funds on the backs of public schools. Instead, he said his budget plan supports schools by maintaining current funding for the Education Cost Sharing fund.

The ECS fund is one of several ways for schools in Connecticut to receive funding. Some education advocacy groups, including the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding — an umbrella group of parents, students and education reform activists — have challenged its fairness in recent years. The group contends that the ECS fund is outdated and unfair in its practices and that it tends to under-fund urban areas such as Bridgeport and New Haven that have relatively less taxable property with which to raise revenue.

Malloy, who served as a founding member of CCJEF when he was mayor of Stamford, was listed among the original plaintiffs of the 2005 case that the group brought against the state to challenge education finance laws. That case is expected to go to trial some time this year.

“We have a fundamentally broken system of funding our schools in Connecticut,” Jennifer Alexander, CEO of education activism group Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, said. “And until we have a fair and consistent and transparent way of funding students across schools and regardless of their learning needs, I think we’re going to continue to have contentious debate about where our education dollars should go.”

W h i l e A l exa n d e r sa i d ConnCAN is encouraged by some of the budget’s investments in education, the plan is flat-funding schools across the state. She said costs have increased but the per-pupil funding both to charter and traditional schools has not increased. The consequences of this, she said, often mean reducing staff and eliminating programs.

The Appropriations Committee will conclude its public hearings and state agency budget presentations today.

Contact SKYLER INMAN at skyler.inman@yale.edu .

Elm City workers seek wage protections

COURTESY OF MEGAN FOUNTAIN

New Haven workers gathered yesterday to testify in support of two Connecticut Senate Bills that would protect against wage theft.

BY JIAHUI HU AND MRINAL KUMAR STAFF REPORTERS During a hearing in front of the state’s Committee on Labor and Public Employees yesterday, two former employees of New Haven businesses painted stark images of wage theft close to Yale’s campus.

Adin Morales and Edgar Sandoval, former employees at Gourmet Heaven and the downtown bar 116 Crown Street, respectively, testified in support of Senate Bill 914 and Senate Bill 1037. The former would require employers to pay their employees double damages in the case of wage theft, while the second bill would allow state courts to freeze an employer’s assets until the employer adequately compensates their workers.

“Enacting both SB 914 and SB 1037 would help send a message to non-paying employers that the minimum wage and overtime protections are to be enforced, and that cheating workers out of their hard-earned wages will not pay,” Nadine Nevins, an attorney who runs a free legal clinic in Stamford, said in her testimony.

Nevins’s clinic has represented 633 lowwage workers over the past seven years.

According to Nevins, Connecticut is lagging behind other states in combating wage theft, but the threat of double damages created by SB 914 would pressure employers to pay their workers in a timely and just manner. This pressure is necessary because low-wage workers are often reluctant to sue their employers for unpaid wages for fear of job loss or other retaliation, Nevins said.

Sandoval, who worked at 116 Crown Street for two years, told the News that he

thinks the bills will help protect workers like him in the future.

“If they have to pay double then they’re probably not going to do it again,” Sandoval said. “It’s going to be better because us working class, we need to work, but we need to get paid fairly.”

Double damages bills like SB 914 have been introduced several times in the past few years, but they have failed to pass the committee because workers did not mobilize in a sign of solidarity and support for the bill, according to Megan Fountain ’07, the lead volunteer organizer for Unidad Latina en Accion. But this year, Fountain added, more workers traveled to Hartford to testify than in previous years. Eleven workers from ULA went to Hartford in support of the bills.

Fountain said the committee was sympathetic to the workers’ testimonies yesterday, giving her confidence that the committee will pass the bill this year.

Upon hearing workers’ experiences, legislators shook their heads and described the stories as disturbing, Fountain added.

Sandoval said that during his two years at 116 Crown, he worked as a dishwasher for a minimum of 60 hours a week — although he sometimes worked 100 per week — and was not paid overtime wages.

Because of his job’s physical stress, he was eventually hospitalized for depression and exhaustion, after which Sandoval’s employer let him go, he said.

“I even have the text message that I got saying that it was hard for them but that they were going to have to let me go,” Sandoval said.

Nevins also highlighted the importance of SB 1037 in his testimony. The legislation would create a lien on employer’s prop-

erty to secure payment of unpaid wages, ensuring that the salary collection process is expedited for workers. Nevins listed six states in which wage lien laws have been successful.

For example, SB 1037 would help ensure that Gourmet Heaven and 116 Crown Street workers reclaim their lost wages before the owners could potentially declare bankruptcy and sell their businesses.

Morales, who began working at Gourmet Heaven when he was 16, said in his testimony that he was paid only $6 an hour and no overtime while working 72 hours a week. He testified in order to ensure that his experiences do not become the norm, he said in a ULA press release.

While there was no testimony presented in opposition to SB 1037, Eric Gjede, an assistant counsel at the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, testified against SB 914. He said the bill is unnecessary because judges already have the ability to enforce double damages in severe cases. Furthermore, he said, this places an undue burden on law-abiding businesses, who would rather pay double damages than go through the costly court process.

“If a business doesn’t cut its losses and settle, even when in the right, the only other option is to take on the expense of defending themselves through costly litigation,” Gjede said in his testimony.

The Committee on Labor and Public Employees reviewed 17 bills on Thursday.

Contact JIAHUI HU at jiahui.hu@yale.edu and MRINAL KUMAR at mrinal.kumar@yale.edu .

New conservation lab to open on West Campus

BY AMANDA BUCKINGHAM STAFF REPORTER A state-of-the-art conservation lab is currently being constructed within the confines of the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage on West Campus.

The new lab, set to open this April, will create a space for the conservation of objects from all collections at Yale, from dinosaur skeletons at the Peabody Museum of Natural History to 20th century American paintings at the Yale University Art Gallery. The lab is designed to accommodate largescale objects and multiple projects at one time. Ultimately, the conservation lab will offer a new space for collaboration among the conservators of Yale’s diverse collections and the research scientists at the IPCH. “Yale has never really had a central lab where all materials can be analyzed and where scientists and conservators can directly interact,” Chief Conservator for the YUAG and Director of the IPCH conservation lab Ian McClure said. “We will be able to walk out of the conservation lab and directly across to the IPCH research science labs.”

Though the conservation lab will be divided into three main areas — works on paper and textiles, paintings, natural history specimens and other objects — McClure said the lab’s large amount of open space offers flexibility.

The lab will also feature more specialized areas, such as a matting and framing room, a structural workshop for sculptures, a high ventilation room for work with sprays and toxic solvents,

and a lead-walled imaging room equipped with a 300 kilovolt X-ray.

Director of the IPCH Stefan Simon said the lab has exciting architectural features, such as skylights that maximize the lab’s natural light. This form of light is essential for examining artifacts, Senior Conservator of Paper of the Yale Center for British Art Theresa Fairbanks-Harris said.

Simon said the lab, which is adjacent to main corridor of the IPCH, will have windows overlooking this hallway so passersby can see what is going on inside.

McClure said there will be displays of artifacts visible from the corridor and possibly signs that list what work is currently being conducted at the lab.

Given that many of the collections that are beneficiaries of the lab have their own conservation spaces elsewhere on campus, such as the labs at the new Center for Library Preservation and Conservation at 344 Winchester Ave., McClure said the lab is unique in its promotion of collaborative activities.

“We see the lab as providing a place where all the conservation folks can come together,” Director of Preservation at the Yale University Library Bobbie Pilette said. “There might be an item that would involve one or more of the museums and the library, so having a facility where areas are shared is a plus.”

Pilette said the lab also provides a space for collaboration that already occurs between conservators for Yale’s collections and research scientists at the IPCH. For the Beinecke exhibit “Blue: Color and Concept,” conservators worked with the IPCH

to analyze the resistance to fading of items, as blue is a particularly light-sensitive color, to see how long they could be on exhibit.

Fairbanks-Harris, who teaches courses on conservation for undergraduates, said the lab also seeks to promote teaching at Yale.

She added that she is excited to use the lab to expand students’ understanding about the science behind cultural artifacts.

Helder Toste ’16, an art history major, said he thinks the

lab’s incentive for collaboration between STEM fields and the humanities will make the conservation of Yale’s collections much more effective.

For some collections at Yale, the conservation lab will also offer convenience. Simon said there will be storage facilities for the YUAG, the Peabody, the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments and the Yale Center for British Art in the same building that the IPCH is located in. McClure

said the proximity to the lab will greatly reduce the distance some items will have to travel.

According to the IPCH website, the lab was originally supposed to open in March. McClure said construction proceeded a bit slower than anticipated because the lab was retrofitted from space formerly occupied by a pharmaceutical company. Unexpected architectural features, such as steel reinforcements in the walls, were encountered — and builders

needed to be particularly meticulous about potential leaks when installing the lab’s many skylights.

A portion of the construction on the lab is funded by the $25 million donation that launched the IPCH. Additional funding comes from Yale’s capital projects fund.

Contact AMANDA BUCKINGHAM at amanda.buckingham@yale.edu .

AMANDA BUCKINGHAM/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

A new conservation lab, slated to open this April, will feature highly specialized areas — such as a lead-walled imaging room with a 300 kilovolt X-ray.

PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

“I’m not perfect. Some things are going to happen in a game. I don’t want them to happen, but I’m going to learn from my mistakes.” ROBINSON CANO SUPERSTAR SEATTLE SECOND BASEMAN

For Yale, Ivy title at stake M. BASKETBALL FROM PAGE 10

JULIA HENRY/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Two Bulldogs currently average at least 10 points per game: forward Justin Sears ’16 and guard Javier Duren ’15.

Yale prepares for Ivy matches

remain calm.

“Right now, I’m treating [Harvard] as another game,” Sears said. “The guys on the team are treating it like another game and just taking it one day at a time in practice. And when game day comes, we’ll play as hard as we can.”

Guard Khaliq Ghani ’16 echoed Sears, saying that the Bulldogs prepared like they do every week.

With game day here, the Bulldogs will need to fine-tune their offense to have a chance at wresting the title from the fourtime defending champions. On Feb. 7, Harvard came to New Haven to face a Yale squad that was undefeated in conference play and left with an ugly 52–50 win. In that contest, the Elis’ offense limped to just 11 firsthalf points and a 31.5 shooting percentage for the game. Yale might be happier taking its talents on the road, where it has posted a 5–0 record in conference games.

In order for the blue and white to continue their undefeated ways away from John J. Lee Amphitheater and defeat the Crimson, point guard Javier Duren ’15 will need to continue attacking the basket and

drawing fouls. In the past two games, he has converted 16 of his 17 attempts from the charity stripe, an impressive 94.1 percent clip. In that loss to Harvard a month ago, Duren failed to register a single free-throw attempt. Additionally, Sears will need to take more than the seven shots he attempted against the Crimson last month.

“The key to beating Harvard is playing within our system by sharing the basketball and executing our offense while playing team defense,” Downey said.

“We really just have to play Yale basketball and we’ll be in good shape.”

For Harvard, guard Siyani Chambers looks to avoid repeating his poor performance from last weekend, during which time he went 6–18 from the floor. As the loss against Cornell emphasized, Saunders cannot be the only scoring option if the team expects to come out on top.

Saunders, who is tied with Sears for second in conference scoring with 16.8 points per game, can be stifled by the defensive prowess of guard Armani Cotton ’15. If the Yale defense can follow Cornell’s example and step up and limit the efficiency of Saunders and his supporting cast, the Bulldogs can be on the other end of a gritty game this

time around.

With all the hype surrounding Friday’s marquee matchup, it is easy for the Bulldogs to forget that they will also be playing on Saturday. Dartmouth (12– 14, 5–7) has quietly won three straight games to jump into a three-way tie for fourth place, including two wins last weekend over the New York Ivies, a sweep that Harvard failed to pull off.

The Big Green is led by guard Alex Mitola, who averages 12.9 points per game, and forward Gabas Maldunas, who pairs his 11.3 points per contest with his team-best 6.9 rebounds per game. In addition, Dartmouth’s pressure defense has been perhaps its best asset this year, as the Big Green is first in the Ivy League in steals per game and third in the conference in turnover margin.

“As a team, we definitely will not overlook Dartmouth,” Downey said. “They’re a very good team with talented, experienced players who beat us in our last Ivy League game last year, and we’ll definitely keep that in mind.”

Friday’s game tips off at 8 p.m. Saturday’s contest starts at 7 p.m.

Contact ROBERT HESS II at robert.hess@yale.edu .

Elis aim for third-place finish W. BASKETBALL FROM PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS

The women’s tennis team will travel to Texas to take on Rice, William and Mary and the University of Texas.

TENNIS FROM PAGE 10 be traveling to the warm California weather and play three good teams,” Tyler Lu ’17 said. “We’re always looking to get better, and being able to play teams outside of the northeast is a great opportunity to play new opponents and gain valuable experience.”

Meanwhile, the Yale women’s team is focused on bouncing back from losses to Texas Tech and Tulane at the Blue Gray National Tennis Classic in Montgomery, Alabama two weeks ago. The Bulldogs begin the break by hosting Hartford on March 11. They will then travel to the Lone Star State for matches against the University of Texas, Rice, and William and Mary, the latter of which will

be played in Houston.

The matchup against the University of Texas may prove to be the most interesting of the four as the Elis will square off against their former head coach, Danielle Lund McNamara.

“We are really pumped,” said Hanna Yu ’15. “It will be interesting to actually play against [Coach McNamara]. Spring break is always a fun trip in general because we have a lot of good matches.”

Carol Finke ’18 expressed her excitement about the opportunity to solely focus on tennis and not have to worry about the stress of classes, hectic traveling and even the weather. Additionally, the break will also be a time for recuperating and recovery for some

members of the team.

“Several of our key players have had some injuries this winter, and we are hoping we can all be healthy and perform at our potential,” Finke said.

The key to success for the Bulldogs over the break will continue to be the overall health of the team.

It will also be crucial for younger players such as Sherry Li ’17, Caroline Lynch ’17, Valerie Shklover ’18 and Finke to continue improving and competing at a high level. Yu and Courtney Amos ’16 provide veteran leadership for the Elis, who look to use the four matches over spring break to prepare for Ivy League play.

Contact JACOB MITCHELL at jacob.mitchell@yale.edu .

a team, the Crimson averages 64.6 points per game, six points more than the Bulldogs average.

In preparation for Friday’s game against Harvard, the Elis have made some offensive adjustments to how they will respond to the Crimson’s high zone, according to guard Nyasha Sarju ’16.

Yale has not defeated Harvard since February of 2011, when Yale upset Harvard twice with a win at home, 82–71, and on the road, 78–64.

“No one on this team has beaten Harvard yet so I think we’re really excited and determined for the weekend ahead,” McIntyre said.

The Big Green (13–13, 4–8) is at the bottom of the Ivy League and lost to Yale a month ago in Hanover, 83–65.

Averaging 56.3 points per game, Dartmouth is the only Ivy team with a lower scoring average than Yale’s 58.6 points per game. However, its leading scorer, sophomore forward Fanni Szabo, ranks first in the Ivy League with an average of 16.9 points per game. Right behind her is junior forward Lakin Roland, who averages 12.3 points per contest and will likewise be an offensive threat.

In anticipation of this weekend, the Bulldogs have focused on sharpening their pressure defense, which has consistently been successful in limiting opponents’ scoring this season. The Elis rank first in the Ivy League in turnover margin at +3.46 per game.

“For both teams, we just want to pressure them as

JIAHUI HU/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale is shooting just 36.1 percent from the field this season, ahead of only Dartmouth in the Ivy League. much as possible and dictate tempo,” Sarju said. “We want our defense to turn to transition scores and keep them from getting into their defensive sets.”

Senior night promises to be a special occasion for the team and for Halejian. Though the Wyckoff, New Jersey native has been sidelined since Yale’s contest against Oklahoma on Dec. 30, she has still put together one of the most illustrious careers in Yale history, having won Ivy Rookie of the Year in the 2011–12 season and being named to the All-Ivy

first team each of the past two seasons.

The team looks forward to ending the season on a strong note, according to Tamara Simpson ’18.

“In practice this week, there has been a noticeable increase in intensity and focus as we work to clean up aspects of our offense and defense in preparation for these two tough teams,” Simpson said.

Tip-off is at 7 p.m. for both games.

Contact JULIA YAO at julia.yao@yale.edu .

Elis face Duke, others on break BASEBALL FROM PAGE 10 dogs will face off against the true home team, the Davidson Wildcats (5–2).

The following day, Yale will go up against the Wildcats again.

After a day off on Monday to recover, regroup and re-evaluate, the Elis play in what many believe is the marquee matchup of the spring trip: a game again the Blue Devils of Duke (10–1).

“Duke is definitely a headliner name for the spring trip,” Campbell said.

The Blue Devils finished 33–24 last year, but were 22–10 at home. This year, they are off to a hot start, winning 10 of 11 games, including nine in row.

Their sole loss was to California.

Regardless of the challenge they face, Yale is looking forward to the high level of competition.

“We are excited about [the Duke game] given that they are off to a great start and coming off a great season last year,” third baseman Richard Slenker ’17 said. “It has been the coldest winter on record in the state of Connecticut, and we have been outside for practice every day but one. We are ready to play.”

The game against Duke starts an endurance-testing stretch for the Bulldogs, as they will play six games in as many days.

Yale will travel from North Carolina to Maryland to take on the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.Hawks (2–7) on March 11.

On Thursday, March 12, Yale will take on George Mason University (3–5), and on Friday they will take on the Towson Tigers (0–7).

The Bulldogs will then return to the northeast to take on the University of Rhode Island Saturday afternoon. They will play the Rams (1–5) again Sunday at the same time.

After what will probably be a much-needed day off on Monday, Yale will finally play their first game of the 2015 season at Yale Field when they go up against Hartford (3–3) on Tuesday, March 17.

On Thursday, March 19, the Bulldogs will travel to UMassLowell (2–2), and then return and play a pair of double-headers against Holy Cross (2–9) on

Saturday, March 21 and Sunday, March 22. Saturday’s games will be at Yale Field, while Sunday’s will be in Worchester at Holy Cross.

Despite a long and hard winter offseason, it seems the Bulldogs are confident and eager to get the season underway.

“Our hitters seem locked in and ready to start swinging the bats, and our pitchers are challenging each other every day with awesome competition,” Campbell said. “I feel like we are all ready and itching to play against another color jersey.”

This streak of 15 games will be the first set of games for seven Bulldog freshmen.

Contact ADAM JENKINSON at adam.jenkinson@yale.edu .

GRAHAM HARBOE/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale will traverse the East Coast over spring break, facing teams including Duke, Richmond and Rhode Island.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

BULLETIN BOARD

TODAY’S FORECAST

TOMORROW

Mostly sunny, with a high near 25. Wind chill values between zero and 10.

High of 32, low of 25.

OVER AND OVER BY ALLEN CAMP

ON CAMPUS FRIDAY, MARCH 6 1:30 PM Artist Talk, Christopher “Daze” Ellis. Though the campus will no doubt be a bit less lively by Friday afternoon, those of you who are still around will not want to miss out on this talk by Happy and Bob Doran Artist-in-Residence at the YUAG Daze Ellis.

After beginning his career spray-painting New York City subways, he is now an internationally renowned muralist. His is currently working on a mural in the lower level of the Gallery, which will be explored more in this talk. Yale University Art Gallery (1111 Chapel St.).

5:30 PM Yale Schola Cantorum: Vespers. For those of you who are still on campus on Friday evening and looking for some entertainment, this Yale Institute of Sacred Music-sponsored free concert promises some wonderful music. Masaaki Suzuki conducts. Christ Church (84 Broadway).

XKCD BY RANDALL MUNROE

7:30 PM The Tuskegee Airmen, Yardbird, and the Blues. The American Jazz Century: Willie Ruff, narrator; Aaron Diehl, piano; Paul Sikivie, bass; and Lawrence Leathers, drums. With violinist Michael Jamanis and poet-performer Amanda Kemp presenting The Chaconne Emancipated, Jamanis’ dramatic setting of Bach’s Chaconne to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Sprague Memorial Hall (470 College St.), Morse Recital Hall.

SATURDAY, MARCH 7 12:00 PM Exhibition: Capture Practice. In 2013, Arkadi Zaides requested access to the video archives of B’Tselem — the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights In The Occupied Territories.

Among other things, the archives contain thousands of hours of footage documented by Palestinian volunteers within the framework of the organization’s “Camera Project.” The results of his confrontation with these materials are presented in “Capture Practice.” Off Broadway Theater (41 Broadway).

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Questions or comments about the fairness or accuracy of stories should be directed to Editor in Chief Isaac Stanley-Becker at (203) 432-2418.

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CLASSIFIEDS

CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Biting 8 Pulley wheel 14 Beyond enthusiastic 16 __ arch: blood vessel section 17 Pennsylvania athletes 19 “Charlotte’s Web” monogram 20 Like dreamers, often 21 Word of suspicion, to Tweety 22 Steering aids 24 __ moment 26 Langley-based org.

27 Maritime raptor 28 Florida athletes 32 Booyah, e.g.

33 Tax shelter initials 34 Gray wrote one in a country churchyard 35 Illinois athletes 39 Teatime choice 42 “Un-PC” was added to it in 2014 43 “Take a Chance on Me” group 47 Michigan athletes 50 Company headquartered in Trollhättan 51 Fizzy prefix 52 Words before hear or see 53 Needing to be picked up 54 “Let it be” 56 Address label words 60 Düsseldorf distances: Abbr.

61 Sports cliché that explains 17-, 28-, 35- and 47Across 64 Make final adjustments to, as a concert piano 65 Family feud 66 They may be intangible 67 Setting piece

3/6/15

By Steve Marron

DOWN 1 Electrical units 2 Scott Adams’ Evil Director of Human Resources 3 Wrap around 4 Grafton’s “__ for Ricochet” 5 Rum desserts 6 Post-op areas 7 Red Sox great Yastrzemski 8 The tenth Muse, to Plato 9 Old TV knob 10 Proof word 11 Diplomatic official 12 Taking in 13 “Understanding is a kind of __”: Sagan 15 Part of XXL: Abbr.

18 Proceed 23 Air freshener scent 25 Ray or Jay 28 Emcee’s aid 29 The Era of __: period in Notre Dame sports lore 30 Toon with a cat named Bowser 31 Satisfy 36 Health care orgs.

Thursday’s Puzzle Solved

SUDOKU FREE DAY

2

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1

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1 4 6 ©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

37 Vintner’s prefix 38 Hose users: Abbr.

39 Words on the Royal Canadian Air Force badge 40 Is ready to blow 41 “__ of Philadelphia”: Oscar-winning song 44 Court scores 45 Long-grained Asian rice

3/6/15

46 Beyond poor 48 Pre-game decision makers 49 Property encumbrance 53 Eiffel’s world 55 Level 57 Fall mo.

58 “Mon __!”

59 Salon treatment 62 Sinusitis-treating MD 63 Top __

3

3 4 2 5

6 1 9 5 1 2 4 8 6 3 7 4 1

SUNDAY High of 40, low of 24.

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NCAAW Wake Forest 85 Syracuse 79

SPORTS CAMILLA OPPERMAN ’16 SPECIALIZING STAR Following her career high-tying 9.825 on the floor exercise, Opperman was named the ECAC Specialist of the Week for the second time this season.

Opperman’s fourth-place finish was also the highest for any Yale gymnast on Friday.

NHL Flyers 3 Blues 1

RYAN HITCHCOCK ’18 ROOKIE OF THE YEAR In his first season at Yale, Hitchcock tied for the team lead with 12 assists and was named Ivy League Rookie of the Year. His head coach, Keith Allain ’80, was named the Ivy Coach of the Year, and three teammates were named to the All-Ivy first team.

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NHL Wild 2 Capitals 1

FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE yaledailynews.com/sports

“I feel like we are all ready and itching to play against another color jersey.”

GREEN CAMPBELL ’15 BASEBALL

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

Ivy title hangs in the balance

BY ROBERT HESS II CONTRIBUTING REPORTER March Madness is epitomized by a matchup between two Ivy League juggernauts duking it out for their conference crown.

That matchup comes to life on Friday, as Yale takes on Harvard in perhaps the program’s biggest game in 13 years, before the Bulldogs travel to New Hampshire to take on Dartmouth in their regular season finale.

Heading into the final weekend of the Ivy League basketball season, Yale (21–8, 10–2 Ivy) and Harvard (20–6, 10–2) sit atop the standings with matching 10–2 conference records.

On Friday night, these Ancient Eight frontrunners will square off in front of a sold-out crowd at Lavietes Pavilion in Cambridge, and a win would put Yale in prime position for its first NCAA Tournament bid since 1962.

“The opportunity to play in

the NCAA Tournament for Yale would be a dream come true,” forward Sam Downey ’17 said.

“But right now, all that matters is just focusing on our game plan and playing our best in these next two games.”

Yale travels to Harvard fresh off winning back-to-back home games against Princeton and Penn. In both contests, the Elis trailed by three at halftime before being carried by forward Justin Sears ’16 in the second half. Over the weekend, Sears collected nine offensive rebounds, providing his teammates vital opportunities for second-chance points. For his efforts, the junior from Plainfield, New Jersey earned Ivy Player of the Week honors, his fifth such award this season and 10th of his career.

The Crimson, on the other hand, struggled in a loss at Cornell last Friday, which caused them to drop into a first-place tie with the Bulldogs. Harvard

shot 25.4 percent from the floor in that contest, as Siyani Chambers and Wesley Saunders, the team’s leading scorers, were held to 9–31 shooting. But on Saturday, Harvard bounced back by shooting a scorching 58.7 percent in an 80–70 win again Columbia.

Everyone who follows the Ivy League knows what is at stake tonight: the coveted conference title and a spot in the NCAA Tournament. Although this is the penultimate game for both teams — the Bulldogs travel to Dartmouth on Saturday, while the Crimson hosts Brown — it has the feeling of a championship game.

Despite the hoopla surrounding the game — some Harvard students camped out to receive tickets; ESPN has plans to use live coverage during SportsCenter and Harvard has had to bring in extra bleachers — the players SEE MEN’S BASKETBALL PAGE 8

Baseball faces 15 games in 15 days

BY ADAM JENKINSON CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The Yale baseball team will spend plenty of time in the sun over spring break despite not being on vacation, as they travel south to take on some of the best college baseball teams America has to offer.

BASEBALL Beginning this Friday, the Elis embark on an extensive road trip, mixed with two short home stints.

Over the two-week vacation, the Bulldogs will play 15 games, including a critical game against Duke on March 10.

“Being successful on the spring trip for any Ivy League team is always a statement that northeastern teams can play, even being prohibited from practicing on a baseball field for months,” centerfielder Green Campbell ’15 said.

Such prohibition was evident this week, as a game against the University of New Haven, which was supposed to be the season and home opener for the Bulldogs, was canceled due to the heavy snow.

This delay made many players want to play even more. Several players interviewed said they are ready to see if the hard work they put in this winter will translate to a higher level of play.

“Of the 301 Division I college baseball teams, we are the last team to start,” catcher Robert Baldwin ’15 said. “The extra practice has allowed us to fine-tune our fundamentals, but has left us yearning for outside competition.”

The first opponent Yale will face this season is the University of Richmond Spiders (5–3), with the game being played at Davidson University this Saturday at noon.

Later in the afternoon, the BullSEE BASEBALL PAGE 8

MEN’S BASKETBALL

JULIA HENRY/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale’s first Ivy loss of the year was to Harvard in a 52–50 nail-biter that came down to the final seconds.

Tennis travels for upcoming tests

BY JACOB MITCHELL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Rest and relaxation are not on the agenda for the Yale men’s and women’s tennis teams over spring break. Both teams will be in action as the men’s team prepares for nine matches over the next two weeks and the women’s team prepares for four contests.

TENNIS The men’s team has not competed since traveling to Virginia two weeks ago, but they will kick off spring break by hosting Fairleigh Dickinson, Marist and Stony Brook on March 7 and March 8.

The Bulldogs will compete in matches against the other schools on both of the two days, and they will then travel to Loyola Marymount on March 14.

Improvement will be the theme for the Elis, who have already

compiled a 6–3 record thus far in the season, including impressive wins over George Washington and William and Mary. However, the team is focused on gaining momentum for Ivy League play that begins next month.

“Coming into spring break, we know we are going to have to train hard if we want to compete in the Ivies,” Stefan Doehler ’18 said.

“We’ve had some solid wins in the season so far but we definitely know we can do better, and spring break will be a perfect time to work on what we need to improve.”

The cold, snowy weather in New Haven also has some members of the team circling March 15 and March 19 on their calendars.

The Bulldogs will travel to Irvine and San Diego to face the Portland Pilots and the Utah Utes, respectively.

“The team is very excited to SEE TENNIS PAGE 8

JOEY YE/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The men’s tennis team will head to the sun to take on Portland and Utah in Irvine, California and San Diego.

Bulldogs end year at home

BY JULIA YAO STAFF REPORTER After falling to the top two teams in the Ivy League — firstplace Princeton and runner-up Penn — the Yale women’s basketball team will complete the last weekend of its regular season by facing Harvard on Friday night and Dartmouth on Saturday.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

GRAHAM HARBOE/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

After a cancelled opener against New Haven, the Elis will be the final Division I team to begin competition.

STAT OF THE DAY 53

OLUFOLAKE OGUNMOLA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Captain Sarah Halejian ’15 is 10th on the Yale all-time scoring list, with 1,226 points.

The games come on the heels of a tough run for the Bulldogs (12–14, 6–6 Ivy) — the team has lost six of its last seven games, and currently ranks fourth in the Ivy League.

“It’s an important weekend because not only is it our last weekend of [the] season, but we have the potential to get third place in the Ivy League, something we haven’t done in a couple of years,” guard Meg McIntyre ’17 said.

Additionally, Saturday’s game

is senior night, when captain and lone senior Sarah Halejian ’15 — 10th on Yale’s all-time scoring list with 1,226 points — will be honored for her contributions to the team.

The Elis will face stiff competition this weekend. Tied for second place in the league, Harvard (12–14, 5–7) came away with two wins over Cornell and Columbia in Cambridge during the past weekend. Leading the team in scoring is 6’4” senior forward Temi Fagbenle, who averages 14.3 points per game, enough for sixth in the conference. Fagbenle was named to the All-Ivy first team last year and has earned 14 Ivy League weekly awards in her career.

Joining Fagbenle in doubledigit scoring are fellow senior forward and co-captain Erin McDonnell and junior forward Annmarie Healy, averaging 13.2 and 12.9 points per game, respectively. As SEE W. BASKETBALL PAGE 8

YEARS SINCE THE YALE MEN’S BASKETBALL TEAM LAST MADE THE NCAA TOURNAMENT. With wins this weekend against Harvard and Dartmouth, or with a win over Harvard and a Crimson loss to Brown on Saturday, the Bulldogs would clinch a bid to the Big Dance.

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015

Paul Fry, Luis MorenoOcampo, Charles Hill, Tom Perrotta, Yale Carillonneurs, Slava Vakarchuk, Sam Tsui, Tom Lehman, Ilan Zechory, Sarah Ruhl // ILLUSTRATIONS BY THAO DO, ZISHI LI, CAROLINE TISDALE, LAURIE WANG

RAPPING

B6,7

RINGING

B10,11

RUHLING

B12

TOM LEHMAN AND ILAN ZECHORY

THE GUILD OF CARILLONNEURS

SARAH RUHL

Jacob Potash and Zack Sekoff hop on a train to NYC to hang with the Rap Genius cofounders.

We arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t sure who these people are, but the name rings a bell.

Michelle Liu chats with award-winning playwright and all-around lovely human being Sarah Ruhl.

PAGE B2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND FRIES

PAUL FRY: AN OCEAN OF ISLANDS // BY SAATCHI KALSI

//PATRICK PEOPLES

Paul Fry isn’t just a famous academic; he’s also “Yale famous.”

A scholar of British Romantic poetry and a professor at Yale for over forty years, Fry put aside his original aspirations of becoming a painter to pursue literature.

In addition to being one of the few professors whose course is available online, Fry served as beloved master of Ezra Stiles College for almost a decade. In an interview with WKND, Fry recounts memorable Master’s Teas, including a particularly charged one with the founder of the Black Panthers, and describes his work in the upcoming “Critique of Reason” exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery.

Q: I heard that you were originally interested in pursuing a career in painting, but went to graduate school because your father believed art wasn’t a viable career path. How did this impact your life, and what advice would you give to students who are torn between pursuing their dreams and fulfilling expectations?

A: Well, in the first place I should give my father the credit of not really being a person who stood in my way. I made my own

choice, and my father was a painter and very much honored painting. I went to graduate school because I felt I had a deeper vocation for the study of literature than for painting. Also, you could be drafted if you went to art school — this was during the Vietnam War. However, if you went to graduate school, you were exempt from the draft. Once I was in graduate school I was comfortable and happy with my choice. Today I could only advise students to follow their deepest vocation.

Q: Do you believe it’s possible for a person to realize their creative aspirations at any point during his or her life?

A: I certainly think so. The time and intensity of effort that would be required for most of us to do so does perhaps mean a career change, and the ease with which one changes careers depends on one’s phase of life. It’s probably unwise to do so and hope to succeed without being fully committed to it. I have to say that literary studies is a discipline that requires a lot of preparation and is not something I

would recommend someone do midlife or later.

Q: In your online lecture “Introduction to Theory of Literature,” you examine various conceptions of the meaning of literature. If you could describe the purpose of literature and why it continues to engage us in a few words, what would you say?

A: I think literature calls our attention to the measure of the fictive. I think that literature as a form of discourse has a privileged position amongst others because of its openly and exuberantly fictive nature. In some ways I would defend it and its study on formal grounds. However, one could say in a more humanistic vein that literature expresses more eloquently and subtly emotions and feelings that we all try to express one way or another.

I WOULD DEFEND LITERATURE AND ITS STUDY ON FORMAL GROUNDS.

Q: How did you get involved with Romanticism? Was there any particular reason you chose this artistic movement?

A: When I was a graduate student at Harvard, I thought of myself as a Modernist. I spent a lot of time studying the canonical works of the earlier twentieth century and was fascinated with them. I also had a temporary flirtation with early American colonial literature that was developed under one of my more interesting mentors. However, it was when I came to Yale that my interest in Romanticism took off, under the influence of the great figures in the department in those days, like Harold Bloom and

SPRANG

YOUR FLIGHT HOME JFK // All-day

BREAK

We’re just crossing our fingers and hoping that acts of God don’t get in the way of our plans to get the hell out of New Haven.

Geoffrey Hartman.

Q: On the subject of Romanticism, could you describe your work in “The Critique of Reason” exhibit?

A: It’s quite limited. My role is only to read a half-hour paper in a symposium that I understand is going to take place on April 18th and 19th. My own experience has been mostly with the British Art Center and their collection over the years. It is a great occasion for collaboration, and I hope it works out because it’s an excellent idea.

Q: Do you have any favorite Romantic poems?

A: Yes, certainly. I think Keats’ “To Autumn” is the most perfect poem in the language. I very much admire “Tintern Abbey” and a poem called “Michael” by Wordsworth. While these are lyric poems, I also esteem Wordsworth’s long autobiographical poem “The Prelude,” and Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight.”

Q: To switch gears, college students are so often swamped with course reading that they don’t have time to read for leisure. What would you say to a student looking to read for leisure?

A: Well, I think it is important simply to deepen one’s sense of a rich field. To read works in isolation is to feel that somehow they are little islands in the vast ocean, whereas, in reality, the entire ocean is islands.

Q: What is your philosophy of reading, and how does it square with a college student’s practice of skimming?

A: I am unable to skim. If I skim I have acquired no information, let alone understanding of the text as a text. Sometimes I have to skim just like anyone else and I make the best of it. Now, there is a movement abroad in literary studies called distant reading, which involves digital humanities databases, that really absolves you from reading at all. All you have to do is gather together vast quantities of whatever you are interested in and then develop a

search engine that asks the intelligent questions so you can come up with generalizations about a whole genre. It is not an insignificant or uninteresting field, but it is really amazing to me because it absolves you from reading and composes other tasks in its place.

Q: In your opinion, does distant reading detract from the intended purpose of literature?

Does the manner in which we acquire information alter our understanding of it?

A: I don’t want to be dogmatic or doctrinaire. I think one can learn interesting things by this means. We have always used what are called concordances [an alphabetized list of the important words in a book or text]. As a student of Wordsworth, I have worked all my life with the concordance of words that allows me to see when and how often he uses a certain word, phrase or theme. Concordances are already like databases and search engines, and even traditionally they could search for things other than words — they are just not as vast.

Q: You have taught at Yale for more than forty years. Is there any particular moment in your teaching career that has been the most gratifying or interesting?

A: Well, I’ll have to say that the response to the online literary theory lecture course has been incredibly gratifying. For years, I got emails from people in every corner of the world telling me that it had changed their lives.

Furthermore, I was able to turn it into a book! My most recent book is based on a transcript of the lectures: I turned the transcript into decent prose, fixing the grammar and eliminating all the “umms” and “ahhs.”

Q: What was something you most enjoyed as Master of Stiles? I think a lot of students are curious about this because from our point of view, college masters seem to have a lot of fun!

A: It was certainly an interesting position — we were laughing all the time. I enjoyed all kinds

of things about it! I participated in some sports; I got to know lots of students and enjoyed knowing them. What I particularly liked doing was developing ideas for Master’s Teas. We had Martha Stewart, film directors, actors such as Edward Norton, conceptual artists and other intellectuals and celebrities. It was a lot of fun putting those events together over the years.

Q: Is there one particular Master’s Tea that you recall which received the best reception?

A: I think the most exciting Master’s Tea was with Bobby Seale, one of the leaders of the Black Panthers who had opened a barbeque restaurant in Philadelphia and had published a book titled “Barbequing with Bobby.” He came to the Master’s Tea accompanied by the New Haven head of the Black Panthers chapter, a guy named James Edwards who was on the hustings at a time when the city was full of tanks, and when Brewster [the Yale president at the time] made his stand on behalf of the Black Panthers, saying they couldn’t get a fair trial in New Haven. It was a tremendously controversial period. James Edwards was one of the most fierce and dedicated people I have ever encountered.

He was so much more serious in his politics and his understanding of racial relations than Bobby Seale was, or at least is now. I think the Martha Stewart event was also special. It all went great until toward the end of the Q&A someone asked her if she had any advice about decorating his dorm room and she thought he was being condescending and got mad at him. She had come from a local Kmart where she was introducing a new line of towels. I can’t even begin to remember all the people we had from an enormous variety of fields. Sometimes we would have people who weren’t very well known and we would have to scour the courtyards to find an audience. But we had them hanging from the chandeliers for a lot of them.

Contact SAATCHI KALSI at saatchi.kalsi@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Making friends with strangers on airplanes. No *wings* attached!

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND PROSECUTES

SPEAKING CANDIDLY FOR A MINUTE: LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO // BY KELSI CAYWOOD

Q: What does your work as a senior fellow entail?

A: I started teaching here for the first time last year. The Jackson [Institute] invited me to come here and I said yes. Now for me, I like Jackson because it is not just about law, it is about global affairs. So I want to review what I did for nine years as the first prosecutor of the ICC, but I need to know what happened to others. I want to understand the rationale of their reactions. For me, international law is not just the text of the norms, it is how the relevant actors apply the norms. That’s why I came here.

Q: Is there any similarity between how you chose criminal cases as a prosecutor and how you choose case studies as a professor?

A: No, because when I was prosecutor I got a mandate — I had no freedom. Here, as a professor, I have more freedom.

Q: Do you have any thoughts on what is going on in Argentina right now [with the accusations surrounding President Cristina Kirchner]?

A: The current Argentina situation shows that political interference and corruption is promoting inefficiency of our national criminal justice systems and the absence of an impartial international body to complement the national investigation is making it difficult to solve the problems.

Q: Do you think that is something that law will have to focus on in the future?

A: Yes. How to coordinate national states and international organizations — that is the problem of your generation. My gener-

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ation is dumb, because my generation is educated in national systems so they don’t focus on global issues.

Q: Is there some sort of compromise of national sovereignty as international systems grow and solidify?

A: It depends. National interest is connected with the size of the country and its army. Small and medium countries have [an] interest [in using] international law to manage conflicts and they could be more eager to compromise their sovereignty. But the U.S. has hegemonic military power, no one can challenge it.

Q: Is there something lost with outsourcing that power of the judiciary systems to the ICC? What does it mean for the constitutions of those nations involved in the ICC? A: Nothing. The system was built and is working without the U.S. Its relevance can be bigger if the conflict managers learn how to use the legal system as leverage in negotiations.

Q: Is there any sort of struggle between the United States and the ICC? A: The Bush Administration was very hostile until 2005, but no later and not now. When I was appointed, I was teaching at Harvard and a colleague of mine told me it was an honor to get the position, but he had to reject it. I said “Why?” “Because without U.S. support you cannot investigate and you cannot arrest.

It will be a shame because you will receive a salary for nine years doing nothing.” That was his prediction. There was a chance that he was right. So my job was to build an institution. Now it is there. It is part

of the international landscape and it will not disappear.

Q: Your friend mentioned lack of support and thought it might be a hindrance to the ICC. What do you do in these situations of doubt, whether in the courtroom or in your daily life?

A: When you are the chief prosecutor, you cannot just say, “Oh, I made a mistake.” Before you move, you have to be sure. When you move ahead, you stay there, even if you are attacked.

In 2007, no state was interested in confronting [Omar al-] Bashir.

I had evidence against him, but I knew that if I requested an arrest warrant, the court could be isolated and without support. So I had this dilemma and I asked my students, “What do you think? What should I do?” And 43% said I should indict Bashir. 43% said I should not. And that is real life. That is my life. Half of the world will be against you.

Q: How do you promote that same sense of clarity with your students that you have in your decisionmaking?

A: I try to make them think. I try to present real problems and let the think about possible solutions from their own perspective. It’s not about them refuting what I say, it is about them solving problems on their own.

Q: Where can students find or discover that ability to identify novelty in the system? How, if it is possible, can students be inspired to find that?

A: I believe that case studies of real dilemmas are good for students, because you discuss the connections between different factors. Through simulations of the

SPRING BREAK SHOWDOWN Home // Spring Break

It’s WKND’s annual tradition to get into an argument of epic proportions with our parents as soon as we touch down.

UN Security Council you understand Russia, China, and Germany’s rationale. I think American students need to learn more about the other actors, to develop an American strategy.

Q: So do you see a change in the way that America talks about itself, considering that it is not leading the world? Do you think that will be realized in rhetoric?

A: American exceptionalism is rooted in history. The U.S. could not accept the global order in the 19th century, when they were fighting the British Empire. But then in the 20th century, after the First World War and the second, the U.S. led the new global order. After the end of the Cold War, the U.S. was not leading the global order — its focus on national security became parochial.

Q: The nature of your career has been very public. But if you had the opportunity to speak candidly to the world for a minute, what do you think would be crucial to tell them?

A: I would say, we don’t know what kind of world we are leaving to our children, but we should know what children we are giving to the world. Your education is key but no one can define how the world will be in 20 years. So we need to provide a education to allow you to define how the world will be in the future.

Q: So do you think you will keep teaching in the upcoming years? Or do you have any personal projects that you will pursue?

A: I want to keep teaching and learning from my students to understand the world. But I think it is my last year here.

Q: Do you think you will move back to

Argentina?

A: Normally I live two weeks of the month in Buenos Aires and a week a month in New York working as a lawyer. I spend my winter and spring teaching. But now I am going to Harvard.

Q: How do you think international judiciary systems can protect human rights? Do you think it is a preventative measure?

A: International law is not about the courtroom. It is putting some actions, like massive crimes, outside of the political options. Additionally, legal institutions are transforming the relation with the killers.

The idea is that having a system of law means that the killers are not your enemies. The killers are criminals. And then you cannot kill the killers, you should prosecute them.

So if someone rapes my daughter, I cannot kill him. I should put him in jail and I can hate him, but I cannot kill him. And that’s why it is not about courtroom activities, it’s about how we change the framework for individuals reacting.

Q: How does the UN relate to the ICC? Will there be a merge at any point?

A: No, because the UN Security Council is a meeting place. Samantha Power wrote a book saying that blaming the Security Council for the lack of security in the world is like blaming Madison Square Garden because the Knicks are playing bad basketball. But it is an important meeting place. It decides important issues. The ICC should be independent, its contribution is to keep its legal mandate.

Contact KELSI CAYWOOD at kelsi.caywood@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Making up with your parents quickly. You’re stuck with them for two weeks — time to get along.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND POLITICKS

“YOUR QUESTIONS ARE CONVEYING AN EDUCATIONAL INDOCTRINATION”: CHARLES HILL // BY SOFIA BRAUNSTEIN

Q: Do you think the U.S. has been constructive in solving the IsraelPalestine conflict or have our own interests gotten in the way of effective negotiations?

A: The U.S. has been indispensable to the negotiations because the U.S. has been and remains the only third party that both the Israelis and the Palestinians are willing to work with.

There has been a basic trust on both sides that the Americans

suddenly began to be evident there was a seed of revolution in Lebanon. There was also the green movement in Iran. These two were crushed. Then came the 2011 Arab Spring, a huge movement of young people. Suddenly everything was in turmoil simply because there was an opening. It became clear that a dictator as odious as Saddam Hussein need not be the predestined outcome for all of the peoples of the Middle East, and they began to take action. Those actions have been against other Muslims, against the Middle East. This is where we are now. This is not something traceable to what the U.S. did after 9/11.

Q: But do you believe at all the the U.S. presence in the Middle East in the past several decades has lead to these oppressive regimes or to any other conflicts?

A: It is an American habit, or form of entertainment to blame everything on America. The easy way, for political purposes inside America, is to say that everything starts with America and what we have done wrong, but it isn’t so.

The regimes that came to power in the Middle East are hereditary monarchies that seize power by military coups. In other cases, they put in place parliamentary

“

tional law and manipulate diplomacy to get a nuclear weapon.

These are the things that people do to themselves. They would like your question because it sounds like you are doing something that they would like to have people believe.

Q: With conflicts escalating in Syria and Iraq, and with a global wave of people traveling to join terrorist organizations, do you think Syria will take a similar direction to other Middle Eastern countries with prolonged fighting? Is there any way to swiftly quell this conflict?

A: Well, Syria is ungoverned, except around Damascus by the rump of the Assad regime. A huge part of it is under the control of ISIS, the most radial terrorist force that has appeared yet in the modern Middle East. However, there are freedom fighters in Syria who have sought to overthrow the Assad regime, but they haven’t been getting any support from the outside. There has been the idea of safe-zones inside Syria where people could go if they’ve been ravaged by the war, but that has not been carried out.

Generally the outside world has let Syria devour itself on its own terms and timetable, and that’s a tragedy. That’s the way it is now.

I don’t see any way to change it, other than an effort to turn back the primary threat that is ISIS, which now holds not only territory in Syria, but also huge territory in Iraq.

This is a major strategic challenge, and the U.S. has taken some steps that have been in some sense effective, but we never seem to do enough of what is required to have any momentum toward success.

So this problem just keeps on going. It’s been going on in Syria since 2011, and isn’t going to come to an end anytime soon.

GET A GOOD EDUCATION...REALLY SET YOURSELF TO IT AND TRY TO DO IT. BUT YOU HAVE TO DO IT YOURSELF.

were going to do it in a fair way and that we didn’t have any particular national interest that was driving us — that we really wanted to see a two-state solution. So that being the case, there was really no way to avoid it, the fact simply was that there was no other party that the two sides would trust.

Q. Are there things you think the U.S. did wrong after 9/11? How could Bush have responded better?

Or do you believe the escalation to the subsequent wars and to today’s constant conflict was inevitable?

A: The Middle East has been under a kind of lid for decades and decades and there have been a multiplicity of factions and religious animosities and ethnic, linguistic and class differences that have all been held down by a combination of military regimes and the political use of Islam as a tool of oppressive regimes.

When Saddam Hussein was overthrown, that lid was lifted and it

systems that were really front organizations that weren’t serving the democratic needs of the people. Those regimes then used propaganda and subsidies to turn the ire of their people in another direction, mainly against Israel.

They thought they could co-opt most radical Islamic groups by bringing some of them into their governments and paying some of them to go to other countries and commit acts of violence instead of acts against themselves. They were doing whatever they could to stay in power to survive, but what they were doing was slowly making it almost inevitable that the peoples of the Middle East would have enough of all of this.

But that has been taken over by elements that are not acting in the interests of the people. Theyreare dictators such as Assad in Syria, radical Islamists as in the case of ISIS, Al Qaeda as a terrorist group, the murderous centuries-old Shia vs. Sunni war and an Islamist rule in Iran that is doing what it can to violate interna-

SPRANG BREAK

“

Charles Hill has extensive experience both in the political and academic worldsat Yale. A diplomat in residence, he serves as a humanities lecturer and BradyJohnson Distinguished Fellow in Grand Strategy. As a career minister in the U.S. Foreign Service, he has advised Ronald Reagan and former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, focusing primarily on Middle East policy. His most recent book, “Trial of a Thousand Years: World Order and Islamism,” explores the innate incompatibility of political Islam and a state-based international system. WKND sat down with Hill to discuss U.S.-Middle Eastern relations, the ongoing conflict in Syria and the current system of education on international relations in the United States.

Q. You mentioned in your book,

neglect due to the teaching about it that has taken place in the last 30 or 40 years. Teaching about the way the world actually works was dropped in colleges. Education on international affairs turned to focus on issues, not on structures, not on history. A lot of ignorance.

This is very significant in intellectual history in the U.S., at least. The universities and college stopped teaching international affairs in a way that would convey its actual structure. In this way, things grew up particularly “Model UN,” which has taught one generation after another of American students to think incorrectly about the United Nations, which causes frustration among the students and puzzlement as to why what they have been taught doesn’t seem to have any actuality to it.

Q. Why do you believe statehood or, even further, democracy is the ideal form of governance?

A: Statehood is the [worldwide] form of government. That is what began in 1648, which is the origin of the international state system — that’s when the state became accepted, at least juridically, as the fundamental unit of world affairs, against the empire. I think it’s the best, although the state as a concept has had to make its way in the world again and again. So far, for 350 or so years, the state has produced successes through a lot of hideous violence and upheavals — many, many unfortunate things — but the state has delivered more to the people of the territory, whatever the government may be, than any other proposed system. That just is, although now that states are failing and losing control over their territory, it’s not impossible that the state system could deteriorate to the point that it could be unworkable in large areas of the globe.

What will follow from that would be something very ugly and dangerous.

As for democracy, that’s a topic that comes back again and again.

The key question is a very fundamental one, and that is for every individual person to answer. It is: Do you think people want to be free, or that people don’t care about being free? Twenty years ago people said people want to be free and now increasingly I hear that people don’t want to be free, or that they want to do anything they possibly can to avoid being free. They want to be in a state run by, for example, the Communist party of China, which every day puts out editorials and articles that say, “Whatever happens, we will never, ever become democratic because democracy is the worst of all forms of government.”

So it’s how you feel about that.

My feeling is that people want to be free.

Q. But what about our involvement in Vietnam? It seemed like the people wanted a communist state and we still came in, fearing the domino effect, to try to quell communism and encourage democracy.

A: It seems in this interview your questions are conveying an educational indoctrination that you and your whole generation has, and it’s a dogma. So you ask me a question that’s a dogmatic question, a leading question.

Each of the questions you’re asking me has three answers already stuck in it which you’re trying to get me to say yes to. You’re posing the precondition to the question, and the difficulty in dealing with a question like that is that it just isn’t true. I once thought the way you thought. When I was sent to Vietnam by the U.S. government, I resigned rather than go because I believed what you just said, that the people wanted a Communist government, and we

were going to force them not to accept what they wanted, which was to be living in a Communist dictatorship. However, in a strange turnabout, my resignation wasn’t accepted and I was sent to Vietnam anyway. And when I got there I found, astonishingly, that the people didn’t want to be communist. In fact, they had come into the cities and the areas that were under the control of the South Vietnamese government because they were fleeing communism. It was an entirely different picture on the ground then what the media had been portraying.

So why was the media doing this? I think it was that, at that particular time, Vietnam was a political issue, an anti-war movement. There was the New Left, which was largely a student movement from Europe, that was gaining influence inside the U.S. American students were strongly Maoist. I was at Harvard for a year during the great student upheavals there. The students, sincerely — they were not traitorous — believed that Maoism was the wave of the future for the world. They had that kind of mentality, the idea that the world’s problems were created

by America, that democracy is a weapon that we beat people with, that the troubles everywhere you looked were attributable to us, that the people there don’t want to be free, they want to be Communist. These things are now somehow in the curriculum of secondary schools in America.

They churn out a kind of assumption, a range of layers of assumption, that I’m hearing from you in your questions.

Q. Any words of advice to Yale undergraduates?

A: Get a good education if you really set yourself to it and try to do it. But you have to do it yourself. Yale is a wonderful place for students to get so much attention and so much care, so many deans, so many people watching over you, so many people with good intentions, but really your education has to come from you.

You have to decide what courses to take. My advice is, don’t take courses on the basis of what you think will get you a good job, take courses on what will give you a good education. A good test is if your family asks, What are you doing with that course? Why are you taking that? That’s a sign that you’re getting a good education.

Contact SOFIA BRAUNSTEIN at sofia.braunstein@yale.edu .

“Trial of A Thousand Years,” and in your interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2012, your belief in the effectiveness of a state-based world order. Do you think Western statehood should be imposed everywhere?

A: That misses the point. The international state system is the system that has been adopted around the world in the past several centuries. It has been adopted voluntarily; it is no longer Western, it is international — it is an international world net that has member states from every continent. Its organization is the United Nations. This is not something we are trying to establish; it has been established for a long time. The problem is that it has been deteriorating out of

AWKWARD HOUSE PARTY House // 1 a.m.?

Why are you here? Whose house is this?

WKND RECOMMENDS: Going home. You don’t belong at that house party. You belong in the family room eating pretzels and listening to your mom talk about Facebook.

Y

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND READS

SUBURBS UNDER THE MICROSCOPE: TOMN PERROTTA // BY IVAN KIRWAN-TAYLOR

// PRESS RELEASE

Tom Perrotta ’83 is a novelist, screenwriter and JE alum. With a BA in creative writing, he is a beacon of hope: living proof that those with liberal arts degrees don’t always end up wishing they’d stuck to Econ 115. He did, however, teach at Harvard. (Nobody’s perfect.) His first work of length, ‘Bad Haircut,’ was born out of his childhood in New Jersey — his meticulous eye for the complexities of American society has been at work ever since — from his high school black comedy “Election” to his anatomy of modern life in the suburbs, “Little Children,” both of which he helped adapt into critically acclaimed films. WKND spoke to literature’s equivalent of “Arcade Fire” over the phone, hoping to tease out a dissertation on dysfunctional America.

Q: Your most recent publication, ‘Nine Inches,’ is your first collection of short stories. Do you find the short story form more difficult than the novel?

A: Not exactly the first — ‘Bad Haircut’ was stories as well, but with a consistent narrator. In that sense it wasn’t a short story collection. There’s a higher degree of difficulty because story form demands a sort of perfection; everybody presumes the novel is an inherently flawed form. Nobody writes a perfect novel — it’s not what the novel is set up for. John Cheever: his novels just are not at the same stature as his stories. Alice Munro doesn’t even write novels.

I enjoy the middle of a novel, where you’re living with characters. With a short story, as soon as you get it running, you have to shut it down. That’s the challenge.

Q: “The novel is an inherently flawed form.”

Could you elaborate on that?

There’s a famous jokey definition:

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The novel is a work of prose of a certain length with a serious flaw. Think of the novels that are widely considered as candidates for the Great American Novel: “Huck Finn” is a great novel but it has a very strange ending, “Moby Dick” is a fantastic novel but there’s this ungainly, essayistic section about The Whale. [These books] don’t feel like perfect artifacts.

tion, of how values get passed down from one generation to the next — that’s what most interests me. It just so happens that that fits nicely into suburbia.

the playground than cute.” What is ‘cute’ art and how, as a writer, do you avoid cuteness?

Q: You adapted “Little Children” for the screen yourself. What does the page-toscreen process entail? What do you keep and what do you cut?

Q: In reviews, “Nine Inches” has been compared to Joyce’s ‘Dubliners’ and Raymond Carver’s collections. Do you feel any pressure from great past authors?

A: That was a very interesting process.

I adapted it with the director, Todd Field.

He was trying very hard not to lose the feeling. There’s a narrator not connected to any of the characters, commenting on the action, and in the film a lot of the commenting comes straight from the book. Most of what I lose is tonal. A lot of the action in “Little Children” is comic, and the film is darker. In the movie adaptation of “Election,” there was a lot of comedy, but the novel itself has a lot of menace.

A: [Laughs] This is actually very close to my heart. I’ve always believed one of the functions of art is to disturb, challenge, provoke — [to] make people uncomfortable. There are other things of course: to move you, to make you appreciate your life, the more positive things.

But to provoke can be positive. There’s a tendency in school for people to cut off things that make you uncomfortable.

When the movie of “Election” came out, I went and watched a screening with my parents. It’s a dark movie; people behave in pretty horrible ways. I saw my mother slinking down and slinking down. She watches Hallmark and Lifetime. This wasn’t what she’s used to. A woman behind her, at the end of the movie said, “Oh, that was cute.” My mother looked relieved: someone at least found it acceptable, not nasty or challenging.

A: Less than I did when I was young.

Part of doing this for a long time is understanding and accepting your limitations: what it is that you do well, what you don’t do well. Carver was a writer who meant a huge amount to me when I was young, and I learned from him a simplicity in sentences. When I read him now I realize how literary his sentences were, how he hid that behind some simplicity. What I admire about Joyce is how he went from ‘Dubliners’ to … [long pause] the awe of his later stuff, how different it was.

Q: You’re often described as a “suburban” writer. What is it about suburbia that interests you?

A: I almost feel like I blended into my identity as a suburban writer with “Little Children.” Before, I was considered a New Jersey writer, a guy writer. I wrote about rock ’n’ roll, the working class.

“Little Children” was about sexual transgression. I didn’t realize I was fitting into a generation of social novelists: Richard Yates, John Updike. That’s probably where my publisher wanted to place me.

The drama of child-rearing, of educa-

Q: TV shows are getting better and better.

What do you think about the rise of serious television?

A: For me, as a viewer, it began with “The Sopranos.” I was watching something with exhilaration and geek connection to what was going on. I was heartbroken when some of those episodes ended. Why wouldn’t a novelist feel like this new form — long-form TV — is so closely connected to the novel? You’re watching a character unfold for five, six, seven years sometimes. I noticed people were feeling a connection to these characters on TV — at a party or a barbeque, this collective enthusiasm that was really exciting. If you want to join a cultural conversation now, the most obvious entryway is television.

Q: There’s an arresting sentence in “Little Children”: “There was no higher praise at

AWKWARD PITY PARTY Your Room // All hours

You wonder: Why don’t I have a job? Why do mid-terms suck? Why aren’t all of my friends asking to hang out? WKND wonders: why can’t you make us care?

Q: One of the markers of modern suburbia, of modern life, is social media. Do you think it affects what fiction looks like?

A: It has been the most remarkable phenomenon in everyday life in the past five years. I’ll give you a very personal line. In “Bad Haircut,” I was writing about the world and my childhood. I was infused with a sense of mission: If I don’t write about this world, nobody will. I was the only person in that world who wanted to be a writer. It was a very working-class world. People were shocked that I read fiction. I felt that I had an ownership, then, on this piece of the past.

Then ... Facebook came out, and people have these pages on the past. Hundreds of people weigh in on their memories. There’s a place where this collective memory is preserved. I wouldn’t be able

to write that book if I tried now. I don’t know if something’s been lost from the world; I think something’s probably been gained. But when the past is always present, the role of the fiction writer, to preserve the past, is changed. People in your generation keep in touch with their high school friends. I think I would have been a very different writer if I were twenty years old now.

Q: In ‘Little Children,’ there’s a very memorable incident about pornography.

Do you think the digital growth of pornography has changed us at all?

A: When I was at Yale in the early ’80s there was a very sort-of-unified feminist resistance to pornography. You had to make a real effort to acquire pornography. It was this physical object you had to carry around. It was an anti-porn time. I remember being surprised by how feminists seemed to split: pro-porn, antiporn. I know in the U.K. they’re trying to legislate porn. I think there’s a lot of destructive, harmful stuff that goes into the production of it. Maybe they will be able to regulate internet porn, but maybe it’s too tightly woven into society now.

Q: One last question about your craft: do you find that writing is a compulsion?

A: Yes, but I don’t know if it’s a daily compulsion. I’ve gone weeks without writing, but I’m not one of these compulsive journal writers or scribblers — when I’m not writing, it’s when I don’t have an idea. When I don’t have that, I feel unmoored, I feel anxious, I feel [laughs] like my life has no meaning.

Sometimes I’m not writing, and it makes me feel unhappy, but it happens.

Contact IVAN KIRWAN-TAYLOR at ivan. kirwan-taylor@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Going on Instagram to feel better. All those pictures of your friends in Majorca and Greece are bound to lift your spirits!

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND ANNOTATES

GENIUSES, OR WHATEVER: TOM LEHMAN AND ILAN ZECHORY // BY JACOB POTASH AND ZACK SEKOFF

On Tuesday, we descended into the seedy depths of Williamsburg, Brooklyn to interview the pair of Yale College graduates who, in 2009, founded the company formerly known as Rap Genius. (It was recently rebranded as simply Genius.) Their office space is a simple suite of apartments in a condominium building overlooking the East River.

We caught them in the midst of a big transitional moment: This spring they’ll move into a new 44,000-square foot headquarters, putting to use the $40 million investment they received in July. They’ve also announced a new technology that will go on the website, allowing users to wield their annotation toolkit anywhere on the Internet. It’s all part of their goal: to make Genius an essential part of the Internet’s fabric.

Tom and Ilan greeted us in slippers, offered us Pellegrino, and invited us to take a seat on their couch.

Ilan, the president, majored in religious studies at Yale, and worked at Google and HBO before devoting himself to Rap Genius. He’s also a certified hypnotherapist. Tom, who double-majored in Ethics, Politics and Economics and mathematics and philosophy, is currently CEO. We’re Yale freshmen, and since being at Yale — since being in our position, you have gone on to — Tom Lehman: Well I wasn’t quite in your position. I was in Pierson, which is a worse version of Davenport, and so even though I had that disadvantage — You still made it?

TL: Well, I don’t know if I made it. But things are going okay.

What college were you in, Ilan?

Ilan Zechory: I was in Trumbull. Trumbull was the most run-down, it was like the art stoner vibe. I don’t know if it’s still that way.

What are your thoughts on the fact that you can

kind of tell what college someone’s in? Why is that?

TL: If you’re in Grand Strategy, you’re maybe in Davenport. Does that answer your question?

No offense. I had friends who were in Grand Strategy. Whatever.

IZ: In Trumbull, there was maybe one token strapping Christian kid. But it seemed like other colleges had a ton of them, and we just had a bunch of, you know, like pseudo-intellectuals, basically.

TL: It was the cool kids. Pierson didn’t have a lot of cool kids. Sorry, Pierson in heaven. Noah and Dave were good.

Shoutout to Noah and Dave.

TL: And others. I’m kidding! This is insane for me to say this.

You’ve gone on to start a multi-million dollar company, you know rap stars, you’ve traveled the world. Have any of the those experiences topped your Yale experiences in terms of craziness level?

What are the most memorable Yale times?

TL: There’s a meme called the Yale Bubble, or whatever — you know, it’s not a literal bubble.

But what it means is that you’re sort of insulated from the world. And I think that is very true in the sense that I thought, “Whoa, big time, I’m in college, I’m doing real work.” Yale was way more tame and chill. It’s nice, because if you’re a potted plant, and you want to transplant it, you’ve got to have it be nurtured in its original home.

IZ: And you’ve got at least four years or whatever to have that protection from society, and despite having homework or whatever it’s not that crazy or that hard, ultimately. Ultimately. You do hard work for sure.

TZ: Anything that you’re doing that seems hard, but — oh wait, it costs a ton of money to do — that’s not hard. You’re paying a ton of money for it. When you’re trying to get paid …

IZ: … things can get hard.

TL: Yale is definitely a time when you can chill out compared to what life feels like now.

When you were at Yale, did you have any sense of where you wanted to go after that?

TL: I thought guaranteed: going to go to law school, hopefully a prestigious law school, because I was into that kind of stuff back then.

There was actually a major at Yale during my time where you had to apply to get into it. So I was like, “That’s the major for me!” I was an idiot. Anyway, I thought I was definitely going to go to law school, be a legal academic. I was very taken with constitutional law, particularly John Hart Ely, very taken also with law and economics. Word to Susan Rose Ackerman, word to Henry Smith. I thought that was going to be my thing. I thought “Okay, I’ll take a year in New York, I got this interesting weird opportunity at this hedge fund, it seems kinda weird and chic, but you also don’t have to dress up or whatever, and do something — something with computers, and a bunch of people are moving to New York. That seems like the thing — I’ll do that.”

And then everything got all twisted and turned, so, yeah, I did [work at the hedge fund], but it was all wrong.

IZ: I came in freshman year, I was takin’ a bunch of different stuff. I didn’t know what I was gonna major in, I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life or whatever — I wasn’t too worried about it. But then around sophomore, junior year — that was 2004, 2005, so that was the birth of blogs, basically. So, I got a blog, and I had a lot of fun with it. And … perfect! Then I started taking writing workshops, and fiction writing and screenwriting, and writing on the side myself and thinking: okay, great,

I’ve found my calling — I’m going to be a young, white, Jewish writer, in the mold of Woody Allen or Philip Roth! I set my sights on that kind of thing, and then I realized, or as time went on the world told me, and I told myself: that’s not interesting anymore. So, I still like writing. I still think writing is interesting. But that mold is over, I think — the white Jew. No one wants to hear what a white guy has to say anymore, which is good. I think that’s good.

TL: Also, college is a very individualistic thing. It’s like, okay, what are you going to major in, what’s your GPA … and so that encourages you in college to think about yourself as: I’m special, and I’m a rugged individualist. I’m going to be a professor! I’m going to be a writer!

The reality is, in life, hard things — very difficult to do alone, and most important things or desirable things to do are very hard. And so, big difference between college and the real world is that — sorry to use that phrase — there are groups of people involved. There are group projects, and relationships, and so forth, and — IZ: I think a lot of people learn about that through extracurriculars. But not me and Tom! You’ve always had this – in interviews, and also as a company – this irreverent, playful tone, to some extent. I can see that its part of your personalities, but going into a corporate world, how much of that have you had to rein in? Or have you just completely said, “That’s the character of the company and we’re gonna keep it”? What’s the push and pull of that?

TL: The real answer is threefold. Part of it is that we are constantly trying stuff. I’ve got this whole philosophy: worse is better. Basically it’s this notion that you’ve gotta get out there in the world and try to do stuff. You have to try things.

There’s this great book called “Art and Fear,” which I’ve never read — I’m ordering from Amazon now, but I read an excerpt from it — okay, this is how honest I am — and the excerpt talked about how an artist is setting up a ceramics class

and runs an experiment. (Actually, I’m very into ceramics and wheel-turned pottery so this is particularly salient for me.) But the basic idea: A teacher tried this experiment. He said, “Okay, two groups — one group is the quality group and one group is the quantity group.” What they found was that the quantity group actually ended with the best quality, because the quality group was just stressed out — “How can I do the perfect thing? I need to the perfect thing. It’s gotta be great.” And the quantity group was just trying and refining and trying and trying and produced a lot of crap but ultimately ended up producing something good. So whether it’s the literal annotations on your website or the way your website works, or the way you interact with the world, you’ve gotta be trying new things. You can’t be afraid. You can’t be thinking: “Ah, how do I project to the world in a way that’s absolutely perfect, in a way that is kinda lighthearted but also underscores my seriousness?” We’re complicated people in the sense that we like jokes, but we’re also very serious about the work. And I think we’ve projected something that perfectly encapsulates who we are.

You’ve said that Genius is a 10-year project. What is the bulk of that? Because it seems like you have the basic technology in place. I guess you just came out with the embedding technology, last July. What are you trying to put in place over that timespan?

IZ: Last year we did the ability to embed. This year we’re doing the ability to literally annotate any website on the internet without embedding anything. Just going to any website and annotating using our special sauce — like, that’s an incredibly hard technical problem. So what are we doing for the next five years, or maybe the next 10, 15 years? Just building more and more technology, and building more and more of a movement.

TL: I agree with that. The scary thing is: You have to have new ideas. In other words, like, it’s so hard to have a good idea, and by good idea I mean something that anyone actually cares

about, let alone a lot of people. It’s so hard to have good ideas that, whenever you have one, what you wanna do is just keep pouring gas on that fire, keep extending it. And you have to do that — keep pushing. But you have to have brand-new ideas.

And ideally the ideas have a common theme, and they connect and whatever, but you have to have new ideas, and that is an extremely scary prospect, because, I put all the good thoughts I had in my first book! There’s an old saying. I got it from the Rawls character from “The Wire.” He says everybody has one book in them, almost no one has two. And I think there is a lot of truth to that. So you have to have new ideas, and the way to have new ideas is not to sit in a room and start thinking about it. We have this saying here at Genius: “Hi, modernism!” Good. High modernism, bad.

Q: Some would say that Yeezy season is approaching right now. That’s the feeling right now. This is kind of a two-part question. One: How involved are you in the Yeezy circle? Have you been in contact with him? Is he on board with Genius?

IZ: Yeah, we have met and hung out with Kanye. He is just a truly great guy. Like, he’s a truly, truly great guy in the sense that a) just a nice guy, and b) super interesting. Like, a super fascinating person to be around. He says great, interesting stuff, also has a way of being in the world, that is, you know, related to what makes him a good artist. He’s just a deep and fucking interesting guy to be around. I have a ton of love for Kanye, not only as an artist, but in the times we’ve hung out, briefly or whatever, like — just really really cool guy, and he’s down with Rap Genius. He’s sent us an idea for how the site should look. He’s engaged. He’s got this new music coming out.

Have you heard it? Are we ready?

IZ: I have heard, I’ve heard all the songs. I heard “All day,” I heard “FourFiveSeconds,” I heard “Only One,” all a long-ass time ago. They

were all different when they came out. Heard a real work in progress. I think I heard “FourFiveSeconds,” and Rihanna wasn’t on it yet. But it was a long-ass time ago, but he was just playing stuff, and it was amazing. He was so excited to share it. He played these 12 songs he had ready, like, five times in a row, and everyone was moving it. I think the album will be coming out, it seems like, very soon.

TL: The thing about Kanye is — if you think about the iPhone — what is special, truly special about the iPhone? What’s special about the iPhone is that the iPhone is the product that makes it so that the richest billionaire in the world and you know, a normal college or high school kid who’s got a little money, can still use the same phone. Like its not obvious this is the way it would work out. There was the ver2 phone, right, this $5,000 phone. Kanye is the embodiment of that notion — the richest billionaire in the world, Ben Horowitz, is still listening to “The College Dropout,” just like a college kid.

Part of his whole ethos when he’s talking about his new clothes or shoes — he doesn’t want it to be a limited edition, special sellout, $400 thing.

He wants it be for the masses, the iPhone.

That is very deeply woven into the Genius philosophy, that if you wanna understand something, you don’t have to be the billionaire of knowledge, the insider who went to Yale or whatever, who knows the guy who knows the guys who knows the backstory. Everyone can know that.

You don’t have to feel bad that you’re pretending to know who your friends are talking about.

You just go on the thing and look it up. Likewise, when you’re annotating, you could be a billionaire who owns a newspaper and gets to control the words on the newspaper, but then anyone can go right in those words and annotate right on top of them and have the same stature as that billionaire. And so that philosophy — that Apple embodied, Kanye embodies — is also what we try to take some cues from. So Kanye is a major inspiration for us.

Contact JACOB POTASH and ZACK SEKOFF at jacob.potash@yale.edu and zack.sekoff@yale.edu .

// MARGARITA CORPORAN

SPRANG BREAK

COFFEE WITH YOUR HS SWEETHEART Starbucks // 3 p.m.

Umm. Hey. Hey. So like … How are you?

Fine. You? Same. Enjoying school?

Yeah. It’s cold. Haha. ha. ha. Bai.

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SPRANG BREAK

TEXTING YOUR CURRENT SWEETHEART Your room // All day

Omg, I just got coffee with my ex today!

How was it? She’s such a loser! Lol. Lol. Haha. Luv you.

WKND RECOMMENDS: Dirty chais — like your current sweetheart, you still have a rocky, interdependent relationship with them.

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND ROCKS

// PATRICE BOWMAN

THE POLITICS OF POP MUSIC: SLAVA VAKARCHUK // BY CAROLINE WRAY

Slava Vakarchuk is a mod-­ ern Renaissance Man. Fre-­ quently called Ukraine’s #1 pop star, he is the lead singer and front-­man of Okean Elzy, Ukraine’s most successful post-­ Soviet rock band. He has also had political influence in his country, participating in both the Orange Revolution of 2004 and 2013-­14’s Maidan Move-­ ment. He has worked as a good-­ will ambassador for the UN’s Development Programme, and served in the Ukrainian parlia-­ ment briefly from 2007-­08 (he resigned because of qualms with the political system). He also has a Ph.D in theoretical physic, and donated his earn-­ ings to charity after winning the Ukrainian “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”

In between stadium concerts for his band’s world tour,Vakar-­ chuk visited campus to lead the discussion “Physics, Revolution, and Rock & Roll: Reflections on Today’s Ukraine.”WKND caught him for a few minutes before he jetted off: presumably to per-­ form to another sold-­out crowd, write another album, or save the world.

Q: What made you pursue rock music professionally, since you also have a background in physics and politics?

A: When I was 19 and a student, I just kind of popped up in a recording room. And that was it — I got hooked. While I was a physics student, I began singing, but I wasn’t thinking, just yet, of treating it as a career. It was as I was doing my Ph.D work that we

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started to get more success. But I decided to continue with my work, and I got my Ph.D; by the time I finally got it, I was already famous, and then I stopped. I don’t know if I’d say I needed the physics — well, that’s not true. I think it has helped me to think. I think that training does help me think through matters logically.

Q: If you were already famous, what made you decide to go back and follow through with that degree?

A: It made me uneasy! The idea of not completing something I’d started — that’s who I am. I finish things out, and I follow through. I wasn’t going to leave something undone.

Q: What kind of political power do you find in music?

A: You know, I don’t try to spin out political messages with my music. Some of our fans have extremely different views on politics than I do, and they still like listening to our music.

Other people feel just the same way about politics as I do, and they’ve never heard one of our songs. These things don’t have to go together. But I will say that most of our listeners seem to care about what’s going on in our country, and I’ll connect that back to what’s happening with our society more generally. It’s important to me to be engaged politically, but that’s more related to who I am as a person. You can be political and

make political statements without being a politician, and that’s especially true of celebrities.

When I make good music, I’m making myself happy. The songs themselves aren’t sending these same political messages that I talk about outside of my music.

I find both of those things to be important to me, extremely important to me. But they are different, and they should be.

Q: So Okean Elzy has been together for 20 years. Over that time, what have been the biggest changes in Ukrainian music and politics that you all have witnessed or experienced?

A: When we started, the music scene lined up with the Soviet scene. We as a band have definitely evolved: We got more experimental for a while, had an album with dance elements, sort of ‘cleaned up’ our sound for a couple of albums, and most recently we’ve gone for a more ‘natural’ sound. It’s always an exploration, I think. And then [regarding changes in] politics: Well, it goes to the leadership.

For years — if you look at the years of our band, and the political leaders at that very same time, you can see it: Ukraine has not had the best leadership, to put it mildly [laughs].

As we talked about earlier today, Ukraine is like the Israelites and we’ve been wandering in the desert for years. There’s almost a generational turnover that hasn’t quite materialized yet.

But, as I said, it’s up to Ukrainian society to deal with this. Getting frustrated is not the answer,

SHOPPING FOR SEXY SHORTS AND SANDALS

without individual action. And, with the Maidan, that’s what’s been happening: people taking action.

Q: Related to that action — you mentioned, earlier today, the daily violence going on in Ukraine.

How do you think that physical violence has changed the way Ukrainians feel about their nation and civic engagement?

A: I think it’s really defined three camps: people who care a little, people who care a lot, and people who don’t care at all. And that last camp has gotten so much smaller, necessarily. Of course, some people will always be indifferent, but there are far fewer of them now. And then the number of those people who really care, who are standing up and making noise and trying to make change, that number is really growing.

Q: And that’s a good thing, yes?

A: Yes, certainly, of course.

There is no other way for a country to change, except through those people. You know, it’s interesting, and I think hard for some other nations to understand: what we’re going through now, you guys went through 250 years ago. It’s a revolution towards our independence.

Q: If it were up to you, what would be the next step in creating positive political change in Ukraine?

A: There needs to be movements from the bottom-up and the top-down. You need society to make an effort to change itself, and you need strong, authoritative leaders who will really make things happen even when there’s resistance. I think the first way — bottomup — has already started happening. When you see something like the Maidan, you see [the bottom up movement].

And that came from a place of being pushed, you know? That was after a series of decisions — and, like I said, reporters ask me all the time to logically explain why those decisions were made, and I honestly can’t do it — and it just brought this disappointment to the surface, and that disappointment evolved into something more like frustration, and has caused people to really make changes they want to see. We’ve been improving the way we engage with politics. Society has been improving itself. The second way, topdown, is tougher. I think we have a ways to go, there. It’s harder to achieve. And, honestly, I’m not sure I can say for sure what the very next step is, for us to get to that kind of authority.

Q: You spoke earlier about Western engagement, and said something a little controversial: You don’t think the West has any obligation whatsoever to engage in, or even care about, the Ukraine crisis.

A: Yeah, I know that’s not always the most expected or popular stance. But it’s impor-

Q: So what, then, has made you get so engaged in politics over time?

A: I feel I’m paying my dues to my country; and it’s not because I have to, it’s because I want to.

It’s the place where I was born and raised and I want the best for it.

Contact CAROLINE WRAY at caroline.wray@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Ross: Dress for Less // Whenever

Who care’s if home is in Boston, where there’s still 18 feet of snow? It’s SPRING BREAK.

tant to me: I don’t expect anything from anybody. It would be, as I said, humiliating to travel the world and almost, you know, beg for help, or whine. I so strongly believe that any change that has to happen in Ukraine must come from within Ukraine itself. I got to where I am on my own — no European Union, no American weapons, no NATO. People in Ukraine have been waiting for a “messiah” figure to come and fix everything, and to them I say, “Make your own contribution.” No one can or should fix things for you but you. It’s possible, I say, to make happen whatever it is that you want to make happen. But you have to do it. You can’t just wait for someone else to come do it for you. Help yourself first. Now, as I also said — and this is cynical, but here you are — helping Ukraine is helpful to everyone. “Tipping point” really is a great phrase for it. The powers that are pushing up against each other in Ukraine affect many nations and societies. So, in that sense, it’s worth getting engaged: Get engaged for yourself, not for other people.

Living in denial.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B9

WEEKEND SINGS

ACA-SCUSE ME? ACA-TSUI!

Yal e

/ BY VIVIAN WANG

Sam Tsui ’11 is living the dream: After graduating from Yale, the YouTube sensation moved to Los Angeles and started a career in music that has already led him on a tour across Asia and spawned two full-length albums.

It turns out he was perfect while he was at Yale, too, juggling roles as a campus tour guide, member of the Duke’s Men, classics major and all-around dreamboat. He picks up the phone while stuck in L.A. traffic on his way out of a session at the recording studio and talks to WKND about Yale, stardom and life on the West Coast.

Q: So you were a classics major here at Yale. If you hadn’t gone into music, what would you have done with that?

A: Classical Greek, actually — I didn’t think just classics was specific and useless enough. The plan was always to go into music. It was what I loved and why I came to Yale: so that I could pursue my weird academic interests and also take part in the great music scene. The plan was always music. If I hadn’t done it, I guess I might have gone on, gotten my Ph.D. in classics or something, taught and gone into academia. I still do love it.

Q: When did you know you wanted to go into music full-time? Was it scary?

A: I had always planned to, in a general and vague sense. From when I was very young, that was the assumption, even though initially I thought maybe I’d do musical theater or be a music writer or something like that. But there was a moment when I actually came to realize that that big, general dream was actually, in the practical world, coming true. I guess the pivotal point was graduating from Yale and deciding where I was going to move, and the fact that I chose to move to LA, where I’d officially be an independent musician out here — that was the moment of choice. I was super lucky that by that point I’d already built up this following online and had a support system of managers and people who knew what they were doing. Graduating from school and coming out here was the “Holy shit, this is real” [moment].

Q: How has your vision for yourself and your music changed since you started out?

A: One of the most exciting things about being in music, especially right now, is that the entire industry is in such a state of flux … Everyone’s vision of what form this whole world is taking has changed a lot in just the past couple years. Obviously when I first moved out here, in the back of my head I thought, “I’m gonna move out here, I’m gonna get signed to a big record label and I’m gonna tour and put out albums.” One of the coolest realiza-

tions I’ve been able to make is that right now really is an age for independent musicians. The tables are turning, and it’s in a lot of artists’ best interests to be independent. I’m very lucky that I get to go into that with this incredible fan base and awesome social media presence. I have a lot more agency personally, which is very cool.

Q: How was the experience of getting famous different because it was via YouTube, and you were still a student?

A: It definitely changed my day-today experience of it. It was so different.

New Haven is not LA, and YouTube and the digital space already kind of allow someone to connect with people around the world, even though your day-to-day is not necessarily anything like that. You’re going to school, you’re in this bubble, and yet all of your content is being viewed by millions of people all around the world.

Initially, it was very jarring to be a student and be going to classes and a cappella rehearsals and going out to Toad’s and whatever, and meanwhile there was this whole world of content online that I was putting out and at the same time concurrently building this whole brand. So at first it was very strange.

It’s still weird just because a lot of what I do, and what a lot of us in this space do, is we’re with our team making our videos and doing our stuff at home, and yet to be stopped on the street or to go on tour — it’s like, oh yeah, this stuff we’re doing that feels like it’s on a very microcosmic scale actually has a life of its own.

Obviously with college it becomes harder to visit Hong Kong, because it’s on the other side of the world, so I hadn’t been for a handful of years. There were a bunch of cousins, aunts and other people that I just hadn’t seen for a long time. So to get to come back and see them in the context of, “Oh, I’m a touring musician, here, come to my show,” and to have them show up and [see] thousands of screaming fangirls — it was super surreal to get to invite my family to that. Especially being the halfAsian kid, there’s that element of bringing honor to my family that was

SA M TS UI

Q: How did other Yalies react to your newfound fame?

A: As stuff started happening, as we got to be on Ellen and all these things, I think the reaction from most of the people who just knew me as Sam from the Duke’s Men or from classics was a lot of loving teasing, like, “Oh, you’re doing your videos again,” and all that stuff. But then it was funny that there was one newer class who didn’t know me before [I got famous], and they came my senior year. I was a tour guide, and on the tour they would be like, “Oh my god, I’m such a big fan,” and there was no irony in it — they just kind of appreciated what I was doing. Whereas everyone else was like, “That’s just Sam, doing his YouTube thing.” But always in a loving way, of course.

Q: What is the most surreal moment you’ve had since becoming famous?

A: This summer I did a tour in Asia, and we had a show in Hong Kong. My dad is from Hong Kong, and I still have a ton of family members over there.

awesome. I got to be like, “This is what I do.” My dad and mom and brother flew out to Hong Kong for the show as well, so it was like a family reunion.

Q: What was it like getting to do the YSO Halloween show cameo last year? You’re up there with the likes of John McCain and Woody Allen.

A: Oh my gosh — yeah, that was super cool. Likewise, it was one of those surreal moments where [the Halloween show] is just something that I have so much love for; it was such a part of my college experience.

So to get to be considered by my peers and colleagues as someone that would be worthy of making that kind of cameo is awesome.

Q: If you could go on tour with anyone, who would it be?

I’m a huge fan of Jessie J. She’s, like, my favorite ever, so I would say her. To get to go on tour with her would be awesome. [Editor’s note: this interview was held before this year’s Spring Fling lineup, including Jessie J as the headliner, was announced. WKND is crossing its fingers for a guest appearance.]

Q: What advice would you give to Yale-student you?

A: It’s going to sound super cliché, but seriously just taking advantage of all the talented people around you and all of the resources. One of the reasons I was able to do what I was able to do is because I had access to Yale’s recording equipment. So there were resources on a practical level.

But it’s also the one time in your life where you’re just surrounded by a critical mass of insanely awesome people. And I think going into the real world, and coming to LA, as much as I love it — that is definitely something that is not quite the same. There isn’t

// INSTAGRAM

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CHECKING YOUR FAMILY’S PRIVILEGE The dinner table // 7 p.m.

BREAK

Un ive rs

Prepare your definitions of “heteronormative,” “cisgender” and “implicit bias” beforehand.

t h i s constant energy or creativity and being surrounded by amazing people who are making you do your best work. So just doing as much as you can. That being said, I look back at myself and all the nights where I’d just chill and watch Netflix at my apartment and think, I should have been doing more things. But I guess that’s always the case. You can always do more.

Q: What is the best New Haven pizza spot?

A: Everyone likes Sally’s and Pepe’s, but they’re so far from campus that I went to each of them, like, once. Yorkside was my go-to. I think it was just a sentimental thing. I can’t tell you how many nights after Duke’s Men rehearsals, we went to Yorkside and just got buffalo chicken tenders or whatever. I guess I’m biased. I guess if we’re talking pizza I’d take my family to, [I’d say] Bar. Yeah, let’s say Bar. Maybe I’ll sound cooler if you say Bar. Q: Why did YOU choose Yale? [Tsui, along with Allison Williams ’10, starred in the notorious “That’s Why I Chose Yale” admissions video.]

A: I did a summer program at Yale when I was in high school — I took ancient Greek at Yale the summer after my junior year. I was that kid. I was such a nerd. But I just fell in love with it. [And] I really do believe that Yale has the best undergraduate arts program of all the Ivy League schools. The fact that I could be part of this old, historic classics program, and also be part of this vibrant a cappella scene and do the Dramat shows — there was just such a culture of creativity that I found to be way better than anywhere else.

Q: The newest Whiff class was tapped this week. What advice would you give them?

A: Believe it or not, I didn’t do the Whiffs. I was in the Duke’s Men for three years, and then I technically graduated a semester early. Since I had done summer session, I had enough credits. I was totally torn at that moment, because doing the a cappella thing as a guy, you’re like, “Of course, the Whiffs — that’s why everyone’s doing all these a cappella groups.” But at that point I had momentum with all the other stuff I was doing, and I couldn’t afford to take an extra year off. That was definitely the hardest decision I had to make at Yale. I definitely am glad I moved to LA, but I was super bummed I couldn’t do it. So my advice is definitely do it if you can.

Q: Would you ever come play Toad’s?

A: Oh my God, I would absolutely love to. That is one thing I’ve talked to my agent about — definitely on my next U.S. tour I want to come and play Toad’s. That would be so awesome.

I did a tour two summers ago and we played [a smaller venue] in New Haven that was a little ways from campus, and it was the summer so no students were around. So my mission since then has been to make a show at Toad’s happen.

Q: So like, Master’s Tea by day, Toad’s by night?

A: Yes! Yes, that would be the dream.

Contact VIVIAN WANG at vivian.y.wang@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Looking up “heteronormative,” “cisgender” and “implicit bias” in the dictionary.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BELLS

Behind the Bells: The Yale Guild of Carillonneurs // BY STEPHANIE ROGERS

// KEN YANAGISAWA

I live in Branford — the most beautiful residential college.

Also the loudest residential college, not because of our raucous parties, but because of Harkness Tower. We hear Harkness’ chimes every day — the perfect alarm clock after a late-afternoon nap — but we don’t really put faces or names to the sweet melodies.

I had a chance to meet the students behind the bells recently: I ventured up the narrow winding staircase and chatted with five members of the Yale University Guild of Carillonneurs — Paige Breen ’16, Thomas Gurin ’18, Andy Zhang ’16, Megan Brink ’17 and Jonathan Shao ‘17. With the largest dynamic range of any musical instrument, the carillon can be heard from miles away. It’s also the biggest and heaviest instrument on the planet. Yale’s Car-

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rilon is only moderately sized, at 43 tons! (Pro tip: If you become friends with a Yale Carillonneur, or just go on a tour, they might let you play “Hot Cross Buns” to wake your friends from their late-afternoon naps.)

Q: Some people at Yale perceive the Carillonneurs to be a secret cult or a secret society. Do you think you are secretive? How do people react when they find out you are Carillonneurs?

Paige Breen: They sometimes say “Oh, I didn’t even realize people played the bells in Harkness Tower.”

Jonathan Shao: One of the members didn’t even find out about the bells until his sophomore year. People think the bells are automated or played by a machine.

Andy Zhang: Even people who do know think, “Oh, I don’t know what goes on up there in that tower.” But we do have tower tours whenever people request them. We try to be very open on campus, given that the Carillon is a very public instrument.

Megan Brink: We are trying to get people to know more about the Carillon tours — we had senior class gifts and people entered a raffle to win a tour.

But they are actually free and you can take them anytime! [laughs] So, yeah we are trying to get more people to know about the tours.

Q: What drew each of you to the bells? Why did you want to become Carollinneurs?

PB: It’s something pretty

CATCHING UP ON READING Your living room // Afternoons

8

Right after you take a nap! Which you’ll do after a quick snack. But first let’s check Facebook.

unique to Yale. Not many universities have carillons and when they do, they don’t have a student-run group like ours.

Tom Gurin: It’s kind of hard not to be aware [of the Carillon] when there is a huge sound coming from the middle of campus … it’s pretty obvious.

So, I was keeping my eye out a for an info session.

AZ: I thought it was a unique opportunity to play a new kind of musical instrument that not a lot of people can play. No other carillon is run by students in the whole world. It is a unique instrument and a unique community.

MB: It’s independent — you don’t have to rely on an orchestra — but it’s also a community. You can hang out with other people; you can even play duets. You have to know how to read music but there are no

other requirements.

JS: Zero percent of the Carillonneurs had bell experience before [playing here].

Q: How does it make you feel when people petition each year to stop the bells?

AZ: When you look at the results from that petition, most of the responses were overwhelmingly positive [in favor of the Carillon]. So, people can submit these things but when the actual results come out you see people like [the bells].

PB: My first thought is — I wish they would come and take a tour! I feel that if they knew more about it and how the instrument works and saw how much time we spend learning the pieces they would have a different point of view.

MB: I think it’s funny how they try to spell “Carillonneurs.”

[Aside about pronunciation of “Carillonneurs” ensues.]

Q: Do you have any crazy Carillon stories — any wedding proposals take place in the tower?

PB: There was this one couple who rented the top of the tower — AZ: No, they didn’t, they didn’t go to the top of the tower.

They actually came up to the tower [afterwards]. First, they met in this room in WLH — it was tWWW Whis whole saga — and he filled that room with roses. Like, a lot of roses. It was WLH 119, which is a big room.

Then, they came here and we played a bunch of pieces that they requested.

WKND RECOMMENDS: Procrastinators uniting. Today.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND WHISTLES

// PATRICE BOWMAN

Q: And she said yes?

AZ: I think so …

PB: I hope so!

AZ: I think they said yes earlier [in WLH 119] and then came to the tower.

This was their celebratory round.

Q: Have there been any funny Carillon stories?

MB: One time I had a tour with these two [older] women. I told them how the carillon is like a piano: you can play notes. I turned around and one of the women started playing “Hot Cross Buns” on the real Carillon. And I was like no, you can’t touch the Carillon.

You have to go through nine weeks first.

Q: Could you describe the audition process? Is it really rigorous?

JS: So, my position this year was the heel-a-monster, which is basically a rush manager. We had a ton of signups during the bazaar: 186 [names], a little bit more than 15 percent of the freshmen class. We call it the heel process. It’s a 10-week process during which the heelers — the students who want to join the guild — take lessons from current members and, on the 10th week, they audition. Then, we decide who [will be new members]. We ended up with six this year. Not all 186 auditioned.

AZ: It’s really intensive. You have to practice a lot and, near the end, if you’re dedicated, it takes up a lot of time. So a lot of people drop before the audition.

MB: We had 22 who actually made it to the audition day.

JS: Each teacher has four or five students and once the heelers make the guild, we call them our children.

PB: Tommy is my son.

AZ: We have a family tree on one of those family tree websites. It goes back a long way.

PB: I just met my great-great-greatgreat-great grandmother from the 1990s. She was class of ’94.

AZ: We use a real family tree website.

TG: [The website moderators] are probably wondering, “How do these people keep having kids by themselves?”

AZ: [The new members] are not children until they get in — we try to keep the relationships more formal in the beginning. But then, once they’re in the Guild, it becomes more like family. The Guild is a group that does more

than just play music.

TG: Definitely. Being a freshman in the guild, it was really interesting to go from a professional relationship to becoming really close friends with all of the people.

MB: We had karaoke night on Saturday in the tower.

Q: What do you do together?

PB: We go on tour. This Friday we’re leaving for our Eurotour. We’re going to the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark. We’ll get to meet a lot of official carillonneurs there and take lessons.

Q: Do you get many song requests?

PB: Sometimes; it comes in spurts.

On average, we get a couple a week.

TG: I think that when it comes in spurts that might be my suitemate [making requests] …

JS: Because of midterm season, I recently got a request to play “Bad Day.” AZ: I think it’s so funny to be really relevant.

PB: We were playing some break-up songs after Valentine’s Day. Some people noticed.

TG: On Valentine’s Day, I played the “Friends” theme song because it’s not just romantic [it’s also about friendship]. Then I played “On My Own” because that was the reality of my Valentine’s Day. Q: What is the Carillon’s history?

AZ: In 1921, the first bells were brought in with the original Harkness

Tower. I think they brought ten bells in from England with funding from Anna Harkness, in memory of her son. The Carillon used to be called the Harkness Memorial Carillon. In 1966, Florence S. Marcy Crofut commissioned another 44 bells. We have a total of 54, now called the Yale Memorial Carillon.

1966 was the beginning of the Guild as it is today. Before, when they had 10 bells, it was the Yale Guild of Bell Ringers. They rang at 7:30 every morning.

MB: Funny fact: when the bells were first installed, the hammers were too far away [and hit the bells with more force]. The first time they played the bells, all the glass in Branford shattered.

AZ: People reported hearing it four

miles away. They adjusted accordingly. Today, people can usually hear it from three-quarters of a mile away. If the wind is just right, you can hear it all the way from KBT. Q: Have you always played in Harkness?

AZ: In 2009, they did a renovation and so they brought in a mobile carillon on a truck and parked it up by the Whale. People couldn’t really hear it in the center of campus.

MB: People did miss the real Carillon.

AZ: Afterwards, the people on Science Hill said, “You should build another carillon up here so we can hear it.” I would love another carillon.

PB: More carillon is always great.

Q: Do you have 24-hour access to Harkness?

JS: Yeah, it’s a nice hangout space.

We have these two empty levels … and we’re thinking of maybe building an exhibit there — like a museum of Guild history.

MB: It’s the 50th anniversary next summer. The exhibit will be part of that.

AZ: 1966 to 2016. The Guild of Carillonneurs [in North America] is this big organization and every year they have an annual meeting. And that meeting will be here [in June 2016]!

The whole carillon community of the world will be here too.

Q: What have been some of the strangest requests?

AZ: I’ve played a bunch of Miley Cyrus.

JS: Sometimes people even send in their own compositions.

AZ: Someone wrote a song with really weird lyrics. It’s not like you would have been able to play the lyrics.

TG: Exactly!

AZ: But [we couldn’t play it because of] what the song was about.

MB: Some people have requested “Boyz-n-the-Hood!”

AZ: Some things [sound really good] on carillon, and some things, like “Uptown Funk,” just do not.

When Macklemore came for Spring Fling everyone was like, “Play Macklemore!” That was decent but “Thrift Shop” is kind of hard to play on the carillon.

MB: There have been some really cute requests. Once, one girl got homesick and so her dad requested we play “My Old Kentucky Home.” Sometimes people ask if we can play things for their boyfriends.

Q: Are there any final thoughts you want to share?

AZ: Come on our tour! And we have a website.

PB: We have also started tweeting.

Q: Can I tweet at you requests?

AZ: I suppose that could be done.

You would be the first person to do it. We also have a live-stream of the music.

MB: We are getting really tech-y.

Q: Do you get a warm feeling in your heart every time you hear the bells?

Q: Do you feel like you have a special power over campus? That you can set the tone for the day?

PB: Definitely.

AZ: If you shared an instrument with only 20 other people in your community and you knew them all so well, [you would too]. It’s nice that I get to share this with them.

AZ: Some [of the Carillonneurs] think about that more. I always feel really self-conscious if I play dark pieces at noon. I just don’t want the music to be jarring. If the weather is nice, you can’t play something dark and stormy. Don’t play something horribly sad on a Sunday afternoon.

Contact STEPHANIE ROGERS at stephanie.rogers@yale.edu . // THAO DO

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PLEASURE READING

Your living room // Afternoons

8

Please. Don’t make us laugh.

WKND RECOMMENDS: Reading WKND. That’s doable.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND RUHLS

// BY MICHELLE LIU

// PRESS RELEASE

Q: You’re teaching classes at Yale this semester. What are you learning from your students?

A: In general, they always are teaching me about the innocence of the blank page, and how exciting it is to be entering into the playwriting world.

Q: I actually learned about your work when I wrote an article about the last time Yalies put on a production of one of your plays, “Eurydice,” last fall. Did you get a chance to see it?

A: No, I was so sad that I didn’t. I knew the actress [Lucie Ledbetter ’15] who plays Eurydice and I really wanted to come, but I had a play at the Lincoln Center in New York at the same time and I was previewed for it and I couldn’t go see it.

Q: Which play was this?

A: It was the premiere of “The Oldest Boy.” Q: What was the experience of doing “The Oldest Boy” like?

A: It was wonderful. It was the first time I’ve worked with puppets. It’s a story about a woman who is married to a Tibetan man and they have a child who is thought to be a reincarnated lama, and so they have to go through a series of examinations to see whether or not the child is a reincarnated lama — and then they have to decide whether to give the child to the monastery. I learned an incredible amount about Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism and about puppets and how to operate dramatic puppets, so it was a really incredible process.

Q: Since you didn’t get a chance to see “Eurydice,” what were some stand-out (or just impressively bad) plays you might have seen while you were in college?

A: One play I remember seeing which had a huge impact on me was Paula Vogel’s “Baltimore Waltz,” and it was in a tiny black box theater at Brown. I had lost my father — he died when I was 20.

The play had an enormous emotional impact on me, and I think also taught me about abstraction and humor and how they can be right up against really profound loss.

Q: I read this BOMB conversation you had with Paula Vogel, whose playwriting seminar you were in as an undergraduate at Brown, where she says that she cried over the first work of yours that she read.

This really resonated with me — the day before spring semester started, I sat

down and read “Eurydice” and cried. How do you learn how to tap into that sort of emotion — and, perhaps more broadly, cathartic emotion in general, with readers and playgoers alike?

A: I think that for better or for worse, most writers and most artists are made with a thin veil between their emotions and the outside world, and I think it takes a lifetime for a writer to learn how to modulate that — how to both protect yourself and be brave enough to be vulnerable in your writing and share it with other people. With “Eurydice,” I had so many stage readings and so many workshops [that], by the time it was done, I felt like the emotion in the play was not mine anymore. The first time I heard it read, it felt like a private funeral for my father. By the time it was in New York, it felt like a piece of art that was for other people, so I think that there’s a transformation that takes place over time, and I think that theater is an amazing vehicle emotionally because emotion really does transform through repetition and through sharing it.

Q: How do you maintain a personal connection with a work of yours after it becomes transformed so many times for a wider public audience, and how does this transformation happen?

A: In the case of that play, I don’t think I could have not had a personal connection because it’s sort of the architecture of the myth. From verbatim conversations I had with my father [to] the directions he wrote out for how to get to my grandparents’ house, artifacts of personal connection are all deeply embedded in the play. It’s a lifelong question for playwrights: how you create something personal and then share it; how you maintain your connection as a storyteller to the material and then turn to the audience and give it to the audience, so that you’re not revolving in a little hermetically sealed fob of your own emotional life. I think it’s something I really love about the theater — you’re assuming there’s a reader, you’re assuming there’s a watcher, so you’re transforming something that’s public.

Q: You recently published a book of 100 essays you don’t have time to write. As far as I can tell, it’s the only published work of yours that isn’t a play or adaptation.

A: Yes. Q: What compelled you to put these smaller pieces together in book form?

A: It was totally unintentional. … I was just trying to write to stay afloat when I had little children. I had twins sort of unexpectedly, and was having trouble finding the time to write a play. And writing the essays was my way of maintaining sanity at the time. At a point I had 50 essays, and I thought, “Hmm, maybe I could make it to 75,” and at that point my agent said, “I think it’s actually a book,” and I thought I would try to write 100. But I never thought it would be a book and it’s moving to me to feel like there are periods in one’s life where you don’t think you’re working and then you look back and you realize you were working all this time, but just in a really differ-

ent way.

Q: One of the essays — well, at least according to the random essay generator on your website — answers “no” to the question: “Is there an objective standard of taste?” If there isn’t, then what is your standard?

A: I love plays that are theatrical, and I love plays that break my heart. I love plays that reinvent form. I love plays that include new people and new stories that deal with really ancient, ageold questions.

Q: A New York Times review of your most recent play, “The Oldest Boy,” notes that it is your most accessible work.

(The reviewer, Charles Isherwood, even goes so far as to say he wouldn’t have guessed that you wrote it.) So there’s this suggested clean break between past works and the newest. Do you agree with that? Has anything changed about the way you’re approaching your work?

A: I mean, first of all I don’t read reviews so I don’t know what people say. I wrote that play for a particular person: I wrote that play for my babysitter, who’s Tibetan. She speaks four languages, but she never went to high school or university. I wanted it to be a play that she liked and that she and her family would come to the theater and recognize their own story in.

So I did write it to be accessible and inclusive, quite purposefully. I don’t always have such a specific audience in mind when I write a play, and with this play I was hoping that it would resonate with all parents — people who have to deal with the question of how you let go of your child — but I was also writing it specifically for an audience who, historically, has not had their story on American pages.

Q: What else, or who else, has also inspired you recently?

A: I loved the play, “An Octoroon,” [which] I just saw at Theatre for a New Audience — I thought it was incredibly theatrical. [It was] deeply political and totally surprising and just deeply original. I have been enjoying a book about Montaigne, Louise Glück’s new book, and Louis C.K. Q: Is there any way you could link Louis C.K. to anything you’ve ever written?

A: Did you say if I can see the relationship between Louis C.K. and Louise Glück?

Q: Sure — A: I think they both have really dry wit.

Q: I actually asked if there was any relationship between Louis C.K. and your work, but I like the mishearing.

A: I really admire him! I admire the way he performs on TV. I don’t like that much TV. I think he’s actually making something new on television that’s deeply personal and very very funny and says something.

Q: What works of other authors do you look at and think, “Wow, I wish I had made this?”

A: I wish I had composed all of Chopin’s music — no, I don’t wish I had done that. I am happy for other people. … If I had made it, I couldn’t enjoy it in the same way that I enjoy and commune with it knowing that another person made it.

play that I know less about, sort of for my own edification, and as a palate cleanser, called — I’m not sure what it’s called yet, but it’s about polyamory and the ethical slaughter of animals and whether or not these two things have anything to do with each other.

Q: Have you noticed any particular themes repeatedly cropping up in your work lately?

Q: I’m a little intrigued that your mother grew up playing Peter Pan.

A: I think I’ve definitely been writing more about motherhood lately, now that I’m a mother. I think I write about love a lot, death quite a bit — the usual preoccupations.

Q: I’ve also read in a lot of places that you’re not a big fan of the label “quirky.”

A: I’m what?

Q: That you’re not a big fan of the label “quirky.”

A: I always grew up with pictures of her on the wall hugging Mary Martin and pictures of my mom flying dressed all in green, so it’s part of my mythology that my mother could fly, my mother could play Peter Pan. And it was so odd to me when she turned 70, somehow, that this woman, who in my mind was Peter Pan, was

A: Oh — this is like a game of telephone. That’s hilarious.

This is going to make the best interview because I’ll just make up t h e s e

“

I THINK THAT THEATER IS AN AMAZING VEHICLE EMOTIONALLY BECAUSE EMOTION REALLY DOES TRANSFORM THROUGH REPETITION AND THROUGH SHARING IT.

“

Sarah Ruhl is a Tony-nominated playwright, MacArthur Fellowship recipient and 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Now she teaches a graduate seminar and the undergraduate course “Ovid and the Plays of Transformation.” Her plays often deal with transformation and look beyond the ordinary — she’s taken on subjects from Greek mythology to the early history of the vibrator.

Ruhl’s most recent book, “100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write,” made it onto the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2014 list. WKND spoke with Ruhl over the phone about Louis C.K., never growing up and what she’s working on now.

bizarre questions between Louis C.K. and Louise Glück.

Q: No, you’re making my questions better!

A: So, I’m not a big fan of the label “quirky” — that is true.

Q: What are you a big fan of?

A: If I had to replace the word quirky [I would use] original or fabulist.

Q: What do you mean by “fabulist”?

A: [By] fabulist, I definitely mean someone who’s creating something fantastical, that doesn’t look like how we imagine everyday quotidian life. I think quirky is something we say when we want to distinguish a writer from being part of mainstream culture, and I find that dangerous.

[The call dropped. Ruhl called me back as she was getting into New York.]

Q: What are you working on right now?

A: [Aside] Oh, thank you! [To me] New Yorkers are so funny. They’re always looking out for each other. I am working on a play for Actors Theater of Louisville called “For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday,” and it’s a play I wrote as a gift to my mother, who grew up in Iowa playing Peter Pan in the 1950s.

And then I’m also working on a new

growing up. So I guess the play is about what it means to be grown up.

Q: Speaking of mythologies, I think we have all have these constructions of our parents that might not necessarily be “real.” You’ve also talked a lot about the idea of motherhood, and being with your children — what sort of mythologies do you think your kids are ever going to have about you?

A: I don’t know. I think it’s very hard to [know] how our children see us. I don’t really know how to answer [the question]. The bond between the parent and child is so intimate. One doesn’t objectify oneself in a neutral way and try to imagine the gaze of the child; [it’s] such an intimate connection [so] it’s hard to do that. I have a lot of fun with my three kids; I try to take them to work as much as I can. They think the theater is a fun place to be, and I’m on my way to see them now before bedtime.

Contact MICHELLE LIU at michelle.liu@yale.edu .