NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2016 · VOL. CXXXVIII, NO. 123 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
RAIN STORMS
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CROSS CAMPUS
CHINESE YALIES DIVERSITY ON FOREIGN SOIL
ON SITE
IT’S TRUE, MAN
Yale considers reporting website or app for sexual misconduct
TWO YALIES NAMED TRUMAN SCHOLARS FOR SECOND YEAR
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Clintons campaign in CT
Cha-Change. A new series
of $20 bills will feature abolitionist Harriet Tubman on one side and retain the image of former President Andrew Jackson on the other. Tubman will be the first African-American to ever appear on U.S. paper currency and the first woman to do so in over a century. However, disappointed citizens took to social media and criticized the decision to feature both figures on the bill simultaneously. Jackson is known for his racist legacy as president.
Noon on Monday. If you
plan to vote as a Connecticut resident in the April 26 primary, make sure to pay attention to voter registration deadlines. While the deadline to register online or by mail passed yesterday, residents can register in-person until noon on April 25. Connecticut holds a closed primary, so residents can only vote in the primary of the party with which they are officially registered. U China? The Yale-China Association has awarded two-year fellowships to eight Yale students. Among the recipients are six graduating seniors, one recent graduate and one student from the School of Public Health. Fellows will teach written and spoken English to high school and university students, while taking courses in Chinese language and culture. Students can apply for the fellowship for up to five years after graduation. Bringing it Holmes. Bria
Holmes, a graduate of Hillhouse High School who played college basketball at West Virginia University, will join the Atlanta Dream. Holmes was a first-round, 11th-overall pick in the WNBA draft, and she is the first New Haven resident to be drafted into the WBNA.
I can’t wait to fall in love with you. According College
Magazine, Yale is the No. 2 best college to fall in love. The top three spots in the magazine’s ranking were all taken by Ivy League institutions with Columbia at No. 1 and Harvard at No. 3. According to College Magazine, “No matter what stage you’re in on your romantic journey, Yale’s got you covered.”
Fast & furious. Today many
Yale students have donated their meal swipes for the annual Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project fast. The YHHAP fast raises more than $10,000 to aid New Haven’s homeless population every year.
THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1987 More than 200 teaching assistants gather in the Hall of Graduate Studies common room to call for higher salaries, improved working conditions and an end to pay inequities among departments. Yale teaching assistant salaries are lower than those at NYU, Brown and Berkeley. Follow along for the News’ latest.
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LAX FACE-OFF No. 4 Yale men’s lacrosse to face No. 6 Albany team on Saturday PAGE 12 SPORTS
Masters recommended eliminating title BY DAVID SHIMER STAFF REPORTER
tighter gun-control policies. She and the other panelists addressed the disastrous impact of gun availability on youth culture in Connecticut, a state which has been permeated by gang activity and marred by some of the nation’s most devastating acts of gun violence. Gov. Dannel Malloy and Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin ’01 LAW ’06, both pres-
As University President Peter Salovey prepares to announce several major naming decisions, the News has confirmed that the Council of Masters recommended that the title of residential college “master” be eliminated. The Council of Masters initially voted to keep the title at one of its meetings prior to November’s campus protests, according to a senior faculty member who was informed of the vote by one of the masters. But in the aftermath of the protests, the council re-voted in favor of eliminating the title, the faculty member said. Based on interviews with half a dozen masters — all of whom declined to speak on the record — it is unclear whether the decision was unanimous. Because the “master” title is included in University bylaws, its official removal is ultimately dependent upon a Yale Corporation vote. While the specific timeline of the council’s recommendation is unclear, Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway told the News in Decem-
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AMY CHENG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Hillary Clinton LAW ’73 brought her campaign to Hartford to discuss gun control Thursday. BY AMY CHENG AND CAITLYN WHERRY STAFF REPORTERS Just days before the state’s primary on Tuesday, the Clinton campaign came to Connecticut, with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton LAW ’73 speaking at a discussion on gun control in Hartford while her husband, former president Bill Clinton LAW ’73 visited the Elm City.
Hillary Clinton bridged the gap of generations at her Thursday morning event, drawing a crowd of students and policymakers alike to a roundtable on gun control that featured five panelists who have been personally affected by gun violence. Clinton, who was welcomed on stage by a crowd of more than 300 people chanting her name, dedicated the event to criticizing rampant gun violence and calling for
Elm City clergy supports property tax bill BY MICHELLE LIU STAFF REPORTER In a suit and bow tie, Elder Ron Hurt prayed alongside the 30 people seated in Deliverance Temple Church Thursday afternoon. Then, he segued into the political. “We’re here today to send a prayer up to Hartford,” he said. Hurt is one of 103 local New Haven leaders who have signed a recent letter to members of the
state General Assembly in support of S.B. 414, a bill concerning Yale’s property taxes. The letter’s signees include members of the New Haven clergy, Democratic Town Committee members and local business owners. Prior to reading the letter aloud, Hurt told the crowd Thursday that, just like local churches, Yale should pay taxes on its commercial properties. He delineated the distinction between Deliverance Temple’s
ALUMNI
Donations aside, a new era in engagement BY JON VICTOR STAFF REPORTER When the Association of Yale Alumni was founded in 1972, Yale’s alumni body looked very different than it does now: nearly all members were white and had graduated from Yale in all-male classes. This group, while not the ideal admissions haul of today, tended to give back to the University in much higher numbers than current graduates do. “There was a supposition that there were things that you did,” Acting AYA Executive Director Jenny Chavira ’89 said. “And you did them because you did them.” Today, Yale’s young alumni are more diverse than ever before, but from the point of view of the Office of Development, potentially also less engaged than ever before. Alumni participation rates in giving hit an all-time low of 33.7 percent this year after dropping 25.61 percent in the last decade — the biggest fall in the Ivy League. And this decrease has primarily been concentrated among the younger classes: In the past 10 years, there has been an 11 percent increase in the number of alumni solicited, but a 26 per-
cent decrease in participation. But donations only tell half the story of alumni engagement. In order to examine how alumni relationships with Yale have changed over time, it is necessary to consider all the ways in which alumni can engage, and how robust Yale’s alumni departments are compared with decades ago. Given a changing technological landscape and shifting attitudes of young alumni, Yale’s alumni outreach bodies have been forced to change their strategies to engage as many alumni with their alma mater as they can. “Seventy-five years ago, you just communicated a different message and the engagement was probably less complicated,” Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Joan O’Neill said. “[Now], we need to find many more diverse ways to engage [alumni] with Yale, and keep Yale relevant in their lives.”
SHIFTING FOUNDATIONS
As Yale as an institution changes, its traditional alumni engagement bodies have been forced to change too. Over the past several years, structural changes have uprooted the AYA, the priSEE ALUMNI PAGE 6
main building on 584 Congress Ave. — where it carries out its core, tax-exempt mission — and its commercial property. The church leases 592 Congress Ave. to the China Cafe next door, for example, and thus pays thousands of dollars in taxes on that property and others each year, Hurt said. “Yale should be treated the same way we are treated,” Hurt said. Yale has met the contentious
bill — which has support from Mayor Toni Harp, the Board of Alders and New Haven’s state delegation — with considerable backlash. The University argues that the bill would essentially tax the University’s academic property and revoke Yale’s taxexempt status. S.B. 414 passed the state’s finance committee this month and awaits full debate on the state senate floor this legislative session. Like many of the bill’s current
supporters, the letter’s authors said that S.B. 414 will only clarify which of the University’s properties are taxable. The community letter insists that Yale’s academic properties are tax-exempt, saying that current law governing the tax status of Yale’s commercial properties is unclear. “This ambiguity in the law makes our city’s ability to proSEE TAX BILL PAGE 4
Bedbug infestations plague dorm
DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Harkness Hall has seen six infestations of bedbugs in the last few months. BY DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY STAFF REPORTER When Luying Liu GRD ’21 noticed brown blotches on her bed sheets, she told herself not to panic. “I was doing a lot of other stuff at the time and tried to get my mind off it,” Liu said. But the blotches — dried blood from the tiny insect bites on her arms and back — kept reappearing. On March 31, Liu — who lives
on the eighth floor of Harkness Hall, a 172-bedroom dorm complex for graduate and medical students located on Cedar Street near YaleNew Haven Hospital — contacted Yale Housing and the Office of Facilities to request an inspection. It was clear where the blotches had come from: a bedbug infestation, the sixth in Harkness Hall since October. The Harkness Hall bedbug infestations, which
at the moment have subsided, have generated fierce debate within the graduate and medical student community, fueled by the activism of angry residents who insist that housing officials have badly mishandled the problem. Two weeks ago, the brewing controversy forced the Medical School Admissions Office to relocate dozens of visiting students SEE BEDBUGS PAGE 4