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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · VOL. CXXXVIII, NO. 39 · yaledailynews.com

INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING

CLOUDY CLEAR

59 35

CROSS CAMPUS

PILLS AND BILLS YALE’S ROLE IN MEDICAL R&D

CLUB BLUES

WHAT’S THE HOLD UP

Club rugby teams contemplate seeking varsity status

STUDENTS WORRIED ABOUT DELAYED SEPT. ACT SCORES

PAGE B3 WKND

PAGE 4 SPORTS

PAGE 5 UNIVERSITY

Chun steps down as Berkeley master

Time to celebrate? During an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Hillary Clinton LAW ’73 joked about spending her birthday — Oct. 26 — on the campaign trail. “I slept late, which was pretty celebratory,” she said.

director Jonathan Zittrain ’91, Harvard Law School’s “Free the Law” project will soon digitize HLS’s extensive collection of legal decisions.

Can you feel the love?

Off-campus just got better.

The apartments at College & Crown celebrated a grand opening yesterday. The new construction offers a diverse selection of units, ranging from studios to luxury lofts. Rewind. With the end of

Daylight Savings Time on Sunday, you’ll gain one hour. Will you extend your Halloweekend or wake up earlier on Sunday? This was Mark Zuckerberg’s frat. Harvard AEPi got a

mention in the Washington Post yesterday when their parody of sorority recruitment videos got over 50,000 views in a few days.

Rory the role model. Buzzfeed critiqued Rory Gilmore from the hit show “Gilmore Girls” for being too perfect earlier this week. Rory’s strongest moments, the article said, were her failures, such as her decision to drop out of Yale. Elm City Eats. New Haven Restaurant Week kicks off this Sunday. One of the week’s first events is a $18 prix fixe lunch at Harvest, featuring the famous shaved brussel sprout salad. A sex-positive campus.

Tomorrow is the last day of Sex Week. One of several events is a talk about attitudes about sex toys and masturbation at 4 p.m. in the Branford Common Room. THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1967 Berkeley College Council unanimously votes in favor of abolishing parietal hours — defined visiting hours between students of opposite sexes. Follow along for the News’ latest.

Twitter | @yaledailynews

y

Faculty split on GESO

the announcement and also spoke fondly of Chun’s mastership, highlighting his attentiveness and welcoming nature. “I’ve gained so much from this experience, from all of you, that I don’t know if I can ever fully SEE CHUN PAGE 6

SEE GESO PAGE 8

if you want to celebrate with Dean Amerigo Fabbri GRD ’04 before he steps down: head to Pierson’s annual Inferno party at 10 p.m. tonight.

ever, YSO will livestream the Halloween show — for $5 per view— for students who were not able to get tickets.

PAGE 7 CITY

While the Graduate Employees and Students Organization continues its decades-old call for a graduate student union, some Yale professors have expressed concern that a union would damage relationships between faculty and students and reduce the quality of a Yale education. As the movement to unionize graduate students gains traction across the nation, administrators and faculty at Yale and its peer institutions are discussing in greater detail the implications that a graduate student union would have inside and outside the classroom. Two weeks ago, GESO gathered hundreds of its members and allies on Beinecke Plaza, calling on Yale to hold a neutral election, free from intimidation or scare tactics, on the issue of graduate student unionization. But no speakers at the rally addressed how a union at Yale might impact the relationship between graduate students and faculty members, who expressed split opinions on GESO’s mission in interviews with the News. At Harvard, where graduate students have made similar demands for unionization, administrators distributed a two-page “guide for discussion” to faculty on Oct. 14 to shape their dialogue

If you don’t have plans yet. Or

Kick-off Halloween from home. For the first time

City receives $55,000 grant to improve green spaces

BY FINNEGAN SCHICK AND VICTOR WANG STAFF REPORTERS

Reviving records. Led by

Yesterday, the New York Times’ “Modern Love” series published an essay written by Sophie Dillon ’17. Dillon’s piece, titled “A Romance That’s Extra Zesty,” links a relationship to a TED talk about Prego sauce.

OUT OF THE WEEDS

SARA MILLER/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Berkeley College master Marvin Chun announced he will step down at the end of the academic year. BY VICTOR WANG AND ELLEN KAN STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Marvin Chun, the first AsianAmerican to become a residential college master, will step down from the Berkeley College mastership at the end of this academic year.

Chun, a psychology professor, announced his decision in a Thursday email to the Berkeley community. Chun told the News he plans to request a year of sabbatical leave in order to focus on his academic work and spend more time with his family. Berkeley students interviewed expressed surprise about

Female graduates report lower wages, satisfaction

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 third in a five-part series on the results. DAVID SHIMER reports.

In terms of income and satisfaction with their education, it appears the deck is stacked against female Yale graduates. On Sept. 29, the Chronicle of Higher Education published the results of a Gallup-Purdue Index survey that found that 50 percent of 30,000 college alumni nationwide strongly agreed that their college degrees were worth the cost. At research universities like Yale, a slightly higher-than-average 53 percent of respondents felt the same. In response to the Gallup numbers, the News distributed a comprehensive survey to the classes of 2013 and 2014 ask-

Community examines UWC modifications BY MONICA WANG STAFF REPORTER In the days since University President Peter Salovey announced a series of revisions to the formal procedures of the UniversityWide Committee on Sexual Misconduct, members of the Yale community have begun theorizing as why certain modifications to the procedures were made. According to the new UWC procedures, which were drafted by a five-person faculty committee chaired by law professor Kate Stith, complainants and respondents in formal complaints of sexual misconduct will now receive only the final decision about disciplinary action, and not the UWC panel’s original recommendations. Previously, both parties received the disciplinary recommendations

of the UWC panel — a group of five UWC members who hear the facts of a case — as well as the final disciplinary decision rendered by an administrative decisionmaker with the authority to independently accept, modify or reject the panel’s recommendations. Now, if the decision-maker — who is the dean of the respondent’s school or the provost if the respondent is a faculty member — changes the recommended punishment, neither the complainant nor the respondent will know, although the decision-maker is now required to consult with the UWC panel before making any modifications. Discrepancies between recommended and final punishments in Yale’s sexual misconduct proceedings generated national SEE UWC PAGE 6

ing whether they believed their education justified the cost of Yale tuition. Three hundred and sixty-seven responded — 177 men, 187 women and three individuals who did not identify with either gender — and the results suggest that female graduates have lower incomes and are less satisfied with their education than their male counterparts. While a similar percentage of female and male graduates viewed their Yale educations positively, their degree of approval differed markedly: 67 percent of male graduates “strongly agreed” and 15 per-

cent “agreed” that their Yale education was worth the cost of tuition, while 52 percent of female graduates “strongly agreed” and 31 percent “agreed” their tuition was worth the cost. Not only are female graduates less satisfied with the worth of their Yale degrees, but they also have lower incomes on average, according to survey data. Of the 335 respondents who reported earnings, 160 were men, 187 were women and three did not identify with either gender. 66 percent of those women are currently earning less than $50,000 per year, as compared to the 44 percent of men in the

same income bracket. And while 36 percent of male graduates are earning more than $75,000 per year, just 17 percent of women fell in the same bracket. Of the administrators and 18 alumni interviewed more extensively by the News, the majority said gaps in income and satisfaction can be explained by divergent career interests. Because women tend to gravitate toward less lucrative professions, those interviewed said, their subsequently lower incomes might lead them to view their Yale educations SEE WAGES PAGE 6

Jordan’s Furniture to open in New Haven

NOAH DAPONTE-SMITH/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

New Haven’s Jordan’s Furniture store will be the first with an indoor amusement park. BY NOAH DAPONTE-SMITH AND JIAHUI HU STAFF REPORTERS Zip lines, a 45-foot fountain and the world’s largest indoor adventure rope course will all come to New Haven in time for Christmas, bundled inside a

200,000-square-foot furniture store. Jordan’s Furniture — a family-run business that offers s h o p p e rs e n te r ta i n m e n t options including theaters in six locations across New England — opens on 40 Sargent Dr., the former New Haven Regis-

ter building, on Dec. 11, President and CEO Eliot Tatelman announced Wednesday during a media tour of the space. Roughly 140,000 square feet of the building will house the store’s furniture sales, with SEE FURNITURE PAGE 8


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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION

.COMMENT “Completely agree. That’s why I still refer to Yale as The Collegiate yaledailynews.com/opinion

Big data is watching O

n Tuesday, the Senate passed the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, which allows companies to more easily share metadata with the government in hopes of preventing cyberattacks. This information would largely be customer data. As Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., puts it, the bill is effectively a “direct pipeline to the NSA” for our personal information. It is landmark legislation, to be sure, which is why I’m puzzled that I haven’t seen even one indignant Facebook post about it on my news feed. In fact, most of the discussions I have about online privacy boil down to a shrug and a glib remark: “I don’t have anything to hide.”

OUR CONCERN FOR PRIVACY EXTENDS JUST ABOUT AS FAR AS MAKING JOKES ABOUT THE NSA READING OUR EMAILS That’s a lie, of course. As our parents never fail to remind us, we’re the first generation to have most of our lives documented on social media. We’ve had it drilled into our heads for years that what we post could have a huge impact on our personal and professional lives. Yalies care about privacy insofar as we care about how we present ourselves online. We also tend to demonize the surveillance state, mindful of the dangers of an Orwellian dystopia. What’s equally insidious, however, is the vast amount of information that’s collected by private companies: our search history, our purchase history, how long we spend on a given website, our location, etc. Yet we never bat an eyelash as we connect app after app to Facebook. Our concern for privacy extends just about as far as making jokes about the NSA reading our emails. Why don’t we care more? Because all this data collection seems benign. Google tells us that it’ll improve our search results. Advertisers tell us that we’ll have targeted ads that are far more applicable to us. We’re even promised that our names and addresses are never stored. But we vastly underestimate just how powerful all this metadata is. Targeted content can be just plain creepy. In 2012, The New York Times reported about Target’s customer information collection practices. The company

has gotten so great at analyzing small bits of user data that they’re able to predict when a woman is SHREYAS pregnant, TIRUMALA s o m e t i m e s even before Rhyme and she knows herself! And reason as companies collect more and more data, their predictions only get better. At least for now, these analytics are primarily used for advertising. Even for those of us who use ad-blocking software, however, metadata has a profound impact on our lives. Just last year, Facebook revealed that it was able to manipulate users’ emotions simply by changing the content displayed on their news feeds. Do we really want to live in a world where our mood could be decided for us by an algorithm — or worse, by the highest bidder? This type of information is bought and sold every day, and with the recent spate of attacks against Sony, Anthem Insurance and the Office of Personnel Management, it’s safe to say that it’s stolen fairly often too. These companies and hackers literally have the power to control what we think and how we live.

MANAGING EDITORS Tyler Foggatt Emma Platoff

ONLINE SPORTS Ashley Wu

ONLINE EDITOR Erica Pandey OPINION Larry Milstein Aaron Sibarium NEWS Rachel Siegel Vivian Wang CITY Sarah Bruley Amaka Uchegbu SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Stephanie Rogers

WEEKEND Irene Connelly Caroline Wray Emily Xiao YTV Raleigh Capozzalo Peter Chung Rebecca Faust MAGAZINE Abigail Bessler Elizabeth Miles COPY Martin Lim Chris Rudeen Grace Shi

SHREYAS TIRUMALA is a sophomore in Trumbull College. His column runs on alternate Fridays. Contact him at shreyas.tirumala@yale.edu .

PRODUCTION & DESIGN Mert Dilek Ellie Handler Emily Hsee Tresa Joseph Amanda Mei Samuel Wang PHOTOGRAPHY Tasnim Elboute Julia Henry Elinor Hills Irene Jiang Kaifeng Wu ILLUSTRATIONS Ashlyn Oakes WEB DEVELOPMENT Tony Jiang Alicia Vargas-Morawetz

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The News’ View represents the opinion of the majority of the members of the Yale Daily News Managing Board of 2017. Other content on this page with bylines represents the opinions of those authors and not necessarily those of the Managing Board. Opinions set forth in ads do not necessarily reflect the views of the Managing Board. We reserve the right to refuse any ad for any reason and to delete or change any copy we consider objectionable, false or in poor taste. We do not verify the contents of any ad. The Yale Daily News Publishing Co., Inc. and its officers, employees and agents disclaim any responsibility for all liabilities, injuries or damages arising from any ad. The Yale Daily News Publishing Co. ISSN 0890-2240

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

Food cart justice L

ast Wednesday, Oct. 15, the City of New Haven cracked down on York Street’s beloved food carts — among them, the Caseus grilled cheese truck, the Ay! Arepa cart and the Portobello Latin food cart. The tiff followed the city's decision to enforce a zoning law that restricts economic activity in residential areas, which on paper include city blocks with Yale dorms. Despite the fact that these trucks have been a relatively stable fixture of the York and Elm milieu for years, they were nevertheless ordered to halt operations for violating this previously unenforced law. Outside of New Haven, the relationship between cities across the country and their small-scale food enterprises has evolved. Local governments are now aiming to encourage the kinds of food-related entrepreneurship these food carts have exhibited for some time now. After having a long-time ban on food trucks, Chicago, for example, overturned a long-time ban on food trucks by passing an ordinance that would allow food trucks to feed people, while explicating the unique food safety and licensing rules a food truck vendor would need to follow. But this extends beyond food trucks as well. Cities are changing their zoning codes to make urban agriculture a more prom-

As Emily Steel and Julia Angwin argued in The Wall Street Journal ("On the web's cutting edge, anonymity in name only," Aug. 2010), we are “anonymous in name only.” For those of you who still insist that your privacy doesn’t matter — that you have nothing to hide — I invite you to give out your social media passwords. Heck, while you’re at it, copies of your keys would be great too. Our privacy matters, and we don’t pay enough attention to it. Think twice when you’re registering for a website. Consider giving those terms of service a skim. Advertising databases should not know more about you than your friends do.

YALE DAILY NEWS PUBLISHING CO., INC. 202 York Street, New Haven, CT 06511 (203) 432-2400

SPORTS James Badas Greg Cameron

'GOLDIE ’08' ON 'MIELE: GHEAV BY ANY OTHER NAME'

inent feature of urban space — New Haven, for example, passed an ordinance that made previously illegal a g r i c u l t u ra l AUSTIN ctivities, BRYNIARSKI alike keeping chickens, Guns & legal. Other cities are butter changing their out-of-date health codes that prohibit such innocent activities as opening a stall at a farmer’s market or selling homemade baked goods. These sorts of food policies — the “less government, more grub” approach to regulating food businesses — are the result of the trendiness of food trucks but also the entrepreneurial spirit of people who might not have the capital to open up an entirely new restaurant. Why would our city want to punish these small-scale food establishments, then? Students and workers looking to have an inexpensive and convenient meal, and the folks making and serving the food, all benefit from the existence of food carts. It is also important to note that nationwide immigrants were responsible for launching 28.5 percent of new business in 2014

and are therefore the group most likely to be adversely affected by these prohibitive policies. Given these facts, the food truck crackdown here in New Haven seems less like an obligation for bureaucracy to enforce the laws, but rather has the trappings of gentrification. The policing of the space where the food trucks operate on the basis of their legality was petty — how can an area 50 feet away from Blue State Coffee and Kiko Milano seriously be considered “residential” and not “commercial”? And why weren’t business owners met with civility by a city agent, rather than threatened with arrest by police? I spoke with Sebi MedinaTayac ’16, who protested the city’s move at City Hall this past week. He told me that this isn’t about an attack on food carts at large, but, more acutely, the treatment of immigrant businesses and the tension between established restaurants and these newer outlets for purchasing food. “Brick-and-mortar restaurants shouldn’t necessarily have the final say,” he told me. Adjacent businesses have come to the support of the food trucks, while others have complained that they drive customers away and are unfair competition, don’t have to pay the same sort of rent or taxes. But isn’t that kind

of the point of the open market? Is it really the city’s role to intervene in such a situation? I think not. In realizing their error in the face of backlash, the city and its economic development officer issued an apology to the carts, holding a press conference with the owners of the Caseus Cheese Truck and Ay! Arepa — both the mobile versions of existing restaurants. Medina-Tayac pointed out the absence of representatives from carts without brick and mortar associations like Portobello was another instance of the city snubbing a legitimate, if lesser-established, food business. After agreeing to change their location to the other side of the street, food trucks were given the green light to operate again. But that’s not to say the city shouldn’t play an active role in New Haven’s food environment. If the city’s going to intervene in any sort of food or labor issues, perhaps their top priority should be the rampant wage theft that has come to our collective attention over the past year or so. Let’s target people exploiting others through food establishments, rather than those just trying to make an honest living. AUSTIN BRYNIARSKI is a senior in Calhoun College. His column runs on Fridays. Contact him at austin.bryniarski@yale.edu .

BIG DATA HAS THE POWER TO CONTROL WHAT WE THINK AND HOW WE LIVE

Editorial: (203) 432-2418 editor@yaledailynews.com Business: (203) 432-2424 business@yaledailynews.com

EDITOR IN CHIEF Stephanie Addenbrooke

School…”

SUBMISSIONS

All letters submitted for publication must include the author’s name, phone number and description of Yale University affiliation. Please limit letters to 250 words and guest columns to 750. The Yale Daily News reserves the right to edit letters and columns before publication. E-mail is the preferred method of submission. Direct all letters, columns, artwork and inquiries to: Larry Milstein and Aaron Sibarium Opinion Editors Yale Daily News opinion@yaledailynews.com

COPYRIGHT 2015 — VOL. CXXXVIII, NO. 39

CHAI-RIN KIM/CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

G U E S T C O L U M N I S T D AV I D T O P P E L B E R G

Another economic meltdown T

he early 2000s were supposed to be a time of change for the field of economics. In 2001, Joseph Stiglitz won the Nobel Prize for proving that, contrary to basic assumptions of neoclassical economics, imperfect information is present in pretty much any market. Holding on to the assumption of so-called perfect information, according to Stiglitz, was proving disastrous for all kinds of economies, ranging from Gary, Indiana, to Kenya. The following year, the Nobel Prize was awarded to Daniel Kahneman for providing another blow to a fundamental assumption of economics: humans behave in ways that are explicitly (and predictably) irrational. Recent advances in behavioral and empirical economics have further punctured the neoclassical perspective. One would think that with such condemnation, the teaching and learning of economics would have since evolved in some way. Unfortunately, no such revolution has occurred. Economics still teaches the same basic assumptions; many academics still operate from those same flawed beliefs. Ignoring the falsehoods from within and ignoring critiques from outside, the field of economics has intellectually stunted itself into halfaccurate theories at best and pure delusion at worst. Milton Friedman famously stated that unrealistic assumptions in economics don’t matter if the theory’s predictions prove true. Prior to the 2007 finan-

cial crisis, ex-Federal Chairman Alan Greenspan was a huge advocate of subprime mortgages, unregulated derivatives and free-market solutions to “irrational exuberance,” believing that “weeds” in the economy would die off naturally. Likewise, famed Yale economist Irving Fisher claimed days before the 1929 market crash that “stock prices have reached a permanently high plateau.” After the crash, citing several economic models, he stated that stocks would soon rise in prices and that the market crash was merely “shaking out the lunatic fringe.” Friedman, Greenspan and Fisher bought into unrealistic assumptions and the unrealistic theories that grew out of them; the truth is that poor assumptions lead to poor theories, just as bad economists lead to catastrophic results. Abstract assumptions and theories are one thing, but what about the models we depend on? The New York Times’ Upshot, for example, recently covered the Phillips curve, which claims that inflation rises when unemployment goes down. The Phillips curve plays a central part in macroeconomic theory; rumor has it that Federal Chairwoman Janet Yellen wants to raise interest rates based on its implications. But the curve has proven widely inaccurate for the past few decades. Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard has said that “the Phillips curve is, at best, very weak,” and Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo similarly stated that “the Phillips curve

[hasn’t] been working effectively for 10 years now.” Looking at history supports these conclusions: The early 1970s had both high inflation and high unemployment, an impossibility according to the model. Perhaps, like our neoclassical assumptions and theories, our neoclassical models don’t truly represent reality, and depending on such models can lead us astray. But economics isn’t just flawed internally; it also shuns many critiques in other fields. Decades ago many social sciences underwent the “cultural turn,” shifting from a purely reason-driven approach to one that incorporates “culture” as an independent variable in their analyses. But economics today continues to ignore subjective influences on prices, demands, even on economic behavior itself. Economist Robert Frank, for example, conducted a study where college students, after taking two semesters of introductory economics, became more selfish and less cooperative. Apparently, studying neoclassical economics makes us behave like, well, self-interested agents in neoclassical theory. Culture, norms and value systems indelibly affect our interpretations and behaviors. The “economics” that is taught today as a result is only one normative perspective of many, ignoring its cultural context and relativity. If economics is so flawed with its assumptions, theories, models and feigned objectivity, why

hasn’t it changed? How can one of the most respected academic fields be so intellectually myopic? In his Nobel Prize lecture, Joseph Stiglitz answered this question, noting that, “one cannot ignore the possibility that the survival of the [neoclassical] paradigm was partly because the belief in that paradigm, and the policy prescriptions, has served certain interests.” At the risk of sounding conspiratorial, I will posit that “certain interests” definitely have a stake in certain forms of economics over others. With one-fourth of graduating Yalies working in finance or consulting and many economics professors doubling up as consultants for banks and corporations, “certain interests” do appear to be intertwined with the teaching and learning of economics. Even our massive and widening wealth inequality is not some unexplainable event but rather a consequence of bizarre convictions in neoclassical thought. Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on him not understanding it.” Perhaps we Yalies — as students at a top economics university — can provide the intellectual challenge necessary to open up the field. And in that process, the garbage that is economics today can evolve into something a little more genuine for the future. DAVID TOPPELBERG is a junior in Berkeley College. Contact him at david.toppelberg@yale.edu .


YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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FRIDAY FORUM: WARD 1

JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE “A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.”

EIDELSON

EZE

GUEST COLUMNIST SARAH EIDELSON

GUE ST COLUMNIST UG ONNA E ZE

Let’s talk about money

The time for change

L

et’s have a talk about money. Some people — and some institutions — have a lot more of it than others. And the reasons why aren’t complicated. Because of the Yale administration’s financial aid policies, some students have to find a way to make $6,400 each year to stay on good terms with this institution. These students’ lives are different from those whose privilege enables them to focus on other pursuits and worry less about money. Students have to struggle more to make ends meet because Yale refuses to eliminate the student income contribution. And let’s talk about money in New Haven. A lot of people don’t have enough of it. More than a third of New Haven children are living below the poverty line. And the reasons why aren’t complicated. We have a jobs crisis. Nearly 20 percent of New Haven residents in communities of color are unemployed. These numbers are devastating, but they’re not surprising when you consider the fact that less than a quarter of the jobs in this city are held by people who live here. Our status quo is one of extreme economic and racial inequality. The scale of the crisis is daunting. But I believe that change is actually possible. This week, the Administration announced a $194 million budget surplus for the 2015 fiscal year. Our University has the opportunity to choose to use its wealth to serve the best interests of its students. Yale could eliminate the student income contribution and take a small step toward narrowing the wealth gap among its students. As the largest employer in New Haven, Yale could choose to step up and be a leader in

addressing the jobs crisis. Our University could hire more people from our neighborhoods of need into good jobs that anchor strong communities. In my time as your alder, I’ve learned that the barriers to the world I want to live in are tall. We can’t scale them by changing a policy or passing a law. But when a lot of different people truly commit to working together, we can begin to dismantle them.

LET’S BUILD ONE EXPERIENCE OF PROSPERITY AND POSSIBILITY FOR ALL PEOPLE IN OUR CITY A few years ago, we didn’t have open conversations about Yale’s money the way we do now. Now students across campus are demanding that Yale take action to eliminate the student income contribution, divest from environmental destruction and invest in our cultural centers and mental health services. Two years ago there wasn’t consensus across New Haven that we needed to address the jobs crisis. Now we’ve come together to establish New Haven Works, a jobs pipeline program that has placed over 600 residents into good jobs. Community members and elected officials are speaking with one voice to call on our large employers to step up and

hire qualified New Haveners. We’ve brought youth issues to the forefront and chosen to prioritize funding for youth violence prevention programming and investment in our youth spaces. Just this past spring we saw the election of the first ever student representatives on the Board of Education. Now we get to see what happens when the people affected by policies have a voice in making them. I am honored and humbled to represent you on our Board of Alders and to serve alongside a remarkable group of individuals who are committed to fighting every day to change the status quo. It is also so meaningful to work together with Mayor Harp, who shares our vision of a New Haven where all people can thrive. Her belief that people should look out for one another and that ours should be a city that doesn’t leave anyone behind is inspiring. She demonstrated incredible leadership in establishing Youth Stat four months into her first year of office. Youth Stat brings together all relevant city agencies to track young people at risk and intervene before more serious situations emerge. Coupled with our Board’s work on youth spaces and programming, we are expanding opportunities for young people in this city step by step. The need for change is urgent. And the resources, both financial and human, are there. Let’s choose to reject the status quo. Let’s build one experience of prosperity and possibility for all people in our city. SARAH EIDELSON is a 2012 graduate of Jonathan Edwards College and the incumbent Ward 1 alder. Contact her at aldereidelson@gmail.com .

I

n the race for Ward 1 alder, our community is faced with two competing visions for the Yale-New Haven relationship. Over the past four years, we have secluded ourselves within the Yale bubble, often ignoring many of the grave issues that our neighbors face on a daily basis. This retreat within Yale’s walls comes at a time when a fifth of our city’s black and Latino residents are unemployed, a third of New Haven children live below the poverty line and hundreds of the city’s homeless live without roofs over their heads. In addition to these issues, our current alder has alienated herself from her own constituents, contacting us only in the few weeks preceding Election Day and often employing overly aggressive campaign tactics. I have a different vision: an alder who maintains a consistent presence in the ward and who is willing to tackle the tough issues with common sense policy solutions. Over the course of the past few months, I have become concerned with some of the campaign tactics used in this race. Rather than engaging in organic conversations, many of my opponent’s canvassers have harassed and intimidated students, sometimes calling them multiple times a day despite requests to be left alone. In some cases, canvassers have even followed students into their bathrooms. Rather than drawing students into the life of our city, aggressive doorknocking has turned many people off. Some students have felt the need to post signs on their doors explicitly asking canvassers to leave them alone, or even to call the police on canvassers they did not recognize. This is unacceptable. I take a different approach. I

speak with anyone and everyone: affordable housing advocates and spoken word poets, New Haven Police officers and city developers, environmental activists and members of the Yale administration. My campaign team is diverse and bipartisan; we have Bernie Sanders supporters, libertarians and even former members of Fish Stark's and Sarah Eidelson’s campaign teams. I embrace this inclusive, noninvasive approach. When going door to door, I canvass only with friends and supporters who are in the same colleges as the people I am visiting, which leads to more candid conversations. I speak with international students and people who have already voted in other parts of the country despite their ineligibility to vote in this election, because my vision for our engagement with the city does not stop at the ballot box.

MY CAMPAIGN TEAM IS DIVERSE AND BIPARTISAN We will only see the kinds of changes our community needs through consistent and open engagement on the part of our alder. This is why I am making the following commitments to you; if elected, I will: 1. Hold bimonthly town hall meetings at a central location on campus; 2. Send monthly communitywide emails updating all of you on what I have been doing as alder and on important events in the city; 3. Meet weekly with different

student groups to find opportunities for collaboration between City Hall and the student body. These steps will foster transparency and accountability and allow for meaningful progress on the major issues facing our city — homelessness, crime, under-performing schools, irresponsible spending and our city’s carbon footprint. Each of these areas relates to the others, so we need a holistic approach to tackle these problems. Any attempt to address unemployment in New Haven, for example, must include reforming New Haven schools and closing the achievement gap by supporting programs like Leap and reinvigorating New Haven Boost. With some of my other policy ideas, I know we can lower our carbon footprint. We can give city residents better access to jobs and after-school programs in different parts of the city by making our public bus routes more efficient. Throughout my campaign, I have released policy proposals online and discussed them at length at public events. I hope you will visit my website and Facebook page for further details. The Ward 1 alder cannot lead from the sidelines. Governing effectively requires investing in personal relationships, transcending partisan lines and maintaining an active presence in the community. This Tuesday, we can either elect to endure another two years of the status quo, or we can finally step up and improve our relationship with New Haven through open and consistent engagement. If you elect me as your alder, you can expect real change. UGONNA EZE is a senior in Pierson College. He is a candidate for Ward 1 alder. Contact him at ugonna.eze@yale.edu .

EIDELSON

EZE

S TA F F C O L U M N I S T T Y L E R B L A C K M O N

G U E S T C O L U M N I S T K H A L I D AT TA L L A

An alder and a friend

The choice is Eze

S

arah Eidelson is both a Democrat and a friend. Let me explain. As a Democrat, I support Eidelson’s re-election to the Board of Alders because of the work she’s done and the work that still needs to be done. My first real experience working with Sarah came during the New Haven charter reform process in 2013. The city automatically begins a charter revision process every 10 years, so Sarah invited Yale students to work with her to figure out how to revise the charter in a way that would maximize the opportunities for New Haven residents. Importantly, however, the conversation was not driven by ideas about what we thought would be best. Instead, it was about how we could help amplify the voices of New Haveners in a way that would give them a larger say in their own government. After discussing the issues more with the community, Sarah eventually helped us find the most useful way of engaging with the reform process: supporting New Haven high school student seats on the New Haven Board of Education. It was, in many ways, a perfect match: Community leaders wanted more information about how school boards with student representatives worked, and many Yale students could offer their experiences serving on local school boards in high school. Over the coming months, Sarah helped a coalition of students organize official testimony at charter revision hearings and then returned to educate Yale students about the changes they would be voting on that fall. In the end, our strategy did not rely upon Yale students riding in on white horses to save New Haven schools; rather, we wanted to

give New Haven students agency in affecting change in their own communities. In this process, Sarah proved her worth as an effective leader. Having already established the trust of her fellow alders, she was able to connect students and policymakers to ensure that interests were aligned and students would actually benefit from the changes. But like any good local leader, she also obsessed over the details — trying to figure out term lengths, rotation schedules and eligibility requirements — in order to turn big ideas into concrete reform. It was a model for how the Ward 1 alder can and should operate in the city. That dedication to public service alone is reason enough to vote for Sarah. But some of the most inspiring moments for me happened when Sarah put aside the politics and just became my friend. Over the past six months, I struggled to figure out my role in the Ward 1 primary. After a bit of a tumultuous summer, I was at a breaking point. Two of my good friends, Sarah Eidelson and Fish Stark, were both vying for the same position, and it was taking a severe emotional toll on me. I believed then, and I still continue to believe, that both were doing so with the best of intentions. But both were also pushing me to my limits. Both very clearly wanted the endorsement or implicit backing of the Yale Dems, and I very clearly did not want to offer it to either at that stage. After a few testy exchanges with Sarah over the summer, I finally just met up with her in New Haven. I couldn’t help it; in the middle of Cross Campus, I just broke down crying. I’ll never forget that moment because I saw Sarah put aside her copy of the New Haven Register, com-

plete with a large headline about the New Haven jobs crisis, and just give me a much-needed hug. For the next half-hour, we talked — not about city politics, or the Yale Dems or her work on the Board of Alders — but about my own mental health. She wanted to know that I was getting the help I needed and told me to simply take the summer off from local politics. Until that day, I never truly considered Sarah Eidelson my friend. We had worked on projects together in New Haven, sure. But we had never talked as openly and honestly as we did that day. Her small gestures of kindness and sincere concern about my well-being that summer inspired my confidence in her as a human being far more than any piece of legislation she could have pushed through the Youth Services Committee. Sarah has endured an unrelenting barrage of criticism on campus and, frankly, within the pages of this very paper. But as Sarah runs for re-election, I’m proud to stand beside her once more as she works to build upon the progress she’s already made in this city. Sarah approaches her work in this city with humility, she works with a team and she ultimately works to empower the voices of each and every New Havener because she cares. Sarah has proven she can navigate complex situations with passion and resolve. She has fully integrated herself into the New Haven community far more than any Yale alder before her, and I, for one, am proud to say I will be casting my last ballot here at Yale for the re-election of my alder and my friend. TYLER BLACKMON is a senior in Jonathan Edwards College. Contact him at tyler.blackmon@yale.edu .

I

rushed out of section in Bass on Wednesday evening, hoping to catch the tail end of the Ward 1 debate in LC 101 — I had always wondered what Sarah Eidelson ’12 looked like in person. By the time I arrived, the room had cleared out, so it’s unlikely I’ll ever get the chance. I’ve known Ugonna since freshman year. He is a man of principle, conscience and action. Ugonna’s involvement in New Haven is passionate, emotional and honest. When I first heard he was running, I wondered why a kid from the Bronx would want to get into New Haven politics. But what soon became clear to me is that, for Ugonna, this was never about politics. His candidacy is grounded in genuine compassion and his innate need to take a stand for what he believes in. Throughout his time at Yale, he has come to call New Haven his home. This isn’t a national or state election and many people may be dismissive of its importance. But for the citizens of New Haven, it is, in its own way, just as important. Ugonna has gone about crafting incisive and substantive policy proposals geared toward tackling the issues New Haven residents care about. All the while, he has made sure to actively engage the student body. From holding campus events on education policy and environmental sustainability, to directly approaching student organizations, Ugonna’s focus has firmly been on how to open up doors for Yale students to get involved with the city. Ugonna’s ties to both New Haven and the student body are strong. He has been volunteering around New Haven, interacting with residents on a personal basis, and is a member of various student groups such as the Black Men’s Union, the

Hip-Hop Collective and the Yale Political Union. His motives are unimpeachable and I have been a first-hand witness to the fervor with which he has dived into this election process. The first question on his mind isn’t, “How can I get as many people to vote for me as possible,” it’s “What are the problems facing New Haven residents, and how can we work together with Yale students to solve them?” Like his public events, campaign staff meetings have always been focused on the issues, on policy and on engagement — not on politics or partisanship.

HIS APPROACH TO SOLVING THE PROBLEMS PLAGUING THE CITY IS INCLUSIVE AND ROOTED IN AN ASTOUNDING HUMILITY THAT LEAVES NO ROOM FOR DOGMATIC THINKING Yet, in some quarters, people have tried to draw a glaringly partisan line through this election. The “need to have a progressive” has been emphasized so often that I have to wonder just what that means. People have suggested that only a progressive can work well with the current Board of Alders, or that

only a progressive can properly tackle the issues facing the city. Ugonna’s campaign has blown these excuses out of the water. The composition of his campaign team is as bipartisan as they come, and his approach to solving the problems plaguing the city is inclusive and rooted in an astounding humility that leaves no room for dogmatic thinking. At least one thing that all the candidates in this race, past or present, can agree on is that the position of Ward 1 alder is one uniquely suited to educating Yale students about the issues facing New Haven and fostering civic participation. I’m a senior, and I’d like to think I’m politically conscious, but how can someone who graduated before I even enrolled, someone who doesn’t attend student events and who is unfamiliar with the student body be the one to show me, and others, the way forward? In a Facebook comment about the Ward 1 alder race, a New Haven resident claimed that the Ward 1 position should be the province of a Yale student or a very recent graduate. I agree wholeheartedly. Much of the Ward 1 debate centered on the need to get Yale students involved in New Haven affairs, and who is better positioned to do so than an involved and approachable student? I believe that respect is earned, not freely handed out like Halloween candy. With his commitment, his humility and his thoughtfulness, Ugonna has earned my respect and my vote along with that of many others. Take a chance, talk to him and I bet he’ll earn yours too. KHALID ATTALLA is a senior in Jonathan Edwards College. Contact him at khalid.attalla@yale.edu .


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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.” CARL SAGAN AMERICAN ASTRONOMER AND AUTHOR

Developing rugby teams consider varsity status BY DANIELA BRIGHENTI STAFF REPORTER Tackles and diamond-shaped balls are no longer just symbols of football — as rugby grows in popularity across the nation, so does the number of Ivy League schools elevating their rugby programs to varsity status. As of this fall, Brown, Harvard and Dartmouth have all recognized women’s rugby as a varsity sport, a school designation that increases a program’s ability to recruit and receive funding from the school. Dartmouth became the most recent Ivy team to make the switch this fall, after Harvard and Brown elevated their programs in 2012 and 2013, respectively. The same trend has not been observed for men’s rugby, which has 14 varsity-recognized teams nationwide but is not currently an NCAA sport. While members of the Yale club men’s rugby team did not indicate a present interest in becoming the Ivy League’s first varsity men’s rugby team, the women’s team, after seeing three Ancient Eight squads now reach varsity status, is more hopeful for a transition in the future. Players on both teams highlighted the ongoing development of their programs, which has included the hiring of two new head coaches in the past two years. “At the moment we are not concentrating on going varsity,” Yale director of rugby and men’s head coach Greg McWilliams, in his second year leading the team, said. “We are setting a strong foundation through both programs and trying to get them to a point where they are competitive … I would like to think that if there is a transition to varsity it would come by for the women before the men.” Despite the men’s team’s club status, the athletic administration recognizes the sport’s growth and has been very supportive of the teams’ needs, McWilliams said. Last winter, for example, the men’s team was

given access to the varsity gym and its trainers, a move that may have played a role in the team’s berth to the USA Rugby Men’s DI-AA National Championship Tournament last spring. This access is unusual, as the Yale Club Sports Handbook notes that the varsity weight room is “not available for club sport athletes.” This fall, the administration also hired new women’s head coach Craig Wilson, who was previously coaching with Hong Kong National Under 20s, Hong Kong’s junior national team. Like McWilliams, Wilson said that he views his job as ensuring that the program — whether it be club or varsity — is always developing, and that players are satisfied. However, Wilson did recognize the benefits that becoming a varsity sport would bring to the program: regular access to the varsity gym, access to nutrition experts and supplements, provision of sports medicine, increased funding and additional coaching resources such as assistant coaches and trainers. “I personally think varsity is a mindset,” Wilson said. “It does not mean that the ladies involved in the team work less than those in varsity programs. Everything they do is through pride, determination and teamwork with little external support.” Women’s co-captains Serena Lau ’17 and Alina Yaman ’17 added that although there has been an ongoing conversation on the team in the last few years about transitioning into a varsity sport, the current team is still in its developing stages and is working towards playing competitively with the hopes of eventually becoming an established varsity program. Tom Migdalski, director of club sports, intramurals and outdoor education said the Yale Athletic Department has not received a request from men’s or women’s rugby for varsity status thus far, and declined to com-

YALE DAILY NEWS

This fall the Dartmouth women’s rugby team became the third Ivy rugby program to achieve varsity status. ment further on the topic. “With varsity-level competitors, we need to be able to play at their level, and we need to put in the work to do that,” Lau said. Being an intensely physical and technical sport, rugby requires a high level of commitment throughout the season from athletes, men’s team captain John Donovan ’16 said. The men’s team practices an estimated 10 to 15 hours every week, including practice sessions, weight training, team

meetings and weekend games. “Rugby offers a unique athletic and team experience as compared with frisbee, soccer or any other activity offered at Yale,” Donovan said. “The intensity of the sport attracts highly motivated and driven individuals while its physicality fosters camaraderie and builds character.” Lau and Yaman said that rugby at Yale requires a higher level of investment than other club sports.

The women’s team has two field practices, three weight training sessions and one skill development session each week. In addition, players must watch video analyses of their weekly games in their own time, Lau and Yaman said. The Yale Club Sports Handbook cites several criteria for a club team looking to become a varsity sport, such as a history of deep interest in the sport from the Yale community, existence of adequate competition within

the Ivy League or the region and evidence that Yale can perform well in the sport, among other factors. It adds that the criteria do not fully define the requirements for ascension to varsity level, and that “becoming a varsity sport is not a simple process.” The Yale Women’s Rugby Football Club was founded in 1978, and the men’s in 1875. Contact DANIELA BRIGHENTI at daniela.brighenti@yale.edu .

Yale-NUS takes distinct approach to science curriculum BY QI XU STAFF REPORTER At the inauguration of YaleNUS’ new campus on Oct. 12, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that Yale-NUS cannot be a carbon copy of Yale if it is to succeed as its own institution of higher education. Differences between Yale and its Southeast Asian counterpart have become especially apparent as Yale-NUS reviews parts of its Common Curriculum, which some students have argued poses a particular challenge to those without strong backgrounds in science. Yale-NUS has a “Common Curriculum,” a set of courses that comprises 38 percent of a Yale-NUS student’s education. Unlike Yale’s distributional requirements, some Common Curriculum categories only include one class, meaning that those individual courses are compulsory for all students. Two of these compulsory classes are the introductory science modules, called “Scientific Inquiry” and “Quantitative Reasoning.” Students must also complete more advanced classes in the categories of Integrated Science and Foundations of Science, although these categories offer more choice in classes. While students have largely expressed support for the introductory modules, the more advanced modules have proven difficult for non-science majors, who say lectures are confusing and grading is inconsistent. Still, faculty and students alike say they support Yale-NUS’ continuing efforts to revise its science offerings. Additionally, although YaleNUS only offers three majors in the sciences, administrators say these majors are broader than those offered at Yale, offering students more freedom in their academic pursuits. “I think that including science in the Common Curriculum is essential for making this a 21st-century education … We want to introduce students to all the fields they need to be effective citizens today, and scientific literacy is absolutely essential,”

Yale-NUS President Pericles Lewis said. “This does present some challenges in that students have a variety of backgrounds in science when they arrive, but the payoff is worth it.”

ASSESSING THE CURRICULUM

Lewis said that although Yale-NUS does not release course evaluations like Yale does, an internal survey distributed this year showed that students’ responses to the compulsory “Scientific Inquiry” module are largely positive. For the more advanced science classes in Integrated Science and Foundations of Science, Pericles said, the problem lies not in the difficulty level, but in the amount of material covered. The course design started out “too ambitious” in that it aimed to cover too much in one or two semesters, he said, adding that these are broadly successful classes but the school hopes to tweak its approach going forward. Yale-NUS Dean of Faculty and Yale astronomy professor Charles Bailyn ’81 said the school has made a “decent start” on incorporating science into the Common Curriculum, although it needs to adjust the sequence of courses. “I think the balance between science, social science and humanities isn’t that different for us than for Yale,” Bailyn said. “The really big difference is that we have a Common Curriculum, whereas Yale has a distribution system. That means that we can design science courses that everyone will take. At Yale, some students seem to choose their science courses based on how easy they appear to be, and that’s not an option that’s available here.” Bailyn is heading a committee to review the school’s Common Curriculum. The committee generated an internal report earlier this year based on input from Yale-NUS faculty and students. The report was also examined by an external panel, comprised of Yale and NUS faculty not directly linked to the school, earlier this month.

Bailyn said the external panel will compile a report of its own, and when it is available — most likely in mid-November — the school will release main points from both the self-study report and the external report, although some details will remain confidential. The Yale-NUS faculty will most likely vote on changes to the Common Curriculum in January of next year, Bailyn said. Several Yale-NUS students interviewed acknowledged that some science classes at their university tried to cover too much ground. They agreed that the school needs time to adjust its first iteration of the Common Curriculum. Matthew Bolden YNUS ’17, an environmental studies major who took three classes in the Integrated Science category, said the courses were well-taught. Although the introductory computer science class in the Integrated Science category covered a good deal of material, he said he did not find it overwhelming or rushed, and the professor was always available for office hours. But he noted that the science in the Common Curriculum could be generalized to equip everyone with the essential scientific understanding and skills, rather than catering to those who already know they want to pursue scientific research. “[Science] ought to be part of the Common Curriculum, but that’s far easier said than done. For the most part, tertiary science education is designed to churn out researchers. That’s all fine and dandy, but it turns away a lot of people.” Bolden said. “The Common Curriculum has to grapple with this issue, and I don’t think we’ve quite figured out how to do that yet.” Al Lim YNUS ’19, who is taking the mandatory “Scientific Inquiry” course this semester, said that the scope of the module is too ambitious as it covers evolution and cosmology in one semester. Still, he said, despite not having prior experience in these areas, he found the subject matter relatively easy to follow.

BROAD-RANGING MAJORS

Yale-NUS’ three science majors are life sciences, physical sciences and mathematical, computational and statistical sciences. The environmental studies major is cross-listed as humanities, sciences and social sciences. The majors are not being evaluated as part of the current curricular review. Fourteen percent of YaleNUS’ inaugural class declared a science major, a smaller proportion than at other universities in Singapore. At the National University of Singapore, 21.4 percent of incoming freshmen this year were science majors. At the Nanyang Technological University, 16.3 percent of incoming freshmen planned to study the sciences. Additionally, at both NUS and NTU, a significant portion of students chose

to study engineering, although that is not an option at YaleNUS. Lewis said that although Yale-NUS offers few science majors, each major is broad enough to cover a variety of topics and fields. “We look at [the majors] more as a framework for studies rather than as a limiting factor,” he said. “So in physical sciences a student can study physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology … Life Sciences covers what at Yale are several departments, such as MCDB, E&EB and MB&B.” Lewis added that since many of these programs share the same prerequisites, it is possible to cover them in a single major. Students also have the opportunity to take more advanced courses at NUS in more spe-

cialized fields where Yale-NUS might not have a faculty member, Lewis added. Bailyn agreed that the majors at Yale-NUS are much broader than majors at Yale. For example, Bailyn said, the mathematical, computational and statistical science major — a single science major at Yale-NUS — includes the equivalent of math, computer science and applied math at Yale, as well as parts of statistics. “So there are many more pathways available to our students than would be the case for any three particular majors at Yale,” Bailyn said. “So the range of our programs is not a problem.” Yale-NUS was founded in 2011. Contact QI XU at qi.xu@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS

Yale-NUS and Yale offer vastly different science curricula.


YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

NEWS

“I am more afraid of alcohol than of all the bullets of the enemy.” STONEWALL JACKSON CONFEDERATE GENERAL

Increased safety measures for later Harvard-Yale start time BY MONICA WANG AND PADDY GAVIN STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The annual Harvard-Yale football game will start two hours later than usual this November — a scheduling switch some students allege may affect alcohol consumption. In previous Harvard-Yale matches, kickoff was typically scheduled for 12:30 p.m. This year’s Game will start at 2:30 p.m., a kickoff time requested by the NBC Sports Network, which televises The Game, according to Associate Athletics Director Sports Publicity Steve Conn. While event planners have already set in place several measures intended to accommodate students attending the afternoon event, some students have expressed concern that the

pushed-back start time could detract from the experience of The Game and even lead to higher instances of binge drinking. Michael Herbert ’16, former president of the Yale College Council and staff columnist for the News, said The Game’s later start time, coupled with the ban on the sale of alcohol within the Yale Bowl, will result in a less enjoyable experience for students and fans. “I think that the start time isn’t going to help anything,” Herbert said. “People will still be starting very early and drinking through the day, and at 2:15, people will indulge more than they should, because they know it’s going to be their last chance [before the Game].” Herbert added that the Yale Bowl’s ban on alcohol encourages irresponsible behavior. The

bigger problem remains — students have to drink all their alcohol before they go to the stadium, he said. Still, Alex Borsa ’16, a communication and consent educator for Silliman College, said he feels students will pace their celebrations more because of the Game’s later start time and have a more positive experience as well. “My immediate reaction [to the later kickoff time] is one of relief,” Borsa said. “Students won’t feel the need to get drunk as quickly, or in more dangerous ways, by not eating or hydrating.” But like Herbert, Borsa said he disagrees with the ban on alcohol within the Yale Bowl and is in favor of the sale of beer and wine within the stadium. He added that he does not believe the current ban deters students from drinking, arguing

that it instead encourages students to drink more before the game. “Drinking a lot beforehand would not be in students’ best interest,” he said. “It brings greater biological and social risks.” Administrators in charge of the Alcohol and Other Drugs Harm Reduction Initiative said that they were hopeful that, with the additional time, students would be sensible in their planning for activities before the game. “Hopefully, this two-hourslater start time will allow students more time to rest and eat before the festivities begin,” AODHRI Students Affairs Fellow Elizabeth Larsen ’15 said, adding that student safety is a top priority at football games. Administrators interviewed

declined to comment on the potentially increased risk of alcohol overconsumption. Even though The Game draws an excess of 50,000 people, thus resulting in more medical incidents reported than other home games, the ratio between the number of incidents and the number of attendees remains low, Yale Police Department administrative lieutenant Von Narcisse said. According to AODHRI Student Affairs Fellow David Lindsey ’12, the number of health-related incidents on the day of the Harvard-Yale Game has decreased in the past three years. Administrators have already implemented safety and transportation measures to plan for the later event. Senior Associate Athletics Director Varsity Sports Admin-

istration Andy Dunn said postGame bus routes have been adjusted to more efficiently transport attendees back to campus. Plans include staging queue lines for the buses earlier in the evening. Narcisse said the three police agencies involved in ensuring the Game’s security — the Yale Police Department, New Haven Police Department and West Haven Police Department — will increase staffing during the Game. Narcisse added that additional police officers will be deployed to direct traffic. The Yale Bowl, which first opened on Nov. 21, 1914, holds over 60,000 people. Contact MONICA WANG at monica.wang@yale.edu and PADDY GAVIN at paddy.gavin@yale.edu .

Delayed ACT scores raise concerns for early deadline TIMELINE DELAYED ACT SCORES Sept. 12: September ACT tests administered.

Oct. 24: October ACT test administered.

Oct. 19: ACT informs colleges of delay in writing section scores, which could impact students meeting early admission deadlines.

Nov. 1: Early admission deadline for many colleges, including Yale.

Oct. 26: ACT contacts affected students, telling them that their official score reports will be delayed.

Nov. 10–Dec. 18: Multiple-choice scores projected to be posted online as individual tests are scored. Writing scores are typically posted around two weeks after the multiple-choice scores.

Nov. 6: ACT expects all writing sections to have been scored and posted online.

Mid-December: Yale and many other colleges release early admission decisions. JACOB MIDDLEKAUFF/PRODUCTION & DESIGN ASSISTANT

BY JON VICTOR STAFF REPORTER With delayed September ACT Writing Test scores causing confusion for students applying early to college, attention has now shifted to a possible delay in the October test scores. On Oct. 19, ACT notified colleges of the September delay, which was caused by the introduction of a redesigned writing section, according to ACT spokesman Ed Colby. The September test was the first to include the new writing section, which was scored on a different rubric from the previous version. While students have been able to access their results on the other sections of the September ACT, official score reports are not released to students and to colleges until all sections are scored. And according to Yale’s admissions website, writing scores for the October ACT could be delayed as well. Despite concerns that students’ official score reports will not be released in time for many schools’ early action application deadline on Nov. 1, Dean of Admissions Jeremiah

Quinlan said the delay will not have a significant impact on Yale’s normal application process timeline since the admissions committee bases preliminary decisions on self-reported scores in the Common Application. Students initially selfreport their scores through the Common Application, but must also have an official score report sent to colleges by the testing organization. Many colleges — including Yale — require that applicants taking the ACT submit the ACT Writing Test, which includes an additional essay section. “This is not going to delay the processing or review of Early Action applications,” Quinlan said. “The way the process works is that applications become complete, and we begin reviewing them on self-reported scores. It’s only towards the end of the process when we might get close to admitting a student that we want to make sure that the scores are official.” Still, though thousands of students will not receive their official score reports until after the early action deadline, the vast majority of test takers already has access to their offi-

cial score reports online since their writing sections have been graded. As of Tuesday morning, nearly 90 percent of the September ACT writing scores had been scored and reported, Colby said. He added that ACT expects to have the remaining writing tests scored and reported by Nov. 6, five days after Yale’s early action deadline. On Thursday, the Yale admissions office posted a message on its website assuring prospective students that their applications will not be impacted by the delay. “Scores that are received by the first week in December will arrive in time for early action consideration and will be considered without prejudice,” the message reads. Jim Swanson, a college counselor at Creighton Preparatory School in Omaha, Nebraska, said students at his school were not particularly worried about the delay. Swanson said only one student and one parent came to him with concerns, but he assured them that colleges would change their deadlines for official score reports given the delay. Yale’s peer schools have also

posted similar notices: Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania both state on their websites that they are aware of the delay and are making accommodations for affected students as necessary.

This is not going to delay the processing or review of Early Action applications. JEREMIAH QUINLAN Dean of Admissions However, high-school students interviewed who took the September ACT Writing Test expressed frustration over the delay, stating that the delayed score reporters have added further confusion and anxiety to an already stressful process. Yousef Issa, a senior at Hampton High School who is applying to Yale early action through the Questbridge National College Match Program — a college and scholarship application process for low-income high-school seniors — said he has received mixed information from admis-

sions representatives about how to deal with the problem. Issa took the ACT Writing Test in September and October. Issa and Maeve Moran, a senior at Merion Mercy Academy in Merion, Pennsylvania, both criticized ACT for its lack of transparency about the issue. Moran said the delay was stressful for her because initially, she did not know its cause and thought there may have been a problem with her specific test. “They don’t give any information out,” Issa said. Issa was also concerned about the possible delay of the October test results, which could have more significant consequences for early action applicants to Yale since admissions decisions are supposed to be sent out in mid-December. Colby said ACT does not expect a delay in score reporting for the October test, adding that ACT is making adjustments to the process to help speed up the scoring and reporting of writing test results. “As with any new process, there is a learning curve, and we have learned a great deal in this first experience in scoring the enhanced ACT writing test on a

national test date,” Colby said. “We will be closely monitoring the process to ensure that it is moving along as anticipated and are prepared to make any further adjustments as necessary.” However, Yale admissions’ website states that the ACT notified colleges of a possible delay in score reporting for the October test. An additional section addresses students who took the ACT on Oct. 24, urging them to self-report scores as soon as they receive them. The Admissions Office remains confident that potential delays will not have a drastic impact on the normal admissions timeline. Quinlan said that even if the scores are not available under the normal timeline, the admissions committee considers applications until right before decisions are released, and so it will be able to review information that comes in later than expected. Students who took the ACT on Oct. 24 are scheduled to receive their multiple-choice scores sometime between Nov. 10 and Dec. 18. Contact JON VICTOR at jon.victor@yale.edu .


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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“The most important factor in determining whether you will succeed isn’t your gender it’s you.” ANGELA BRALY AMERICAN EXECUTIVE

Days after UWC changes, conversation continues UWC FROM PAGE 1 attention last November, when The New York Times revealed that University Provost Benjamin Polak lightened the recommended punishment for former School of Medicine cardiology chief Michael Simons MED ’84. The UWC found Simons responsible for sexually harassing Annarita Di Lorenzo, a young Italian researcher at the medical school. Though the UWC originally recommended permanently removing Simons from his post, Polak issued just an 18-month suspension. The subsequent controversy and outrage led the University to announce that Simons “had decided” not to return to his post, according to the Times. While Stith and two UWC members interviewed decline to comment on whether the Simons controversy affected the newly modified procedures, School of

Medicine professor and former Women Faculty Forum Chair Shirley McCarthy MED ’79 said she believes the case had an impact. “I’m sure it did [impact the recent modification],” McCarthy told the News. “The UWC came up with a decision and it was overturned by the provost. It seemed to most everybody that the UWC had the resolution that seemed the most fair. To have that overturned just didn’t make sense.” Stith said the modification stems from the committee’s desire to make UWC procedures match other disciplinary processes at Yale. In many other disciplinary procedures, Stith said, the affected parties are provided with only the panel’s findings and recommended conclusions, but not its recommended sanctions. She cited the Dean’s Procedure for Student Complaints and the Provost’s Procedure for

Student Complaints — both of which govern student complaints about discrimination from faculty members — as well as faculty complaints regarding reappointment, tenure or violations of University policy as examples where the parties involved do not receive the recommended official action. “A number of other disciplinary processes at Yale function this way, and I believe the committee wanted to align the UWC procedures with other [similar ones],” UWC chair and ecology and evolutionary biology professor David Post told the News. Stith also stressed the companion modification that requires the decision-maker to consult with the UWC panel before suggesting sanctions that are different from the panel’s original recommendations. Yale School of Medicine professor and current WFF Chair Paula Kavathas said the WFF

Lower salaries for alumnae WAGES FROM PAGE 1 more negatively in hindsight. However, others said that a hostile environment on campus could augment feelings of dissatisfaction amongst females. Marianne LaFrance, a professor of women, gender and sexuality studies, said the inhospitable atmosphere women often face on campus results in less worthwhile educational experiences. “In many studies, women have been described as encountering a ‘chilly climate’ in college environments relative to men,” LaFrance said. “For example, male students continue to dominate in class discussions and then parlay their greater participation into establishing additional networking relationships with faculty members and other students. The result is educational experiences for females are less than those for male students.” LaFrance said women might also receive less valuable educations because pro-

fessors are not as willing to push or challenge them, choosing instead to gravitate toward males. She added that sexually hostile campus environments could make them feel less valued. But Ellen Su ’13, a sur-

ences working at a nonprofit, women tend to follow their passions and not their wallets. “At the nonprofit I worked in over the summer, it was really interesting to see that it was 95 percent female,” Cogan said. “I got the sense in talking to the other people who worked there that women were more inclined to do something that is helping other people rather than just enriching themselves, and that does often lead to lower incomes.” Still, Steven Morales ’13 said this income gap does not surprise him because women make less than men nationally due to broader societal inequalities. According to the White House, women working fulltime earn just 78 cents for every dollar a man earns. Future installments in this series will further analyze graduate satisfaction by Yale College major and level of financial aid.

In many studies, women have been described as encountering a “chilly climate” in college environments. MARIANNE LAFRANCE Professor, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies vey respondent, said differences in satisfaction should be attributed to postgraduate income opportunities, adding that the fields to which women gravitate — particularly those in the humanities — tend to pay less. Ashby Cogan ’14 said that based on her experi-

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

SURVEY RESULTS GENDER AND DEGREE SATISFACTION Please rate the degree to which you believe your Yale education was worth the cost. 4%

2%

5%

6% 9%

9% 15%

67%

Strongly Agree Agree

52%

31%

Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree

What is your income bracket? 16% 20%

12% 32%

21%

11%

6%

19%

$1–$25,000 $25,000–$50,000

18%

$50,000–$75,000

47%

$75,000–$100,000 $100,000+

LISA QIAN/PRODUCTION & DESIGN ASSISTANT

agreed that the process by which final decisions were made could be improved. “[The new procedures] will require a conversation with the opportunity for direct feedback from the committee members before a final decision is made,” Kavathas told the News. “I am pleased that this change and others were approved.”

It seemed to most everybody that the UWC had the resolution that seemed the most fair. SHIRLEY MCCARTHY MED ’79 Chair, Women Faculty Forum Besides the modified role of the final decision-maker, the revisions also clarified the infor-

mal complaint process and altered the criteria for the factfinder, who gathers the relevant parties’ testimonies before formal hearings. According to University Title IX Coordinator and Deputy Provost Stephanie Spangler, because informal complaints could previously be submitted to both the UWC as well as to Title IX coordinators, students sometimes mistakenly believed that there were two different informal resolution processes. Now, informal complaints will be explicitly handled by Title IX officers, although UWC members will still be available for consultation. Spangler said the clarification — which was recommended by a Yale College Council and Women’s Center undergraduate survey released in April that revealed confusion about the informal process — is intended to make clear that there is only one informal process. Her office is working to provide more

information about the informal process to detail the options available for addressing complaints, Spangler added. Additionally, the fact-finder was previously required to be “independent” of the University, but now is only required to be impartial and properly trained in UWC procedures. “New Haven and Yale are interwoven,” Stith explained. “A ‘no connection with Yale’ criterion cuts out many who have the experience, integrity and judgment to be excellent independent and impartial fact-finders.” When the UWC was established in 2011, administrators expected to revise its procedures periodically, especially after the UWC accumulated more years of experience in addressing sexual misconduct on campus, according to Salovey. Contact MONICA WANG at monica.wang@yale.edu .

Chun to take sabbatical CHUN FROM PAGE 1 give back,” Chun wrote in his announcement email. “But the mastership is not a lifetime appointment, and in my ninth year, this feels like the right time for me to share this honor with another colleague who can bring fresh ideas to the community.” In his announcement, Chun paid tribute to his colleagues in the Berkeley community, including Berkeley Dean Mia Reinoso Genoni and Yale Chief Investment Officer and Berkeley Fellow David Swensen. Chun cited Swensen’s “legendary” beer tastings for Berkeley seniors and the renaming of the Berkeley Master’s House as the Swensen House as two highlights of his mastership. Reflecting on his time as the master of Berkeley, Chun called the experience “a fairy tale dream,” adding that as a high school student, he could not even fantasize about attending an institution like Yale. “What I love about Yale residential colleges is that our communities are diverse, so students get to meet and frequently develop close friendships with people different from themselves,” Chun told the News. “My mastership has strengthened my belief that Yale is the best college in the world.” In addition to his role as Berkeley master, Chun directs the Visual Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, which uses functional brain imaging to understand how to improve memory, attention, conscious perception and decision-making. He is also known for teaching the popular “Introduction to Psychology” lecture, most recently in fall 2014. Chun has won multiple teaching awards for his work in the course. Chun said that during his sabbatical, he plans to focus on research that uses brain imaging to predict behavior and finish a cognitive psychology textbook to be published by Oxford University Press. Faculty members who have worked closely with Chun in his capacity as master praised his dedication to the position and said he will be missed. Stephen Davis, head of Pierson College and chair of the Council of Masters, said he has always been impressed by Chun’s thoughtfulness as well as his open, good-humored outlook on life. Davis also said he appreciate the support Chun extended to him. “During my first year in the job at Pierson, [Chun] was one of my two assigned mentors on the Council,” Davis said. “This meant that I would call him up with questions at strange hours, but he always took the call and was unfailingly patient in offering me the wisdom and guidance I needed. Truth be told, I still call him for advice, and that is one of the many reasons I’ll miss him next year.” Genoni said she marvels at Chun’s unparalleled gift for creating events that helped build Berkeley’s community, and that the two had many opportunities to share in their students’ joy and college camaraderie, such as during the Inner Tube Water

JASON LIU/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Chun has been master of Berkeley College for nine years and was the first Asian American to become a college master. Polo championship. Chun is also well-known for hosting popular, food-centric social events. During his tenure as master, Chun introduced the semesterly “Berkeley Thunder Brunch,” in which his office partners with the Berkeley dining hall to treats students to an especially savory Sunday brunch. In addition to Thunder Brunch, Chun hosts an annual Halloween party, an Oktoberfest celebration for seniors and an Italian Dinner at the beginning of the academic year. Chun and Genoni also take each sophomore suite out to dinner over the course of the year. Berkeley students interviewed responded to Chun’s departure with surprise and disappointment. “It’s hard to imagine Berkeley without Master Chun,” Berkeley Master’s Aide Artem Osherov ’17 said. Students spoke fondly Chun’s involvement in student life. Chun takes pictures and cheers on Berkeley teams at every intramural championship, even taking student players out to eat after games to celebrate victories, said Josh Hayden ‘17, another Berkeley master’s aide. Eugenia Zhukovsky ’18 said Chun’s enthusiasm for everything he does, as well as receptions at the Master’s House, play a large role in making Berkeley feel more welcoming. Chun’s investment in his role makes students feel as if they all have a personal connection with him, Ben Rosenbluth ’17 said. Hayden also recalled the silence in the room when Chun first informed the Berkeley administrative staff of his decision before the announcement.

“I feel like there was definitely a void in the room because he’s been such an integral part to all of our Berkeley experiences,” Hayden said. “Master Chun goes above and beyond the call of duty so that everyone feels at home and special.” Master’s Aide Bianka Ukleja ’18 said Chun’s quiet nature, in contrast to Genoni’s more outgoing character, brings balance to the Berkeley leadership. Ukleja praised Chun for being emotionally intelligent, commenting on how his academic background in psychology well fit his role. “He’s not very outgoing, but he knows how to read students and make them feel like they’re loved,” Ukleja said. “It brings this warm environment where you’re not intimidated by your master.” For Julian Drucker ’17, an important quality in a master is awareness. Drucker described a conversation he had with Chun after running into him over the summer. Drucker said Chun knew he would be taking a year off to tour with the Whiffenpoofs, and Chun offered him the opportunity to attend senior events for both his original graduating class and the class of 2017. Drucker said he was touched at the effort Chun puts into getting to know each of his students. A search committee made up of Berkeley community members will start searching for the next Berkeley master later this semester, according to Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway. Contact VICTOR WANG at v.wang@yale.edu and ELLEN KAN at ellen.kan@yale.edu .


YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

NEWS

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” FREDERICK DOUGLASS AFRICAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL REFORMER AND WRITER

Activists call for foster care support BY CHLOE KIMBALL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

JULIA HENRY/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The number of children in the Connecticut foster care system has dropped 16 percent in the past four years.

Though the number of Connecticut children in need of foster homes is dropping, local activists are still calling for improvement to the foster care system. Connecticut has seen a 16 percent reduction in the number of children in the foster care system since January 2011, said Gary Kleeblatt, Connecticut Department of Children and Families communications director. But although New Haven’s foster care system has seen improvements in the past years, foster mom Jennifer Hartley said the system still has a long way to go. Hartley is joined by child-placing agents who state that while New Haven has seen significant reductions in the number of children in need of foster families, those children and their new parents are often neglected by the system. “Foster parents don’t have the support they need to be doing the very hard job they are doing,” said Randi Rubin Rodriguez, CEO and executive director of r’ Kids Family Center — a licensed child placing agency based in New Haven. Current state efforts are focused on reducing the number of children in need of a foster home, Kleeblatt said. In 2011, only 21 percent of foster children were placed with kin or someone they knew intimately, such as a coach or family friend. As of September 2015, that percentage has nearly doubled, now

standing at 39.3 percent, Kleeblatt said. He added that there has been a 62 percent reduction in the number of children placed in DCFrun residential facilities, which are a last resort for foster children because they do not provide the support of a traditional family. “We’ve been really working to strengthen families and their capacity to care for children themselves,” Kleeblatt said. “Families are the best resources that children have. If we can support families to do what they naturally do, which is to care for their kids, then we are ahead of the game.” But Rubin Rodriguez said she wants to see improvements to the system beyond what the government has already achieved. While the state has been working to prevent the separation of children from their birth parents, considerably less attention has been given to foster parents themselves, she said. Rubin Rodriguez said the government does not provide enough therapeutic and psychiatric resources to meet the needs of foster children whose experiences render them especially prone to mental health issues. The lack of mental health resources also makes caring for foster children more challenging for parents who are not fully equipped to deal with their child’s mental illness, she added. “The lack of availability of mental health resources is a crime,” Rubin Rodriguez said. “That a child has to be tormented

because there are no other services besides the ER is disheartening.” She said the government relies on community agencies to provide parents and children with the services needed throughout the foster process. But the individual agencies do not have the infrastructure necessary to meet the city’s need, she said. Rubin Rodriguez added that the dearth in resources is exacerbated by lack of volunteers. Foster care advocates also said that despite the dropping number of children in need of foster homes, Connecticut still needs more residents to volunteer as foster parents. “The whole state of Connecticut is in real need for people who are willing to share their lives with a youth in need,” said Elaine Benevides, the supervisor of the therapeutic foster care program for Jewish Family Service, a child placement agency. “There are so many youth in the system who need a home and just not enough people who are willing to come forward and be a resource.” Hartley’s 17-year-old foster daughter said foster children find it difficult to move from home to home. She said greater availability of long-term homes would provide more stability for children within the system. Today there are 3,995 children in foster care in the state of Connecticut. Contact CHLOE KIMBALL at chloe.kimball@yale.edu .

Grant enhances city’s natural habitats BY MICHELLE LIU STAFF REPORTER A new state grant aims to unite urban residents of New Haven with the great outdoors. Earlier this month, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection awarded $55,000 to local environmental organization Common Ground for the restoration of an urban wildlife refuge. Common Ground — a three-pronged nonprofit organization that includes Common Ground H igh School, an urban farm and an environmental education center — will use the money to restore 2.5 acres of New Haven’s park land and create a more effective gateway to nearby West Rock Ridge State Park. DEEP granted the money to improve urban dwellers’ access to the natural world and restore the natural habitat, Common Ground’s Director of Development and Community Engagement Joel Tolman said. “We’re trying to be good stewards of this land,” Tolman said. Common Ground will create a health and environmental exploration trail, construct a new classroom pavilion and restore a half-acre wildlife habitat near West Rock, according to a statement from

Gov. Dannel Malloy’s office. These measures will serve New Haven residents and students alike, Tolman said. High school classes will use the pavilion to learn environmental science handson, but younger students will also make use of it in Common Ground’s environmental engagement after-school program, he said. Likewise, the handicap-accessible exploration trail will allow people with limited mobility to access Common Ground’s farm and the city park land. It will also serve as a running track for the school’s physical education classes, Tolman added. Common Ground anticipates beginning the bulk of this construction work next semester, Tolman said. The nonprofit seeks to complete the pavilion by end of spring 2016 in time for approximately 800 students to use it during Common Ground’s summer ecology camps. The city park land that Common Ground manages is adjacent to West Rock Ridge State Park. Common Ground often utilizes the trails which link the two spaces, taking students on field trips to the state park and doing volunteer work on the trails, park supervisor Jill Scheibenpflug said. The DEEP grant arrives two years after U.S. Fish and Wild-

life Service designated New Haven as one of the country’s first urban wildlife refuges in 2013, New Haven Parks and Recreation Director Rebecca Bombero said. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service initiative aims to connect people in urban areas like New Haven to natural habitats and highlight the importance of preserving natural resources. Common Ground’s work contributes to a larger, citywide initiative to enhance urban green spaces, Audubon Greenwich Center Executive Director Michelle Frankel said. Frankel added that other green spaces on land trust land and university campuses provide an enhanced habitat for wildlife. New Haven is one of 17 communities being awarded grants to protect 949 acres of open space in the state, according to a statement from the Connecticut Senate Democrats. The Urban Green & Community Garden Initiative through which DEEP awarded the grant is available to economically distressed municipalities. The next deadline to apply for an Urban Green & Community Garden Initiative Grant is Feb. 6. Contact MICHELLE LIU at michelle.liu@yale.edu .

ALEXANDRA SCHMELING/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

The $55,000 grant will be used to restore 2.5 acres of New Haven’s park land.


PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT Harvard guides faculty on calls for unionization

“I look at every piece of furniture and every object as an individual sculpture.” KELLY WEARSTLER AMERICAN DESIGNER

Furniture store to open in Elm City FURNITURE FROM PAGE 1

FINNEGAN SCHICK/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Despite ongoing calls for a graduate student union, faculty remain divided on the issue. GESO FROM PAGE 1 with graduate students on the topic of unionization. While Yale administrators said they are not planning a similar mass communication, they have reached out to both faculty and students to talk about GESO’s unionization effort. They stressed that the University encourages a free and open discussion about the issue. “Everyone is entitled to his or her own view on this important issue,” Graduate School Dean Lynn Cooley said. “And we hope for a robust campus dialogue free from pressure to silence an opposing viewpoint.”

THE FACULTY DIVIDE

GESO’s mission for graduate student unionization presents many problems for the University’s faculty members, whose own graduate school experiences may have shaped their stances on the issue. Faculty members have different opinions about whether the calls for graduate student unionization are justified, but all confront the tricky question of how to broach the subject with graduate students. Since Yale does not have a codified guideline, faculty members interviewed have approached the topic of unionization with their graduate students about the issues in different ways — if they have had such conversations at all. Professors interviewed expressed a mixture of support and worry over GESO’s efforts to form a graduate student union. Faculty who support unionization stressed the work that graduate students do outside of their own studies, such as the support they provide undergraduates as teaching fellows. But faculty who expressed qualms about a graduate student union worried it would create a bureaucratic barrier between students and faculty that would harm current mentoring relationships. African American Studies professor Matthew Jacobson said that because graduate students, as teaching fellows, already have complete responsibility for their classrooms, the professor-graduate student relationship would change very little as a result of unionization. Jacobson said he has been a staunch supporter of graduate student unionization during his 20 years at Yale, even though this viewpoint can be unpopular among the faculty. The University depends heavily upon graduate students’ labor, he added. “Why not recognize them as the workers that they actually are?” Jacobson said, adding that although he has not always supported GESO’s tactics — which have included an attempted grade strike and instances of peer pressure to secure support — he has always been sympathetic to its mission. Theater Studies professor

Murray Biggs also highlighted the work that graduate students do in leading classroom discussions with undergraduates. Additionally, while some faculty have worried that unionization would turn graduate students’ teaching roles into formal employment instead of a crucial part of their educations, American Studies and English Senior Lecturer James Berger said he does not think graduate students’ commitment to their teaching would change with a union. Instead, Berger said he sees the desire for unionization as the result of greater professionalism among graduate students, both in their research and in their teaching. “The prospects for academic employment after graduation are much slimmer, even for people coming out of the elite programs,” he said. But other faculty members’ views were more closely aligned with those of the administration, which has encouraged graduate students to voice their concerns through existing channels rather than through a union.

The prospects for academic employment after graduation are much slimmer. JAMES BERGER Senior Lecturer, American Studies and English Statistics professor Jay Emerson GRD ’02 said the issues that graduate students face do not warrant unionization, and that change should instead come through effective bodies like the Graduate Student Assembly, a governing body of graduate students that is recognized by Yale, and through faculty members advocating for their graduate students. Emerson also said he does not think any of his students are active GESO members. He added that he worries some GESO members might have been pressured into joining the organization. As a graduate student at Yale in 1994, Emerson opposed GESO’s unionization effort and helped found the now-defunct group Grads Against Unionization. This anti-union contingent of graduate students regularly voiced opposition to GESO’s actions throughout the mid-1990s. Members felt that GESO was aggressively pressuring them into joining the union cause, Emerson said. He noted that GESO made repeated, unwelcome visits to students’ homes and used peer pressure to get new members. Emerson said in his first year as a graduate student, GESO announced to all first-year students that union dues were pay-

able immediately upon arrival at Yale. “A simple ‘no thank you’ didn’t work, so we organized our opposition,” Emerson said. “We didn’t think a graduate student union had a place at Yale. We were academics-in-training capable of representing our interests through established channels. We certainly didn’t see ourselves as vulnerable employees in need of union representation.” Some of Emerson’s concerns seem to persist today. Psychology professor Frank Keil said whenever graduate students approach him to talk about unionization, it has been to express complaints about GESO’s tactics. Students are frustrated that GESO organizers often disrupt their laboratory work to gather support, and that GESO has asked students to pay dues out of their stipends, Keil said. Today, as a Yale professor, over a decade after he finished his own graduate studies here, Emerson said he sees himself as having three main roles: a faculty member, a researcher and a mentor. If his graduate students have concerns, Emerson said, he advocates for them to the administration. Most graduate students just want to be left alone to their studies and research, Emerson said. A graduate student union could strain professional faculty-student relationships, he added. Keil agreed, noting that bureaucratic regulations could emerge that would change the relaxed climate of mentoring into a more restrictive “bossworker” one. Still, GESO chair Aaron Greenberg GRD ’18 disputed Keil’s and Emerson’s assertion that a graduate student union would alter students’ relationships to professors. “Given the 70,000 graduate employee members of unions, it seems a sweeping claim that all those relationships with faculty and students are changed in some essential way,” he told the News Thursday night.

THE FUTURE OF UNIONS

Like Yale, Harvard does not recognize graduate students as a union. But in contrast to the University, Harvard’s administration is confronting the topic of unionization head-on. At Harvard, a group of graduate students is working with the national union United Auto Workers to advocate for unionizing Harvard’s teaching fellows and research assistants. Although Harvard administrators have spoken out against a graduate student union there, they have also acknowledged a growing national movement in such a union’s favor. In his Oct. 14 email to the faculty, Dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Xiao-Li Meng cited the efforts of the web-

site #WeAreWorkers to redefine the work that graduate student teachers do. By contrast, Yale administrators have not disseminated public statements on the topic of graduate student unionization, although they have consistently expressed opposition to GESO’s mission to the News. University spokesman Tom Conroy said Yale does not believe a union is in the best interest of graduate students. Still, Yale has said it encourages a campus “dialogue” around the issue. Without voluntary recognition from a private university like Yale or Harvard, graduate students’ unionization efforts depend on the status of two cases pending before the National Labor Relations Board. A 2004 NLRB decision in response to a complaint from Brown University graduate students ruled that they did not have the right to unionize because the relationship between students and universities is primarily academic in nature. But the two cases currently pending could overturn the Brown ruling. According to Meng’s letter, with the NLRB composed of much more labor-friendly members than it was before President Barack Obama took office and made new appointments, it is possible that by the end of the year, graduate students at private universities will be legally allowed to unionize. The faculty talking-point guide that Meng distributed “assumes that the National Labor Relations Board would find that graduate students who perform work for the University are employees.” Though the NLRB decisions regarding the status of graduate-student teachers have been mixed, Berger said he thinks the general point of labor law states that people who do work and wish to form a union have the legal right to do so. “Grad students do real work,” Berger said. “The work is both real in itself and necessary for the college. They don’t teach ‘practice’ courses. The courses are for credit.” Regardless of faculty’s personal opinions on the issue of unionization, both Harvard’s and Yale’s administrations have encouraged an open discussion around the issue. Both have emphasized that faculty should not threaten adverse consequences for students supporting unions. “Any graduate student is absolutely free to be a member of GESO,” FAS Dean Tamar Gendler said. “And that has no bearing on how they are treated by their faculty mentors.” The National Labor Relations Board was founded 80 years ago. Contact FINNEGAN SCHICK at christopher.schick@yale.edu and VICTOR WANG at v.wang@yale.edu .

another 36,000 square feet at the front of building leased to a private vendor, Tatelman said. The amusement park, dubbed “It,” will fill the remaining 30,000 square feet of the building. Tatelman said the store aims to attract shoppers from across the state and host corporate team-building retreats. “It will be a happening — you’re going to want to come here with your friends and your family, and every kid is going to want to have a birthday party here,” he said. Though most furniture stores only aim to attract customers who want furniture, Jordan’s places amusements inside its stores to attract as broad a customer base as possible, said Heather Copelas, Jordan’s public relations manager. Jordan’s elected to install four zip lines and a rope course in the New Haven store because the size of the former Register building was particularly conducive to these attractions, Copelas said. Tatelman added that the franchise also opted to build an amusement park because they had never done it before. New Haven was also a good location for Jordan’s next store because the city sits at the interchange between two major highways, I-95 and I-91, Tatelman added, noting that this will enable the store to attract a geographically diverse clientele. Building the store has not been cheap. The fountain alone — which shoots water 45 feet into the air with a multicolored lightshow choreographed to 150 songs — contains 1,000 nozzles and cost $2 million to build, Tatelman said. He declined to specify the total cost of the store. Though Jordan’s is owned by American conglomerate holding company Berkshire Hathaway, Tatelman said his family runs the day-to-day affairs of the company. He added that Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, will make an appearance at the private opening ceremony on Dec. 10. Speaking to the assembled media and officials, Mayor Toni Harp praised the project, saying it confirms New Haven’s status as a “focal point of local economic resurgence.” “I welcome today’s news that Jordan’s Furniture will distinguish itself on this site,” Harp said. “We have high hopes that today’s announcement will lead to destination shopping on a greater level than before.” Harp commended Jordan’s for its community outreach efforts in the city, noting that earlier this month, the company distributed 108 mattresses free of charge to the New Haven Fire Department. She said efforts like these can serve as a model for other businesses to emulate. Copelas said the company has also participated in com-

munity engagement at its other locations. Jordan’s has distributed winter coats to families in need, provided prom dresses for low-income teenagers and, in partnership with adoption organizations in Massachusetts, placed roughly 300 children into foster care, Copelas said. Jordan’s will also bring 270 new jobs to New Haven once it is fully operational, Tatelman said. In preparation, city officials ran a two-month job training program in the summer to prepare 30 New Haven residents to compete for these jobs, Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson SOM ’81, said. Five graduates of this program have already been hired by Jordan’s, Nemerson said, adding that six are still being considered by Jordan’s and nine have been hired by other firms. Nemerson said Jordan’s hired around 60 from over 1,500 applicants during its first wave of hiring. Roughly 500 construction workers are also operating on the site, Copelas said. Connecticut firm KBE Building Corporation, based in Farmington, is overseeing the store’s construction, Tatelman said, noting that Jordan’s specifically sought a Connecticut firm. Though the amusement park will be inside the furniture store, it will have an admissions fee, Tatelman said. The store’s opening has not come without opposition. Residents of City Point — a neighborhood near the store — expressed concern that the store, if it becomes the shopping destination city officials seek, might cause traffic problems in the area. City spokesman Laurence Grotheer said the city administration does not expect the new store to permanently increase traffic in the City Point area. But he said traffic could increase during the first months of the store’s operation. “There’s some concern that, while this remains a novelty for its first few weeks and months, there may be some congestion,” he said. “But the city is confident that the infrastructure can accommodate anticipated traffic.” Grotheer added that the proximity of Exit 46 on I-95 eases access from the highway to the store. Residents of City Point can access the highway via Exit 44, he said. Tatelman said the city has been a cooperative partner throughout the building process. He specifically praised the city’s building inspectors for their work. Jordan’s also has locations in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Contact NOAH DAPONTE-SMITH at noah.daponte-smith@yale.edu and JIAHUI HU at jiahui.hu@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

NEWS

“Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.” AYN RAND RUSSIAN-BORN AMERICAN NOVELIST AND PHILOSOPHER

Federal court upholds gun safety law BY KRISTY KIM CONTRIBUTING REPORTER After pro-gun activists challenged a gun safety law passed by Gov. Dannell Malloy following the Sandy Hook shooting, an Oct. 19 federal appeals court ruling upheld the law. Malloy banned the sale and purchase of nearly 200 semiautomatic assault weapons and all magazines that can hold over 10 rounds of ammunition in April 2013, five months after 20 first-graders and six teachers were killed with a semiautomatic rifle at a Newtown elementary school. A coalition of firearms manufacturers and dealers, Second Amendmentrights activists and gun enthusiasts brought a 10-plaintiff lawsuit against Connecticut citing Second Amendment violations in May 2013. The plaintiffs lost the case — Shew v. Malloy — in the state District Court in January 2014 and lost their appeal in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month. Malloy said in a statement that the court’s decision is a step in the right direction for Connecticut and the country as a whole. “Connecticut would be better off if every state and the federal government enacted similar, sensible gun safety rules,” he said. Scott Wilson, president of the Connecticut Citizen’s Defense League and a plaintiff in the suit, told the News that he hopes Malloy’s law will eventually be struck down, even if they must go through the Supreme Court. Wilson said the law will not reduce massacres caused by guns because mass shootings often occur in gun-free zones, such as schools and theaters. Guns can keep people safe when properly monitored by the government, he added.

“There are a lot of people who don’t like the notion of firearms but, and I’ve been saying this for years, let people who are licensed, trained and law-abiding have the ability to protect themselves,” Wilson said. Still, on Yale’s largely liberal campus, some students said the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms should not apply to semi-automatic weapons. Adam Chase ’19 said he supports the Second Amendment but the rights it guarantees should not be limitless. He said the types of guns now available were not in existence when the Constitution was written, adding that it is unclear the Constitution’s authors would have permitted the public use of such guns. He added that guns are also used differently today than how the Constitution intended for people to use them. “People get caught up in what the constitution said rather than considering the spirit of what it meant,” Chase said, adding that giving people guns for selfdefense will not decrease crime rates. Andreas Ravichandran ’19 said tighter gun control is a Second Amendment violation, but an infringement that is worthwhile. He said it is justifiable to curtail rights — even those in the constitution — if they are in the interest of public safety. “It’s similar to how my free speech doesn’t let me shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater,” he said. The gun used at Sandy Hook — a semiautomatic Bushmaster AR-15 rifle — had a magazine that could fire 154 rounds in less than five minutes. It is now banned in Connecticut. Contact KRISTY KIM at kristy.kim@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS

Gov. Malloy said the gun safety law will benefit Connecticut and the rest of the country.

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PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

“I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.” ALEXANDER THE GREAT CONQUEROR

Picking up steam, Lions visit KEYS TO THE GAME BY MAYA SWEEDLER STAFF REPORTER The Yale football team takes on its fourth league opponent of the season when Columbia visits the Bowl on Saturday. While the Bulldogs have captured 11 of the last 12 matchups, the Lions are in the midst of a rebuilding process under new head coach Al Bagnoli. This game is by no means a guaranteed win, but provided the defense prevents big plays and the offense converts on third down and limits its turnovers, the Elis can reward their home fans with a Halloween win.

THE SECONDARY COMES FIRST

Penn’s vertical threats shredded the Yale secondary last Friday for several big-yardage plays. The top two Quaker wide receivers combined for six catches of at least 20 yards, with two of those receptions going for touchdowns. Against Dartmouth, the Big Green’s top two wideouts tallied five catches of at least 20 yards. While the Elis have effectively mixed up blitz patterns at several points during the season, such defensive gambles cannot come at the cost of big plays. The Bulldogs have enough talent in the secondary to shut down the deep ball. Cornerback Spencer Rymiszewski ’17 currently ranks second in the Ivy League in passes defended, with captain and safety Cole Champion ’16 right behind in third. Should the team prevent passing lanes from opening up along the sideline, Yale can use its physicality to effectively shut down Columbia’s passing attack.

KEEP HOLMES ON THE SIDELINE

Punter Bryan Holmes ’17 bears the dubious distinction of leading the Ancient

FOOTBALL FROM PAGE 12

Eight in punts. With 33 punts through six games, Holmes’ statistics say almost as much about the Yale offense’s ability to convert on third down as its conversion percentage does: ranking sixth in the Ivy League, Yale converts just 36.7 percent of its third-down attempts. Compounding that statistic is Columbia’s third-down defense. Opponents have only converted 30.8 of their thirddown attempts, best for second in the league. Only one other Ivy League team that Yale has played thus far ranks comparably — Dartmouth, which defeated Yale 35–3 on Oct. 10 and has an identical 30.8 percent third-down defense. While third downs may not have been the difference in Hanover, they might be critical this weekend.

PROTECT THE FOOTBALL

Yale’s turnovers tell a strange story. In their two losses, the Bulldogs have turned the ball over five times in the red zone. But despite the three interceptions and two fumbles inside the 20-yard line, Yale has still converted on 75 percent of its scoring chances, making the Elis the third-most efficient team in the red zone. Overall, the team’s turnovers have perhaps been the best predictor of the game’s outcome. In Yale’s four wins, the Elis’ net turnover margin is even. In their two losses, however, the Bulldogs have coughed up the ball five more times than their opponents. Winning the turnover battle seems like an obvious strategy, but given Yale’s struggles to maintain possession, particularly when approaching the end zone, the team would do well to clutch the pigskin a little closer. Contact MAYA SWEEDLER at maya.sweedler@yale.edu .

only been sacked seven times all season long. Additionally, the Lions held the Big Green, which entered the game averaging 158.4 rushing yards per game, to just 88 yards on the ground. This is a worrisome number for Yale, as its offense has struggled this season when it has been one-dimensional. Leading the ground game this past month has been running back Deshawn Salter ’18, in the absence of injured starter Candler Rich ’17. The sophomore burst onto the scene in October, picking up 233 yards in his debut at Lehigh and earning Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week honors twice in his first four starts. However, Salter is sidelined with a neck injury, so wide-receiver-turnedrunning-back Austin Reuland ’16 will get his first start on Saturday, according to Reno. Reuland scored his first career touchdown last weekend after Salter left the field. In addition to Salter, right guard Jon Bezney ’18 and wide receiver Bo Hines ’18 will not start due to injury. Replacing them will be Jeho Chang ’18 and Christopher Williams-Lopez ’18, respectively, Reno said on Thursday. While Chang and Williams-Lopez have seen extended amounts of playing time this season, Reuland, who has struggled with a hamstring injury, will be in for a tough test. Reno pointed to Columbia’s fourman defensive line as a potential area of concern, calling tackles Niko Pedilla and Dominic Perkovic “big, physical guys.” In the secondary, Reno noted the similarities between Columbia’s and Yale’s, adding that the Lions’ corners also play aggressive press coverage. Roberts compared the Columbia defense to that of Maine, a team Yale beat 21–10 two weeks ago. He said the similarities provide an advantage, as the team is familiar with some of the base coverages the team displays.

ON THE RISE COLUMBIA FOOTBALL Yale

Columbia 2015

2015

2013

2014

POINTS PER GAME

7.3

10.3

14.5

22.2

POINTS ALLOWED PER GAME

40.2

38.9

22.7

24.2

SARA SEYMOUR/PRODUCTION & DESIGN STAFF

Offensively, Columbia returns an experienced bunch with talent at the skill positions. Veteran running back Cameron Molina earned Second-Team All-Ivy recognition last year, and wide receiver Scooter Hollis is currently ranked sixth in the conference with 31 receptions. This season, Hollis has been catching balls from recent University of Florida transfer, quarterback Skyler Mornhinweg. Mornhinweg is one of two Power 5 transfers to start behind center this year in the Ivy League: Roberts, who left Clemson for Yale in 2013, is the other. “[Roberts and Mornhinweg] both possess a lot of natural ability,” Reno said. “When you look at arm strength and tangibles, you can see why they were at the schools they were at. Skyler can make every throw.” Champion said Mornhinweg is as good as any quarterback the team has faced at making zone reads. The mobile junior quarterback has three rushing touchdowns on the season — as many as Molina, the more traditional rusher.

Last year’s matchup, a 25–7 Eli victory, marked Yale’s 11th win in the last 12 meetings between the schools. The Bulldogs’ defense had its best outing of the 2014 campaign in that victory, holding the Lions to 285 total yards and picking off four passes. Defensive back Jason Alessi ’18 had two of those interceptions. The offense more than doubled the Lions’ output, notching 586 total yards. Rich shredded the Lions defense for a career-best 202 yards on just 17 carries, and Roberts added 267 yards through the air. Reno said that this year’s Columbia squad has made huge improvements over the last 12 months. Pointing out that the Lions now boast the third-best defense in the Ivy League, Rich said that Bagnoli’s new philosophy and coaching staff have created a very different-looking team. Kickoff from the Bowl is set for 12:30 p.m. The game will be available for streaming on FOX College Sports. Contact MAYA SWEEDLER at maya.sweedler@yale.edu .

Critical stretch for Yale VOLLEYBALL FROM PAGE 12

YALE DAILY NEWS

The Bulldogs look to respark momentum in the final stretch of their Ivy season.

said. “It’s that simple. We still control our destiny, but every game is do-or-die.” If it is to leapfrog Harvard and Dartmouth, Yale has little room for error. The Bulldogs will have to win out in order to have complete control over their title hopes — a daunting task for most teams, though not out of the question for a team with such an impressive championship pedigree. In fact, Yale faced a similar closing stretch after its second loss to Harvard last year, needing to win its final four matches to claim a share of the conference title and force a one-game playoff for the Ivy’s lone NCAA berth. The Bulldogs handled the challenge, dominating all four opponents — including Columbia and Cornell on the road — and dropping just two sets in the process. Yale then defeated Harvard, in Cambridge, to earn the national tourna-

ment berth. Aware of the implications of this weekend’s contests, as well as the team’s losing record on the road, the team’s veterans remain confident. “I think our team is ready for a win on the road,” captain and outside hitter Karlee Fuller ’16 said. “The girls are pumped and prepared for whatever challenges are presented with playing in another gym, and I think we are looking forward to showing our resilience on someone else’s turf.” In order to avoid falling to either of this weekend’s struggling foes, the Bulldogs, who have won as many games this season as their two opponents combined, must work to reverse the slow starts that nearly cost them a win in each of their prior meetings. Yale split the first two sets before pulling away against Columbia, and last-place Cornell was able to open up a commanding lead prior to succumbing to the Elis’ deep attack. Setter Kelly Johnson

’16, who won Ivy League Player of the Week following those victories, and outside hitter Kelley Wirth ’19 played critical roles in each comeback effort. Middle hitter Meaghan Truman ’18 acknowledged that while Yale has been able to afford slow starts on its home court, it has no such luxury on the road. “The team is really focusing on starting games off strong and coming out with intensity at the start of the match,” Truman said. “Obviously our home crowd is missed when we are playing on the road and the opponents’ crowds are loud, but our team is always capable of providing our own energy and focusing when facing a tough crowd.” Even with two wins, Yale will need some help to climb further up the Ivy ladder by the end of the weekend. Harvard and Dartmouth each travel to Princeton and Penn this weekend, and a pair of wins for either or both teams will keep the victors at least a

Elis aim to upend Lions M. SOCCER FROM PAGE 12 day, Yale nearly tied the game when Downs hit the crossbar six minutes before regulation ended. While the UConn game ended after 90 minutes, the two previous contests, against Ivy foes Cornell and Penn, went to overtime with Yale unable to notch the elusive game-winning goal. The Bulldogs will seek to reverse that trend on Saturday, but a difficult road test stands in their way. Although Columbia was ranked in the NCAA Top 25 for two weeks earlier in the season, peaking at number 21 as recently as Sept. 27, its form has taken a small dip during the month of October. The Lions currently sit fourth in the Ivy League table, having lost to Brown and Dartmouth, which currently boasts an undefeated conference record and sits atop the Ancient Eight. Still, the Lions’ record this season is already better than their sevenwin season a year ago when they finished seventh in the league, with only Yale behind them. “[Columbia] is a very direct and straightforward team. It’s a lot of big-ball soccer, a lot of stuff

in the air,” goalkeeper Ryan Simpson ’17 said. “They move the ball well across the ground, but they like to go high, wide and over top.” In the past few games, Yale’s defense has improved dramatically. After allowing nearly three goals a game during their first nine contests, the Bulldogs have conceded just 1.25 goals a game over their past four outings. The defense’s top priority will be marking Columbia forward Arthur Bosua, who leads the Lions in shots, points and goals. His three goals also earn him a tie for fifth-best in the conference. The Dix Hills, New York native scored against Yale in last year’s contest as a freshman, which ended 2–1 in Columbia’s favor after a disputed foul with less than three minutes to go granted the Lions a go-ahead penalty kick. While the Yale defense has improved as the season has continued, the offense’s struggles to create chances and to convert those chances into goals have persisted. Against Columbia, the Yale attack will have to beat star senior keeper Kyle Jackson, who has earned All-Ivy recognition each of the past three seasons and

game ahead of the Bulldogs. By season’s end, though, the Elis will have a chance to decide their fate independent of other results, assuming they can keep pace until that point. Yale plays host to Harvard and Dartmouth during the season’s final weekend, a pair of contests that could singlehandedly decide the Ivy League’s 2015 champion. Those title hopes remain at the forefront of the Bulldogs’ minds. For now, however, Yale’s players say that their collective focus lies only on the next match on the schedule. “We don’t like to get caught up in the ‘ifs’ and what could happen in the future, but rather we focus on the game directly ahead of us,” Fuller said. “The goal right now is to beat Cornell.” Yale faces the Big Red in Ithaca on Friday before heading to Manhattan to play the Lions on Saturday. Contact JONATHAN MARX at jonathan.marx@yale.edu .

Halloween battle in NYC W. SOCCER FROM PAGE 12

ROBBIE SHORT/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Head coach Kylie Stannard will seek his first Ivy League victory against Columbia, one of the two conference opponents remaining. has already posted six shutouts this season. His second-best Ivy League goals-against average will force the Bulldogs to up its game on the attacking end of the pitch if they hope to pull off the victory. “Obviously we haven’t accomplished what we set out to accomplish, which was win an Ivy League championship, but we want to finish the season strong, win our remaining Ivy League

games and finish in the top half of the table,” Downs said. “It’s the first year under a new coach and we’re just trying to get our feet under us and figure it out.” The game, which will be held at Columbia’s Rocco B. Commisso Stadium, kicks off at 7 p.m. on Saturday. Contact LISA QIAN at lisa.qian@yale.edu .

the Lions’. Yale has scored 1.14 goals per game this season, a figure that puts the team at a fourth place ranking in the league, while Columbia holds the last-place spot with just 0.93 goals per contest. Of the Elis’ offense, forward Michelle Alozie ’19 is still the leader for most goals scored on the team. She will contend against Columbia’s own freshman goal leader, Emma Anderson. Alozie stands above with six goals to Anderson’s five, and 16 points to Anderson’s 12. Alozie and the rest of Yale’s attack will face a challenge against Columbia goalkeeper Allison Spencer, who maintains an 82.8 save percentage, making her second in the Ancient Eight for saves. “I believe that we can outperform Columbia by meshing as a team and using our depth from the bench to

capitalize on our offensive chances,” Ames said. According to defender Ana Keusch ’16, after the team watched film this week, the players went out to the field during practice to focus on defensive positioning, reading plays and connecting passes within the final third of the field. This is the last road game of the season for Yale. If the Bulldogs manage to pull out a win against the Lions, the loss could potentially knock Columbia out of the top half of the league in the standings. “We need to embrace that we want it more than the other team,” forward Paula Hagopian ’16 said. “Even if nothing is going our way, we can still outwork them, which will hopefully pay off.” Yale kicks off at Columbia on Saturday at 4 p.m. Contact NICOLE WELLS at nicole.wells@yale.edu .


YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 11

BULLETIN BOARD

TODAY’S FORECAST

TOMORROW

Increasing clouds, with a high near 59. Light west wind becoming northwest 5 to 9 mph in the morning.

SUNDAY

High of 53, low of 42.

High of 59, low of 44.

DOONESBURY BY GARRY TRUDEAU

ON CAMPUS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30 9:00 AM 2015 Yale Technology Summit. The Yale Technology Summit is a daylong program of conversations with Yale faculty, researchers, students, staff and alumni working with innovative and cutting-edge technologies. The event, coordinated by Yale Information Technology Services, is free and open to all members of the Yale community. Evans Hall (165 Whitney Ave.). 3:00 PM Memory Studies in Modern Europe: Public Memory. The new “Memory Studies in Modern Europe” working group gathers graduate students who seek to explore the concept of memory across all regions of modern Europe. The group is open to people from all disciplines willing to engage with theoretical texts as well as case studies in an informal setting. Each meeting will focus on a key concept in memory studies. Bass Library (110 Wall St.), Rm. L71.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31

QUAIL UNIVERSITY #7 BY LUNA BELLER-TADIAR

9:30 AM Circa 2001: European Cinema at the Millennium. A film conference featuring full-length original prints of European films in or about the years 2000–01. All with English subtitles. Sponsored by the European Studies Council, the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Funds, the Whitney Humanities Center, the Film Studies Program and the Film Study Center. Whitney Humanities Center (53 Wall St.), Aud.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1 3:00 PM Velázquez’s Masterpieces in Seville and Some New Proposals. Known as “Nova Roma” since the 1500s, the city of Seville had a cherished tradition of classical studies and Italian Renaissance art. If Rome saw the birth of Caravaggio’s revolutionary art, Seville was the cradle of the greatest of all Spanish Golden Age painters: Diego Velázquez. Salvador SalortPons explores Velázquez’s Seville, his early masterpieces, the newly discovered Sevillian paintings, and other works thought to be by the artist’s hand. Yale University Art Gallery (1111 Chapel St.).

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

LUNA BELLER-TADIAR is a sophomore in Timothy Dwight College. Contact her at luna.beller-tadiar@yale.edu .

202 York St. New Haven, Conn. (OppositeFOR JE) RELEASE OCTOBER 30, 2015

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

CROSSWORD Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Lewis ACROSS 1 Birdbrain 8 Crummy 14 Annabella of “Jungle Fever” 15 Producer 16 What each successive starting word of the answers to starred clues is to the starting word that precedes it 17 Equestrian’s head cover 18 Newscaster Lindström 19 *Popular clubs 20 *Ty Cobb specialties 24 The last Mrs. Chaplin 25 Valuable extraction 26 Pros with schedules 30 Save 31 *Dressed down 35 Closing words 37 Hut 38 *Didn’t allow to remain in, as political office 42 Trouble 43 Barely come (through) 44 Box “b” on a W-2: Abbr. 45 Magazine that published advance excerpts from Stephen King’s “Firestarter” 46 *It’s ancient history 50 *They might be knocked down in a bar 54 Hamlin’s caveman 55 Like bogeys 56 What the start of 50-Across is to the start of 19Across 60 Playing the waiting game 61 Resort site 62 Pass 63 Minimally DOWN 1 Some email enders 2 Dangerous, in a way

10/30/15

By Don Gagliardo

3 Writer who said “The only abnormality is the incapacity to love” 4 Hullabaloo 5 Els with clubs 6 Ancient IndoEuropean 7 Hydroelectric facility 8 Pack up 9 Five-time world champion skater Carol 10 1994 Costner role 11 5 for B or 6 for C 12 Orpheus, for one 13 Scraps 15 Elect 19 Leaping critter 20 Sleeps it off, with “up” 21 Theatrical piece? 22 As scheduled 23 __ choy 26 Windy City travel org. 27 Colombia neighbor 28 Actors John and Sean 29 Naturally bright 31 Good, in Hebrew 32 Golden __

CLASSIFIEDS

Thursday’s Puzzle Solved

SUDOKU FINDING YSO HALLOWEEN SHOW TICKETS

9

©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

33 Musical org. based in Kawasaki 34 Electrical measure 36 __-eared 39 Much of Nevada 40 Emotional spells 41 Strand under a microscope 45 Resist 46 Birdbrains 47 Silly 48 Good-sized combo

10/30/15

49 Wreck big time 50 Deal 51 Roundish 52 “__ Smile Be Your Umbrella”: old song 53 Boring type 56 Arkansas governor Hutchinson 57 Actress Vardalos 58 Abbr. near a tee 59 Assembled

5 8

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


IF YOU MISSED IT SCORES

NFL Patriots 36 Dolphins 7

NBA Hawks 112 Nets 101

NBA Grizzlies 112 Pacers 103

SPORTS

QUICK HITS

YALE BASKETBALL CHAMPS RECEIVE RINGS Following a historic season that saw the Yale men’s basketball team earn a share of its first Ivy League championship since 2001–02, the Elis were honored with their championship rings Thursday night during the Blue Madness festivities at the John J. Lee Amphitheater.

IVY FOOTBALL TOP TEAMS CLASH In a meeting of 6–0 teams, No. 15 Harvard and No. 22 Dartmouth square off Friday night in Cambridge with first place in the Ivy League at stake. The last time a pair of ranked Ivies played each other was in 2007, when No. 25 Harvard defeated No. 11 Yale 37–6.

NHL Devils 4 Flyers 1

y

NHL Penguins 4 Sabres 3

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

“We still control our destiny, but every game is do-or-die.” JESSE EBNER ’16 VOLLEYBALL

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

Potential scare in Halloween matchup BY MAYA SWEEDLER STAFF REPORTER On Saturday, two teams in blue and a horde of students in costume will enter the Bowl for a Halloween contest between the Yale and Columbia football teams. Despite the levity of the holiday, Saturday’s game is a significant one for the Elis (4–2, 1–2 Ivy). Entering the second of five consecutive conference games, the Bulldogs need to rebound from last week’s 34–20 loss at league opponent Penn if they are to have a chance at an Ivy title. “We came out with a lot of fire and energy [at Penn], but I felt like we got ahead of ourselves a bit,” linebacker Victor Egu ’17 said. “We weren’t doing what we normally do, and we weren’t consistent … I felt like that hurt us in the long run.” Three red-zone turnovers, including two passes that were picked off in the end zone, crippled the Bulldogs, who lost a 10–0 lead when Penn’s offense rallied for a 20-point second quarter. Through six games, the number of interceptions thrown by quarterback Mor-

gan Roberts ’16 — nine — equals the number of turnovers the entire Yale defense has forced. That same defense allowed 533 yards and forced no turnovers against a potent Quaker offense. Despite Friday’s poor showing, the Eli defense has improved since last year, allowing 24.2 points per game this year after allowing 29.9 points per game in 2014. Safety Hayden Carlson ’18, Egu and linebacker Matthew Oplinger ’18 currently rank second, third and sixth, respectively, in the Ivy League in tackles, and cornerback Spencer Rymiszewski ’17 is second in the league in passes defended. “After reflecting on the game and watching it, the same feeling I had walking off the field is the one I had after we watched the game early Saturday morning,” head coach Tony Reno said. “I felt like we didn’t play up to our standards. I felt like we gave the game away … we beat ourselves in some areas.” The possibility of a potential letdown looms large this weekend, as a historically dreadful Columbia football program comes to New Haven. In 1971, the last time the Lions finished above 0.500, Reno

had not been born and Richard Nixon was president of the United States. But Columbia (1–5, 0–3), the longtime punching bag of the Ivy League, appears to be receiving renewed support under fresh leadership. The university’s new athletic director, Peter Pilling, has pulled out all the stops in his first year, hiring the winningest active coach in the league, longtime Penn coach Al Bagnoli, and increasing the football budget by at least 50 percent, according to a report from The New York Times. These aggressive decisions have already begun to pay off: three weeks ago, the Lions broke their 24-game losing streak, beating Wagner College for the team’s first win since November 2012. The team followed the milestone victory with a near-monumental upset against then-No. 25 Dartmouth last week, taking the undefeated Big Green down to the final minute before ultimately falling short, 13–9. “Columbia is much better than [its] record suggests,” captain and defensive back Cole Champion ’16 told the News. “They pose a num-

Ivy race intensifies

FOOTBALL

YALE DAILY NEWS

Yale has defeated Columbia in 11 of the teams’ past 12 meetings, including a 25–7 victory in 2014. ber of challenges for us going into the game Saturday that we will work to prepare for.” First among these challenges is a stout defense. While the Big

Green did everything in its power to hand Columbia the game last weekend, drawing 17 penalties that cost 159 yards of field position, Columbia managed to sack

Dartmouth quarterback Dalyn Williams six times. Prior to Saturday, the mobile signal-caller had SEE FOOTBALL PAGE 10

Elis head to the Big Apple

BY JONATHAN MARX STAFF REPORTER

BY LISA QIAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

A game out of first place with three weekends remaining to reclaim first place and a sixth straight Ivy League championship, the Yale volleyball team heads to New York this weekend to face off against a pair of teams at the bottom of the conference standings: Cornell and Columbia.

Following a pair of onegoal defeats and an overtime draw in conference play, the Yale men’s soccer team will continue its search for its first Ivy League win when it travels to New York this Saturday to play Columbia.

MEN’S SOCCER

VOLLEYBALL Earlier in the season, the Bulldogs (10–7, 5–3 Ivy) played host to, and defeated, both of this weekend’s opponents. Yale handled Columbia (5–12, 3–5) in four sets and overcame a 2–0 deficit for a five-set victory over Cornell (5–13, 1–7). In order to duplicate that performance, however, Yale must overcome its road woes — the Elis have lost each of

YALE DAILY NEWS

The Bulldogs have already topped the Lions and the Big Red this season, defeating them back-to-back on Oct. 2 and Oct. 3. their first three Ivy matches away from the friendly confines of Payne Whitney Gymnasium.

“We need these wins,” middle blocker Jesse Ebner ’16 SEE VOLLEYBALL PAGE 10

ROBBIE SHORT/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Midfielder Archie Kinnane ’18, who took a careerhigh three shots against Columbia in 2014, leads the Elis with three assists.

Yale (1–11–1, 0–3–1 Ivy) has not won an Ivy League match in its last 16 attempts — the last win came over two years ago in an overtime win against Dartmouth. Despite the negative string of results, the Bulldogs have demonstrated steady improvement over the course of the season and hope to translate that into a victory over Columbia (8–4–1, 2–2–0). “Especially in the last few games, we’ve done a lot bet-

ter job of keeping the ball to allow for more attacking opportunities,” forward Kyle Kenagy ’19 said. Kenagy, the team’s leading scorer with three goals in 10 games, has been supported up front in conference play by midfielder Nicky Downs ’19. Downs, who has scored or assisted on all three of Yale’s Ivy League goals this season after a quiet nonconference portion of the schedule, added that the team has been playing with renewed confidence. “I think that the next step that we’ve still yet to make is putting together a complete performance where we don’t concede, we get a lot of good chances going forward and we capitalize,” Downs said. Against the University of Connecticut this past TuesSEE M. SOCCER PAGE 10

Final road game awaits at Columbia BY NICOLE WELLS STAFF REPORTER The Yale women’s soccer team has emerged victorious many times against Columbia — the two teams have battled in 30 total contests, with the Bulldogs winning 19 of them. However, none of those wins have come in the past four years, with three ties and one loss for Yale making up the recent history of the matchup. To counter Columbia’s rise as a program, the Elis look to put down the Lions and add one more win to their all-time record this Saturday in New York.

WOMEN’S SOCCER Columbia head coach Tracey Bartholomew leads the Lions (6–7–1, 2–2–1 Ivy) in her second season at

the helm. After her debut in 2014, the Lions finished sixth in the league — three spots off from the third-place ranking of Yale (4–8–2, 1–4–0). One year later in the 10th week of the 2015 season, the Lions and the Bulldogs have switched roles. The Elis have fallen to seventh in the league, while Columbia’s Bartholomew has coached her team to a much-improved third place ranking. “Each coach brings a specific background, unique experience and coaching style,” goalkeeper Rachel Ames ’16 said. “Though I think Columbia is still getting accustomed to the coaching change from last year. So it will be interesting to see their developing style of play and how they’ve adapted.” Last weekend, Columbia won in a 2–1 contest versus Dartmouth, whereas the Elis were one goal short against Penn in a 2–1 defeat. At Dartmouth, the

STAT OF THE DAY 1

Lions immediately began the game as a strong offensive force, scoring twice within the first 28 minutes of play. That early offense poses a problem for the Bulldogs, who have suffered from early goals allowed throughout their recent three-game losing streak. In all three of those losses, Yale found itself with at least a one-goal deficit by halftime. “Coach [Rudy] Meredith is emphasizing that we need to be plugged in for all 90 minutes, and that just takes a bit more focus,” captain and defender Ally Grossman ’16 said. “Having this focus from the get-go will allow us to not make the little mistakes that cost us early goals.” Overall, however, the Bulldogs’ attack appears to be more potent compared to SEE W. SOCCER PAGE 10

ROBBIE SHORT/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale’s tendency to allow early goals may be an issue against Columbia.

THE NUMBER OF WINS THE COLUMBIA FOOTBALL TEAM HAS RECORDED IN ITS PAST 27 GAMES. Under new head coach Al Bagnoli — who coached at Penn for 23 years — the Lions won their first game since 2012 in Week 4 this season, but the team remains just 1–5 heading into its game at Yale.


WEEKEND

// FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015

UNIVERSITIES LIKE YALE CONDUCT THE R&D OF UP TO A THIRD OF AMERICA’S DRUGS.

THE COST OF LIVING SHOULD WE HOLD THEM RESPONSIBLE FOR MAKING SURE PATIENTS CAN ACCESS THOSE DRUGS?

//BY HANNAH SCHWARZ //PAGE B3

BBQ

B4

BOO

B6

BRADYS

B10

IT’S ALL IN THE SAUCE

IN THE STARS

FUNNY OR CRUEL?

David McCullough profiles Joe and Peg Grate, who operate one of New Haven’s most beloved food trucks.

Weekend looks to the planets to deliver your Halloween Horrorscopes.

Ian Garcia-Kennedy makes a convincing case for why these are the best movies ever. // EMILY HSEE & AMANDA MEI


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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

NAIK

BALKOSKI

WEEKEND VIEWS

HOLDING TOO MANY ABSOLUTES // BY JANE BALKOSKI Here is a quote from “The Glass Essay,” a poem by Anne Carson: “You remember too much, / my mother said to me recently. / Why hold onto all that? And I said, / Where can I put it down?” And here is a story: Sam and I fought about memory. He told me that he never deletes old messages, pictures or emails, because we should always keep track of the people we’ve been. Sam loves the glass coffin of the Internet, where everything is pretty, intact and dead as a doornail. At first, I told him that I could not adopt his method: at the end of a relationship, in a fit of angry grief, I storm through social media, destroying all the evidence in sight. I unfollow and unfriend without a second thought. But it was a question of accountability, he said. “I refuse to forget past mistakes and missteps.” And at the time, despite our differences, this struck me as a noble endeavor. Ah, yes, I thought, I have met a person who cares about empathy in the way that I care about empathy. Selfflagellation appeals to me; I love the idea of an endless wake, gazing into the glass coffin forever, reliving and remembering all the complexities of loss. So, I thought, when (if?) our relationship ends, Sam, I will not delete these messages, emails and pictures. I will preserve this version of me, ugly and flawed as she is, because grief and guilt are productive emotions. In August, I admitted to my family that my computer was having problems. For a while, I had lived in a happy, forced oblivion, refusing to acknowledge the screen’s spasms and the fan’s drone. But finally, a few

days before I went back to school, I confessed: It makes the noises of a dental drill, I said, showing them the device. The computer was four years old and I had not treated it with respect or care, but let crumbs gather under the keyboard, sharp corners dent the metal shell. The thing was ugly, too. I had covered it in stickers, kept a tacky record of my travels: Paris, Louisville, New Haven, San Francisco. (I forgot to buy a sticker in Russia.) It bounced around my backpack and overheated on my bed, until some small mechanism melted, sputtered to a stop. My mother offered me her laptop, and I felt no regret as I exchanged one silver rectangle for another. It did not make uncouth noises in quiet coffee shops. Its screen did not seize up. The metal shell was soft and cool to the touch. At the same time that I was exchanging gadgets, in late summer, Sam was showing me — slowly, hypnotically, the way a magician lays out cards — that he did not love me anymore. You do not possess sufficient mystery or beauty to justify your self-destructive streak, he was telling me in some complicated code, and I was mesmerized by the sudden loss, the guilt and grief. I read and reread all the nasty (and valid!) accusations. I stared at my face in the mirror, swollen and pink as a pig head. Everywhere I looked I saw scorn or indifference. Here is another quote from “The Glass Essay”: “It pains me to record this, / I am not a melodramatic person.” I didn’t give my mom instructions as I handed over the old computer. I only realized this when she called a few days later, and asked for my password. “We’re taking it to the Apple store, and if they can fix it, we’ll give it to Dad.” I told her the password, then pictured my computer in the hands of a stranger: manicured fingers on the ugly, stupid stickers. I expected to feel some regret or resentment — if the stickers were lost, so too was

t h e proof, the detritus of my past four years on planet Earth, the record of all the people I’d been. For a second, I wanted to say: take off the stickers, and bring an external hard drive to the Apple Store. Ask the employees to upload all my files and folders to that hard drive, then mail it to me, along with the stickers. But I only listened to her talk, stories of coworkers and new neighborhood restaurants, small changes and accidents. There are no songs, photos or messages on my new computer. I

//LAURIE WANG

open the folders sometimes and stare at the dead, white screen. Then, a little window pops up, asking me to “sync” photos, songs or messages from another device. I close the window. Sam and I haven’t talked since I got back to school, but I want to tell him, you, my mom, my dad, anyone, that it’s all bullshit, all the rules and axioms and commandments and imperatives. Love me, trust me, tally

up your failures, pick difficulty for its own sake, sacrifice everything for art, express no ugly feelings, have no ugly feelings. But, a third quote from The Glass Essay: “The vocation of anger is not mine.” Inertia carries me from one day to the next. Contact JANE BALKOSKI at sophia.balkoski@yale.edu .

Wholly Guacamole // BY ROHAN NAIK

Advertisements in the early 20th century referred to the avocado as the “aristocrat of salad fruits,” and while the saying isn’t common today, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who disagrees. Who doesn’t love a ripe avocado? Even harder to find is someone who doesn’t love the avocado’s most celebrated offspring … guacamole. One night a few weeks ago I found myself in the Silliman kitchen watching a “guac-off,” hosted by a friend. For those who don’t know, a guac-off is an event popular in Texas and the Southwest that pits teams against one another to create the best guacamole. This particular competition allotted 15 minutes to four teams. The guacoff provided the base ingredients — avocadoes, tomatoes, garlic and lime — but contestants were encouraged to bring their own ingredients, with points for delicious innovation, of course. Unsurprisingly, the final products were remarkably different in presentation and taste. One was particularly spicy, another embedded chips within the guac and one chef used tomatillos from her own backyard. My personal favorite appeared on a wooden pizza plate and contained pieces of diced mango, which, in conjunction with the lime, provided a tenuous balance between sweet and sour. I wasn’t surprised by the piquant flavor of the guac — that was expected from seasoned enthusiasts. Rather, I was surprised by the contestant’s individual relationships with their dishes. Ranging from family tradition to new friendships, everyone had a profound tale that inspired his or her creation. I panicked. Where was my story that forever linked guac and me? I wondered if I was just a poser. Perhaps my dedication to guac was of a lesser nature, and I was just a bandwagon

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//DELEINE LEE

fan. In an effort to validate my affinity, I began to think of my history with it. My first memory of guacamole dates back to my first grade end-of-year celebration. Held at a neighborhood swimming pool, the party’s snack selection featured the usual suspects — carrots and ranch, goldfish and Oreos — and guac alongside, a new addition. It soon became part of my daily regimen. In the years following, I and the other kids in my carpool would devour it after school at “El Jarrito,” a local Tex-Mex restaurant. There I was introduced to tableside guac, where a server brings avocados and other ingredients to the table and creates in

front of your eyes. Guac followed me to middle school, where it would make appearances at various bar and bat mitzvahs, by which point it had long lost its novelty. In high school, guac transformed itself into the perennial drunk food. People pretending to be drunk would call out, “Where’s the guac?!” and we would point to the near-empty container. Lamentably, guac has become a rare sighting in New Haven. Many see Yale Dining’s abominable version of guac as highly pureed, and I would

2015 YALE TECHNOLOGY SUMMIT Edward P. Evans Hall // 9 a.m.

Gaze, o Wanderer, upon the summit of technology from this technology summit.

be forced to agree. In my opinion, the best guac-off is to be found at Pacifico v. Rubamba, although I need to try them more before I can announce a victor. Growing up as an Indian American in suburban Texas, I was not expected to name guac as my favorite food. My family would scowl when I would announce my desire for a Mexican restaurant over an Indian one, and they always viewed guac as too bland. “Where is the chili powder?” my mom would always inquire, never pleased with the plethora of other spices. On a family trip to India in the sixth grade, when I mentioned my love for Mexican food, my grandmother reprimanded me for being far too Ameri-

canized. She declared that guacamole was an adulterated form of avocado and remained perplexed at even the notion. In her eyes, a desire for Indian food should always precede that for another cuisine. Many of my Hispanic peers, too, would dismiss my affinity as Americanized. They insisted the guac from my favorite El Jarrito was Tex-Mex, a fusion of American and Mexican cuisine. They exclaimed I had never had true Mexican guac and if I did, I might not like it. To them, I was just another Indian gringo. What they, and my grandmother, were saying is that my penchant for guac doesn’t occupy a logical place in my life. My constant cravings for Mexican food and desire to have guac at every social function doesn’t fit into a cultural narrative that others have created for me. I remember fervently searching for comebacks to contest these assertions, as if a single statement could convince people that my passion for guac was genuine and fit nicely into my cultural identity. I would usually revert to “I just like it!” which didn’t do much to satisfy my critics. They desired a statement with more pizzazz that would categorically affirm my right to state guac as my favorite food. I never found such a statement, and today I’m no longer looking. That night a few weeks ago I ran from the Asian American Cultural Center to the guac-off wearing my cowboy boots from home, and it all just seemed to click. No competition between guac and another food. No questioning friend. No justification or confusion. It was just … normal. Maybe if I had shared my story (and arrived on time) I’d be writing this as the 2015 guac-off champion. Contact ROHAN NAIK at rohan.naik@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.


YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND PHARM

FINDING AND FUNDING THE CURE // BY HANNAH SCHWARZ

t looked terrible for Yale. There, in one of the nation’s most widely read newspapers, was an article about the University receiving $40 million in annual royalties from a drug that was too pricey to sell in places where the disease raged on. It was March 2001, and The New York Times had quoted a letter addressed to the Yale Law School students campaigning against the prices. The letter, which had been written in February by Jon Soderstrom, managing director of Yale’s Office of Cooperative Research, the body responsible for dealing with patents and licensing, read, “Although Yale is indeed the patent holder, Yale has granted an exclusive license to Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., under the terms of which only that entity may respond to a request.” The law students, part of a group called the Yale AIDS Action Coalition, had responded with their own request: “If you say you’ve got this license agreement that doesn’t leave you any wiggle room, then let us take a look,” recalled Marco Simons LAW ’01, one of the law students in the coalition and now the legal director of EarthRights International. The Office refused. An outside organization, Doctors Without Borders, contacted the University independently in March to ask if it would allow South Africa to import generics of the drug, d4T, which Bristol-Myers Squibb had priced at $10,000 to $15,000. The Office’s response was the same: their hands were tied. The students, Simons said, were gearing up for a big campaign. But it would turn out to be unnecessary. The OCR had drawn media interest, and within a month of the Times article, on March 14, the University announced that Bristol-Myers Squibb was lowering the price of the drug. “When we started out, we didn’t expect the rapid movements we saw,” Simons said. “With my experience, with uni-

I

versity organizations, you have to fight for a long time to get movement.” He said he thinks the swift change stemmed from recognition that if the University did not do something, it would soon find itself in an “embarrassing” situation. “They could see [the pressure] coming,” Simons said. By the time the Yale AIDS Action Coalition held its first public event, “[they] were basically declaring victory.” As Simons described it, the issue at hand was twofold. First, the medicine’s cost was essentially pricing out entire populations. Second, Bristol-Myers Squibb was unwilling to allow the importation and production of generics in certain countries. That was 14 years ago. “We turned out to be on the vanguard of something much bigger,” Simons said in retrospect. RISING PRICES In August of this year, a drug company called Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired the rights to Daraprim, a drug that treats a potentially fatal parasitic infection. A month later, the price of the drug jumped from $13.50 a tablet to $750. The founder and CEO of the company, Martin Shkreli, perhaps more widely known as the “Pharma Bro,” said the price increase was defensible — Turing, he told The New York Times, was just trying to stay in business. But no matter. He was skewered. The Daily Beast called him “Big Pharma’s Biggest A**hole.” The BBC dubbed him “the most hated man in America.” The Shkreli episode was so extreme — the price of a single drug tablet increasing by nearly 56 times overnight — that it became a national outrage. But a drug’s price increasing substantially without any obvious increase in efficacy was nothing new. In August, Rodelis Therapeutics acquired a tuberculosis drug from the Chao Center and increased the price of 30 pills from $500 to $10,800. Under pressure, Rodelis returned the

BETWEEN A QUARTER AND A THIRD OF NEW DRUGS ORIGINATE AT UNIVERSITIES.

drug rights to the Chao Center in September. And from October 2013 to April 2014, the price of a multipurpose antibiotic called Doxycycline went from $20 a bottle to $1,849 a bottle. Policymakers have taken notice. In just the last year and a half, at least six state legislatures have introduced pharmaceutical transparency bills, which would require manufacturers to justify their drug prices. A Massachusetts bill would allow the state to set a maximum price for a drug under certain conditions. And a Pennsylvania bill would exempt insurers from paying for a drug if a company failed to file a required report. Hearing the conversation about drug prices, someone could be forgiven for thinking that pharmaceutical companies alone are responsible for research and development. But between a quarter and a third of new drugs originate at universities, in laboratories that are funded by the National Institutes of Health, which in turn is funded by taxpayers. The university then sells the intellectual property of those drugs to interested pharmaceutical companies, working out patent and licensing provisions via its Technology Transfer Office (Yale’s equivalent is the OCR). The university receives royalties. The drug companies — for the most part — can price the drugs as they wish. That is, unless the university gets a company to sign on to certain access provisions.

In 2014, the OCR negotiated 11 exclusive licenses for medicines or medical-related technologies, mostly with smaller biotechnology companies. None were for blockbuster drugs or discoveries like d4T, according to John Puziss, director of licensing at the OCR. On average, the OCR will license between 10 to 20 patents per year, Soderstrom said. In each contract, the University and the company have to agree on a number of provisions: among others, how much will the University and the researchers get in royalties, under what conditions can the exclusive license be revoked and in which countries will the University file patents? Yale has come far since the 2001 d4T incident, and, in 2014, the OCR managed to include global access provisions in nine of its 11 exclusive contracts. Those provisions vary, but according to Puziss, the OCR usually tries to get a specific one in each contract — an agreement that the company won’t patent in low-income and low middle-income countries. “Our license template basically says that Yale won’t file patents in [those countries],” Puziss said. “That’s where we start off, and every time we do a license, that’s a negotiation. We’re generally pretty successful in getting that clause.” Still, if the company doesn’t agree to it, the OCR has backup options. If a company insists on patenting in low-income and

COMPARISON GLOBAL HEALTH GRADES Harvard Yale

Innovation B Innovation C+

UCSD

Innovation B-

Stanford

Innovation C

UC Irvine

Innovation C

Cornell

Innovation D+

UCLA

Innovation C-

U of Illinois

Innovation CInnovation D+

U of WI

Access B+ Access B+ Access BAccess B+ Access B+ Access B+ Access B+ Access B+ Access B+

//EMILY HSEE

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BRINGING UNKNOWN PATTERNS INTO VIEW

low middle-income countries, it will sometimes agree to nonenforcement agreements that exclude those nations. There are certain exceptions to the non-enforcement provisions, but the gist is that companies will not prosecute patent infringements for the wrong reasons but will still have the legal backing to prosecute infringements for the right reasons. According to Justin Mendoza SPH ’15, the President of the Yale Chapter of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines — an organization that advocates for increased university focus on global health issues — the provision is great, in theory. But in practice, it does not make much sense. Non-enforcement agreements don’t have their own type of patent, Mendoza noted. And if you’re a generic company looking to produce a drug to which you know Yale has given another company an exclusive license, you would have no way of knowing that Yale wouldn’t prosecute you for patent infringement. “Unless [Yale were to] contact every generic company in the country and say, ‘Hey, please feel free to make this,’ you would just not produce it,” Mendoza said. If a company refuses to forgo patent filing in these countries, the OCR can try a pricing strategy: getting the company to sell its drug at less than 25 percent of the market value in the U.S. and other developed nations. The provision is meant to make the drug affordable, but again Mendoza is skeptical. “It’s really arbitrary — it doesn’t match up to income,” he said. Finally, if none of those options works out, the Office will try something that consumers might recognize from Ben and Jerry’s or Patagonia: the 1 percent approach. One percent of the company’s drug sales will be donated to a global health organization or to the governments of low- and low middle-income countries, either as a cash or inkind contribution. But according to Mendoza, that provision doesn’t do much either. “The important part of the provision is either it’s 1 percent of profits made in low- or middleincome countries, or it’s 1 percent of all profits,” he said. GlaxoSmithKline, the company that pioneered the 1 percent approach, opts for the former. Though the approach might look good on paper, Mendoza said, considering that only 1 percent of the industry’s entire profit margin comes from sales in lowand low middle-income countries, that’s 1 percent of 1 percent of a company’s profit. He paused to do the math. “We’re talking about a thousandth of their profit margin,” Mendoza said. Some of the provisions may be less than ideal to access-tomedicines advocates, but they are undoubtedly a step up from what the Office had in the early 2000s, which was, essentially, nothing. No non-patent, non-prosecution or even percentage-of-market-price provisions.

“IT’S NOT PUBLIC PROPERTY” The OCR, as its new provisions suggest, has evolved since the early 2000s, but by how much is still unclear. While Puziss was willing to tell me about the provisions the OCR tries to include in contracts, as well as the number of companies with which it successfully negotiated those provisions, he was

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Loria 351 // 9 a.m.

Step up to a day-long symposium celebrating African American studies professor Robert B. Stepto.

According to Puziss, there was no pricing provision in the Bristol-Myers Squibb d4T contract, so the OCR could not do anything when the price skyrocketed. Soderstrom said it was the d4T fiasco that led to these changes. “After the experience we had with Zerit [the drug name for the d4T compound], we became a leader among our peers,” he said. “We started with the Nine Points.” The Nine Points is a document written in March 2007 by 12 universities’ technology transfer officers, and signed by a significant number of other universities. Among the document’s major points are that universities should “carefully consider” where they enforce their patents, and should also include provisions in their contracts that address the needs of neglected patient populations. The document also called on all its signatories to adopt licensing policies that reflected their status as institutions built and maintained for the public interest, but its language was broad. “We were criticized for the bland general statement,” Soderstrom said. So in 2009, the university, along with Boston University, drafted another document colloquially called the Statement of Principles. Its language was more specific. The first section of the document, for instance, states that universities won’t patent drugs in developing countries or enforce patents when possible. The signatories also agreed that when they did award exclusive licenses, they would, when possible, incorporate certain provisions in their contracts. Among those: an agreement that the university wouldn’t prosecute patents in certain countries, would intervene if the company were irresponsibly developing or producing the drug and would set different drug prices for nations of different income levels. The signatories said that they would also include “agreements to agree,” requiring the company to sit down with the university if it turned out that the drug served an unanticipated public health purpose. In between the signing of those two documents, Soderstrom said, Yale changed its own licensing policies — the university’s default would be to no longer patent in low- and low middle-income countries. “I remember the conversation with Rick Levin [then President of Yale],” Soderstrom said. “Rick was a huge proponent of doing the right thing for the right reasons.”

The October Country by Ray Bradbury.

SEE PHARM PAGE B8


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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND EATS

JOE AND PEG, ON WHEELS // BY DAVID MCCULLOUGH

For Joe and Peg Grate, it all began on Christmas in 1989. Joe, 59 years old at the time, sat at the bar of New Haven’s Knickerbocker Golf Club enjoying a few drinks with his friends during the club’s annual Christmas party. Just as the first abrupt beats of “Jam Tonight” by Freddie Jackson came on over the speakers, Joe felt a light tap on his shoulder. That was the first time he saw Peg. She was 50 and every bit the firecracker she is today. “I asked him if he knew how to swing, which was an older dance, the dance of our generation,” Peg recalled. “And he said yes. Then I asked him if he wanted to swing with me. He said he did.” They danced all night and, as Joe says, the rest is history. *** Joe and Peg operate a rickety food truck in the Ingalls Rink parking lot on the corner of Prospect and Sachem streets. And from it, they serve some of the most delicious barbecue in all of New Haven. Although neither looks a day over 60, Peg is now 72 and Joe 10 years her senior. Both grew up in similar small Southern towns. Peg was born and raised in Haynesville, Louisiana — a tiny town on Route 79 a few miles south of the Arkansas border. And Joe grew up in Georgetown, South Carolina, an old coastal town “with great barbecue.” In 1959, after serving in the Korean War as a combat engineer in the 27th Infantry Regiment, nicknamed the “Wolfhounds,” Joe followed his sister’s advice and moved to Connecticut. He immediately found a job in the automobile industry; shortly thereafter, he opened his own auto body and repair shop on the corner of Dixwell Avenue and Munson Street. After running the shop for several years, Joe segued into the food industry by turning the auto body and repair shop into a gas station and convenience store. Then, in 1990, when the Volvo Tennis Tournament moved its location from Stratton, Vermont to New Haven, Joe and Peg’s lives changed. When Volvo put out a call for volunteers to cook at the tournament’s food court, Joe responded. “That’s when I had an uncle from South Carolina come up to visit,” Joe said. “He gave me some facts and pointers on barbecue. That’s where it all started.” After their immense success at the tournament, Joe and Peg decided to open up a restaurant at the same junction as Joe’s former gas station and convenience store. They called it Joe Grate and Peg’s. The restaurant’s menu offered a panoply of authentic Southern food nearly impossible to find in New England, from barbecued spare ribs and chopped pork to peach cobbler and sweet potato pie. Eventually, their customer base grew so large they had to switch locations to Hamden. Then, on a cold February evening in 2004 — after over a decade of successful restaurant-life — fate again came crashing in. “It was in the evening,” said Joe. “There was nobody in the restaurant except me and my grandson. I was in the kitchen cooking and he was at the side bar eating. Then, all of a sud-

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den, boom!” A car came crashing through the front wall. “I walked out to the counter and there was a car right in the middle of the dining room,” Joe recalled. “So it was pretty clear we couldn’t use the restaurant after that point. I finished the cooking, though.” That night, Joe and Peg returned home and decided it was time to make a change. “We had had enough,” Peg explained about running the restaurant. “It became a chore. You have no life; we were there all the time. We even had to spend many nights there. We just needed a break, so we went off on a little excursion.” They sold the restaurant, loaded up their SUV, and “took off for a month.” Joe and Peg followed I-95 south all the way to Georgia, and from there they headed west to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Tennessee and Missouri. Along the way, they stopped at every barbecue place they could find. “We tried everything,” said Peg. Joe laughed in response. “Man, we had fun.” And when they returned, they brought with them an idea that would not only change their lives, but also help reshape the culinary landscape of New Haven … a food truck. *** Fast forward 11 years to a cool fall morning at the Ingalls Rink parking lot. Joe and Peg’s white food truck lumbers into the lot at its usual 10 o’clock arrival. The words “Joe Grate and Peg’s Barbecue Catering” are emblazoned in red lettering across the side of the truck. Under a faded painting of Joe’s face lays his famous slogan, “It’s all in the sauce.” The truck rolls to a stop at the north end of the lot. The menu, a cardboard slab taped to the side of the van, offers nearly 20 items, from corn on the cob to their signature meals, like Georgia hot sausages, brisket or chopped pork. Since they closed the restaurant in 2004, Joe has gone blind due to glaucoma. Although this severely limits his abilities to help out around the truck, he has not broken stride at the grill. “Joe does all the cooking,” Peg noted as she explained the hours of food preparation involved even before their truck arrives at the parking lot. “He grills the butts for the pulled pork, he does the brisket, he does the ribs, all of it.” When I expressed my surprise, Joe admitted, “After doing it for all these years, it becomes natural. I can’t see your face, but in my environment, around

// DAVID MCCULLOUGH

napkins. The inside of the truck, though, looks like the foodtruck equivalent of Merlin’s laboratory. Condiments, cans of beans, bags of sandwich bread, styrofoam serving trays and plastic utensils line the walls. Two stout stoves squat in the back on the driver’s side, while cast-iron pots and tin serving trays sit atop the burners. And a tall white refrigerator wedges itself into the back corner across from the stoves. Peg shuffles around the back, warming the stove tops and pushing pans of grease out of the way, while Joe mounts his throne: the decaying driver’s seat. There he’ll sit for the rest of the afternoon as an onslaught of customers descends from Science Hill, or climbs down from the scaffolding of the new colleges, and strolls into the parking lot for a taste of authentic Southern barbecue bathed in a sauce unlike anything you’ve ever tasted. “People seem to follow us wherever we go,” Peg said. “We get over 50 customers an after-

Joe takes the orders and hollers them back to Peg, all of 72 years old, who scurries around the stove with surgical deftness. As long as the truck is there, the crowds flock. When they’re not in the lot, Joe and Peg cater. They do as many as 15 to 20 events a year — fairs and craft shows, weddings and bar mitzvahs. “The lines go around the corner at those,” Joe said. “We love it. And the people are the greatest joy, meeting people from all over. That’s what we love most about it,” said Peg. Joe and Peg’s food truck embodies the essence of the new food truck cult. To the elderly couple, they took their remarkable cross-country barbecue tasting trip, married it to their restaurant, and then put it on wheels. Joe and Peg brought north their own experiences and cultures from places as far away as Memphis, or as idiosyncratic as Haynesville, Louisiana, and gave them to the local New Haven community.

THE PEOPLE ARE THE GREATEST JOY, MEETING PEOPLE FROM ALL OVER. THAT’S WHAT WE LOVE MOST ABOUT IT.

the grill in our back patio, I can maneuver.” That morning, while Peg set up the generator behind the truck, Joe put out the chairs to the small table in front where they keep the condiments and

noon and we have a lot of fun with it.” Whether in spring downpours or 100-degree summer heat (which would usually mean it is about 120 degrees in the truck), Joe and Peg are there.

YALE FOOD SYSTEMS SYMPOSIUM Yale Law School // 12 p.m.

We at WKND believe in the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corn, and syrup.

Davenport College Dean Ryan Brasseaux teaches an American Studies course in the fall called “Introduction to Public Humanities.” Each year, Brasseaux and his students create a project focused on the local

community. Two years ago, they made a website about local food trucks. “New Haven is a city of great culinary diversity,” Brasseaux said. “And I think that’s reflected in the food trucks.” Not only do these trucks reflect the city, but also their widespread popularity is beginning to change the culinary landscape of the community. “Food trucks are a more democratic model than brick-andmortar establishments,” said Brasseaux. “Not only do they go into the community to bring food to the people, but also the [financial] overhead — or lack thereof — allows for a diverse array of cuisines through trucks that most people can afford.” As Brasseaux states, there is nothing more democratic than a food truck: food from all over the world conveniently accessible to people at an affordable price. It’s casual, it’s innovative and it fosters relationships that help to revitalize a community. Everyone loves the food trucks that gather at Ingalls Rink, from Yale professors to construction workers building the new colleges. And to those who know Joe and Peg, there is no couple more idyllic or appropriate for their setting. It is almost out of a storybook: the couple who met late in life at a dance party on Christmas, who, with their unlovely but friendly truck, take their delicious culinary culture to a place far from their home. In doing so, they bring the community together, every day, always with a smile. “It’s crazy, all that we do,” says Peg. “But if that’s what crazy is, then I love it.” Contact DAVID MCCULLOUGH at david.mccullough@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND ARTS

MODEST MOUSE, HERE TO PLAY // BY NATALINA LOPEZ “I can really feel the Tylenol P.M. kicking in,” Isaac Brock, the front man for Modest Mouse, announced midway through his band’s set. The crowd, which filled College Street Music Hall last Wednesday night, gave a hushed laugh that reverberated in the warmth of the venue. Brock’s murmured jokes, including one about getting a Yale tattoo, provided continuous entertainment throughout the concert. These moments exposed the bandleader’s quirkiness and created an unforeseen intimacy that was the highlight of the entire performance. As an observer familiar with the band’s repertoire, I expected to be jumping up and down, shouting lyrics that were drowned out by those of people around me. The band’s set list did not match those expectations, but the concert revealed a deeper,

lesser-known side of Modest Mouse that resonated with many different periods of their music. The band took to the stage with “The Whale Song,” immersing themselves in a six-minute jam session of layered harmonies and guitar buildups. This song, which they’ve only played at 10 out of numerous concerts over the years, enveloped the venue in a mellow melody. From the getgo, it appeared as if there were no intention to crowd-please. It was unpredicted. It was exactly Modest Mouse. Only four teenagers, who had passed around a joint earlier, danced at the beginning of the concert. They knocked into the dads behind me, who gruffly stared back, while others were confusedly trying to place the song. Though the sound within the venue was incredible, dynamic and loud (quite loud),

not many fans knew the lyrics for the first three or four tracks. A new vivacity coursed through the crowd when “Lampshades on Fire” and “Dashboard” debuted. Energy amplified with the fast tempo of the rhythmic percussion, and many people in the balcony seating area stood to dance. The band gave a solid performance the entire time, bringing out a trumpet and featuring the violinist at several points. If there was one thing Modest Mouse did not lack, it was instruments: The stage had various musical gadgets — and eight band members to play them all. Brock’s lispy vocals confidently carried the melody, but I awaited something bouncier, something to raise the crowd to its feet. People seated in the balcony made me little at ease — I am personally too anxious to sit at concerts. Gazing around during a guitar solo, I saw

people at the bar watching a live recording of the concert on the overhead TV screens. When Modest Mouse reached their encore, I looked forward to four of my favorite, and more popular, songs that hadn’t debuted. One of these dreams came true when they strummed into “Ocean Breathes Salty,” but Modest Mouse surprised the audience again with a reach into their archives for “Shit Luck” and “Gravity Rides Everything.” The band continued to belt their eccentric lyrics 15 minutes over the cut-off time, leaving the crowd with pleas for more. No, “Float On” was not played. Neither was “World at Large.” Both of these are Spotify’s most popular Modest Mouse songs. After 23 songs, an hour and 50 minutes, many in attendance lingered, waiting for more. I couldn’t help but want the band to play

something else as well. They were entertaining. Their songs were melodic, beautifully played and sometimes sardonic and funny. Every moment that Brock spoke was memorable. Yet, I’m still slightly bitter that the band has the license to play whatever they fucking please. Thinking back on the rare songs the band did play, they were a real treat for the diehard fans, for the old dads behind me singing softly and the drunk college kids swaying to the angst-ridden rhythms. I understand that “Float On” is overplayed, but I believe it would have been the perfect climax to the buildup, rather than the semiflat exit. To be honest, Modest Mouse didn’t provide the orgasm. Call it good news for people who love bad news. Contact NATALINA LOPEZ at natalina.lopez@yale.edu .

// NATALINA LOPEZ & JR REED

Art from the Ground Up // BY ALICE ZHAO

At 1046 Chapel Street, tucked between Panera and Starbucks, there is a city deconstructed. “Beauty Through the Back Door,” currently on view at the Fred Giampietro Gallery, celebrates urban space stripped down to its basic core, familiar sights distilled to their fundamental essence. Featuring the works of the late conceptual artist Gerald Ferguson and Yale alum Jonathan Waters MFA ’77, it’s a thoughtful meditation on what exactly constitutes the world we see today: the materials, the colors, and the people who bring it all together. Of the pair, Ferguson presents perhaps the starker vision. Using mostly only black paint on white canvas, he portrays commonly overlooked aspects of city life: ashcans on street corners, drain covers by curbs, doormats under feet. The city — or, at least, what Ferguson chooses to represent in it — is a plain subject. However, Ferguson’s careful omission of everything but the crudest details both disturbs and fascinates. In “16 Ashcans,” Ferguson depicts only the lids of trash bins, reminiscent of miniature headstones. And in “2 Drain Covers,” he paints metal gridding, thick black punctuated by evenly spaced, miniscule squares. Ferguson’s meticulous style elevates the otherwise visceral nature of his craft: his paintings are rough,

FRIDAY OCTOBER

30

coarse, heavy-handed, but undeniably controlled. Ferguson makes urban construction visible. It’s not hard to imagine these structures — these ordinary, but somehow magnetic structures — originating in the sketches of some architect. In Ferguson’s strongest works, he pares his subject matter down to only what’s necessary for the barest sliver of recognition. For instance, his works “24 Drain Covers” and “3 Doormats” reject ornamentation. “24 Drain Covers” is all straight lines and sharp angles, while “3 Doormats” features strokes of black paint, rough and tousled. His weaker works are the ones that break away from the carefully crafted industry of the others, the ones that are slightly more whimsical and literally more round. “4 Ashcans” depicts the tops of trash cans, circles within circles within circles, while the aptly named “4 Circles, 4 Ellipses” features — no big surprise — circles and ellipses. While these pieces are certainly more fun and light than the rest of Ferguson’s work, the lack of edge — and edges — detracts from the realness and grit that permeates Ferguson’s collection. A special exception, however, is “No. 14,” Ferguson’s only piece in the exhibition that features color. Splats of red, blue, yellow, and green stand out among black drips, all on a white background.

There’s something like graffiti to it — something spontaneous and refreshing beyond the conciseness and tightness of Ferguson’s other works. Jonathan Waters, on the other hand, experiments with sculptures and cutouts rather than canvas and paint. For the most part, he works with blocks: blocks of wood carved in seemingly impossible-to-balance shapes; blocks of thick paper patched together, almost like Tetris. While Ferguson may be more literal in his depiction of the city, Waters plays around with the idea of space, of doors, windows, inside and outside. There’s something very basic to his approach — in the end, it’s just squares and rectangles put together — but that simplicity lends his collection an air of childhood and imagination. His sculptures most strongly demonstrate this particular whimsy. Evoking building blocks, they’re curious that manage to remain standing despite their precarious shapes. In particular, “Coleraine” and “Resting Red” highlight the sense of putting things together, of using the most basic to create the most complicated. In stark contrast, Waters’ “Positive/negative #1” and “Positive/negative #2” are two giant metal structures more industrial and complex than the smaller sculptures that dot the rest of the gallery.

DANTE’S INFERNO MARATHON

RLL, 82-90 Wall St., 3rd floor // 12 p.m. How deep into the circles of hell can you go in one sitting?

There’s a sense of growing up in those two pieces, of maturation and loss, which makes Waters’ other work all the more compelling. Waters’ framed art also captures his smaller sculptures’ essential creativity. Comprised from patched paper of different colors — rich black, smooth red, cream white — the pieces have something rough about them. It’s in the slightly uneven edges of the shapes, the pencil traces on the paper, the wrinkles around the edges where the glue may have not stuck properly. “Flushing Road” is perhaps the best demonstration of this controlled “mess”: a large signature — maybe the artist’s, maybe not — is cut off in the middle, almost as if by accident. Nevertheless, Waters’ style is far from distracting or sloppy. If Ferguson’s works feel like a professional architect’s sketches, Waters’ sculptures evoke that architect as a child, for whom playful curiosity trumps nonnegotiable perfection. It’s no wonder that Waters picked names such as “Colonsay,” “Priddys Hard,” and “Great Nore” for his pieces. There’s something extraordinarily compelling about childhood and the thought that all the grand cities we see today had to come from somewhere. Contact ALICE ZHAO at alice.zhao@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Inferno by Dante Alighieri.

// ALEX SCHMELING


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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND SCARES

Pisces The stars are aligned for you: find a YSO ticket on the street, go for free!

Aries Beware of yourself tomorrow. May be best to steer clear.

Taurus Make out with a sexy cat on Halloween night; score! But the moon will turn on Sunday morning, when you realize it was an actual cat.

Gemini Expect a brief rendezvous in a coven (read: sneak into a sorority mixer).

HALLOWEEN HORRORSCOPES // BY WEEKEND Aquarius Mars has a warning: You awake on Sunday morning to discover that you have been permanently transformed into your costume from the night before. Plan accordingly … you don’t to be a half-assed “sexy” zebra forever.

Cancer A shift in the wind will cause you to grow ravenous; you eat an entire pack of candy corn, then a Wenzel, then make a stop by Insomnia on your way home. Seek out elastic waistbands.

Capricorn An epic journey awaits: Weave your way through the labyrinth of the SAE basement, battle the line at the GHeav deli and end your night in an offcampus party so hip, it kills. (You’ve been warned.)

Leo Moonlight will cause a wolflike shift in your persona. Best to locate somewhere you can howl. (Venus recommends residential college courtyards, Box 63 or East Rock.)

//ASHLYN OAKES

Sagittarius A mercurial shift will take hold of you, causing a productive streak — just in time for the end of midterm season. At least you’ll be on top of your readings!

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JAZZ PERFORMANCE: WE FOUR

Sprague Memorial Hall // 7:30 p.m.

We’re all 4 those silky sounds.

Scorpio The Sterling security guards don’t come get you before closing. Sleep in the stacks.

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Libra The stars call for a profile picture change; Jupiter recommends 4 p.m. on Sunday for maximum likes.

SATURDAY OCTOBER

The Shining by Stephen King.

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Virgo The stars call for romance — last month’s DFMO sends you a booty text. “Netflix and chill” is a go … but you might want to change out of your Bernie Sanders costume first.

CIRCA 2001: EUROPEAN CINEMA AT THE MILLENIUM

WKND RECOMMENDS:

WHC Auditorium // 9:30 a.m.

A 2001: a French/Ukrainian/German/ Finnish Odyssey. Ne t’inquiète pas — there will be subtitles.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.


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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND PHARM

PRIVATIZING A PUBLIC GOOD // BY HANNAH SCHWARZ PHARM FROM PAGE B3 unwilling to talk about details. When I asked him which companies had included which provisions in their contracts, he said it was confidential information. “These things are regarded as very sensitive business information,” he told me. “Why?” I asked. “Weren’t these drugs developed with taxpayer money?” “Would you show your mortgage or bank account statement to strangers?” he responded. I asked Soderstrom the same question I asked Puziss. “[Pharmaceutical companies] don’t want to trade what they consider to be [confidential business] plans about the company and the investments they’re making,” he responded. “You’ve got to remember that the pharmaceutical industry is high-risk, long-term R&D, and the bets that they’re placing are very large.” I asked about the Freedom of Information Act, the law that allows citizens to file requests to see almost all government documents. The contracts don’t have to be hyperlinked on the OCR website, but why aren’t they FOIA-able? “The grants are,” Puziss said. But the licensing information? “It’s not public property.” Both Gilead and Merck declined to comment for this article. Public affairs officials from Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the trade group that represents U.S. pharmaceutical companies, said their group is not involved in decisions about access provisions, and that “how a company decides what to do on licensing is an individual company decision.” Though BristolMyers Squibb public affairs officials said they would connect me with someone on their corporate team, they did not. The companies refused to talk even about what they believe they are doing well in the field of access. And from the side of the OCR, the contracts are confidential, and neither Soderstrom nor Puziss were willing to make them anything but. Despite signing on to both the Nine Points and the Statement of Principles, the University has done almost nothing to subject itself to outside accountability. In April, for the very first time,

the OCR released information to Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, which was producing its second report card on universities’ research innovation, technology access policies and global health programs. The willingness to share information was a big step in transparency for the OCR — when UAEM was creating its first report card in 2013, the Office refused to share numbers. Of the 59 universities evaluated in the most recent report card, released April 21, Yale came in 8th with a “B.” That was a significant jump from two years before, when Yale came in 29th and scored a “C-.” But the newest ranking still revealed issues with access. One of the report card’s questions asks how often Yale pursues other access provisions when companies won’t agree to forgo patenting in low- and middleincome countries. The preliminary answer on the survey is 81–100 percent of the time, but a follow-up survey question reveals that not a single one of these provisions included the biggest developing-world economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China, or South Africa). Puziss said the question is not that relevant. Searching through the OCR’s database and starting in January 2014, he could not find a single time that the University had patented in Brazil, Russia or South Africa. He also said the University rarely patents in India, where the government has purposefully made patent protections weak. In these situations, additional access provisions are simply unnecessary. Still, when the OCR does patent in India and China, the countries rarely benefit from access provisions. Together, those two nations represent 36 percent of the world’s population. The last paragraph of the final point in the Nine Points document reads, “We recognize that licensing initiatives cannot solve the problem by themselves. Licensing techniques alone, without significant added funding, can, at most, enhance access to demands for which there is demand in wealthier countries.” In other words, the question about whether universitydeveloped medicines are being made accessible in the developing world isn’t just a question of access, of including certain

phrases in contracts. Because it doesn’t really matter if there are systems in place to make medicines accessible if the medicines don’t exist — if they just aren’t being made. That second issue has nothing to do with patents and everything to do with the structure of the U.S. R&D system. The R&D system in place today in the United States is relatively new. It began in 1980 with the passage of a bipartisan piece of legislation called the Bayh-Dole Act, signed into law by thenPresident Jimmy Carter. Before the Act, there was almost no commercialization of university research; any inventions made using federal funding had to be handed over to the federal government. The Act, for the first time, allowed universities to pursue ownership of their inventions. According to Lisa Ouellette, an assistant professor at Stanford Law School who focuses on patenting under the BayhDole Act, the change was necessary. Prior to 1980, she said, “the concern was that a lot of university researchers were doing cool things, but that the university wasn’t being used by society more broadly because there were no incentives to commercialize it.” SUPPLY & DEMAND (AND THE PUBLIC GOOD?) Before Bayh-Dole, universities were treated strictly as institutions for the public interest. But with its passage, universities now had an incentive to research commerciable drugs and technologies — that was where the royalties would lie. The change prompted questions about the purpose and future of universities. Would market demand begin to dictate university research? And how would universities remain accountable to the public when operating in a marketplace that responds only to supply and demand? “One of the interesting things about the University selling off their research is [they] are nonprofit organizations, they’re taxed as nonprofits, but then they’re profiting off of their research,” said Hannah Brennan LAW ’13, a fellow at Public Citizen, a left-leaning federal advocacy organization. According to Unni Karunakara,

the former international president of Doctors Without Borders, the way that the U.S. allows universities to exercise intellectual property rights is unique. In 2014, the average large research university spent 3.46 percent of its total biomedical research funding on global health research, training and collaboration, according to the UAEM report card. The majority of that money, though, was not spent on researching neglected diseases — viral, parasitic and bacterial diseases that have an outsized impact on low-income nations.

WOULD MARKET DEMAND BEGIN TO DICTATE UNIVERSITY RESEARCH? Though there was substantial variation in how much each university devoted to that type of research, the high was 28.1 percent and the low 0 percent. Yale’s score was particularly abysmal. Just 1.72 percent of the University’s biomedical research funding — half the average — was spent on global health research, training and collaboration. Of that, only 2.4 percent was spent on neglected disease research. In other words, just 0.04 percent of the University’s total biomedical funds. According to Soderstrom, unfortunately, that research is simply not where the money lies. “[Neglected and tropical disease drugs] are the hardest things in the world to try to license because they have the smallest market [of people who are able to pay for the drug], and they take just as much effort,” he said. “It’s just the nature of the capitalist, democratic system that we live in. If you’re a company that is beholden to its stockholders, what would benefit you the best is to invest in things that are going to generate significant profit. Soderstrom said that at Yale, there have been instances in which researchers were pursuing vaccines for neglected diseases,

but companies simply were not interested in licensing. The system is not only skewed against the development of drugs for the world’s most impactful diseases. It is also skewed against pricing drugs, any type of drug, affordably. Even in the U.S., access issues abound. The irony, of course, is that those who have funded the development of the drug itself are the people being priced out of the market: the taxpayers. Peter Maybarduk, the director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Program, put it in more specific terms: “[The U.S. invests] $30 billion a year through the NIH, and then we give those technologies away to companies and allow them to charge consumers $100,000 a year for cancer treatments or $100,000 for a course of a Hep C treatment.” Pharmaceutical companies usually say their drug prices are high because they need to recover the cost of R&D — they usually spend a significant amount of money to purchase the license from a university, or to conduct the R&D themselves. But most of the experts I spoke with don’t buy the argument. “When you start to look at the pricing [of drugs], it’s completely arbitrary — in certain countries, it’s priced differently,” UAEM President Merith Basey said. “They’re saying that they need to recoup their costs, but there are labs in Europe that have reproduced these drugs for $200.” Brennan agreed. Drug prices simply aren’t based on R&D expenditures, she said. “The narrative is breaking down for the pharmaceutical companies: they’re still saying they need to set prices high to account for R&D expenses, but it has become increasingly clear that they price drugs to maximize profits,” she said. In fact, the pharmaceutical company officials themselves have already started to inadvertently tear down that narrative. According to Maybarduk, at a recent public forum, a Gilead official admitted that the company does not price according to R&D costs, but instead according to market prices. Companies are able to do that partially because the U.S. federal government, unlike that in many other countries, lacks strong compulsory licensing abilities,

said Ryan Abbott, a Southwestern Law School professor who specializes in health and intellectual property. When I talked about this with Gorik Ooms, a human rights lawyer and the former executive director of Doctors Without Borders Belgium, he said the U.S. should look to India, where the government has made drug access a top priority, for a solution. “If a public authority invests in a new medicine, then I think the intellectual property should stay with the public,” he said. In fact, that’s the path a good number of countries besides India have opted for. According to Ouellette, Canada, the UK and Italy have all chosen to build a system that doesn’t incentivize pharmaceutical companies; the U.S. stands apart in how strong its incentives are. India may be the developing world’s pharmacy, but it is the U.S. that is the world’s developer. Malaria, Ebola, influenza — all of these diseases are now treated or cured by drugs or vaccines developed in the United States. Lung cancer, heroin addiction? Treated or cured by drugs developed in university laboratories. HIV/ AIDS? Once treated by a drug developed in Yale laboratories. Soderstrom said that, since the d4T incident, leading academic institutions like Yale have started to pay attention to drug access. They’re trying to be proactive, “to be part of the solution as opposed to part of the problem.” But the tension between the public and private spheres is still there. It probably always will be. “In a sense, this [system] does cost taxpayers money,” said Abbott. “In another sense, private industry is how drugs get made.” But to Ooms, who pointed out various alternative R&D systems, if people continue to believe that a private market is necessary, they are never going to make significant progress. Karunakara agreed. “The free-market economy — we work in that system. But that doesn’t mean we should not challenge it,” he said. “This is not a song on iTunes. We are talking about life.” Contact HANNAH SCHWARZ at hannah.schwarz@yale.edu .

GRAPHIC YALE’S UNIVERSITIES ALLIED FOR ESSENTIAL MEDICINES RANKINGS

ACCESS

B-

INNOVATION

EMPOWERMENT

ACCESS

INNOVATION

C

2015: #8 of 59

B+ C+

B EMPOWERMENT

C-

2013: #29 of 59

B

D//AMANDA MEI

SATURDAY OCTOBER

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DESIRE, BEAUTY, AND THE ASIAN BODY

WKND RECOMMENDS:

AACC // 3 p.m.

Madame Butterfly breaks free.

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.


YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B9

WEEKEND SITS

NOT YOUR MOTHER’S CHAIRS // BY MICHELLE LIU

//ASHLYN OAKES

I showed up late for the tour. It was two Septembers ago, on my first visit to the Yale University Art Gallery’s Furniture Study. The tour guide had already led the other visitors through a few rows of chairs. A friend and I had gotten a little lost, having first arrived at the YUAG only to be told that the study is actually in a different building on campus. As it turns out, the location of the study isn’t even listed on the Gallery’s website. To get there, you have to make an appointment first. Or, you can arrive for the public tour held every Friday at 12:30 p.m., like I (almost) did. I can’t remember a lot of what the guide said, but I do remember a couple things: first, that chests of drawers can evolve over the years, newer iterations featuring more compartments than their older counterparts. And second, that the neatly arranged rows — of tables, chairs, mirrors and cupboards — gleamed quietly. When I moved through them, I could see marks of use — scratches, nicks, the glow of being worn. *** Part of the YUAG’s American Decorative Arts department, the Furniture Study has been around since the 1930s, when Francis P.

Garvan, who graduated from Yale in 1897, donated what museum assistant Eric Litke calls an “enormous” gift to the Gallery. “He was a little bit ahead of his time in his vision of what he wanted his gift to be,” Litke says. Besides having key objects on view in the YUAG proper, Garvan wanted to have as much of the remaining donation to be stored in a visible and accessible way. The donation totaled 10,000 objects, including everything from silver to furniture to ceramics and glass. Thus the Furniture Study was born: an encyclopedia of American furniture, from 1650 to 1830. Since then, the American Decorative Arts department has filled in the gaps, acquiring objects from the 19th and 20th century. The study now also features contemporary woodturning and wood art, Litke said. At the time of its creation, Litke tells me, Garvan anticipated that his donation would allow young Yale men to receive a genteel education in the decorative arts. Now, the study functions in a variety of ways. Professors hold classes and sections in the study, where students think about the domestic settings of the furniture or how it was made or even what kind of tree a certain chair came from. Scholars

WHEN I MOVED THROUGH THEM, I COULD SEE MARKS OF USE — SCRATCHES, NICKS, THE GLOW OF BEING WORN.

SATURDAY OCTOBER

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from other institutions drop by as well, and furniture appraisal classes use the study’s collection to train appraisers, Litke says — one man taking a course at Sotheby’s even measured all the chairs for his thesis on the ergonomics of colonial seating. *** As professor Ned Cooke spoke with me in the study, we walked through the aisles, with Cooke opening cabinets and assembling chairs. Cooke teaches courses on American decorative arts and material culture, including one introductory course which I took with him last spring. He compares the Furniture Study to open stacks libraries, as opposed to an Orbis search: there are aisles for you to browse through, and you might discover something you weren’t expecting. The aisles are organized by type of furniture, such as sideboards, desks, cabinets and tables. As visitors walk along an aisle, they can perceive how a form changes over the centuries. Walking me through the aisles, Cooke points out a chest from the 17th century. He calls it a “lump of storage space,” and it is practically just a box with a lid. Further down the row, the chests become more complicated. More drawers appear, and then compartments within the drawers appear. Whoever owned the later chests could put specific items in specific boxes, instead of digging around that one big chest. Unlike the storage facilities on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Furniture Study’s objects aren’t behind sheets of plexiglass. This accessibility encourages visitors to interact with the objects at a closer level, the reason being that thinking about these objects

YSO HALLOWEEN SHOW Woolsey Hall // 11:59 p.m.

Spooky and spectacular.

isn’t the same as thinking about a painting; you have to use senses other than sight, Cooke says. The students in his freshman seminar, “Furniture and American Life,” learn to handle the objects by hand. “So much of these objects is tied into our bodily relationship to them,” Cooke said. “What do the drawers feel like when you open them? What are the secret compartments? What is the smell like?” Many students in Cooke’s introductory decorative arts class, like Sarah Gomez ’18, first discovered the study through Cooke. Gomez has since revisited the study because the pieces there “tell both individual stories and stories of larger historical trends in decorative art,” she said. Her classmate, Derek Lo ’17, also found himself drawn to the intricate craftsmanship of the objects in the rows. Personal experience with this kind of craftsmanship, Litke says, is increasingly uncommon in our postmodern material culture. What the study aims to do is prompt visitors to think about the way things in our everyday lives are made, and to consider what human handcraft is capable of. “Getting people to think about how things are made, and stimulating interest in American history: basically those are the flip sides of the coin of what our mission is,” Litke said. *** Tucked away in the back of the study are what Litke calls “the bones of a working furniture shop”: remnants from the 1960s and 1970s, when the study used to have a staff member on hand for furniture repairs. Now, the Furniture Study hires outside

conservators, but the shop still remains, featuring a workbench that formerly belonged to Garvan’s cabinet repairman in the 1920s. The study currently invites craftsmen into the workshop for public demonstrations on historical woodworking techniques. Earlier this month, conservator Joshua Klein brought his foot-powered lathe — a machine which rotates wood on an axis to manipulate it in a variety of ways — down to the study, demonstrating colonial wood turning to a packed room of 25 people, including the general public and Yale faculty. He first compared two 18th-century chairs, one made by a turner and the other by a carpenter. After noting the differences in the techniques and outputs of each, Klein showed visitors and Gallery staff the setup of the lathe and how it worked. Klein says that among “period furniture geeks,” the study is a widely known, well-cherished resource. By observing objects in the study, visitors begin to see the value system of their makers. These economy-minded craftsmen might have made an opulent, expensive chest of drawers, but have left the inside or backside unfinished to save time and effort, Klein says. As a conservator, Klein has come across countless pieces of historical furniture, but he says that for someone unacquainted with the particulars of period furniture, the discovery that such luxury objects contain surprises within can be eye-opening. The collection is not just comprised of high-end commissions, however. “Not everything is the furniture of the 1 percent,” Klein said. “This is actually a pretty good cross-section of the kind

of furniture that was available — everything from elaborate ornamentation to relatively common objects.” As a visitor to the Furniture Study himself, Klein says that it derives its allure not just from the unique collection and accommodating policies. The staff is also warm and welcoming so that “you don’t feel like you’re bothering anybody,” he added. *** Three hundred and fifty people went on a Friday tour or attended a demonstration at the study in 2014, Litke said — a 100-person increase from the previous year. John Lee ’18 was one of them. Lee, who had just begun learning the craft of woodworking at the time, found himself paying attention to the relationship between the craftsman that made an object, the viewer of that object and the material used for the object. “It is very special to think that all these physical objects were used at specific time,” Lee said. Cooke says that with accumulated use, an object will acquire a patina, a sheen that is produced from use. Over the years, the arm of a chair or the side of a desk will be worn by sunlight, by oil from the palms of your hands, by scratches and by people trying to rub the scratches out. “There’s a sense that it’s been loved,” Cooke said. Over a year after that first visit to the Study, I think differently of the scratches crosshatched across the wooden floor of my room — these signs of use aren’t scars, just mere marks of my presence. Contact MICHELLE LIU at michelle.liu@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Coraline by Neil Gaiman.


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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

A SPOOKY HALLOWEEN WEEKND // BY WAYNE ZHANG “I love villains — they’re the best characters in movies, right?” — Abel Tesfaye to Pitchfork Media, 2015 “The Hills have eyes! The Hills have eyes! Who are you to judge, who are you to judge?” — “The Hills,” The Weeknd, 2015 Before and after the King of Pop’s death, musical titans from Rihanna, to Drake, to Lady Gaga (and especially Kanye West) treated Michael Jackson as a divine entity — quoting and sampling his songs, emulating his dance moves, and publicly discussing the universal success and celebrity status that consumed and eventually destroyed him. The freshest mainstream distillation of Jacksonian pop comes from Abel Tesfaye, aka The Weeknd, in the form of “The Hills,” the follow-up single to the #1 smash “Can’t Feel My Face.” It also currently rests atop the Billboard Hot 100 — Tesfaye is the 11th artist in history to replace himself at #1. The single marks a seminal moment in Tesfaye’s career trajectory: if MJ’s zombie-ridden, scream-filled, 14-minute long “Thriller” music video cemented his international stardom, then “The Hills” is Abel Tesfaye’s “Thriller” moment. Tesfaye’s parallels with MJ in range (falsettos!), style (moonwalk!) and tone (aching!) have been well-documented by critics and artists alike, but few have compared the artists’ dark lyrical themes. In the ‘80s, MJ crooned about jilted, love-childbearing ex-lovers, the occult, and being “bad.” Tesfaye’s

//LAURIE WANG

album, Beauty Behind the Madness, and “The Hills” in particular speak to these malaises, but on an even more sinister level. In “The Hills” music video, a visibly intoxicated Tesfaye escapes his wrecked car in a gated community, leaving behind battered women and exploding flames. With the sun waning, he indifferently limps alone to a hookup in an abandoned mansion and saunters upstairs to a room with three scowling women. The scene is draped in red light, symbolizing hell. Tesfaye plays Christian Grey, Patrick Bateman, Jordan Belfort. It’s not Motown anymore; it’s LA. It’s not MJ in “Thriller,” watching movies and going on dates; it’s Facebook booty-call-

ing and swiping right on Tinder. It’s not just horror and love and despair. It’s explicitly sex. Adultery. Drug abuse. While Tesfaye has sung extensively about substances, he’s never sung more explicitly than here: “Always tryna send me off to rehab / Drugs started feeling like it’s decaf.” But does a combination of drugs exist that can produce the hyper-honest, fatalistic over-sharing of a line like “I only love it when you touch me / Not feel me”? When Tesfaye admits, “When I’m fucked up / That’s the real me,” is he stating a fact or happily giving an opinion? Would he even know? Even the name “The Hills” alludes to a 1977 cult classic film

“The Hills Have Eyes,” in which a suburban family is savagely murdered by a group of cannibals. “The Hills” might also refer to Hollywood, whose corrupting nature spelled MJ’s demise. Illangelo, who has mixed songs by Drake, Florence & The Machine and Lady Gaga, and who has worked with The Weeknd since some of his earliest mixtapes, produces the song’s bleak backdrop. An exaggerated bass menaces and Tesfaye’s voice is distorted ever so slightly, as if we’re hearing a stream of consciousness siphoned out of his mind. A woman’s scream periodically manifests itself, foreshadowing destruction. The only solace lies in the

song’s denouement, when the discordant, minor-key staccato violin dissolves into a gossamerlike piano. Tesfaye returns to his Ethiopian roots, melismatically whispering in his native language, Amharic: “Ewedihalehu / Yene konjo, ewedihalehu / Yene fikir, fikir, fikir, fikir.” Loosely translated into “I love you very much / My beautiful / My love,” the deeply personal, tender nonsequitur forces listeners to question their initial perceptions of the story told in “The Hills.” Tesfaye goes beyond embodying the melancholy essences of Lana Del Rey, Tame Impala, or Birdy — he conjures the spirits of Hemingway, Salinger and Camus, who convincingly sublimated humanity’s unrest

and self-destructive capacity. That “The Hills” currently rests atop the Billboard 100 is as much a testament to The Weeknd’s musical prowess as it is to his fans’ empathy. In an interview with Pitchfork Media titled “The Dark Knight Returns,” Tesfaye disclosed, “I can never be Michael Jackson or do what he did, but he is definitely a good inspiration: I want to give the kids that feeling.” And he does. While it’s improbable that “The Hills” will achieve the cultural permanence of MJ’s “Thriller,” its chilling sentiment — and its parting hope — is already immortal. Contact WAYNE ZHANG at wayne.zhang@yale.edu .

Looking into the abyss with the Bradys // BY IAN GARCIA-KENNEDY The greatest movies ever made are “The Brady Bunch Movie” and “A Very Brady Sequel.” This is an objective fact that I will defend to the death. Both movies were made in the ‘90s and were meant to serve as a comic take on the original “Brady Bunch” series. The central joke was that times had changed since the ‘70s, but

//DELEINE LEE

SUNDAY NOVEMBER

1

the Bradys had stayed locked in their sunny, sitcommy state of mind. I’m not sure which is funnier: the movie itself or picturing the reactions of the original show’s fans who expected a loving homage to the flawless Brady children and all their family values. Most comedies have an underlying kindness to them, or at least some sense of affection for their bumbling main characters. Not so with the Bradys. What most sets these films apart from other comedies is their shockingly meanspirited sense of humor. Consider this scene, for instance: The Bradys may have to sell their home. The kids ponder the implications of the move. Jan says, “We’ll have to make new friends.” To which Marcia replies, “But Jan, you don’t have any friends.” That’s it. That’s the scene’s punch line. It’s not clever or witty — it’s just hateful, and the deadpan line readings and reaction shots make it hilarious. You keep waiting for the cop-out, for the scene when we really do root for the Bradys, when someone isn’t appallingly mean to Jan, when kindness and decency prevail. But it never happens. After her entire family has basically taken turns insulting her after she dares to speak out against Martha, Jan’s inner voices also start attacking her. It’s funny and creepy and profoundly sad. The sequel’s incest subplot (yes, you read that correctly) provokes a similar mixed response. But we can’t really talk about

the Brady movies without talking about Jennifer Elise Cox. In my opinion, it is one of our culture’s great oversights that we aren’t mentioning her name in the same breath as Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Her performance as Jan Brady is so gleefully off-therails that the entire movie seems to bend around her. I don’t know who told her she was acting in a trippy psychodrama, but clearly she believed them and threw her heart into it. This gloriously unhinged tour de force is accomplished through total commitment to the part and a complete lack of vanity. In one of the greatest tragicomic scenes ever captured on film, painfully lonely Jan carries a male mannequin around in the hopes of convincing people that it is her boyfriend. It’s a mildly chuckleworthy one-joke concept that the actress elevates to high art through sheer force of will. There is no winking at the audience. When she makes out with the mannequin, she does it like she means it. Her longing and desperation to fit in are so overpowering that the sight of a wildly grinning girl attempting to reattach the head of her mannequin boyfriend becomes almost touching. It’s also one of the most deliriously funny things I’ve ever seen. There’s always a fine line between comedy and cruelty. In the Brady movies, that line may not even exist. Contact IAN GARCIA-KENNEDY at ian.garcia-kennedy@yale.edu .

VELÁZQUEZ’S MASTERPIECES

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Brighten your Sunday with a sampling of the Spanish Golden Age.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.

YUAG // 3 p.m.


YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B11

WEEKEND THEATER

//COURTESY OF T. CHARLES ERICKSON

ON THE EDGE OF OUR SEAT AT THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH // BY YVONNE YE

The first thing you need to know when you walk into the theater is this: There’s an apocalypse happening. Actually, there are three apocalypses. Also, dinosaurs, mammoths and Homer happen to inhabit the same time period as bicycles, Moses and the telegram. Our gallant protagonist, Mr. George Antrobus (portrayed by Andrew Burnap DRA ’16) has recently invented the wheel and developed the alphabet; meanwhile, his family, accompanied by their maid and sometime-seductress, Lily Sabina, struggles to navigate through a formidable slew of disasters, both natural and man-made. And if that’s not enough for the audience to handle, members of the cast occasionally drop charac-

ter to act as “themselves,” creating a series of faux-disturbances such as food poisoning, missed cues and flat-out refusal to play certain scenes. Welcome to Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning play that casually kicks down the fourth wall before two cast members are even onstage at the same time. From the moment the theater lights dim, the creative team spares no expense to communicate the satirical, comedic, even absurd attitudes of the play: a ’40s-style newscast cheerily notifies the audience of the exits in the theater, solid walls teeter and tip over in an impressive feat of versatile stagecraft engineering and dark curtains are stripped away from the understage to expose movement of

the props and backstage crew. Delicate wire-frame mammoths and dinosaurs boast such intricacy and attention to detail that they nearly steal the scene. Meanwhile, playful stage lighting complements the metafictional havoc the actors and director wreak using the script itself. In one memorable decision, Carolina Ortiz Herrera DRA ’17 uses strobe lighting to illustrate the end of the world (perhaps it was a questionable decision, too — while effective at simulating a Biblical end of days, it also had audience members grimacing and covering their eyes). And even if all of history seems to be happening at the same time, the costumes anchor the audience comfortably in early 20th-century New Jersey or post-apocalyptic America as the scene demands.

A stellar cast, comprised almost exclusively of Yale School of Drama MFA candidates, leads the audience through the end of the world several times over, bringing to the stage nuanced portrayals of the troubled members of the Antrobus family and the strange characters that they run into along the way. Melanie Field DRA ’16 captivates the audience as the melodramatic Lily Sabina, the family maid who occasionally moonlights as a beauty queen and burlesque performer. Field seamlessly picks up and discards her character’s accents as easily as she does her various wigs, dropping effortlessly into the persona of a toughened war survivor or acting out a version of herself, a “Melanie Field” fed up with performing the same incomprehensible

play night after night. Suddenly, a play with more than seven decades under its belt becomes much more personal as Field leans against the doorframe of a theater exit, smoking a cigarette and expounding on the miseries of education in showbiz. “I came to grad school because I wanted to be an artist,” she grumbles to the audience before the show resumes. Paul Stillman Cooper DRA ’16 stood out among the cast for his portrayal of the complex Fortune Teller, a character neither completely artificial nor completely human and alive, who prophesies the impending Biblical flood amid a group of naysaying burlesque dancers. Stick-skinny and outfitted in gypsy-esque clothes, Cooper’s Fortune Teller lashes out at the excess and hedonism about

him with a satisfying level of cynicism and wit. Director Luke Harlan DRA ’16 took on an ambitious project in directing “The Skin of Our Teeth,” a play that requires not only extensive consideration of stage, understage and audience space, but also calls for the director himself to appear onstage at certain points to “rescue” the production from its wayward actors. And while the actors who address the audience seem to barely scrape through by the skin of their own teeth, this production of Wilder’s play masterfully blends philosophy, social satire and playful absurdity in a refreshing look at the potential of modern theater. Contact YVONNE YE at yvonne.ye@yale.edu .

Bring Up the Bodies // BY NOAH KIM

Go to Hell: A Descent With No Exit // BY LOGAN ZELK

//MATTHEW LEIFHEIT

SUNDAY NOVEMBER

1

The play is at 8 p.m. on a Thursday night, at the Calhoun Cabaret. The Cabaret itself is finely furnished with a gaudy and ornate design in the style of the Second French Empire. Indeed, it extends outwards, with grandiose empty frames enclosing the audience in its invisible borders. Of course, the action takes place in front of the sitting spectators, but the stage has no demarcated boundary. We are in the room, and we soon discover we’re also in Hell — a setting that is funnily reflective of Sartre’s feelings about occupied Paris, where he lived at the time he wrote the play in 1944. The story begins with a meekseeming man, a journalist from Rio named Garcin who is led into the neatly adorned room by a rather sterile and disturbingly composed valet. Garcin, as portrayed in this production, is effeminate and welldressed, and whose words don’t coincide with his behavior. After some conversation, the valet leaves Garcin alone in the room with the door locked. He proceeds, after a short time, to throw a hysterical fit, banging on the door for an immeasurably long time, finally giving up and sitting in despondent fashion on a spinach-colored chair. Enter character number two: Inez. Inez, over the course of the play, reveals herself as a cruel and callous character, a lesbian postoffice worker who is sternly repulsed by men and quickly makes this clear to Garcin. Inez possesses a nearconstant gaze of hawkish amusement. Her expression varies at some points, such as the few moments she feels some level of remorse, but certainly her words are those of a manipulative sadist. Her malevolence was to me the most perturbing part of the play, perhaps because it was so prominent that I was forced to ruminate on it. These two distinct characters proceed to interact, and Inez soon displays her abilities to attach emotional tendrils to those around her and while Garcin reveals his susceptibility to others’ opinions. During their verbal knife fight, they realize that there are no mirrors in the room. In essence, they are each other’s definition. Because they have left behind both the earthly world and their material bodies, as well the mirrors, the only source of self-image each one can possess is that relayed by the other. This is exemplified in a moment between

OFFICE KILLER

WHC Auditorium // 3 p.m. Corporate America or corpse-orate America?

Inez and Garcin during which the two, waiting for something to happen, pick two of three chairs in the room in which to bide their time. In the meanwhile, Garcin makes rather annoying movements with his mouth, driving Inez to fury. She barks at him for his contorted face; Garcin can’t contest this accusation, given the only evidence for his image is the remark from Inez, and so he believes her image of him. This concept is repeated in the play frequently and fervently, most notably with the addition of a third damned soul: Estelle. Estelle is the character of pivoting action between Garcin and Inez’s conversation. Estelle hails from high society and in life was married to a wealthy man; Estelle’s pretty entrance is only marred through her screaming about a faceless man whom she appears to know from her past. Estelle would have enjoyed her name being repeated as much as I have above — she is portrayed as shifty, easily bothered and resistant to acknowledge the wrongs she committed during her stay on Earth. What follows in the play is the pure expression of what is perhaps Sartre’s most famous and misunderstood line: “Hell is other people.” No punishments comically reflective of their cause appear, no demons with pitchforks and pentup phallic rage descend to skewer the characters, and no devil assumes shape, even as a suave man with puny horns adorning his head. No, Hell for each character is indeed the others, for each one depends entirely on the opinion on the others for their own identity. Inez depends on her victims, Garcin depends on Inez believing he was a man and not a coward, and Estelle can’t define herself without a man. So bound to each other are they that even during the moment when they have the chance to escape the bowels of their 18th-century furnace, no one leaves. It is a sentimental play, and is performed as such. And the final questions remain after the show ends, stuck to the shell of everyone’s heads — how bound are we to the eyes of others? Do we subscribe too much to what others think to validate our own existence? And it was these questions that harangued my inner ear as I walked away from Calhoun, waiting on the edge of Elm Street for a moment to pass. Contact LOGAN ZELK at logan.zelk@yale.edu .

“We are secretaries and we do things secretarial.” “And once a month we kill a guy and cut him up for burial! (shh)” Thus spake the amanuenses of the Cooney Lumber Mill, empowered professional women with elaborately coiffed hair, high heels and murderous intentions. The production of “The Secretaries” currently playing at the Yale (not Calhoun) Cabaret is a perfectly entertaining slice of riotous, gory fun that locates the fine line between hilarity and terror and dismembers it, all while smearing its blood over its naked chest. Written by The Five Lesbian Brothers (Maureen Angelos, Babs Davy, Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healey and Lisa Kron), a female performing/playwriting collective, The Secretaries takes place in the office of the aforementioned Cooney Lumber Mill, through the eyes of newbie Patty Johnson (Jenelle Chu), a sweet, sensitive girl trying to fit in with her fellow coworkers and impress her boss, the dictatorial Susan Curtis (Chalia La Tour). As time progresses, however, Patty begins to feel that something is off about her new job: Susan collects her employees’ tampons in a plastic bag, forces them to stick to a strict diet of SlimFast shakes and prompts them to sign celibacy agreements. As the weeks pass, Patty is steadily inducted into this bizarre new world, as group dynamics shift and sexual tension grows, only to discover that her fellow secretaries are part of a deranged murder cult that ritualistically slaughters one of the mill’s lumberjacks at the end of each month. This is unabashed camp, an onstage rendition of the lurid exploitation one finds while surfing the shadier corners of Youtube and tiptoeing around the back ends of video stores. It’s relentlessly entertaining, provocative and occasionally vomitous theater, a self-aware, postmodern gore-fest that fully embraces its sordid source material. The actors shine with sweat before the glare of the bright, accented lighting, enunciate heavily as they sink their teeth into

these gleefully cheesy lines (“I’m no feminist. I know how to take a joke!”) and grimace grotesquely during entrances and exits. All are spectacular, but of particular note is Annelise Lawson as Peaches Martin, an anxious, ingratiating secretary trying to lose weight to meet her overseer’s expectations. Lawson’s performance is a tour de force of steadily mounting hysteria, and she hilariously exposes giddiness as the flipside of repressed violence.

IT’S RELENTLESSLY ENTERTAINING, PROVOCATIVE, AND OCCASIONALLY VOMITOUS On a superficial level, the play is a spooky tale for a spooky time of year, and this production, which is both genuinely unnerving and genuinely funny, works perfectly well as pure entertainment. However, it’s also a searing satire of group dynamics, the public perception of lesbians, what it means to be empowered in the modern world and the way in which women can inadvertently perpetuate misogyny through group shaming and one-upmanship. The idea of camp is built, essentially, upon a distinct aesthetic that typically has the effect of leaching creative content of ideological core. This is not to suggest that camp is inferior to socalled high art, just that it necessarily trends towards the apolitical in favor of seduction-via-spectacle. This is what renders the high achievement of the play all the more luminous: it’s a nasty little joyride of a horror-comedy that somehow functions simultaneously as a blistering social critique without diluting the visceral grip of its exploitative trappings. Tickets are unfortunately 12 dollars each. They are, however, well worth the money.

WKND RECOMMENDS: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.

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


PAGE B12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

HOLLYWOOD, OPERAAND 3D PRINTING: JORDAN PLOTNER // BY MANASA RAO

J

ordan Plotner ’17 — an American Studies major concentrating in film — used to spend his childhood car rides listening to the Beatles. Today, he composes for commercials, Yale productions and Hollywood films. “Harold,” the opera he composed during his freshman year, won Best Narrative Film at March’s Yale Student Film Festival. Raised in London, Plotner took a gap year to compose for a band in Malaysia and spent this past summer studying under American film composer Marco Beltrami, the composer of “I, Robot” and “The Woman in Black.” Excelling beyond the scope of his instrumentbuilding class at Yale, Plotner used his 3D-printed beer bottle instrument to score a job with Ikea.

//JULIA HENRY

A: My parents are big music lovers. They both played instruments when younger. Neither have kept it up but they are both avid listeners and we always had music playing in our house. From a very young age, I was quizzed on the Beatles and I quickly became an expert on the Beatles. On long car rides, my parents would ask who is singing, who wrote this song, not in a competitive way but in a thisis-really-fun music sort of way. Jump forward a little bit, I started learning guitar and double bass at the same time and I became more interested in music. When I was 13 or 14, I was given a notebook, a nice big empty notebook and later I had a chat with my dad and he said, “You know, you can practice guitar, but there are always going to be people who are technically more proficient and technically better. But no one else will have your mind and the ability to create,” and he really encouraged me to start writing songs in this book. When I was 14 or 15, I started recording myself playing these songs that I had written. I wasn’t very good but I was just going with it. Eventually, I started trying to make these songs more complex and interesting. Q: Tell me about the biggest parts of composing a piece of music — where do you even begin? A: I think the most important part of a piece of music is the melody. So sometimes I’ll just be walking — I know this is cliche — but I’ll be struck with it, it will just pop into my head and I will write it down or whistle it. [Harold] started as a sticky note when I was boarding a plane. I have numerical values assigned to notes and I wrote out the numbers of the main theme of the opera. So that is one way where it just pops into my head, which is nice because I don’t have to work too much at it. Another piece I was commissioned to write was for a concert band in Shanghai and they wanted it to be based around a traditional Chinese folk melody. So I had to take that melody and adapt it to form the basis of the piece. The key of film music is to serve as and to enhance the emotional response of the visuals of what is happening on the screen. Just how it’s important, when you want to become a good writer, to read a lot, to be a good film composer, you have to watch a lot of movies. I also have a condition called synesthesia that causes me to visualize music and numbers as shapes, and it helps me compose and think of music in my head. It is a visual process that

helps me approach things in a different way than I would otherwise. Q: Can you tell me about “Harold”? A: I was taking a composition seminar, and they told us in the first class about having to do an end-of-year project. I had never written a piece just for choir before, so I decided that was what I wanted to do. I was in the shower one day and I decided I would try writing an opera, and that was in September of my freshman year. Thinking back, it was not the smartest thing to do. I don’t think I realized how much work it would be. I wanted to do it a little differently than a traditional opera, which is on stage. I wanted to do a film portion of it, through which the action of the opera was acted out through silent film. My roommate happened to be a filmmaker and another suitemate happened to be a writer so he wrote the libretto. I wrote the opera in two weeks over winter break … I was set on having a four-year-old as the main character, so I literally went to every nursery school in New Haven with fliers. And to find the grown-up, we were looking for an age range of 60–80 years old. Someone responded to an ad on Craigslist, and that’s who we used. It was kind of guerilla filmmaking and the music was challenging but really fun to work on … and so it was originally just voices and then I added other instruments.

pletely free or it can be similar to commercials. … Sometimes you have to emulate [the director’s temporary idea] in great detail and sometimes you don’t. Then, in independent projects, I do what I want. I don’t have a general preference to do one or the other. Sometimes I’ll be in the mood to be very independent and sometimes I enjoy working under people with constraints because it forces me to be creative within a certain domain and it can be fun and challenging, sort of like a puzzle. Q: How does it feel to hear your music being played by others, and then in movies and in commercials? A: It’s an odd thing because I feel, by the time I finish working on something, that I’ve listened to it so many times and I’ve seen and heard it in so many different iterations. For example, I’ve heard “Harold” so many times now that I can’t hear it as real music. It kind of seems like an idea I once had. There’s a massive disconnect but also such a close connection. So, I tend not to go out and listen to things I’ve composed unless I’m feeling nostalgic or if I’m trying to search for an emotional place that I was at in past times.

Q: What is the biggest difference in composing for movies, productions and commercials?

Q: Can you contrast your experiences in Hollywood and Malaysia for us … what were the most striking parts of your experiences at each place?

A: So, there is a certain amount of freedom in each. I’d say on the spectrum of creative freedom, you have independent productions on one end and commercials on the other. For example, this past week I was doing a commercial for Intel and they had two different bits of music I had to compose. One was a little five-second opening, and they wanted it to be in the style of certain talk shows but not certain other talk shows, so it was a very specific style that they wanted. You oftentimes go back and forth with the producer in charge, which is a great process because obviously I’m just starting out in this field, so I have tons and tons to learn. So working on such a small piece of music that is in the heads of the people hiring me that I have to then translate into music is phenomenal practice: It helps me to translate emotions and intellectual ideas into music. I’ll put [film] in the middle of this spectrum, because it can be com-

A: In Malaysia, I was commissioned to write in this festival and it was a great experience. I was able to travel there and work with the band but I had creative freedom with what I did. There were other performances that have been disastrous. One of my school’s ensembles had a tour in Luxembourg and we premiered one of my pieces. [The piece] was pretty complicated and it was beyond the technical proficiency of my band, and I should have known that but I was not quite as experienced. So, that was a complete train wreck; we literally stopped and people just kind of looked at me and I was like [laughs] “What do you want me to do?” There was another film I was working on, and when I showed up to the premiere 80 percent of the music I had written was cut out. There have obviously been really amazing experiences too. This summer I was working in Los Angeles with Beltrami, and he was an incredible person and

c o m p o s e r. Seeing how a master works was an enlightening experience and being able to work with him and create things and get feedback on it was invaluable. Another musical experience — this is slightly different — I recorded a song in a bomb shelter once during my gap year. I was in Israel picking avocados and I was with a friend right on the Gaza border and a war broke out and we had to take cover since we were pretty close to where missiles and shrapnel was falling and we had to make use of the bomb shelter. Q: It seems your talents span more than just composing music. Can you tell us more about your 3D printer invention? A: That originally started for this instrument-building class and I wanted to do something a little different. I love the sound of blowing across the bottle, and there is a computer process called “sampling” in which you take a sound, record it and then transpose it into different keys on a keyboard. It’s all digitally done on the computer and I wanted to do that in physical form. I 3D printed the shape of my mouth and created a mouthpiece for each bottle because that was the way to optimize the airflow across the bottle, and then I did all the electrical wiring for it. Q: Who have you learned the most from? A: That’s really tricky … so obviously my parents and family have been incredibly supportive. While I might not have had formal musical training from them, they gave me the tools to figure it out for myself. I had a really inspirational guitar teacher in London who got me into composing, and got me excited about composing electronic music and different types of music. I also had a really great band teacher who came my senior year and worked with me on my piece. The Beatles — definitely. They are the best melody writers of all time and they have inspired me more than any other group. Contact MANASA RAO at manasa.rao@yale.edu .

I WAS IN THE SHOWER ONE DAY AND I DECIDED I WOULD TRY WRITING AN OPERA.

Q: When did your journey with music begin?


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