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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · VOL. CXXXVIII, NO. 32 · yaledailynews.com

INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING

SUNNY CLOUDY

Rushing out of the Closet Is there a place for LGBTQ students in Greek life and athletics? //NOAH KIM AND ROHAN NAIK //PAGE 3

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CROSS CAMPUS

LG(REEK)BT LIFE QUEER YALIES NAVIGATE FRATS

LET THEM EAT LAW

ADMISSIONS IN ASIA

Yale Law School answers student calls for rape law courses

DEAN QUINLAN TRAVELS THROUGH INDIA AND CHINA

PAGE B3 WKND

PAGE 5 UNIVERSITY

PAGE 7 UNIVERSITY

U N I O N I ZAT I O N

GESO: Students or employees?

Clinton In Connecticut.

Former President Bill Clinton LAW ’73 visited the Constitution State yesterday.

Although he didn’t make a stop at Yale, Clinton traveled to Storrs to accept the Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights at UConn. He shared the honor with Tostan — an activist group based in Senegal that promotes community engagement.

Goodfellas. If Goldman

didn’t ask you to come back at the end of the summer, it might be time to think about other options. The Yale Center for International and Professional Experience will host a workshop at its office at 11 a.m. today specifically for juniors. The session will include information on types of fellowships available to juniors to support senior thesis research as well as tips for application processes.

Love That Dirty Water. Visit

Cambridge this weekend to watch the 51st Head of the Charles Regatta on Saturday.

The city will be flooded with over 11,000 athletes and 400,000 spectators from around the world. Make sure to wear your Yale gear to support the Bulldogs — Ivy League crews will be racing throughout the day.

Go Fish. If you thought

Founders Day was over the top, you aren’t alone: a group of students are gathering on Cross Campus at 11:30 a.m. to poke fun at the University tradition with Flounders’ Day. Come for the irony; stay for Goldfish.

Party On Park Street. The Afro-American Cultural Center will host “The HipHop Collective Presents: Sedgwick Ave” — a celebration of the ’70s origins of hiphop culture at 8 p.m. tonight.

Check it out if you, like us, haven’t been to a party at the Af-Am house since Bulldog Days 2013.

Yale Daily News Day. Today, the News celebrates the five-year anniversary of the renovation and rededication of our building at 202 York Street.

Our home base — The Briton Hadden Memorial Building — continues to serve us well.

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1975 The University overshoots its enrollment goal and accepts 119 too many students. The miscalculation, administrators say, is due to a computer malfunction.

Follow along for the News’ latest.

Twitter | @yaledailynews

y

Malloy to expand two highways in New Haven to reduce traffic PAGE 8 CITY

City details $395 million development

BY JIAHUI HU STAFF REPORTER

Around 150 GESO members marched from Warner House to Woodbridge Hall, where they met their allies: two New Haven unions, U.S. Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73, Mayor Toni Harp and a host of student

After a year of few public updates, city officials and developers announced the status of the $395 million Coliseum downtown development project Thursday afternoon.

At the press conference, Mayor Toni Harp said the New Haven-based architecture firm Newman Architects will spearhead designs for the Coliseum development project, located at the intersection of Orange and George streets, two blocks south of the New Haven Green.

Canada-based developer LiveWorkLearnPlay will begin the first phase of construction next summer, during which time it will build around 400 mixed-income residential units, tens of thousands of square feet of retail space and a hotel complex. The Coliseum development will also bring 1,700 new jobs to the Elm City, according to Ted DeSantos, the senior vice president of Fuss & O’Neill, a consulting firm aiding the city. LiveWorkLearnPlay co-managing partner Max Reim said the company will try to source the majority of these jobs from New Haven residents.

“We’re going to be nepotistic and hire as local as possible,” Reim said.

After the eventual culmination of all four construction phases, the Coliseum will house 1,000 apartment units. Developers will set aside 50 to 70 spaces for businesses, 20 to 30 of

SEE GESO PAGE 4

SEE COLISEUM PAGE 6

Stacks On Deck. According to

the Washington Post, former Yale corporation member and 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson ’73 led the GOP in fundraising this quarter. Sixty percent of the $20.7 million Carson raised, the Post said, came from donors who gave less than $200. Of course, billionaire front-runner Donald Trump leads the pack in campaign funds.

LIFE IS A...

FINNEGAN SCHICK/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

GESO supporters gathered on Thursday afternoon for the organization’s fourth protest in 18 months.

BY FINNEGAN SCHICK AND VICTOR WANG STAFF REPORTERS Orange picket signs bobbed in the autumn light Thursday afternoon on Beinecke Plaza as over 600 people called, for the fourth time in 18 months, for a Yale graduate student union.

“This is our decision and we want to make it ourselves,” said Aaron Greenberg GRD ’18, chair of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, to the crowd over a

loudspeaker.

Since its founding in 1990, GESO has held regular strikes, straw polls and rallies on Yale’s campus. And over the past 25 years, GESO’s central demand has remained the same: a vote to unionize without being intimidated by the Yale administration.

But student unionization at Yale — according to administrators and professors interviewed — seems like a contradiction in terms. Beneath the fanfare of Thursday’s rally lay

a single question: are members of GESO employees, or are they students?

FOURTH TIME AROUND

FAS Senate debates faculty disciplinary procedures

BY VICTOR WANG STAFF REPORTER During the first official open meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Senate on Thursday, senators, FAS professors and administrators debated how the University will adjudicate complaints of violations of the Faculty Standards of Conduct.

The Senate, established in December 2013 to represent the interests of non-administrative

FAS faculty, held its first meeting Sept. 10, but did not open the meetings to non-Senate faculty until this month. Most of the 22 senators, as well as about eight other faculty members, attended the meeting, according to Senate chair and history director of undergraduate studies Beverly Gage. The meeting’s most contentious moments came during a debate over a draft of the review procedures for faculty standards of conduct violations, written

Yale degrees worth the cost, grads say

O

n Oct. 11, the News sent Yale College graduates in the classes of 2013 and 2014 a survey with questions about the value of a Yale degree relative to its cost. This is the first in a five-part series on the results. DAVID SHIMER reports.

Life is full of regrets, but attending Yale College is likely not one of them.

On Sept. 29, the Chronicle of Higher Education published the results of a Gallup-Purdue Index survey which found that 77 percent of 30,000 college alumni polled nationwide agreed or strongly agreed that their college degrees were worth the cost. At research universities

like Yale, a slightly higher-thanaverage 80 percent of respondents felt the same. A significant factor governing satisfaction was whether alumni still carried student-loan debt: as the amount of debt that graduates possessed increased, so did their dissatisfaction. For recent graduates — alumni who had graduated in the last 10 years — who owed more than $50,000 in student loans, just 40 percent said the cost of their education had been worth it.

In response to the Gallup numbers, the News distributed a comprehensive survey to the classes of 2013 and 2014 asking whether they believed their education justified the cost of tuition. The responses of 344 alumni suggest that Yale, despite its prestige and resources, has a similarly satisfied pool of alumni. Still, Yale graduates who carry student loans disagreed with the otherwise positive consensus at a higher rate, in line with the Gallup results.

SEE TUITION PAGE 6

by an ad hoc committee convened by University President Peter Salovey and Provost Benjamin Polak in May 2014. Senators and faculty interviewed said there was a general sense of unease about the role administrators would play in the adjudication process if the current draft is approved.

“I am not comfortable with the draft procedure in its current form. It could be used in dangerous ways,” senior lector

and senator Ruth Koizim said.

“From our perspective, it is very much a work in progress and it has a long, long way to go before it resembles anything we would be comfortable with.”

The Faculty Standards of Conduct, which were drafted last fall and drew significant criticism from faculty, were finalized and presented in the updated Faculty Handbook in September. The committee must now turn its attention to the next

phase of the standards: drafting the procedures the University will use to adjudicate alleged violations.

University Title IX Coordinator and Deputy Provost Stephanie Spangler and psychology professor Margaret Clark, who heads the ad hoc committee, presented the draft at the meeting.

The draft procedures, which SEE SENATE PAGE 6

Arrest threats for Rubamba owners

YALE DAILY NEWS

Ay! Arepa cart employees protested Thursday after they were told not to sell food.

BY JIAHUI HU STAFF REPORTER After the owner of Rubamba was threatened with arrest Thursday afternoon, the future of the Ay! Arepa cart remains unclear.

Ernesto Garcia, owner of Rubamba, and employee Victor Lopez were approached

by James Turcio, the city

compliance officer, as they set up their food cart for the day, the two salesmen said.

Garcia and Lopez said they were told that if they sold food, they would be arrested.

In response, Lopez and Garcia — whose food truck has served customers on York St. for the past four years — solicited signatures from passersby for a petition they

hope to present to the city of New Haven. By 1 p.m., the petition had around 80 signatures.

“Rubamba serves an awesome need,” said Kendrick Kirk ’17, who did not sign the petition but is concerned about the future of the food cart. “There are not very SEE FOOD CART PAGE 4

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION

.COMMENT “One identifiable trait of conservatives is a sense of duty, which extends yaledailynews.com/opinion

Where are you, Einstein?

I

grew up watching quite a bit of PBS. Shows like NOVA and Bill Nye the Science Guy were captivating not just because of their flashy visuals, but because they made science seem cool.

I remember my role models being prominent academics and scholars — at least until I found out that was considered weird.

It was more acceptable to look up to a businessman or athlete; almost nobody else around me cared about figures like Carl Sagan or Michio Kaku.

America hasn’t always been this way. There was a time when the nation praised intellectuals. We were in awe of Einstein. Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan were revered by generations of schoolchildren.

Scores of writers and thinkers drew inspiration from Derrida and the rest of the Yale School.

And the grand debate between Keynes and Hayek piqued the interest of budding economists everywhere.

But what is an intellectual?

MIT professor Alan Lightman defines an intellectual as someone who “speak[s] and writ[es] about [a] discipline and how it relates to the social, cultural and political world around it.”

An academic learns for the sake of learning, but an intellectual seeks to use that learning to impact the human experience.

Today, we’re light-years away from the culture that celebrated such thinkers. The age of the public intellectual is long gone.

WE DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS These figures simply don’t exist anymore. Why? Because the purpose of gaining knowledge has fundamentally changed. Being smart is now a means to an end: getting rich.

This is why you’re far more likely to hear high school students idolize Mark Zuckerberg than Slavoj Zizek. We most value intellect when it lines our pockets — not when it contributes to social change and the intellectual capital of the world.

There’s far more money to be made in the private sector than in academia. But this has always been true. What’s changed since the early 20th century is the level of respect that we give to such people, which is reflected in the salaries we pay them. Even at most universities, the bastions of knowledge most likely to respect deep thought, professors are woefully underpaid compared to athletics coaches.

But at least there’s fame, right? Well, not quite. During the 20th century, professors and thinkers were often household names: Einstein, Feynman, Sagan, Freud, Jung. You could

be famous for being smart; you could even influence the actions of world leaders.

Now, it seems SHREYAS best TIRUMALA the way to get the world’s Rhyme and attention is to make a reason great product — not to dedicate oneself to learning.

When we do pursue social change, our discourse is stunted without intellectuals. Social activists come in two varieties: “slacktivists,” who are content with sound bites small enough to fit into a BuzzFeed article, or lifelong activists who spend their entire careers fighting for one issue. We’re missing the perspectives of individuals outside of the social justice bubble — particularly those who can provide lessons from other fields. More importantly, however, I can’t help but feel that the world of social justice advocacy largely consists of activists who have spent so much time shouting at the public that, when they do bring up important issues, few pay much attention. Is it really so surprising when the NRA comes out with yet another statement highlighting the merits of gun ownership? Does anybody really notice when NARAL decries laws limiting abortions as oppressive anymore?

It is the role of the public intellectual to spur discussion about these issues. There was a time when Americans were so fascinated by Einstein that they’d pick his brain on everything from religion to public policy. A culture of intellectualism encourages meaningful discussion, preventing us from substituting talking heads for real policy analysis.

We do not have enough public intellectuals. And without them, we’re left with sensationalism. Our airwaves are populated by demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Bill Maher, both of whom are more concerned about ratings than reason. It’s also quite sad that we trust entertainers like John Oliver and Steven Colbert to teach us about the world more than we trust scholars.

Now to be fair, we do have some intellectuals out there who are giving it a good effort. Neil deGrasse Tyson certainly comes to mind. In an ideal world, however, when I ask a five-year-old whom he or she looks up to, I’d hear more diverse responses than Bill Gates or Kobe Bryant; I’d hear about a scholar too.

SHREYAS TIRUMALA is a sophomore in Trumbull College. His column runs on alternate Fridays.

Contact him at shreyas.tirumala@yale.edu .

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to voting.”

'YALENSIS' ON 'STANGE: THE PLEA TO VOTE'

GUEST COLUMNIST ISAAC AMEND

A transgender call to action F

or many students, entrance into Yale unlocks four of the most formative years of their lives. Grueling problem sets and papers on Kant hone intellectual prowess while long-lasting friendships amid a hyper-stressful environment build personal integrity. Because the University charges an outrageous amount for us to experience these formative years, it has a tremendous responsibility to make sure that each student is given the necessary support to optimize their time spent at this institution.

If Yale appreciates its student body and strives to be a bastion of progressive thinking, the administration must channel a sufficient amount of resources and faculty support to improving the lives of transgender students — students who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. Such support would give a voice to a marginalized community and enhance its overall well-being, but also greatly enriches the moral fiber of Yale’s walls. Yale’s institutional character is defined by how far it will go to help struggling communities, not by how many new hubs of student life it builds from millions of donor dollars.

As a transgender man who is now Isaac instead of Isabel, I know that the greatest obstacle the transgender community faces is an intense societal stigma surrounding gender variance. It’s the kind of stigma that drives a fellow student in section to poke fun of Caitlyn Jenner or silently ridicule the high pitch of a professor’s voice. Discrimination, even in low doses, can tear at a student’s psyche and under-

mine their mental well-being. At its deadliest, this stigma drives a 41 percent rate of attempted suicide among transgender respondents nationwide. The average life expectancy for black transgender women, who face the double stigmas of transmisogyny and racism, is 35.

In light of this harsh reality, I challenge the administration to take these practical steps as a starting point to improve Yale’s transgender climate: First, email all professors about the meaning of preferred pronouns and their relation to transgender identity. Likewise, email all transgender students with a written template on how to contact professors about preferred pronouns.

YALE’S INSTITUTIONAL CHARACTER IS DEFINED BY HOW FAR IT WILL GO TO HELP STRUGGLING COMMUNITIES Second, incorporate the LGBTQ Office into the freshman cultural tour, with relevant pamphlets and resources available for interested freshman students.

Third, expand the Yale course catalog to offer more than one WGGS class on transgender issues, and temporarily replace

established faculty, such as Greta LaFleur, when they go on leave. Incorporate transgender issues into coursework across disciplines, ensuring that students outside of WGSS are given the opportunity to engage with transgender scholarship. Also, require students to take at least one class on minority culture — racial, sexual, gender or socioeconomic — within their Yale careers.

Fourth, Yale should strictly abide by its own non-discrimination policy. The ROTC program at Yale excludes transgender students, which blatantly violates that policy. The administration should officially recognize this injustice.

Fifth, expand Yale College’s Peer Liaison Program to offer mentors for all classes, not just freshmen, and ensure that transgender and gender-variant students are proportionately represented among the PL corps.

This issue is especially salient for transgender students given that they are substantially less likely to be “out” as freshmen, and therefore less likely to benefit from trans-related PL resources.

Transgender students have few role models to look up to; faceto-face, experience-based guidance can be life changing.

Sixth, install gender neutral bathrooms where they’re lacking and develop a campuswide map indicating the various locations of these bathrooms.

Finally, Yale should invest in a centralized resource center by creating an online or paper compilation of resources for transgender students, something akin to what the Bluebook is for Yale classes. Make this manda-

tory reading for residential college faculty and readily available to students.

These steps mark the beginning of a long-term endeavor to create a celebratory transgender climate that will feature greater initiatives such as mixed-gender housing for freshmen and transgender training at Yale Mental Health. The administration has no excuse to ignore these requests. After all, Yale rightfully instituted one of the nation’s best college transgender health plans that makes a physical transition feasible for a little over $2,000 per year. If the administration is capable of change at that magnitude, it surely can enact the above policies within months.

At the end of the day, however, the best source for positive change in the transgender student population is the personal interaction that fosters respect for transgender students. Yale’s exceptional residential college system also encourages acceptance of transgender identities within more tight-knit communities. I lovingly call my residential college, Timothy Dwight, a “gated incubator of the soul” for good reason: It’s because small gestures in the form of my correct name and preferred pronoun authenticate my identity, which is oftentimes difficult to solidify alone.

I’m proud to be on the forefront of historic social change and look forward to collaborating with the administration to enact this transgender call to action.

ISAAC AMEND is a junior in Timothy Dwight College. Contact him at isabel.amend@yale.edu .

G U E ST C O LU M N I ST ZAC H YO U N G

Who will win?

Y

esterday afternoon, chants echoed through the central part of campus: “We will win! We will win!” The chanters stood around an impromptu stage in Beinecke Plaza, some hoisting banners with the names of academic departments. A motley crew of young and old, of Yale and its locality, the crowd yelled loudly, “We will win!”

This was no pep rally. I had stumbled upon a protest organized by the Graduate Employee and Students Organization — a group aspiring to unionize Yale’s graduate students. One by one, graduate students took to the stage to air their grievances about being graduate students at Yale. A student in archeology bemoaned the size of his stipend this semester. Another in anthropology claimed her TF salary fluctuated year-to-year by 40 percent.

While the verses varied, the chorus was the same: “more.”

More money, more benefits, more therapists. Yet absent was an answer to the essential question: “From where?” Although the activists cheered their own interests in higher salaries and better services, no speaker addressed how to pay for these things.

Behind the shouts of “we will win,” its corollary went unspoken: “Others will lose.”

If Yale graduate students unionize, they will likely succeed at diverting additional resources

towards their priorities. Within the reality of a zero-sum budget, these increases must come from somewhere. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Even if Yale were to expand its budget by drawing from the endowment, it would come at a cost to future generations, including graduate students. Either research departments will receive less funding to hire professors, or financial aid expansion will be curtailed, or maybe undergraduate tuitions — which have increased 4 percent this year and 87 percent in the last 15 years — will rise even more. Whatever the case may be, “we will win” does not happen in a vacuum.

At the GESO protest, no representative of these competing interests had a voice. GESO demands the right to unionize without interference, or, in the protesters’ words, “intimidation.” Yet the decision to unionize would affect more than just graduate students. All of Yale would have to face the reshuffling of priorities that would result from one group having unique collective bargaining rights. While the graduate students may unionize, the departments, the students on financial aid and the tuitionpayers will not. Hence President Salovey would not be able to allocate resources based on his sense of Yale’s priorities; he would also have to contend with the special

leverage of graduate students.

There may be legitimate concerns about graduate student well-being, which could justify rebalancing the University’s priorities in that direction. Ignoring the alternatives, however, does a disservice to the complexity of these choices. In the context of finite resources and competing priorities, there are no easy answers. Moreover, there is a danger in letting the loudest voices set the agenda.

BEHIND THE SHOUTS OF “WE WILL WIN,” ITS COROLLARY WENT UNSPOKEN: “OTHERS WILL LOSE” Yale departments want more money. Students on financial aid want to eliminate the student income contribution. And families would like to see lower tuitions. Under the status quo, Yale graduate students are entitled to benefits that many working men and women would envy.

Beyond getting to pursue their intellectual passions, all graduate students receive primary health care and mental health services at no cost. Those with children may receive parental relief for at least 8 weeks or may choose to take a traditional leave of absence. Yale offers salaries to TFs that are competitive with those of other universities.

Maybe Yale still isn’t doing enough. But securing a special bargaining position isn’t the way to responsibly lobby for change.

To promote their self-interest, graduate students should employ the same means available to other Yale constituencies. This includes lobbying administrators, writing editorials and holding protests. However, by seeking to place itself above other Yale interests, GESO threatens to harm our community.

President Salovey and Yale administrators do not hold back additional resources out of illwill or condescension. I imagine that Yale’s leaders would love to have more resources and make everyone happy. But in a world of scarcity, increasing TF pay means investing less in our computer science department — and they won’t have a union to say that.

ZACH YOUNG is a junior in Silliman College. Contact him at zachary.young@yale.edu .

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ASHLYN OAKES/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 3

FRIDAY FORUM

JOHN F. KENNEDY “If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”

GUEST COLUMNIST ALEX ZHANG

Making Asian American Studies a reality I

challenge Yale University to announce by the end of the 2016 calendar year a permanent expansion of Asian American Studies at Yale and to publicize a timeline of actions it will take to achieve this goal.

I know you have questions.

Your first is this: “Who are you to make such a challenge?”

Simple. I am a student continuing a call for Asian American Studies at Yale that stretches back 46 years (yes, all the way back to 1969). These calls have so far been “dealt with” by the administration with sympathetic yet utterly noncommittal “responses.” I call this University home, yet there are still doors that the University refuses to open.

Before we go any further, let’s review some key dates.

December 1969 — Frustrated Yale students create their own Asian American Studies course syllabus and find a professor to sponsor it as Yale’s first Asian American Studies course for credit.

January 1994 — Former University President Richard Levin tells a packed room in the Asian American Cultural Center that Asian American Studies is an evolving field not ready for Yale. “We just aren’t there yet,” he said, promising to “create a program in the future.”

September 1999 — Yale cancels two Asian American Studies classes because the professor hired to teach them was offered a tenure-track

position at Dartmouth.

January 2015 — Yale offers one Asian American Studies course for the entire 2014– 15 academic year. A graduate student teaches it. There were fewer Asian American Studies courses taught last year than there were 30 years ago.

Your next question is this: “Why challenge Yale?”

Students have been “politely asking” for 46 years.

There comes a time when “wait,” and, “too important to rush,” no longer make for acceptable answers. As the campus awakens to conversations about the Calhoun legacy and as three African American Studies professors prepare to depart the University, we find ourselves at a critical moment to demand immediate action. “Commitments” can no longer be the “wait-and-see” promises recited over and over for years by well-meaning gatekeepers; we face a crisis.

Certainly, Yale has taken steps to cultivate Asian American Studies. It hired and tenured Asian-Americanist Mary Lui. It also just hired AsianAmerican literature specialist Sunny Xiang in a tenure-track position. Furthermore, Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway attended the Yale Asian American Studies Conference last spring and Yale President Peter Salovey met with participants and students attending the conference.

Here’s the problem: there are still not enough Asian

American Studies courses available to even constitute a concentration in any major, and there are no plans for permanent expansion in sight.

Imagine what it must be like for a student to attend Lui’s Asian-American history class, to fall in love with the subject, and to be told, “That’s it. Glad you had your fun, now go do other things!”

Now you are asking: “Why isn’t Asian American Studies here yet?”

WE FIND OURSELVES AT A CRITICAL MOMENT TO DEMAND IMMEDIATE ACTION FOR ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES To answer, the University hasn’t set any targets or goals for creating an Asian American Studies curriculum. The American Studies Department at Yale — arguably one of the best in the country — and the Ethnicity, Race and Migration Program may be pushing to recruit more faculty in this area, but they can only influence hiring decisions so much.

Moreover, Asian-Americanists hired in the last decade have almost all been visiting lecturers. The bulk of them have found more secure positions elsewhere.

Perhaps most concerning, some in the humanities and social sciences see Asian American Studies as illegitimate. They argue that Asian American Studies is only concerned with identity projects and are not “rigorous” enough for an academic institution like Yale. To these people I ask: please prove that your field is more legitimate. Explain how we would be better off forgetting the contributions of Asian-Americans to the country. Try to dismiss the hundreds of books and scores of professors across the country.

If 45 years of institutionalization in other colleges is not enough to make Asian American Studies legitimate, then what is?

Thousands of students and alumni have been tiptoeing the line between patience and frustration for years. I am challenging the University to once again consider the expansion of Asian American Studies at Yale, and this time, to follow through. Soon, more students will demand, more alumni will demand and the University will have to take note. We have waited long enough.

ALEX ZHANG is a sophomore in Calhoun College. Contact him at alexander.zhang@yale.edu .

ASHLYN OAKES/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

G U E S T C O L U M N I S T I S I S D AV I S - M A R K S

Paint it black (and brown) Y

ale has always been a safe space for whiteness.

Elihu Yale, the founder of Yale, was a man who had a major role in the East Indian slave trade. Moreover, Yale relied on slave trading money for its first scholarships, endowed professorships and libraries. It was therefore no surprise when, on Founders Day, an unknown individual posted graphs and charts on Cross Campus comparing the amount of minority faculty members to the amount of minority students. Mysteriously, the charts on Cross Campus were torn down from the bulletin board in order to be replaced by a sloppy arrangement of cards and lollipops advertising Founders Day. At Yale, only around 3.5 percent of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences are black, 9 percent are Asian and 2.8 percent are Hispanic. Only 13.4 percent of tenured professors are non-white. Even though some of Yale’s peer institutions, such as Emory and Stanford, did not hire any black faculty until the 1970s, the amount of black faculty has noticeably increased at those universities, whereas Yale’s number of African-American professors has remained stagnant.

And the poster, poignant though it was, failed to mention the issue of sexism in academia. A mere 24.1 percent of

tenured professors at Yale in 2014 were women — around the same percentage of women in Congress.

Many tenured deans often say that research in “minority” areas of scholarship is less valuable than traditional research areas. Women of color in particular often receive lower teaching evaluations than their white counterparts. This problem, however, is not an isolated issue; out of the 26 percent of female university presidents nationwide, only 4 percent are women of color. And according to the National Center for Education Statistics, about 84 percent of full time professors across all American universities are white.

YALE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A SAFE SPACE FOR WHITENESS In some ways the lack of faculty diversity may be a self-fulfilling prophecy: Even though more minority students enter the University, it becomes difficult to see yourself entering academia when no one in a position of power looks like you. As a black,

female student at Yale and an aspiring academic, a sort of double consciousness plagues my existence here. Although I want to play by the rules, assimilate and work my way up into academia, a small part of me feels the need to reject the system entirely. Historically, the academy has been mired in white supremacy and in many ways still is.

Any investigation of faculty diversity must also be taken in the context of the academic subjects taught at Yale. In spite of being considered one of the top institutions for studying humanities in the world, Yale only has one course in Asian American history, which is absolutely ludicrous when 20 percent of the student body identifies as Asian. Moreover, our philosophy department is dominated by the analytic tradition, whereas continental philosophy, critical theory and post-colonial studies are neglected. Scholars such as Cornel West, bell hooks, Henry Louis Gates ’73 and most recently Elizabeth Alexander ’84 have all left Yale for other institutions.

To be sure, 42 percent of Yale’s undergraduate population consists of minority students. Yale has come a long way from its “old boy” and “blue blood” culture by increasing the amount of minority students in the student body, and by increas-

ing resources available for those students. Programs such as the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program work to increase opportunities for minority students at Yale who want to enter academia. However, this does not excuse Yale’s reluctance to hire minority and female faculty. Accepting minority students and providing them with resources is necessary but not sufficient for dismantling white supremacy in the university. When students of color do not see faculty in positions of power, it subconsciously and consciously reinforces the idea that they will not be able to obtain the highest pinnacles of achievement.

As one of the most competitive universities in the country, Yale’s name is respected and recognizable. Given this prominence, Yale has the opportunity to set the precedent for education. With all of its resources and qualified faculty, it can create a model for education that is critical of power structures that oppress minorities in America.

It can start by doing more to encourage minority students to go into academia, and hiring more professors of color.

It’s your move, Yale.

ISIS DAVIS-MARKS is a freshman in Jonathan Edwards College.

Contact her at isis.davis-marks@yale.edu .

GUEST COLUMNISTS R I C H A R D B R I B I E S CA S A N D TA M A R G E N D L E R

An excellent faculty is a diverse faculty A

century ago, neither of us would have been welcome on Yale’s faculty. As a Mexican-American first-generation college graduate, and a Jewish-American woman, we would have been excluded from America’s elite institutions of higher education. For most of its first three centuries, Yale’s faculty consisted mainly of males of European descent. But homogeneity is not often conducive to scholarly excellence or the emergence of new ideas, and Yale was able to develop into a world-class university not because of this homogeneity, but in spite of it. Like other institutions of higher learning, Yale’s lack of faculty diversity is rooted in social and economic obstacles that limited the opportunities for many. This legacy of racism, sexism and marginalization is well-documented in a number of the classes that Yale shares with the world through its Open Yale Courses initiative. The lack of faculty diversity over the years represents a legacy of lost opportunities to make a great university even greater. We are committed to ensuring that such opportunities are not lost in the future. A diverse faculty opens the institution to new voices and ideas, and offers modeling and mentoring for successive generations.

But faculty diversity will not simply happen. We need to make it happen.

The creation of the position of the deputy provost for faculty development and diversity is an important part of this commitment. As deputy provost, I (Rick Bribiescas) have worked with deans and directors across the campus to heighten awareness and promote best practices. Within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, I have trained the committees responsible for tenure and promotion on issues of bias and equity, and I have prepared a comprehensive set of materials which are being used by all FAS faculty search committees to ensure that they identify an excellent and diverse pool of candidates and take proactive steps to counter the effects of implicit bias. Indeed, much of the key research on implicit bias in hiring has been conducted by Yale faculty, including by Jack Dovidio in Psychology working with Yale colleagues Jo Handelsman, Corinne Moss-Racusin and Tori Brescoll GRD ’06; by Mahzarin Banaji, who began her seminal work on implicit bias while she was on the faculty here at Yale; and by Jennifer Richeson who will be joining Yale’s psychology faculty in July 2016.

In the past year, Yale has made consistent strides towards diversifying the faculty and the leadership of the University. For example, of the 28 FAS faculty who are either arriving in 2015– 16 or who were hired during the 2014–15 hiring cycle, 15 are men and 13 are women, including two women in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, one in Computer Science, one in Statistics, one in Economics and one in Philosophy — all of which are departments where women faculty have been underrepresented. Of those 28 faculty, three are of African descent and six are of East Asian or South Asian descent. All of the faculty who have been hired are world-class scholars, teachers and mentors whose presence on campus will contribute to the university’s commitment to leadership in the creation, preservation and

dissemination of knowledge.

We have also made important strides in increasing the representation of women and faculty of color within the Yale leadership, including leadership of the residential colleges, the FAS, Yale College, the Graduate School and several of the professional schools.

Despite our efforts, the natural ebb and flow of faculty will result in departures. However departures that are hastened by campus-climate issues or weaknesses in faculty development are unacceptable. As FAS dean, I (Tamar Gendler) have instituted a policy of meeting with each departing faculty member to solicit their advice about how Yale can become even more effective in mentoring and supporting its faculty of color, its women faculty and any other faculty for whom Yale has not been as effective in its support as we seek to be for all our faculty. I have already learned a great deal from these conversations and I have begun to implement many of their suggestions.

BUT FACULTY DIVERSITY WILL NOT SIMPLY HAPPEN. WE NEED TO MAKE IT HAPPEN Finally, we are committed to providing the resources that will allow FAS departments to achieve our campuswide goal of a faculty that is diverse and excellent. At a recent meeting of the FAS department chairs, I, as FAS dean, announced a threeyear initiative which includes adding additional resources to the FAS faculty “slot pool.”

These resources (in administrative parlance “half-slots,”) could, if combined with existing departmental resources, bring as many as 24 faculty to the University who add excellence along a range of dimensions: these might include faculty who bring diversity, faculty who work at the intersections of traditional disciplinary boundaries, faculty who work in areas where we need additional strength or faculty who represent targets of opportunity along some other dimension. This initiative will advance our commitment to attract to Yale world-renowned researchers, teachers, scholars and mentors, and an excellent faculty in all of these dimensions is a diverse faculty.

As the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the deputy provost for faculty development and diversity, we have the responsibility for and the privilege of making that ambition a reality. We are energized by the progress we have made so far; but we are not content. We welcome the campuswide conversation that has begun around these questions, and we look forward to working together to build an excellent, diverse and supportive community.

RICHARD BRIBIESCAS is the Deputy Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity. Contact him at richard.bribiescas@yale.edu .

TAMAR GENDLER is the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Contact her at tamar.gendler@yale.edu .

Fill this space here.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“I learned law so well, the day I graduated I sued the college, won the case, and got my tuition back.” FRED ALLEN AMERICAN COMEDIAN

GESO holds fourth rally in 18 months GESO FROM PAGE 1 groups including Fossil Free Yale and Students Unite Now. GESO, which claims it has the support of over two-thirds of Yale graduate students, carried a long banner featuring the faces of its graduate student supporters into Woodbridge Hall.

On Monday, the office of the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences posted flyers around campus highlighting the money Yale spends on graduate students each year in financial aid and stipends. While Graduate School Dean Lynn Cooley said her office came up with the idea for the posters before knowing about the rally, Greenberg told the crowd that GESO stood opposed to any effort by Yale to sway graduate student opinion on the topic of unionization. “[Yale’s] posters are about numbers, our posters are about people and their experiences,” Greenberg said.

Every Yale graduate student must teach for at least three semesters while at Yale. After taking intensive courses for their first two years, graduate students are paired with professors through the Teaching Fellow Program. Every Ph.D. student at Yale receives a full tuition fellowship of $38,700 in addition to a minimum stipend of $29,000, which can reach up to $33,700. These stipends are guaranteed to all Ph.D. candidates in their first five years. Graduate students in the humanities and social sciences who are on course to finish their dissertation during their sixth year also receive a guaranteed stipend during the last year.

After students have completed the teaching requirement, if they choose to teach while finishing their dissertations, they are paid on a course-by-course basis. Students receive $4,000 for a course that requires six to 10 hours of work per week and $8,000 for teaching a course that takes 10 to 20 hours.

“Just as students are expected to attend classes, take exams and write a dissertation, they are expected to teach,” reads the GSAS

website on Teaching Fellows.

Several professors and administrators interviewed said they see the Teaching Fellow Program as a vital step in a graduate student’s education. They also pointed out that graduate students do more than teach.

In the humanities and social sciences, students must attend class, conduct research and meet with their advisor about their dissertation. In the sciences, many graduate students do more collaborative work in labs. To think of graduate students as employees, rather than trainees, would be inappropriate, Cooley said.

“Students are students, not employees,” she added.

Former Deputy Provost Charles “Chip” Long came to Yale as a professor in 1966. Having studied at the University of California, Berkeley during the protests of the 1960s, Long said he is sympathetic to student activism. But in the case of GESO, Long worries that graduate students are misguided in their desire for unionization. He said he believes students can have an enormous effect on the University without being unionized.

But Greenberg and other members of GESO have chosen to turn away from Yale-approved channels of communication — like the Graduate Student Assembly and the Graduate and Professional Student Senate — instead hoping for change through a graduate student union.

CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION

The stories of students like Tanambelo Rasolondrainy GRD ’19, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology, suggest that some graduate students may throw their support behind GESO, not because they have been turned away from Yale-approved channels, but rather because they are not familiar with other ways of communicating with the University.

“Joining GESO is the only way I can have my voice heard,” he said.

“I don’t really know what the GSA is. I don’t have time for that.”

The two primary bodies of

JENNIFER LU/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

One hundred and fifty GESO members marched from Warner House to Woodbridge Hall where they met hundreds of other GESO allies.

graduate student government through which Yale administrators communicate with students are the GSA and the GPSS. Cooley said she meets regularly with the GSA and praised the organization’s proposals as “wellresearched.”

Through these two organizations, all graduate students can voice their concerns to the administration, and several requests from the GSA and GPSS have come to fruition. In December 2014, Yale extended a sixth year of funding for graduate students in the humanities and social sciences after working with the GSA. After funding was announced, however, GESO took credit for making it happen. At the time, Greenberg said GESO viewed the sixth-year funding extension as an official response to GESO’s actions. But former Graduate School Dean Tom Pollard said GESO had “absolutely totally nothing to do with it.”

“There are thousands of reasons that the existing channels are not working,” Greenberg said, though he did not elaborate.

The GSA and GESO share a history at Yale, one that shows how graduate students have, by fits and starts, gained a greater voice in their education over the past 50 years. When GESO began in the early 1990s, neither the GSA nor the GPSS were very robust, Long said.

“The GESO organizing effort increased the importance and the validity and the interest in the GSA and GPSS,” Long said, adding that in 1990, “it seemed clear that GESO was organizing not entirely without context.”

The context for the growth of GESO and the GSA was a graduate student population largely dissatisfied with their learning environment, Long said. In the 1960s, Yale only provided full financial aid by merit — the rest of the graduate student population received either partial or no financial assistance.

Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway, who earned his Ph.D. from the University in 1995, described life as a graduate student at Yale in the 1990s as “challenging.” In those days, even Yale’s full financial stipend did not meet the cost of living in New Haven, Holloway said. Medical benefits for graduate students were at a bare minimum, and medical care for spouses and children of graduate students was not even considered until more recently, according to Long. Holloway said the disparities in graduate student support were the source of occasional ill-will — unless you got an external fellowship, there was no money for research or travel, he said.

“GESO started, in part, as a result of graduate students’ dissatisfaction in general, not just teaching fellow wages or working conditions,” Long said.

But all this began to change when former University President Richard Levin became Dean of the Graduate Schools of Arts and Sciences in 1992, Holloway said. Levin increased graduate student fellowships across the entire University.

FINNEGAN SCHICK/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The GSAS put up two posters around campus several days before the GESO protest.

Because Levin’s changes coincided with the foundation of GESO and the growth of the GSA, it is difficult to pin down the source of these reforms. Long said he thinks the creation of a more attractive environment for graduate students would have happened even if GESO had never existed.

“GESO did not cause all this stuff,” Long said. “[GESO] is a symptom of a problem that was already being adjusted.”

NOT THE FIRST TIME, NOT THE LAST

While Yale professors who were on campus during the 1990s interviewed by the News said the University has responded to many of the needs of graduate students during the past two decades, GESO continued to push for a student union. In the fall of 1995, GESO members attempted a “grade strike” by withholding the grades on exams and papers in the classes they were teaching. The strike backfired, as not all of GESO’s members withheld the grades. When some professors threatened not to hire GESO members in the spring, GESO took Yale to court.

On Dec. 7, 1995 then-Dean of Yale College Richard Brodhead called GESO’s grade strike a “serious dereliction of a Teaching Fellow’s responsibilities.”

Several months later, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that if GESO had been a union, the grade strike would have been invalid because it was a “partial strike.” Dissenting graduate students, the board ruled, could not withhold their teaching work while still coming to classes and writing their dissertations. GESO became unpopular with undergraduate and graduate students because of the strike, Long said.

Since then, GESO has not attempted any similar strikes.

Instead, the GESO of today models itself on the graduate student union at New York University. In 2000, the NYU graduate students negotiated a contract with their university, but then lost the contract in 2005 when the university declined to renew it. In 2013, the group regained union status and remains one of the only graduate student unions at a private university.

Past GESO efforts to union-

ize also include a 2003 vote by the graduate student body. The vote was not sanctioned by Yale, but was monitored for fairness by a nonpartisan political organization, the League of Women Voters. The motion to unionize failed by 43 votes. Still, GESO continues to ask for a “neutral election” — one without interference from the University. Such a neutral election would still allow GESO to campaign on its own behalf, while also keeping undergraduates, faculty and administrators from voting.

Long said that GESO, in gathering support from graduate students, has used strong-arm tactics like harassing graduate students at their homes and coercing some students into signing union cards.

Long characterized such activities as “inappropriate.”

In the past, GESO demonstrated that it had majority support through the collection of signatures of University graduate students. But on Thursday, as the group did the year before, GESO took photos of over two-thirds of graduate students to show their strength in numbers. The rally was among the larger of GESO’s four previous demonstrations in the last year-and-a-half.

GESO, like the GSA and the GPSS, is concerned by what the organization considers insecurities around teaching assignments and funding, as well as inadequate mental health resources and child care for graduate students. GESO has also called for greater gender and racial equity across all departments, especially in the sciences.

Yet according to U.S. labor laws, a union can “collectively bargain” only around issues that pertain directly to the working conditions of union members.

Long said that graduate students have nothing to do with faculty hiring, which is currently under the authority of the Office of the Provost. Furthermore, Long said the University knows it needs to diversify its faculty, and has taken steps to do so.

“You don’t need graduate students to instruct [Yale] in the importance of diversity,” Long said. “I don’t know why they’re doing this.”

Holloway said he supports the conversation around faculty diversity that graduate students are trying to foster. Yale recently

hired 15 men and 13 women into the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for the coming academic year. Of those new hires, three are AfricanAmerican and six are of East Asian descent. In an email to the News, FAS Dean Tamar Gendler said that an excellent faculty is a diverse faculty.

“WE WILL BE BACK”

As the sun set on Beinecke Plaza Thursday evening, a few graduate students shared their personal experiences at Yale. Grant Mao, a former School of Management student, said he was expelled in April after struggling with depression. He said the University barred him from ever entering Evans Hall at the SOM, and that he may have to return to his home in Shanghai due to visa requirements that mandate he remain enrolled in school.

Michelle Morgan GRD ’16, a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies, said that due to the restructuring of the Teaching Fellow stipend last year, she received a 40 percent pay cut. Although Morgan is a seventh-year graduate student and is not required to teach, she said that the money she receives from teaching is necessary to support her son. Morgan said having a graduate student union would help student workers who, like her, struggle financially.

Following the rally, University spokesman Tom Conroy said in an email to the News that Yale highly respects the opinions of Harp and Connecticut’s U.S. senators, noting that Yale has a track record of working with them on city and state issues. The University is responsive to inquiries they may have about Yale policies and practices, including inquiries about the status of graduate students, he said.

Near the end of the rally, Murphy spoke to the crowd about the important role unions have played in American history and in the creation of a middle class.

“What you are asking for is small, it is reasonable,” Murphy said to the crowd. “We will be back here again, but frankly we hope that we don’t have to.”

Contact FINNEGAN SCHICK at christopher.schick@yale.edu and VICTOR WANG at v.wang@yale.edu .

Arepa cart owners protest removal from York St. FOOD CART FROM PAGE 1 many places that serve cheap food and are super convenient.”

A representative from the city building department served the Rubamba, Caseus and Portobello food trucks an official order Wednesday morning, demanding they vacate their locations on York Street and College Street on campus. The representative claimed the food trucks had been operating in a residential area, therefore violating the city’s food-vendor ordinances.

Turcio did not return multiple requests for comment.

Though Garcia and Lopez wasted no time launching a street protest against the vacation order, Garcia said he hopes to reach an agreement with Turcio. The two will meet Friday morning, and Garcia hopes to convince Turcio to allow the Arepa cart to stay in its current location. He added that he is willing to cooperate with the law.

“We have food, but we’re not going to sell it because he said we would be arrested if we did,” Garcia said.

Garcia said he does not know what he will do if Turcio does not acquiesce to his request.

Neither Caseus nor Portobello have heard more from the building depart-

ment about the status of their food trucks, according to the owners of both trucks. But the carts did not return to their usual locations Thursday.

Instead, Caseus food truck coowner Tom Sobocinski worked with Greg Martell, known as Chef Brody, of the Banh Mi truck in a previously planned fundraising effort for Columbus House, a city homeless shelter.

Sobocinski and Martell parked the Banh Mi food truck in front of Willoughby’s on York Street, roughly two blocks away from the Banh Mi and Caseus’ trucks’ usual locations.

“No new news today,” Sobocinski said. “We did a charity event with Chef Brody and no one [from the city department] came out.”

Carlos Mendez, owner of the Portobello cart that usually parks on Broadway, did not return to his usual location Thursday. Instead, he opted to park near the Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Mendez and Sobocinski said they have not received arrest threats or updates from city officials about the state of their food trucks.

Rubamba’s brick and mortar location is located on 25 High St. Contact JIAHUI HU at jiahui.hu@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS

The Ay! Arepa cart was a York Street staple until city officials ordered them to move Wednesday.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

NEWS

“If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn’t have been worth the Nobel Prize.” RICHARD FEYNMAN AMERICAN THEORETICAL PHYSICIST

CORRECTIONS MONDAY, OCT. 12

A previous version of the article “Yale secures HC Meredith’s 200th victory” incorrectly stated that Rudy Meredith is the longest-tenured women’s soccer head coach in the Ivy League. In fact, Phil Pincince at Brown University holds that distinction.

THURSDAY, OCT. 15

A previous version of the article “Elm City Housing: Low vacancy, high rent” incorrectly stated the address of First Niagara Bank. In fact, it is located at the corner of Elm and Church streets.

NHPS leaves $1.7 million

BY MIRANDA ESCOBAR STAFF REPORTER According to New Haven Public School district representatives, $1.7 million of New Haven’s Annual Alliance District Grant went unspent during the last academic year.

The Alliance District Program — a state-run initiative that provides the 30 lowest performing Connecticut school districts with annual grants — awarded NHPS with $12 million during the 20142015 academic year. Though the state department reported a $2.6 million underspend in May — the largest underspend across Connecticut’s school districts — further purchases were made that brought the final amount of leftover grant money to $1.7 million in June, said NHPS Chief Financing Officer Victor De La Paz. Although NHPS representatives said a $1.7 million underspend is relatively small, they added that their main priority in the coming academic year is to reduce the amount of grant money that goes unspent. “[$1.7 million is] still a significant amount of money,” De La Paz said. “But it’s 14 percent of our 2015 allocation, which is not really out of line with what carryover should be for a large grant.”

The Department of Education places restrictions on how the 30 districts that receive alliance grant funding can spend their award. School districts can only spend money on specific areas, such as academics. The districts are not allowed to spend their money outside of these restrictions, meaning that grant funding cannot be devoted to expenditures like teacher salaries.

De La Paz said NHPS’ 14 percent carryover was because the schools could not invest those funds in teacher and principal salaries, one of the district’s biggest expenses.

“The alliance grant is explicitly not supposed to cover our cost of operations,” he said. “If it were allowed [to cover operations], there would be no carryover.”

Adriana Joseph, NHPS deputy chief of youth, family and community engagement, said NHPS has several plans in mind to cut the amount of grant money that goes unused. She said the district will invest more in supporting NHPS students, pointing to Mayor Toni Harp’s 10-point plan — an initiative presented Tuesday that aims to improve literacy and technology exposure at schools — as a potential area for investment.

“We’re very cognizant of the fact that we need to have a better plan in place to be able to spend

that money down next year,” she said.

Recent data shows that NHPS students underperform on reading tests taken on computers because of their unfamiliarity with the technology, De La Paz said. He added that the district plans to invest in the availability of technology in schools so that they can increase test scores while decreasing the amount of Alliance Grant money that goes unspent.

But De La Paz said having carryover funds at the end of the year is not necessarily a bad thing, since districts are allowed to carry that money over to the next year.

The alliance grant is explicitly not supposed to cover our cost of operations.

VICTOR DE LA PAZ Chief Financing Officer, NHPS “Instead of rushing to spend [leftover funds] at the end of the year, we just rely on the fact that we’re allowed carryover, and we intend to use those funds this year,” De La Paz said.

Though NHPS has carried over the $1.7 million they did not spend last year to this year’s budget, they may not be afforded this option next year.

The state Department of Education recently proposed a 3 percent cap on the amount of Alliance District grant money that can be carried over, with hopes to enact it in the 2015–16 academic year.

Abbe Smith, director of communications for the state Department of Education, said carryover money should be capped because schools that do not spend the entire grant they are awarded are not accomplishing the improvement plans they laid out at the beginning of the year.

“By capping the carry-forward amount at 3 percent, we can help districts align their spending more closely to their school improvement strategies, thereby having more of an impact on student learning for the current academic year,” Smith said.

The Alliance District program serves over 200,000 students and 410 schools statewide, the state Department of Education reports.

Contact MIRANDA ESCOBAR at miranda.escobar@yale.edu .

Law school to offer rape law course

BY QI XU STAFF REPORTER In response to students’ calls for more coursework on the topic of rape law, next semester Yale Law School will introduce a new seminar dedicated exclusively to the study of gender-based violence.

The seminar, titled “Law Reform and Gender-Based Violence,” will be taught by two visiting professors from the City University of New York School of Law: Dean of CUNY School of Law Michelle Anderson LAW ’94 and law professor Julie Goldscheid. The majority of its content will be devoted to rape law — a topic not introduced at law schools until the mid-1980s — but the course will also cover domestic violence and culminate in a study of campus sexual assault. Visiting professor Edward Stein LAW ’00, who teaches at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York, will also teach a gender-oriented class called “Sexuality and the Law” in the spring. Stein said that although rape law could potentially be discussed in the class, he has not currently included it in his syllabus.

Faculty and students interviewed said that in light of recent media attention to campus sexual assault, students have developed an increasing interest in rape law, and that in the wake of the recent Association of American Universities survey on campus sexual climate, it is important to continue the study of rape law in law school classrooms. “[The AAU survey] will increase students’ interest in the topic [of rape law] to be sure,” Anderson said. “And although there is still a lot of discomfort surrounding such discussions — [and] appropriately so — the intensity with which students grapple with these issues and the importance of the issues can’t be denied.”

Anderson added that she specifically included campus sexual assault on the syllabus

because of the increased visibility and importance of sexual misconduct on college campuses.

The course will cover topics including force and consent in rape law and the consequences of rape convictions. During the section on campus sexual assault, the class will analyze issues surrounding Title IX — the law that prohibits gender discrimination at universities that receive federal funding— as well as current controversies on sexual misconduct and prevention strategies, Anderson said.

Goldscheid said the class will give students an opportunity to examine several interpretations of Title IX and some of the controversial state laws surrounding it. Students will also have the chance to voice their opinions about what is lacking in the law and generate conversations on the pros and cons of current approaches.

Currently, some Yale Law School classes on criminal justice do touch on rape law, but none are entirely devoted to that subject. Last spring, several law school students proposed a weekly, student-led, ungraded reading group called “Gender-Based Violence and Law” in response to the lack of courses offered on the topic.

Claire Simonich LAW ’16, one of the approximately 20 students who enrolled in the reading group last spring, said she and her peers are excited for the new class. Although insightful discussions came up during their reading group discussions last semester, she said, a fullblown class — taken for a grade and taught by a faculty member — will meet more often and will allow students more guidance from the professors.

Simonich added that she has observed an increased student interest in rape law recently, pointing to a daylong conference on Title IX that the Yale Law Journal held last month after the release of the AAU survey results. “[The AAU survey served as] one more signal to continue talking and studying

[and] doing everything we can to make Yale a more comfortable place for women and free from gender-based violence,” she said.

Jeannie Suk, a Harvard law professor who teaches criminal law and procedure, said she has seen an increase in interest in rape law coursework in the last few years, adding that she is not aware of any criminal law professor at Harvard who does not include rape law in his or her course. Students seem very interested in learning the criminal laws governing rape, and particularly how they differ from the policies about campus sexual misconduct to which they are consistently exposed, Suk said.

In December 2014, Suk wrote a column in the New Yorker defending rape law coursework in law schools, in response to some advocates’ and colleagues’ concerns that teaching such a sensitive issue in the classroom could upset students and affect their performance. Suk argued that the topic’s sensitivity is precisely why it must be taught, in order to teach students how to engage in difficult conversations and to remove the taboo around sexual assault. She told the News that the atmosphere in her classroom during rape law discussions is engaged and open.

“The suggestion that the release of the AAU survey and other public attention to these issues should lead to less class discussion and analysis of sexual assault rules, rather than more, is mind-boggling to me,” Suk said. “Problems don’t get addressed by not talking about them. A good way to address a very serious problem is through education, which is what we’re doing in classrooms.”

Stanford Law professor Robert Weisberg said the majority of sections in criminal law — which is a compulsory first-year, first-term course at Stanford — include rape law coursework. Still, he acknowledged the paradox that although students are increas-

ingly calling on their professors to cover this material, many continue to be uncomfortable discussing it in class. Weisberg spends one week on rape law in his class on criminal law.

Weisberg added that he has always begun the week on this material with a “gentle admonition” about the sensitivity of the subject. Although he has never had an overt problem in class discussions, he cannot be sure that there is not some student discomfort or disagreement with his approach, he said.

The AAU survey further justified law professors’ attention to this subject matter, Weisberg said, as even the low estimates are so alarming that the subject demands academic attention. And if the higher estimates are true, he said, the argument for study is stronger still.

Despite the increasing attention to rape law nationwide and Yale Law School’s efforts in expanding the discussions to classrooms, Simonich said she still feels that Yale can do better. She said she would like to see more tenured Yale law professors who have a feminist background and perspective, adding that the school does not currently employ any criminal law professors whose scholarship is centered on feminist legal theory. If faculty were trained to teach rape law, she said, they would be more comfortable handling such sensitive discussions in class.

George Fisher, another Stanford law professor who devotes a chapter of his class to rape shield laws — which protect complainants from media and defendants during rape proceedings — agreed that it is important for professors to include rape law coursework.

“I think our understanding of difficult topics always benefits from reasoned discussion.

If law students can’t discuss freighted social issues, who can?” Fisher said.

Contact QI XU at qi.xu@yale.edu .

WILLIAM FREEDBERG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale Law School will offer a new class on gender-based violence next semester.

Former Yale researcher wins Nobel Prize

BY JAKE LEFFEW CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Last week, the University added another esteemed alumnus to its list of Nobel Laureates.

Aziz Sancar, who studied at Yale as a postgraduate fellow during the late ’70s in the Department of Therapeutic Radiology, was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Sancar’s recognition by the Nobel Committee stems from his research in mapping “at a molecular level, how cells repair damaged DNA and safeguard the genetic information,” according to the Nobel Prize’s official website. This research was conducted in Yale Medical School’s Biochemistry lab, where Sancar worked under the supervision

of therapeutic radiology professor W. Dean Rupp, Jr. According to Sancar’s peers, his work ethic, coupled with Yale’s research faculty, enabled the development of new and impactful scientific developments in the field of DNA research.

Sancar solved the chemical nuances of three DNA repair mechanisms. Senior research scientist in therapeutic radiology Douglas Brash, who was a peer of Sancar’s, explained that although DNA may become damaged for a variety of reasons, this damage should not be confused with DNA mutation. A DNA mutation consists of genetic material that is still “perfectly normal,” but damaged DNA is abnormal and requires correction, Brash added. If

the DNA is damaged, cells will extract the mistake in a process known as DNA excision repair.

Sancar’s work has mapped the pathways by which a cell repairs this damaged DNA and safeguards the genetic material. His work can be used in the development of new cancer medications.

Sancar, who grew up in a small town in rural Turkey, “was a legendarily hard worker,” Brash said. Sancar did not return request for comment.

Sancar’s interest in DNA research came at a time of burgeoning progress for the field.

Not long after Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA’s double helix formation, Yale’s Department of Radiobiology was founded by molecular biophysics

and biochemistry professor Paul Flanders. Rupp, who ran a lab in the Department of Radiobiology, was working on gene cloning when Sancar joined his team.

“He applied to my laboratory to come as a postdoctoral fellow and I looked at his resume and because he did have experience in cloning genes, at least one gene in particular, it seemed like a good fit for my laboratory,” Rupp said.

Rupp added that he had a significant impact on Sancar’s education. Central to Sancar’s selection as the 2015 Nobel Prize winner was a paper entitled “Mechanistic Studies of DNA Repair,” Rupp explained.

The research for the report was conducted entirely in Rupp’s Yale-based laboratory. Sancar

later went on to conduct more research at the University of North Carolina.

But Sancar’s experience at Yale set the stage for a lifetime of contributions to the biological and medical sciences.

According to Peter Glazer, chair of therapeutic radiology, Sancar’s research has had significant implications in several practical areas of medicine.

“This knowledge has contributed to the development of cancer and aging,” Glazer said. “It’s also important to understanding how certain cancer therapies work and helps the development of new cancer therapies.”

Sancar told the New York Times that he first realized he wanted to be a biochemist after taking a class during his second

year of medical school.

“I come from a small town in Turkey and so everything was basically unknown to me,” Sancar said in an interview with the Times. “Being exposed to that was very exciting.”

According to the Times, Sancar, who is the first Turkish scientist to win a Nobel Prize, received the call from Stockholm notifying him of his award at 5 a.m.

Sancar is currently a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In December he will travel to Stockholm to accept officially the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Contact JAKE LEFFEW at jake.leffew@yale.edu .

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“You don’t need a silver fork to eat good food.” PAUL PRUDHOMME AMERICAN CELEBRITY CHEF

Alumni surveyed on tuition satisfaction TUITION FROM PAGE 1 Eighty-two percent of Yale respondents indicated that they felt their education was worth the cost of tuition, 5 percentage points higher than the national average.

The largest percentage-point differential between the national and Yale data sets stemmed from the most positive response — strongly agree — with Yale graduates choosing the option more than their national counterparts by 9 points.

Still, there were significant differences in satisfaction among various demographics within the Yale pool itself. Male graduates expressed satisfaction with their Yale degrees at a much higher rate than their female counterparts, and they also currently earn significantly higher incomes: 51 percent of male alumni are earning over $50,000 a year, compared to just 32 percent of females. Fifteen percent of men are making over $100,000 — three times more than the percentage of women. While alumni who still possessed student loans were significantly more dissatisfied with the worth of their Yale education, in line with the Gallup results, there was little variation in satisfaction by race.

Yale Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Joan O’Neill said the overall positive alumni responses are in line with the feedback her office receives.

“We consistently hear from alumni that they feel their Yale education was extremely valuable, that it helped them to head in the direction they are now heading in their lives — though these are young alumni — and that Yale was really meaningful in helping

them become the people they are,” she said. “And it’s that gratitude we continue to see among alumni in terms of their desire to give back as volunteers and to give back financially, because they do feel their Yale education was meaningful.”

Of the 18 survey participants interviewed more extensively by the News, the vast majority said they agreed or strongly agreed that their Yale degree was worth the cost, citing benefits like on-campus opportunities and the Yale network.

Briana Rose Pigott ’13 said she considers the education she received at Yale to be invaluable, so she strongly agrees that her degree was worth the price tag. Not only did connections fostered by Yale help her find a job at a law firm for next year, but Yale also gave her the chance to learn from intellectual people with different backgrounds and opinions while on campus, she said.

“I loved Yale. It was perfect,” she said. “I wouldn’t change it or do anything differently and would do it 100 times over again.”

Still, some graduates interviewed expressed equally negative feelings.

While Hody Nemes ’13 — an environmental studies major who works at an environmental nonprofit — said although he is grateful for the education Yale provided, he ultimately would disagree that his degree was worth the cost. He said his main complaint centers on Yale professors, both in terms of the attention they paid to students and the quality of their classes.

“Professors have a lot of competing concerns, and I sometimes felt that they were not particularly

interested in individual students — and to get their attention you had to really speak up and strongly seek them out,” he said. “And I felt myself sometimes wishing that Yale would do teaching workshops for professors or would require a professor … as part of their tenure track to be evaluated based on other teaching styles — to have to go through a course on how to give a good lecture, run a good seminar.”

But Aayush Upadhyay ’14 said Yale professors helped make his experience so worthwhile, leading him to strongly agree that his education merited the cost. A computer science major currently employed

by Google, Upadhyay said the small size of the department enabled him to build relationships and engage in research with impressive, engaged professors.

Strongly agreeing that her Yale education justified its cost, Ellen Su ’13 said she has found her positive feelings to be the norm amongst her peers. She added that she and many of her friends were art majors, which at another school might have made it difficult to find a place of employment after college. But the intangible skills Yale fostered enabled her and her peers to do so.

“Yale gave me and my friends the skills to sell ourselves to people and learn how to present ourselves,” she said. “I’m not sure I’ve interacted with people who regret going to Yale.”

Future installments in this series will further analyze graduate satisfaction by gender, current income, Yale College major and level of financial aid.

SURVEY WORTHINESS OF COLLEGE TUITION Rate the degree to which you believe your education was worth the cost of tuition.

Strongly agree

Disagree

Agree

Strongly disagree

Neutral 3%

Yale Responses

were obtained by the News after the meeting, state that deans can initiate reviews if they perceive a conduct violation. Any member of the Yale community can bring a complaint as well, but the dean decides whether or not to proceed with a formal review.

More problematically for some faculty members, the draft procedures also state that, following a complaint, the dean of the respondent’s affiliated school will choose a five-person review panel to hear the case. The review panel will investigate the claim and submit a report to the dean, but the dean will have the final say on the complaint’s outcome.

“The dean may accept, modify, or reject the conclusions of the panel and any of its recommendations,” according to the draft procedures.

Faculty members interviewed said they took issue with several parts of the draft.

Koizim said the current draft is very open-ended and allows relevant administrators to override panel decisions. She said she fears the procedures could be used to retaliate against faculty mem-

bers who are seen as annoyances by administrators.

History professor Glenda Gilmore, who raised her concerns at the meeting, said the procedures violate faculty members’ constitutional rights to due process, including the right to active counsel at trial and the right to hear and question witnesses.

Gilmore’s remarks at the meeting also highlighted deans’ influence over the review process, noting that the deans appoint the panel and may overrule the accused’s objection to anyone chosen for the panel. Also troubling, she suggested, is the dean’s role as final-decision maker.

Gilmore recommended that the faculty reject the Review Procedures.

It remains unclear how much influence the FAS Senate actually holds in the drafting of the review procedures. In an email to the News, Spangler wrote that the draft procedures will be reviewed by all University faculty, as was done with the Standards themselves. Part of that procedure, Spangler, said, includes forwarding the draft procedures to the Senate for discussion during its meeting.

National Responses 0

47%

20%

27%

40%

60%

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

Following the discussion, the Senate did not come to any conclusion or hold any vote, Gage said. Rather, members agreed to engage in open discussion about the topic at the next meeting.

“There is enough concern that it requires more discussion,” Gage said. “We hope to do some research on our own.”

She added that an informal committee may be set up within the Senate for this purpose.

Koizim, however, said she is not confident in how much impact the Senate’s input will have on the drafting of the procedures.

Besides debating the review procedures, faculty members at the meeting also raised concerns and queries with FAS dean Tamar Gendler. Topics of discussion included the relationship between Gendler’s office and the Senate, faculty salaries, planning for the new residential colleges and diversity initiatives. Gendler told the News she asked for the Senate’s advice about how best to circulate documents to members of the FAS for consultation.

Gage was positive about the relationship between the

Senate and the FAS dean’s office, but added that the two bodies are still defining it.

“It’s a very good relationship,” Gage said. “We are still working out the issues that the dean can bring before the Senate and what kind of information the Senate can have access to from the dean’s office.”

Koizim said that while the administrative structure of the University is murky, she sees Gendler as the main point of administrative contact and said Gendler’s office and the Senate share many concerns.

The Senate also made strides in establishing a new Committee on Faculty Advancement, which would consider the various forms of support for faculty members, ranging from research facilities to salaries. The committee was tentatively established, but has yet to be voted upon by the entire Senate.

During the first Senate meeting in September, five committees were established, and the Senate has since chosen chairs for each of these.

The next FAS Senate meeting is scheduled for Nov. 19.

Contact VICTOR WANG at v.wang@yale.edu .

FAS SENATE COMMITTEES NUMBER OF CHAIRS Yale Committees

Yale College Expansion

3

5

6

Budget and Finance

Peer Advisory

Faculty Advancement*

6

5

8 * The committee has been tentatively established.

QUINN LEWIS/PRODUCTION & DESIGN ASSISTANT

14% 7%

80%

100%

SARA SEYMOUR/PRODUCTION & DESIGN STAFF

City details Coliseum project

COURTESY OF NEWMAN ARCHITECTS

The multimillion dollar development is slated to begin its first phase of construction next summer.

COLISEUM FROM PAGE 1

Elections and Nominations

9% 6%

4%

FAS Senate holds first open meeting SENATE FROM PAGE 1

23%

59%

which will be earmarked for new small businesses. The Coliseum will also include office buildings and a four-and-a-half star hotel, said Matthew Nemerson SOM ’81, the city’s economic development administrator. Construction on the hotel will likely begin in spring 2018, he added.

The Coliseum parking lot, where the new developments will be built, has been divided into four quadrants. LiveWorkLearnPlay will build on the northwest quadrant during the first phase, Nemerson said. Each additional phase will develop another quadrant of the current parking lot.

Nemerson added that one quadrant will house high-rise apartments and another office buildings.

The Coliseum development compliments City Hall’s threepart Downtown Crossing Plan, which aims to facilitate transportation and increase commerce between downtown New Haven and the city’s outskirts. Phase two of the plan is underway and looks

to streamline transportation at the crossing of Orange Street and Route 34, which is adjacent to the Coliseum, among other projects.

Gov. Dannel Malloy has contributed $21.5 million from the state and the city of New Haven has contributed $12 million to fund the second phase, Nemerson said.

Nemerson added that the city’s Downtown Crossing Plan also helped attract Alexion Pharmaceuticals back to the city. Alexion, which left New Haven in 2000, will be located at 100 College St., just a few blocks from the crossing of Orange Street and Route 34.

The Coliseum development has not been without its obstacles over the last year, DeSantos said.

Connecticut electricity company United Illuminating Company ran electricity lines across the parking lot, which later needed to be relocated for the Coliseum construction, he said.

Newman Architects has also designed Swing Space and Arnold Hall on Elm Street.

Contact JIAHUI HU at jiahu.hu@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

NEWS

“You develop a sympathy for all human beings when you travel a lot.”

SHAKUNTALA DEVI INDIAN WRITER

Admissions dean travels to Asia

BY JON VICTOR STAFF REPORTER For the first time in over a decade, Yale College’s top admissions official has traveled to Asia on behalf of the University.

Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeremiah Quinlan is in the second half of a two-week admissions trip that includes stops in major Asian cities such as Mumbai, New Delhi, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. The trip is part of an Admissions Office effort to maintain ties with the region, from which hundreds of prospective students apply each year. Although the office sends admissions officers on multiple trips to Asia every year, Yale’s Dean of Undergraduate Admissions has not traveled there himself for quite some time.

“This year … I wanted to visit Asia and conduct the outreach myself,“ Quinlan said. “Given the strength of the applicants Yale receives from Asia and the relative complexity of applying to college or university in the United States, it is important we continue to meet and talk to potential applicants.”

Around a quarter of all international students at Yale are from China, and more international students enroll at American universities from China each year than any other country. In addition, this year has seen increased ties between China and the University, with last week’s inauguration of the SOHO China Scholarship for low-income Chinese students and the creation of the Yale Young Global Scholars-Beijing — an academic program for high-school students — to take place in January 2016.

Quinlan’s trip also coincides with the inauguration ceremony for Yale-NUS’s permanent campus — an event that was attended by top Yale administrators including Quinlan, University President Peter Salovey, Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway, Graduate School Dean Lynn Cooley and Jane Edwards, dean of the Center for International and Professional Experience and senior associate dean of Yale College.

While in the region, Quinlan will also be giving presentations at high schools, meeting

with alumni, conducting alumni interview workshops and holding school council tea sessions — gatherings where admissions representatives can discuss the college application process with highschool administrators. Quinlan said the trip is a useful opportunity for the Admissions Office to give updates on developments at Yale, talk about the application process with students and answer specific questions about parts of the admissions process like financial aid.

Kartik Srivastava ’17, an international student from India, said it was encouraging to learn that Yale’s dean of admissions is visiting the country, adding that having representatives holding information sessions in person can make students excited about applying, and eventually attending, Yale.

“Even with its name and all its history, Yale is an obscure place in a foreign land,” Srivastava said.

“Sending a representative helps add a face to the various brochures and websites that are available otherwise.”

In addition to communicating with students, Quinlan said speaking with alumni interviewers about how the admissions process is evolving is valuable for the office, since applicant interviews are becoming increasingly important parts of the application process.

Caroline Van ’79, head of Yale’s alumni interviewers in Hong Kong, said Quinlan’s visit to the city will have a lasting impression on the members of the Alumni Schools Committee, the body that comprises alumni who interview prospective students on behalf of the Admissions Office.

“The weight of having the dean of Yale’s undergraduate admissions come in person demonstrated a caring commitment to attracting the best future classes for Yale College,” Van said. “Nothing can replace the face-to-face impact of someone speaking frankly and factually with bits of humor.”

As of fall 2014, 10 percent of students enrolled in Yale College were international students.

ADMISSIONS DEAN ABROAD

CITIES VISITED BY QUINLAN ON CURRENT TRIP

Beijing

6

Oct. 15–17

Delhi

Shanghai

Oct. 6–8

Oct. 14–15

2

Hong Kong Oct. 12–14

1

5

4

Mumbai Oct. 4–6

Singapore Oct. 8–12

3

Contact JON VICTOR at jon.victor@yale.edu .

SAMUEL WANG/PRODUCTION & DESIGN EDITOR

State committee faces dearth of data

BY SARA SEYMOUR STAFF REPORTER The Juvenile Justice Policy and Oversight Committee found Thursday that data indicating the efficacy of existing youth recidivism programs is sparse and hard to acquire.

Led by state Rep. Toni Walker, the discussion centered on two major problems that the committee faces: insufficient access to data that already exists and access to data that accurately indicates the efficacy of current recidivism programs. Given the inadequacy of the current data, the committee decided that it must reconsider which outcomes to measure in programs targeting recidivism.

The committee discussed programs that offer a wide range of services, ranging from job training to intensive in-home child and adolescent psychiatric treatment.

“How are we going to define success? Are we simply going to keep measuring it in the same way we have — that a child completes a program and gets rearrested, or doesn’t?” said Bill Carbone, director of the Tow Youth Justice Institute and University of New Haven professor. “We need to take this to the next level. We need to have the data systems that permit us to look at other indicators of success.”

Kendell Coker, an assistant professor at the University of New Haven and faculty chief researcher of the Tow Youth Justice Institute,

presented data suggesting that the most-used programs might not be working. But he acknowledged that the data analysis raised more questions than it answered. He noted that when youths complete a program but still return to prison, it does not necessarily indicate a failure of the program to achieve its initial goal.

Carbone agreed, adding that a program’s immediate goal may be to reduce truancy and improve communication within the family, but even if a youth attends school and communicates better with his family, the youth may still commit an offense leading to arrest, Carbone said.

According to the sample data Coker presented, females under

the age of 16 were completing programs at about the same rate as females 16 years of age and over, but the younger females were being rearrested at a higher rate.

The data for male youths was similar. Many of the minors participated in multiple programs, which made it difficult for committee members to determine which interventions effectively combated recidivism.

Ben Barnes, co-chair of the committee and secretary of the Office of Policy and Management, questioned whether the data indicates which programs are most effective. Coker acknowledged that the data was inconclusive, adding that the findings do not reveal much about the effective-

ness of the programs because they do not consider outcomes other than rearrest rates and program completion rates.

Committee members said not all work groups within the committee have access to certain data sets, which hinders the committee’s progress. Chris Rapillo — director of Delinquency, Defense and Child Protection for Public Defender Services — said her work group is still waiting for data from a recidivism study because a memorandum of agreement to release the information had not been signed.

The lack of data slowed the progress of her work group, Rapillo said.

Walker said it is unaccept-

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“We can always use many barriers in order to stop movement and to stop progress, and I really hope I don’t hear that anymore,” Walker said. “Because it’s not us, it’s our kids. Our kids are the ones that end up losing.”

According to data from the Office of Policy and Management, 9,439 youths under the age of 18 were arrested in Connecticut in 2014.

Contact SARA SEYMOUR at sara.seymour@yale.edu .

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PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

“They say the universe is expanding. That should help with the traffic.”

STEVEN WRIGHT AMERICAN COMEDIAN

New lanes won’t cut traffic, experts say

BY NOAH KIM STAFF REPORTER Gov. Dannell Malloy’s plan to expand I-84 and I-95 by two lanes is unlikely to cut state traffic, experts say.

A Connecticut Department of Transportation study found that I-95 travelers could save over 14 million hours of traveling time by 2040 with the new lanes.

The additional lanes are part of the governor’s 30-year transportation plan — “Let’s Go CT!” — which includes improving railways, bus lines and pedestrian walkways. However, city planning and transportation experts expressed doubts that additional lanes would decrease traffic flow.

“When you widen the highway, it might improve flow for a little while, but demand for road space will eventually even out with supply and you’ll be back at square one,” Joe Cutrufo, Connecticut advocate at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, said.

Charles Marohn, president of the nonprofit organization Strong Towns,

echoed Cutrufo’s claims.

He compared attempting to cure congestion by widening highways to curing obesity by buying bigger pants.

“You’re not really getting at the fundamental problem,” he said.

Cutrufo suggested reinstituting highway tolls as a more effective way of fixing traffic congestion. Connecticut is the only state in the Northeast without highway tolls, he said, adding that traffic flow could be easily managed by charging higher tolls during rush hour and lower tolls during off-peak times.

Additionally, Cutrufo advocated for improved public transit.

“If we had more bus routes that took people from the places they live to the places they need to go, it would accomplish a lot more than widening the highway,” he said.

Widening Connecticut’s interstate highways would significantly improve the economy, the Department of Transportation study reported. The I-95 expansion could bring $15.5 bil-

lion in new business sales, add $9 billion to Connecticut’s gross state product and add a further $6.3 billion to workers’ wage income, the study found, noting that the project will cost an estimated $10.7 billion. According to the study, the I-84 expansion will be less lucrative. The two new lanes will produce $4.4 billion worth of new business sales, add $2.6 billion to Connecticut’s gross state product and add $1.8 billion to workers’ wage income. But, at an estimated $1.5 billion, the project’s cost will also be cheaper.

Doug Hausladen ’04, director of the New Haven Department of Transportation, Traffic and Parking, said the city will not directly benefit from widening either highway. However, he said he was still optimistic about Malloy’s overall vision.

“We’re extremely excited about the governor’s transportation plan, as it contains several long-term investments in New Haven,” Hausladen said.

Contact NOAH KIM at noah.kim@yale.edu .

JENNIFER LU/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Malloy’s plan to improve traffic flow was influenced by a state Department of Transportation study.

More alumni join VFA to launch entrepreneurial careers

BY JAY LEE CONTRIBUTING REPORTER While some students launch businesses during their time on campus, five alumni from the class of 2015 began their entrepreneurial careers post-graduation through a training program called Venture for America.

Founded in July 2011, VFA is a fellowship program for recent college graduates who wish to work at startups across the country. Alumni have joined since 2012, but the number of Yale graduates in the 2015 VFA class is the highest yet: five participated in 2015, compared to four in the previous three years combined. Harvard had three VFA fellows for the class of 2014 and none for 2015, according to the VFA website.

“It’s kind of like a condensed, abbreviated taste of business school,” said Sophie Kaye ’15, who is one of this year’s fellows, of her experience while working at Leagueside, a startup based in Philadelphia working to help fund youth sports leagues.

The five members of the class of 2015 — Kaye, Landon Acriche, Sophie Janaskie, Sam Lowenkamp and Christopher Morse — went through five weeks of training at Brown University over the summer, during which 120 fellows participated in weekly team challenges, attended formal training sessions by corporations like McKinsey & Company, panel speaker events with serial entrepreneurs and lectures by professionals in various industries.

In August, the fellows started working for emerging startup

companies, where they said they hope to learn new skills that may prove useful when they decide to launch their own businesses in the future. “[Training activities] ranged from ‘ build a website’ to ‘develop a growth strategy for VFA,’” Lowenkamp said. “Most of the challenges were based on real problems at real companies, so our learning and practice were nicely grounded in the reality of building a startup.”

Out of the five alumni VFA fellows, some only recently came to entrepreneurship as a career path, while others have been set on trying to start their own businesses or working at a startup for a long time.

Lowenkamp, for example, said he spent his junior summer interning for a startup accelerator — a company that provides mentorship to startup companies — and was inspired by the high-speed, high-stakes world of startup companies. He said he knew right away that he wanted to work at a startup company after graduation, and when he learned about VFA, he decided to apply.

“When I learned that VFA helps its fellows find new positions if their current startup goes under, I was sold,” he said.

“I had found a startup with a safety net.”

Acriche, who currently works at Alabama Power in Birmingham on startup projects for the corporation, said that joining VFA is not only for people who want to start their own businesses. Acriche said that although one of the goals of VFA is to help people start their own

businesses or organizations in the long run, it is not a requirement and not the path for everyone who participates in the program. He added that he would recommend VFA for people who might not be interested in the more streamlined routes of finance, law or medical school.

Leandra Elberger, senior communications and development manager for VFA, echoed the sentiment, stating that the program partners with startup companies in which a young college graduate could make a real impact.

“More important than looking for a startup that is going to be the next ‘unicorn,’ we look for startups that have great opportunities for a young person to make an impact and learn through good management and mentorship,” she said.

While Yale’s alumni at VFA are committing their first years out of college as entrepreneurs working in startups, some current students are getting a head start by launching their companies while at Yale. Last week, for example, Mustafa Malik ’16 opened his business, Lassi Bar, which offers lassi, a traditional Indian yogurt-based drink.

Malik said that his entrepreneurial experience on campus has been both “exhilarating and exhausting,” adding that Yale’s resources and network allowed him to grow very quickly as a business.

While Malik did say that Yale’s entrepreneurial culture is not as strong as other colleges’ like Stanford or Harvard, he said that Yale is definitely making progress and that the Yale Entrepre-

COURTESY OF SOPHIE KAYE

Five alumni from the class of 2015 are Venture for America fellows this year. neurial Institute has been very helpful in launching his business. But Malik added that YEI needs more funding and a larger presence on campus. In order to improve the entrepreneurial environment at Yale, students

should be made more aware of the many New Haven businesses started by Yale alums, such as Blue State Coffee, he said.

“I think the university should definitely expand and provide more resources for student proj-

ects, especially undergrads,” Malik said.

VFA operates in 15 cities nationwide.

Contact JAY LEE at jay.lee@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

AROUND THE IVIES

“I think so long as fossil fuels are cheap, people will use them and it will postpone a movement towards new technologies.”

PAUL KRUGMAN AMERICAN ECONOMIST

T H E C O L U M B I A S P E C TAT O R

Columbia Divest for Climate Justice protests

BY TEO ARMUS AND BANI SAPRA With a heavy police presence near campus, about 50 members of Columbia Divest for Climate Justice chanted phrases like “profiting from climate change is immoral” at a protest on Wednesday intended to pressure Columbia to divest from the fossil fuel industry.

This event — part of a national day of action for climate change — came an hour before group members presented a proposal on fossil fuel divestment to the

Advisory Committee on Socially Re s p o n s i ble Investing, asking Columbia COLUMBIA to divest its direct and indirect holdings from the top 200 oil, coal and natural gas companies.

As CDCJ escalates its tactics to pressure Columbia to make a decision, the group has also collected 170 student pledges to

engage in nonviolent civil disobedience — including possible arrest and expulsion — if Columbia does not divest from fossil fuels.

Notably, CDCJ’s protest was marked by the presence of approximately 40 police officers along Broadway, from 114th to 116th Streets.

At the protest, group members filed onto the steps of the Low Memorial Library, raising signs that featured slogans such as “climate change kills New York City” and demonstrating

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examples of the effect of climate change on city infrastructure and communities. As students passed by the steps, protesters called for Columbia to “be a leader” and “stand up for people and the planet.”

“We’d like to place pressure on the administration before our members’ presentation of our proposal before ACSRI, and we’d also like to mobilize the student body to show ACSRI we have broad-based student support,” CDCJ member Nikita Perumal said.

Two police officers present at the scene, both of whom asked to remain anonymous out of concerns for job security, confirmed that police were present because of the CDCJ protest at Low, but declined to comment further.

A spokesman for the New York Police Department said that they had no information on the police presence around campus.

CDCJ organizer Rachel FifiCulp said she was surprised to see police members following

the group’s protest, noting that their presence could have made students of color especially uncomfortable.

“It speaks to a trend of overmilitarization of our campus against students,” she said. “The fact that [Public Safety and the NYPD] are mobilizing against students so frequently is scary.”

“Women, children, people of color, low-income communities. And Columbia supports that for profit. It’s not about trees, it’s about people. Climate change is about climate justice.”

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS Cornell, Yale at Reese M. SOCCER FROM PAGE 12 have them run around a lot to tire themselves out at the beginning.”

The Elis and Big Red have had similar struggles on both sides of the ball this season. Cornell has scored five goals in 12 games this season, the lowest total in the Ivy League. Although Yale has scored four more goals in all contests, its 85 shots are 30 lower than the Ivy League average, and the team is ranked dead last in that category. On the defensive side, the teams are ranked one and two in the Ivy League for number of goals allowed, with Yale leading the way at 25 in 10 games.

Despite the fact that Cornell seems to be a weaker opponent than other teams the Bulldogs have faced this season, Kinnane said that the team is still approaching this game like all others.

“I think we try to prepare just as much for any opponent no matter what their record is, because we know that records can be deceiving,” Kinnane said.

Saturday’s match will also serve as a charity function for the Bulldogs, who will warm up in specially designed T-shirts and have started a crowd fundraiser in support of Grassroot Soccer, an organization that uses soccer to empower youth and combat the spread of HIV, according to its website.

As of Thursday night team has raised $1,575 from seven different donors thus far, slightly more than a quarter of its $5,000 goal. “[Grassroot Soccer] is something our upperclassmen have been working with,” Kenagy said. “It’s both awareness for the spread of HIV and a health organization, which connects health educators and mentors with kids to help them live healthier and more productive lives.”

The game kicks off in Reese Stadium at 1 p.m. It will be followed by a women’s soccer matchup, also between Yale and Cornell, at 4 p.m.

Contact LISA QIAN at lisa.qian@yale.edu .

“The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it.” LOU HOLTZ HALL OF FAME FOOTBALL COACH

Big Red showdown W. SOCCER FROM PAGE 12 focused on inflating those numbers.

“I don’t think that Cornell’s stats are in our heads as much as our opponent might want them to be,” midfielder Geneva Decker ’17 said. “We obviously all know that they’ve achieved the feat, but what we’re focused on is making that ‘goals against’ stat even higher than three goals [for Cornell].”

Where both teams find common ground statistically is in the league standings. Cornell, five points behind the league leaders, and Yale, six points behind, have just four conference games left to contend for the Ivy League championship.

Despite being a spot behind the Big Red in the table, the Bulldogs made up ground last weekend with a 1–0 victory against Dartmouth while Cornell fell in a 2–0 match against Harvard. Prior to that defeat, Cornell was the last remaining undefeated team in the NCAA, outlasting each of the 332 other teams in the NCAA. But with both teams focused on conference results only at this point in the season, the Elis are hoping to build upon their Dartmouth victory and gain some momentum in the Ivy League. “[The team] is just going to stay composed,” forward Michelle Alozie ’19 said. “We know how we play soccer, and it showed during

ROBBIE SHORT/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Midfielder Sarah McCauley and the Elis are looking to capture their second consecutive Ivy League victory and move up in the standings. our game versus Dartmouth last week, so we are ready to give them what we are made of.”

Alozie remains the top goal scorer for the Yale team with five on the season, while midfielders Sofia Griff ’19 and Keri Cavallo ’19 are not far behind with four and three goals, respectively. Defender and captain Ally Grossman ’16 leads the team in assists with five, good for second-most in the Ivy League.

While Cornell’s defense has been the best statistically in the

conference, its offense has lagged far behind. Cornell ranks sixth in the league in goals per game and the Big Red have been shut out in three consecutive contests.

As one of five remaining teams in the country with just one loss, Cornell remains a formidable opponent for Yale, but the Bulldogs believe their best play is still ahead of them.

“At this point in our season, we are doing a much better job of possessing the ball and communicating as a team,” defender Hannah

Coy ’18 said. “If we can keep this going, we will get the results that we need.”

History is on Yale’s side, as it has defeated Cornell in each of its past four meetings. However, this is the first time in 13 years that Cornell will finish the season with a winning record.

Kickoff between the Ivy counterparts is slated for 4 p.m. on Saturday at Reese Stadium.

Contact NICOLE WELLS at nicole.wells@yale.edu .

Volleyball to play two key home games VOLLEYBALL FROM PAGE 12 their last two games, the Tigers won both games this past weekend to climb out of the Ivy cellar. With a Friday victory against Brown, Princeton would enter its match against Yale with an even 0.500 in-conference record.

“Both Penn and Princeton have some strong pin hitters that we need to contain,” captain and outside hitter Karlee Fuller ’16 said. “They run some different defenses, but if we focus on our side of the net and control what we are able to control, we will find success.”

Two standout juniors comprise a significant part of the Tiger attack. Outside hitter Cara Mattaliano reached her seventh double-double of the season on Saturday with 10 kills and 12 digs, achieving Ivy League Honor Roll status for her performance on the weekend. Middle blocker Brit-

tany Ptak also excelled, committing zero errors all weekend while recording 20 kills across the two matches.

Setter Kelly Johnson ’16 noted that the Bulldogs, seeking their sixth-consecutive Ivy title, know that every conference opponent has Yale circled on their calen-

dars. After last week’s struggles, she said that the key to a rebound is playing more comfortable on the court.

“There is always pressure to win regardless of what our record is, but we aren’t focused on that pressure,” Johnson said. “We are working to get better and have fun

every time we step on the court. If we do that, the score will take care itself.”

Yale hosts Penn on Friday at 7 p.m. and Princeton on Saturday at 5 p.m.

Contact JONATHAN MARX at jonathan.marx@yale.edu .

Non-conference play concludes in Maine KEYS TO THE GAME

BY MAYA SWEEDLER STAFF REPORTER This weekend, Yale football travels north to take on Maine for the first time in 78 years. The Elis have a chance to rebound from their first loss before moving into five crucial weeks of Ivy League play.

If the team can hit its stride, continue to stop the run and gain yards on the ground itself, Yale can leave Maine content with a 4–1 record.

GET BACK ON TRACK

A week removed from a brutal 35–3 beatdown in Hanover, the Elis had just six days to prepare before leaving on Friday for the six-hour trip to Orono, Maine. After the Maine trip, Yale faces a short week as it takes on Penn the following Friday night.

Halfway through the season, one major impediment has been a bad string of luck in the injury department.

A whopping seven starters were inactive against Dartmouth, the most head coach Tony Reno said he could recall during his four years in New Haven. More worrisome is that many of those injured do not have official timelines to return. Those who do fail to inspire much hope: wide receiver Bo Hines ’18 said he will not play against Maine after missing four consecutive games and defensive back Foye Oluokun ’17 said he is out for the season. Even though the Bulldogs have demonstrated their resilient depth, Yale’s ceiling is limited if some of its top contributors cannot return to the gridiron.

LIMIT TURNOVERS

In its 32-point loss to Dartmouth last weekend, the

scoreline could very well have been even more lopsided.

Dartmouth failed to convert any of Yale’s three red-zone turnovers into points.

The week prior, Yale again ceded two costly turnovers near the goal line. While they ultimately had little impact on the outcome of the Bulldogs’ 27–12 win, Yale cannot afford such mistakes moving forward.

More specifically, the Elis cannot expect to be bailed out again this weekend as Maine has a tendency of making its opponents pay for coughing up the football. Maine averages nearly seven points per game off of turnovers.

CLEAR RUNNING ROOM

As this season’s results have indicated, Yale football does best when its aerial attack is offset by a solid running game.

With running back Candler Rich ’17 out for an undisclosed amount of time, the burden falls to Deshawn Salter ’18, who proved he was more than up to the task against Lehigh.

The sophomore dashed for 233 yards against the Mountain Hawks, averaging eight yards per carry, but was stifled against Dartmouth in his encore performance. Salter managed a measly 2.4 yards per carry against the Big Green, good for just 45 yards on the ground.

However, Maine does not have the same level of experience in its linebacking corps as Dartmouth, and if Salter and the offensive line can get in sync as they did two weeks ago, the Bulldogs should be able to leverage a balanced, effective attack.

Contact MAYA SWEEDLER at maya.sweedler@yale.edu .

FOOTBALL FROM PAGE 12 moving people’s positions.”

Another element of the Elis’ rebounding process, Reno explained, is affording attention to the problem but spending more time working on the solution. Citing Yale’s inability to put points on the board, Reno said the team will not fixate on the loss and instead use it as a teachable moment.

Quarterback Morgan Roberts ’16 said that the team refuses to let the outcome of a single game define the season.

“We didn’t do the little things right,” Roberts said. “We’re smoothing things out and we’ve closed the book on Dartmouth.

We’re excited to play Maine and hopefully play a better game this weekend.”

Although Maine, like Yale, is a Division I Football Championship Subdivision program, the Black Bears are a full-scholarship school that can offer money to their players. Both Roberts and Reno said they were excited to go head-tohead with a high-level state school such as Maine.

There are close ties between the Yale and Maine football programs, as four members of Yale’s coaching staff either played at or coached for Maine. Current defensive line coach Jordan Stevens and director of football operations Chris Gennaro played for the Black Bears. Stevens captained the 2009 squad before returning to Orono to coach for two seasons. Defensive coordinator Steve Vashel and quarterbacks coach Kevin Cahill also coached there before moving to New Haven.

“They’re a very experienced football team,” Reno said. “They’ll be one of the top, if not the best team, we play. There’s a lot of speed, especially on the perimeter in the defensive backs and receiver positions.”

The Black Bears tend to get off to hot starts: 51 of their 93 points have come in the first quarter.

Additionally, the team can roll out an experienced quarterback in Dan Collins. In a 39–7 rout of Albany, the Black Bears racked up a season-best 469 yards of offense, well above the team’s season average of 334.4 yards per game.

But returning from a shoulder injury that caused him to miss five games last season, Collins has posted mediocre numbers through five games this year. The Maine signal caller has thrown for 788 yards, two touchdowns and five interceptions, although he has been able to elude the rush. The dual-threat quarterback has only been sacked seven times this season.

Last week, the Bulldogs were fairly successful in applying pressure and forcing Dartmouth’s mobile quarterback out of the pocket. The team brought down Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year candidate Dalyn Williams three times, with linebacker Victor Egu ’17 tallying 1.5 of those sacks.

Egu and fellow linebacker Matthew Oplinger ’18 both shifted positions during the offseason, as Reno moved Egu back from the defensive line and Oplinger from the inside to the outside.

“We switched [Egu] from [defensive] end to linebacker during games last year, which is really hard to do … so in the offseason we made the decision to move him to linebacker exclusively, and he’s grown immensely from spring to now,” Reno said. “He had some points in times in games where he really takes over, like he did on Saturday. He’s got a high ceiling.”

Yale’s special teams unit has also performed well this season.

Jamal Locke ’18 is currently leading the Ivy League with a 29.7

kickoff-return average and kicker Bryan Holmes ’17 is averaging 40 yards per punt, including six punts placed inside the opponents’ 20-yard line.

Holmes said he is looking forward to the test that the Black Bears can provide the Elis in the latter’s break from conference action.

“In order to be good, we have to play good teams,” Holmes said.

“That’s something that Maine is going to give to us, a good game that will challenge us.”

Kickoff is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. on Saturday. The game is available for streaming on Fox College Sports.

Contact MAYA SWEEDLER at maya.sweedler@yale.edu .

FIVE GAMES, FIVE STATES YALE FOOTBALL’S TRAVELS THROUGH WEEK FIVE at Dartmouth College 35–3 loss

at Colgate University 29–28 win

5 at University of Maine 3:30 PM on Saturday

4

1

2

3

at Cornell University 33–26 win

at Lehigh University 27–12 win

SARA SEYMOUR/PRODUCTION & DESIGN STAFF

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 11

BULLETIN BOARD

TODAY’S FORECAST

TOMORROW

A slight chance of showers before noon. Mostly cloudy through mid morning, then gradual clearing.

SUNDAY

High of 56, low of 34.

High of 49, low of 31.

A WITCH NAMED KOKO 11 BY CHARLES BRUBAKER

ON CAMPUS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16 5:00 PM Pig Out: Hogs and Humans in Global and Historical Context. The Yale Program in Agrarian Studies announces an international conference to examine the role of pigs in human society in comparative cultural and historical perspective.

Presenters will be drawn from around the world and across academic disciplines, including the natural, agricultural and environmental sciences; the humanities; and journalists, activists and public intellectuals. Luce Hall (34 Hillhouse Ave.).

7:30 PM Transformational Leadership for Church and Society program. U.S. Sen. Chris Coons DIV ’92 LAW ’92 will participate in a public conversation about leadership and public service. Sen. Coons’ talk comes as part of his two-day engagement with the Yale Divinity School to guest-lecture in the new Transformational Leadership for Church and Society program.

Coons has written and spoken extensively on his divinity school education and its impact on his political career. Sterling Divinity Quadrangle (409 Prospect St.), Marquand Chapel.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 10:00 AM Science Saturday Lecture & Science Demonstrations Series: Wildebeests, Hippos, Alewives & Isotopes. Science Saturdays is a special lecture series designed for families that brings the excitement of research and the passion of scientists to school-age children. Each event involves a lecture by a Yale professor and engaging science demonstrations run

by Yale College students. Sterling Chemistry Laboratory (225 Prospect St.), Rm. 110.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18 1:00 PM Introduction to Scenic Design. Interested in scenic design? Join student designers Susannah Hyde ’17 and Shoshi Bieler ’16 for an inside look at the set-design process. Hyde and Bieler will be going through all the steps it takes to make your vision come to life, from the initial drawings to the finished, 3D product. Students at any level of experience welcome. Broadway Rehearsal Lofts (294 Elm St.), Conference Room.

To reach us: E-mail editor@yaledailynews.com Advertisements 2-2424 (before 5 p.m.)

2-2400 (after 5 p.m.)

Mailing address Yale Daily News P.O. Box 209007 New Haven, CT 06520

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

Bulletin Board is a free service provided to groups of the Yale community for events. Listings should be submitted online at yaledailynews.com/events/ submit. The Yale Daily News reserves the right to edit listings.

To visit us in person 202 York St. New Haven, Conn. (Opposite JE) FOR RELEASE OCTOBER 16, 2015

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Type of hippo 6 59-Down product 9 Color guard accessory 14 Child on TV for decades 15 Virgo preceder 16 “I’m here” 17 Hummingbird feature?

19 Enjoyed Vegas 20 Valley 21 Place to live in Spain 23 Sore feeling 24 Purported ancestor of Ragnar Lothbrok on TV’s “Vikings” 26 Foothills?

29 Crazy scene 30 Call-day link 31 Value 32 Did a cobbler’s job 34 Stain 37 Hot Wheels Volkswagen?

41 Hoedown move 42 Taking place 44 Is in store for 47 Pine product 49 Maker of the GreenSaver Produce Keeper 50 Potty-training tool?

53 Absolut rival 54 Explosive letters 55 Collector’s __ 56 Reveals in an unwelcome way 58 Naming 60 Mouthpiece for a Lilliputian horse?

64 Nursery supply 65 Psyche component 66 Hiding __ 67 No longer an item 68 Oversaw 69 Teamed (with) DOWN 1 Jams 2 Good remark?

3 Plants with sword-shaped leaves

CLASSIFIEDS

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Lewis

10/16/15

By Mark Bickham

4 Lombardy’s capital 5 Everyone in Mississippi?

6 Big ring name 7 AT&T, for short 8 Grinder 9 1969 hit with the line “You are my candy girl” 10 Botanist Gray 11 Candy heart words 12 Show one’s face 13 Make amends for 18 Outdo 22 Volume measure 24 Abbr. on some cans 25 Hardly a happy ending 27 Where the Santa Maria sank, nowadays 28 Dined on, biblically 30 Dash warning 33 “I suggest you move on” 35 Pie makeup?

36 Stock 38 Plus

Thursday’s Puzzle Solved

SUDOKU TAKING 6 CREDITS

5 8 6 9 4 5 ©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

39 Doesn’t exactly help one’s reputation 40 Stunning or cunning 43 One under a tree, maybe 44 Nissan sedan 45 Start of a pitch 46 Fifth-century Roman Empire enemy 48 In a little while

3 7

1

4 8 5 6 4 1

10/16/15

51 1996 A.L. Rookie of the Year 52 Psi follower 53 Needles 57 Org. whose logo features an eagle head 59 6-Across maker 61 Awfully long time 62 Rocks in a bucket 63 “Ideas worth spreading” acronym

1 7 8 4 6 5 8 5 4

5 2 8 3 9 6

IF YOU MISSED IT SCORES

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MLB Mets 3 Dodgers 2

NFL Saints 31 Falcons 21

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SPORTS OVER 11,000 ROWERS HEAD OF THE CHARLES UPCOMING The largest two-day regatta in the world will begin Saturday in Boston in front of roughly 400,000 spectators.

The Yale heavyweight, lightweight and women’s crew teams will all end their fall season racing in the regatta.

NHL Penguins 2 Senators 0

YALE MEN’S LACROSSE ELIS HOST ISRAELI NATIONAL TEAM Though Yale’s two soccer teams may take center stage at Reese Stadium during the day Saturday, the spotlight that night will be on the Yale men’s lacrosse team, which takes on the Israeli national team at 7 p.m. under the lights.

y

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“We got punched in the mouth, and now the question is, ‘How do you respond?’”

TONY RENO HEAD COACH, FOOTBALL YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

Yale seeks rebound at home VOLLEYBALL

Non-Ivy play ends up north

BY MAYA SWEEDLER STAFF REPORTER On Saturday, the Yale football team travels north — farther north than it ever has — to battle Maine for the first time in 78 years.

FOOTBALL

YALE DAILY NEWS

With two Ivy losses already in the books, all nine of the Elis’ remaining conference matches are crucial toward a title run.

BY JONATHAN MARX STAFF REPORTER After suffering its first Ivy weekend sweep since 2010, the Yale volleyball team looks to rebound and make up ground in the conference title race with two home matches this weekend.

Yale (8–6, 3–2 Ivy) plays host to Penn and Princeton, both of which are jockeying with the Bulldogs for position in the Ancient Eight standings. Penn (9–8, 3–2) sits tied for third place with Yale, while Princeton (7–7, 2–3) lies just one game back in fifth.

The Bulldogs were thoroughly dismantled on the road last weekend, dropping Friday’s four-set match to Dartmouth before being swept in straight sets by rival Harvard on Saturday. While the losses knocked Yale out of the top spot in the Ivy standings, the Elis remain in the thick of the title race if they can regain their early-season form and maintain it for the remainder of the season.

“Being at home is big for us right now,” middle blocker Jesse Ebner ’16 said. “We’ll be comfortable and in our routine, so hopefully we’ll be more ready at the start of our matches.”

The Quakers visit New Haven in the midst of an up-and-down season. Two weeks ago, Penn bested Dartmouth in a three-set road win but suffered a sweep the next day at the hands of Harvard. Most recently, Penn enters the weekend after a fourset home loss to the middling Columbia Lions.

In order to contend with Yale’s hard-hitting attack, Penn will likely rely on the stellar play of outside hitter Alexis Genske, who ranks third in the conference with 196 kills and earned a spot on last week’s Ivy League Honor Roll. Genske was the lone Quaker to record double-

Elis look to crack top defense

BY NICOLE WELLS STAFF REPORTER With the Ivy League season almost at its midpoint, the Yale women’s soccer team hopes to pull out its second-consecutive win against fellow Ancient Eight member, Cornell.

WOMEN’S SOCCER The Big Red (8–1–4, 1–1–1 Ivy) will travel down to New Haven carrying with

YALE DAILY NEWS

In the Bulldogs’ two prior non-conference tests, Yale defeated Colgate and Lehigh.

BY LISA QIAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

SEE W. SOCCER PAGE 10

ROBBIE SHORT/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

STAT OF THE DAY 3

SEE VOLLEYBALL PAGE 10

SEE FOOTBALL PAGE 10

Ivy winless foes to meet

them an impressive feat. In 13 contests thus far, Cornell has conceded just three goals.

The team’s 0.216 goals-against average is number one in not only the Ivy League but in all of NCAA Division I women’s soccer.

Yale (4–5–2, 1–2–0), on the other hand, ranks last in the conference in goals allowed per game while sitting tied for sixth in the league with four shutouts.

Despite the impressive statistics of Cornell’s stellar defense, the Elis are more

Cornell goalkeeper Kelsey Tierney has recorded 11 shutouts thus far this season.

digit kills and digs in both of her matches this past weekend.

The Bulldogs must also focus on containing Penn setter Ronnie Bither, who leads the Ivy League with 9.21 assists per set. Bither also ranks 13th in the Ivy League in digs, one of three Quakers in the conference’s top 15.

The night after its matchup against Penn, Yale plays against Princeton, which enters the weekend on an opposite trajectory from the Bulldogs. While the Elis started the conference season 3–0 before dropping

Though the Black Bears have a sub-0.500 record, they still pose a legitimate challenge to the reeling Bulldogs (3–1, 1–1 Ivy), who are seeking to recover from their first loss of the season — a 35–3 thrashing at the hands of conference rival Dartmouth.

“I said to the guys this morning, if you thought you were going to go through this season without some kind of setback, the numbers aren’t with you guys,” head coach Tony Reno said. “The odds aren’t there. You have to be able to recover from things.”

Recovery might be difficult: Maine (2–3, 2–1 Colonial Athletic Association) matches up against a Yale squad that has suffered at least one injury in every major position group.

Against Dartmouth, the defense played without defensive end Nick Crowle ’18 and defensive back Foye Oluokun ’17, who said he is out for the season following two surgeries to repair an upper-body muscle tear. The wide receiving corps has been decimated, with three of the top four wideouts on the Week One depth chart — Robert Clemons III ’17, Bo Hines ’18 and Myles Gaines ’17 — inactive last week.

Running back Candler Rich ’17 and offensive lineman Jon Bezney ’18 rounded out the group of starters that missed the game.

Hines, who has not played since the first half of the season opener, said he does not expect to play this weekend but hopes to return next week against Penn. Timelines for the remaining injured players have yet to be announced.

“As a coaching staff, we firmly believe the team is 100-strong,” Reno said. “What you do as a staff is build quality depth. The best way to handle injuries is to build up the team and be able to provide answers in the depth chart or in

The Yale men’s soccer team has a great opportunity to move out of last place in the Ivy League standings on Saturday, as it faces another winless conference foe at home.

MEN’S SOCCER Taking on Cornell (2–9–1, 0–2–0 Ivy) at Reese Stadium, the Elis (1–9– 0, 0–2–0) will look to improve on last week’s encouraging match against Dartmouth. The Bulldog defense played one of its best games last Saturday, but its offense recorded just three shots on goal and failed to make its mark on the match. Against the Big Red, Yale will seek to finally play a complete game, complementing the improved back wall with a potent offensive performance.

“First of all, we want to continue to play lock-down defense,” midfielder Nicky Downs ’19 said. “Then, hopefully we’ll get some stuff going on the attack, so we can score a goal.”

Midfielder Archie Kinnane ’18 added that the team has had a good week in practice and hopes that this preparation will translate into success in the Bulldogs’ third conference matchup.

The last time the two teams met, both had plenty of opportunities to take the lead but squandered most of their combined 31 shots. As was the theme throughout the 2014 season,

ROBBIE SHORT/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Both Yale and Cornell boast strong defenses but have struggled offensively. it was the Yale defense that finally yielded with less than 10 minutes left to play. The game winner was scored by Cornell midfielder Conor Goepel, who led the Big Red in goals and points last season but graduated last May. Without its 2014 talisman, the Big Red has struggled to recreate last season’s 10–6–1 campaign and, until this week, its win total was identical to that of Yale. Against Colgate this past Tuesday, Cornell notched its second win of the season, and first in four games,

through an early goal from sophomore defender Eric Nuss. As a result, Cornell will have momentum on its side as the team travels to New Haven.

“We found that Cornell likes to play very direct and very aggressive,” forward and leading Bulldog scorer Kyle Kenagy ’19 said. “They’re going to come out chasing a lot of balls, and we think the best way to deal with it is to be able to control the ball well and SEE M. SOCCER PAGE 10

THE NUMBER OF GOALS ALLOWED BY THE CORNELL WOMEN’S SOCCER TEAM THIS SEASON IN 13 CONTESTS. No other team in all of NCAA Division I women’s soccer has allowed fewer than four.

Meanwhile, Yale has conceded 23 goals in 13 contests.

WEEKEND

// FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015

Rushing out of the Closet Is there a place for LGBTQ students in Greek life and athletics? //NOAH KIM AND ROHAN NAIK //PAGE 3

// TASNIM ELBOUTE

CAVITIES

B2

COMPUTERS

B4

CRYING

B5

OH, ARKANSAS

GREAT BOOKS, BIG DATA

POWERFUL POETRY

Alex Zhang reflects on home and purple cows.

Ian Garcia-Kennedy explores the intersection of literature and code.

Hayun Cho gives us the word on visiting Asian American poets’ performances.

PAGE B2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND VIEWS

ZHANG

THE ARKANSAS TRAVELER // BY ALEX ZHANG

When we registered The Arkansas Society as an official undergraduate organization at Yale, Eli insisted we choose someone — a “Chief Porcellian” — to start each meeting by yelling “WOOOOOO P I I I I I I I I I I I G G G G G G G SO O I IEEEEEEE!!!!!”

On Saturdays, when the seveneight-nine of us gather to watch the Arkansas Razorbacks (the college football team), Eli steps up as our entertainer. And I mean “entertainer” in the Southern sense of the word. His sort of Southern hospitality is some combination of sweet tea from Popeyes, the kind that tastes like leftover Halloween candy you split with your sister, and an open seat on his couch any day of the week. In his mind, he’s memorized a Top Ten Sweet Teas in Hot Springs, Arkansas list, just like I’ve memorized a Top Ten Shittiest Sweet Teas in Little Rock, Arkansas list.

“I don’t know how the heck they make it so sweet,” Eli often says about Popeyes’ glorious nectar (which it is, if you’ve been deprived in the Northeast like us). He says “heck,” not “hell;” “dagnabit,” not “dammit;” “I’m temperate,” not “I don’t drink.” *** Once, at the Purple Cow, I scraped the ice cream from my lips then wondered, “Why is my mouth purple?

What kind of restaurant would dare sell purple milkshakes with free refills?

I know I’m not in heaven, only in the small white building Abrar called the McDonald’s for rich white people who want french fries with sea salt.

Up Hinson road, we sat in emptychurched parking lots & wondered why people were hungry all the time.

When the lights shut off on the asphalt, I swore September would wait as we spoke of forgetting and that time, & that time, as we crushed our cups and wondered what the hell kind of town we were leaving.

I think humans get hungry all the time the way that people forget about the world when they laugh; Abrar once told me the funniest thing he saw that day was an Unexpected Jihad video on Youtube, where Wake Me Up When September Ends plays before interrupted by an explosion; I think it reminded him of an Allah he had forgotten,

and how they might’ve been friends over purple milkshakes in a dinky white restaurant like we were. *** I imagine that if Odysseus had known about dental hygiene, he would have returned home much sooner so he could brush his teeth. On the voyage back, he would have thought, “Wow, I can’t wait to brush my teeth … and to see my wife.” Maybe that’s the best kind of romantic you can hope to be, the kind who loves a person and a place so much the only thing left to think about is taking care of yourself.

In Connecticut, I keep a box of floss at my desk but only open it when my mother calls and tells me to take care of my teeth. On plane rides back, I inspect myself the way dentists rattle off words like “four occlusal” and “we

have a buccal on thirty-three.” Here is number 13, I tell myself, 13 is when your palms first held another girl’s cheek. And look here at M-1, I’ll say, you haven’t called him in two months — we’ll need to fill him in sometime next week. Or, this is all futile, I’ll think, everyone needs dentures by the age of 80 anyway.

The Arkansas Society has a sweet tooth for certain ideas: college football, sweet tea, Bill Clinton, sometimes home, and always Arkansas. At gatherings, when I think of home, my mouth starts to numb like it knows that home is why I love all of my cavities. There is a purple milkshake sitting somewhere in a dinky white restaurant waiting for me, and maybe an empty church parking lot with the lights still shining. I hope there is a toothbrush too.

Contact ALEX ZHANG at alexander.zhang@yale.edu .

AMBROSE

// DAN GORODEZKY

Or are we dancer? // BY GRAHAM AMBROSE

Señora Cordoba commanded her forces with enough confianza — confidence — to impress a military lieutenant. Brief pauses punctuated her rapidfire speech, as if to give her breathless students a fair chance to decipher the meaning of her long-winded instructions.

Every Friday night, the maestra opened dance lessons the same way: screaming, stomping and traipsing icily through the claustrophobic gymnasium stuffed with sweaty middleschoolers.

I couldn’t dance. Instead, I appointed myself translator on the basis of the random bits of Spanish I happened to know. I felt responsible for bridging the great lingual divide and explaining in plain English Señora Cordoba’s cryptic directions. Put your foot here, not there; hands firmly on the upper shoulder; fix your posture in the back.

Each syllable of opaque Spanish presented itself like an audial puzzle meant to be taken apart and pieced back together in English, a different phonetic arrangement. The situation also bore unexpected fruit: the translator controls the conversation as much as any conversant. And power proved inexhaustibly sweet.

Spanish was manageable.

Dance was uncrackable. The maestra herself wasted no time excoriating my attempts to become fluent in the language of kinesthetics.

“No, no, no. It is all wrong,” Señora would mutter reproachfully. Her hands clasped in perfect union behind her back, she marched between the soldiers executing the letter of her

FRIDAY OCTOBER

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orders in perfect formation. I wasn’t cut out for the brigade: my steps were too slow, my spins too uneven and my arms too crooked. I embodied the very opposite of the gracia mastered by my 11-year-old peers as they danced waltzes fit for a royal wedding. I was the jester, enthusiastic in temperament but fatally unready for higher responsibilities. *** Six years later, I took an uneasy step into a dance studio in Chicago’s West Loop and recalled my days as translator.

Back then, I had never thought the language of dance was spoken outside my middle-school gymnasium. And to a boy from northern Illinois, Chicago still seemed a faraway jungle of skyscrapers and wind and suburban terror.

I paused, paralyzed, as my friends advanced confidently toward the dance floor. I thought I wanted to retry my skills, to set back into motion the rusting machinery that had been shut down years earlier by the maestra’s unattainable standards.

It would be romantic to suggest that I began walking toward the dance floor for any reason other than social pressure — social powerlessness. I didn’t hear the music, then, or spot any flicker of gold that drew me in. I did it not for the aesthetic of fun, nor of freedom, nor of carefree passion. No. At the edge of the world, torn between the comfort and the challenge, I licked my lips and tasted the forbidden fruit from middle school. I wanted to prove

that I could still translate.

I could see the walls moving, and the crowd seemed to engulf me. Sure enough, a minute into the gambol, the uncouth ways of my sixth-grade self returned — poor form, egregious rhythm, abrupt movements. I could feel the heavy eye-roll of Señora Cordoba cast down upon me like a cinderblock. Nothing had changed. My translating was flawed.

I spun around, expecting to find adults moving with same perfect military precision that I had come to loathe. But on all sides, I was shocked to find men and women reveling in missed step and broken beat. They weren’t adult versions of the sixth-graders who waltzed circles around my failure six years prior; they were adult versions of me.

Everyone was doing it wrong.

But an outsider would never have known. The cavorters were not good dancers, but they were certainly good pretenders. Laughter and smiles made it hard to tell the difference.

Señora Cordoba wanted me to learn to walk. But I would much prefer to talk, to use dance as a language for self-expression rather than a marching order of self-repression. Perfecting the art did not mean perfecting the language. Rather, it involved a learned acceptance of “good enough” known across every mother tongue.

I still couldn’t waltz, foxtrot or blitz, but on the dance floor, I could be happy. Podría estar feliz.

//CHAI-RIN KIM

Contact GRAHAM AMBROSE at graham.ambrose@yale.edu .

SEARCH VS. RE-SEARCH: JOSEF ALBERS 36 Edgewood Ave., Room 204 // 10 a.m.

Found vs. Founder. Lighting vs. Lighning-bug.

Syllables are important.

WKND RECOMMENDS: Laugh and the world laughs with you.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B3

WEEKEND QUEER Alina Yaman ’17 still remembers walking up the steps of Sigma Nu one night during their freshman year. It was their first time at a frat party at Yale. However, their story diverged from the typical freshman experience when a brother at the door wouldn’t let Yaman — who describes themself as “not feminine-presenting” — enter the party even while others flowed in. Yaman was only able to gain entrance after informing brothers at the door that their own brother was on the soccer team, along with many members of Sig Nu. Yaman left the fraternity soon after getting inside.

It wasn’t the only time. Yaman, who identifies as genderqueer and bisexual and uses “they” pronouns, encountered the same situation at Zeta Psi two weekends ago. That night, they were denied entrance and told it was an invite-only party; meanwhile, brothers were letting in streams of “girls with long hair.” “[It was] degrading and humiliating,” they said. “I don’t want someone to look at me, say ‘Oh, you don’t look like someone I would want to hook up with, so I’m not going to let you in,’ and then try my hardest to get in. It’s stupid, and what’s the point?”

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

WE FEW, WE BAND OF BROTHERS // BY NOAH KIM AND ROHAN NAIK

In the past few years, issues surrounding sexual misconduct have brought national attention to fraternities at Yale. Some members of the LGBTQ community say treatment of queer students should also be in the limelight. For many, the single-gender nature of Greek-life institutions indicates that queerness does not have a place in the community.

They see Greek life as enforcing already rigid gender norms.

Max Goldberg ’17, leader of the YCC task force on LGBTQ Resources and an LGBTQ peer liaison, said that on an ideological level it can be hard for queer and trans people to be involved with Greek life because their identities often defy gender norms. He noted that these differences can lead to conflict, as they inherently contradict the idea of heterosexual brotherhood that underscores fraternity life.

Rianna Johnson-Levy ’17, coordinator of the LGBTQ Cooperative, said some queer women feel that other queer women attach a stigma to Greek life. She noted that she sees a lot of potential for sororities to be powerful groups of women; however, she feels unable to fit in because of the some of the traditionally feminine aspects of sorority life, such as wearing dresses and make-up.

“People come in with the assumption that sororities are about meeting boys.

Being a queer woman is so heavily associated with being a feminist and radical,” she said.

“There’s this idea that feminism and Greek life are incompatible.”

In addition to the problems posed by pressure to conform to gender norms, both queer and straight students voiced concerns about the heteronormativity of Greek life, especially with regard to formals and mixers, which are typically held between one allmale and one all-female group. The underlying assumption of heterosexuality can make members who are not straight feel excluded from one of the core activities of Greek life.

While most queer students interviewed have had overall positive experiences with Greek life, many of its features make the experience distinct for a queer student.

Gabriela*, a queer woman who wished to keep her name and sorority anonymous for personal privacy, noted that in an organization that is predominantly straight it is easy to feel like an outsider.

“No matter how tolerant you are, frats are still heteronormative institutions,” Jacob Woocher ’16, a former fraternity member, said. “I don’t know how to get around that.”

Queer members of fraternities noted that media depictions of Greek life further the perception that being straight is a requisite for participation in Greek life. Recent media reports, keen to highlight problematic heterosexual dynamics, have focused on the sexist culture of fraternity men, but have paid little attention to queer identities within these groups.

Luc Ryan-Schreiber ’17, a gay member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, said he “thought he hated frats” while in high school, but that the realities of frat life at Yale confounded his expectations and contradicted his initial fears.

Sigma Phi Epsilon member Will McGrew ’18 added that he initially had no intention of rushing, as he takes issue with single-gender institutions, but that he found Sig Ep to be especially respectful to people of all genders.

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

// TASNIM ELBOUTE

FRIDAY OCTOBER

16

FLOUNDERS’ DAY

Cross Campus // 11:30 a.m.

There will be swedish fish, goldfish and SWUGfish.

While many assume that Greek life is an exclusively straight space, many queer students at Yale have found it to be a welcoming home.

That being said, it is a home that poses substantive issues for its queer members.

“It’s a very hetero space and the assumption is that you’re straight always,” RyanSchreiber said.

Other queer students involved in Greek life shared this ambivalent view, noting that they joined the organizations to find a social community of shared interests but did not expect to forge queer relationships.

Sophie Freeman ’18, a queer member of Kappa Alpha Theta, said she was initially

hesitant about broaching her sexuality with the group, although that was not a reflection of Theta’s inclusiveness but rather of her own coming-out process.

Ryan-Schreiber agreed, noting that he feels SAE is an inclusive space and that he has not experienced direct homophobia.

Still, he noted that the lack of openly gay members sometimes makes it difficult for such brothers to express their desires for the organization. He estimated there are only around four openly queer members of SAE. While both Freeman and Ryan-Schreiber found the assumption of heterosexuality at times tiresome, they insisted that it isn’t restrictive. Ryan-Schreiber said he has brought male dates to mixers, and Freeman said she felt very welcome bringing her girlfriend to a Theta formal.

Despite a general attitude of inclusion, some members pointed to certain subtle displays of homophobia that still persist within fraternities.

McGrew says he does not have vivid tales to tell because the general culture precludes blatant displays of homophobia. Still, he said that homophobia can manifest itself in more “tactful” ways. For example, he noted that at parties, a straight man might address only the women in a given group, ignoring the queer men.

A High Street fraternity member, who wished to remain anonymous because he felt uncomfortable speaking negatively about his fraternity, said that open slurs are uncommon. Instead, he said, homophobia is veiled in certain comments. For example, if a crowd at a party included many gays or other minorities, a brother might say, “Wow, this sucks,” and not explicitly, “I wish there were others,” referring to white, straight students.

He added that there is a “thinly veiled desire” among fraternity brothers to hang out with people who share a “rich, white, straight culture.” He alluded to a High Street versus non-High Street divide amongst frats, and believes active homophobia to be more present in non-High Street frats.

Those frats are seen as more traditionally masculine and conservative, and while members may be tolerant of a queer population at Yale, they do not like the idea of their “bros” being gay.

Goldberg agreed, adding that Delta Kappa Epsilon or Zeta, which are affiliated with athletic teams, can be more problematic as teams tend to emphasize and police masculinity.

Presidents of DKE and Zeta did not respond to requests for comment.

According to Alex Borsa ’16, former coordinator of the LGBTQ Cooperative, though gay members are present in certain Yale fraternities, they tend to be “masculine gay guys or gay men who can pass for straight.”

He said that the type of queer student represented in Greek life is only a small subset of the queer population on campus.

Sorority members were quick to distance their organizations from fraternities, which they see as less focused on tolerance and inclusion.

Those interviewed added that it is often more socially acceptable for women to be sexually fluid without being immediately labeled, while men are often seen as either gay or straight. According to Goldberg, the bar is much lower for men to be labeled as gay in a frat than women as queer in a sorority; he noted that fraternities are more able to identify specific queer members than sororities.

Queer women in sororities noted that they feel little pressure to divulge information about their sex lives. Gabriela explained that in her understanding, open conversations about hookups were prevalent in fraternity chapter meetings, whereas in a sorority meeting one would not be expected to reveal such information.

While they are not unhappy with their positions in the Greek life scene, there was a general consensus amongst queer students interviewed that fraternities and sororities can create a better dialogue around LGBTQ inclusion.

Gabriela said she wished her sorority openly discussed queerness, rather than leaving it as an “unnamed part of life.” She added that the fault lies with both straight and queer members, as straight members tend to focus on interaction with male groups, while queer members do not look to Greek life to provide a romantic outlet and thus do not broach the issue.

Freeman said sororities could take a more proactive role in recruiting diversely, something she feels they are waiting to be asked to do.

Students interviewed advocated for greater discussion within the community about how to make spaces more queerfriendly. Noting the success of recent discussions about sexual assault in fraternities, they hope to expand such conversations to include institutional receptivity to the queer community.

“If [queer acceptance] were promoted in any way, it would become a norm,” McGrew said. “We just aren’t recognizing there’s a problem at all.”

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE Nonetheless, queer students praised certain organizations on campus for providing

WKND RECOMMENDS: Slow and steady wins the race.

SEE QUEER PAGE 8

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND DATA

MINING

LITERATURE IN THE TIME OF COMPUTERS // BY IAN GARCIA-KENNEDY

//ASHLYN OAKES

Are the humanities doomed?

Compared to the fast-moving worlds of computer science and physics, analyzing ancient texts seems increasingly retrograde.

With growing student demands to invest money into more ostensibly forward-thinking departments, such as computer science and engineering, the humanities seem to be under attack from a hostile brand of modernity. But rather than push back, a small group of professors and students have absorbed the techniques and practices of the sciences. In doing so, they’ve brought a new area of study to Yale: the digital humanities.

“Digital humanities” is a broad term that encompasses any approach to the humanities relying on digitization. According to English professor Wai Chee Dimock GRD ’82, there are three discrete focuses within digital humanities: broadening access, online teaching and data mining.

Broadening access is generally accomplished by uploading great works, such as Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis,” to online databases. Online teaching is self-explanatory. But the most revelatory area is likely data mining — a term generally heard almost exclusively in the context of STEM subjects. It’s difficult to wrap one’s head around (or see the use in) the concept of applying quantification to literary texts, but Dimock provided a helpful example.

“I have a hunch that the word ‘extinction’ is used by Melville more often in conjunction with Native Americans than with plants and animals,” she explained. “However, if I were to write a full-length essay on the use of the word ‘extinction,’ I’d definitely want to do this as a data-mining project, tracking down every instance of the word’s usage and correlating that with the recurrence of other words.”

Such specific, detail-oriented

FRIDAY OCTOBER

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insights would be nearly impossible to glean through traditional research methods. It’s the unique ability of computers to process massive chunks of data — or perform macro-analysis — with total accuracy.

At Yale, the digital humanities are broken up into separate “projects,” each with its own focus.

Their range is truly staggering, encompassing Western and Eastern texts, Modernism and preModern scrolls. Pericles Lewis, a professor of English and comparative literature and the president of Yale-NUS College, is the project director of the Modernism Lab. He created the lab, a virtual space for collaborative research on literary modernism, out of his own frustration with what he believed to be an underutilization of digitized resources.

Lewis recalled that the earliest digital humanities projects were based on a “publishing” model in which researchers would take what would otherwise be in a book and put it on the Web. “I saw wikis especially as a way to do collaborative research, but unlike [with] Wikipedia, I wanted the Modernism Lab to reflect scholarly debates and the voices of the individual contributors,” he said. Far from an online database, the Modernism Lab serves as more of a virtual think tank.

East Asian Languages and Literatures professor Michael Hunter shared a similar collaborative sentiment. He is one of the heads of the Ten Thousand Rooms Lab, a workspace designed for uploading and studying premodern Chinese texts. The lab’s name itself comes from a premodern Chinese poem by Du Fu, and gives a good idea of the project’s less-than-modest ambition: “If I could get a mansion with a thousand, ten thousand rooms A great shelter for all the world’s scholars, together in joy, Solid as a mountain, the elements could not move it.”

“The goal of the Ten Thousand Rooms Project is to create an online platform or workspace for the collaborative translation, transcription and annotation of pre-modern Chinese texts,” Hunter explained. “Once users contribute a certain number of texts and a certain amount of content, the platform will also be useful as a searchable database.”

He was also quick to point out that the programs being used are not inherently limited to premodern Chinese texts. In fact, the underlying software was initially created for medieval European texts, so there’s no reason to believe that it cannot be repurposed once again.

A single digital humanities lab can focus on a topic as broad as Modernism or something as narrow as the work of a single figure. The Brodsky Lab at Yale falls into the latter category. The lab is named for the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, who suffered an almost 10-year-long KGB campaign against him and subsequently emigrated to the United States. Brodsky taught at several universities — including Yale — and was eventually appointed poet laureate. Now, the Brodsky Lab uses new digital tools to explore his massive body of work, as well as his incident-packed life.

A third-year Ph.D. student in the lab, Carlotta Chenoweth GRD ’19, presented her findings at a University of Pennsylvania conference last spring. Her project, “Brodsky in absentia: An Interactive Map of Exile,” created a digital map of Brodsky’s travels in letters, interviews and poetry.

“As exile became the central theme of his creative output, ‘Brodsky in absentia’ complicates assumptions students may have regarding the experience of exile,” Chenoweth explained. “From quotidian matters to political angling, Brodsky’s exilic experience was immensely complex.”

Jacob Lassin GRD ’19, also a

“NO POP” OPENING RECEPTION 130 Park St. // 6 p.m.

NO LIE, this is gonna be great.

third year Ph.D. student, focuses less on the biographical details of Brodsky’s life and more on his work. His research involves building a database of feminine rhymes — the rhyming of two or more final syllables — in Brodsky’s poetry, in order to gain a better understanding of the nature of such rhymes in both Russian and English. “Produced” and “reduced” is an example of a masculine rhyme, in which only the final syllables rhyme, whereas “painted” and “acquainted” is an example of feminine rhyme, in which the last two syllables rhyme.

FOR THE FIRST TIME, PROFESSORS INVOLVED IN THE DIGITAL HUMANITIES ARE SHAPING SCIENCE AND DATA ANALYTICS AROUND THEIR OWN NEEDS. Lassin noted that while common in Russian poems, feminine rhymes are apparently quite rare in English poetry. The feminine rhyme sounds odd when used in English, yet Brodsky fought to retain it in translations of his poems. Macro-analysis of these feminine rhymes may be used to demonstrate larger trends in his writing.

In spite of the massive possibilities unlocked by digital research, questions remain about the potential limitations of digital humanities. For instance, is it possible for such macro-analysis of great literature and poetry to eliminate the intangible nature of art?

One of the insights gained by the Brodsky Lab through data

mining was the recurring motif of snow in Brodsky’s poems. While anyone who has done significant research on Brodsky could tell you that snow comes up a lot, such macro-analysis of his oeuvre reveals the sheer extent of his love for “snow.” But the question remains: does the computer executing the data mining even know what snow means? Will students of the lab be able to cite the average number of times “snow” is used per masterpiece, yet be unable to say anything about what the snow represents, or how Brodsky varies its usage? By reducing art to data codes, do the digital humanities estrange students from the very works they study?

Slavic Languages and Literatures professor Marijeta Bozovic, head of the Brodsky Lab, certainly does not think so. In fact, she discussed the unique possibilities of such estrangement: “I encourage students to produce original scholarship as soon as possible — that is, to contribute new knowledge about a body of work or cultural moment. Without some degree of estrangement from established modes of reading already established works, a really creative and novel contribution is impossible.”

For Bozovic, estrangement isn’t something to be feared — rather, we should almost embrace it.

Without estrangement, we bring previous assumptions and prejudices to research. And such closemindedness can instigate a dearth of new opinions. Lassin, the graduate student who wrote about feminine rhymes, feels that initial estrangement leads to deeper connection.

“I felt closer to the material,” he said of Brodsky’s work. “My specific project allowed me to see poetics in a whole new way and engage with the material much more strongly.”

Bozovic was also quick to point out that humanities research

is already largely dominated by computers, whether in the form of typing up papers or searching web databases. Past humanities majors have had to passively accept the technological changes issued to them by computer programmers. Now, for the first time, professors involved in the digital humanities are shaping science and data analytics around their own needs.

However, the movement is far from unimpeachable. One need only do a quick online search to find articles like “Literature is not Data: Against Digital Humanities.” The authors make a notentirely unpersuasive case that big data will soon overtake literature the same way it has overtaken music, social life and even romance. Only time will tell if the doomsday predictors are right.

Bozovic’s other areas of interest include the Russian avantgarde. When I corresponded with her, a poem came up — almost in passing, and completely tangential to our conversation. The poem is called “Dyr bul shchyl” and was written in 1912 by Aleksei Kruchenykh. A little research reveals that it is considered the most famous transrational (adj.

— going beyond or surpassing human reason) poem. Moreover, the poem is written in Zaum, a language that Kruchenykh himself invented, which is apparently defined by a lack of definite meaning.

“Dyr bul shchyl” is in many ways nonsensical, all harsh consonants, yet its entire purpose is to capture some primal feeling that modern language cannot.

When existing language was not enough for the poet, he invented his own. And the professors of digital humanities have done the same thing in their research. They are inventing a new language of humanities.

Contact IAN GARCIA-KENNEDY at ian.garcia-kennedy@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: There are some things which it is better not to know.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B5

WEEKEND ARTS

RECOLLECTIONS OF ROBERT REED // BY TÉA BEER

// TÉA BEER

At 8:25 a.m. on the first day of classes of my freshman year, I walked into Basic Drawing. There were about thirty students; Professor Reed sat on a stool in the middle of the room. His face was stern and his gaze piercing. He told us that Basic Drawing should be required for all Yalies, because it taught people to see. I texted my mother after class to tell her that I would cry a lot but learn a lot with Professor Reed. Basic Drawing challenged me like no other class I’ve taken. I learned about spatial experiences, how to make a drawing convincing, about investing in each mark on the page. It pushed me to my limits and forced me to stretch myself in ways I didn’t know I could bear. Somehow I came out of it, and at the end Professor Reed called me a “goddamn soldier.”

I took Introduction to Painting last fall with him as my sophomore advisor. Room 207 in Green Hall became my second home on campus, where I laughed and sang and cried my way (again) through the semester with my classmates.

We formed our own set of vocabulary for the visual literacy Professor Reed constructed in that room: “Marlon Brando,” “Straight No Chaser,” “make those colors behave.” Professor Reed could be very harsh, but I came to see with increasing clarity during my second semester with him that he demanded so much from us because he believed so intensely in us, often more than we believed in ourselves. A deep kindness pierced through his stern facade.

One day I was sick, and he told me to either lie down on the couch or go home. When I lay down, he

draped a blanket over me and kept one eye on me for the rest of class.

This year, as the wind turns sharper and the colors of New England autumn begin to tinge the leaves, I cry again, but for a different reason. It is hard for me to enter Green Hall without feeling the pang of absence. After a long battle with cancer, Professor Robert Reed ’60 ART ’62 no longer passes through the halls where he walked from 1958 to December 2014 as an undergraduate, a graduate student and a teacher.

I used to get so frustrated in his class. I felt that his expectations of our work were too rigid.

He wanted observational drawings of convincing spatial experiences, and anything else was not valid. But this past summer, a painting of his up in the new Whitney Museum in New

York left me happily astonished: happy to see a work by a professor I loved, and astonished to see the decided abstraction of that work.

In the painting was the simultaneous ratification and denial of what he taught us about spatial experiences and ellipses and line weight. Seeing it freed me, somehow, from the strictness of his teaching.

Professor Robert Reed lives on in his works. There are about 30 of them on view in Green Hall until Nov. 12. If you didn’t have the opportunity to study with him, spending some time with these works in all their meticulous complexity might introduce you to the man who dedicated over 50 years of his life to sharing his passion for art with this community.

When I look at the smaller pieces in the first and second

rooms of the exhibition, I can feel how painstaking Professor Reed was. These abstract works are highly complex and layered, yet his precision orders the chaos.

The three large purple paintings in the stairwell deny depth to the composition through the impossible overlapping of sweeping color planes and flat, bare rectangles. Though they are less compressed, they still convey the exactness of Professor Reed’s eye. The latest paintings, in the pit space, combine the meticulous diligence of his early period and the large gestures of his middle works, bringing together Professor Reed’s endless carefulness and intensity.

And so I miss him. His presence remains in the conversations I have with other students of his, where we share in the pri-

vate vocabulary of his classroom, in the stories about him we tell to people who didn’t study with him, and in me, every time I try to make something from the world around me into something wrought from my own hands.

The Yale School of Art is attempting to both establish the Robert Reed Scholarship Fund in his honor and name the classroom G-01 in Green Hall, home to many of the introductory art classes, after him. This would be the first classroom in the School of Art named after a person of color. If you would like to contribute, please send donations to the Yale University School of Art and note that the donation is for the Robert Reed Fund.

Contact TÉA BEER at tea.beer@yale.edu .

These words are songs // BY HAYUN CHO

It is Monday night in Calhoun Cabaret, and Jook Songs, Yale’s Asian-American spoken word group, opens for Jess X. Chen and Will Giles’ Asian American Pacific Island Poetry Tour. The stage glows as three undergraduate poets deliver their pieces; each performance is a seed of truth, delivered with rare emotional audacity. The show is graced with a good audience. There is tangible warmth in the clapping, dense snaps and even some moans (always a staple) here and there. This is performance poetry: the poets give themselves to the audience, the audience gives themselves to the poets. Put everything from joy to rage in a room and people will listen — people will be honest for once. When the last student poet finishes her poem, an expectant hush fills the cabaret. Last Words * First Songs has begun.

Why Last Words? Why First Songs? Later, Jess and Will explain why they chose this particular title for their tour. It is a testament to the resilience of the immigrant experience, or the act of leaving and starting all over again; it is a testament to generations of blood.

Will starts the show. “How do you stand when your roots have been burned away?” he asks as he stares directly into the stage lights. He navigates colonial oppression, particularly the U.S. occupation of Hawaii and the Samoan Islands. He confronts his own immigrant identity as a second-generation Samoan-American and reflects on the past gen-

eration’s pain of what to do “when you are forced to choose whether to put your children in culture or clothing.” Will is fearless in his confrontation of both the burden and blessing of bloodline. He ends one of his pieces with “I am the blood that I want.” Will insists on reclaiming space; he sheds and claims parts of himself onstage. He is unafraid to revisit pain, to leave it. Halfway through the show, he jokes, “After performing each poem, I imagine being a snake and saying, ‘I’m done with this body!’”

When Jess X. Chen walks onstage, no one knows what to do. Even snapping seems too half-hearted — we resort to thunderous applause. Jess has a piercing gaze that is not only soulful but also has the power of holding the audience accountable. Everything about her presence asks the listener to understand the immense weight and the immense joy of her reflections. She confronts diaspora as a first-generation Chinese-American poet: “We marched on until our voices carved a canyon to the other side of the world.” She also addresses colonial trauma, the queer and colored body, and the body of the earth. Jess stops performing for a moment to tell us she believes that the radical imagination it takes families to move across borders is not unlike the radical imagination of art.

According to Jess, migration is an act of imagination, and imagination is “daring to love what is not in front of you.” When she says this, peering at us with her arms tilted upwards, I cannot help but bite my lip to keep from crying. When I look around at the other people in the room, I see other people doing the same, wiping their eyes and grinning. I

hear muffled sobs in the second row.

What is it that makes us cry?

After the show, I see students, mostly students of color, flocking to Jess and Will, thanking them, embracing them, trying their best to schmooze in an honest way. I am one of them. I hug both of them and thank them for their work. I tell them that I’ve always felt what they address in their pieces but I could never write it down. I am an incoherent mess. Perhaps what I want to say is, “I am so happy to see two poets of color owning a space and daring the world to love them back.” “I am so happy to see you flourishing as activists, filmmakers, artists and writers when the American arts scene is so stale with whitewashed ideals that stand upon a history of violence.”

Or, “I want to be like you.”

Jess tells me to ask her for advice. “I remember when I was starting off as a writer,” she said.

“It was communities like this that made it all worth it.” We leave the cabaret in a daze, some of us holding newly purchased prints; Jess is also a visual artist and sold some of her artwork. Her prints reflect the themes of her work — one, depicting a soaring bird with human figures holding hands and running beneath a night sky, struck me as a beautiful homage to the various journeys and communities immigrants make in their lives. We are all different bloodlines, walking out, and it is not an overstatement when I say it is joy we seem to feel. At the end of the show, Will told us his rules for poetry. One, be the best listener in the room. Two, love louder than you listen. I loved louder that night than I had in a long while.

Contact HAYUN CHO at hayun.cho@yale.edu .

// MATTHEW LEIFHEIT

FRIDAY OCTOBER

16

SEDGEWICK AVE

Afro American Cultural Center // 8 p.m.

“You better lose yourself in the music, the moment / You own it, you better never let it go / You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow / This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.”

WKND RECOMMENDS: Sometimes we can be too clever for our own good.

PAGE B6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND JUST

DESSERTS

WHAT DINING HALL DESSERT ARE YOU?

START

// BY WKND

It’s dessert time!

Where are you?

Grabbing something for the road

On my way to a talk — I’m trying to be mindful

Just a few friends engaging in meaningful conversation

Do you Insta your coffee or children that aren’t yours?

APPLE CARDAMOM OLIVE OIL CAKE Like celery, you may be svelte but have no nutritional value. Draw your own conclusions.

FRIDAY

16

MOONSONG

Yale Cabaret // 8 p.m.

The moving story of a son and his ailing mother told through a variety of theatrical forms.

It’s just as bad for you as chocolate cake, but with exotic spices and a stylish name it seems so healthy you just have to eat it. Normally, you don’t put toxins like that in your body, unless they come in a Lucky Strike box — on weekends you head to the farmer’s market to see and be seen, and you haven’t eaten bread without nuts in it since 2005. You own more than one pair of status footwear and your backpack really expresses who you are. In your spare time you enjoy knowledgeably disagreeing with Aristotle.

Are you going out tonight?

If I don’t, people will think something’s wrong

I haven’t had time for that since Camp Yale

Kids

CELERY

We take up a long table and everyone can hear what we’re saying

What’s the crew like tonight?

Gotta make a meeting

Koffee

Settled into the dining hall with my squad

I don’t eat dessert

How come?

OCTOBER

PAGE B7

MAGIC BAR

TRES LECHES Your experiences abroad have really changed you as person. Five years ago you did two days of service work in another country, and now you’re just so open to what other cultures have to teach us. You personally know three catchphrases in another language (one of which is “tres leches”) and you use them liberally to alert others as to just how much of a global citizen you are. Other hobbies include patronizing ethnic restaurants, wearing shirts with inspirational quotes, and posting #tbt Instas of you doing good in other lands.

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Just as the Magic Bar is an uneasy alliance of chocolate, coconut, graham cracker and peanuts, you are a jumble of the various activities to which you have overcommitted yourself. You’re active in a cappella, a peer liaison, the bulwark of your college’s IM team — and you definitely had to apply to your major. You’re probably a campus celebrity, or at least a section asshole. Being involved up to your ears is a good way to combat the gaping existential abyss that surfaces when you have half an hour of free time. Just be careful lest you slip up and join CLAY and RALY at the same time.

SATURDAY OCTOBER

A fish in the hand is worth two in the sea.

//AMANDA MEI

17

SAVING MES AYNAK Luce Hall // 7 p.m.

A documentary about a mission to save a 5,000-year-old archaeology site in Afghanistan.

CHERRY CRUMBLE You’re as American as apple pie — or in this case, as cherry crumble. It reminds you of the good old days sitting on the front porch griping about those darned socialists. You enjoy doing patriotic things, like wearing American flag apparel and getting wasted in the name of our forefathers, and you love words like “forefathers” because you’ll defend your vernacular from gender-inclusivity to the last breath. There is a 100 percent chance you participated in Elihu Day.

WKND RECOMMENDS: It is easy to think of impossible solutions.

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND QUEER

ATHLETES, ALLIES AND ASSUMPTIONS // BY NOAH KIM AND ROHAN NAIK

QUEER FROM PAGE 3 a more inclusive atmosphere than others.

For example, Gabriela noted that Sig Ep is known for having greater queer visibility than other fraternities. She believes that Sig Ep has a better reputation than certain sororities with regard to diversity of members’ sexual orientation.

Sig Ep President Amin Mirzadegan ’17 said the organization’s diversity in sexuality results from a commitment to overall inclusiveness and its efforts to pull members from different areas of campus. He added that Sig Ep still has room for improvement and can do more to support its queer members.

A notable substitute to the gendered Greek organizations is Fence Club, a social club with a house on High Street.

Fence functions similarly to a fraternity, with open parties, a rush process and an off-campus space, but it is co-ed. Perhaps because of this, Fence is known for its high proportion of openly queer individuals.

Fence President Eric Nelson ’16, who identifies as gay, said as a co-ed group, Fence does not have a hyper-masculine or feminine component, and so people of all creeds can fit in.

He noted that a man choosing to join a co-ed frat rather than normal frat shows he is comfortable bending traditional notions of Greek life. Once a group already has that ideology, having queer members doesn’t alter the dynamic.

“We have more queer representation now then when I joined, but Fence doesn’t feel any gayer,” he said. “The culture has always been open and accepting and free.”

According to Emily*, a queer junior in Fence, the co-ed nature of the group, in conjunction with fact it rarely does mixers, creates an atmosphere with less focus on sex and romance.

“Unlike other spaces it’s just a group of friends,” she said.

“It’s not just another gendered group.”

OUT OF THE CLOSET, ONTO THE FIELD Because athletic teams and Greek life often overlap, the lack of openly queer members in fraternities and sororities can be traced to the disproportionately straight makeup of teams on campus. Many assumed Princeton football player Mason Darrow to be the only openly gay D-I player in the country when he came out last month.

“This is really unfamiliar territory, because there aren’t many openly out athletes, and you hear about them very much through rumor. Because of that, it puts a lot of weight onto individuals for feeling out their own environments,” said Donovan*, a gay junior on the varsity swim team.

He said that he and another friend of his were only aware of a half-dozen queer athletes.

Ryan-Schreiber echoed his

SATURDAY OCTOBER

17

s e n timents, saying that he believes that Yale hasn’t hit a critical mass of out queer athletes.

“I can only think of seven of literally hundreds,” he said.

“That makes it hard because if you have seven, two are seniors, then the next year, you’re down to five because the new freshmen may not be out.”

Yaman said that they believe the insular nature of varsity athletics means that athletes aren’t exposed to as many diverse backgrounds and viewpoints. Yaman and RyanSchreiber agree that part of what helps students come into their identities at Yale is meeting different people and having diverse experiences.

“That happens less with athletes because they get closed into their groups and don’t have much time to spend with people outside of their scene.”

Stefan Paul Palios ’14, a queer athlete on the track and field team, echoed their sentiments, saying that at Yale, the team is its own world that can sometimes lead to a physical separation from suitemates, friends and professors.

Different teams have different attitudes towards sexuality and gender identity. However, a majority of athletes interviewed referred to their teammates as close friends and praised them for their efforts to shape inclusive environments.

Isaac Amend, a transgender athlete currently on the Yale Men’s Rugby Team, said that before he transitioned, he had a negative experience on the women’s cross country team because his identity made it hard for him to fit in with other team members.

“However, the Yale Men’s Rugby was totally accepting of my transgender identity — the president, Louis Metcalfe ’16, personally invited me to coffee and explicitly expressed pride at the fact that he was playing alongside a transgender man,” he said. “Times are changing; I feel like I’m watching historic change unfold day by day.”

Donovan said that he had always had a close relationship with his teammates. He told WKND that many of his negative experiences with homophobia were mitigated by the fact that his teammates stood up for him and called out others, even others on the team, who insulted him.

Katie Chockley ’14, former head of the student organization Athletes and Allies and a former member of both the varsity track and cross country teams, likewise lauded the efforts of her fellow runners, saying that her friends on the team had done everything they could to make her feel a part of the team. Chockley came out by revealing that she was

// TASNIM ELBOUTE

bringing a girl to Fr e s h man Screw and described the experience as relatively painless.

“I was so nervous the first time I took a group shower with the team because I was worried people were going to think I was checking them out.

But while we were doing that, one of my teammates turned to me and asked me if I’d had any good hookups lately. And that totally put me at ease. What that told me was, ‘You’re gay, but I’m cool with that aspect about you,’” she said.

ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK? Despite the affection that most athletes felt towards their team members, many stated that they had endured alienating experiences because of their sexuality.

Chockley said that during Spring Fling of her freshman year, a group of male juniors and seniors gathered around her while she was making out with another girl and started pointing and laughing at them.

“It could’ve been because of freshman PDA, or it could have been because I was with a girl, but that was super uncomfortable to say the least,” she said. “There are major power dynamics involved with a group of men laughing at two lesbian girls, even if all of them think gay marriage is a good thing.”

Palios mentioned an incident during which one of his teammates shouted a homophobic slur at him in a locker room.

“What really crushed me was that my team did nothing, and when I looked at them later, they said ‘It’s between you and him, and we’re not going to get involved,’” he said.

“It made me feel like absolute shit.”

Most queer athletes interviewed said that they believed explicit displays of homophobia and non-acceptance to be rare. Many talked about the prevalence of homophobic language in athletic spaces and about feeling left out when their teammates talked about their romantic lives.

Palios said that he was particularly bothered when his teammates treated homosexuality as a joke. “There were constant wisecracks about anal sex, liking dick and being obsessed with their body.”

Several athletes expressed disappointment with the methods by which their coaches had responded to dis-

LGBTQ CO-OP SWING & BLUES DANCE

plays of queerness.

Ryan-Schreiber said that his freshman year rugby coach had been one of the most homophobic people he had encountered at Yale.

“We were in the car coming back from practice, and he was going on about these fags that were messing with his backyard, and every other word was ‘fag.’ The whole thing was absurd. It was almost of a caricature of a coach from the 1970s.”

Palios said that he was upset by the method by which coaches had dealt with homophobia on the team.

“Instead of saying, ‘team, this is what we’re doing,’ they spoke to individuals,” he said.

“It didn’t help to create a whole team culture of acceptance.”

Yaman advocated educational programs for coaches that would help them understand the experiences of and problems faced by queer athletes.

ALLIES FOR ATHLETES Athletes and Allies, a club for queer athletes, originally began in 2009 as an annual event organized by the Director of Yale’s new Office of LGBTQ Resources Maria Trumpler GRD ’92.

“It didn’t start out as much.

The first time it happened, it was basically just a single gay varsity athlete and Maria Trumpler sitting there and eating pizza,” said Chockley.

Chockley rebooted Athletes and Allies after the organization stopped meeting during her sophomore year. By her estimate, a mix of about 20 club and varsity athletes attended. Following the meeting, those assembled decided to transform the gathering into a legitimate club that would meet more regularly and host additional events.

During the spring of 2012, Athletes and Allies organized an ally campaign that encouraged more inclusive behavior. During the campaign, 246 athletes signed pledges not to use derogatory and otherwise homophobic language and to call out others around them for doing so.

“What was really interesting about that, was this one guy on the men’s base-

ball team came up to me the next year and told me that he and his teammates started out by treating the whole thing as a joke, like, yelling out ‘Be an ally!’ whenever anybody said the word ‘faggot’ or used the word ‘gay’ in a derogatory way,” said Chockley. “But over time somehow, it actually turned into them literally policing each other about homophobic language.”

Chockley said that she believed that this method was a less confrontational way of correcting behavior.

“One of the things is that if you start policing language, people start getting defensive because it feels as if you’re saying that they’re bad people for speaking a certain way,” she said. “No one likes policing their friends, so if you make a game out of it, the stakes are a lot lower.”

Despite the role the organization has played since its establishment, several queer athletes have expressed hesitations about becoming involved.

Donovan said that he has always been reluctant to attend meetings.

“It’s obviously a very individual decision, but there are a lot of people who are freshmen who don’t want to go to a place that’ll automatically out them,” he said. “For other people it’s a good thing. For me it was a little too much.”

Ryan-Schreiber believes that there should be a more systematic way for athletes to come out to their team members. He advocated internal resources within the athletics department and an organized support system through which athletes could reach out and talk to someone.

“As a freshman you have resources,” he said. “There’s a LGBTQ resource center with PLs, but the issues that face athletes are very different than the ones faced by anyone else at Yale.”

He added that freshmen athletes should get emails from

t h e i r teams telling them about available resources for queer athletes. He also recommended that they be provided with the contact information of a queer upperclassman who could advise them during the process.

“We need to let them know that their team is actually going to be fine with this,” he said. “It’s hard to know that because the atmosphere isn’t conducive to finding that out.

I think I can make that statement for most spaces at Yale.

There will be a few people that may be uncomfortable but the majority of people will be fine.” *** Both queer athletes and queer students involved in Greek life hope to see increased dialogue surrounding the issues they face in their respective communities.

Gabriela and Freeman said a greater number of conversations about diversity during the rush process would highlight issues that queer members face.

Students interviewed said that the creation of alternate spaces — such as queer organizations that functioned similarly to fraternities — would be unnecessary. Rather, all said that the emphasis should be on creating change within existing institutions.

For Goldberg, problems in the athletic and Greek communities are of a social nature rather than just problems of resources. He believes that university policy will have little impact on Greek-life culture. The central component of engendering change, he said, would be through a shift in social norms brought about by the members themselves.

Yaman agreed, adding that queer members need not be vocal about their sexuality, but should feel able to do so if they so desire.

“All that’s required is a small cultural change,” Yaman said. *Name changed to protect privacy Contact NOAH KIM at noah.kim@yale.edu and ROHAN NAIK at rohan.naik@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Slifka Center // 8:30 p.m.

Moving. Grooving. Swinging. Blues-ing.

Stretch your arm no farther than your sleeve will reach.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B9

WEEKEND EATS

MAD, MAD WORLD // BY AUSTIN BRYNIARSKI

It’s the evening of Thursday, Sept.

24. I’m standing next to Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway. Modern art abounds. Fur adorns each seating option. We are in the main room of fashion designer Lela Rose’s apartment, watching in awe as an alreadyset glass table is lowered from cables — as though from the heavens above — like a hockey rink scoreboard. Holloway and I are perhaps the tallest people at this cocktail hour, but even we feel dwarfed under the descending table.

As I sip a drink garnished with “absinthe-scented mint,” I’m scanning the room, contemplating Rose’s clientele (the Duchess of Cambridge, for one) and thinking about the team of chefs she has assembled. Clearly Rose is the one to contact if you ever need to throw a dinner party in Tribeca. Dan Barber, Roy Choi, Daniel Patterson, Daniel Boulud and Rene Redzepi are not necessarily household names — but take it from me that Rose has called to battle a five-man army of brilliant chefs, who boast a collective seven Michelin stars and the undivided attention of the culinary elite.

If you’ve ever eaten at a food truck, you owe that to Choi. If you’ve ever read “The Third Plate,” a treatise in favor of sustainable agriculture, you’re familiar with Barber. And if you’ve ever wondered, “What’s the best restaurant in the world?” the response would be “Noma,” the Copenhagen-based brainchild of Redzepi.

This dinner is inaugurating “MAD at Yale,” a series of seminars and classes beginning this summer that will turn chefs and food professionals into students. The venture is a collaboration between the Yale Sustainable Food Program and MAD, Redzepi’s nonprofit offshoot of Noma

that focuses on food and culture in and beyond the kitchen.

Each diner paid thousands of dollars to attend. I didn’t stay for the dinner, but after mingling, it was quite clear that the guests were at least pretty interested in the partnership the dinner celebrated. This surprised me — I figured that the type of people eating at fancy restaurants or attending lavish fundraisers would be more concerned with the meal in front of them than, say, the sustainability of their scallops and grains.

Redzepi told me a few days later that his clientele are rarely interested in food’s far-reaching ramifications. But history professor Paul Freedman, faculty advisor to MAD at Yale, says that while the most revered chefs have historically been considered talented artisans, today they are seen as all-knowing changemakers — for better or worse.

“Chefs are asked their opinions on these things, whether we think they’re knowledgeable or not,” Freedman said. Even if they’re only situated at one node of a complex network, chefs are first responders to the gamut of questions about the “food system.” Why aren’t you doing more about food waste? Why are you serving Chilean sea bass? Why aren’t you purchasing locally?

“There’s a lot of tension in the very word ‘chef’ and what that means,” Redzepi told me.

What does “chef” mean, then?

And what makes a hifalutin chef uniquely positioned to engage with larger food-related concepts that affect everyone? These are the questions MAD at Yale hopes to address.

to announce the new collaboration.

Local chefs, cooks and Yale students all gathered to greet Redzepi and company.

“We wanted to demonstrate to the MAD people and to Dean Holloway that there was a contingent of people that were really going to care about this,” said Anna Lipin ’18, who has worked with Freedman to help with the preliminary planning for MAD at Yale.

Noma investor Mark Blazer chatted with a couple of Yalies working on a food startup, as Redzepi could speak candidly with aspiring student-chefs. For Lipin, this initial meeting was microcosmic of the collaboration to come.

MAD at Yale will bring together six to eight chefs and “food leaders” from around the world. Participants will be able to exchange ideas with professors about the ways in which a variety of issues — sustainability, the natural sciences and politics among them — intersect with a chef’s trade.

Yale students will be able to interact with, cook with and learn from chefs.

Like Yale’s Global Fellows program, in which students help acclimate midcareer global leaders to campus, students will similar introduce chefs to Yale and its surroundings.

Freedman said that while initial attention will be on chefs, other food leaders and activists thinking about environmental issues, fisheries, indigenous foodways, immigration and globalization will have a seat at the seminar table.

Part of what makes MAD so exciting, Lipin said, is the collaboration between academics and chefs.

She and Redzepi agreed that such partnerships are rare. Redzepi, who dropped out of high school at age 15, said that he had been taught that a class void separated his workingclass trade and the “tweed-jacket” — if not white collar — reputation and status of the university. Redzepi told me about the “snob effect” that existed between the ivory tower and the restaurant.

“I thought [Yale] would be much more snobbish, but that doesn’t exist at all,” Redzepi said.

The walls between what he calls the “cooking community” and academia have become more permeable.

To him, something has leveled out.

According to Lipin, this communion between academics and chefs would not have been possible without Freedman, the YSFP and a larger institutional respect for food and the study of food. MAD at Yale, she said, is an extension of the philosophy already present in the YSFP or in courses such as Freedman’s semiregular lecture “The History of Food.”

Freedman recognizes that academics, when compared to chefs, also do not hold the answers to major

*** The morning after Rose’s dinner party, the MAD team left Manhattan on a day trip to Yale, first stopping at the Yale Farm

global issues like world hunger, and that the social dynamic within MAD at Yale ought to be of conversation, and not stuffy, one-way lectures.

“Getting people to Yale so that chefs only learn stuff from the experts — that’s not the point,” he said.

Freedman insists that academics have as much, or more, to learn as do chefs about food’s big problems. *** To understand MAD, one must understand Noma. In 2003, as Yale students literally broke ground to start the Farm on Edwards Street, a waiter was smoothing the tablecloths for the first time at the newly opened restaurant in Copenhagen’s Christianshavn neighborhood.

Noma is best known for putting “New Nordic Cuisine” on the map under Redzepi’s direction — a dramatic rethinking of the traditional flavors and forms of Nordic cuisine (think hearty breads, hunks of ground meat and seafood fresh from the sound, all stripped down to their most acoustic versions). Most ingredients come from within Nordic borders; locality is sacrosanct (although it must be noted that Redzepi takes issue with even defining something as “local”).

The seasons beget what is on the menu. Foraged foods are focal points.

The kitchen is a laboratory. Noma’s meticulous approach to cuisine has earned it the title of “best restaurant in the world” from Restaurant Magazine for four of the past five years — 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2014 — and from a spate of other publications over the same time span.

“We’ve transformed from this tiny gourmet palace to opening up our world to different fields and research,” Redzepi said. Today, he added, Noma is a “place to explore food culture, but through the lens of a restaurant.” A restaurant alone, however, could no longer sustain such energy, so Redzepi started MAD to address the spillover.

Since 2011, MAD has hosted the annual MAD Symposium, a place where chefs, practitioners and academics come together in a lollapalooza of discussing how to move toward “making a better meal.”

(Think “Great Big Ideas,” the fabled college seminar, but all about food.)

All chefs cooking at the fundraiser dinner — save for Patterson — are alumni speakers of the event. Two years ago, Freedman himself presented a history of the celebrity chef at the festival.

Redzepi first interacted with Yale when he visited in 2011 to speak in the Program in Agrarian Studies’ yearly seminar series. Since then, Yale students have gone to work at the Redzepi-founded Nordic Food Lab.

Lipin noted that Redzepi realizes the power he holds in his profession, and that he wants to wield it responsibly. For his part, Redzepi believes he can realize the grand ambitions of the MAD brand with Yale’s resources at hand.

“I think we will unleash a generation of super, super chefs that will cook better than ever, be better business people than ever and will be strong community leaders within their food world,” he said. “At the end of the day, everybody should be doing something to make any situation within their world better.”

That’s Redzepi’s answer: He doesn’t think that being a chef should preclude him from leaving a place, or profession, better than he found it. *** As Redzepi revealed his new collaboration at Yale, his restaurant back home is in transition. Last month, he announced that Noma would close at the end of next year and reopen in a different part of Copenhagen, this time with an urban farm — one about the size of Yale’s own farm.

“I think one of the interesting parts of actually going and having an urban farm is to see what you can produce in a city environment — in a raised bed, and in a greenhouse and on a raft in a lake,” Redzepi said. An urban farm takes the notion of “local” food and injects it with steroids.

Pointing to parsley growing at the Yale Farm, Redzepi tells me that he wants to know how to maximize that parsley’s flavor: what the perfect combination of soil, water and air is.

Ever the chef, flavor is his guiding principle, the holy grail at the end of his pursuit for that better meal.

This is part of his theory of change.

For change to occur within the food system, he says, food needs to taste delicious.

“When I talk about things I dream of, it’s places like our part of the world where any flavor will convince people of positive change,” he said. For Redzepi, urban farming is as much a common-sense, if unconventional, way to grow food as it is an exhilarating challenge.

“Why not?” he asks.

“MAD” is named as such because it’s the Danish word for food. Redzepi claims its English meaning, however, is intentional — this “why not” attitude conjures an image of a mad scientist, mixing potions as complicated as the mixed drink I held in Lela Rose’s dining room, in ways never before imagined. This is the spirit with which MAD at Yale will begin come next June. How it precipitates remains to be seen.

Contact AUSTIN BRYNIARSKI at austin.bryniarski@yale.edu .

“THERE’S A LOT OF TENSION IN THE VERY WORD ‘CHEF’ AND WHAT THAT MEANS”

GORODEZSKY //DAN //DAN GORODEZKY

SATURDAY OCTOBER

17

YALE PHYSICS OLYMPICS Sloane Physics Lab // All day

“Let me atom!” high schools will cry during this Newtonian showdown of physics smarts.

WKND RECOMMENDS: Handsome looks are of little worth without sense.

PAGE B10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

POMPOS PICKS // BY NATALIE POMPOS Lexi Henkel ’17 Greenwich, Connecticut

Isiah Cruz ’17 Union City, New Jersey

Hey Yalies! Gossip Girl here, and I have the biggest news ever.

Absolute perfection is an understatement when describing Lexi Henkel; just ask Nate Archibald.

The producers of “Gossip Girl” confirm she was not cast in the series because her fashion sense, intellect and beauty would’ve sent Blair Waldorf into a conniption. Not to mention, Waldorf gets rejected from Yale *gasp*. If you can pull yourself away from your daydreams of approaching Henkel and uttering “three words, eight letters; say it and I’m yours,” you can appreciate her perfectly coordinated outfits worthy of Page Six. One of my sources confirms Henkel remarked on her budding fashionista years that she couldn’t take any credit for her style growing up: “My mom certainly made sure I was the best-dressed toddler at my preschool. I showed up to school in a smock dress and matching bow every day, without fail. In the summer, I went to the beach looking like a huge diva, in a cute bikini, sarong, wedged flipflops, sunglasses and a matching purse.” Due to an early-instilled sense of polished style, Henkel credits her mother as her “ultimate fashion confidant.” Another source caught her regarding Kate Middleton as her fashion idol: “I love her timeless, but current and fresh look.” Interestingly, I just received an anonymous tip

With a fashion sense described as urban luxury, and outfit selections influ-

that Prince William was recently spotted on the palace steps crying in agony that he was merely settling for Middleton, and in love with the girl who emulates his wife’s style better. Could this be true? Or is it just Little J up to her

enced by the icon Kanye West, it’s no wonder Yeezus is debuting a remix to his song “Amazing” to describe Isiah Cruz. “It’s amazing, [Isiah’s] the reason, everybody

devious ways? One thing is certain: if Henkel did star in “Gossip Girl,” viewers would’ve heard in the series premiere, “Spotted — Chuck Bass losing something nobody even knew he had. His heart.” xoxo

fired up this evening…” Cruz remarked, “I wouldn’t say I always had great style, but I definitely paid attention to it and it’s always distinguished me.” While you can usually spot this maven on campus showcasing minimalist color schemes, long-cut tops, slim chinos or jeans, Chelsea boots and a fierce multiplatinum sock game, if his performance ever falls low on the charts, it’s definitely when his laundry hamper gets full. While Cruz delivers hit after hit outfits most days, he did admit his worst fashion decision of all time: “I’ll never forget it. A neon blue graphic tee with a huge stop sign in the center that read ‘Stop Hating’ in graffiti lettering.” Guess the haters always gonna hate, hate, hate, but unlike Kanye, Cruz only has a fan club. No wonder he saw no long-term use for the tee and rid himself of it. While Cruz occasionally has to help dress Kim so she doesn’t embarrass Kanye, Cruz remarked, “I’ve always been a fan of true, unembellished beauty. Few things make me happier than seeing my girl wearing a long tee of mine, yoga pants and no makeup.” It’s true that few things on campus make girls happier than seeing Isiah Cruz wearing a tee of his and no makeup as well. His fashion reign is as far as your eyes can see.

Neema Githere ’18 Nairobi, Kenya The reverend prophet Beyoncé preaches that a “diva is the female version of a hustla.” One sight of Neema Githere and you Knowles the oracle speaks the truth. Githere describes her personal style as “indecisive and unpredictable.”

She feels most confident wearing “something bold — be that a crazy pattern, tacky sweater or a piece of statement jewelry.” Has someone put a ring on it? I don’t think so; catch her at Woad’s and you’ll see gloss on her lips and a man on her hips.

On an everyday basis, she likes experimenting — “with patterns, but I also like wearing random athletic things like Adidas or running shorts. It’s all a farce though; I don’t think I’ve stepped foot in a gym while at Yale.” Makes sense. Why would a hustla ever need to work out?

Who Run the World? Githere. When she isn’t showing campus her Halo through initiatives such as Yale’s Refugee Project, Yale-Africa and The Globalist, you can catch her scouring the racks of the Salvation Army on Dixwell Avenue for one-ofa-kind pieces. These Irreplaceable finds add to her Flawless look that will last Till the End of Time. She chuckled recounting an occasion when her outfit could’ve benefitted from a Partition, though: “One time I folded a piece of kitenge, a type of fabric that is made in Kenya, into a blouse for Freshman Screw and then it unraveled while I was dancing.” Wonder if she left the dance floor with any singles? When asked about her favorite designers, she remarked, “I’m not bougie enough for that.” The real question is, who needs a degree when you’re Schoolin’ Life?

JT Flowers ’17 Portland, Oregon No matter the season, JT Flowers’ outfits are always blossoming.

Need I say more? No. Contact NATALIE POMPOS at natalie.pompos@yale.edu .

Ask Jack // BY JACK BARRY DEAR JACK: With midterm season in full swing, I find myself frazzled. Flipping through the pages of my Yale College Planner (TM), I see nothing but review sessions, study groups and exams. What’s a girl to do? My ever-growing self-doubt is beginning to overwhelm me as I spiral downwards into a late night Destiny’s-Child-music-videobinge-watch. Yesterday, I was so overwhelmed by my workload that I watched over 90 minutes of interview footage with the otherother-other Destiny’s Child member, Farrah Franklin, in order to relax. Her story is so inspiring. Since I have procrastinated so much, I am out of time to study for

SUNDAY OCTOBER

18

my exams. I just don’t know what to do! Please help.

— Newfound Farrah Franklin Fan DEAR FAN: Reading your story, I can see that you are a survivor, you are not gon’ give up, you are not gon’ stop. You are “gon’ work harder and keep on survivin’!” I want you to know that you are not alone.

Millions suffer from your stressinduced procrastination and selfdestructive tendencies. Indeed, it’s people like you that make this country the best nation on earth.

But if your habits are interfering with your daily life and long term aspirations, a solution does exist.

Cramming. The night before your next big midterm, I want you to cram, and cram hard. Fortunately, the more you cram the easier it becomes. Here are a few simple rules to follow: 1. Serious crammers don’t mess around; careful not to breathe.

Ensure your mouth is dry and free of debris. When cramming marshmallows into your mouth, it is essential to rid your facial cavity of any saliva. Mouth juice is absorbed, increasing the size of the marshmallow, therefore limiting the amount you are able to cram in. Over time, your cheeks will stretch and hang limply from your face like the jowls of Handsome Dan. Rejoice! These are the livery of the most noble crammers.

RUMBULL IN TRUMBULL

Trumbull Courtyard // 1 p.m.

Sounds funbull.

2. Wear loose-fitting or elasticbased clothing. Cramming dining halls mugs under your tightfitting bustier is no easy feat, but sweater weather has finally arrived and swiping mugs has never been easier! Borrow a large male relative’s oversized sweatshirt, preferably purchased in the early ’90s and in a muted gray hue. Before entering the dining hall, cram a small to medium-sized accomplice under your sweater. Quickly exchange your partner for their same weight in mugs. There will be no noticeable change in your appearance and you will be able to make a quick getaway. So long as your accomplice isn’t a sniveling snitch, no one but you will know the whereabouts of the holy mugs.

3. Always carry a fire extinguisher. Signs identifying the maximum capacity of a room are there for a reason: to inspire you to defy expectations. Fire marshals wouldn’t list a safe number of people that can be in a confined space at once unless they wanted you to create a fire hazard. Cram as many of your friends and loved ones into a room as possible and then look up. You’ve just realized there is more space between you and the ceiling. Create a Facebook event and cram some more people inside. Once you believe not another ounce of flesh could be squeezed into the writhing masses, cram in just one more body. You should be challenging yourself. Drag heavy, hard-

to-move furniture in front of all available exits. It adds a touch of class. Sit in silence amongst the crammed collection of people and wait for one of your friends from France or New York to light a cigarette and start smoking. Something amazing is about to happen.

I know my tips on how to cram before your next midterm will bring “much success, no stress, and lots of happiness.” Your future is brighter than the flames of a burning mouthful of marshmallows.

Your friend, Jack Contact JACK BARRY at john.c.barry@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: The smaller the mind, the greater the conceit.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B11

WEEKEND THEATER

MORE THAN DECENT // BY LAURENCE BASHFORD

“This was the moment for me, when it all started.”

The two women clasp each other’s necks, circling one another with locked eyes, drawing closer and closer until …

“Indecent,” a play created

by Paula Vogel and Rebecca Taichman, tells “the extraordinary true story of a little Jewish play” — namely, “The God of Vengeance” by Sholem Asch — and follows its journey from a faltering first reading at a literary salon in Warsaw to European acclaim and finally the Broadway stage.

This is a play that will not fail to captivate you from the moment the curtain rises. As the actors join in a dreamlike dance, we meet each as a generic caricature, whose identity can be rein-

vented freely in a stream of new guises as the show progresses. The life and times of Sholem Asch and his colleagues and companions unfurl before us on their quest to bring Jewish works to an international audience for the first time. Identity — in racial, sexual and artistic terms — lies at the heart of “Indecent.”

The seamless transitions between Yiddish and English dialogue, subtitled by projection, create an astonishing commentary on familiar problems of immigration and America’s insular social structures. In a particularly striking scene, the conniving New York producer uses his legal dominance over the actors to excise the most human moments of tenderness in the play for its lesbian

themes. Such actions speak to oppressive cultural norms founded in the commercial hegemony of Western capitalism that continue to marginalize minority groups of all kinds to this day. “Indecent” is as much a play about America and theatre in the present as it is about the plight of the Jewish people throughout the 20th century — and above all, it illustrates magnificently how these two truths intersect.

“Indecent” was not without its few faults, of course.

The fact that the play’s most powerful and beautifully staged scenes were found in reenacted excerpts taken from Sholem Asch’s original play will make you wish you could just watch “The God of Vengeance” in its entirety instead. As each episode of

the story emerges with yet another impeccably choreographed and stylized scene of dance, song or projected text upon the walls of the University Theater, the crux that makes this play most compelling begins to feel somewhat obscured. The inevitable theatricality of a play portraying the history of another play’s production requires no small amount of focus on the part of the viewer, in order to track the various characters portrayed by each actor through the passing years. All this said, Vogel’s adaptation and contextualization is undeniably invaluable, for the many rich layers of meaning it builds upon its source foundations.

Contact LAURENCE BASHFORD at laurence.bashford@yale.edu .

//COURTESY OF YALE REP

Reimagining Shakespeare // BY AGNES ENKHTAMIR

//KAIFENG WU

SUNDAY OCTOBER

18

BERKELEY COLLEGE ORCHESTRA SEASON OPENER

“The Winter’s Tale” was written by the Bard of Avon — the man colloquially known as Shakespeare — in the 16th century. And in true Shakespearean fashion, the play’s events are centered on the paranoid King Leontes, played by Iason Togias ’16. In the opening scene, Leontes asks his wife to charm his childhood friend, King Polixenes, into staying in his kingdom a little longer. But when his wife lays on the smiles and the laughter, Leontes becomes obsessed with the notion that his best friend and his wife are sleeping together. The king naturally reasons that his son isn’t his son, and that his pregnant wife’s child isn’t of his blood either.

The Yale Dramat removes the familiar play from its 1580s context. Rather than setting the play in Shakespeare’s simpler time — when only women whom men denounced as hysterical raved — the Dramat’s production features teenagers wearing clashing prints and goofy grins in strobelit raves.

Director Katie Kirk ’17 seeks to highlight the combating forces of the kings and their traditions somewhat obviously by transporting the characters to approximately 350 years after Shakespeare’s time: namely, the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. The resulting reunification of Germany is intended to echo the rekindling of Leontes and Polixenes’ friendship after one accuses the other of having sex with his wife.

Transporting the plot to a radically different time in order to accentuate the play’s core

themes of forgiveness and transformation was an ambitious move, but it fell flat most of the time. The cultures of the two sides of Germany — East and West — were incorporated into the characters, but only on a superficial level. The characters weren’t different for having lived in West or East Berlin; they were just dressed differently. Berlin didn’t add another level to the play. It was just colorful scenery.

Though the setting and set design highlighted the play’s core themes minimally, the show didn’t need too much help in the first place. This production’s strength lay in its actors.

Iason Togias ’16 was perfectly adequate as Leontes, the paranoid king who accuses his good friend Polixenes — played by Dillon Miller ’18 — of infidelity with his wife. Togias conveyed happy and angry and sad, but only sparingly did his emotions register levels that the audience could feel. Leontes, the mad king, was just that: an archetype.

There was a scene, however, in which Togias elicited goose bumps. Leontes had just learned of his family’s deaths, a direct result of his unfounded paranoia.

Togias’ face was numb and his hands limp. He crumbled onto the ground in a powerful emotional scene.

Alec Mukamal ’18 played minimal parts for comic relief. The character he shines as doesn’t even have a name — he’s just the Shepherd’s Son. Mukamal’s hilarious overacting was a much-needed break from the quiet intensity of many of the

Contact AGNES ENKHTAMIR at dulguun.enkhtamir@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Battell Chapel // 4 p.m.

Mozart and Wagner and Mendelssohn, oh my!

other actors.

In one of the last scenes of the show, soft and soulful elevator music plays in the background as Leontes is reunited with most of his family and his friends.

Leontes hugs Polixenes … Leontes’ daughter hugs the Shepherd … Polixenes’ son hugs Leontes’ daughter … The five-minute scene of the characters’ reunification is supposed to leave us teary: this is the happy ending that the audience was waiting for. Instead, the sappy music and the ’80s outfits make it almost comical, an example of how “The Winter’s Tale” could have either handled the culture differences between Leontes and Polixenes or between West and East Berlin.

But it tried to do too much, diluting the intended effect.

Though the actors were all capable in their own right, the casting directors of the play apparently found that transporting the play more than 300 years in the future would be easier than reimagining it with people of color. The cast is all white, or at least all white-passing.

The Winter’s Tale is ambitious — more so than a typical modern revival of a Shakespearean play — but overall, it falls flat trying to do so much. The show juggled themes of betrayal, the strength of familial ties, friendship and the needs of loved ones — and the backdrop of the Berlin Wall didn’t render them more clear or powerful. It lessened their impact.

Pride cometh before a fall.

PAGE B12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

I

chiro Fujisaki was the Japanese Ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2012. He has worked in the Japanese government since 1969,

and having finished his time as an ambassador is using his expertise to lead a diplomatic tour called “Walk in U.S., Talk on Japan.” Over several trips, the tour brings Fujisaki as well as other experts on Japanese politics and culture to give talks to American audiences in an attempt to strengthen grassroots ties between the two countries. WKND interviewed him after an intimate luncheon in Rosenkranz Hall, where he and others talked about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Japan’s economic situation and aging population, and how U.S.-Japanese relations have

// BY WK ND

46

YEARS SERVING

//COURTESY OF

THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT

Q: How is the tour structured?

What places have you visited?

A: It’s the prime minister’s office idea to send this troupe not only to the big cities but smaller cities and universities. This is the 11th [trip to the U.S.], and the third time for me. On the first tour I went to Ohio and Indiana, and on the second tour Arizona and California. This time I’m going to Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts.

Q: Which was your favorite state so far?

A: Well, of course that would be Connecticut.

Q: What is the core purpose of the tour? What kinds of things do you hope to accomplish?

A: Two things. We would like to tell you about what Japan is now, not only the good parts but problems as well. [We want to explain] what problems the economy is facing, how we are restoring from the earthquake, how we are coping with an aging society. [Everything] has a good side and a difficult side. My second point is that if look at the composition of the group, [there are] two senior men and three young ladies. We want to show the U.S. that it’s not only silver hair and bald men sitting in a row, but there are ladies and young people. They’re already in the team.

Q: That reminds me of what you said during your talk earlier, about needing to mobilize new labor forces in Japan. Are you serious about bringing more women into the workplace?

A: [Prime Minister] Abe has been thinking that in order to cope with the decreasing population we need to utilize more women.

Some people would call it “women-omics.” In order to do that we have to have more nurseries, so that working mothers can have their children [and their careers]. We also need to shorten the working time so they can go home earlier; [we don’t want] long, long hours of work. The government and big corporations are now pushing [for these reforms] and we hope that small and medium companies can fol-

THE GOVERNMENT OF JAPAN

low as well. The establishment of nurseries has been done by public money as well, and there’s a very strong commitment to that.

Q: You also spoke about historical problems between Japan and other countries. Can you tell us about how problems between Japan and the U.S. have been resolved as opposed to those between Japan and other countries?

A: We always have to face history, this is true. It was good that the Prime Minister made a statement this August saying that we Japanese have the responsibility to convey the history to the generation after us and even the one after that. We have to face the history with humility, that is the really important part. People often say that we try to forget history. However, it’s important that while we remember we don’t concentrate on just that.

Japan and the US have had difficult times. For example, there was racial discrimination against Japanese immigrants in California, and Japanese-Americans were put into campus during the War; Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all the major cities were wiped out during the war by air raids. From the U.S. side you can say there was a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. These are all facts of history. But if we just concentrated on talking about that, we would not have gotten to where we are now. We face the history but we are positive and try to construct new relations; from that we have come to a real strong alliance.

80 percent of Japanese think they like Americans and 80 percent of Americans have affinity towards Japan. Looking back on the difference between the cultures and our history of war, it’s amazing that in only 70 years we were able to establish this kind of relationship.

And it didn’t just come natural. It

was not only because [of political issues]; it’s because people have tried to exchange through grassroots and cultural exchange, because Japanese culture such as anime was accepted here and American Hollywood movies and MLB were admitted in Japan and people started to accept each other.

That seems like the kind of thing this tour is trying to accomplish.

This team is one working on the grassroots side trying to show what Japan is. We’re not trying to gather 300 people in a room, but rather have smaller discussions [such as today’s]. It’s quite a hectic schedule; we are doing the trip in only four days and on Saturday we are going back to Japan. But it’s worthwhile going around. I appeared on NPR yesterday, and it’ll be broadcasted on Friday. We want to convey the challenges and achievement of these things the Japanese have been doing.

Q: Do you think the relationship between Japan and the U.S. is satisfactory at this point?

“

A: Yes, I think so, but it’s not without effort. And I always say that three things are important, especially from the government’s point of view. One is, no surprises. Second is, no overpoliticization. Third is, don’t take things for granted. Between individuals there can be pleasant surprise — a Christmas present, or going on a date. But between two countries there are no good surprises. You have to know each other well. The second point [against over-politicization] is because politicians make things bigger, and if it’s bigger it’s difficult to solve. It’s best to do things as discreetly as possible. Third, don’t take things for granted. After several years [in a relationship], even in marriage, you think you are doing this much, he’s not doing enough for me. But we have been married for almost 70 years. It’s possible that we think we are not being appreciated or you think we are defending Japan and Japan is not appreciative of that. Let’s try to appreciate what others are doing and express gratitude rather than take things for granted.

WE WOULD LIKE TO TELL YOU ABOUT WHAT PULL QUOTE PULL JAPAN IS NOW, NOT QUOTE PULL QUOTE QUOTE PULL ONLY THE PULL GOOD QUOTE PULL QUOTE PARTS BUT PULL QUOTE PULL QUOTE PULL QUOTE PROBLEMS ASQUOTE PULL PULL QUOTE PULL QUOTE WELL.

“

WALK AT YALE, TALK ON JAPAN

transformed over the years.

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