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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014 · VOL. CXXXVII, NO. 59 · yaledailynews.com

INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING

SUNNY CLEAR

37 23

CROSS CAMPUS

THE GAME WHAT MAKES VARGA GREAT

URBAN RENEWAL

COMPUTER SCIENCE

Liveable City Initiative director departs, leaving a vacancy to fill

DEPARTMENT ABSENT IN ADMINISTRATION

PAGE 12 SPORTS

PAGE 3 UNIVERSITY

PAGE 5 SCI-TECH

Elm City immigrants mull Obama action

wasn’t long ago, but Thanksgiving Break is a different ball game. Whether you’re going or staying, take the chance to kick back before you inevitably get buried by the chaos of finals season. See you on the other side.

Not so fast! There’s still

one thing that we have to do before we get to break, though: Beat Harvard. Let’s storm Cambridge and bring home a victory that we can enjoy in the bliss that is having no class on Monday.

the 2004 “We Suck” prank “the Greatest College Prank of All Time” in an article that it ran yesterday, revisiting the meticulous strategy that Mike Kai ’05 and David Aulicino ’05 put in place to pull off the legendary feat.

Let there be Lux. It’s officially

holiday season: The annual adorning of the Old Campus halls with Christmas lights began last night, with Farnam Hall lighting up “JE LUX” as it does every winter. Soon to follow are the Durfee walrus, the Lawrance moose and the other yearly masterpieces.

Getting there. The property at 1 Broadway is finally starting to look like a storefront again, with signage and windows emerging from the construction site occupying EmporiumDNA’s future home.

There, too. And right down the block from 1 Broadway, Barbour will open its doors today. The store revealed that the first 35 customers to filter through its doors will automatically win a gift card worth between $20 and $50.

Yale’s finest. Yale Athletics announced that two studentathletes — Elle Brunsdale ’15 and Matt Townsend ’15 — have been named Rhodes Scholarship finalists. Let’s just say that both appear to be very deserving of recognition, and are living proof that athletes can bring the heat in the classroom just as well.

Looking ahead. On Thursday,

The New York Times’ Upshot section reported on an analysis run by the Hamilton Project on the relationship between one’s college major and ability to pay off debt. Not surprisingly, the humanities lagged, while economics majors did well for themselves.

On shaky ground. City crews had to close areas around College and Crown Streets yesterday after a water main break created a sinkhole in the area. Repairs lasted throughout the afternoon.

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1947 Five Yalies are arrested in Cambridge after campus police find them carrying around a can of paint and suspect them of having plans to vandalize.

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Against the Crimson, the Bulldogs look for a berth in NCAA tournament PAGE 8 SPORTS

NATA S H A C H I C H I L N I S KY- H E A L 1 9 8 7- 2 0 1 4

Grad student was “willing to give of herself”

Ready? Break. Fall Break

GOAT. Business Insider named

VOLLEYBALL

BY EMMA PLATOFF STAFF REPORTER

said. “It’s very frustrating, because there’s nothing we can actually do but pray and seek legal assistance.”

In a nationally televised speech last night, Obama announced that undocumented immigrants will be eligible to apply to stay in the U.S.

Natasha Chichilnisky-Heal GRD ’18, a Ph.D. candidate in political science, died Tuesday night in her New Haven apartment.

She was 27 years old.

In a Wednesday morning email, Graduate School Dean Lynn Cooley conveyed the news to graduate school students and faculty, extending her sympathy and sorrow and urging mourners to take comfort in one other.

The New Haven Police indicated that there was no evidence of either foul play or an accident, she said. According to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Connecticut, both the cause and manner of death are pending further study.

“I encourage you to seek support from your fellow students, faculty and from chap-

SEE IMMIGRANTS PAGE 4

SEE OBITUARY PAGE 4

LILLIAN CHILDRESS/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Members of the New Haven community gather in La Casa to watch the president’s nationally televised speech announcing his new directive on immigration.

BY LILLIAN CHILDRESS STAFF REPORTER It has been four years since West Haven High School senior Suidy Jimenez lived with her mother, and two years since she has seen her. It has been five months since her mother was arrested for try-

ing to cross the border, then put into a Houston detainee facility. To Jimenez, President Barack Obama’s executive order on immigration, announced last night, is a beacon of hope.

“I can name many occasions where I wish I could have my mother near me, cheering me on,” Jimenez

S E X UA L M I S C O N D U C T

Despite progress, sexual misconduct policies still draw ire

BY NICOLE NG AND VIVIAN WANG STAFF REPORTERS In the fall of 1969, nearly 600 women stepped onto the grounds of Yale College as students for the first time.

During the 45 years since Yale became co-educational, the University’s treatment of sexual misconduct has evolved substantially: An institution that once had no term for “sexual harassment” now has a University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct that hears dozens of complaints every year.

This evolution has come slowly. And while multiple reports and committees have been convened to address the issue, some of their suggestions have been taken into account and implemented, but others have not.

Over the past month, the University’s procedures have again faced criticism. On Nov. 10, UWC Chair David Post con-

Y

ale’s sexual misconduct policies have come under close scrutiny in recent weeks.

The policies, though, are the product of a decades-long evolution, one that began when few students even knew the term “sexual harassment.” Still, many say, the University has a long way to go. NICOLE NG AND VIVIAN WANG report.

vened an internal town hall for UWC members to discuss concerns they might have about recent media scrutiny of the committee.

While neither the meeting nor its contents were made public, a UWC member who asked to remain anonymous, citing confidentiality concerns, told the News on Nov. 9 that the town hall would be a good opportunity for the committee to address some “cracks in the foundation” of its policies.

A BLIND EYE

One evening in 1974, a freshman student returned to her room visibly shaken. She told her roommate, Lisa Stone ’78 SPH ’82, that she had been sexually harassed by a teacher.

Though deeply distressed, the two women did not know how to address the situation. Sexual harassment was not a phrase used at the time, let alone discussed on campus — Stone said as a freshman she did not even SEE MISCONDUCT PAGE 4

Anti-blight director departs

BY ISABELLE TAFT STAFF REPORTER When Erik Johnson boarded a plane for southern California on Tuesday, he was leaving behind more than his job as executive director of the Livable City Initiative, New Haven’s housing code enforcement agency and neighborhood development department.

He was leaving home.

Johnson grew up in the Newhallville neighborhood before embarking on a career in city planning that took him to Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C, and ultimately back home to New Haven to head the LCI in 2010. He announced in late October that he would be taking a job with a non-profit development organization just outside of Los Angeles, and his last day at City Hall was Monday.

In an interview that afternoon, he said

working in his hometown came with an added sense of responsibility.

“On some level, the job felt more important because you have an obligation to make where you’re from better,” Johnson said.

Mayor Toni Harp is now in the process of reviewing candidates to replace Johnson as leader of a city department with a sprawling mandate of enforcing housing codes, reducing blight, supporting home-ownership and improving quality of life in New Haven neighborhoods.

Johnson’s resignation came in spite of the mayor and economic development chief Matthew Nemerson, who oversees the LCI, negotiating with him over the summer to keep him in town. In May, he told Harp that he was taking a higher-paying job as the SEE LIVABLE CITY PAGE 6

KEN YANAGISAWA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Yale’s recognition of and response to sexual misconduct has evolved significantly since its first female students matriculated in 1969.

The endowment game YALE-HARVARD RIVALRY EXTENDS BEYOND THE FIELD

BY LARRY MILSTEIN STAFF REPORTER Even after the scoreboard buzzes on Saturday afternoon, the rivalry between Harvard and Yale will be far from over. Rather, the competition simply shifts from the yard line to the bottom line.

For the past three decades, Harvard and Yale have been competing not only in touchdowns, but also in returns. And as the institutions with the two largest endowments in the nation, investment performance is more than a sport — it is a multi-billion dollar game.

At the end of the fiscal 2014 year — the period ending on June 30, 2014 —

Harvard’s endowment remained the largest in the country at $36.4 billion.

Yale’s endowment stood at an institutional nominal high of $23.9 billion.

There is always a rivalry between money managers across the industry — it is a competitive endeavor.

ANDREW LO Professor of finance, MIT “There is always a rivalry between money managers across the industry — it is a competitive endeavor by SEE ENDOWMENT PAGE 6

PAGE 2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION

.COMMENT “Students need to relax and take things less seriously.” yaledailynews.com/opinion

'STUDENT' ON

'COLLEGE APPS ALL OVER AGAIN'

GUEST COLUMNIST AMANDA MEI

GUEST COLUMNIST JAC O B WO L F- S O R O K I N

Empathy takes more time Sowing the seeds P

for change P

rogressive candidates in competitive races across the country got trounced during the recent midterm elections. Although Gov. Dannel Malloy bucked the national trend to win reelection here in Connecticut, the Democrats lost eight seats in the Senate, 12 seats in the House and two gubernatorial races. We are now stuck with a House and Senate that stand squarely in opposition to the president’s agenda.

But considering only who wins and who loses in a first past-the-post electoral system misses a crucial element of an otherwise disheartening narrative. Unlike election results, the development of the progressive movement is not easy to quantify. By focusing on percentages and margins of victory, we ignore the millions of people who voted for losing candidates. This election is part of the slow but certain progress towards building progressive coalitions across the nation. In multiple states, including those that typically lean Republican — from Alaska to Nebraska — voters showed up to approve a higher minimum wage than the federally mandated baseline. Criminal justice reforms passed in California, Alaska, Oregon and Washington, D.C. These progressive victories happened because grassroots organizers — many of them college-aged students — knocked on doors, made calls and continued their work to galvanize popular support.

We must not forget this fact.

Many losing congressional candidates across the country spent the last two years organizing communities, particularly those typically underrepresented the political process, and that matters.

Given the election results, it would certainly be a mistake to call these programs sweeping successes. Yet even after the votes have been tallied, they retain value. Now, not 2016, is the time to be improving our organizing capacity.

That’s why we, a small group of Yale students who lead Students for a New American Politics PAC, choose to spend our time empowering young people to engage in progressive electoral politics. This past summer, 20 passionate, college-aged activists served as field organizers on competitive Congressional campaigns with SNAP’s support.

Two of these activists spent their summers as field organizers for Carol Shea-Porter in New Hampshire’s 1st district.

Despite garnering 49.5 percent of the vote, Shea-Porter

lost in the recent elections. But the 300,000 individuals who voted for her don’t disappear after the polls close. Rather, they are more likely now than before to participate in the political process and make their voices heard moving forward. And this is just one example. Although victorious this year, the Republicans are not positioning themselves for future success. They are trying to squeeze every vote out of their existing and aging base; the progressive movement, by working in races such as SheaPorter’s, is looking to expand its base and craft progressive coalitions that reflect a changing America.

Despite disheartening results, I take solace in the fact that 20 SNAP Organizing Fellows were able to break into progressive politics, as were thousands of other organizers and volunteers across the nation. The coalitions they built will stand ready in 2016 to ensure no one is denied access to health care because of an inability to pay, to defend women’s rights and to push forward environmental policies that recognize climate change.

Now is not the time to be discouraged — our goals remain unchanged. To ensure balloons are dropping and crowds are cheering in Democratic campaign rooms on Nov. 8, 2016, we must continue building these grassroots coalitions.

No one is better-situated to organize in a underrepresented community than someone who hails from a similar background. The staff of most political campaigns remains insufficiently diverse, hampering the ability of progressive candidates to act upon their values of inclusiveness in the political process and increased opportunity for all.

There remains considerable work to be done. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, $3.7 billion was spent over the course of the 2014 electoral cycle. SNAP spent $41,923.

As a young American with an interest in moving our nation forward, I hope that my peers, both at Yale and at college campuses and vocational schools across the nation, will remain invested in building movements that represent the America of today. We will be better for it. Congress will be better for it. Our nation will be better for it.

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ily and place and emotion that must have been their lives. I wonder how much they grasp of their own pasts.

In the afternoon after a lunch that was neither Chinese or American — but a fusion we know know as Chinese takeout — my group had the chance to either decorate lanterns or discuss their identity as adopted children from China. The previous night, I had received a handout of questions that I could use to facilitate discussion, such as how often the teenagers talked about adoption with friends and how interested they were in visiting China.

I knew that such a conversation would be difficult and uncomfortable, not least because I myself was not adopted. But I thought it was an important conversation to have.

My group did not agree. They chose instead to make lanterns.

Ella, the youngest of the girls, told me outright that she would rather do anything other than engage in a conversation. She shook her head adamantly when asked for a reason.

I was at a loss. My teens left the room to go make lanterns, and I followed in disbelief. Although I

could not know for certain why they shied away from past events, I had a feeling they did not want to confront hard questions about their personal history, some of which they may not even be able to answer. As someone who had only known them for a few hours, I decided not to push their personal space.

I had initially assumed that a pointed discussion would have benefited my teens by encouraging them to think about their identities and share their experiences with others. But how much good would it have brought them if I had forced it upon them? If someone dragged me to a concert against my will, I would probably be more focused on my own vexation than on the cultural benefits I would reap from the experience. Hard discussions — about culture, identity and family — are necessary and worthwhile, but they should arise from natural inclinations to discuss rather than from contrived situations.

No one is made in a day. It is difficult to reduce someone’s experience to a single group discussion. Pearl, Ella and the other members of my group are the products of years of conversa-

JACOB WOLF-SOROKIN is a junior in Calhoun College and the executive director of SNAP PAC. Contact him at jacob.wolf-sorokin@yale.edu .

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

EDITOR IN CHIEF Isaac Stanley-Becker

earl told me not to burst her bubble but gave me a hundred chances to err. I spent the day with her and four other teenagers, careful not to breach their boundaries.

I was spending the day with them as part of an event — the Chinese Adopted Siblings Program for Youth — that brought together Yale students and adopted children from China now living nearby in the region. When we were sitting in Sudler Hall after registration, our conversations began with a Taylor Swift song playing over the speakers.

I didn’t really like the song, but I had heard it before and could talk about it with my teens. From there, we talked about horses, Rubik’s Cubes and our favorite classes.

But I did not and still do not know where in China they were born. I didn’t ask. I know some of them were from Connecticut, others from New York, but I know next to nothing about their past except what I gleaned from pleasant but brief encounters with their parents. In the span of a day, I had no way of piecing together who Pearl or the others were, or the long tales of fam-

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tion and silence, love and sorrow, migration and home. Perhaps their 11 or 12 years have brought changes most of us cannot fathom, but we all know what it is like to carry the weight of years. Unpacking the load of personal history and talking it through with other people takes more than a single opportunity to share. It takes patience, willingness and, above all, time.

At the end of the day, Pearl and I sat back down in the auditorium for the final talent show. A number of acts went by in an energetic and endearing, but ultimately unimpressive, fashion.

And then a little girl came onstage with a guitar and a soft smile. She started singing a Taylor Swift song in a wistful voice, and Pearl leaned her head slowly onto my shoulder. I thought of all the times I had listened to the same song in middle school, and then I imagined Pearl thinking about the events of her past. In that moment I felt closer to Pearl than I had before, even though we barely spoke.

AMANDA MEI is a freshman in Berkeley College. Contact her at amanda.mei@yale.edu .

THAO DO/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

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In defense of Alpha Delta Phi

A recent article in the News (“Chi Psi pulls bid for Lake Place,” Nov. 17) implied that my fraternity, Alpha Delta Phi, disrespects women on a regular basis. It also suggested that we are a detrimental presence in our neighborhood. As the president and a threeyear member of this fraternity, I reject both of these characterizations.

In my years with Alpha Delta Phi at Yale, our fraternity has never received a complaint, formal or otherwise, regarding the way we treat women. I know that, if such a thing were to happen, the member involved would come under extreme scrutiny. His membership would be questioned both by our chapter and the international fraternity. Whenever we host parties, we welcome all members of the Yale community to attend until our home is full, without respect to color, creed, gender or sexual preference.

Furthermore, this article perpetuates an unfair misconception that fraternity brothers at Yale are less than respectful, studious and hardworking. But it should be worth remembering that all three presidents of the United States who attended Yale College were in fraternities. Yale Alpha Delta Phi has produced two Supreme Court justices, two university presidents and the co-founder of Time Inc., among other prominent leaders.

If I didn’t know any better, I might enter Alpha Delta Phi and find myself disgusted.

I would probably look on the ground and see drying, stale beer. Glancing at the walls, I might be taken aback by the streaks and

splotches of mud. And certainly, my nostrils would be bombarded by the lingering stench of sweat in the air.

However, I do know better.

I know that inside Alpha Delta Phi there are stunning oak floors varnished by a fine American lager. I know that our walls are decorated with the splashedup signature of so many careless feet dancing the night away.

I know that the very air we breathe is blessed with the constant reminder of all those merry nights spent huddled around our pong table. And I know, that in the absence of pristine floors, a glistening kitchen and the faint smell of Febreze, I have come to appreciate something far more profound — the brotherhood.

If I didn’t know any better, I might think that Alpha Delta Phi was a place just for lacrosse players. I might think that they would never open their doors to a non-athlete. I might even think they were a little bit elitist.

But I do know better. I know that among the brotherhood there are individuals from all across the Yale community. I know that non-athletes thrive within the fraternity and that all brothers are treated as equals.

I know, after seeing our proud ranks lined up to march into the tailgates at exactly 9 a.m., that we only consider ourselves elite

only when it comes to daytime partying in ridiculous costumes.

And I certainly know that, during my freshman year, this lonely soul, 3,000 miles away from his hometown, was warmly welcomed by a friendly group of strangers at Alpha Delta Phi. I know that I live with a group of certifiable goofballs — the biggest bunch of dinguses you will ever lay eyes upon. We have a guilty pleasure of playing Avicii just a little too loudly on Saturday mornings and playing John Denver just a little too late on Friday nights. We are a bunch of man-children clinging desperately to the last slivers of life before adulthood.

We break things and spill beer and make a ruckus in the first degree, but we are kind. We respect the Alpha Delta Phi, we respect our brothers before us and we respect our brothers to come, but most importantly, we respect Yale, the institution and the community. If ever in your life, you feel that I or any of my brothers are not upholding these values, I encourage you to reach out to me. In the meantime, I hope to see you all at 23 Lake Pl. CONNOR DURKIN NOV. 20 The writer is a junior in Pierson College and president of Alpha Delta Phi.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 3

FRIDAY FORUM

RONALD REAGAN “All great change in America begins at the dinner table.”

Thank yous, noted R

ecently, I’ve vacillated between a self-doubt that catches in my chest and forces me into a tight ball in the top right corner of my bed, and a gratitude that consumes me in unexpected ways. Perhaps the two are related — faced with a litany of opportunities, feelings of inadequacy, of uncertainty, stem from the impossibility of doing all things fully. But in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’d like to focus on articulating thanks.

This past Tuesday, I gathered friends for the third year running to celebrate a pre-Thanksgiving “everything but the bird” dinner. Each time I opened the door to let in another group of guests, I felt this forceful sense of gratitude.

I deeply wanted to see these people at my doorstep, their cheeks rosy from the cold, their glasses fogged from the sudden change in temperature. Though we went through double recipes of stuffing, mac and cheese and pumpkin muffins, I neglected to corral everyone into a circle and make them share what they were thankful for. As I washed the last dishes and swept cookie crumbs off the floor, I realized we’d missed this opportunity to give thanks. I wasn’t quite sad, but

something felt unfinished.

Though sweet potatoes coming out of the oven were greeted with more enthusiasm than friends coming in through the door, the CAROLINE dinner wasn’t about the food, but about SYDNEY the people. While tacitly acknowledged by Selfeveryone there, we Absorbed didn’t take the moment to say it out loud. I said, “I’m so happy to see you!” I said, “Thank you for your help!” I said, “This is so lovely.” But I didn’t articulate the feeling of warmth with a more explicit expression of gratitude, and I wish that I/we had, and that we would say these things more often.

It’s difficult to put gratitude — a feeling of security, luck, content, indebtedness, fulfillment — into words other than “thank you.” How can we truly give thanks?

This year, when I’ve felt these waves of gratitude as I walk down Chapel, I’ve responded with texts to a handful

of people to let them know I love them.

These are much more bursts of positive emotion than effective expressions of gratitude. I’m sure you, too, have read the studies showing people who feel lucky and thankful are happier than those who do not. Often, the subjects in these studies must keep gratitude journals. I, however, am a notoriously terrible journal-er — I have boxes of 90 percent-empty journals both at home and at school. But I do write thank you notes.

HOW CAN WE TRULY GIVE THANKS? In fact, if you’re reading this column with your breakfast, I am probably at this very moment licking and stamping a small batch of envelopes. I won’t go as far as to say that writing thank you notes was a cornerstone of my upbringing, but the task was definitely up there. The last time I ordered stationery, I ordered 200 cards, because between gifts, inter-

views, small favors and weekend visits, I knew I’d get through them. I think I’ve used just under half in the past year.

The thank you note enables me to begin with a concrete object of thanks — thank you for the sweater, thank you for meeting with me, thank you for hosting me this past weekend — and then progresses to more thoughtful meditations on the giver, now the recipient of thanks. I remember to thank people for tangible things. Without a gift or event to prompt a thank you note, I struggle to articulate, sometimes even to direct, these waves of gratitude. In a thank you note, there’s room to make that attempt.

I wish I depended less on the tangible to articulate these intangibles. On the wall next to my bed, I’ve pinned up a thank you note from my best friend from high school that may actually be the best love letter anyone will ever write me. I don’t really remember the gift I gave her that year, but I think I wrote her a thank you note for her thank you note.

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

G U E ST C O LU M N I ST M AT T H EW G O L D E N B E R G

I

Reforming the game

grew up in Alabama, so my love for football may have been inevitable.

Though I never played the game (my small high school was one of the few in the state not to field a team), the sport has occupied a prominent place in my life.

As an undergraduate, I spent many a Saturday afternoon keeping stats in the Yale Bowl press box. My history senior essay focused on the role of football in the racial desegregation of Southern high schools. Yale’s come-frombehind 9–7 triumph in The Game in 1998 was one of the highlights of my bright college years. In my adult life, both Alabama and Yale football have been major avenues through which I’ve stayed connected to old friends and made new ones.

This weekend, I will join thousands of other Yalies in Boston to cheer on Tyler Varga and company as they vie for the Ivy title against the Crimson.

But I will do so with growing ambivalence. Not about the outcome of The Game — I badly want us to beat Harvard. Rather, I have started to question whether we should be playing or watching the game at all.

Over the last several years, evidence about the long-term neuropsychiatric consequences of football-related head injuries has been mounting. Former Harvard linebacker Chris Nowinski was one of the first players to speak publicly about his experience with concussions and has dedicated

his career to better understanding the risks of football-related head injuries. Numerous other ex-players have since acknowledged significant mood and cognitive problems, and a few have committed suicide. Autopsies of former NFL players have demonstrated evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy — a pattern of brain degeneration that has been linked to repetitive concussive and even subconcussive blows to the head. The NFL is close to finalizing a $765 million concussion settlement with former players, protecting the league from further litigation but acknowledging that the game has severe inherent risks.

YALE SHOULD LEAD IN IMPROVING FOOTBALL SAFETY For those of us who love the game, the sport’s danger is an inconvenient truth. Football may very well build character among the boys and men who play. The sport can certainly enliven school and civic spirit and bring communities together for a common cause.

And there’s no doubt the game can be hugely profitable for several universities and professional teams. As a fan, I derive great pleasure, and occasional

anguish, from football. Yet at what cost does my entertainment come?

As a psychiatrist, I am all too familiar with the devastating effects that mental disorders can have on the lives of patients and their families. In my field, we have had some success in treating depression but have limited ability to stop or reverse dementia. Rarely are we able to prevent the development of mental disorders in the first place. But it now seems evident that by reducing repetitive head injuries, we could prevent certain movement, mood and cognitive disorders and perhaps even suicides. And we could limit such head injuries by eliminating football, or at least football as we know it.

It may be that there is no such thing as safe football. But searching for ways to make football safer rather than eliminating it entirely is practical; the sport is so enmeshed in our culture that it seems difficult to believe it will ever disappear. I acknowledge that it’s also personally convenient, a way to resolve my cognitive dissonance about the sport. I can watch football without feeling guilty about it.

Yale is ideally positioned to pioneer radical change in the sport. This is a campus that could embrace a serious discussion about whether an institution of higher learning like ours should be sanctioning an activity that is putting students’ future mental health in jeopardy. Unlike places like Alabama or Ohio State, whose identity and

bottom line seem inextricably linked to the pigskin status quo, Yale could have a similar existence even without a varsity football team. And Yale could almost certainly tolerate a version of football that looks quite different than the one we know.

Yale and its Ivy League peers could take immediate steps to advance our understanding of football-related brain injury and improve player safety.

These institutions have the financial and scientific resources to invest in research on head injuries and the development of enhanced diagnostic algorithms and superior player equipment. Because the Ivies don’t compete for a national football title — and therefore are less subject to concerns about competitive disadvantage with non-conference foes — the schools could mutually agree to new rules that focus on player safety: player weight restrictions, practice limits, cognitive screenings or eligibility decisions by an objective third party, the elimination of certain high-risk plays like kickoff returns and increased penalties for certain dangerous plays are just some of the ideas we could implement.

Yale is the place where Walter Camp fathered American football over 130 years ago. And it is a place where football should now be reimagined.

MATTHEW GOLDENBERG is an assistant professor of psychiatry. Contact him at matthew.goldenberg@yale.edu .

GUE ST COLUMNIST UG ONNA E ZE

I

Tragedy of the Commons

t is strange to imagine that there was once a time when Commons was open until late at night. Only four years ago, it was not uncommon for Yalies to spend a good part of their evenings in that great hall, exchanging jokes and conversation over a bowl of cereal and fruit. Commons very much served a communal function. It attracted students and faculty from all walks of life, from undergrads to university administration, into one shared space. When the University decided to cut dinner out of Commons four years ago, students and dining hall staff protested against this fundamental change in campus life.

Four years later, Commons now serves lunch for only five days of the week, four hours each day. What was once a central hub for student life and activity is now sputtering its last breaths, as its hours are cut and its services are moved elsewhere. This should worry us. The decision to move hot breakfasts to Branford is not an isolated measure of austerity; it is a statement of the University’s longerterm vision for Commons.

As Yale’s endowment has grown, her shared spaces have grown smaller. There has been a shift, over the course of the past few years, in the ways that students engage with our dining halls. Family

night dinners, while well-intentioned, limit the ability of students across colleges to eat together. Morse, Stiles and Berkeley’s dinner transfer policies only make these limitations more apparent.

The strict enforcement of dining hall hours for lunch and dinner at many other colleges hasten otherwise relaxed meals.

The trend has gone from the communal to the local, from open spaces to closed ones.

THERE HAS BEEN A SHIFT, OVER THE COURSE OF THE PAST FEW YEARS, IN THE WAYS THAT STUDENTS ENGAGE WITH OUR DINING HALLS. This is problematic because, as many of us know, Yalies are already burdened with engagements and activities down to

the minute. Between classwork, extracurriculars, job interviews and research, our meals are often the only time in the day when we can sit down and converse with leisure. The age-old mantra, “Let’s grab a meal,” indicates more than just an intention to eat food together; it signifies a desire to spend time in a relaxed manner. In my own experience, chance encounters at Commons have almost always developed into opportunities to catch up with old friends. Because of other engagements, a good part of my social life revolves around these lunches and dinners. I would not be surprised if this were the case with many other students.

In addition to fostering social ties, dining halls serve another important function for campus life: They are a space for intellectual conversation and debate. Dinners are often used as a time to test out ideas and challenge conventional beliefs. The relaxed atmosphere of our dining halls encourages the free flow of ideas that many students do not get to express in the classroom. In the dining halls, an electrical engineering major can discuss admissions policy with an athlete, while a debater can discuss music with old friends from a preorientation program. Dining halls are

places where people can meet, regardless of individual interest. Cutting back on hours makes it more difficult for students to reach out to other Yalies outside of their normal social and intellectual interests.

An extension of dining hall hours need not infringe on the livelihoods of dining hall staff. We would not even need to change the hours that food is served to make these spaces better tailored towards students’ needs. Once the original dining hall hours are up at 7 p.m., the staff can collect all the plates and lock up the kitchens, like normal. Students who wish to continue their conversations or study should be allowed to stay until final closing hours (which can be enforced by student aides).

As Yale prepares to welcome two new colleges, it is important that her spaces be made more available to the student body. Opening up Yale’s dining halls will strengthen social ties and protect a necessary sphere of student life. In addition, an extension of hours will reinforce the dining halls’ important role as forums for free and open intellectual discussions.

UGONNA EZE is a junior in Pierson College.

Contact him at ugonna.eze@yale.edu .

GUEST COLUMNIST M U R R AY B I G G S

Beating the numbers I

t’s recommendation season at colleges across the country. Last year, when asked by a Yale senior majoring in English to recommend her for work after graduation with a notable public service organization, I was happy to oblige — until I opened the online recommendation form that required me to answer every question about her numerically.

Let’s pause here. As someone whose professional life has been devoted to the study and teaching of those soft and subjective humanities subjects — dramatic literature, theater and film — I may be suspected of social-scientific Luddism. But no, I take reliable statistics seriously, on issues of health, environment, education, population, standards of living and many more. I sit up when reading that 35 percent of adult Americans are clinically obese, especially when I’m told why; or that more than 40 percent of Bangladeshis live below the international poverty line; or that 50 percent of the world’s agricultural land is threatened by encroaching salt water.

When my blood is tested, I want to know the cholesterol numbers. But can I swear that my student falls in the top 5 percent, or the next 10 percent, of all undergraduates I’ve taught in the last 30 years, or even five, in this or that category?

WE ARE MOVING TOWARD QUANTIFYING ESSENTIALLY VOLATILE HUMAN FACTORS Yes, the grade sheets help. But can I be sure that my standards haven’t shifted, however subtly, over the years? Could I have mellowed? Or how do I compare an A grade in, say, "Modern American Drama" with an A in acting Shakespeare? And as to more personal assessments like consistency of preparation, quality of seminar commentary, listening to classmates, can I really trust my necessarily subjective memory — comparatively — any more than that of any other past experience? When I read those supposedly clinching testimonies from colleagues, like “This is one of the three best and brightest students I’ve taught in 37 years at Yale, Stanford, Penn, etc.,” I’m no longer so quickly bowled over.

This move toward quantifying essentially volatile human factors has been coming at us steadily for a while. But last year’s recommendation form was new to me. In times past you could get away with crossing out all the comparative questions and substituting “see attached,” i.e. a regular letter in continuous prose. Not this time. These statistical questions had to be answered.

And that creates its own problem, since when you genuinely (if mistakenly) trust your judgment that the student belongs not in the top five percent but only in the next 10 percent, do you risk damning him or her by saying so, if your reader dismisses all but the very top-liners?

Several guessing games are going on here, because you’re also trying to predict the “honesty” of your fellow recommenders and how skeptical of a perfect score its unknown readers will be.

I despaired of doing both the right and the best thing by my student. Then I hit on a ruse. At the foot of the recommendation form was a space for “any additional comments.” So I took the plunge and, having answered every statistical question with “Not able to judge,” I filled in the final space with a page of hopefully nuanced evaluation that recalled for me what I trusted would impress others about this thoughtful, articulate, well-read, understated, appreciative, compassionate, responsible, goodhumored, hard-to-describe human being.

And you know what? Seconds after pressing “send,” I was told that the recommendation had been “successfully submitted!” Better still, my student got the job — though she opted for another public service outfit instead.

MURRAY BIGGS is a professor of theater studies. Contact him at murray.biggs@yale.edu .

YOUR YDN ;8@CP PFLI YDN ;8@CP PFLI YDN DAILY

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT Chichilnisky-Heal’s talents knew “no limit” OBITUARY FROM PAGE 1 lains, advisors and others who can be helpful,” Cooley wrote. “We mourn the loss of Natasha and extend our deepest sympathy to her family and friends.”

Chichilnisky-Heal received her Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University in 2009 after just three years of study. A speaker of French, Russian and Spanish in addition to English, she worked at the World Bank, the World Energy Forum and the Nexus Global Youth Summit before coming to Yale.

At Yale, she was heralded as a top student by professors and an excellent friend by her classmates.

“There was absolutely no limit to where she could’ve taken her talents,” Allegra di Bonaventura, assistant dean of the graduate school, said.

On Wednesday afternoon in Rosenkranz Hall, roughly 50 people came together for a department gathering, at which political science professor and department chair Steven Wilkinson, director of graduate studies Frances Rosenbluth, University chaplain Sharon Kugler and director of clinical services for University Health Services Howard Blue, spoke. Attendees discussed memories of Chichilnisky-Heal, recalling everything from her sharp seminar comments to watching baby elephants play in Africa while there for a conference.

This spring, despite being on leave from Yale, Chichilnisky-Heal organized a conference in the political science department, inviting guest speakers to discuss the Russian involvement in Ukraine.

Friends and professors remembered Chichilnisky-Heal for what they described as her incredible kindness, wit and intelligence.

Lynn Hancock GRD ’18 described Chichilnisky-Heal as her best friend in the political science department. When Hancock first arrived at Yale, lonely and loaded with belongings, Chichilnisky-Heal devoted the entire weekend to helping her move in, she said. This type of unsolicited kindness was characteristic of Chichilnisky-Heal, friends said.

“She was funny, sarcastic, unbelievably bright and always willing to give of herself,” Hancock said. “Everyone who met Natasha was

struck by her enthusiasm, sense of humor and brilliance, and I am no different.”

Hancock added that Chichilnisky-Heal was always there for her, whether she was struggling with formal modeling problem sets or personal setbacks.

William Kwok GRD ’18 also remembered Chichilnisky-Heal as one of the most loyal friends he has ever had. At the beginning of this year when Kwok did not yet have a place to stay, he said, she let him stay with her though she had just moved in to her apartment herself. Kwok said he will miss singing The Smiths songs with Chichilnisky-Heal, as well as the random, encouraging text messages she would send him. Kwok also recalled some of her quirks, such as the time she adopted a stray cat who she referred to as “nameless.”

Lisa Gilson GRD ’17, a classmate and friend, said that Chichilnisky-Heal was capable, witty and funny. Gilson recalled details like her friend’s bookshelf — stocked with texts about everything from comparative studies of Mongolia to psychological phenomena — and the delicious apple and brussels sprout dish she made. After sharing dinner or tea, the two would talk until Gilson was crying from laughing too hard, she said.

Political science professor Susan Rose-Ackerman, one of Chichilnisky-Heal’s advisors, described her as a wonderful student, full of energy and life. Rose-Ackerman remembered her in particular for the brave and creative fieldwork she did in Zambia and Mongolia, and how much she cared about the issues of developing countries.

Political science professor John Roemer, another one of her advisors, said she was “ebullient, brilliant and inquisitive,” adding that the faculty who interacted with her will remember her fondly and mourn for her.

Gilson also described Chichilnisky-Heal as an “intellectual force to be reckoned with” — but an accessible one.

“A lot of people who are like that are kind of intimidating,” Gilson said. “But she was really human. She cared about people and you could tell.”

Contact EMMA PLATOFF at emma.platoff@yale.edu .

“We often miss opportunity because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work.” THOMAS EDISON INVENTOR AND SCIENTIST

Immigration order’s impact unclear IMMIGRANTS FROM PAGE 1 for a period of three years without fear of deportation, provided they fulfill certain requirements. They must have lived in the U.S. for more than five years, have children who are American citizens or legal residents, pass a criminal background check and be willing to pay their taxes in full. Those who satisfy these requirements will be granted Social Security cards.

“The important thing is not so much this speech but the movement,” said Megan Fountain ’07, Unidad Latino en Acción organizer. “These are the speeches that they’ve prepared for the media, so there are certainly details that are underneath this speech.”

Fountain went on to suggest that the Obama administration should ensure that Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not collaborate with police departments that have committed civil rights violations. In New Haven, police do not check whether an individual they detain is an undocumented immigrant or not.

The executive order does not apply to those who have recently come to the U.S., nor those who come to this country illegally in the future. In addition, the directive does not grant the right to stay permanently or define a path to American citizenship.

Only Congress has the power to make such a law, Obama said.

But for many undocumented immigrants living in New Haven — a city that has long been among the most welcoming of immigrants — the specific ways in which the executive order will impact their lives is still uncertain.

The Elm City is currently home to around 14,000 undoc-

umented immigrants, according to Mary Buchanan of DataHaven. It remains unclear just how many will still be at risk of deportation under Obama’s executive action.

“From the perspective of the legal system, there are many problems of the way that the immigrants are treated,” said Elliot Friedman LAW ’15. “[The executive order] is clearly a step in the right direction, and it’s also obviously by its own terms limited.”

On Thursday night, a group of Yale students, immigrants and community members gathered at La Casa Cultural to watch Obama’s address.

[The executive order] is clearly a step in the right direction, and it’s also … by its own terms limited.

ELLIOT FRIEDMAN LAW ’15 Fatima Rojas, who came to the U.S. from Mexico 11 years ago and worked for many years as a janitor receiving only $4.50 an hour, said that when she heard the news that she would not be in danger of deportation, she was in shock. Still, others suggested that Obama could do more.

“Obama’s recent proposal, while it is a very powerful proposal and it’s very progressive, it doesn’t cover the extent that it should,” said Topiltzin Gomez ’18, who is undocumented but covered under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — a memorandum directing government officials to practice prosecutorial discretion towards

immigrants who migrated to the U.S. as children — because he came to the U.S. when he was only five years old. “There’s still much work to be done, and we have to keep on fighting.”

Despite the order’s limitations, many immigrants interviewed still consider the order a major step forward.

“It makes me excited because I know my parents can have a better job than they have now, that they can give us more chances to go places and meet new things … and they can be there right next to us supporting us without being scared of ICE or anything like that,” said Michelle Cabrera, a middle school student at the Barnard Environmental Science Magnet School.

Alejandro Gonzalez, a Mexican immigrant who has lived in this country for over 14 years, said that even though the policy applies to him, he is saddened that not all 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. will have the same opportunity as him.

In a press release sent after the speech, Gov. Dannel Malloy said that it is not too late for Congress to act before the steps Obama outlined take effect.

“There is no excuse for inaction,” he added.

“One of the preeminent benefits of this action will be to keep families together, ending the prospect of deporting parents of U.S. citizens, and enabling them to seek jobs, pay taxes and support their families,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73.

In 2010, the Pew Research Center estimated that undocumented immigrants make up 3.4 percent of Connecticut’s population.

Contact LILLIAN CHILDRESS at lillian.g.childress@yale.edu .

Sexual misconduct policies products of decades-long evolution MISCONDUCT FROM PAGE 1 know what feminism was.

“Neither of us thought about saying anything to anyone,” Stone said. “We liked our [residential] college dean at the time, but we couldn’t imagine telling him.”

But that was the only mechanism in place at the time for addressing complaints of sexual misconduct, said Ronni Alexander ’77. After her flute teacher allegedly raped her while she was an undergraduate in 1975, Alexander said, she was told that the only method to file a complaint with the University was to inform her residential college dean, who would sit her and her alleged rapist down to “talk about it.”

Two years later, at the request of the Yale Corporation, Ann Olivarius ’77 LAW ’86 SOM ’86 compiled a 27-page report on the status of women at the University. The report detailed dozens of student complaints with a University that they believed had not made a home for them.

“No one imagined that we would find legal evidence against a good number of faculty members for having raped and sexually assaulted their women students, and in one case, a male member of the community,” Olivarius said.

Later that year, Alexander, Olivarius, Stone and two other plaintiffs, Pamela Price ’78 and Margery Reifler ’80, sued Yale, alleging that sexual harassment by male faculty members — and Yale’s failure to provide a grievance process — constituted sex discrimination and violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. It was the first lawsuit ever to use Title IX in charges of sexual harassment against an educational institution.

The plaintiffs were not seeking monetary compensation, Olivarius said — they simply wanted the University to institute a central tracking system to keep track of people who committed sexual misconduct.

The women did not win their suit, but they established an important precedent, Olivarius said. The court upheld their argument that sexual harassment constituted sex discrimination under Title IX — an argument that had never been made

before.

In addition, Yale instituted a grievance process, in the form of a Sexual Harassment Grievance Board. The SHGB was charged with handling informal complaints, while formal complaints between students were to go through the Executive Committee — a body originally created to adjudicate violations of Yale’s undergraduate regulations, such as plagiarism or cheating, said former Executive Committee chair and history of science and medicine professor William Summers.

But the SHGB had major flaws, Stone said.

The most serious weakness, Stone said, was that after an investigation, the decision of whether or not to proceed with any disciplinary action was in the hands of one administrator. If that individual was “sexist or a harasser,” Stone said, the chance that sanctions would be imposed was low.

Today, sexual misconduct cases are heard before a panel made up of members of the UWC. Following the investigation and hearing, the panel writes a report detailing its findings of fact, conclusions and recommendations.

The final decision, however, is still rendered by one individual — the dean of Yale College for undergraduate respondents or the provost for faculty respondents. Under Yale’s current policy, the final decision maker has the power to accept, reject or modify in whole or in part the panel’s conclusions or recommendations, including sanctions.

“One person should not be responsible,” Stone said. “That was Yale’s idea for controlling the damage and not having to fire anyone.”

BLUEPRINT FOR REFORM

In the years after the lawsuit, the University released dozens of reports on the status of the women, from plans to double the number of women faculty to accounts of campus sexism.

In 2001, the University convened the Women Faculty Forum to foster gender equity and highlight the accomplishments of female community members. Eight years later, in response to various complaints it had received regarding Yale’s

procedures for dealing with sexual misconduct complaints, the WFF created a Sexual Misconduct Working Group, cochaired by astronomy professor Priya Natarajan and School of Management professor Constance Bagley, who is currently involved in a gender discrimination lawsuit against the University.

The working group published a Report on Sexual Misconduct at Yale in October of that year — a 76-page document that evaluated the University’s mechanisms to handle complaints of sexual misconduct.

Then-WFF Chair and School of Medicine professor Shirley McCarthy said sexual harassment cases until that point had been inadequately managed.

Each school had different resolution procedures in place, some of which were opaque and not easily accessible. According to the 2009 report, the previous procedures to handle sexual misconduct differed based on the identity of the complainant, the identity of the dean under whose authority the complainant fell and the identity of the respondent.

For example, if the respondent to a Yale College complainant was another undergraduate, the complainant could choose to proceed with the case through the Yale College Executive Committee or the Yale College SHGB, but a separate procedure existed if the respondent was under the authority of another dean.

“From the University and faculty side, we thought we bent over backwards to give [students] more options so the students would be in control,” Summers said. “That confused students.”

McCarthy said that the resolution procedures at the time also raised questions of impartiality. Since cases were usually adjudicated by members of the school in which the alleged misconduct had occurred, McCarthy said a decision-maker could be biased — for example, in cases involving a faculty respondent who made significant financial contributions to the school.

While the WFF drew up its recommendations for a revised grievance process, several highly publicized incidents of alleged sexual misconduct rocked the campus. In 2008, pledges of the

“There had been a real tradition of sweeping things under the rug, keeping them quiet and never actually taking action against accused students,” Brodsky said.

There is still significant student confusion on the University’s sexual misconduct procedures. Fourteen of 16 students interviewed earlier this month said they had no prior knowledge of UWC procedures.

Yale had agreed to create a University-wide Title IX coordinator position, train community members on sexual misconduct and establish the UWC, the OCR said it would not find Yale in noncompliance with Title IX, and therefore would not implement sanctions.

University Title IX Coordinator and Deputy Provost Stephanie Spangler said that Yale had already been moving to implement these policies before the Title IX complaint was filed, citing the 2009 report.

“When the federal Title IX investigation concluded in June 2012, these initiatives were noted in the Voluntary Resolution Agreement, but they were already well-established,” she said.

McCarthy noted, however, that the Title IX complaint had likely spurred the University into finalizing the measures more quickly.

Brodsky said that while the UWC is a vast improvement over the complaint mechanisms that existed while she was an undergraduate, she feels the University has still not appropriately punished guilty respondents.

“It has gotten better — when we filed our complaint, no one had ever been expelled for sexual misconduct, and that has happened since. But I think the school is sort of hedging right now,” Brodsky said. “I think it’s doing a better job of finding people responsible, but then not really doing anything as a result.”

Both Brodsky and Olivarius said that Yale has espoused a desire to be a leader in issues of sexual misconduct and women’s education but has not shown true initiative to fulfill that promise.

Instead, Olivarius said, Yale has chosen to accept minimum standards rather than robustly embrace the law.

“You can’t half-heartedly commit to equality,” Brodsky said.

AN INVESTIGATION

UWC, THREE YEARS IN

Zeta Psi fraternity posed outside of the Yale Women’s Center holding a sign that said, “We Love Yale Sluts.” Two years later, Delta Kappa Epsilon pledges took to Old Campus shouting, “No means yes, and yes means anal.”

On Oct. 15, 2009, the Working Group presented the report to then-University President Richard Levin, then-Provost Peter Salovey and then-General Counsel Dorothy Robinson. Salovey and Levin promptly responded that the University would convene a committee to respond to the recommendations, Bagley said.

Still, on March 15, 2011, fed up with what they saw as Yale’s unresponsiveness to a “hostile environment” for women, 16 students and alumni filed a formal complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The complaint alleged that Yale had violated its Title IX obligations by failing to properly address sexual misconduct, said Alexandra Brodsky ’12 LAW ’16, one of the students who filed the complaint.

There had been a real tradition of sweeping things under the rug, keeping them quiet.

ALEXANDRA BRODSKY ’12 LAW ’16

Two weeks after the complaint was filed, the OCR opened a formal investigation into Yale’s Title IX compliance.

On June 15, 2012, the OCR announced that it had entered into a Voluntary Resolution Agreement with Yale. Because

Now in its fourth year of operation, the UWC has seen between 40 and 70 complaints each year, according to the annual Reports of Complaints of Sexual Misconduct published by the Provost’s Office.

On Nov. 1, Yale once again

became the focus of national scrutiny when The New York Times published a front-page story about allegations of sexual harassment against the School of Medicine’s cardiology chief, Michael Simons. In particular, the article revealed that the UWC had recommended that Simons be permanently removed from his chairmanship and banned for five years from any high administrative position. But Provost Benjamin Polak only suspended Simons for 18 months.

Bagley noted that the 2009 WFF report, of which she had been an author, had not envisaged a final decision-maker in its recommendations for the creation of a UWC. While the report had suggested that the provost be allowed to stay the imposition of sanctions that he or she found inappropriate, the UWC was supposed to be the main adjudicative body, she said.

“We felt that the UWC should be the one having the final say in these cases,” Bagley said.

“They’re the ones that are closest to the facts and have been duly empowered to render these decisions.”

In the past weeks, beyond the UWC’s internal town hall, the University has made other moves to address concerns about the gender climate on campus, including convening a medical school task force on gender equity, appointing a deputy provost for faculty development and diversity and publishing the findings of the February 2014 Yale Diversity Summit.

Still, Alexander said that while issues of gender equity and sexual misconduct have undeniably improved since she filed her suit over thirty years ago, there is still work to be done.

“In those days, sex discrimination was really in-your-face.

It was really easy to see,” she said. “Then things got better.

Now it’s so much more difficult to see that it makes it much more difficult to fight. If you can’t see it, it’s easier not to look. And then it comes as a really big shock when people find out it’s still there.”

Contact NICOLE NG at nicole.ng@yale.edu and VIVIAN WANG at vivian.y.wang@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

NEWS

“The city is what it is because our citizens are the way they are.” PLATO GREEK PHILOSOPHER

CORRECTIONS

YA L E L AW S C H O O L

THURSDAY, NOV. 20

A previous version of the article “Faculty note issues with small engineering dept.” incorrectly stated that there were 30 SEAS tenure-track faculty in the year 2008. There were, in fact, 50 tenure-track faculty in the comparable current SEAS engineering departments.

A previous version of the article “Final exams capped at 50 percent” incorrectly stated that a policy capping final exams at 50 percent of the overall grade was implemented earlier this year. In fact, the changed exam policy merely recommends that professors cap final exams at 50 percent.

Law students face high competition for clerkships

Yale appoints new general counsel

BY RACHEL SIEGEL STAFF REPORTER Alexander Dreier LAW ’95 has been named Yale’s new vice president and general counsel.

Come March 23, 2015, Dreier will replace Dorothy Robinson as the University’s top legal counsel.

The news was announced by University President Peter Salovey in an email to the Yale Community Thursday afternoon. “[Dreier] has worked with universities all over the country and internationally in areas important to Yale,” Salovey said, citing civil rights, research regulation and international education as among Dreier’s areas of expertise. “His knowledge of higher education will be very beneficial to us.”

Dreier’s appointment comes at a particularly contentious time for the general counsel’s office. From heightened scrutiny over campus policy on sexual misconduct to last year’s suit against three faculty members in the School of Management in which the plaintiff claimed she had not been reappointed to her professorship because her gender and age, the office is no stranger to nuanced and difficult issues.

Currently a partner at the law firm Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C., Dreier’s practice focuses on advising universities, medical centers and other educational and research institutions, according to his professional profile on the firm’s website. Dreier has represented clients before the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as other federal and state courts, in litigation including affirmative action, civil rights, school funding, employment discrimination and special education. He also has experience advising universities and their governing boards on issues related to endowment management, conflicts of interest, international initiatives and student affairs.

Among his recent endeavors, Dreier and other partners at Hogan Lovells filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in Fisher v. University of Texas, which involved a challenge by a white student, who was denied admission to the university, to its policy of considering race as one factor in its admissions calculus. Dreier and his colleagues represented 40 associations of colleges, universities, educators, trustees and other representatives of higher education in supporting the University’s admissions policy.

Before joining Hogan Lovells,

Dreier was assistant to the provost and adjunct professor of law at the University of Oklahoma and clerked in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“I’m thrilled and honored to be returning to Yale in this new role,” Dreier said in an email to the News. “I loved New Haven as a law student, and am looking forward to being part of the Yale community again.”

Senior Advisor to the President Martha Highsmith said Dreier’s appointment was finalized over the past week. Once Dreier assumes office in mid-Spring, acting general counsel Cynthia Carr will return to her position as deputy general counsel.

Before coming to Yale Law School, Dreier studied as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, where he received an M.A. in philosophy and politics.

Dreier completed his undergraduate degree at Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

In addition to his professional practice, Dreier is a member of the National Association of College and University Attorneys, as well as the American Health Lawyers’ Association. He frequently speaks on behalf of both organizations about legal developments of interest to clients in research and education. Kathleen Santora, chief executive officer of the NACUA, said Dreier has been an active and engaged member of the association since 1997.

“Alex is an outstanding speaker, author and volunteer and brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the position of vice president and general counsel at Yale,” Santora said.

Dreier’s appointment comes seven months after Salovey announced Robinson’s departure at the end of April. Robinson was the second woman ever to be appointed vice president of the University, and through her time as general counsel supported a range of University initiatives — among them partnerships with New Haven, online education, policies on sexual harassment and the return of ROTC to Yale.

“It truly would be impossible to isolate a particular set of events, as my time here has been extraordinarily full, not only with special moments, but with remarkable people through many changes at Yale and in the legal landscape of higher education,” Robinson said.

Contact RACHEL SIEGEL at rachel.siegel@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS

Alexander Dreier LAW ’95, a partner at Washington D.C. law firm Hogan Lovells, will become Yale’s vice president and general counsel in March.

WILL FREEDBERG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

It is estimated that about 35 to 40 percent of Yale Law School graduates enter clerkships immediately after graduating.

BY PHOEBE KIMMELMAN STAFF REPORTER Ever since David Lat LAW ’99, founder and managing editor of the legal blog Above the Law, clerked for the United States Court of Appeals for the ninth circuit, he thought the colorful personalities and sprawling court he encountered would lend themselves well to a novel. Over a decade later, while writing his first book “Supreme Ambitions,” Lat finally got the chance to put his own fictional spin on one of the United States’ biggest federal circuits.

For Yalies, the book hits close to home. But it also delves into a topic that both drives and haunts many students at Yale Law School and beyond — judicial clerkships, which are full-time, post-graduate positions that advise judges on cases at the district, state or federal level.

A PROCESS IN FLUX

The timeline for acquiring clerkships has changed considerably over the last several years, according to Columbia Law School Director of Academic Counseling and Judicial Programming Anne Green.

This shift in the timeline has forced younger law students to start thinking about clerkships sooner. In Lat’s novel, Audrey does not apply for a judicial clerkship until her third and final year of law school. But Green said today’s law students often interview for these positions during the summer after their first year of law school, even though they will not fill them for two more years.

These changes are in part due to the elimination of the Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan early last year, which regulated the clerkship application process, according to the United States Courts website.

At the same time, Green noted, more judges are hiring graduates with a few years of work experience, leading some students to choose to wait until near the end of their law school career, applying for a clerkship after they have obtained a job at which they can work for one or two years after graduation.

Alternatively, others even postpone applications until they are already working.

But Harvard Law School Director of Judicial Clerkships Kirsten Solberg said that the increase in applications from older law students has made it more competitive for law students who want to begin their clerkships immediately after law school.

Solberg said that 10 years ago, 95 percent of HLS graduates entered clerkships right after graduating, while only five percent took time between law school and clerking. Now, she said, that ratio has drasti-

cally changed, with the number of Harvard Law alums clerking split at about 50–50 between these two groups.

But Solberg said this added competition has not discouraged Harvard students from applying for clerkships. In fact, more are doing so because the judiciary has not seen the same shrinkage in positions that law firms have in recent years.

Yale Law School Career Development Office Director Kelly Voight cautioned that this new trend of students applying for clerkships earlier in their law school careers is not unsurprising given long-term patterns in the clerkship hiring process.

“Clerkship hiring has proven to be cyclical,” she said. “Over the past 30 years, we’ve gone through periods with a regular schedule, hiring later in the student’s academic career and periods of non-regulation like [what] exists today.”

A RITE OF INITIATION

Voight said around 35 to 40 percent of Yale Law School graduates clerk immediately after graduating, a number that has remained fairly constant over the last several years.

Despite this relative stability, some Yale Law students said the clerkship hiring process is itself inherently flawed.

A YLS student who would only speak under anonymity

said YLS’s process of attaining a clerkship lacks transparency.

The student added that attaining a clerkship often depends on getting good grades in classes taught by professors who have strong connections to judges, creating competition in and out of the classroom to outperform peers.

Elizabeth Willis LAW ’17 said Yale does a good job of working within the confines of that challenging structure. Akunna Cook LAW ’16, however, said there is a major flaw with applying for clerkships from Yale Law School: unequal access to information. Some people are privileged and receive lots of information, she said, and others are instead kept in the dark and ultimately harmed in the application process.

But Alex Schultz LAW ’17 said he thinks that generally the information his classmates have is the same as his, and that this is indicative of a fair process.

Greg Cui LAW ’17 said he has found input from professors and peers, along with informational panels organized by Yale Law School, helpful in navigating the beginnings of the clerkship process. Law School professor Akhil Amar said he views this advising process as critical to his role as a law professor.

“If a student does good work for a professor, I think the professor needs to stand by the student and let the world know that

that student did good work,” he said. “That’s kind of the social contract, especially at a school like Yale.”

April Hu LAW ’17 said many students try to get a clerkship after graduating because there is a common assumption that this will open many doors in the professional field. Many people entertain the idea of a clerkship, she added, without really knowing the precise reason.

Lat said that given his experience with clerkships, he thinks the process of obtaining them can sometimes be political. Certain judges, though not all, use personal politics as a key factor in deciding about a particular applicant, depending on how much disagreement and diversity of perspective they want in their court. Yale Law School professor Owen Fiss said he hopes politics do not play a role in clerkship hiring. He added that when students apply for a clerkship, it is important for them to choose wisely which judge to clerk for.

“I think the law clerk’s highest duty is to be a critic of the judge,” he said. “The best person to work for the judge is [someone who] would give him or her the best opportunity to work in the law and not one that serves some political interest.”

Contact PHOEBE KIMMELMAN at phoebe.kimmelman@yale.edu .

GRAPH PERCENT OF GRADS WORKING IN FEDERAL CLERKSHIPS 35

34.5

30 24.1

25 20

17.1

15

12.7

11.4

11.1

11.1

10.8

10.3

UVA (7)

California Berkeley (9)

10

9.9

5 Yale (1)

Stanford Harvard (2) (2)

Duke (11)

NYU (6)

Michigan Vanderbilt Ann Arbor (15) (9)

UPenn (7)

Law School (rank) JILLY HOROWITZ/PRODUCTION & DESIGN EDITOR

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” HENRY DAVID THOREAU AMERICAN AUTHOR

Yale-Harvard rivalry extends to the markets

YALE Private Equity

Bonds and Cash

Domestic Equity

Domestic Equity Natural Resources

Private Equity Hedge Funds

Natural Resources

Hedge Funds

Foreign Equity

Bonds and Cash

Foreign Equity

Real Estate

Real Estate

HARVARD ENDOWMENTS FROM PAGE 1 nature, so you will always get a rivalry among asset managers regardless,” MIT finance professor Andrew Lo ’80 said. “But the Harvard and Yale rivalry goes beyond that, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a certain degree of rivalry with the endowments as well.”

THE SCOREBOARD

Although Yale has not won The Game since 2006, the Yale Investments Office has consistently beat its Cantab rival — the Harvard Management Company — over the past two decades.

Since 1994, Yale has seen an average annual return of 13.9 percent, well above HMC’s 12.3 percent. Both Harvard and Yale outperformed the estimated 9.2 percent average return of university endowments over the same period. Over the past 10 years, that divide has only grown, with Yale’s average investment returns per year standing at 11 percent compared to Harvard’s 8.9 percent.

“These differences are significant,” said Richard Hesel, a principal at Art and Science Group, LLC, a firm that advises colleges and nonprofits. “When you have endowments at this magnitude, a one-percent swing is $400 million of revenue — not a small amount of money and that has large consequences.”

Still, NYU Stern School of Business finance professor David

Yermack said the data for investment returns often fluctuate, so there would need to be huge differences — not just a few percentage points — for it to be statistically significant.

Wick Sloane SOM ’84, a columnist for the website Inside Higher Ed, said irrelevant of actual nominal differences, it is the perception that matters most.

“In this game, with such staggering amounts of money, these returns just aren’t that far apart,” Sloane said. “[But] in the endowment world, they may be life and death.”

Still, the price tag on a endowment provides only a glimpse into the investment offices of these schools. The true story of the Yale and Harvard endowments lies behind the reported numbers.

THE HALL OF FAME

In 1985, David Swensen, a young Wall Street executive at Lehman Brothers came to the Elm City, tasked with turning around Yale’s $1.3 billion endowment.

Swensen is credited with pioneering the “Yale Model,” which aims to allocate investments towards alternative or illiquid investments — including private equity, real estate and natural resources — while also diversifying the portfolio to decrease risk.

Provost Benjamin Polak described Swensen as a “moral force,” someone who is an

uncanny judge of both character and investment opportunity.

“The reason Yale has done so well boils down to two words: David Swensen,” he said.

Swensen declined to be interviewed for this article.

But like all protagonists, Swensen has a rival. Jack Meyer started running the Harvard Management Company in 1990.

Before stepping down in 2005, he grew the endowment from $4.7 billion to $25.9 billion.

Hesel said that prior to these two leaders, the operative word in endowment investing was “conservatism.” However, Yale and Harvard began to shift the previously accepted norms and as a result, transformed the industry.

“They both were concurrently radicalizing the way that institutions investments have been handled prior to their taking over their respective organizations,” said Daniel Wallick, an institutional investment strategist at Vanguard.

Throughout their tenures, Swensen and Meyer produced very similar endowment returns.

According to the released annual reports between 1990 and 1998, Yale’s returns were higher than Harvard’s for five out of the nine years.

In 2005, Meyer stepped down from his role as chief executive officer of HMC to start his own hedge fund, Convexity Capital Management. But this was only the start of trouble for Harvard’s endowment over the next few

years — and to a certain extent, Yale’s endowment as well.

THE SACK

“The fiscal year that ended June 30, 2009 marked the close of what was very likely the most challenging period in modern times for the financial markets, as well as for the Harvard portfolio,” current HMC CEO Jane Mendillo ’80 SOM ’84 wrote in the Harvard annual report that year.

In the 2009 fiscal year, Harvard saw a 27.3 percent drop in its endowment, the largest drop in over 40 years. Yale’s endowment suffered critically as well.

According to its 2009 Endowment Report, Yale’s assets lost nearly a quarter of their value, leading to a decline of $5.6 billion.

As a result, Harvard had to borrow cash. In 2008, the university sold $1.5 billion in taxable bonds and $1 billion in taxexempt bonds, which freed an additional $2.5 billion in cash.

“They had that disastrous cash exposure during the recession,” Hesel said. “Having Harvard borrowing to fund operations [was] astounding.”

Although Yale was not as cashstrapped as its rival, the fall in the endowment led to widespread criticism of Swensen’s investment strategy. Some financial experts claimed that the “Yale Model” was broken and should be retired.

“The endowments, Yale, Har-

vard and all didn’t lose so much because of the markets, they lost that much because they were invested is risks that were way, way too high,” Sloane said.

“If they’d had the endowments in treasuries, they would have had the same amount of money before and after the crash.”

Yermack said there are still lessons to learn from the financial downturn and its impact on the Yale and Harvard endowments.

He echoed Sloane’s sentiments that both schools paid a hefty price for heavily investing in risky asset classes like private equity. Yermack added Yale is still feeling the impact of the severe budget cuts across the University.

“The impact of the events of 2008-2009 will not be reversed overnight,” Mendillo wrote in her 2009 letter. “Regaining the market value lost as a result of the recent global economic crisis will take time.”

THE PLAYBOOK

Fast-forward six years, and the financial crisis appears as a faded scar on Harvard and Yale’s record, a significant dip in a graph of otherwise rising lines.

Still, some contend that the asset allocations of both institutions may still bear the marks from the recession. In fact, it may be the explanation for why HMC has not returned to its former glory under Meyer.

Harvard may be working to avoid a situation where the

school has low cash reserves, Wallick said. Therefore, he said Harvard’s managers might have constructed the current portfolio in a way to make funds more accessible, hedging against a similar drop in the value of illiquid assets that occurred in 2008.

“You can think of it as an insurance policy,” Wallick said.

“They decided to take more insurance, in this case buying more liquid assets.”

Compared to Yale, Harvard has placed more funds in domestic equity and lower risk bonds and cash. Yale has relatively higher investments in private equity and hedge funds. Lo said that historical data indicates that taking on more illiquid investment tends to carry a long-term reward, which may be why Yale’s allocation has been performing relatively more strongly.

“Therefore, it becomes a question of asset allocation that drives the results, so if Yale bets big on private equity and that does well, then returns will be higher,” Yermack said.

But uncertainty remains.

Despite Yale’s outperformance over the past two decades, many argue the ball can still be turned over.

“It is absolutely possible for Harvard to beat Yale again, there is nothing structural that prevents that from becoming a reality,” Wallick said.

Contact LARRY MILSTEIN at larry.milstein@yale.edu .

Livable City Initiative director departs LIVABLE CITY FROM PAGE 1 deputy development director for the city of Hartford. After Harp increased his salary from about $98,000 to $120,000 and promised to overhaul the LCI by refocusing it on neighborhood development, Johnson agreed to stay.

But after he was offered a job in California, he told Harp he was leaving.

“I got an unexpected and really great opportunity to work with a really talented group of people,” Johnson said. “I hope my story, if I have a story, shows other people form New Haven and black men in particular that you can come home and you can leave home to do other things. If the opportunity presents itself to come back again, I would, hopefully as a better leader and professional to serve this community.”

New Haven City Hall spokesman Laurence Grotheer said Harp had accepted his resignation this October “with regret.”

As he settles into his new job across the country, the city is still in the process of determining the future of the LCI. Nemerson said he does not foresee major changes to the role of executive director or to the day-to-day work of the department, even though he and Harp told Johnson over the summer they would rename it the Office

of Housing and Neighborhood Development.

The LCI was formed by former Mayor John DeStefano Jr. in the mid-1990s, taking on the code-enforcement and development duties of the existing Office of Housing and Neighborhood Development, but also acquiring a new mission: combating blight in the city.

By the end of the 20th century, New Haven was suffering from depopulation and vacant homes, said Jim Paley, executive director of the non-profit organization Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven. Believing an empty lot to be healthier for a neighborhood than a deteriorating, empty home, the LCI has torn down hundreds of previously vacant buildings.

When Johnson claimed the position of executive director in 2010, however, New Haven was on the upswing: After decades of migration to New Haven’s surrounding suburbs, the city’s population stabilized in the mid-2000s and, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, increased by about 6 percent between 2000 and 2010. Because blight has been less of a problem in New Haven, Johnson prioritized helping to create a cohesive New Haven identity and inspire neighborhood pride.

“This is a much better place than we give it credit for,” John-

son said.

Nemerson said the city is looking for a candidate who can manage a team well and allocate resources efficiently. Grotheer said Harp has received applications from both city and noncity employees. Once Harp chooses Johnson’s successor, the three will work together to plan any major changes to the LCI. Grotheer said the mayor hopes to choose a successor “sooner rather than later.”

I won’t shed any tears if the LCI ceases to exist as long as it’s replaced by [a strong] organization.

JIM PALEY Executive director, Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven Alder Anna Festa, who represents Ward 10, which includes the affluent East Rock neighborhood, said she thinks LCI needs to take a more neighborhoodspecific approach to blight. East Rock lacks the abandoned homes that dot some of the city’s neighborhoods, but residents are not always satisfied with the appearance of properties, and feel they don’t have many options to get

help from the city.

Festa said she had never felt certain that the Office of Housing and Neighborhood Development needed to be reorganized into the LCI back in the 1990s.

“They switched it for a reason,” Festa said. “I’m still trying to figure out what that reason is.

Ward 4 Alder Andrea JacksonBrooks, whose district includes the Hill, said her constituents have found the LCI to be attentive and effective at resolving housing issues in the neighborhood. To Jackson-Brooks, the creation of the LCI signaled a new focus on neighborhood issues. She thinks the next executive director should continue the department’s current work.

In 2012, the LCI renovated several homes in the Hill and sold them to working-class families.

The neighborhood also played host to the “Hill-to-Downtown project,” a multi-faceted effort to connect the Hill neighborhood to the Yale School of Medicine and Union Station. The Hill was separated from downtown in the 1950s by the construction of Highway Route 34.

Nemerson said the breadth of the LCI’s tasks gives its executive director a degree of flexibility in choosing priorities and projects.

“Everybody in one of these director positions brings his or her own skills,” Nemerson said.

“Erik had a passion for planning.

Planning isn’t really part of LCI, but it doesn’t make sense not to let Erik try his hand at doing some planning things.”

Projects Johnson listed as highlights of his tenure include updating the department’s technology, rehabilitating several homes in the Hill and, earlier this year, launching a program called Re: New Haven that incentivizes people who do not currently live in the city to buy homes in the Elm City. First-time homebuyers with incomes below 120 percent of the median family income in New Haven can receive a $10,000 loan that will be completely forgiven if they live in the home for five years. Including funding for energy-saving renovations and in-state college tuition paid by New Haven Promise, Re: New Haven pledges up to $80,000 in benefits to participants.

Paley said he had found Johnson to be a strong leader with an understanding of the city’s diverse neighborhoods and their challenges. Going forward, Paley hopes the LCI will have a stronger focus on aggressively attacking blight. Neighborhood Housing Services sometimes acquires foreclosed-on homes from the city; it then renovates them and sells them at affordable prices.

That task, Paley said, is more difficult when a home is surrounded by blighted properties owned by absentee landlords.

He would like to see the city take such owners to court more often.

“The city doesn’t really want to do this. It’s confrontational; it probably takes them time and paying attorneys, all that stuff,” Paley said. “But it’s really important because those buildings have a serious negative impact on the work that we’re doing.”

He considers the city to be at a crossroads — dramatic racial and socioeconomic divisions between neighborhoods persist, but change looks possible. Paley said he thinks the LCI is largely serving its purpose and need not change dramatically from the course Johnson set over the last four years.

One organizational change Paley would not mind seeing is a new name. He remembers when the department was renamed from the Office of Housing and Neighborhood Development, triggering confusion about its purpose.

“Who names a housing department an initiative? An initiative is different from a department,” Paley said. “I won’t shed any tears if the LCI ceases to exist as long as it’s replaced by an organization that takes all the strengths that the current LCI has and then says, ‘How can we make this better?’”

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

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

NEWS

“Acting is like a Halloween mask that you put on.” RIVER PHOENIX AMERICAN ACTOR, MUSICIAN AND ACTIVIST

Donation structure hurt CS, faculty argue

BY STEPHANIE ROGERS AND RACHEL SIEGEL STAFF REPORTERS Last week, Harvard University announced a donation from former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, estimated at $60 million, that will increase its computer science faculty by 50 percent. Meanwhile, the number of faculty in Yale’s Computer Science department stands stagnant at 20 — the same as in 1989.

In response to the donation, Yale computer science professors interviewed expressed hope for similar growth in Yale’s faculty. But they also expressed concern about the Yale University Office of Development’s regulations surrounding donations, and how they affect professors’ abilities to bring in donations. More broadly, they questioned to what extent the Yale administration considers the input of computer science faculty.

DETACHED FROM THE DEVELOPMENT OFFICE

In 1981, computer science professor Michael Fischer had to make the choice between Harvard and Yale. He chose Yale — where he has been teaching for the past 33 years — partly because Harvard did not have a full-fledged computer science department. But after last week’s donation, Fischer said it looks like he made the wrong decision. Harvard has taken the initiative in computer science education while Yale has not, he explained.

And faculty within the Computer Science department have little power over the situation, Computer Science Director of Undergraduate Studies James Aspnes said. No matter how motivated faculty members within the department may be, decisions about approaching big donors to provide the department with funds are made at a higher level and are tightly controlled by the Yale Development Office, he said.

Aspnes said that, in order to not overwhelm donors with requests from every program at Yale and to steer donor funds to the University’s top priorities, he thinks the Office of Development has to maintain tight control over faculty members.

Deputy Provost for Science and Technology Steven Girvin said that although faculty are not encouraged to go to donors, if they have specific connec-

tions, they are urged to bring those to the Office of Development. Computer Science department chair Joan Feigenbaum noted that she plans to meet with alumni concerned about computer science funding in the next few weeks.

Fischer said he has approached people within the Development Office several times, but has been repeatedly rebuffed.

But adding positions to departments is not at the top of the office’s current priorities, Vice President for Development Joan O’Neill said. Yale is more focused on raising money for existing positions than it is creating new ones, she explained.

“Our job within development is to fund whatever the institution has set as priorities,” O’Neill said.

Adding that Yale’s academic mission is generally set by the president, provost and certain deans, O’Neill said Development acts as more of a “check and balance” in determining whether an academic priority “would excite donors or not.”

Paul Karoff, assistant dean for communications for the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, said in an email that the donation from Ballmer was consistent with Harvard’s goal to grow the computer sciences. He added that the donation would allow Harvard to achieve “critical mass,” putting the university in a position to recruit the best and most innovative teachers and researchers.

“I don’t believe Yale would have any trouble in getting these donations, but I don’t think they are asking for it,” Fischer said, adding that the University has had little trouble receiving funds for infrastructural projects such as West Campus and the two new residential colleges.

Still, Provost Benjamin Polak said that Yale is looking to increase funding for STEM but that finding donors is not always easy.

“We are absolutely trying to make that happen, and talk to everybody about our needs since there are more and more students these days that want exposure to STEM or study in STEM,” Polak said.

LITTLE ADMINISTRATIVE REPRESENTATION

Currently, no computer science professors hold appointments in the provost’s office. Only one is on the Presi-

dent’s Divisional Advisory Committee on Physical Sciences and Engineering, which includes computer science.

Fischer said he cannot remember a time when a computer science professor held an administrative position. In contrast, Harvard Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael Smith, whose role is critical in faculty hiring decisions, is a professor of engineering and applied sciences in the computer science department.

Fischer said he believes it was key for Harvard to have a computer science representative within the administration who was in a position to be vocal about the department’s needs.

University President Peter Salovey said there is no formula used to determine how many faculty members from each department are represented in the divisional committees. However, Salovey said that the existing structure — which categorizes computer science along with physical sciences and engineering — could be improved.

Salovey said that at least for the moment, computer science is a better fit in its current division than in other divisions.

But Girvin said all administrators who are also professors and researchers in specific departments have to be conscientious of conflicts of interest when they make funding and faculty decisions.

“If I have a conflict of interest in some situation, I have to hand the decision over to my colleagues, the associate provost or the provost,” Girvin said.

“We have to be very careful about those things.”

Although Girvin noted the importance and centrality of computer science in the 21st century, Feigenbaum is unsure whether the administration at large understands the necessity of a thriving computer science department.

If the administration wants to secure donations from the tech magnates of the future, they should be concerned with getting those potential magnates to matriculate, Feigenbaum said. That requires increasing the size of the computer science department, she added.

Feigenbaum said she sees the Harvard donation as a challenge.

“Now it’s our turn,” she said.

Contact STEPHANIE ROGERS at stephanie.rogers@yale.edu and RACHEL SIEGEL at rachel.siegel@yale.

Music School creates new degrees

BY GAYATRI SABHARWAL STAFF REPORTER Aspiring professional musicians may now have more reasons to attend the Yale School of Music, which has launched two new programs for future performers.

Earlier this month, the School of Music announced the creation of two programs, the Master of Musical Arts degree and the Artist Diploma. Both programs are now available to applicants for the 2015–16 academic year. Yale School of Music Deputy Dean Melvin Chen said the programs are part of a larger series of reforms to the school’s curricular offerings.

“A number of years ago, there was a plan to rethink the entire curriculum,” Chen said. “The degrees have been revised one by one.”

Chen said that in 2007, the school formed a review committee that examined the school’s curricular structure and made several recommendations to its administration. But he noted that the proposed changes could not be implemented at the time because of budget constraints resulting from the 2008 financial crisis. The school has only recently begun implementing the changes, which include the Doctor of Musical Arts degree that became available in 2013 as well as the two new programs, Chen added.

The Artist Diploma is a twoyear program open to any applicant with at least a high school diploma. The program will accept three students for the 2015–16 academic year, and six students per year after that point. Chen said the program caters only to aspiring musicians at the highest skill levels, adding that the school will give each student in the program personalized career guidance and unique performance opportunities that are not available to most students at the collegiate level.

“The people we accept to this program are going to be ones that, we’re fairly confident, are going to have a major international career,” Chen said.

The people we accept to this program are going to be ones that, we’re fairly confident, are going to have a major international career.

MELVIN CHEN Deputy Dean, Yale School of Music Chen explained that the new programs are tailored to students who aspire to have careers in music performance rather than in non-performance-oriented fields such as musical academia. The programs are aimed at honing the musical skills of students above everything else, he added. Chen noted that only a small number of graduate music schools across the country offer post-master’s degrees such as the music school’s Master of Musical Arts degrees, which he thinks will lead to an increased number of music school applicants.

Dana Astmann, the manager of communications at the School of Music, said that the school has been in contact with students who are considering applying for the new programs. For example, she explained, School of Music professor Boris Berman coordinated and led an online video chat in February for prospective applicants. Astmann noted that so far, the student response to the new programs has been positive.

There are currently 187 students enrolled in the School of Music.

Contact GAYATRI SABHARWAL at gayatri.sabharwal@yale.edu .

Bicyclists introduce new form of robbery

BY SARAH BRULEY STAFF REPORTER Students usually envision a robbery as a single thief approaching them, perhaps with a weapon in hand, on a poorly lit street late at night.

But recent robberies in the Elm City show that Yale students and New Haven residents should not restrict their notions of robberies to this stereotype.

While police report that violent crime on campus and in the city is on the decline, students have reported being robbed on multiple occasions this semester by groups of teenagers, who sometimes don Halloween masks, riding bicycles. According to a campuswide email sent by Yale Police Department Chief Ronnell Higgins last Thursday, these groups speed down sidewalks, intimidating many pedestrians. In light of the recent robberies, Yale Police officials have urged students and residents to be aware of their surroundings.

“From time to time, we see groups of adolescents or teenagers who ride bikes in groups with the intention of stealing a phone or robbing someone,” said YPD Assistant Lieutenant Von Narcisse in an email. “[But] I want to emphasize that this is rare … there doesn’t seem to be a pattern to when or why these robberies occur.”

He added that the most recent reported incidents this semester have not happened on campus, but rather in downtown New Haven.

An overwhelming majority of students interviewed, 17 of 20, said that they had not seen or engaged with these bikers.

Pedestrians’ experiences with the bikers varied — while two encounters left pedestrians unaffected, one was left with a more shocking experience.

Xiao Qing GRD ’18 said that earlier this semester, two teens on bikes sped past her on the sidewalk. As they passed, one reached for her cell phone, but only managed to knock it

out of her hand. Qing said that after she picked up her phone, the bikers rode away from her.

“I was shocked,” Qing said.

“I think he gave up after I picked up my phone.”

Qing said that the riders, both males, appeared to be too young to be college students.

Rather, she noted, they looked like high schoolers.

Other students said that their encounter with the bikers were “bothersome” but amounted to little more than a minor inconvenience. Ferzan Tapramaz GRD ’20 said that while the teen riders have never attempted to grab his belongings, he has only had to step aside out of the riders’ paths.

Yet most students interviewed said that they have not had any interactions with the bikers.

Kevin Wei ’17 said that he often sees teenagers riding their bikes along Elm Street, but has never experienced or seen them attempt a robbery.

Police patrolling in New Haven have not experienced a surge in robberies from the adolescent riders, either, according to New Haven Police Department spokesperson David Hartman.

“That’s certainly not to say [the robberies] don’t happen,” Hartman said. “But it’s just not a large problem.”

According to Higgins, the YPD has nonetheless placed additional uniformed and plainclothes officers outside in response to the uptick in appearances made by the adolescent riders.

Narcisse stressed that with the recent appearances of the bikers and spike in bicycle thefts on campus, pedestrians should stay especially vigilant now that the sun sets earlier in the day.

“Both Yale and New Haven Police remain highly flexible to meet community expectations to safeguard our open urban campus, but we need your assistance,” Higgins said.

Contact SARAH BRULEY at sarah.bruley@yale.edu .

EDDY WANG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale students have reported being robbed by groups of teenagers on bicycles, sometimes donning masks, in recent months.

PAGE 8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

“We suck.”

Elis hope to sweep NY trip

HARVARD STUDENTS AND ALUMNI

Playoff gives Yale chance for revenge

BY ALEX WALKER AND ERIN WANG CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS Two Yale-Harvard showdowns will take place this weekend. The Yale volleyball team travels to Cambridge today in a one-game Ivy playoff to battle for this year’s NCAA automatic bid.

“I think this is going to be an energypacked match just because so many people will be at Harvard on Friday night,” head coach Erin Appleman said.

The Bulldogs (16–7, 12–2 Ivy) will face off against the Crimson (19–4, 12–2) in a onematch playoff at 7 p.m. at Harvard’s Malkin Athletic Center. Both teams shared the regular season conference title after finishing with identical records in regular season play. Harvard dealt Yale its only two conference losses earlier this season when the Crimson bested the Bulldogs in two tightly contested matchups that ended in scores of 3–2 and 3–0.

The playoff against Harvard will be the final Ivy League match in a long and storied career at Yale for captain and Ivy League Player of the Year Mollie Rogers ’15. Rogers had a total of 326 kills on the season — second among all players in the Ancient Eight — and 26 service aces this season. She is the second Bulldog in a row to receive such honors after setter Kendall Polan ’14 won the award the past three years. Rogers is also only the eighth player in Ivy League history to receive first team All-Ivy honors for all four years.

“It’s obviously a huge honor and it’s really cool … keeping that Yale tradition alive,” Rogers said. “But it doesn’t even compare to winning the Ivy League title.”

Yale also brought home the Ivy League Rookie of the Year award this season. Setter Kelsey Crawford ’18 led the league in average assists per set, with 10.83. Crawford is the fourth Bulldog, alongside Polan, Rogers and setter Kelly Johnson ’16, to receive this award in the last five years. Joining Rogers in achieving first team All-Ivy status are Johnson and libero Maddie Rudnick ’15.

YALE DAILY NEWS

The Bulldogs have taken down the Big Red 10 of the last 14 times they have faced them on the ice.

BY MARC CUGNON STAFF REPORTER Coming off of a big fourpoint weekend during which the Elis dismantled Dartmouth and pushed past Harvard in a close game, Yale is riding a hot streak that it will look to carry into this weekend’s clashes against Clarkson and Cornell. But facing off against both an Ivy League opponent and a top-five ranked ECAC squad will provide Yale (3–1–2, 2–1–1 ECAC) with a stiff challenge in the Bulldogs’ second consecutive away trip.

With two critical points up for grabs in both contests, Yale will look to prey upon a momentumstarved Cornell squad, aiming to right the ship and to neutralize an offensively gifted Colgate team.

“This is a tough road test for our team but one we are up to,” Ryan Obuchowski ’16 said. “Cornell is always a tough environment to play in and win and they always have a quality team. Colgate is a very good team with a lot of skilled players, and I think their record shows the type of success they’ve been having this year.”

Against Cornell (1–4–1, 1–3–0 ECAC), the Elis are the favorites.

Yale currently sits at sixth place in the ECAC while the Big Red are ranked in the bottom half of the

conference at 10th place. Furthermore, the Elis have won 10 of their last 14 matchups against the Big Red. The momentum difference between the two squads, with Yale riding a two-game win streak while Cornell lost their last game to St. Lawrence, gives the Elis an advantage heading into the matchup.

“We need to maintain our discipline and competitive level from last weekend,” forward John Hayden ’17 said. “Cornell is a good team with an intense rink atmosphere. It’s safe to say we need to be ready to battle.”

Yale is in a less favorable position against Colgate (8–3–1, 2–1–1 ECAC). With their current record, the Raiders sit at fifth in the ECAC, just above the Elis and thus stand in the way of Yale advancing in the conference table. The matchup against Colgate will be a must-win for both teams, which are seeking to keep pace with the hot start that the Quinnipiac Bobcats have begun the season with. As the two teams are similar in skill level, with Colgate a slight favorite, and both needing to maximize points in winnable games this season, the two teams will both be skating hard for a win.

The match will feature a battle between Yale’s stalwart defense and Colgate’s dynamic attack.

Netminder Alex Lyon ’17 who has allowed just 10 goals in the ECAC this season will spearhead the Bulldogs’ defensive efforts.

However, Colgate’s Tyson Spink will pose one of the stiffest challenges that Lyon has faced all year. Spink is the second-highest scorer in the ECAC with six goals to his name thus far. Furthermore, Raiders’ team captain Spiro Goulakos leads the conference with 10 assists in the 2014– 15 campaign. These two will be a troublesome offensive duo for Yale to contend with and are a top defensive priority for the Elis. In just 12 games thus far in their campaign, the Raiders have come out firing and have netted 36 scores in that short period of time, meaning that Yale’s strong defense will have to be at its best to stop them.

“We’re looking to build off the two wins last week and take the momentum into this weekend,” forward Mike Doherty ’17 said.

“We’re playing two more good teams, so we have to be ready to play, but the boys are excited to go.”

Yale’s next match comes against Rochester Institute of Technology at Ingalls Rink on Saturday, Nov. 29.

Friday marks just the third Ivy League playoff in history. The last playoff occurred in 2010, when Penn defeated Yale to move on to the NCAA championship field of 64. Before that, Harvard, Yale, Cornell and Penn finished the 2004 season in a four-way tie, and Yale emerged victorious in the playoffs, defeating both Harvard and Cornell in five-game matches.

Appleman expects this year’s match to be much more spirited than the 2004 and 2010 playoffs for both players and fans. In 2004, the contest was held at Union College, a neutral site, and few Yale fans attended the match.

Four years ago, Yale hosted the playoff against Penn over Thanksgiving break, again resulting in a weak fan section.

Yale has claimed the Ivy League crown for the past five years. This year’s title is the Bulldogs’ eighth and the Crimson’s second of all time. Though the Crimson ended this season on an 11-game winning streak, its longest since a 13-game streak in 1997, Harvard still trails Yale 38–22 in the two teams’ all-time series record.

Harvard and Yale have been given a block of 100 free student tickets each, which will be available for pickup at the Malkin Center from 6 to 6:45 p.m. Students must bring their Yale identification to receive a ticket. The match will also be streamed live and free of charge on the Ivy League Digital Network.

The Ivy League is currently 18th out of 33 conferences in the national RPI rankings.

Harvard and Yale sit at No. 69 and No. 80, respectively, up from 83 and 97 three weeks ago.

“We’re going to take what we have learned from the past matches and hopefully incorporate it into our game plan,” Rudnick said.

“The Yale-Harvard rivalry goes back so far that excitement is always high every time we play them.”

Contact ALEX WALKER at alex.e.walker@yale.edu and ERIN WANG at erin.wang@yale.edu .

HENRY EHRENBERG/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Outside hitter Kaitlyn Gibbons ’18 has accumulated 167.5 points across 23 games in her freshman campaign.

Contact MARC CUGNON at marc.cugnon@yale.edu .

Cross country standouts talk strides

BY STEVEN LEWIS CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Kira Garry ’15 is a environmental studies major from Montauk, New York. She ran as a part of Yale’s cross-country top seven since her freshman year and will be the track and field captain this winter. She was named to the AllIvy first team this season, an honor last achieved by a Yale female runner in 2011.

tle things, and I think I approach things with a much broader perspective now, realizing that what’s most important when you line up is to believe in yourself and know that your training has prepared you for this point. a science major and recipQAs ient of numerous academic

honors, what are your plans to continue in both your academic and athletic fields after Yale?

does it feel to be selected to So I really want to go to medQHow compete in the NCAA Division Aical school. I’m an environI cross-country championships on Nov. 22?

A

It feels great. It was a huge dream of mine to qualify, and last year someone on my team reminded me that we were at the Yale-Harvard game, and we watched a live stream of the race, and I said, “Next year I’m not going to be at The Game. I’m just gonna say I’m not gonna be at The Game because I really want to be at nationals.” At the time when I said that, I’m not sure I really believed that it could happen, so it definitely feels really cool to have done it.

personal best in the 6K QYour is nearly a minute faster than your best from last year, how were you able to make such a big improvement in only one year?

A

I think my summer training definitely had a lot to do with it. Summer base training is really important for cross-country, and I think that I worked really hard over the summer to put in consistent training. And I used to get really caught up with the lit-

mental studies major but my concentration is human health and public health so while I’m not applying to med school this fall I’m planning to apply either next fall or the year after. I’m applying to graduate programs right now to do a master’s in either public health or integrative physiology and … I would definitely like to continue running after school. I’m not sure entirely how it will work out yet, but the goal would be to keep running next year and then apply to med school.

back at the past four QLooking cross-country seasons, what has been your favorite part about running cross-country at Yale?

A

The team, definitely. It will be really weird not to race with my team. This weekend is the first race that I haven’t had all six of them lined up with me. Day in and day out, the team brings a really positive attitude, and we have fun even though running, in itself, is not fun. Workouts are hard and we know that, but we approach the hard workouts with the idea that if we work hard together, we can do

really special things. My freshman year was the first year that our coach Amy Gosztyla was here and our team saw significant improvement. We went from being eighth in the league to fourth. That season still feels like a magic season where every day we came to practice super excited about what we were doing because we knew we were getting better every day. The team is just really close and I feel lucky to be a part of a team that has so much tradition, especially with Harvard-Yale-Princeton and the Ivy Championships. There’s definitely something really special about competing in cross-country for Yale. So I’m excited to have one more shot at it.

ANNA SOPHIA HARLING/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Kevin Dooney ’16 is a history major from Dublin, Ireland. He qualified for nationals last year and this year and is one of only six Yale runners to compete at nationals since 1991. He was second team All-Ivy last year and is first team All-Ivy this season. Dooney is one of only five Ivy League runners selected for nationals this year. are your goals headQWhat ing into the NCAA Division I championships this weekend for the second time?

A

This year I’m aiming for a top-40 finish to give me AllAmerican honors. It’s a very different feeling coming back for a second time. Last year I was just happy to be there whereas this year the goal going into the season was very much to make nationals.

In their most recent race, Kevin Dooney ’16 and Kira Garry ’15 ran average miles of 4:54.5 and 5:29.5, respectively. you also represented Ireland at the European Championships last year. What was that experience like?

A

It was a really fun experience; I had run for them in high school at an under-20 level, but to do it from over here and qualify for the team, and then [to] get to go serve from America, was a pretty special experience. We came in fourth at the championships, so I’m definitely looking forward to hopefully getting selected to go back this year.

do you think about durQWhat ing races? How do you stay

focused and positive through such long distances?

trust you did the training to get there and [that] you’re not doing anything stupid. On Friday the race started pretty slowly, and we were all packed up in a big group together; you just know you’re not running that fast, and you know you’ve done this in training, and you feel comfortable at these paces. When it’s getting tough you need to dig deeper and really question what can’t I do, what am I fine doing. On Friday it very much was trying to get to nationals, so I knew where I needed to be in terms of people around me.

And that was my goal, so as people were getting by me, [I told myself] “you’re here to get to nationals,” so you make sure you can’t let people pass you.

to competing at In terms of staying posiYou’ve earned numerous acaQIntheaddition national level in the U.S., Ative, you mostly just have to Qdemic honors — how do you

balance your studies and your time commitment as a full year athlete?

A

It’s definitely difficult being a full-year athlete, and the lifestyle required of four to five hours of practice every day and trying to get between eight and 10 hours of sleep a night is definitely a difficult thing to do. So you need to be smart about when you do your work and how you’re doing your work. Unfortunately there are times when you simply can’t do as much as you would like, so you just have to make up for it and try to keep yourself going. It is tough at times, but thankfully professors for the most part are understanding, and Dean’s Excuses help as well when traveling.

Contact STEVEN LEWIS at steven.lewis@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

NEWS

“Smoking is hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain and dangerous to the lungs.”

KING JAMES I KING OF SCOTLAND, IRELAND AND ENGLAND

Screenwriting program grows despite limited resources

BY CAROLINE WRAY STAFF REPORTER In 1971, filmmaker Michael Roemer was tasked with writing a film for Paramount Pictures about “young people.” Over 40 years old and out of touch with the younger generation, Roemer looked to the Yale School of Art for guidance.

“If you let me live with you for a while, I’ll help you make your movies,” he recalls telling the art school administration. At the time, Roemer noted, there were no other filmmaking classes being offered at Yale, and any filmmaking on campus was entirely student-initiated.

It would be another few years before the University would allow Roemer to teach filmmaking to undergraduates. But today, alumni and students who have taken his course mark it as a milestone in their development as artists.

Screenwriter Camille Thomasson ’81, who teaches the residential college seminar “The Screenwriter’s Craft,” said that Roemer taught her “to examine my intentions — and assumptions — and to interrogate my work.” Russell Cohen ’17, who is currently in Roemer’s “Introduction to Film Writing & Directing,” described the course’s requirement that students write, direct and produce a different “scene” every week as a challenging but rewarding process.

Since then, filmmaking and screenwriting have been burgeoning interests for Yalies. The craft has grown, and gained recognition and respect from the Yale administration, but many say that the program has outgrown its size, and that its popularity calls for further attention.

GAINING LEGITIMACY WITH TIME

The film and media studies major was established in 1985, but the program did not offer any screenwriting classes until 1992, when American studies and film professor Charles Musser assumed leadership of the program. Film studies lecturer

Lapadula credited Musser as the person who “gave screenwriting its first real chance to expand and come to dimensional life at Yale.”

Musser described the scarcity of screenwriting classes at the time, when students could only take such courses through the residential college seminar program. Students were unhappy with the system because no screenwriting courses were consistently offered, despite being in high demand. Lapadula said he remembered accepting only 12 students for each of his seminars and turning upwards of 90 students away.

In the fall of 1992, then-Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead approved the first-ever Yale College screenwriting class after a group of students petitioned the University to offer such a course.

Roemer selected Lapadula to teach the course, which was only available to juniors in the film studies major at the time.

After Lapadula was hired, he and Musser worked to further develop the screenwriting curriculum. Lapadula taught an introductory course open to all undergraduates as well as an advanced senior thesis course and later an intermediate-level course specifically for film studies majors.

Students who have taken Lapadula’s classes include Nick Antosca ’05, who has written for television shows such as MTV’s “Teen Wolf” and NBC’s “Hannibal,” and Jeremy Garelick ’98, who worked on the highestgrossing R-rated comedy film of all time, “The Hangover.”

Over the past several years, Yale’s English department has occasionally offered courses in screenwriting. English professor John Crowley, who teaches a number of English and creative writing courses, has also taught screenwriting classes through his department, including “Writing for Film: Voice and Vision” in Fall 2012.

Screenwriter Brian Price ’85, who teaches a residential college seminar on screenwriting titled “Classical Storytelling and Modern Screenwriting,” said he

has noticed that Yale has become more receptive to student interest in screenwriting since he was a student in the 1980s. Price explained that decades ago, the University administration felt that screenwriting “wasn’t deserving of academic study, so we didn’t have those classes.”

Now, he said, screenwriting at Yale is considered as legitimate an art form as other literary media are.

A DEMAND FOR SPECIALIZATION

While the number of screenwriting classes at Yale has increased over the past two decades, several students and faculty said they think the University has not embraced filmmaking and screenwriting to the same extent as other liberal arts universities.

“What makes Yale great, and also frustrating, is that it’s a keeper of historically traditional knowledge,” said screenwriter Dave Tolchinsky ’85, who heads Northwestern University’s Writing for the Screen and Stage program. “Yale certainly wasn’t the first to embrace the film major, and when I was here as a music major, it tended towards the classical.”

Peer institutions such as Princeton and Harvard offer more options in screenwriting classes, Musser said, adding that he believes that one serious shortcoming of Yale’s undergraduate curriculum is the lack of a full-time filmmaking instructor. Harvard has the equivalent of seven and a half full-time filmmaking teachers, he noted.

Demand for screenwriting classes at Yale currently exceeds the number of spots available by a large margin. Thomasson and Price said that they had to turn away many interested and qualified applicants from their residential college seminars. Price noted that he received over 50 applications for just 14 spots.

Students interviewed highlighted the importance of offering screenwriting-specific courses because general filmrelated classes and extracurric-

City looks to be smoke-free

BY ERICA PANDEY STAFF REPORTER The Elm City may be smokefree by June 2015.

Mayor Toni Harp gathered with city officials and community leaders yesterday evening to launch New Haven Smokeout — her plan to eliminate smoking from the city by the end of this fiscal year next June. The effort is part of the annual Great American Smokeout, an American Cancer Society campaign that encourages smokers to quit, even just for a day, on the third Thursday of November. The city has previously supported the national movement, but this is its first year with a plan that will include tangible goals working towards a smoke-free city.

“We want to not only advance towards a smoke-free city but also improve the overall health and well-being of people in New Haven,” city Community Service Administrator Martha Okafor said.

Paul Kowalski, acting director at the New Haven Health Department, stressed the urgent need for New Haven Smokeout. According to Kowalski, over 1,000 city residents have died in the past year from smokingrelated health issues. Of the city’s smokers, over half said they have tried to quit more than twice, he said.

Okafor added that the mayor’s plan, which has been outlined but not yet finalized, will provide resources for smokers looking to quit and implement education programs in public schools to prevent smoking habits from developing.

Though it has expanded to include several city departments, Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital, the New Haven Smokeout began as a collaboration between the Board of Alders and Okafor, Harp said. Okafor presented a report to the alders on Oct. 6 which indicated that city residents were in danger of health risks stemming from smoking and secondhand smoke.

Since the meeting, the alders approached the mayor to formulate a plan.

“It is crucial for us to recognize the fact that the alders, after hearing that presentation, actually reached out and took the leadership to say that we must do something,” Okafor said.

Ward 7 Alder Abigail Roth said the impact of smoking on the public health of city residents was an issue she felt close to, and so she was eager to take action after hearing from Okafor’s department.

We want to not only advance towards a smokefree city but also improve the overall health … of the people in Haven.

MARTHA OKAFOR Community Service Administrator, New Haven Director of the Department of Parks, Recreation and Trees Rebecca Bombero announced that her department had just endorsed a proposal earlier this week to convert playgrounds into non-smoking zones, adding that once approved by the Board of Alders, the initiative would be a step towards protecting the city’s youth.

The Board of Education has also taken action by launching an education program to teach eighth grade students about the detrimental effects of alcohol and drugs, including tobacco, said Superintendent of New Haven Public Schools Garth Harries ’95.

“It’s not just about the quadratic formula,” he said. “It’s about students understanding the impact of smoking on their health and making smart choices throughout their lives.”

According to Okafor, while the Board of Education is working to curb youth smoking, Yale Uni-

versity and the Yale-New Haven Hospital approached the Smokeout as a large-scale public health issue.

University President Peter Salovey’s wife, Marta Moret SPH ’87, represented Yale at the event at City Hall yesterday, where she expressed the University’s commitment to the Smokeout. Moret, who has researched the impact of smoking on public health in New Haven, said she and Okafor had met to discuss Yale’s role in New Haven Smokeout and that the University’s School of Medicine, School of Nursing and School of Public Health would continue to engage in research on smoking cessation for the community’s benefit.

Benjamin Toll, program director of the smoking cessation service at Smilow Cancer Hospital, conducted a study with Salovey earlier this year that revealed that smokers are more likely to successfully quit if they are presented with the benefits of quitting rather than the harms of continuing. Moret referenced the study as potentially useful to the Smokeout campaign.

“We already have data on what it takes to help people to quit smoking and stay smoking-free,” Moret said. “And the biggest pieces of that are peer members, are people from your own community. This is the way you get the best results — by taking this issue on as an issue of the neighborhoods.”

Moret said the University would offer any resources it could to the city, including campus space for city Smokeout meetings.

Karen Dubois-Walton, executive director of the New Haven Housing Authority, also spoke at the event, expressing that city residents are eager to see smokefree housing in the city.

As part of the New Haven Smokeout, Southern Connecticut State University has pledged to become smoke-free by May 31.

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

TRAVIS GONZALEZ/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The growing availability of screenwriting courses comes in response to consistently high student demand. ular opportunities do not provide the type of training needed to effectively write screenplays.

Otis Blum ’15 and Alexi Sargent ’15, who have written both plays as well as screenplays, said that they have found screenwriting to be formulaic in a way that playwriting and other mediums are not.

“A kid can open up [Microsoft] Word and just get going on a play,” Blum said. “But I don’t think any kid can just open up Final Draft and start writing a screenplay. You need to have someone tell you what the structure and the format is.”

Tolchinsky added that he thinks having instructors with experience in the screenwriting profession is essential, noting that his screenwriting classes teach students how to pitch ideas to companies and engage with film producers in addition to the writing component.

But Tolchinsky added that he thinks the traditional liberal arts educational model that Yale offers contains classes that are at least as valuable as trade-oriented classes on the business or craft of screenwriting.

Several other alumni and students interviewed also high-

lighted the importance of a liberal arts education for artists such as screenwriters. Daniel Barnz ’92, who wrote and directed the 2011 film “Beastly,” noted that he did not start writing screenplays until after he received a Masters of Fine Arts degree from the University of California at Los Angeles.

“I think any hyper-intelligent person — and God knows there are a slew of them at Yale — can teach themselves the mechanics of screenwriting,” Barnz said.

“And then it’s just about having a story to tell, which doesn’t necessarily come from filmmaking.”

A BUSINESS AND AN ART

Nearly all of the students and faculty interviewed said they believed that screenwriting has gained popularity in recent decades because of its omnipresence in modern society.

Lapadula said that he thinks the past few years have proved that screenwriters can make a name for themselves as screenwriters alone, rather than through taking on additional roles as directors or actors.

“Certainly in terms of public usage, there’s an argument to be made that screenwriting is the

dominant form of storytelling right now,” Price said.

Faculty and professional screenwriters highlighted the artistic merits of screenwriting, noting its interdisciplinary and collaborative nature. Thomasson said she tells her students that screenwriting is “part poetry, part architecture,” and the Yale English Department’s Director of Creative Writing Richard Deming described the ability of screenplays to transform text into visual imagery as “magic.”

But playwright and screenwriter Doug Wright ’85 said he thinks that many have turned to screenwriting because it is currently a more lucrative field than other writing professions. He highlighted the corporate aspects of screenwriting, explaining that screenwriters do not own the rights to their work, as studios are able to freely alter the scripts that screenwriters produce without the writer’s permission.

“As a screenwriter, you’re a writer for hire,” Wright said.

“As a written form, screenplays haven’t entered the national literature and probably never will.”

Contact CAROLINE WRAY at caroline.wray@yale.edu .

Trans/Gender week concludes

BY STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE STAFF REPORTER In the midst of the pre-Thanksgiving break frenzy, a moment of silent peace was found Thursday night in Battell Chapel, where Trans/Gender Awareness Week came to its conclusion with a private vigil commemorating the Trans/Gender Day of Remembrance.

Maria Trumpler, director of the Office of LGBTQ Resources, said that Trans/Gender Awareness Week, which ran from Nov. 10 to Nov. 20, hoped to start conversations across campus about gender identity and gender expression and to create a community with New Haven and Connecticut residents of people who can share their experiences with each other. She said she also wanted to show Yale community members the opportunities for involvement in “trans” — a term which the LGBTQ community regards as an umbrella for a variety of definitions and not a specific designation, hence normally placing an asterisk after it — advocacy and activism, and to celebrate gender diversity.

“My biggest hope is that by having discussions about gender identity with large groups of students, that any student who is exploring their gender identity will find many sympathetic people to talk with,” Trumpler said.

The Office of LGBTQ Resources hosted a series of events throughout the week, including a panel called “Well-Being while Transitioning,” a discussion with Karma Lilola ’12 and a photography exhibit titled “Now You See Me.” Trumpler said each of the events was magical in their own way.

While Trans/Gender Awareness Week was overall considered an overwhelming success by organizers and attendees, students interviewed said that there are still many challenges for students at Yale who identify as transgender.

Gabe Murchison ’14, who coordinated Trans/Gender Awareness Week for two years while he was an undergraduate, said Yale struggles more than many of its peers in ensuring that trans and gender nonconforming students feel acknowledged and welcome.

He added that Trans/Gender Awareness Week is an invaluable way to help those students.

Trumpler said the University policy creates a cumbersome process for students who are transitioning between genders. She said particular problems for these students include working with the registrar’s office to adapt computer programs that will allow students

to change the first name and gender identity for all internal Yale systems and accessing coverage for hormones and surgery offered by Yale Health.

The primary problem that students interviewed acknowledged is gender-segregated housing. Yale does not currently offer mixed gender housing to underclassmen, with students only able to opt-in their junior year.

In 2013, a report by the Yale College Council said that changing this policy to include sophomores drew widespread support, with 90 percent of respondents in the class of 2016 and 85 percent of class of 2015 respondents in support of or indifferent to the expansion of gender-neutral housing to the sophomore class.

Jack Taperell ’18 said he would have strongly considered the option of mixed gender housing because all-male suites can sometimes have the tendency to fall into a stereotypical “macho” culture. He added that he hopes Yale’s administration will soon be responsive to the repeated wishes for the policy change.

YCC vice president Maia Eliscovich Sigal ’16 said YCC is reaching out to residential college deans about the issue, in hopes that it will be in place for this year’s housing draw.

However, important developments have been made, both Trumpler and Murchison said. Trumpler said the peer liaison system is extremely beneficial for students discovering their gender identity for the first time, just as Queer Peers Graduate and Professional Counseling is available to students in the graduate and professional schools. Trumpler also said she takes a very active role in ensuring the wellbeing of students who make use of her office.

On an academic level, Murchison said the increase of classes looking at gender identity shows an important shift for academic conversation. Greta LaFleur’s class “Gender and Transgender,” he said, is a really important example of academic development in gender studies because it helps to promote better conversation concerning gender identity.

“At Yale, I’ve been part of many conversations, both inside and outside the classroom, where folks assume that no one in the room is trans,” he said. “I’m thrilled for the students a few years behind me, for whom that may not be a theme of their time at Yale.”

Contact STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE at stephanie.addenbrooke@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 10

Advent & Christmas Advent Procession with Carols November 30, 5:00p sung by the Christ Church Choir A Festival of 9 Lessons & Carols for Christmas December 14, 5:00p sung by the Christ Church Choir

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Christ Church Broadway & Elm christchurchnh.org

Christmas Eve 4:30p Blessing of the Crèche 9:30p Prelude Music 10:00p The Solemn Christ Mass sung by the Christ Church Choir Christmas Day 11:00a Mass with Hymns

Morning Checklist [x] Brush teeth [x] Wash face [x] Comb hair [x] Grab a cup of coffee [x] Read the Yale Daily News

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 11

BULLETIN BOARD

TODAY’S FORECAST

TOMORROW

Sunny with a high near 37. Wind chill values between 15 and 25.

High of 40, low of 34.

GOOD WILL HUNTING BY DOO LEE

ON CAMPUS FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21 2:00 PM Yale Farm Workdays. The Friday workday ends with pizza for all — cooked in the farm’s hearth oven. Yale Farm (345 Edwards St.).

3:00 PM Fracking and Water: Requirements and Impacts.

The Extractive Industries Working Group at Yale presents a panel and discussion on fracking and its relationship to water use and quality. The panel will feature Franck O’Sullivan, Paul Reig and Jim Saiers, and will be moderated by Brad Gentry. Kroon Hall (195 Prospect St.).

8:00 PM Yale and Harvard Joint Glee Club Concert. In anticipation of The Game, come listen to the Yale Glee Club and the Harvard Glee Clubs. Sanders Theatre (45 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA, 02138).

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22 12:00 PM The Game. Watch Yale football (8–1) take on Harvard (9–0) in Cambridge in the 131st game of this historic rivalry.

ESPN’s College GameDay will cover the game from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Go Bulldogs! Harvard Stadium (65 N Harvard St., Allston, MA, 02134).

12:00 PM Silent Auction. The Yale School of Art’s Silent Auction is a student-run, one-day event, which displays work from current graduate students from all departments. Proceeds of the auction will go towards other community-based events. FRONT Art Space (118 Chambers St., New York, NY, 10007).

4:00 PM “The Rules.” A response to the 2012 massacre in Aurora, Colorado, this play examines the aftermath of a traumatic event from the perspective of its secondary victims and exposes the necessary fiction of action and consequence that underlies the notion of justice. Iseman Theater (1156 Chapel St.).

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23 7:30 PM Great Organ Music at Yale: Jean-Baptiste Robin.

French music of Rameau, Bizet, Debussy, Ravel, Widor, Dupré and Robin. Woolsey Hall (500 College St.).

XKCD BY RANDALL MUNROE

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To visit us in person 202 York St. New Haven, Conn. (Opposite JE) FOR RELEASE NOVEMBER 21, 2014

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

CLASSIFIEDS

CROSSWORD Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Lewis ACROSS 1 One may be under a jacket 5 Drift on the breeze 9 Military group 14 Basically 16 Storyteller of a sort 17 Where dogs chat?

18 Sobriety symbol 19 Hosp. test 20 Pilot’s stat.

21 Manifest 22 Harsh 24 Where donkeys make noise?

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11/21/14

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Thursday’s Puzzle Solved

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6

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SPORTS MOLLIE ROGERS ’15 IVY LEAGUE PLAYER OF THE YEAR Rogers earned Ivy League Player of the Year honors after leading the Elis to their fifth straight Ivy League title and averaging 10.83 assists per set. Additionally, Kelsey Crawford ’18 became the Bulldogs’ fourth Ivy League Rookie of the Year in five seasons.

MATT TOWNSEND ’15 RHODES SCHOLAR FINALIST Senior forward Matt Townsend will miss two games this weekend to interview in New York City for a Rhodes scholarship.

He has maintained a 4.0 through his first six semesters at Yale and was elected to Yale’s Phi Beta Kappa society in the spring of his junior year.

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“[Tyler Varga ’15] is a … tremendous blocker and a skilled runner that hits defenders like the deployment of a nuclear warhead.”

LARRY CIOTTI RUNNING BACK COACH

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

Roberts rips through playbook

BY ASHLEY WU STAFF REPORTER

KEN YANAGISAWA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Quarterback Morgan Roberts ’16 tops the Ivy League in passing yards per game with 325. Harvard’s Scott Hosch has just 158.7.

Yale has leaned heavily on its offense all season en route to its current 8–1 record, and quarterback Morgan Roberts ’16 will look to lead the team’s most prolific offense in decades to victory this weekend.

Roberts arrived on campus in the summer of 2013 as a transfer from Clemson shrouded in hype and high expectations. He shared the position last season with Henry Furman ’14, splitting time both quarterback and wide receiver. Since then, he has taken over the reins on offense and led the Bulldogs to one of their most successful seasons in recent memory, with a chance to clinch a share of the Ivy League title for the first time since 2006.

“He’s done a great job this year,” captain and wide receiver Deon Randall ’15 said. “He’s a confident guy back there. He tells you realistically what he likes, and what he doesn’t like. He’s just been a great leader, whether it be him helping you out with a pass concept or him taking the time off the field to make sure that you understand the offense. I think guys recognize that, and I think he’s done a tremendous job.”

But getting to this point has not been easy, and Robert Clemons III ’17 notes that Roberts took last year and the offseason to really learn the offense.

The quarterback has connected on 21 touchdowns this season to a number of different

receivers, most notably Grant Wallace ’15, Randall and Clemons, each notching 25 or more receptions. Working with each other every day has strengthened their ties and maximized the team’s opportunities on offense.

“We all have a good relationship with Morgan and the quarterbacks,” Clemons said. “I think really practicing timing and route running, you get that feel for the tendencies between you and your quarterback. He knows where you’re going to be and you know where he’s going to throw it.”

Roberts remarked that the whole team put in a lot of work during the offseason, getting up early to lift, run and then watch film in the afternoon.

The work has certainly paid off, as the offense is averaging 43.0 points per game, and Yale is currently ranked as the fourthbest passing offense in the Football Championship Subdivision, averaging 325.7 yards in the air per game. Roberts ranks seventh in the FCS with 2,925 total yards so far this season, completing 68.7 percent of his passes.

A lot of the team’s success comes from Roberts’s ability to direct the offense, execute plays and complete drives.

“He’s a vocal guy and a funny guy,” Clemons said. “During games and practices, he’s the manager, the captain of our offense. He’s vocal, but he’s also cool, calm and collected … He’s always keeping us under control and making sure we know our jobs so that we can execute.”

Roberts recognizes that he is the point guard of the offense and that his job is to distribute the ball to playmakers. However, he credits the improvements in offense to working with the coaching staff, which has pushed him to make better reads. He also mentioned that the receivers have made it easy for him to look good, as he has numerous options at both wide receiver and tight end.

The offense has clicked for much of the season, and Roberts passed for a season-high 405 yards last weekend against Princeton. But with Harvard approaching tomorrow, the team has remained consistent in its preparation. Roberts has prepared by studying the opponent, paying attention to his fundamentals during practice and executing his reads.

“As this year has gone on, our whole team has done a good job of sticking to the process,” Roberts said. “This week is Yale-Harvard, but we understand what got us here was sticking to the process and working our tails off. The minute we start thinking about this game as anything more than an opportunity to play alongside each other is the minute we lose touch with what has made us successful.”

The season culminates tomorrow in Cambridge under the bright lights of national television, and the offense will look to Roberts to lead the way.

Contact ASHLEY WU at ashley.e.wu@yale.edu .

Tyler Varga, one-of-a-kind running back

BY JAMES BADAS STAFF REPORTER When one imagines a running back with a bodybuilder’s physique storming down the gridiron with the balance and agility of a downhill skier, one can get a sense of the nightmare Ivy League defenses have dealt with in preparing for running back Tyler Varga ’15 the past three seasons.

The Ecology & Evolutionary Biology major certainly has genetics on his side. Varga’s parents, John and Hannele, are athletic specimens in their own right. His mother is a skillful alpine skier; his father, meanwhile, was once Mr. Eastern Canada thanks to his bodybuilding efforts.

Varga’s stats speak for themselves. Thus far in his senior campaign for Yale, the tailback who grew up in Kitchener, Ontario, after being born in Sweden, has racked up 1,296 yards on the ground and 23 total touchdowns in nine games.

Those 23 touchdowns match the total from running back Mike McLeod’s ’09 spectacular 2007 season. With three touchdowns on the ground against Harvard, Varga would equal McLeod’s alltime Yale record for most rushing touchdowns in a season.

“Records are made to be broken,” McLeod said. “I broke a lot, but I left a lot in place. [Varga’s] really had a tremendous year.”

In a Yale career abbreviated by his transfer from the University of Western Ontario following his freshman year and an injury-riddled season a year ago, Varga has nonetheless produced whenever he has suited up.

A typical Yale football player

has the opportunity to play 40 games over the course of his career. Varga has only played in 23, yet his 2,858 rushing yards — good for a spectacular 124.3 per game — are fifth-best in Yale’s storied history. 157 rushing yards on Saturday would catapult Varga to third, passing Yale legends Dick Jauron ’73 and Rashad Bartholomew ’01.

The man who helped guide the careers of McLeod and Bartholomew, two pillars of the pantheon of great backs Yale has produced, is Yale running backs coach Larry Ciotti.

Records are made to be broken. I broke a lot, but I left a lot in place. [Varga’s] really had a tremendous year.

MIKE MCLEOD ’09 “[Varga] is a great pass catcher, tremendous blocker, and his running style is best described as a skilled runner that hits defenders like the deployment of a nuclear warhead,” Ciotti said. “Any [National Football League] team would like to have a running back with those attributes.”

Varga’s eye-popping numbers, along with his unique brand of athleticism, has turned him into a top professional prospect.

He is ranked the No. 2 prospect for next year’s Canadian Football League draft, an avenue he might pursue should an opportunity in the NFL not present itself.

But the prospect of playing on Saturdays, let alone Sundays, all appeared to be in jeopardy not that long ago.

The most devastating of athletic injuries often cause the victims to lose the ability to ever play that sport again. In Varga’s case, he nearly lost a foot.

In his final high school game, with colleges across Canada, as well as a few in America paying close attention, Varga tore his peroneal tendon, a muscle connecting the calf to the foot. Doctors soon began to worry his foot might be in jeopardy, as compartment syndrome dangerously restricted the blood flow in his lower leg.

Undeterred, Varga plowed through the injury. At Western Ontario, Varga earned Rookie of the Year honors. When he reached out to Yale head coach Tony Reno in the offseason, the Bulldogs’ newly hired leader was waiting with open arms.

Since coming to the Bulldogs, he has consistently won over his teammates, even if they were at first caught off guard by the sheer size of their tailback.

“The first day of fall camp my freshman year, he came in and was one of the largest running backs I’d ever seen in my life,” offensive guard Mason Friedline ’17 said. “He looked like he could wrestle a bear or something — he was jacked out of his mind. But he was the friendliest guy in the world and immediately introduced himself to the freshmen.”

Varga’s transfer started out seamlessly, and the Elis had appeared to struck Canadian gold. In 2012, Varga led the nation in all-purpose yardage per game, doing it all for

STAT OF THE DAY 70

KEN YANAGISAWA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Running back Tyler Varga ’15 has been instrumental to the Yale offense, contributing 55 percent of the Bulldogs’ rushing yards. the Bulldogs as a rusher, a kick returner and, when injury knocked out all four of Yale’s quarterbacks for that year’s Columbia game, a quarterback as well. Remarkably, Varga set a record that day as well, compiling the most yards on the ground for a quarterback in Yale history with 220 yards on 25 carries.

The senior finished the season with 935 rushing yards in eight games, never dipping below 91

yards in any contest that season.

Last year’s campaign saw Varga limited by injuries, missing four games entirely and carrying the ball just five times in the season finale against Harvard.

“Obviously being healthy for the full season is the number one goal,” Varga said regarding his preparation for this season.

“Either you’re out or your performance is limited, so you want

to be as close to 100 percent as possible … that’s the main focus every week.”

It comes as no surprise, then, that Reno echoed Ciotti, albeit with fewer words, when asked if he expects to see Varga continuing his career in the NFL next year.

“Yes,” Reno said.

Contact JAMES BADAS at james.badas@yale.edu .

THE NUMBER OF PASSING YARDS MORGAN ROBERTS ’16 HAS REMAINING UNTIL HE BREAKS THE ALL-TIME SINGLE-SEASON PASSING RECORD. Roberts has thrown for 2,925 yards this season, and if he is able to throw for another 70 against Harvard, he will break the record.