Yale Daily News — Week of Oct. 23

T H E O L D E ST C O L L E G E DA I LY · FO U N D E D 1 8 7 8

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · VOL. CXLIII, NO. 8 · yaledailynews.com

SigEp to disaffiliate from nationals, go co-ed

BY EMILY TIAN STAFF REPORTER Yale’s chapter of Sigma Phi Epsilon will be no longer— and the organization that will take its place will neither carry Greek letters nor strictly be a brotherhood. The seventy-odd members of the fraternity chapter voted confidentially this September to disaffiliate from its national organization and voted again in October in favor of opening membership to all genders.

“There has been growing discomfort in our relationship with the national organization over recent years, and I feel as though our community has been distant from the national fraternity network for quite some time, both in our involvement and values,” wrote Nathan Somerville ’22, SigEp’s current president, in a statement to the News. “As such, we have taken this chance to build an independent social organization without the limitations once imposed.”

According to Somerville, of the 55 members who voted on Sept. 9, a near unanimous bloc — 98 percent — voted in favor of disaffiliation, which exceeded by around 10 votes the simple majority agreed upon by the chapter to move the decision forward. Members are still deliberating on the name of the new organization.

Internal discussions about the prospect of disaffiliation have been ongoing for years, but the COVID19 pandemic has produced new reasons and more latitude to advance the process now.

The pandemic has forced Greek organizations to either rethink how to appropriately socialize or risk creating hotspots of viral transmission. And fraught conversations about racism and sexism on college campuses have sharpened calls to ban Greek life altogether.

31 High St. Earlier this summer, SigEp nationals sold the Yale chapter’s High Street house to a private owner, which chapter mem-

Virtual outreach increases contact with HS students

bers say partially motivated their disaffiliation vote.

Property records show that the fraternity’s house on 31 High St. was sold by SigEp Housing of Connecticut Delta to Robin Sunrise LLC on Aug. 6 this year. According to Heather Kirk, chief communication officer of the SigEp national headquarters, the selling price of $1,525,000 was above current market value but sold at a loss on the overall property debt. The house has been owned by SigEp since 2006, when it was purchased for $1.1 million. A representative of Robin Sunrise LLC did not respond to a request for comment.

According to Kirk, the house was sold because no chapter members committed to signing a lease for the upcoming academic year.

“SigEp Housing of Connecticut Delta has long supported the chapter at Yale, and even when maintaining the house meant taking a financial loss, if the chapter was committed to signing leases and filling the home’s occupancy, we were willing to help,”

LUCAS HOLTER/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

SigEp nationals sold the Yale chapter’s house on 31 High St. to a private owner earlier this summer.

Kirk wrote. “With no lease commitments, the sale was necessary.”

Fraternity brothers told a different story: The property was an unprofitable investment, increasingly unjustified as national Greek organizations contend with the economic crisis that has put many in financial straits.

BY NATALIE KAINZ STAFF REPORTER A bloom of tulips may soon become one New Haven neighborhood’s final stand against the city’s decision to turn their park into a construction site.

At Monday’s Board of Alders meeting, a majority of alders voted in favor of a plan to trade Kensington Playground — a park in the Dwight neighborhood — for 15 units of affordable housing.

It was the final approval meet-

ing required for the construction project, which has been a topic of debate for more than a year.

Next week, Mayor Justin Elicker will sign an order to put the $30 million project in motion. In the meantime, he’ll have to answer to a group of Dwight residents who are considering civil disobedience as a final recourse of their disapproval.

“We’ve been talking about planting tulip bulbs in Kensington Park right now because [they] will bloom and blossom when the park will be destroyed,” Dwight resi-

ANASTASIA SHILOV/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

As Yale College application deadlines approach, the admissions office is connecting with more prospective students than ever before through their new virtual outreach programs.

According to Mark Dunn, director of outreach and recruitment and associate director at the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, statistics show that more prospective students are engaging with Yale’s outreach programs than they SEE OUTREACH PAGE 4

SEE SIGEP PAGE 4

FOKP consider Kensington protest

More high school students are participating in Yale Admissions events this year thanks to their online nature.

BY AMELIA DAVIDSON STAFF REPORTER

Past occupants of the house paid rent to SigEp Housing of Connecticut Delta, which used to run and maintain the property. Under the new ownership, both members and non-members of the fra-

LILY DORSTEWITZ/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Alders gave final approval to an affordable housing project to replace Kensington Playground on Monday.

dent Nia Campinha-Bacote DIV ’21 told the News. Any planting of flowers would be illegal pursuant to Section 19-5 of the New Haven Code of Ordinances.

“It would be a symbolic act to show that life is abundant here and [the park] has the capacity to do that,” she said.

Campinha-Bacote is a member of Friends of Kensington Playground or FOKP — a group that formed several months ago in opposition to the housing deal. According to FOKP member Patricia Wallace, the organization has requested a meeting with Elicker for mediation on the decision. In addition to planting tulips, FOKP has discussed singing songs about growth and holding hands around the park as the January 2021 construction date approaches. Campinha-Bacote said these acts are intended to show the city that Dwight residents still care about what happens to their neighborhood.

According to a profile conducted by the Dwight Community Management Team this January, more than half of the residents living in the area are low-income.

Over 60 percent of the neighborhood’s 4,000 inhabitants are people of color.

SEE KENSINGTON PAGE 5

DeLauro faces opposition in upcoming Congressional election

BY SAI RAYALA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The congressional race for New Haven’s 3rd district is heating up as the incumbent, 15-term House representative Rosa DeLauro, faces opposition from Republican opponent Margaret Streicker.

New Haven Congresswoman and Democrat Rosa DeLauro is running for her 16th term in Congress. DeLauro, who has been in Congress for nearly 30 years, is a familiar face in the district and has faced little opposition in past elections. Political analyses such as the Cook Political Report have stated that DeLauro is favored to win this election as well. However, Streicker, her GOP challenger and a wealthy real estate developer, is putting up a solid opposition.

“Unlike the incumbent, I have spent my entire career in the real world,” Streicker said. “I have not been in a place in government

where money somehow magically appears. Like most of this district, I go out and I earn money.”

Streicker, a new face to the political scene with no prior experience in office, told the News that she sees the opportunity as a service to the country.

She called DeLauro’s record “30 years of failed policy,” claiming that DeLauro’s time in office had led to lost jobs and a struggling economy. Streicker’s agenda is focused on creating jobs, improving the economy, supporting local law enforcement — she earned the endorsement of the Connecticut Fraternal Order of Police — and providing accessible and affordable health care for all. Streicker said that her background in business has given her the experience needed to tackle these problems.

DeLauro, for her part, has criticized the business background of her opponent.

“Her knowledge and her business is about being a slumlord

in New York and being fined by the Attorney General of New York of over a million dollars for harassing and abusing tenants,” DeLauro said.

According to the New York Times, in 2015, Streicker’s former real estate firm, Newcastle Realty Services, was ordered to pay $1.5 million in fines and legal fees for inducing tenants to vacate a building through illegal buyout agreements. The firm did not admit any wrongdoing.

Despite her many terms in Congress, DeLauro told the News there is still much she is excited to do if she were to win reelection, including passing legislation on equal wages for women, national paid sick days and paid family and medical leave. She also said she plans to focus on the child care industry — which she said has become particularly important during the pandemic.

As chair of the Labor, Health SEE DELAURO PAGE 5

CROSS CAMPUS

INSIDE THE NEWS

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1970.

COLLECTIVE

The New Haven Women's Liberation movement pickets Mory's in protest of its men-only membership policy. The demonstrators report that their efforts convinced several patrons of the club to eat elsewhere, but they also faced harassment from diners.

Membership to Mory's was opened to women in 1974.

The Neo Collective — Yale’s first Black arts collective — held its first welcome event for Yale students and New Haven community members via Zoom. Page 6 ARTS

EARTH

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

DeLauro, who has been in Congress for nearly 30 years, is a familiar face in the district and has faced little opposition in past elections.

A study found that the projected human population of 10 billion in 2050 could live on the planet at a decent standard of living with 40 percent of today’s emissions.

Page 8 SCITECH

DIVESTMENT

On Thursday, University President Peter Salovey created a committee to offer new investment practices for fossil fuels. Page 11 UNIVERSITY

SCIENTISTS

Yale scientists and coaches weigh in on the feasibility of restarting athletic competition in the spring amid COVID-19. Page 14 SPORTS

PAGE 2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION GUEST COLUMNIST HANWEN ZHANG

GUEST COLUMNISTS B L A K E S C H U T Z A N D E VA N WA L K E R - W E L L S

WeChat, we feud E

very Saturday at 8 p.m., I settle in front of my phone.

My grandparents’ pixelated faces fill up the screen, moving around in time-lapsed slices. Their voices trip over semi-frozen video frames and five-second audio lags, further compounding my novice-level Chinese. It’s frustrating.

It’s horrifyingly messy.

But we’ve somehow always made it work, setting aside that precious one hour during which I give life updates, vent my frustrations and watch as my grandparents show me everything from their latest pet goldfish to their bathroom renovation project. Our words, clipped and slightly crippled, hobble across 12 time zones as we take in the precious few waking hours we have together.

Our faces are squished into tiny adjacent squares on a 4-inch display, the closest we ever get to erasing the 6,000 miles of open ocean that lies between us.

That might change.

I’m one of the few 19 million WeChat users in America. With the app’s future in limbo, the fate of my weekly grandparent-grandson bonding time walks a thin tightrope.

WeChat joins the likes of TikTok, coming to close brushes with outright bans in the midst of worsening U.S.-China relations and revealing just how perilously fragile our modern-day relationships are.

Over the past decade, the Chinese government has steadily unrolled what is arguably the most extensive censorship system in the world and a notoriously self-sufficient, airtight media culture of its own. Among TikTok, QQ and Sina Weibo, WeChat is China’s ultimate substitute for American tech: it’s Facebook, WhatsApp and FaceTime, all rolled into a single app — and it’s the only video-calling platform that exists in both China and the U.S. For most Chinese Americans caught in the interstices between two rival political systems, WeChat becomes a messenger.

It’s the lifeline that allows tearyeyed immigrants to see their loved ones at home. It’s the virtual cashier through which a handful of mom-and-pop stores run their transactions. It’s an unlikely tool for activism, reminding a Chinese American population with traditionally low voter turnout to visit the ballot boxes and allowing users to engage in political conversations at times. And for a Chinese-stuttering, second-generation Asian American college student, it’s his only tether to his grandparents in Shanghai.

But like all technology, WeChat is a double-edged sword. In a nation where the government controls both legal and business spheres, all Chinese tech companies must effectively agree to aid censorship and surveillance efforts. They do so by collecting personal information and relaying it to government databases when necessary, hunting down criminal suspects, weeding out dissent. The result is a largely compromised social media experience that falls just shy of Orwellian. Accounts of users who spread pro-democracy rumors are promptly suspended; protest logistics are traced; videos and articles are culled meticulously to adhere to a single national narrative

The U.S. government, then, should certainly be wary of an app that potentially harvests its users’ data for an antagonistic regime. But an all-out ban — disrupting the lives of millions of Chinese Americans — is the equivalent of taking an eye for an eye, especially when an equally viable, less draconian option still sits on the table: separating national security from the sphere of private life by forbidding government workers from downloading WeChat onto their smartphones. It would be a compromise that protects confidential government information while allowing the millions who rely on the app to continue at their own discretion. Indeed, if the administration successfully manages to shuffle the platforms off the App Store, it will have waded deep into uncharted waters: The US government has never attempted to suspend an avenue of communication, not even during wartime. Protecting national security does not — and should not — come at the cost of cutting down total communication.

Beyond national security concerns, the Trump administration has also alleged that the app spreads misinformation. But for Trump, this only adds icing to a decision layered rich with irony.

Rather than target rampant Facebook misinformation campaigns, guard his home turf against the imminent perils of Russian election meddling, or even bother to fact-check his own daily deluge of narcissistically delusional tweets, the Trump administration is attempting to tighten its grip over a large swath of the Chinese American population.

Amid mounting international tensions, Trump’s threatened WeChat and TikTok bans come across as more retaliatory than reasoned — aimed at payback, not prudence.

For now, though, the bans have been blocked. U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler brought Trump’s efforts to a temporary halt, issuing an injunction that cited “scant little evidence that its effective ban of WeChat for all U.S. users addresses those concerns” and concerns over the First Amendment. There’s still hope that our nation, priding itself in its democratic tradition of free speech, will live to see another day.

But uncertainty lingers, just as looming and present as ever: The U.S. government could appeal to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to overturn the ruling at any time.

So despite the promises of 5G networks and LTE, I still hold my breath every week when I dial to make a video call. And I’ve realized that the scramble over WeChat is at heart a frighteningly apt metaphor for all the relationships in our 21st-century lives: fraught, volatile, tenuous.

We bask in the light of glowing rectangles and insulate ourselves. We retreat safely in our Facebook and Twitter echo chambers, closing the doors and bolting shut the locks, until we discover all that’s left connecting us is a single, green-colored app.

At least my grandparents still keep their trusty, 20-year-old plastic landline sitting on their end table.

Just in case.

HANWEN ZHANG is a first year in Benjamin Franklin college. Contact him at hanwen.zhang.hhz3@yale.edu .

You’re not covered O

ne low-income student wa s fo rce d to pay thousands of dollars for off-campus mental health therapy. Another gave up trying to find a therapist because the process was too long and too complicated. Others described being denied access to muchneeded specialty care for autoimmune conditions.

What were these students told about the Yale Health Plan’s failure to cover the health care they needed? Pay out of pocket — or go buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchanges, if they can afford it.

In April, we wrote about how lack of clarity over what kinds of health services would be covered under the Yale Health Plan raised significant red flags about coverage for off-campus students. We asked students, “are you covered?” After a Qualtrics survey of students of two Yale graduate schools and free dissemination, we received responses from 61 college and graduate and professional students. Their individual stories are renewed evidence that, for many students, the Yale Health Plan is inadequate.

For too many Yale students, particularly the significant number now living off campus or outside of New Haven, the answer to our original question is, “you are not covered.”

In response to an inquiry a b o u t t h i s p i e ce , C h i e f Executive Officer of Yale Health Paul Genecin reiterated that the Yale Health Plan is designed to be a limited, health m a i n te n a n ce o rga n i za t i o n coverage plan. In an email, Genecin said, “Lacking the national network of national insurers, Yale … coverage is designed for students who spend the majority of their time in New Haven.”

In the spring, we imagined that Yale Health’s limited scope of coverage would stop offcampus students from seeking potentially expensive care in the first place. Yale’s prior authorization guidance does not guarantee that authorized care will ultimately be covered and the health plan excludes preventative care. We were mostly wrong: roughly 40 percent of survey respondents continued to seek elective care. However, roughly half of the respondents said that u n c e r ta i n ty a b o u t wh a t services would be covered changed whether they sought care they otherwise might have.

We were right about what we least wanted to be true — students who did seek treatment faced a number of obstacles. Of the fifteen s t u d e n t s w h o r e p o r te d receiving mental health care since March, six said their care was not covered by the Yale Health Plan. Four of sixteen students who filled prescription medications while off campus noted increased out-of-pocket costs, and another three students noted logistical challenges obtaining their medicine.

Many survey respondents found the system opaque,

inconsistent and difficult to navigate. Over half said that Yale insurance policies were unclear and six students described the policies as “ ex t re m e ly u n c l ea r.” Fo r example, one student’s longterm therapist was covered, b u t a p syc h i a t r i s t wh o could prescribe necessary medications was not.

In an effort to provide mental health services to off-campus students, Yale contracted with Magellan Health, a managed health care company. Student complaints about their experiences with Magellan were common and experiences seemed sharply bifurcated — some students found it easy to use, and others found it took weeks of persistent effort.

One student described calling Yale Health to set up an initial intake appointment, waiting several weeks for the hour-long session, calling Magellan to get prior authorization and waiting to receive it — all before finding a therapist. Expecting students struggling with mental illness to engage in such an extended and complicated process is unreasonable.

FOR TOO MANY YALE STUDENTS, PARTICULARLY THE SIGNIFICANT NUMBER NOW LIVING OFF CAMPUS OR OUTSIDE OF NEW HAVEN, THE ANSWER TO OUR ORIGINAL QUESTION IS, “YOU ARE NOT COVERED.” One undergraduate student found the Yale Health Basic Plan useless, because they were off campus this spring, when they needed care the most: a family crisis in which members of their family contracted COVID-19.

The student, who has a chronic condition requiring regular care from specialists, wasn’t able to get any of the specialist care they needed under the Basic Plan. The student is now uninsured because the Yale plan covers so little of their needs — and because the system was so opaque, they said.

The uncertainty about what care is covered is especially problematic given the number of complaints about contradictory advice from Yale Health care providers and administrative staff. Seven survey responses ex p l i c i t ly re fe re n ce d t h e difficulty of communicating with Yale Health. Lack of clarity in insurance policies can be a major barrier to seeking and receiving treatment. The undergraduate student who

dropped the Yale Health Plan explained, “I had no idea how to do the kind of self-advocacy I needed to do, especially right now.”

At at least one graduate school, students returning to New Haven were told explicitly that if they anticipated being off campus and needing prescriptions or doctors’ visits covered, they should buy insurance on their state’s private insurance exchange.

Unfortunately, such insurance is often significantly more ex p e n s ive t h a n t h e Ya l e Health Plan, rarely covered by financial aid and requires students to navigate frequently c o m p l i c a te d h ea l t h c a re marketplace systems without support.

Other large universities p ro v i d e s t u d e n t h e a l t h insurance through partnerships w i t h a n a t i o n a l i n s u re r, meaning that students can still access in-network doctors when they’re not at school. The Yale Health Plan, however, is “self-funded,” meaning that the University provides its own insurance to students.

Often, self-funded institutions c l a i m t h a t t h ey p rov i d e higher-quality, better tailored insurance for students. In Yale’s case, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed how narrow and flawed self-funded plans are.

An informal s u rvey conducted by students in a subset of the University’s population is insufficient to show anything other than that some members of our community are struggling.

Yale Health should conduct its own thorough, prospective evaluation of its insurance policies and publish the results.

It should also coordinate more formally and transparently with the student body, for example, through a student b o dy a dv i so ry b oa rd o r representative.

In the near-term, Yale Health should create an advising service for off-campus students se e k i n g h e l p o n p r iva te insurance exchanges. The University should also consider giving such students financial assistance to ensure they are able to afford private insurance offering coverage comparable to the on-campus Yale Health Plan. Yale should also consider a long-term partnership with a national insurer. Lastly, Yale must be a leader in advocating for national policy change, including reform of telemedicine laws to increase access to care.

During a period when many are suffering — from family job loss to loss of family members — it is critical that Yale Health make clear, to students and to its own staff, how you can get covered.

BLAKE SHULTZ is a JD candidate at Yale Law School and an MD candidate at Yale School of Medicine.

EVAN WALKER-WELLS ’13+1 is a JD candidate at Yale Law School and MBA candidate at the School of Management. Contact them at blake.shultz@yale.edu and evan.walker-wells@yale.edu .

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Letter (Oct. 20)

I am the father of Dan Lewis ’09, and I am writing to update the Yale community about Dan’s status and progress since he was catastrophically injured in the summer of 2007, following his sophomore year, while participating in the Habitat for Humanity Bicycle Challenge, which has since been suspended.

Dan’s classmates remember him lugging his cello all over campus — he played in the Yale Symphony Orchestra and several chamber music ensembles, and he co-founded the cello rock group Low Strung.

Dan’s terrible injuries occurred when a speeding teenage motorist hit him on a rural highway in western Kansas at roughly the 2,000-mile mark of the bike ride. Despite slim chances of survival and roughly a year of hospitalization that included months of coma and many critical medical episodes, Dan has persisted and is now living at home in Denver. He has been medically stable in recent years and has regained some functional abilities. His language skills, both receptive and expressive, have improved; he can do some simple math and spelling; and he can pluck and bow some basic patterns on his cello. More complete details of Dan’s story can be

found at danlewisfoundation.org, the website address of the Dan Lewis Foundation for Brain Regeneration Research.

The Dan Lewis Foundation for Brain Regeneration Research was established in 2019 with the encouragement and assistance of a remarkable group of world-class neuroscientists and biomedical innovators. The mission of the foundation is to research the potential of new pharmacologic agents — two examples are genomically targeted small molecule medicines and antisense oligonucleotides — that may stimulate neuronal repletion, axonal regrowth and synaptic reconnections. Such research holds promise to accelerate the recovery of the scores of thousands of persons who are in the chronic phase of long-term adjustment to moderate and severe brain injuries like Dan’s. Please visit the website for more information about the foundation’s research agenda and to consider making a donation.

Anyone wishing to send a note to Dan can do so via his email: dan.dise.lewis@gmail.com. He will reply to all messages.

HAL LEWIS is a 1973 graduate of Jonathan Edwards College and father of Dan Lewis ’09.

Contact him and Dan at dan.dise.lewis@gmail.com .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 3

NEWS

“I have oatmeal every morning with whole milk, bananas, and cinnamon, and it’s just the best thing ever. ” KOURTNEY KARDASHIAN AMERICAN MEDIA PERSONALITY

New Haven to participate in national school integration, diversity project

BY LARISSA JIMENEZ, ZAPORAH PRICE AND CHRISTIAN ROBLES STAFF REPORTERS Two prominent New Haven institutions will participate in a nationwide initiative that will seek to increase discussion on the effectiveness of school integration and diversification practices.

The Century Foundation, a New York-based progressive think tank, kicked off the inaugural Bridges Collaborative project on Oct. 15. Earlier this year, it selected two New Haven organizations, New Haven Public Schools and Elm City Communities, among 56 project contributors to participate in the program. Selections also include other school districts, charter schools and affordable housing organizations across Connecticut and the country.

According to the foundation’s website, the initiative will sponsor virtual conversations and programming, provide financial resources for organizations to attend events free of charge and offer access to other resources — like survey instruments and curriculum — “to help further the goals of increasing access to diverse, rigorous, integrated, and inclusive schools and neighborhoods.” City leaders have praised the new project for its cost-effectiveness and potential benefits for New Haven residents.

“The Bridges Collaborative brings about an exciting opportunity for New Haven to partner with school districts and organizations … to discuss diversity and to provide equitable opportunities for our students,” NHPS Assistant Superintendent Keisha Redd-Hannans told the News. “It will move us steps closer to achieving equity across the district.”

Redd-Hannans said NHPS joins the Bridges Collaborative as a school district with a long history of crafting school integration policies. The school’s investment in magnet schools, Redd Hannans said, is a reflection of these policies. The district’s magnet schools operate under a policy that reserves spaces for students from Greater New Haven suburbs in an attempt to diversify the district’s schools. The policy has attracted both controversy and praise.

The district’s Choice and Enrollment Office will spearhead the efforts in the Bridges Collaborative. Others, including a local school principal, the district’s head of research and Redd-Hannans, will contribute to national workshops and lead local virtual meetings for the New Haven community. The national group held its first public virtual meetings last Thursday and Friday. During the first, Former U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. gave a keynote address and members of the Bridges Collaborative answered questions.

Last Friday, Redd-Hannans said that student presenters talked about their experiences and how they felt isolated in school because of either their race or sexual preferences. She said that the discussion highlighted the need for NHPS to be inclusive of all students, especially when designing programming and social activities.

She expects the local New Haven group to meet in January with leaders from other Connecticut school districts and participating organizations.

“What I hope to see movement around over several years is [the development of] a broad, multi-sector, multi-organizational, and diverse coalition that is pushing for legislative change in the state,” said Karen DuBois-Walton ’89, the president of Elm City Communities, the Housing Authority of New Haven.

DuBois-Walton said she hoped the large number of Connecticut-based organizations participating in the initiative will collaborate on ideas for housing and education policies. She said she is excited by the network of like-purposed organizations the initiative will offer Elm City Communities.

She told the News she appreciates the initiative’s focus on both the “culturally competent curriculum” and a “diverse teaching force” of schools, as well as the diversity of living communities. “[t’s important] that they’re going home to a community that’s diverse,” said DuBois-Walton. “That we live amongst each other and go to school amongst each other.”

Outside of New Haven, the Century Foundation selected five

other Connecticut organizations due to its interest in the effects of the state’s long history of ambitious school integration policy. For instance, the state’s 1969 Racial Imbalance Law required schools to maintain minority — non-white, non-Hispanic — student enrollment numbers somewhere between 25 percent less and 25 percent more than the district average.

In an email to the News, Halley Potter ’08— a senior fellow at the Century Foundation — provided context on school integration across Connecticut.

“Connecticut has some of the highest levels of racial and socioeconomic inequality in the country, but it has also been home to some of the most robust efforts to address segregation and integrate schools,” Potter said. “Greater Hartford’s inter-district magnet schools are an example, as well as Stamford Public Schools’ efforts to integrate their schools and classrooms.”

Potter said that the current form of the Racial Imbalance Law requires each school district to disclose the racial composition of the teaching staff and the percentage of minority students and students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. When a school’s minority enrollment is more than 25 percentage points above or below the district average for a specific grade level, the school is deemed “racially imbalanced.”

The state then approves and monitors districts’ plans for addressing the imbalance.

Potter believes this state context provides a “good starting point for addressing segregation,” alongside “exciting work on school integration” that New Haven is doing across sectors.

Stefan Lallinger — a fellow at the Century Foundation and the director of the Bridges Collaborative — told the News in an email about TCF’s motivations.

“We launched the Bridges Collaborative to provide the infrastructure for collaboration as well as support to organizations from all across the country who are pursuing the timely and critical work of creating more integrated and inclusive classrooms, schools, and neighborhoods,” Lallinger said. “More than

YIMING ZHANG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

NHPS and Elm City Communities will participate in a national school integration project for free after being selected by the Bridge Collaborative. six decades after Brown, at a time when many schools and districts are as segregated as they were 60 years ago, practitioners need models of what works, access to best practices and research, and partners in the work.”

Lallinger told the News that New Haven public schools were selected to be a part of this initiative because they “have a long history of supporting magnet schools and choice options intended to promote diversity that have been a boon to integrated schooling options.” He also noted the schools’ commitment to finding solutions to the school segregation that results from “segregated housing patterns.” This commitment, in addition to their past efforts, he said, makes the city “an ideal partner.”

Because of the country’s “profound racial reckoning,” Lallinger said that the moment is opportune “to reignite a movement for integration” — with a focus on the “growing grassroots moment” — after progress has stalled in recent decades. To approach the issue from

a “multi-sector lens,” the collaborative is also working with Elm City Communities and Elm City Montessori, as well as the neighboring Hamden school district.

At last week’s Board of Education meeting, board members were able to hear from DuBois-Walton and Redd-Hannans about the Bridges Collaborative. Many of the board members expressed their support and enthusiasm for initiative.

Board of Education member Larry Conway told the News that he will follow the initiative closely.

He added that he hopes students of all grade levels and ages will benefit from the national project, including the many NHPS students who are living in public housing.

The Century Foundation was founded in 1919 as the Co-operative League.

Contact LARISSA JIMENEZ at larissa.jimenez@yale.edu , ZAPORAH PRICE at zaporah.price@yale.edu and CHRISTIAN ROBLES at christian.robles@yale.edu .

NHPS help English language learners adapt to virtual format

NAT KERMAN/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Kristin Mendoza of Wilbur Cross High School was named New Haven Public Schools Teacher of the Year.

BY LARISSA JIMENEZ AND CHRISTIAN ROBLES STAFF REPORTERS New Haven’s shift to remote education for the start of this year’s fall semester has created disruptions for English language learners, which city teachers, parents and nonprofit leaders have stepped up to alleviate.

In March, New Haven Public Schools closed until the end of the 2019-20 school year. Since the start of the 2020-21 school year on Sept. 3, schools have remained closed, though the city is looking to reopen schools in person using a hybrid learning model on Nov. 9. During this time, ELL students have had to learn how to use unfamiliar technology, find food and other aid from nonprofit organizations and adapt to virtual learning environments. Community members have mobilized resources and changed teaching strategies to adjust to new COVID-19 policies.

“The instructional piece is hard.

We have days where we have a lot of fun and we have days where I feel like I am teaching into the void,” said Wilbur Cross High School ELL teacher Kristin Mendoza in an interview with the News. “It’s hard to draw out participation, it’s hard to get teenagers to turn on their cameras.”

Mendoza said that teaching her ELL students virtually has challenged her and her students. She hopes that the city’s hybrid reopening plan will operate smoothly so that she can return to in-person instruction in a safe manner.

At the beginning of the year, the city of New Haven took steps to ensure that every student had access to an internet-connected device.

Mendoza said that it took a few weeks for students at Wilbur Cross to receive their assigned devices because many students and their parents had changed phone numbers and addresses recently. She said that many of her ELL students have faced issues with access to computer devices that are similar to the problems low-income residents have confronted.

Unique to many ELL students, she noted, is the struggle to learn computer and web applications such as Google Documents due to the language barrier. At one point in the semester, a Spanish-language-predominant student accidentally changed their computer’s language to Chinese, could not change it back and had to send it back to Wilbur Cross for a reset. Mendoza said this left the student without access to an internet device until it could be reset.

Online education has also had

its upsides for Mendoza’s ELL students. Mendoza, who won NHPS teacher of the year this year, told the News that her students have used the opportunity to learn how to work in groups virtually and how to utilize web applications, a skillset Mendoza described as critical.

Additionally, Wilbur Cross’ International Academy has worked with teachers to develop best practices for online teaching.

Despite the newfound virtues of online education, Mendoza said that the loss in human connection has limited the quality of education she can provide her students. She has found that some of her students are hesitant to turn on their cameras while at home, creating an environment she described as a less conducive one for creating bonds with her students. With this in mind, Mendoza said she hopes the district will move along its reopening plan in the near future.

Daniel Diaz, coordinator of parent engagement for New Haven Public Schools, told the News in a phone interview about his efforts to communicate the district’s plans to parents in both English and Spanish via the software Blackboard.

“When COVID-19 closed the schools in March, we gave the par-

ents information in both English and Spanish [letting them know] the schools were closed,” Diaz said. “We shifted to supporting families in many ways.”

Diaz said that he has been communicating with parents “on a daily basis” in English, Spanish and other languages. He has focused on connecting the parents of the approximately 4,000 ELL-designated students with services through organizations like JUNTA, Christian Community Action and ARTE, Inc. He told the News that the combined district and nonprofit efforts have, in particular, sought to ensure that families have adequate access to food items.

Diaz told the News that the district’s efforts to help its ELL students often spread into broader efforts to support the city’ ever-growing immigrant community. These efforts have continued during the pandemic. Together with the BOE’s Office of Youth, Family and Community Engagement, the district has worked to help unaccompanied youth prior to and especially during the pandemic, providing them and other families in need with coats and emergency food supplies. He added that he has worked to connect many undocumented New Haveners with organizations and resources to help them cover rent.

He described how Guilford High School senior Gabriela Garcia-Perez — founder and captain of the Community Integration Mentoring Program — created an initiative called “kids helping kids” to bridge language barriers between New Haven ELL middle school students and students from neighboring communities. Garcia-Perez’s organization also organized multiple food drives in April and May. Part of the collection of food items and school supplies went to the Semilla Collective, a local nonprofit whose work targets the city’s immigrant community. The district has also served hot breakfast and lunch at over 41 public schools in an attempt to alleviate the burden on parents during the pandemic.

“What happened with COVID was that it unveiled the real needs in our community,” Diaz said. “New Haven is a very unique family. We are a family. We all do help each other and the

immigrant community are people who are fighters.”

Bahati Kanyamanza, manager of youth programs and education advocacy at Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services, or IRIS, told the News that he has heard and worked to address concerns from various refugee families about their children’s ability to adapt to online education.

“For kids who have come to the U.S. and don’t know English … remote learning is not working for them,” Kanyamanza said. “One big challenge is technology. Parents and kids don’t know the technology and English becomes a barrier.”

As a Congolese-born refugee who learned English after resettling in the United States, Kanyamanza told the News that he has come to see how in-person learning is more efficient for second language acquisition and comprehension. After hearing that students from some refugee families were struggling to log onto class on a consistent basis at the start of the school year, Kanyamanza reached out to parents to familiarize them with remote learning applications such as Zoom and Google Classroom. After coordinating via phone yielded unsatisfactory results, he safely visited homes to help students navigate their schedules and transition between Zoom calls.

Kanyamanza said that the families he has worked with have faced other obstacles, such as a lack of physical space and an increase in family conflicts. As a result of schools closing, parents and their kids have had to share the same spaces for a prolonged period of time during the pandemic. He says that kids often struggle to consistently attend their classes, which results in disciplinary action from the parents.

As the pandemic persists, he said that IRIS will continue to help translate school and other documents for clients, connect struggling students with teachers and tutors and help address student attendance and technology.

“If it’s an issue IRIS can fix, we fix it,” Kanyamanza said.

Wilbur Cross High School is located at 181 Mitchell Dr. Contact LARISSA JIMENEZ at larissa.jimenez@yale.edu and CHRISTIAN ROBLES at christian.robles@yale.edu .

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“There is no sense in crying over spilt milk. Why bewail what is done and cannot be recalled?”

SOPHOCLES TRAGEDIAN

New co-ed organization to replace SigEp “A lot of those gender barriers weren’t sensible to begin with, and make even less sense when you have the type of understanding about gender a large number of people in our generation have,” said one member on the coeducation committee, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution.

He added that the pandemic’s halt on most social life also has given the group greater opportunity to “plan it out and put some real thought into it.”

KAREN LIN/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The house is currently undergoing renovation, and the three Greek letters that had formerly marked the property have disSIGEP FROM PAGE 1 ternity are eligible to rent apartments in the house. The house is currently undergoing renovation, and the three Greek letters that had formerly marked the property have disappeared.

When nationals sold the High Street property in the summer, the chapter had few reasons to stay affiliated. By severing ties, the chapter would no longer owe dues to the national organization — seen by some as a barrier to entry.

The disaffiliation process Although current fraternity brothers have voted to disaffiliate, the process itself is a knotty undertaking involving months, if not years, of legal guidance and paperwork.

SigEp brothers have already notified the National Board of Directors that they seek to relinquish the Connecticut Delta charter, which governs the Yale chapter. The request is pending board review, according to Kirk.

“We believe students at Yale would benefit from the distinct community that SigEp provides — one focused on leadership, personal and professional development experiences,” Kirk wrote in

an emailed statement to the News.

“We are disappointed that the chapter is seeking disaffiliation after having not taken advantage of these opportunities in recent years, seeing fraternity and sorority life at Yale as a primarily social outlet.”

Should the national organization stall the brothers’ attempt to close the Yale charter, SigEp members suggested that they could alternatively resign from the chapter en masse. The national organization could then still keep the chapter open without membership and initiate a second attempt to invite new Yale members into the fraternity.

Disaffiliation past and present Seeking disaffiliation is not new among Yale’s Greek-lettered organizations. LEO, another fraternity on High Street, formally broke from Sigma Alpha Epsilon nationals in August of 2018. Then-chapter members of LEO expressed that the decision came because they no longer wished to pay dues to their national organization or depend on its support. LEO’s formal announcement, which came in 2016, came after allegations of sexism and racism arose against Yale’s SAE chapter and its national organization.

And when Fence Club, a popular coed social group, was revived

in 2007 after decades of dormancy, it did so sans its original affiliation to Psi Upsilon.

Unfettered by national SigEp policy, which restricts membership to any individual who identifies as a man, the disaffiliating chapter’s members voted to go coed in the first week of October.

Held after a chapter-wide town hall discussion led by a committee of five members, 96 percent of those who voted supported opening membership to all genders, according to Somerville.

Several members explained that the organization’s decision to gender integrate naturally followed disaffiliation.

“This has been a point of major conversation within the chapter for many years now, and given our group’s disaffiliation from the national fraternity, we saw this as an opportunity to finally propose the change that I believe is long overdue,” Somerville wrote to the News.

The decision marks the second time a single-gender fraternity at Yale has transitioned to become coed. None of Yale’s other single-gender fraternities have announced any concurrent initiatives to accept women and nonbinary members.

Greek life and gender inclusivity The vote also occurs in the context of wide-ranging conversations of gender inclusivity and sexual violence on college campuses.

According to the 2019 Association of American Universities’ Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Misconduct administered at Yale, female students reported that fraternity houses were the most common location where nonconsensual sexual touching takes place.

Another report released by the Committee on Social Life and Community Values last year surveyed Yale College students on their social experiences at Yale. Nearly half of the overall respondent pool noted they had attended fraternity parties, though students expressed complaints on the inaccessibility of Greek spaces and their dominant presence in Yale’s social climate. Such comments, the report notes, frequently made mention of “social exclusivity, hyper-sexualization, and class/racial stratification.”

Engender, a student coalition founded in 2016, has been spearheading efforts to increase equity and inclusivity in social spaces at Yale. When Engender petitioned single-gender fraternities at Yale to open their rush processes in 2017 and 2018, SigEp was the only fraternity that allowed women and nonbinary students to participate, though they notified the prospective members that they would not be granted bids due to national policy.

The chapter has seen controversy in its 17 years. In 2011, a SigEp brother driving a U-Haul truck carrying beer kegs at the Yale-Harvard football game tailgate killed one pedestrian and injured two others. The national SigEp fraternity, the local Yale chapter and more than 80 of the Yale chapter’s former members settled lawsuits

related to the accident in 2016 after a lengthy litigation process.

Along with the University and eight other fraternities at Yale, SigEp was also a defendant in a 2019 lawsuit launched by Anna McNeil ’20, Ry Walker ’20 and Ellie Singer ’21, three of Engender’s co-founders, on Title IX claims of gender discrimination. The lawsuit was dismissed on all but one count by the District Court of Connecticut this past January.

Singer and Walker wrote to the News that they are “not surprised” SigEp has chosen this moment to disaffiliate and “wish them well on their efforts.”

“We hope others follow suit instead of continuing with a broken status quo,” they wrote. “The time for gender equity has long since arrived.”

Planning is still underway this semester for a formal open rush process at the beginning of the next semester, contingent on public health guidelines. The new group has not released any formal policies for the upcoming rush cycle. Since first-years will not be on campus, the group plans to primarily recruit a cohort of non-male members from the class of 2023.

The anonymous coeducation committee member acknowledged that the “power imbalance and age imbalance, coupled with the gender dynamic” of male upperclassmen inducting younger women and non-binary members could make the rush process “tricky.”

“How do we ease into this as best we can while being sensitive to having a history of being all male?” he asked.

Somerville explained that the structure and membership operations of the new organization will be largely similar to previous years, though the recruitment process is under review for revision.

He also confirmed that the organization has no plans to expand its size of membership.

“I believe this can only positively impact campus culture at Yale — there is no good reason why men should have a monopoly on the social scene here,” Somerville said. “I sincerely hope more organizations also follow suit, as this will undoubtedly lead to a healthier and more equitable social climate.”

Greek chapters are not formally recognized by Yale as official student organizations.

Contact EMILY TIAN at emily.tian@yale.edu .

More students reached as Yale Admissions recruits online OUTREACH FROM PAGE 1 would in a typical year. From April 1 to Sept. 15, 39 percent more students registered for a virtual information session than students who registered for in-person information sessions in the same period in 2019. In addition, three times more users took a virtual tour from April 1 to Aug. 1 than during that same period in 2019. And in 2020, over 47,000 prospective students have registered for joint virtual events featuring Yale, as opposed to around 8,500 prospective students in 2019.

“Although I wish prospective students could visit Yale in person, I am delighted that we could connect with tens of thousands of students safely in their homes this year,” Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan wrote in an email to the News. “I hope the new programming inspires high-achieving students from all backgrounds to include Yale in their college search.”

According to Dunn, when the admissions office realized they would be doing outreach to prospective students online, their first step was to replicate typical in-person programming like information sessions and tours.

They did this by promoting virtual tours and creating online information sessions, which take place on Zoom. These sessions stay interactive by including polling questions and allowing participants to submit questions, Dunn said.

During a normal admissions cycle, Yale admissions officers would also travel around the country and conduct joint information sessions with other colleges and universities. The admissions office has replicated that as well through virtual events with other schools that tend to target a specific geographic region. Dunn said that these have been “very successful” — 4.5 times more students registered for a joint event featuring Yale in 2020 than did so in 2019.

MADELYN KUMAR/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale admissions officers are now able to host more events for students from non-traditional backgrounds.

“We went into this whole outreach cycle, really very aware of what we didn't know,” Dunn told the News. “But it has actually been really helpful to have the impetus to say, let's make a collection of events, and let's record them and then make that content available to folks.”

Senior Assistant Director of Admissions Corinne Smith has worked on the virtual version of joint events between colleges, which would typically be done in the form of group travel. Smith told the News that virtual outreach has “absolutely” changed the demographics of prospective students that Yale is able to reach. She said that the virtual space allows them to target certain geographic locations or demographic groups that they would not be able to while physically traveling.

One example is the Quest for College group travel program,

meant for “high-achieving, low-income students” who might be a good fit for the QuestBridge program. Smith said that the group travel was planned before COVID19, with the expectation that two weeklong trips would reach around 1,000 students total. Instead, the office conducted four virtual programs and garnered 1,000 attendees in the first event alone.

Virtual outreach has also allowed the admissions office to run specific programs geared toward counselors at schools with “high need” populations, in hopes of removing some barriers to entry for first-generation, low-income students, Dunn said.

“The virtual world allows us to reach students in areas that we may not travel to in a given year or even in five years,” Smith wrote in an email to the News. “It opens the doors for students—particularly for those who may not have

the time or funds to visit campus or who might not be in primary or secondary markets where our group trips typically visit.”

For example, Smith noted that this year the office has been able to reach prospective students from Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, all of which are not typically visited in person by admissions officers.

In an effort to reach more students virtually, the admissions office has also revamped their social media presence. They have specifically increased the use of Instagram stories, using photos and videos of campus as well as a “day in the life” series as a means to replicate the in-person touring experience.

Assistant Director of Undergraduate Admissions Christopher Bowman, who is the staff lead on all admissions social media accounts, told the News that the admissions office has always tried

to use social media to “meet students in their spaces” by providing accessible and informal content. This year, however, they have ramped up their social media presence significantly — going from posting “day in the life” content once every two weeks to now posting nearly every weekday.

“Since we can’t [have prospective students on campus in person,] our thought was, well, how can we sort of recreate a Yale experience through social media?”

Bowman said. “Our big project this fall has been these story series on our accounts to showcase different parts of the experience that we feel visitors would have gotten had they come to campus.”

The deadline to submit the early action application to Yale College is Nov. 1.

Contact AMELIA DAVIDSON at amelia.davidson@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

FROM THE FRONT

“You don't put milk in chamomile tea - that's disgusting behavior! That's not right.” LAURA FRASER ACTRESS

Alders approve Kensington deal KENSINGTON FROM PAGE 1 Some residents, including Campinha-Bacote, criticized the alders’ characterization of Kensington Park as crime-ridden.

Campinha-Bacote said it was the city who had failed to maintain the park’s facilities — which she said was evidence of the city’s lack of care for the Dwight community. “[During Monday’s meeting] several alders were making the claim that our neighborhood and this park is really dangerous — that nobody uses it and it's a high crime spot,” said Campinha-Bacote.

“There have been problems with drugs and crime, but the answer isn’t just to replace the park. It’s a structural problem.”

According to an article by the New Haven Register in 2016, former New Haven Police Chief Anthony Campbell said the Kensington area had been problematic for decades.

But in a statement sent to the News, FOKP member Wallace said that, in recent years, the park has become a major success story for policing in New Haven. “[Lieutenant] John Healy made [Kensington] his top priority when taking over this policing district,” said Wallace. “As a result [the park] is now a place we can use.”

In Monday’s meeting, the alders used terms such as “drug haven,” “space for illegal activities” and “problem park” to describe Kensington Playground.

Still, Ward 3 Alder Ron Hurt said that “while others are having a good time lollygagging around on our green space, there are some families out there who need affordable housing.”

While she voted in favor of the housing development, Aldermanic President Tyisha Walker-Myers challenged the narrative around Dwight neighborhood’s safety. She pointed out that some of those who spoke on behalf of Ward 23 had never even visited the park.

“I do not want people to think that all bad things happen in Ward 23,” said Walker-Myers during Monday’s meeting. “The type of things that happen there happen everywhere. It’s personal to me –– the park and the people that actually live there.”

LILY DORSTEWITZ/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Some alders called the park a "drug haven" and a "problem park" at Monday's meeting.

Three alders spoke against approving the housing project in Kensington Park. Both Ward 10 and Ward 7 Alders, Anna Festa and Abigail Roth, brought up how the pandemic has made green space crucial to the wellbeing of residents.

Although Ward 1 Alder Eli Sabin ’22 agreed that green space needs to be prioritized during the pandemic, he still voted in favor of the housing deal. Sabin said that he did so on the condition that no more New Haven parkland will be traded for development projects — “as [Ward 15 Alder Ernie G. Santiago] said to developers,” Sabin said.

Festa said there are boarded-up homes across the city which could be restored and used as housing instead. This would involve the entire city in the push for affordable housing, rather than concentrating efforts just in the Dwight neighborhood.

On the same night, the Board of Alders voted to sell a parcel of empty land on Humphrey Street to build 12 units of housing. Roth, who said her own constituents reached out to her to oppose the land swap, added that she is confident that there are other existing parcels of land in the city that aren’t currently green space.

“Affordable housing provides tax credits for developers, they collect their money and then they disappear, leaving residents to fend for themselves and live in sometimes deplorable conditions because they have been forgotten,” said Festa.

“Who is to say that these units won’t become market-rate apartments in the future?”

But Kristin Anderson, a representative from the Boston-based developer The Community Builders or TCB, which is responsible for the Kensington Playground project, said the project’s deed restriction will guarantee that the hous-

ing is affordable for a minimum of 40 years.

TCB’s broader redevelopment plan for Dwight neighborhood includes the renovation of 18 other buildings they own. These buildings currently provide affordable housing in the area. The developer will also give $80,000 to the city to renovate Day Street Park, a green space one block away from Kensington Playground.

“There are many regulations and inspections in place that ensure the properties are well maintained throughout their lifetime,” said Anderson in an email to the News.

“TCB has worked with the city and community to shape the project to benefit the residents who actually live in the neighborhood and use these public amenities.”

Ward 24 Alder Evette Hamilton told those at Monday’s meeting that the Board of Alders would be responsible for putting TCB’s “feet to the fire” to ensure that the hous-

ing in Dwight stays affordable and is maintained.

Campinha-Bacote said she hopes the digital record of the meeting will hold alders accountable to their promises. Although she acknowledged that the final efforts of FOKP may not change the fate of Kensington Park, Campinha-Bacote said her group plans to do their part to hold the city and TCB accountable by building up networks within the community.

“How do we do the job that hasn’t been done to connect our community to what is happening?” asked Campinha-Bacote.

“When things like this happen again, we want to stop people from thinking the community is not being vocal.”

Kensington Playground is located on Kensington Street, about four blocks away from Yale’s campus.

Contact NATALIE KAINZ at natalie.kainz@yale.edu .

DeLauro running for 16th term against GOP challenger Streicker DELAURO FROM PAGE 1 and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee in Congress, DeLauro also said she is planning for more control over testing, tracing and treatment of the virus — responsibilities that she said she believes the current White House administration has not fulfilled.

“I’m excited about the opportunity to move forward on all of these issues that I have been working on for years,” DeLauro said.

According to Kenneth Long, a professor of history and political science at the University of Saint Joseph, it would not be surprising if DeLauro won another term. He said this election year is one that is likely to be favorable to Democrats after Donald Trump’s presidency. Long said that Trump’s response to the pandemic and Biden’s high likelihood of winning the presidency have energized the Democratic base and churned out votes against Trump.

DeLauro, as an incumbent, is also well-known to voters, as opposed to Streicker. According to Long, while previous Congressional races have seen a previously unknown candidate win a seat in the House, it usually happens when going against incumbents who have associated with an unpopular party and happens more so in the Senate.

“In the House, people settle into safe seats and they get elected and re-elected for as long as they can continue to walk and talk and then even sometimes after they can’t do that,” Long said.

However, Long stated that Streicker is the strongest challenger DeLauro has faced in a long time. He said that Streicker has been able to spend large sums of money on the race, which DeLauro’s past opponents have not done.

According to the CT Mirror, Streicker had raised nearly $300,000 in donations and loaned her campaign $350,000 with $456,443 of cash on-hand,

while DeLauro had less than $288,000 in campaign cash by the end of the second quarter.

Some of Streicker’s money has gone towards a series of political advertisements, many of which have targeted DeLauro. Her most recent ad highlights the fact that DeLauro allowed former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to live in the basement of her D.C. home when he was a member of Congress. The ad claims that by giving Emanuel a free place to stay, DeLauro was able to use her

influence to award government contracts to her husband’s polling company.

In response, DeLauro told the News that the ads were filled with false accusations without any kind of documentation to back up the claims. A press release sent out by DeLauro’s campaign team stated that her husband’s company has never had any government contracts and that Emanuel stopped staying there when he became chief of staff.

Long said that negative ads such as these tend to work well for undecided voters, who tend to be the least informed.

“Ads, to be effective, have to aim at the votes that they can win from an undecided pool,” Long said. “In order to do that effectively, you generally need attack ads.”

As part of her campaign, Streicker has also been going doorto-door and meeting with possible voters — which Long said could work in her favor.

“There will be some people who will vote for her because they met her, and she seems young and personable and it’s probably been a while since they met someone running against Rosa DeLauro,” Long said.

Streicker and DeLauro faced one another in a debate on Oct. 22 along with the Green Party’s candidate, Justin Paglino. The debate will be broadcast live on News 8.

Contact SAI RAYALA at sai.rayala@yale.edu .

LUKAS FLIPPO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

New Haven Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro is running for her 16th term in Congress, against GOP challenger Margaret Streicker.

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

ARTS School of Music begins performance classes

BY MARISOL CARTY STAFF REPORTER On Oct. 14, the School of Music’s performance block — a period during which students take exclusively performance classes — began.

This semester, School of Music administrators have implemented a two-block plan for hybrid instruction to allow students to continue their course of study while keeping public safety in mind. This included an academic block from Sept. 8 to Oct. 13, during which academic courses were remotely in session, and a performance block from Oct. 14 to Nov. 26, during which students are taking performance classes in person.

“During the performance block at the School of Music, the students and faculty are participating in in-person ensemble activities to the fullest extent possible given health considerations,” said Melvin Chen, deputy dean of the School of Music.

Students are required to live on campus and attend classes in person during the performance block.

They were asked to arrive on campus on Sept. 30 in order to finish a two-week quarantine before classes began.

According to Chen, students will be playing and rehearsing in string orchestra and receiving coaching in chamber music throughout the performance block. They will adhere to safety regulations including mask wearing and social distancing. Many groups are also involved in making recordings that will be available to the public at a later time.

However, a large portion of the student body cannot participate in the performance block due to safety protocols. These include musi-

COURTESY OF KATIE KELLEY

cians whose instruments — such as woodwinds, brass and voice — do not allow them to wear masks while playing.

Pianist Rachel Breen MUS ’22 noted that normally, music students have an “unending cycle” of performance preparations and competitions. But with nearly all live performances cancelled, students are in an unfamiliar position.

“Being a sonic art, music is particularly difficult to teach and learn over the internet,” Breen said.

“Even with teachers making their best effort, musicians simply can’t receive the same quality of education through Zoom. Microphone technology is costly, and doesn’t yield the same result as live instruction.”

Although School of Music students can sign up for slots in indi-

vidual practice rooms, the pandemic also resulted in the loss of music rooms where students can make music together. Breen likened these practice facilities to “second homes,” since some students can spend more than 12 hours a day on their instruments. She added that students socialize during breaks and learn by watching their colleagues.

The “sparse, focused” environment of a practice room cannot entirely be replicated at home.

Jon Salamon MUS ’23, a harpsichordist in the Doctoral of Music Arts program’s post-residency phase, said it was initially difficult for musicians to deal with the changes brought by the pandemic.

But they have come up with innovative solutions and remained positive.

“The loss of activity and purpose has been harrowing — especially

when the pandemic first began, it was very difficult to practice or compose and stay motivated,” Salamon said. “But there is hope. So many musicians have started performing online, offering innovative musical experiences to audiences, all the while keeping themselves busy and engaged.”

A second academic block at the School of Music will resume online from Nov. 30 to Dec. 9, to be followed by a final exam period. Private lessons and studio seminars will be offered during this period and the decision to conduct class in person will be left to the professor and student. Students are encouraged to take their academic courses from home.

Contact MARISOL CARTY at marisol.carty@yale.edu .

Africanus Okokon to create sonicvisual experience at Artspace

BY ANNIE RADILLO AND MAIA DECKER STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Africanus Okokon ART ’20, Artspace New Haven’s current artist-in-residence, will perform a sonic-visual piece called “Invisible Magic Missive Sent To,” or IMMST, on Saturday, Oct. 24. The performance, crafted as a personal experience, is in some ways perfectly suited for a pandemic world.

The experience touches upon themes of analog, time, memory and memory’s limits. Starting at 5 p.m., audience members will rotate through the gallery in small groups — a setting that both creates intimacy and maintains social distancing.

Part of Artspace’s City-Wide Open Studios, the performance will take place in the Artspace gallery.

“I almost want people to [imagine] that it’s just me and them and the performance, images, videos … the people around them are just sort of melting away,” Okokon said.

Okokon said it is difficult for him to describe IMMST because opacity is one of the work’s goals — he said he does not want to reveal too much beforehand.

But he described the piece as a “bricolage” of recorded media. Okokon will incorporate audio and visual elements in IMMST through his own active participation and improvisation. He noted that his presence is vital to the work. “I need to be present to conjure or usher in the images and the sound,” Okokon said.

The performance’s central element is a large rear-projection television. Okokon will use it to display moving images he took when he trav-

IMMST is as much about performance itself as it is about memory, history and the deterioration of images. Okokon said the performance can be understood as a mimicry of life, but also as mimicking lived experience.

A separate part of the gallery will showcase Okokon’s visual art. Okokon said in several projects he explores how images shift, compress and decompress over time, as well as their relation to memory.

Lisa Dent, executive director of Artspace, said that after months of quarantine, the simple act of entering a gallery has become a more valuable ex p e r i e n ce t h a n ever before. Dent added that 2020 has shown her how art continues to help people stay connected during difficult times.

Eve n though Okokon’s performance requires his physical presence, social distancing is not a concern for IMMST. Okokon said his ideal audience is small, as he wants an intimate interaction between the performer and audience members. The piece will also change slightly with each performance.

KAI NIP/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER “ T h i s p e r fo rmance is more of an exercise in being willfully opaque in what I’m conjurDuring his time at Yale, Okokon performed ing and leaving it up to surprise for me,” said a project thematically similar to IMMST, Okokon. “I don’t want people to go in with called “.Srt.” It was then that he began to any expectations.” experiment with audio and visual elements in Audience members sensitive to flashing art through his own participation. lights should refrain from viewing the perforKevin Brisco ART ’20, a classmate of Okokon, mance. said that attendees were “blown away” after witnessing “.Srt” — several audience members were Contact ANNIE RADILLO at in tears, Brisco said. annie.radillo@yale.edu and “Instantly, I think the painting department was MAIA DECKER at sort of enthralled with [Okokon’s] work,” said Brisco. maia.decker@yale.edu .

eled to Ghana, his mother’s home country. For Okokon, his visit was not just a personal homecoming to family, but also a way for him to make sense of his identity as a first-generation West African immigrant in the United States.

Okokon studied visual performance and animation at the Rhode Island School of Design before studying printmaking at the Yale School of Art. He began working on IMMST during his second year at Yale but was forced to temporarily put the project on hold due to the pandemic.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

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NEO ARTS COLLECTIVE CENTERS BLACK VOICES

BY ZAPORAH PRICE AND BRYAN VENTURA STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Earlier this month, the Neo Collective — Yale’s first Black arts collective — had its first welcome event for Yale students and New Haven community members via Zoom.

The arts collective, founded last year by Nyeda Sam ’22, provides Black visual artists, musicians and writers a platform to share their art. The collective also acts as a space for members to support and uplift each other.

New Haven community members and Yale students can strengthen connections through a shared interest in art.

“Being part of the collective means being my true artistic self,” Sam said. “I don’t have to explain my voice or my work. I can just be, and be comfortable in that being since I know that peo-

ple understand where my work is coming from.”

Sam said she created the collective because she felt Yale’s visual arts community was dominated by institutions like the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art. Sam wanted to create a community and give voice to students. Sam added that in her arts classes, she found the environment “largely white” and “frustrating” because her classmates were unable to give constructive feedback on her artwork — which mainly focuses on Black identity.

Enlisting the help of Tobi Makinde ’23 and Sonnet Carter ’23, who are also Black women, Sam began organizing meetings for Black visual artists on campus. Now, the collective has expanded its vision to include all art mediums and members outside the Yale community.

“A big purpose of the Neo Collective is to provide an open space for both Yale and New Haven,” Carter said.

The collective provides its members a safe space to share their thoughts, ask questions and express their art. Carter said it is helpful to hear about the process and mindset of other artists, even if they work with different mediums. For example, listening to someone talk about poetry can inspire ideas for visual art.

Sam is a playwright, poet and visual artist while Carter is a visual artist and graphic designer.

But they collaborate to inspire each other across mediums.

“Our discussions about art and movement have inspired many pieces of poetry and writing,” Kadiatou Keita ’22, a member of the collective’s logistics team, said. “I am able to, in these

meetings, explore what themes I want to include in my works in the future.”

According to Carter, the collective is taking the time to “heal” this semester. Meetings so far have centered around both decompressing and relaxing and exploring new artistic mediums. Carter said this is necessary, given how much the Black community has endured in the past few months.

Carter referenced both the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement in response to police brutality as examples.

Despite challenges introduced by the pandemic, the collective is expanding its definitions of community and artistry. Even though members cannot meet in person, Carter said the virtual space compels members to truly “communicate” and “connect.”

“Our meetings are a space to decompress and channel our indi-

vidual experiences into art and collaboration,” said Cassidy Arrington ’23, a member of the logistics team.

“This semester and even over quarantine, we have found ways to make art a community practice.”

Arrington said the collective’s current goal is to expand their reach. She said the group intends to widen membership and collaborate with organizations such as Artspace New Haven and the YUAG. The collective is currently accepting submissions from Yale students and New Haven community members for its first online art exhibit, “Re;memory: Framing the Imaginary” on Black memory and imagination.

The Neo Collective was founded in 2019.

Contact ZAPORAH PRICE at zaporah.price@yale.edu and BRYAN VENTURA at bryan.ventura@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF SONNET CARTER

Yale Library exhibit ‘12 Portraits: Studies of Women at Yale’ honors Yale women

BY JORDAN FITZGERALD CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Portraits of dead white men, says Tanya Marcuse ART ’90, look down on students across Yale’s campus.

To change this narrative, she and George Miles ’74 GRD ’77 created a photo exhibition titled “12 Portraits: Studies of Women at Yale.”

The virtual exhibition, which features portraits of Yale women, is hosted by Yale Library. It complements a physical display of the collection that opened in the Sterling Memorial Library Memorabilia Room in March. The exhibition commemorates the University-wide celebration of the 50th anniversary of coeducation in Yale college and 150 years of women in the graduate schools.

“The formal power of a diverse group of Yale women challenges, in positive ways, our concept of what Yalies look like and reminds us how coeducation and the slow but steady growth of women faculty and University administrators has transformed Yale for the better,” said George Miles, who co-curated the exhibition and is the curator of the Yale Collection of Western Americana at the Beinecke.

When the University first a n n o u n ce d i ts 5 0 Wo m e natYale150 initiative in 2018, Marcuse wanted to create 20 largescale portraits of women at Yale.

Marcuse reached out to several Yale professors who connected her with Miles and the Beinecke.

After hearing Marcuse’s idea, the Beinecke commissioned 20 portraits from Marcuse, 12 of which are on view in the exhibition.

According to Marcuse, who is now a photography professor and artist in residence at Bard College, Yale’s existing imagery focused on the white, male founders of the institution and failed to

express the University’s current demographics. Marcuse said she wanted to create a diverse representation of women at Yale.

“As Yale as an institution has evolved, the iconography really must evolve as well,” Marcuse said.

For her portraits, Marcuse reached out to several Yale faculty members, including Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Tamar Gendler ’87 and poetry professor Claudia Rankine. But with other subjects such as Anna Grace Glaize DIV ’21 and Grace Woodward DIV ’21, she simply followed her inspiration. She stopped people on campus and asked if they were willing to sit for a portrait. Marcuse photographed 40-50 women before selecting the final 12 that are featured in the exhibition.

Marcuse took every portrait in New Haven, photographing at familiar locations such as the Ezra Stiles College courtyard, the Day Missions Reading Room at the Yale Divinity School and even Blue State Coffee.

For her photographs, Marcuse employed techniques used in Yale’s existing formal portraiture. She replicated its formal backdrops, resolute poses and vertical framing to empower her female subjects.

“I wanted to harness the formal language and expressive powers of the painted portraits of men that we see around the university,” Marcuse said. “I used the stillness and seriousness of this convention to grant power and presence to the women in the photographs.”

Marcuse told the News that she pursued this project because she feels connected to Yale women.

Marcuse and five other women from her MFA program formed The Birthday Club: an artistic group dedicated to supporting and critiquing each other’s work.

And Marcuse’s daughter recently graduated from the University.

The physical exhibition at Sterling includes documentation of the photography process, including contact sheets, small prints and other archival memorabilia.

According to library Director of Communications and Marketing Patricia Carey, this exhibit is now closed to the public because of a recent spike in COVID-19 cases on campus. The exhibition can still be viewed online.

This is not the first time the pandemic introduced challenges.

Marcuse said the opening was initially set to include a conversation on female representation between herself and two Yale professors who are included in the project: Ayesha Ramachandran GRD ’08 and Marta Figlerowicz. This was not possible due to public health concerns this spring.

Marcuse and Miles hope to find a permanent home for the collection. According to Miles, the Schwartzman Center may display these portraits next year.

Woodward noted that the project honors Yale’s important female trailblazers, past and future. Programs Manager for Professional Experience at the Yale Sustainable Food Program Jacqueline Munno said that women’s representation is both unifying and empowering.

“The portrait of me is great, but the part I love most is that I see myself in every one of these women,” Munno wrote in an email to the News.

Marcuse’s work has been on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the George Eastman Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery and the Beinecke.

Contact JORDAN FITZGERALD at jordan.fitzgerald@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF TANYA MARCUSE

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Study finds humans could curb emissions by 60%, maintain decent standard of living

BY ANJALI MANGLA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER A recent study conducted by the Living Well Within Limits project at the University of Leeds — to which Yale School of the Environment professor Narasimha Rao contributed heavily — found that the projected human population of approximately 10 billion in 2050 could live on the planet at a decent standard of living with 40 percent of today’s emissions.

Rao, who specializes in energy systems at the School of the Environment, is a co-author of the paper, which was published in the journal Global Environmental Change this month. The study investigated how much global energy use is required to maintain a decent standard of living for the projected global population of 9.7 billion people in 2050, and found that lowering energy consumption by 60 percent could accommodate such a population. This research was based on previous work conducted by Rao that was published in Nature Energy, which described the material conditions required for adequate living conditions.

“The finding was that the amount of energy that we would need, not only to eradicate poverty, but for decent living across the world even in industrialized countries, is about a tenth of the current energy use in the U.S.,” Rao said. “The major implications of that is that bringing

people out of poverty is not a threat to climate change. People are always concerned about growth in developing countries, and this is a really important finding that growth will happen in developing countries, but it’s not going to be driven by basic well-being, it’s going to be driven by affluence.”

Rao’s previous work looked specifically at energy consumption requirements in developing countries, using India, Brazil and South Africa as case studies. He analyzed a basket of goods and services that provide a decent standard of living. These conditions included a modest amount of space in each household, with about 300 square feet plus an additional 100 square feet per person, as well as basic amenities such as clean water, toilet and sanitation facilities, a refrigerator, nutritious food and basic appliances.

The LiLi project’s recent study built upon Rao’s model and proved that if everyone in 2050 adopted this metric of modest living, emissions would be cut to only 40% of current global energy consumption. Humans would therefore have a reduced impact on climate change.

Joel Millward-Hopkins, a graduate student at the University of Leeds, and others were involved in the LiLi project, which is led by professor Julia Steinberger at the University of Leeds. The researchers translated the living standards described by Rao’s

work into energy requirements by first determining the activity levels appropriate to each country, such as how much transport is needed given diverse population densities or how many schools are needed given the expected age structure of the 2050 population.

They then investigated the most efficient technologies that could support these living standards. Finally, they integrated these activity levels and energy intensities and multiplied them by the 2050 population to obtain global energy use.

“The most important changes I see in the world we imagined are consumption as sufficiency levels — enough for a decent life but no more — and a flattening of global and national inequalities,”

Millward-Hopkins wrote in an email to the News. “Indirectly, it would also be a world requiring far, far less human labour, as the quantity of stuff required would be much less than today, not to mention that in the coming decades automation is likely to become widespread.”

He explained that the policy implications of this work should be targeted at lowering inequality between countries, as well as reducing global consumption of luxury goods and having lower working hours.

Diego Angel Hakim, a graduate student working under Rao at the Yale School of the Environment, believes that the task of reducing energy consumption has a lot to do with redis-

tributing it to population groups that need it the most. He also emphasized that this could help bring people out of poverty.

“I think the implications of this research are truly far reaching: it refutes the argument that human development will cause the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions that the world won’t be able to abate by showing that reaching ‘decent living’ for all the population can be done under a carbon constrained world,” Hakim wrote in an email to the News.

Rao previously worked at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

Contact ANJALI MANGLA at anjali.mangla@yale.edu .

ANNIE LIN/CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

New research complicates previous understanding of microbial gut development

BY AMRE PROMAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER A recent study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation by Yale neonatologist Liza Konnikova investigated the microbial profile of the fetal gastrointestinal tract and shed light on how a baby’s immune system develops in utero.

The study set out to better understand the microbiome of the fetal gastrointestinal tract, which remains a subject of scientific debate. The team first attempted to amplify bacterial genetic material, but were not able to find any bacteria that way. However, the team discovered the byproducts of microbial reactions in fetuses as early as the second trimester. While it is unclear as to whether these byproducts are the result of some undiscovered bacteria or if they are provided by the mother, it is clear that they are present and have some role to play in human development.

“The current state of fetal development is very underdeveloped,” said Konnikova, an assistant professor of pediatrics and obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the Yale School of Medicine and lead author of the study. “There’s so many questions that need to be answered that it’s one of the most exciting fields currently.”

To find out more about this element of fetal development, Konnikova and her team set out to learn what bacteria is present in the GI tracts of fetuses. Historically, scientists have been able to extensively study the fetal development of mice by feeding them radioactive bacteria and observing the microbiome of their fetuses. However, due to the danger of radioactive substances, human studies require a different approach.

In order to detect the presence of the bacteria, Konnikova and her

team tried to amplify bacterial genetic code.

Each bacterium has a unique RNA sequence and — if the bacteria is present — the scientists should have been able to make several copies of it through amplification. Konnikova and her team were unable to amplify any bacteria, but they did find other indications of bacterial presence.

“We report a unique fetal metabolomic intestinal profile with an abundance of bacterially derived and host derived metabolites commonly produced in response to microbiota,” the study reads.

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These microbial metabolites are the intermediate products of enzymatic reactions, according to News-Medical.net. Currently it is unclear how these metabolites arrive, given the lack of microbial presence, but it is clear that they have a role to play in development.

The best guess for that role is that they help prepare the fetal immune system for interaction

with the outside world.

“I think based on some mouse models they are needed for proper immune development and sort of establishing that homeostasis, and I’m guessing that they’re needed for the fetus, once born as an infant to not develop a cytokine storm,” Konnikova said. A cytokine storm occurs when “there’s way too much inflammation to the external world.”

Assistant professor of genetics Bluma Lesch explained how the immune system is complex but consists of two main components.

The first is innate immunity, provided by specific cells which

attack general foreign invaders.

The second is adaptive immunity — the area of interest in this study.

B-cells and T-cells provide adaptive immunity, both of which must learn how to fight off specific infections, according to Lesch. Once these cells have been primed, they can fight off the same infection much more easily in the future. But this poses a problem for good bacteria.

“We’re all colonized with bacteria … most of them are actually healthy bugs, and we call them commensal bacteria, and they have to coexist with our epithelium” Konnikova said. She and her team hypothesize that as a result of the metabolites there will be “no underlying inflammation and so the immune cells do recognize the commensals [and] don’t make an inflammatory reaction against them.”

The way the immune system develops may be crucial in helping infants navigate the bacteria they encounter outside of the womb.

At the moment, this is merely a hypothesis that the researchers hope to confirm or rule out with future research.

However, conducting these types of studies can come with certain challenges.

“It’s really difficult to study anything in utero because you’re basically relying on getting material from spontaneous miscarriages,” Lesch said.

Konnikova also explained that within the last year the National Institutes of Health has begun to fund less of this research, making it more reliant on private sources of income.

This will make it difficult to further answer the questions that her study has raised.

The study was conducted with collaborators at the University of Pittsburgh.

Contact AMRE PROMAN at amre.proman@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

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How swimsuit material inspired the ‘holy grail’ of water filtration

BY ALEXA LOSTE AND BEN SCHER CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS Water filtration is a practice that dates back to the time of Hippocrates, and over time, researchers have worked to create more efficient and reusable filters. This year, Menachem Elimelech, professor of chemical and environmental engineering at Yale, led his research group to discover “the holy grail” of water filtration: a chlorine-resistant membrane.

On Oct. 5, the journal Nature Sustainability published a study by Elimelech’s team on their development of a multilayer polyester membrane that is resistant to degradation by chlorine. This discovery could provide a more sustainable, lower-cost alternative to conventional membranes.

“The exciting component is that we’ve been able to develop a membrane that not only has performance, that is up to reverse osmosis standards, meaning high salt rejection and high water permeability, but we’ve done so using chemistry that is also chlorine resistant,” said Ryan DuChanois GRD ’23, a doctoral candidate in chemical and environmental engineering and a member of Elimelech’s team. “To our knowledge, that hasn’t been done before.”

Reverse osmosis, or RO, is a type of water filtration system that relies on the use of a semipermeable membrane to purify

water of dissolved ions, the paper explains. An optimal RO membrane selectively allows the passage of water while blocking the passage of contaminants. As a result, when pressure is applied to wastewater through an RO membrane, clean water is produced.

The mechanism hinges upon the choice of material that is used for the RO membrane, according to the paper. Polyamide has conventionally been used due to its ability to withstand a greater range of temperatures and pH levels in comparison to its alternative, cellulose acetate.

However, polyamide is intolerant to chlorine, which is used to treat wastewater before the filtration process. But such treatment prevents biological growth on the surface of the RO membrane, according to Jaehong Kim, chair of the Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering. Kim added that current state-of-the-art RO membranes therefore degrade when exposed to chlorine, which increases operational costs for water filtration facilities.

Elimelech worked with Xuan Zhang — a professor at the Nanjing University of Science & Technology — on the research team that worked to find a good candidate for RO that would be resistant to deterioration by chlorine. Using swimsuits as inspiration, they found their ideal material: polyester.

“I focused on conventional polyamide matrix for nearly four

years (from 2013), and finally realized that it was structurally unstable towards chlorine in any case,” Zhang wrote in an email to the News. “Therefore, I decided to find some other candidates from 2017. Polyester is an easy option to access, because some other research groups have reported the fabrication of polyester membranes for ultrafiltration or nanofiltration. Polyester as an RO remained challenging at that moment.”

DuChanois said that past attempts to create RO polyester membranes have been unsuccessful. But by forming “multiple, dense polymer layers on top of a porous support,” DuChanois said that their team was finally able to make a polyester membrane — with a base similar to swimsuits — that was successful and possibly the first of its kind.

This membrane is just as effective as commercially available membranes at rejecting salt and allowing water to pass through, according to the paper. It is also resistant to degradation by chlorine under a wide pH range, from pH 4 to 8, and according to Zhang, it performs better than current RO membranes.

“Since [the membranes] can tolerate chlorine, they would last longer than conventional membranes because they won’t be as prone to biological fouling,” DuChanois said. “And they would improve the sustainability of treatment processes, because you wouldn’t have to remove any

MALIA KUO/CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

chlorine that’s already in the water before you treat the water with reverse osmosis.”

These membranes could be used for desalination and wastewater reuse, according to DuChanois, because they would not only be efficient but also remain intact for longer — helping to reduce waste and costs in the field of water filtration.

The team is currently working on simplifying the process of fabricating the membrane so that it may be scaled up for larger production at a lower cost.

“This research is showing a potential to resolve the problem

that the scientific community was not able to solve for [the] past couple of decades,” Kim wrote.

“If this research further advances and becomes translated for commercial use, the impact on [the] desalination industry will be immense.”

Polyamide has been the most commonly used RO membrane material in water filtration since its introduction in the early 1980s, according to the paper.

Contact ALEXA LOSTE at alexa.loste@yale.edu and BEN SCHER at ben.scher@yale.edu .

New YSPH model helps citizens and policymakers monitor COVID-19 spread

BY SYDNEY GRAY STAFF REPORTER Faculty at the Yale School of Public Health developed a new statistical model to track the spread of COVID-19 in the United States.

Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health and the T. H. Chan Harvard School of Public Health created a new tool, called covidestim, to track current COVID-19 cases on a stateby-state and county-by-county basis. The technology takes into account the latest information on the number of reported cases, death counts and disease severity to provide accurate information about the pandemic to citizens.

Access to the online model is free to the general public.

“There is an urgent need for individuals to be able to access locally-relevant information so that they can make rational choices about how best to protect themselves,” professor of epidemiology Ted Cohen wrote in an email to the News. “Our model currently focuses on producing ‘nowcasts’ rather than forecasts of future epidemic behavior to allow individuals and policy makers to more accurately gauge current risk and understand the current trajectory of the epidemic.”

Cohen said that what distinguishes the covidestim tool from other similar COVID-19 tracking technologies is the way the model combats delays in data reports of symptomatic COVID-19 cases and deaths. He noted that these lagtimes have traditionally created an incomplete picture of the pandemic’s spread.

He explained that covidestim draws on information about the natural history of infections and accounts for these delays in order to produce the most accurate, plausible range for the number of infections at the current moment.

“Our model is really concerned with correcting for gaps and delays in case and death reporting,” Melanie Chitwood, a research associate in the Cohen Lab and one of the project leads, wrote in an email to

KELLY ZHAO/CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR

the News. “Our goal is to estimate daily new infections and the effective reproduction number; these quantities tell us about the trajectory of local epidemics.”

Accurately estimating an effective reproductive number — the average number of individuals that one infected person is expected to infect — is very challenging but crucial to measuring the growth of an epidemic, according to Chitwood. The model seeks to avoid biases and achieve “tighter estimates” by focusing on the number of daily new infections and combining that data with statistics that consider testing capacity and mortality risks, according to the covidestim website.

“Covidestim adjusts for these biases to provide an estimate of the current state of the epidemic at the local level,” said postdoctoral associate Joshua Havukami, who contributed to the project.

“The majority of other models for COVID-19 have been designed for other purposes such as predicting

future case counts or estimating the effectiveness of interventions.”

Chitwood also highlighted the real-world utility of their new model. She explained that using covidestim has already profoundly aided her close friends and herself in gauging COVID-19-related risks.

She explained that a friend recently called her to see if it would be safe to visit family outside of Connecticut. When Chitwood and her friend examined the covidestim data set, the two realized that there were five times more infections per 100,000 residents in the county her friend was to visit. As a result, her friend seriously reconsidered making the trip.

“Understanding that the risk of illness is different across counties and over time is really important right now,” Chitwood said.

“Things may feel safe in New Haven, but we do see that daily new infections are increasing.

Things that were relatively low risk last month might not be next

month. It’s important that we stay vigilant, even if it feels safe here and now.”

According to Cohen, researchers are continuing to develop and improve the model. He mentioned that the team is currently working to modify how the model estimates seroprevalence — the number of people in a population who test positive for a specific disease based on data from serum samples, such as blood.

Cohen also hopes that the model will eventually take on a predictive capacity, enabling it to forecast future trends in the disease’s spread.

“In the future, we aim to build on this work to provide short term (1-4 week) forecasts of the epidemic,” Cohen wrote.

According to the covidestim model, the current rate of infection in Connecticut is 38 infections per 100,000 residents.

Contact SYDNEY GRAY at sydney.gray@yale.edu .

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

“I’m really into oat milk.”

STELLA MAXWELL NEW ZEALAND MODEL

More of the Good Life in Schwarzman

BY EMILY TIAN STAFF REPORTER The Good Life Center — a student wellness hub that has spent the past two years on the fourth floor of Byers Hall in Silliman College — is expanding to a second location in the Schwarzman Center, scheduled to open in January 2021.

Decisions about how to use the new space, which will become the Center’s flagship location, will have to wait until further public health guidelines are determined for the spring semester. But Silliman Head of College and Good Life Center founder Laurie Santos said the Good Life Center’s new spaces will be open as soon as it is safe to do so.

“Like the Good Life Center in Silliman College, our Schwarzman space will serve as an inclusive, restorative, and energizing environment for community, belonging, and well-being,” wrote Alexa Vaghenas ’20, Woodbridge Fellow for the Good Life Center, in an email to the News. “It will be a place where students can learn evidence-based tools for effectively coping with negative emotions, as well as evidence-based tools for thriving.”

Although the Schwarzman Center — a wrap-around student life hub that is set to replace the former Commons — was originally supposed to open this fall, the pandemic has pushed back the grand opening for at least a semester.

According to the Schwarzman Center’s Director of Marketing and Communications Maurice Harris, the new location will take up approximately 1,300 square feet of the second floor annex in the Schwarzman Center’s Grove Street addition.

The partnership between the Schwarzman Center and the Good Life Center, Harris said, was “almost instinctive” due to the annex’s intended availability to all students and their shared values of collaboration, wellness and belonging.

“The new space means we can meet the needs of more students who need access to this well-being programming,” said Santos.

What specific facilities and services will be available to Yale community members in the new space are yet to be determined. Santos explained that she is particularly excited about the new space’s natural light and larger rooms.

Without access to popular fixtures like the lounge and the sandbox — a silent, technology-free room — Santos and others on the Good Life Center team have had to rethink what initiatives the Center could run this semester. Programming for the Good Life Center shifted online this fall to align with pandemic health precautions, although in recent weeks some in-person events, including yoga, have been hosted outdoors.

T he current space shares the fourth floor of Byers Hall

YALE DAILY NEWS

The Good Life Center will open a new flagship space in the Schwarzman Center. with the Acorn, a popular student-run café that has halted operations for the duration of the fall term.

Opened in the fall of 2018, the Center is among the most popular spots on campus, according to Santos. Both the Acorn and the original Good Life Center facilities — which include the sandbox, lounge and study — are due to stay in Byers Hall.

Although Silliman College is easily accessible for most undergraduates, Santos explained that graduate and professional stu-

dents have had trouble accessing the space. Community members and visitors who do not have keycard access to Silliman usually have to obtain limited gate access to Silliman or have to dial the intercom to enter Byers Hall.

The Schwarzman Center’s location in Hewitt Quadrangle, commonly known as Beinecke Plaza, means that the wellness center will be able to reach many more students and staff.

“The space also allows us to expand our offerings, meaning more students can propose events

and wellness offerings on campus,” Santos said.

Vaghenas said that she hoped the additional space will remind students to keep well-being at the forefront of their Yale experience.

“To me, this new space serves as a symbol for the importance of prioritizing self-care amidst the busyness of student life,” she added.

The original site of the Good Life Center is located at 505 College St. Contact EMILY TIAN at emily.tian@yale.edu .

Yale announces new financial aid policies for international students

RUIYAN WANG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Yale Admin announced new financial aid policies for international students to address pandemic strains.

BYAMELIA DAVIDSON STAFF REPORTER In light of the longer winter break this year, international students will be allowed to travel home between the end of the fall and beginning of the spring semester. International students

will also receive additional financial aid to account for their travel or accommodations off campus during the break.

Yale College Dean Marvin Chun announced the changes in an email to international students on Monday night. In a typical year, international students’ aid pack-

ages account for one round trip to and from their home country, but due to the longer break, the College now plans to account for two round trips. International students will also receive the $750 that would typically be released to them prior to spring break to account for food and other accommodations while campus is closed during the break. All these funds will be available to students by the end of November.

“Just as with all of our financial aid policies, during this extraordinary year, we’re trying to make sure that students’ needs are met,” Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan told the News.

“And clearly, with the longer winter break this year, the international policy of one round trip was not enough … So I’m super excited that we’re going to get all these funds out there in the next few weeks so students can use these aid dollars to make the best possible plans for themselves over winter break.”

Chun’s email said that the two allowances — for additional travel, and the typical spring break allowance — should be used either for travel back to one’s home country for break or for accommodations within the

United States while the University is closed for break.

The email also announced certain criteria for international students to be eligible to stay on campus either during the exam period or for the entirety of winter break. Students eligible to stay during exam period must face conditions that make it difficult to travel or to learn at home, such as time zone differences or problems with Wi-Fi. Students may stay for the duration of break if they have demonstrated financial need to stay, or if they have “significant difficulties” with international travel, the email read.

Students who remain on campus during exams or break will be charged for their time on campus — $500 a week beginning Nov. 28, and then $550 from the travel allowance and $750 from the spring break allowance for those who wish to remain on campus for the duration of winter break.

“We reiterate our commitment to support our international community during this period when you are all faced with additional challenges regarding remote learning and international mobility,” Chun wrote in the email to international students.

This announcement came after University President Peter

Salovey reiterated the University’s commitment to financial aid in an email to the student body last week. The email, which announced the latest phase of the Belonging at Yale initiative, pointed to “shoring up financial aid for all students with need” as one of the initiative’s chief goals.

Director of Undergraduate Financial Aid Scott Wallace-Juedes told the News that the University’s reaffirmed commitment to financial aid is “really heartening.” He points to this latest change in international students’ financial aid as an example of ways the University is looking to support its students during the pandemic.

“We really felt like it was important to [increase international students’ aid] in recognition that this year is different,” Wallace-Juedes said. “And if we’re really trying to say, for health and safety reasons, all students should leave campus, we want to make sure that international students are funded in such a way that they’re able to as well.”

Winter break this year will last from Dec. 18 to Feb. 1, as announced in an email to the Yale student body on Oct. 6.

Contact AMELIA DAVIDSON at amelia.davidson@yale.edu .

Board of Alders confirm Lawlor appointment

BY THOMAS BIRMINGHAM STAFF REPORTER In a unanimous vote, the New Haven Board of Alders added a new face to the Board of Police Commissioners during their Monday night meeting: University of New Haven professor Michael Lawlor.

The decision comes after Mayor Justin Elicker nominated Lawlor to serve on the board on Sept. 24. As a member of the board, Lawlor will have the opportunity to propose law enforcement reforms, evaluate the efficacy of existing police policy and make decisions on the employment status of officers. Ward 13 Alder Rosa Santana, who chairs the Aldermanic Affairs Committee, introduced Lawlor’s nomination to the board and urged its members to approve his appointment for a three-year term.

“Lawlor has extensive experience and will be an incredible asset to the Board of Commissioners,” Santana said at the meeting.

According to UNH’s website, Lawlor has served on the faculty since 1995. He is also a former co-chair of the state legislature’s judiciary committee. Elicker selected Lawlor due to his extensive background as a leader in police reforms.

The Elm City mayor said that Lawlor seemed like a good fit to develop the city’s new crisis response team, which plans to send social services

professionals, rather than police, to respond to non-emergency 911 calls.

Citing Lawlor’s experience as a former undersecretary for criminal justice and policy planning under Governor Dannel Malloy, Ward 12 Alder Gerald Antunes, chair of the Public Safety Committee — which has jurisdiction over police policy — spoke favorably about Lawlor’s appointment.

“I think the work that he’s done and his knowledge in the area will serve him well on the board,” Antunes said. “We need someone from the educational community to be a voice.”

Before Monday’s meeting, Ward 1 Alder Eli Sabin ’22 told the News that Lawlor stood out for his “demonstrated awareness” of the need for police reform, developed over “decades of advocacy.” The discussion of policing and race has remained omnipresent in City Hall since the killings of George Floyd and other Black Americans over the summer. Sabin said he believes Lawlor will help move these discussions along in New Haven. “[Lawlor] is not somebody that just realized as the political winds were shifting that it was time to be on the reform side of this issue,” Sabin said. “He’s been an advocate for justice in our criminal justice system for many, many years.”

According to Sabin, Lawlor

described a few key policies that he would work to implement once his tenure on the board began. Among these, Sabin said that Lawlor has proposed bringing the Yale Police Department under the jurisdiction of both the city’s Civilian Review Board and Board of Police Commissioners. The Civilian Review Board is a body designed to investigate and address issues of police brutality and accountability. While the creation of the board was approved last January by the Board of Alders, its actual implementation has stalled for months as the city struggles to decide which community members will sit on the board.

If the Civilian Review Board does come into full operation, its current set of powers would allow it to investigate the NHPD — but not the YPD. The New Haven Board of Police Commissioners currently approves the appointment of new YPD officers, which is why the YPD and NHPD have the same legal jurisdiction to police the city of New Haven. The YPD does not, however, answer to any independent or city-affiliated review board on questions of police accountability.

“Even though Yale police officers get their powers from the city in the same way New Haven police officers do, they are not accountable to the public through these public institutions,” Sabin said. “I was glad

that [Lawlor] said he would support changing that policy.”

Reflecting on Lawlor’s new appointment after the meeting, Sabin said he had renewed hope that Lawlor would be a vocal presence for many long-overdue reforms in city policing, reforms that many advocates in the city, including Lawlor himself, have been striving to implement for years.

“It’s a win for New Haven that [Lawlor] will serve on this board,”

Sabin said. “He’s demonstrated a very deep knowledge of the issues facing the city with regards to policing, and he’s been a longtime advocate of reforms that our city residents are treated as the should be by police.”

The next Board of Alders meeting will take place on Thursday, Nov. 5 at 7 p.m.

Contact THOMAS BIRMINGHAM at thomas.birmingham@yale.edu .

DANIEL ZHAO/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Alders approved UNH professor Lawlor to the Board of Police Commissioners in a Monday meeting.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 11

“Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.”

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER AUSTRIAN-AMERICAN ACTOR AND PROFESSIONAL BODYBUILDER

Yale faculty and staff have the 2nd highest number of positive tests

BY MADISON HAHAMY AND MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO STAFF REPORTERS Yale faculty and staff constitute the second-largest group of coronavirus cases at the University — even though not all are required to participate in regular testing.

Between Aug. 1 and Oct. 20, 17 faculty and staff members tested positive for the coronavirus. The largest group of cases comes from off-campus undergraduate students, 26 of whom have tested positive since August.

While biweekly testing is mandatory for students enrolled in residence both on and off campus, different rules apply to faculty and staff members. According to Chief Medical Officer of Yale Health Jennifer McCarthy, there is a group of high-contact staff who interact closely with students in congregate settings, such as residential colleges, who were identified as the highest risk for transmission. As a result, they are tested once a week. But other staff members who do not fall under that categorization are tested on a voluntary basis, McCarthy said. The same applies to members of the Yale faculty. But some staff members shared concerns with the News over the lack of a regular testing program.

“All other faculty and staff are encouraged to test,” McCarthy said.

“They go right through the link, they schedule an appointment that’s convenient for them and they get their asymptomatic testing.”

Chief Executive Officer of Yale Health Paul Genecin told the News that faculty members are also encouraged to use testing not as an alternative to safety precautions, such as social distancing, mask-wearing and hand-washing, but rather as a complement to these measures.

“Testing is an adjunct, it’s not a plan in itself,” Genecin said.

The News interviewed two staff members who are both required to test weekly due to their proximity to other people. While both felt as though their weekly tests were a smooth experience, they expressed concern about the uneven testing requirements for all staff members.

Brandon Felder currently works at the Davenport College testing center, though normally he is a cook’s helper in Grace Hopper College. Even though he is tested weekly, he told the News that he is not sure that is enough.

“I don’t know what Yale should do, I just feel like Yale should do more,” Felder said.

He said that workers are concerned that even if they are not working directly next to an infected person, they could still be in close proximity to a COVID-positive individual, especially for those with jobs like Felder’s, where social distancing is hard.

Shakilah Phillip works for Yale Hospitality and Catering as a driver and undergoes mandatory weekly testing. Similar to Felder, she feels as though the testing itself is not the

issue — rather, it is the lack of consistent testing that causes problems.

Phillip added that Yale does not tell her whether or not her driving destinations have positive cases, and she often obtains this information through word of mouth. “[Yale] shouldn’t tell us who it is,” she told the News. “But we should be warned that this location has positive testing, so we should be able to take that extra precaution.”

Valerie Horsley — an associate professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, an associate professor of dermatology and a Faculty of Arts and Sciences Senator — told the News that faculty who are in New Haven are eligible for weekly voluntary testing.

Because Horsley works in a lab, she has been advocating for mandatory testing, especially for the graduate students and science faculty who, like her, are in person and do not have access to the same level of testing as undergraduates.

“So far we haven’t had any outbreaks or anything in the labs.” Horsley said. “But we wouldn’t know they are there.”

She added that the testing site on Science Hill recently closed, making it more difficult for faculty who work there to get tested.

McCarthy pointed out that while routine testing is not mandated for faculty and staff, it is freely available to them.

“We have the voluntary, but very available testing for other faculty and staff, it’s not limited,” McCarthy said.

KAREN LIN/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Even though they don’t participate in a biweekly testing program, Yale faculty and staff constitute the second highest number of positive COVID-19 tests.

According to McCarthy, after the recent outbreak within the men’s hockey team, even faculty and staff who do not hold highrisk jobs decided to take advantage of the available testing. She told the News that anyone who might have been exposed to the virus is encouraged to get tested.

When asked about the significant incidence of cases among faculty and staff, Genecin described the case distribution as “miscellaneous” and “rather sporadic.”

According to Genecin, evidence of large numbers of people becoming infected together has not been observed, with the only exception being the outbreak within the hockey team.

“We’re not seeing outbreaks and case links,” he said. “Anecdotally, one person will have attended a wedding, one person will have had a child visit from school and was infected, things like that, we are not getting any clear evidence of community spread in our testing but rather we’re really finding these oneoff cases and sometimes a limited amount of spread.”

As of Thursday, a total of 77,638 COVID-19 tests have been administered by Yale.

Contact MADISON HAHAMY at madison.hahamy@yale.edu and MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO at maria.pacheco@yale.edu .

Salovey debuts committee for ethical investment

BY ROSE HOROWITCH AND EMILY TIAN STAFF REPORTERS On Thursday, University President Peter Salovey announced the creation of a committee that will advise the Yale Corporation on how to practically implement its ethical investing principles. The news was met with mixed reactions — students both expressed hope at the step and claimed it is an effort to avoid tangible change.

The new Committee on Fossil Fuel Investment Principles, or CFFIP, was formed following years of student activism calling on the University to divest from fossil fuels and Puerto Rican debt. The Committee will develop a specific framework for the University’s ethical investment strategy that can then be applied toward individual fossil fuel producers. The committee’s report will guide the Yale Corporation as it decides where Yale invests its $31.2 billion endowment. Specifically, the committee should identify any fossil fuel producers with practices that amount to “social injury” and warrant divestment, per its charge.

“Climate change poses an existential threat to life on our planet,” Salovey wrote in the committee charge. “We have a responsibility to examine whether our investment policies are appropriate or need to be modified with respect to this challenge.”

Salovey’s announcement comes on the day students began to occupy Cross Campus to demand that Yale divest from the fossil fuel industry and Puerto Rican debt.

Rachel Pontious ’24 — an organizer for the student divestment advocacy group, the Endowment Justice Coalition — said that the committee is designed to placate people without taking substantive action.

Dwight Hall Socially Responsible Investment Fund Co-Presidents Johnny Xu ’22, Angelreana Choi ’23 and William McCormack ’22, who is also a Sports Editor for the News, expressed excitement that Yale is continuing to take steps to “reflect on its investment policies and its influence as a large institutional investor.”

Law professor Jonathan R. Macey LAW ’82 will chair the new five-person committee. Additional members include one economics and two earth and planetary sciences professors, as well as the director of the Yale Investments Office. The CFFIP will crowdsource ideas, hosting Zoom forums in which members of the Yale community can advise the committee on making a framework for the Corporation.

Student activists have for years called on the University to disclose and divest any holdings in fossil fuels and Puerto Rican debt. The most recent public records indicate that Yale has invested at least

$454 million into corporations that are involved in the exploration or extraction of fossil fuels. Students’ demands have gained traction through a series of high-profile protests. In 2014, the University asked its money managers to consider the full cost of carbon emissions when investing, but Yale has held off on committing fully to divesting from fossil fuels. The most widely publicized effort came at last year’s Yale-Harvard football game, when students took to the fields and delayed the game’s second half.

In an interview with the News, Macey said that Salovey did not mention this week’s EJC-led protests when asking him to chair the committee. Salovey approached him within the last week, Macey said. At that time, students had already publicized their plans to protest.

University spokeswoman Karen Peart did not respond to a request for comment on ties between this week’s protests and the creation of the committee.

The committee will begin meeting immediately, Macey said, and will meet at least once each week.

He hopes the committee can present its report this winter, calling its charge “time-sensitive.”

The committee will take the broader principles outlined in “The Ethical Investor,” a 1972 book that guides Yale’s investment practices, and make them specific enough that they can be applied to

individual fossil fuel producers to see if divestment is warranted.

Still, members of the Endowment Justice Coalition took issue with the creation of a new committee, alleging that it is an attempt to bog the process down in bureaucracy. The University already has an Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility, also chaired by Macey. The Advisory Committee makes recommendations to be presented to the Yale Corporation concerning the voting of Yale’s stock shares, according to its website. The new committee’s guidelines will be used by the ACIR, which will in turn advise the Yale Corporation.

Nathan Lobel ’17 said that it is unclear how the two committees will differ.

“That is the million-dollar question,” Lobel said. “It seemed clear to us that Yale’s response when presented with asks for it to change its behaviors is to create complex and intricate bureaucracy and abstract the problem from those who actually get to make a decision on it.”

Lobel, who worked with the ACIR as the former policy coordinator for Fossil Free Yale, said that on multiple occasions, activists attempted to contact Corporation members directly but were instead routed through the ACIR, which does not ultimately have the power to change policy.

Macey told the News that the new committee and the ACIR will work closely together. The CFFIP will rely on the ACIR as it establishes concrete guidelines for divestment. Macey added that once the new committee creates the guidelines, the ACIR will apply them to specific companies in the fossil fuel industry.

According to Macey, the issue of whether an investment is ethical or not is independent of whether it will generate a profit. The profitability of the investment “doesn’t enter into [his] calculus,” he said.

A statement from the Yale Endowment Justice Coalition read that the creation of the new committee is “proof that pressure from student activists works.”

“Student activists have been saying for years that the moral question of fossil fuel investments is incredibly clear cut: the only ethical thing to do is disclose and divest those holdings, and reinvest in the New Haven community, which is struggling with the worst public health and economic crises in living memory,” the statement reads.

“The Ethical Investor” was written by Yale professor John Simon.

Contact ROSE HOROWITCH at rose. horowitch@yale.edu and EMILY TIAN at emily.tian@yale.edu .

Claudia Rankine to depart Yale for NYU next year

BY MADISON HAHAMY AND EMILY TIAN STAFF REPORTERS Celebrated poet, playwright and essayist Claudia Rankine will be leaving her post as the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale at the end of the 2020-21 academic year to become a professor at New York University.

The announcement — first made public by a press release from NYU’s creative writing program — comes just a few weeks after the publication of her newest book, “Just Us: An American Conversation,” a collection of poems and essays on race-related conversations she has had with friends and strangers.

“I find myself involved more and more in theater in New York,” Rankine said. “So the decision to take the NYU position will allow me to teach and attend rehearsals and write in a more fluid way.”

Rankine arrived in New Haven in 2016 after previously holding positions at Barnard College, Pomona College and the University of Southern California. During her first year, she was named the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry, the first endowed professorship of poetry at Yale. She is the second faculty member to hold the post, following the poet Elizabeth Alex-

ander, who was appointed to the position in 2015 and held the position until 2016.

Richard Deming, the creative writing program’s director, explained that the professorship “signals the ways that Yale has long had a belief that poetry and the arts are crucial and sustaining aspects of the college’s sense of education.”

“Claudia’s is as dynamic a mind as one will ever encounter, and that is evident from the first moment one meets her,” Deming wrote in an email to the News. “Poetry is a social art and no matter what, I believe that she is probing the consequences and possibilities of language. Her careful attention to her teaching and her investment in widening our notions of community — She leaps across genre boundaries and departmental divisions and engages the world beyond the academy — is evidence of a deeply ethical sensibility and as well as generosity of spirit.”

At Yale, Rankine frequently teaches sections of “Advanced Poetry Writing,” and, in recent years, has also co-taught a class titled “Contemporary Black American Women Poets Experiments in the Lyric” with Maryam Ivette Parhizkar, a doctoral candidate in American studies and African American studies.

Branson Rideaux ’20, who took the class before graduating, recalls Rankine inviting her students to her house for a poetry reading with poet LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs.

“Professor Rankine was incredibly welcoming and I remember being absolutely obsessed with her adorable dog and all of the amazing artwork around her house,” Rideaux wrote in an email to the News. “Professor Rankine spoke to each of us individually, making sure we felt comfortable, that we had grabbed a slice of Pepe’s, and that we had a good seat for the reading.”

Rideaux added how lucky he, and Yale as a whole, are to have had Rankine for the past four years. He described her as an amazing professor, as well as an “incredible poet and Black woman.”

Her 2014 book-length poem, “Citizen: An American Lyric,” portrayed through text and image a portrait of racism and Blackness in America, earning her scores of book awards and a top spot in the New York Times list of bestsellers. With grant money funded from her 2016 MacArthur Genius Grant, Rankine also created the Racial Imaginary Institute, a New York-based “cultural laboratory” of social activists, writers and artists exploring the subject of race.

“When you have a community of volunteers like at the Racial Imaginary Institute, that community becomes the remuneration, more than salaries and capitalistic frameworks,” Rankine said. “And somebody needs to be the organizational energy of it. I’m hoping that being in New York means that we can move forward on a number of projects.”

Despite the move to New York, Rankine describes her four-and-ahalf years at Yale as “really enriching.”

The creative writing program at Yale formally began in 2013.

Contact MADISON HAHAMY at madison.hahamy@yale.edu and EMILY TIAN at emily.tian@yale.edu .

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

At the end of the 2020-2021 academic year, Claudia Rankine will leave her post as the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale to become a professor at NYU.

PAGE 12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

SPORTS

“I don’t want to be better than you or her or him. I want to be better than I am right now.” KERRI WALSH 3-TIME OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST, BEACH VOLLEYBALL

Health experts and coaches contemplate spring sports SCIENTISTS FROM PAGE 14 in New Haven. In adapting their training to the circumstances, the heavyweight men moved their equipment to the green outside Payne Whitney Gymnasium for endurance workouts.

Gladstone told the News he is not optimistic about a racing season this spring. As Ivy League schools operate on different academic schedules and the number of students permitted on each campus varies, he questioned who would be there to compete.

“They’re a lot of people at all of these universities that are taking the year off, so what kind of Eastern Sprints champion would you have?” Gladstone said. “What kind of IRA champion would you have?

It would be a very, very watered down non-representative group.”

Without a season or formal competition ahead, Drake said student-athletes have to create their motivation and improve for the sake of improving. He has been hosting weekly Zoom calls to connect the full team, and he hopes his tennis players can maintain a sense of athletic purpose this fall despite the disrupted practice routines and ambiguity around competition.

Drake said he is hoping for a season and expressed his faith in the Ivy League and Yale leadership to make a prudent decision.

“I think they’re people who know a lot better than I do what’s safe and what’s not, and they’re thinking about more than just the whole tennis team,” Drake said.

Director of Athletics Vicky Chun echoed Drake’s sentiments.

She expressed that the Ivy League presidents utilize medical information made available from public health experts to make the most informed decisions for student-athletes, coaches and staff.

She is confident that protocols and guidelines set by the University and its athletic department work if followed.

“We will continue to prepare our student-athletes and when it’s time to compete, we’ll be ready,” Chun wrote in an email to the News.

The Ivy League’s decision to cancel fall-semester athletic competition remains in place until Jan. 1, 2021.

Contact SYDNEY GRAY at sydney.gray@yale.edu and ZACH MORRIS at zach.morris@yale.edu .

AMELIA LOWER/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Director of the Yale Institute for Global Health Saad Omer stressed that it is too early to determine the likelihood of spring-semester competition.

Chen at Skate America SKATING FROM PAGE 14 petitive event — the 2020 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, where he claimed his fourth consecutive national championship. Chen noted that while this year’s offseason has been a little longer than normal, the relative overlap with a typical figure skating offseason helped him stay prepared to return to the ice.

During quarantine, the Salt Lake City native, who is currently living in California, spent most of his time training and getting ready for the new season. Chen is working with choreographer and former Olympic ice dancer Shae-Lynn Bourne, who developed this year’s programs.

Chen previewed these routines at a virtual competition set up by the U.S. Figure Skating Federation earlier this fall to help get athletes back in competitive shape.

“I kind of let her take the reins with these programs,” Chen said.

“I feel as though if the choreographer is passionate about a certain genre or theme they will give me the best work.”

Chen’s short program this year features music from the 1995 film “Desperado” starring Antonio Banderas, while his free skate is a selection of pieces from American composer Philip Glass.

Chen noted the difference in styles between the two programs, as well as the contrast between this year’s music compared to last year’s. Specifically with the free skate, this year’s slower, classically driven program is very different compared to the more contemporary “Rocket Man” program from last year, which featured a strong hip-hop section. Last year’s program set a world record for points in a men’s free skate at the 2019 Grand Prix Final in Turin, Italy.

“Even since I was a little kid …

I’ve really been trying to explore new styles, new genres of music per competition,” Chen said. “The [free skate is] more or less in my comfort zone since it’s a little slower, the music is a lot more emotional.”

A combination of flamenco and mariachi styles, this year’s short program is “character-driven” and specific to the

A look into sports broadcasting at Yale BROADCASTS FROM PAGE 14 sports broadcasts at Yale have humble beginnings.

The Bulldogs’ first regular broadcasts began just over 10 years ago when a group of students including Ellis launched the University’s first athletics video streaming product, Yale All-Access. While relatively basic in comparison to modern standards, the team pioneered many techniques still used in Yale’s broadcasts today. Then, in 2013, the Ivy League Digital Network was born, standardizing and centralizing streaming across the Ancient Eight programs. Five years later, the Ivy League signed a television deal with ESPN, giving fans access to all of the Bulldogs’ broadcasts via ESPN+ and occasionally, ESPN’s core linear networks.

Despite streaming’s rapid transformation over the past decade, the Bulldogs’ broadcasting team has largely stayed true to its student-run roots.

“We have several students and student-athletes that play a large role in ensuring strong broadcasts for Yale Athletics,” Associate Athletic Director of Strategic Communications Mike Gambardella said.

“These roles can range from set-up, cabling, camera operators, producers, graphics, replay operators and on-air talent. Many positions can be taught and learned through shadowing a few events and help build up our ‘depth charts’ as we usually broadcast numerous events per week, including simultaneous games, and nearly 200 broadcasts per athletic season.”

With some weekends of a regular season featuring upwards of four different teams competing at home, students play an important role in helping to staff each game, ensuring that broadcasts can occur simultaneously at different events across campus.

Ellis said that Yale’s broadcast teams are also structured to meet industry standards — each team is constructed in the same format as any professional television crew. A regular weekend conference basketball game typically consists of 11 staff members: a producer in charge of the entire operation; a director selecting video feeds; a play-byplay and a color analyst who provide live game analysis; a technical director responsible for operating camera feeds; an assistant director liaising with master control at ESPN; a replay operator; and four camera operators, with two on the game line and two up in the “crow’s nests” — upper angles that capture a complete view of the action.

A football game, on the other hand, may require upwards of 22 crew members.

The large production crews pay off: Ellis said that ESPN’s viewership numbers show that Yale has the highest-viewed football, men’s basketball and lacrosse broadcasts in the Ivy League.

According to women’s field hockey captain Imogen Davies ’22, working for the broadcasting team as a production assistant has allowed her to “learn a lot about how event production works.” She has operated cameras at events for basketball, vol-

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

Kayla Burton reports from the sideline at a Yale men’s basketball game against Penn last February.

leyball, lacrosse, ice hockey and gymnastics.

“Being paid to go to Yale Athletics events is amazing,” Davies said.

“The broadcast team is very well organized and it is run quite professionally. It has been a really great experience so far.”

Students are not the only contributor to the Elis’ sports broadcasts, however. The team also draws upon the talents of individuals from the greater New Haven area. Sean Raggio, a recent graduate from Quinnipiac, has served as a technical director for many events, while Kayla Burton, a sports reporter for Western Mass News and former women’s basketball player at Lehigh, has provided color commentary for several basketball games.

Though seasons of experience have made Yale’s sports broadcasts slicker than ever, the team is still looking for ways to innovate and improve their game. Harvard’s program, for example, has brought coverage to almost every single one of its teams at one point or another — including their alpine and nordic ski teams. While Ellis said that Yale is not at that level yet, he maintains that the future of the Bulldogs’ broadcasts involve working closely with the other programs and staying at the forefront of technology to bring coverage to more sports, all while maintaining a high level of student involvement.

“It’s always cool to see one of your camera shots in a Yale Athletics highlight video,” said field hockey midfielder Sarah King ’22, who works with the broadcast team as an assistant director and camera operator. “Don’t get me wrong, pulling together a good broadcast can be tiring and stressful, especially if we’re short-staffed or experiencing technical issues. Knowing we put on a seamless production is a win in itself. I miss broadcasting Yale games, matches and meets. It was something I looked forward to every weekend.”

131 Yale events were broadcast during the shortened 201920 year for athletics, and the Ivy League has suspended all athletic competition for the fall semester.

Contact RYAN CHIAO at ryan.chiao@yale.edu .

feel of “Desperado,” Chen told the News.

Chen’s ambitious and wide range of musical choices has not gone unnoticed, especially by figure skating analyst Jackie Wong — the “most trusted name in figure skating news,” according to Ben Cohen of the Wall Street Journal. “[Chen’s] range in artistry is underrated,” Wong told the News. “He’s been able to pull off a variety of genres of music and character, going more classic to more contemporary.”

Going into this season, Chen, whose proficiency in landing quads — jumps with between four and five revolutions — helps him consistently garner high technical scores, is focused on raising his program components score, which is judged based on the more artistic elements of the sport.

Chen said that this year, he wants to work on skating a more cohesive program by making sure each element does not seem randomly spaced throughout the program.

“One of the things [Chen has] been working on is weaving his jumps into his programs more seamlessly, and I’m looking forward to seeing how his new programs push him to continue to be a more complete skater,” Wong said.

While Chen is excited to get back on the ice, he pointed out one major difference between this weekend’s event and events prior: the lack of sound. Skate America has suggested the possibility of fake crowd noise, but Chen emphasized the irreplaceable nature of a live audience.

“We feed off of the sound of the audience as the program goes on,” Chen said. “Our long program is four minutes and 10 seconds, and once you get to the halfway point you’re pretty tired, so it’s nice to have some sound behind you just to sort of give you that second wind through the rest of the program.”

Replacing the audience with cardboard cutouts is just one of the many protocols Skate America implemented this year in lieu of the coronavirus pandemic.

In addition, all participants are required to quarantine in their

hotel rooms until their arrival COVID-19 screening comes back negative. From then on, they are enclosed in a “bubble” within the Orleans Hotel and Casino and the Orleans Arena. Everyone must also complete health screenings each day which include temperature checks.

With these protocols in place, this weekend’s event will be a unique experience for Chen. His goals, however, remain the same: continue to improve with each competition.

While his two world championships may suggest otherwise, Chen and his coach Rafael Arutyunyan do not believe Chen is an “elite skater” quite yet.

“I talked about this with Nathan and honestly said that I don’t like a lot of things in his skating,” Arutyunyan told Russian news outlet RT in an interview in May of this year.

Arutyunyan said that Chen responded in agreement.

While the Yale undergraduate and his coach looked towards even loftier goals, Wong commended Chen’s body of work thus far.

“Chen is … an incredible technician when it comes to the most difficult jumps being done by anyone in the world,” Wong said. “I probably take it for granted having watched him for so many years, but his jumps — and the consistency of those jumps given the difficulty — are absolutely spectacular.”

These spectacular jumps have helped propel Chen to the longest current winning streak in the sport among active skaters.

Chen’s mind, however, is not on keeping the streak alive.

“The more I start thinking about these win streaks and all that stuff, the worse it’ll be,” Chen said. “So right now I’ll just continue working on that mindset where I’m just thrilled, happy and willing to improve.”

2020 Skate America will run from Oct. 23 to Oct. 25 and can be watched on NBC and NBCSN. Contact TRISHA NGUYEN at trisha.nguyen@yale.edu and JAMES RICHARDSON at james.richardson@yale.edu .

Midfield maestro Winhoffer on Yale’s future

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

Last season, Winhoffer, who led the league with 23 points, earned the title of Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year.

WINHOFFER FROM PAGE 14 11 assists, Winhoffer was truly a force to be reckoned with on the pitch last fall. Given Winhoffer’s quick feet and good awareness, the opposing defenders never knew if Yale’s number 10 would set up a teammate in front of goal or cut inside for a shot himself.

“Performing at such a high level every session and every game is very hard to do, and doing this last season is what allowed [him] and the team to perform so well last year,” Stannard said. “More specifically, he has become a consistent specialist with his set piece service and free kicks which resulted in many goals for us last year.”

The Bulldogs won six and lost one in the Ivy League on their way to becoming conference champions for the first time since 2005.

The whole team performed well throughout the course of the season, but Winhoffer’s contributions were crucial to this turnaround.

Winhoffer has contributed not only to the team’s success on the field but also to Yale’s soccer program as a whole. His actions on and off the field have received high praise from his coaches.

“Most importantly, Mark takes responsibility and is accountable to himself and the

team which is critical for any leader, and I greatly appreciate this from him,” Stannard said.

“Additionally, Mark brings a true passion and love for the game and for competing. He loves training as much as he loves playing and that’s really hard to find. When you have your captain that leads by example with his pure love and joy for the game and for working hard to improve every day, it raises the level of everyone else on the team and helps to improve the culture we want in the program.”

Winhoffer said maintaining good health — from both a public health and fitness standpoint — is his top priority, but the captain wants his team to remain close in spite of the obstacles.

Without a season this fall, Winhoffer’s next high-level competition may occur for the Philippines national team. He said he is currently preparing for a potential call-up in March, when qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup resume.

In February 2019, Winhoffer joined the Philippines National Under-23 team at the ASEAN Football Federation U-23 Championship in Cambodia.

Contact REHAN MELWANI at rehan.melwani@yale.edu .

PAGE 13

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

THROUGH THE LENS

W

e all have places to be.

We all have people to be when we get there.

We walk,

talk, and move through our lives, carrying with us more than we can hold —Or perhaps just enough— but, Do we know where we’re going?

Do we want to?

LILY DORSTEWITZ reports.

NCAAF Clemson 73 Georgia Tech 7

MLS Nashville 3 Dallas 0

SPORTS

ANASTHASIA SHILOV/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

Dept. Chair Albert Ko mentioned that limiting “superspreading” events will be crucial if varsity competition resumes in the spring. that it is too early to determine the likelihood of spring-semester competition.

“We know about superspreading,” Ko said. “We know about that kind of general rule … that 20 percent of people will contribute to 80 percent of the transmission. One of the interventions against superspreading is to limit gathering size because you lower the probability of having these kinds of superspreading events.

I think much of [whether sports will resume] will have to depend on where we are on the epidemic curve in the spring.”

When asked about what the Yale community might learn from the recent cluster of positive cases from members of the men’s hockey team, Ko described the cluster of cases as another classic example of superspreading. He explained that when people are in close contact for prolonged periods of time, whether on a cruise ship, at a bar or in the same room,

No games means no streams for students broadcasters

transmission risk between people is heightened.

Omer also indicated that the U.S. is trending towards a third wave of the coronavirus. Moving into the “respiratory season” — marked by the prevalence of other viruses such as influenza — he said there needs to be a nationwide effort to flatten the curve.

He emphasized the importance of aggressively controlling the virus through non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as substantially increasing the use of masks and implementing broad social distancing — but not necessarily lockdowns — across the country.

“The NBA … has shown that you can play sports safely, but they had to go through extraordinary effort to actually make that happen,” Omer said. “It’s not just the contact part on the court or on the field, it’s also all sorts of other stuff that happens in the locker room and other close contact. Based on that, I would say it’s hard to predict at this point that even on a sport by sport basis you would have a situation where folks are able to play certain sports.”

Given the challenges mentioned

by Omer and Ko and the constraints of the pandemic, the Ivy League has adopted a three-phase approach for returning to training this fall.

Less than a week after Yale Athletics reverted to an entirely virtual Phase 0 on Oct. 14, men’s tennis head coach Chris Drake and men’s heavyweight crew head coach Steve Gladstone shared their expectations for the future of phased training with the News this fall.

“If we’re able to do some phase work, then I think as an individual sport that’s pretty distanced, we get the benefit of at least being able to work in a more full capacity than other sports in that Phase II scenario,” Drake said.

Drake and Gladstone said there are five men’s tennis players and 12 heavyweight rowers currently enrolled in residence and training SEE SCIENTISTS PAGE 12

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

Feeds captured during broadcasts allow officials, like referees pictured above at a women’s basketball game last November, to conduct video reviews.

In any year with Ivy League games and screaming spectators, Yale production crews broadcast competitions for 21 of the Bulldogs’ 35 varsity teams. They capture footage for sports ranging from football to lightweight men’s crew and present it live to audiences with play-by-play commentary, statistics and replays of highlight-reel action.

BROADCASTS Behind each broadcast is a team of more than 35, consisting of full-time staff, members of the local community and Yale students, most of whom are also student-athletes. According

to Yale Athletics Video Producer Evan Ellis ’12, the team “strives to make the best broadcasts, which requires a lot of assistance and a lot of help.”

“Our job from top to bottom is to teach and to educate and that’s something that I take very seriously,” Ellis said. “Some of our students have gone on to do great things in broadcasting and in sports, and this has been a great way [for them] to learn while being a part of something that definitely helps to promote the mission of Yale Athletics.”

Games are broadcast on ESPN+, with a select few streaming on NESN. Fans overseas can also tune in on simulcasts hosted by Stretch Internet. While livestreamed games have now become commonplace,

STAT OF THE WEEK

SEE BROADCASTS PAGE 12

11

“I would say it’s hard to predict at this point that even on a sport by sport basis you would have a situation where folks are able to play certain sports.”

SAAD OMER DIRECTOR OF THE YALE INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL HEALTH

Nathan Chen ’23 to skate at Grand Prix event

BY JAMES RICHARDSON & TRISHA NGUYEN CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS 2018 Olympic medalist Nathan Chen ’23 is taking a break from his studies and preparing to compete in the Sin City this weekend.

SKATING The reigning world champion in men’s figure skating is set to begin the 2020-21 season this weekend at Skate America — the first Grand Prix event of the year — at the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“I am ready to compete,” Chen said, speaking with the News from his hotel room while awaiting the

results of the COVID-19 test he took upon arrival. “I know that my career is not that long in respect to other sports, so the goal is to make sure that I’m present at these competitions and really enjoying myself.”

The statistics and data science major — who is on a leave of absence this year and also plans to take off the following academic year to prepare for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing — is set to embark on a season unlike any of his others. With the world championships scheduled for last March canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, it has been nine months since Chen’s last comSEE SKATING PAGE 12

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

After nine months away from competition, U.S. figure skater Nathan Chen ’23 prepares to headline 2020 Skate America in Las Vegas.

Winhoffer leads team through pandemic

BY REHAN MELWANI STAFF REPORTER In three short years with the Bulldogs, Yale men’s soccer captain and midfielder Mark Winhoffer ’21 has taken his team to the top of the Ivy League.

WINHOFFER

BY RYAN CHIAO STAFF REPORTER

RUGBY New Zealand 27 Australia 7

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAYNE WHITNEY GYM CLOSED THROUGH SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25 Payne Whitney Gym will remain closed through Sunday for cleaning and disinfection, according to an update on Yale’s Sports and Recreation website. The post added that reservations made for the fitness center, pool and group exercise classes have been canceled.

Scientists uncertain about spring sports

With the Ivy League’s decision on spring-semester athletic competition still unannounced, Yale epidemiologists and some coaches are expressing uncertainty about the feasibility of restarting athletic competition in the spring given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Department Chair and professor of epidemiology Albert Ko and Director of the Yale Institute for Global Health Saad Omer discussed the likelihood of spring-semester athletic competition at Yale with the News. Ko detailed the precautions that students, coaches and athletic staff must take if undergraduate sports resume in the spring. He mentioned that limiting “superspreading” events will be crucial to maintaining a low rate of viral transmission on Yale’s campus if varsity competition resumes in the spring, while Omer stressed

NFL Cardinals 38 Cowboys 10

FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE goydn.com/YDNsports Twitter: @YDNSports

MEN’S BASKETBALL ELKIN NEW DIRECTOR OF BASKETBALL OPERATIONS Matt Elkin is joining the Yale men’s basketball staff as Director of Basketball Operations. A former assistant at the Windward School in LA and Vermont Academy, Elkn replaces Rey Crossman, who left Yale this summer.

BY SYDNEY GRAY AND ZACH MORRIS STAFF REPORTERS

MLB Rays 6 Dodgers 4

In his first fall at Yale, the Bulldogs struggled in a transitory season, posting two wins in the Ivy League and finishing fourth in the Ancient Eight. Yale finished under .500 for the sixth consecutive season, but showed significant improvement over a pair of one-win seasons in 2014 and 2015. Less than two years later, Winhoffer was leading the attack for the Ivy League champions, earning the title of Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year in the process.

Even now, amid strict social distancing guidelines and minimal time on the field, Winhoffer is focused on the program’s success.

Although he will miss his chance to win back-to-back championships, he envisions long-term success for the Bulldogs.

“I think when I first got here as a first year it was more of a social club, and I think [men’s soccer head] coach [Kylie] Stannard over the years has turned it into a very serious program with really high ambitions,” Winhoffer said. “Now after winning the Ivy League, we want to be a staple winning the Ivy League just like [men’s] lacrosse, and obviously move forward to be a national perennial powerhouse.”

Following the 2015 season, Stannard’s first at the helm, at least five players left the program.

Stannard brought “high expectations and demands” for his entire roster, as he told the News that winter, and a level of competitive intensity to which some players had not been accustomed.

By the time Winhoffer enrolled, Stannard’s transition was fully underway.

Hungry for success, Winhoffer has always been dedicated to his craft. He began playing at the age of 9, influenced by his father and brother, who both played collegiate soccer. He progressed through the various tiers of the sport with his friends, from club, to high school and to Yale. In addition to his obvious talent and passion for the game, Winhoffer said “getting a very good education was always on [his] mind.”

Winhoffer said he chose Yale as the place to further his soccer

career while pursuing his interest in economics.

As a first year, Winhoffer averaged 40 minutes a game, scoring one goal in his debut season across 16 matches. As the only rookie to feature in every game, he showed signs of promise but was inhibited during part of his second season due to health problems. That fall, the Bulldogs finished 7–6–3.

Things changed for Winhoffer and for Yale at the start of the 2019 season. Winhoffer flew out of the gates with seven assists in the first seven games. He dominated the midfield, always finding pockets of space to help build in the attack. Over the course of the season, he started 17 of 18 games — playing nearly every minute — and helped create 17 goals in the process.

With a tally of six goals and SEE WINHOFFER PAGE 12

MUSCOSPORTSPHOTOS.COM

Winhoffer helped lead the Bulldogs to last fall’s Ivy League title after starting his career on the heels of five straight sub-.500 seasons.

THE NUMBER OF ASSISTS YALE MEN’S SOCCER CAPTAIN MARK WINHOFFER ’21 CONTRIBUTED LAST FALL, A FIGURE THAT RANKED SIXTH IN THE NATION AND ONE SHORT OF YALE’S SCHOOL RECORD.

WEEKEND FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020

// BY MAIA DECKER

// ANASTHASIA SHILOV

Stranger in a Strange Place

“How’s your day been?”

A phrase I’ve likely used hundreds of times while working a series of service jobs. Most recently, I spent my summer serving New York style pizza in the heart of Missoula, Montana (the irony of ending up in New Haven where there seem to be as many pizza restaurants here as we have cows in my home state is not lost upon me).

The teenage girls who worked the front of house always seemed to shy away from the inquisition into other’s lives. Maybe to them it sounded more like “What slice would you like?” Or “debit or credit?” Either way, I took any chance I could to ring up customers because, perhaps it’s odd, but I love talking to strangers.

Each person who comes into a restaurant has their own story to tell: travelers, high schoolers on a first date, professionals in between meetings, construction workers rebuilding the local library. With each face I wonder, “What secrets of the world have you learned so far? How many of them can I glimpse in our brief time together?”

One day, a businessman entered the restaurant and immediately began speaking Italian. All the English-speaking employees were confused, as high schoolers often are. “I’m sorry sir,” I said to him. “None of us speak Italian.”

He laughed and asked if we had any experience in foreign languages, to which I responded, “I’m sorry but I only have a very rudimentary understanding of French.”

Two weeks later, I was running late to work. A man wearing both sunglasses and mask — face-concealed — stopped me on the sidewalk and began speaking in French about the new cafe next door. I responded

back, in my awful French accent, deeply confused at both how I knew this stranger and how he knew that I spoke French. He took his sunglasses off and the recognition hit: This was the same businessman from before.

He had taken the care to remember our conversation and strike a separate one up with me later. This small gesture warmed my heart and instilled in me the knowledge that I had a place in this community: Here we were kind to each other in small but meaningful ways.

Then, I came to the East Coast.

On my Uber here, I started chatting immediately with the driver.

“How’s your day been?”

We discussed Connecticut, COVID and his favorite soup recipe.

But as he dropped me off, instead of offering the classic fish-out-of-water analogy, he told me, “You’re like Bambi. You should buy a gun.”

Although this was an extreme interaction, I was thoroughly shocked. I had five houseplants in my backpack. My sandal tan was fresh. I felt less like a fawn, and more like one of those apparently wrong tiles in the bathroom that always seems to bother you while you’re brushing your teeth: out of place.

Luckily, the moment faded quickly. I was welcomed to Pauli Murray: “How’s your day been?” Oh thank goodness, here were my people. The next two weeks of quarantine felt like I was back in Montana; each student, FroCo and dining hall staff member wanted to know my small truths and listened attentively as I told them.

However, after the quarantine ended, the shock was back. My suitemate is a born-and-raised New Yorker who lost her faith in strangers long ago. One day, we were walking on campus and passed a man sit-

ting on a bench. My mask made it impossible to offer my normal smile, so I used my favorite phrase: “Hello, how’re you?” He responded briefly and my suitemate and I were on our way.

“Don’t do that,” she said. “You don’t know who you could be talking to.”

I was shaken again. In smaller towns, one creates a community out of those around them, regardless of outside factors. I came to realize that Missoula, as a mountain town, fosters a sense of self that is dependent upon one’s place within the community. Amid the sea of strangers on the coast, suddenly one is forced to create a more intentional community than just those who also happen to be strolling along the same street.

So, I worked to create balance between the two paradigms. Since my surroundings had changed, my interactions with them must also. I began to search for the fulfillment of my curiosity of others in smaller ways. On a visit to the Yale Bookstore, I asked an employee what he was reading. He told me about the book “The Celestine Prophecy”

by James Redfield and read me his favorite quote. Although the specific wording was lost to me, the wisdom was shared: Redfield writes that we as human beings are manifestations of not only the physical entities of our parents, but also of their hopes and dreams.

I thanked the man for his time, promptly purchased my dad’s favorite book when he was 18 and called my mom.

Returning home, I sat down and told my suitemate about one of my fears: my sense of loneliness in the world of anonymity. She moved into a detailed story about Julio who worked at her local deli in Brooklyn.

Julio remembered her voicing her worries once about a Spanish test, and since then has only spoken to her en español.

I would like to believe that we as humans have two dual forces that draw us to others: curiosity and desire for community. A poem I love

by Danusha Laméris has a line that strikes me: “Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to the person handling it. To smile at them and for them to smile back.”

I’ve taken to my own secret acts of curiosity and compassion. A dear friend of mine is particularly fond of the stacks at Sterling where researchers have their own little desks — each full of an eclectic mix of books likely assisting them with their thesis in the making. We’ll peer at their books and wonder: What secrets of the world could this person show us? And how could one ever relate 20th-century romantic poetry to the Olympics? Either way, my love for strangers continues, manifesting itself into small Connecticut-appropriate mannerisms.

My dad sent me a stack of handmade Montana-themed thank you cards — little mementos which remind me to be openly grateful for those around me.

Maybe the East Coast is much larger than my hometown. However, I don’t believe this locational difference means that the humans 2,000 miles away are innately different from those in New Haven. We all just want to feel as if we belong in our community and are learning more about ourselves and the world around us in the process.

Contact MAIA DECKER at maia.decker@yale.edu .

PAGE B2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND FALL

Where We’ve “Ben”

// D O R A

GUO

and Where We’ll Go // BY JACQUELINE KASKEL

What would you do if a guy in your class wrote you an origami card revealing a new quirky compliment under every fold? What if he did that every Valentine’s Day? What would you do if this same guy serenaded you in the library with a new song he wrote about you? What would you do if he also happened to be your friend? What if you didn’t feel the same way?

Shoulders drooping from carrying an already heavy backpack and stomach lurching from a lack of breakfast, I had never felt less prepared to take on my first day at a performing arts high school. That day was a whirlwind of people and a hurricane of information. Apparently, this was also the day that I met Ben, but the funny thing is I don’t remember that at all.

My first memory of Ben is from the second week of high school. I had been absent the previous Thursday and Friday, during which Ben had taken handwritten notes for me in all of my classes, though he had barely even met me. First period that Monday morning, Ben handed me the extremely detailed notes (which I still have to this day), and it was then that our friendship began. Or more accurately, his friendship with me began.

You see, I hadn’t attended the same middle school as everyone else and was the new girl at school. I knew nothing and no one, and I felt lost, like fish on dry land. As the new girl, my only knowledge of people came from the gossip and stories that everyone wished would disappear. People told me that Ben was a “weirdo” and a “nerd,” and so that was what I naively believed (ironic, because I was also both a “weirdo” and a “nerd”). Yet, Ben constantly treated me with nothing but kindness, and for such a long time, I ignored him. I gave into the gossip and the stories. To this day, I’m still ashamed of that.

I don’t remember the exact date, but it was sometime during the fall of my freshman year that I realized his kindness was more than just platonic: He had asked my parents for permission to date me. Oh, my goodness, he likes me… romantically? Also, are we still in the 18th century? As a freshman, I was naturally flattered. As the epitome of innocence, I was also apprehensive. But mostly, I was shocked. Stunned.

Worried. All of the above and everything in between. What am I going to do? I don’t like him back. Oh, gosh, he’s in almost all of my classes… How is this going to end?

It was around November when things really started to get interesting. During a music rehearsal at our local performing center, all of the freshman singers were in the basement, waiting for our three minutes of fame on stage. We were in that basement for so long that most of it is honestly just a blur.

What I do remember is this: I was sitting on the floor doing my precalculus homework when Ben walked over and sat right next to me to do his homework. Whispers fled down and across the hall, the gossip that we were a “thing” already beginning to form.

BEN: “I had been considering it for an hour, and I was mortified, terrified to do it.

But I thought, I’m just going to do it. And I did, and I was so scared.”

For Ben, this moment was a feat of bravery. For me, all I could think of was shutting down those rumors. It’s not true! We’re not a thing! I know I didn’t necessarily ask him to leave me alone, but we are definitely not together. Looking back, I think that I didn’t ask him to leave because I secretly really enjoyed his friendship and company. But by not telling him that the romantic feelings were unreciprocated, I exponentially exacerbated the situation.

On Valentine’s Day, he showered me with gifts, flowers and the most intricately designed card that I have ever seen. How could I refuse? And so, I continued to unintentionally lead him on.

In our AP Human Geography class, we were assigned a project, and as an overly studious person, I wanted to work with the most reliable student: Ben. Unfortunately, he mistakenly thought that my choosing him as a partner meant that his feelings were reciprocated.

BEN: “[I felt] ecstatic. I felt like… oh my god, you should have seen the happy dance I did after class.”

As summer approached, everyone was talking about their upcoming plans, their academic programs, and their exotic family vacations. Me? I was headed to EXPLO at Yale. I was beyond excited. You can probably guess where this is going, though. By true coincidence and chance, Ben was also going to be attending the same program, but a different session. My suitemate during this program had actually met Ben during the previous session, and would not stop raving about how witty and wonderful he was.

Imagine my confusion, considering all I knew about Ben was what other people had told me.

I realize now that, as much time as I had spent with Ben, I had never really bothered to get to know him as a person. I had been too caught up in his feelings towards me to appreciate how much he truly cared about me. And how much I truly cared about him. I had been taking advantage of his friendship, though I certainly never intended to.

Sophomore year, things didn’t improve much. Every day in our AP World History class, I migrated towards Ben’s desk to chat with him about calculus, music and the latest TV shows. Again, he took this as a sign that I was interested in him. On our chorus trip to Chicago, we walked around together in the science museum, but I was oblivious to how much my spending time with him both confused and pained him.

One day, he invited me to meet him in the music library, where he waited for me, guitar strap on and lyrics in hand. He had written me a song and he serenaded me right there

WKND RECOMMENDS Destressing by playing Mario Kart.

in that library, after which he asked me to be his girlfriend. It’s hard to say whether I was more flattered or mortified. What am I going to do? How can I say “no” without breaking his heart? Doesn’t he know that I don’t feel the same way? And so, I told him, despite his beautiful song, “Let’s just be friends.” After that day, he still did not give up.

BEN: “You also have to understand, I didn’t understand social cues at that point.

I didn’t understand what ‘just want to be friends’ meant. I misinterpreted it, and so that was a big mistake. I didn’t know what it meant because no one ever told me.”

By the time we reached our junior year, though, we started to become very close, mutual friends, and it seemed like this whole “he likes her, but she doesn’t like him back” part of our friendship was far behind us. The truth as to why we became good friends?

BEN: “Me giving up. One hundred percent. One thousand percent.”

That year, we took AP Calculus BC together, during which we used every spare moment to quarrel with each other, even about the most trivial things. Our friendship clearly hadn’t found its sea legs yet, considering we could only find unity in disunity.

BEN: “[I remember] us constantly arguing. That was so much fun. I just wanted to bicker with you to piss you off at that point.”

Despite our arguments, we were truly good friends. He was someone I confided in and felt completely safe being myself around. During my most stressful points, Ben was always there to cheer me up or calm me down. He sat with me when I was sick in Atlanta, and he didn’t make too much of a fuss when I took his last mint in Tampa. He was anything and everything that you could ask for in a friend. But when prom season arrived, our friendship took a perilous turn.

We agreed to go together as friends, since we didn’t have any significant others with whom to attend. That was our first mistake. I suppose I didn’t realize how incredibly uncomfortable it would be to slow dance with a friend who I was not completely sure didn’t still have feelings for me. The preprom pictures on the beach and post-prom party water balloon fights didn’t really help the overall awkwardness of the entire night, either. Let’s just say that the night didn’t particularly end well, and I completely blame myself for reasons unstated. It’s honestly still a touchy subject for us. It caused an immeasurable rift in our friendship, and I thought that it would be the end of our three-year journey. We spent weeks without speaking and went our separate ways over the summer.

When senior year arrived, our friendship seemed to be, strangely enough, whole once more. Maybe it was the time we spent apart

over the summer or maybe I was just imagining things, but our friendship even seemed to blossom. We applied to college and read each other’s essays. We spent almost every lunch period together. We laughed together until we couldn’t breathe. We even gave each other the flu during a school trip to Tampa. We were seniors. We were on top of the world together. Everything seemed to be falling into place, and our friendship only deepened with each once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Though I’m not sure if we can ever truly forget our turbulent past, it certainly casts a light on what is truly important within a relationship. Friendships are not meant to be smooth sailing every single day. Friendships are not about those days where everything is sunshine, rainbows, and laughter, but rather the times when you just can’t stand each other and find a way to be there for each other anyways.

BEN: “Well, it’s hard to break my heart now. But seriously, our friendship means a lot to me. I don’t want to lose you even though we’re a whole country away. I want to be someone who’s in your life for the rest of your life, and not just let that die out.

Because you are very important to me. I feel like we have something that not many people have in terms of history, which makes it really, really unique and pretty unorthodox, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I think it’s a good thing. I’ve learned so much.

I’ve learned how to be good friends through you, how to have boundaries, and how to empathize through friendship. I feel like I’m a better man now just because of everything that we went through and everything that I learned. The fact that we turned [our friendship] around like that gives me hope for future friendships, because anything can happen. In terms of right now and what our friendship means to me, our history means a lot. I value our friendship more than I value pretty much any other friendship I can imagine. It honestly would be a disgrace not to continue our friendship and to stop caring about you because that’s not really possible at this point. Overall, our friendship means a lot to me, even if it doesn’t seem like it from far away. It does. I can’t really use adjectives to describe it. There’s not really one word in the English language that I can use to fully encompass everything.”

Ben and I? We were not destined to be friends. By this, I mean that our friendship did not fall right into our laps. We had to fight against all odds and even against each other to become the friends that we are today. We both have moments that we wish we could change. Yet, despite it all, every one of those moments led us to this very point in time.

We are almost 3,000 miles away, but still as close as ever. And, from the bottom of my heart, I hope that our friendship never ends.

Contact JACQUELINE KASKEL at jacqueline.kaskel@yale.edu .

ONLINE THIS WEEK: CULTURE SHOCK OR AMERICAN NARCISSISM? Dilge Buksur ‘24 reviews the first season of Emily in Paris.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B3

WEEKEND ENTERTAINMENT

STRANGERS: David DeRuiter Is Just Getting Started // BY OLIVIA TUCKER

A turtleneck, a blue jean jacket and perfectly white high-tops: not a page from a retro Converse ad, but rather the go-to outfit of David DeRuiter ’24.

ence happy. He said that it would’ve been easy to write DeRuiter off as a classic theater kid — albeit an “incredibly talented, put-together theater kid” — but that his idiosyncrasies were unmissable, like his love for the Batman franchise or intramural basketball.

“You see the turtleneck and know pretty much everything you need to know,” he said, and laughed.

Zbornak said that he valued DeRuiter’s willingness to share his passions with others.

DeRuiter is part of the cohort of would-be sophomores who declined to enroll this semester, whose clever Instagram bios mask an anxious uncertainty: Yale ’23.5? ’23 + 1? Did I ever really go to college, or was it all a Dubra-fueled fever dream?

“If something interests him, he’s going to tell you about it, and he’s going to be excited about it and talk about how much he loves it,” Zbornak said. “It doesn’t matter who you are, doesn’t matter if you come from different worlds or that you’re older than him or whatever, and I think it’s really cool that he’s able to do that.”

His hair is jet black and eyes deep brown. He laughs easily and says ridiculous things frequently. As much an academic as he is an artist, he’s double majoring in theater arts and computer science, a seeming contradiction that makes perfect sense the better you get to know him. He paints his nails purple and stays up all night playing 2K with his roommates.

Unlikely friendships with differing interests are a hallmark of DeRuiter’s Yale career. He considers two of his closest friends to be Sameer Shaikh ’23 and Goldstein, both members of Yale’s chapter of Sigma Nu. DeRuiter identifies as queer and describes himself as feminine, and he said that in high school, he felt rejected and intimidated by what he perceived as a culture of “hyper-masculinity.” By contrast, he’s felt supported and embraced by masculinity at Yale, which he called a “really special thing.”

DeRuiter doesn’t shy away from these complexities, but rather embraces them in the only way he knows how: arms wide open, probably saying something in a weird voice, probably singing.

“The bottom line is, the more you get to know the kid, the more you realize that he is just so interesting,” Ben Goldstein ’24 said.

To meet DeRuiter is to realize you are quite boring by contrast. It’s not a defeating feeling, though — it makes you, or at least me, want to live more boldly, and with less fear. He’s the kind of guy who makes you comfortable being yourself by virtue of being himself.

DeRuiter grew up in San Jose, California, a city south of San Francisco he’s become reacquainted with since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Opting to forgo online classes and stay at home this fall, he’s been working as an assistant at a medical center, writing poetry, spending time with his family and hanging out with his new girlfriend. Oh, he adds as an afterthought, and self-producing an album, which he dropped on Spotify this September.

The album — entitled “Henry,” DeRuiter’s middle name — is eight songs long, and brisk, coming in at 22 minutes. It’s a brief but insightful glimpse into the alter ego of a guy who enjoys “nagging, haranguing, haggling, and managing his chronic asthma” when he’s not making music, according to his Spotify artist bio.

“He can solve a Rubik’s Cube but he can’t tie his shoes if he thinks about it for too long,” the bio reads.

The project began in earnest this past August, though DeRuiter said several songs on the album came from earlier work. He composed many of them at work, tapping away on his phone’s notes app in quiet moments.

His favorite song in the collection is “Henry’s Wedding.” It describes the imaginary wedding of Henry, the persona DeRuiter’s created for himself in the album. DeRuiter said he used GarageBand to mix the sound so a listener would hear the organ and guitar in their left ear alone — as if they were a wedding guest, seated in a pew.

“In high school, I was doing theater and my director always called me by my middle name, which I thought was very novel, because nobody did that for me,” DeRuiter said. “I started thinking about the ways in which your performance is an extension of you… You’re going to make art or you’re going to write about things that may never happen, or you’re going to be called by names that are not yours.”

// MITCHELL MOSLEY

“It’s a lot about your alter ego, about the ways you present [yourself] versus how you actually want to be perceived,” DeRuiter said of the album.

In the space of just three-quarters of his first year, DeRuiter made a name for himself in the campus performing arts scene. He’s acted in shows with the Yale Dramat, the Opera Theater of Yale College and Yale Children’s Theater.

Arguably his biggest commitment is to Just Add Water, a musical improv comedy troupe.

Troupe director Alec Zbornak ’21 met DeRuiter for the first time at a JAW workshop during Bulldog Days in April 2019. He made it a point to tell me that he remembered the white turtleneck and denim jacket DeRuiter had on.

“Improv can be really scary, but he just dove right in,” Zbornak said. “He didn’t take himself too seriously, which I liked a lot.”

Later that fall, DeRuiter auditioned for JAW and was called back. He’s a “fantastic performer,” Zbornak said, one who confidently occupies the stage and values making the audi-

All That’s Left

According to Goldstein, DeRuiter’s greatest strength as a friend — besides being “too loyal” and “caring about you too much” — is his ability to connect with people regardless of shared backgrounds, interests or beliefs.

“He can have fun with just about anybody,” Shaikh added. “He’s one of the funniest people I’ve met in my life.”

When asked how they’d describe DeRuiter in just a few words, in an elevator pitch to a perfect stranger, both Zbornak and Nico DeRuiter ’20, his brother, came back to one trait: his fearlessness.

JAW’s motto is to embrace fear, to dive headlong into it, which DeRuiter does “very well, better than most,” according to Zbornak. His brother describes him as many things: intensely loyal, a hard worker, a “healing presence.” But he says the thing he finds most curious about DeRuiter is his “daring in spite of fear.”

“He confronts his fears not to solve them but to know them,” Nico said. “He jokes that he’s ‘the voice of our generation.’ He is to me.”

Contact OLIVIA TUCKER at olivia.tucker@yale.edu . // ASHLEY ANTHONY

// BY ELLA ATTELL

The HBO miniseries “The Leftovers” claims to confront truth by evading it.

If you thought that “Lost” revealed its creators’ god complexes, Damon Lindelof’s next show provides confirmation. “The Leftovers,” Lindelof’s adaptation of Tom Perotta’s novel, continues to derive pleasure from life’s unanswerable questions. If Lindelof isn’t playing God, then he is playing poet — constructing impossible worlds to understand the ones we inhabit.

“The Leftovers” begins with a painful premise. On Oct. 14, 2011, the world witnesses an inexplicable disappearance of 2 percent of the population. Cars crash for lack of drivers, shopping carts run into streets, mothers glance in rearview mirrors to see their babies one moment and not the next. Oct. 14 becomes the day of the Sudden Departure, as if naming the event will somehow explain it.

Season one focuses on the fictional town of Mapleton, New York, and the way this town, like all towns, attempts to rebuild.

Central to this story is police chief Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux), a man who must keep order in a world cratered by unfathomable randomness. Kevin, too, has experienced loss, but his is of another kind. His wife Laurie (Amy Brennerman) leaves their family to join one of the emergent cults. In many ways, this loss is most emblematic of the series at large. Chain smoking in all white, Laurie reveals the real focus of the show: faith.

A few days after the series concluded in 2017, Jeremy Egner interviewed Lindelof for the New York Times and asked if we are supposed to believe the conclusions the finale presents. Lindelof responded with one of those rare answers that enriches the reductive task of asking an artist about intention: “It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s true.

The actual truthfulness is irrelevant to the emotional result of having a system of faith and belief, if it helps bring people together.

‘The Leftovers’ was all about people trying to form belief systems that explained their own role in the universe and, more important, the way they related to one another, and mitigated some of the fears and anxieties and

sadness of living in a world where the people that they cared about most could be pulled away from them at any instant. Just like our world.”

Unintentionally, I started the show on Oct. 14, 2020 — what would have been the ninth anniversary of the Departure. Fiction, though, was the last thing on my mind.

If Lindelof was right and human faith is a matter of meaning-making, I found myself within a parable. Instead of a burning bush, God appeared to me through my mother’s HBO subscription.

I joke because the parallels between “The Leftovers” and COVID-19 haunt me. Just like the characters of Lindelof’s imagination, we watch as people depart in enormous numbers because of something we don’t understand. So much of the series is navigating the existential fallout of an event that confronts you with your own futility.

I’m interested in how we understand the pandemic. Recently, I came across a children’s book that begins this process for the youngest witnesses. “The Great Realization,” based on the spoken poem, has an eerie rhyme scheme and an earnest conclusion:

“Tell me the one about the virus again, then I’ll go to bed.”

“But, my boy, you’re growing weary, sleepy thoughts about your head.”

“That one’s my favourite. Please, I promise, just once more.”

“Okay, snuggle down, my boy, but I know you all too well.

This story starts before then in a world I once would dwell.

It was a world of waste and wonder, of poverty and plenty, Back before we understood why hindsight’s 2020.”

The father goes on to recount a miserable world of pollution and politics before “a new virus came our way,” remembering the pandemic as a fortuitous turning point. I know the book is meant for kids, but I think there is a profound disservice in generating opti-

mistic meaning from something we don’t yet understand. In the same hour, I’ve heard the pandemic called “a reset,” “a nightmare” and “a gift.” At what point is it enough to say we just don’t know and that any meaning we make is nothing more than myth?

I think we are caught between earthly presence and existentialist departure.

Despite the physical threat of the virus, our world has become a purgatory of the mind, not the body. But to me, the pandemic feels more like hell: “When I had journeyed half of our life’s way, / I found myself within a shadowed forest, / for I had lost the path that does not stray.” I think Dante saw it coming.

I have never seen a civilization rise and fall. Neither has anyone else. It doesn’t work that fast. History cannot be willed into existence; neither can memory. Descent, despite its drama, is slow. It requires imagination, the nascent myth born of the senseless. We can only know history in stories. Fortunately, stories come both before and after their time. If we’re lucky, they won’t give answers but just play around with what’s left.

Contact ELLA ATTELL at ella.attell@yale.edu .

ONLINE THIS WEEK: WKND RECOMMENDS Watching the leaves change colors.

CRAVING FRESH FOOD IN THE ELM CITY? Mary Chen ‘22 and Rachel Chang ‘22 explore B-Natural Kitchen for their column on Black-owned New Haven restaurants.

PAGE B4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND CONNECTIONS

A Mindless Mesh Camden Rider

To the guy from Sig Ep: Hi. How are you? I hope you’re doing well. We should talk about First-Year Formal. I didn’t have a date, and was feeling kind of lonely. My suitemate convinced me to come to Sig Ep with him after the dance so he wouldn’t have to walk back to our suite alone. That’s where we met you. Making out with you in that loud ass basement might have been the freest I felt last year. There was clearly no long-term potential between us, which is what I was excited by. We were just people who found each other attractive and mindlessly acted. Then, you wanted to take me to your room. And I didn’t know how to say no. I’d like to think you would have been okay with me saying no. But I didn’t want to find out. So when you went to retrieve your jacket from the mountain piled by the bathroom, I left. Didn’t tell you anything. Just left. A French exit, if you will. I wasn’t ready to do anything more. I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings; the moment we shared really was amazing. But I wanted it to be just that: a moment. I wasn’t willing to make it more complicated. If we see each other again, I would be willing to have another moment like that — a brief entanglement in a sweaty room with music I don’t know blasting from all sides. Or whatever the equivalent of that moment is in a COVID world.

Missed Connections All I Want for Christmas

Katherine Williams

I was walking up Elm Street on the way home from the Christmas tree lighting on the green. Obviously singing “Bring Me Love” by John Legend to myself, my favorite underrated Christmas song. You passed me on the sidewalk, wearing the classic vintage knit Yale sweater, close enough that we could hear each other. I stopped in my tracks. So did you. We both turned around. Simultaneously:

// DORA GUO

“Are you singing— —Bring Me Love?”

It’s your favorite Christmas song too. I could see the disbelief sparkle in your eyes. You said you were on your way down to see the lights and invited me to come. I pretended like I hadn’t been yet. We walked around beaming in the holiday cheer, underneath the newly lit tree.

We talked. We laughed. We shared a hot chocolate from the Jitter Bus. But, I didn’t give you my number, or ask for yours either.

Was it a little bit of Christmas magic? I think so.

// DORA GUO

The Zoom Class Crush Addison Beer

I saw you in office hours the one time I ever went to office hours. As a remote student this semester, I thought my love life would be limited, but one look at you was all I needed to fall helplessly into the void of infatuation. You had your camera off and you never spoke, but I could tell just from your name and the shape of your Zoom square that we were meant to be together. The way the syllables of your first name coalesced with the syllables of your last name; I just knew you were special. I even started going to almost every class just to see your Zoom square, which of course I pinned to my screen. Who cares about finding the Pythagorean side or whatever; I’d rather find what we have in common. But since I dropped that class after getting a 13 on the midterm, I don’t know when I’ll ever be blessed with seeing your beautiful name again.

Maybe I should have gone to office hours more often.

Taking Notes

Julia Hornstein

//

O DORA GU

Fromage de chevre, muy chevere Pradz Sapre

It was my last evening with my parents before I moved into my suite. It was 60 degrees that day. Unprepared for the biting wind, we ran inside Trader Joe’s to take refuge from the cold and seek out some salmon for dinner. I was lazily browsing through the cold cuts when I spotted you across the store. You were covered in the most transparent coat I had ever seen through. I still remember how desperately I wanted to peel off your layers. I had never seen anyone so delicate, so unsullied before.

I don’t know why I didn’t grab you by the shoulders when I had a chance. I was a different man then, concerned that by doing so I would be violating some unspoken rule of grocery store conduct. I know now that everyone who saw you wanted to do the same. Maybe it was a lack of money that stopped me.

But I was with my parents, and besides, I would pay anything for the taste of your liquid honey on my lips. I think I assumed that you would be back when I returned. I never returned.

I will return. I will wade through waves of people, wait interminable eternities if it means I get to see you again. And when I do, not even the most insurmountable mountain (in the middle of Trader Joe’s) can come between me and my honey-dripped goat’s cheese.

When we met, I was afraid to feel those god awful butterflies in my stomach again. I’d just gotten out of something way too long and honestly hadn’t yet moved on. You sat next to me; not on that first day (that would’ve been too forward, too... to the point), but most after that.

Never really seemed to take notes: I sent you mine when you didn’t show up (most Friday mornings). You don’t seem great with time, or maybe you’re just not a morning person. Are you? God, I hope not. Despite my brutal M/W/F trek up Science Hill, I’d usually beat you to class, and, despite coming from close by, you always sauntered in a precise four minutes late.

Whenever we’d exchange glances, I’d immediately direct my focus back toward my laptop, frantically typing out every detail on our professor’s mind-numbing powerpoints. I’m not used to attention. Everyone tells me I’m a loud typer, especially when I’m pulling late nights in Sterling, but you didn’t say anything.

I’d linger after class — after our TF finally shut up about the readings we both never did. I’d slide my computer into my bag at a snail’s pace so we’d just so happen to walk out together.

Not in an obvious way. Well, I hope it wasn’t too obvious. You’d ask me about my weekend plans and our upcoming project while you clutched the handlebars and pushed your bike across Prospect Street like Sisyphus.

We studied for the first midterm together… I was kind of hoping we would. Not really sure how we ended up there — reading over my study guide in LC as icy, late night rain pelted Old Campus’ spindly Elm trees. I laugh at whatever you say (decidedly too much), but I can’t help myself.

I still wonder if you think I’m a loud typer.

Friends in Gross Places Alexandra Gers

There’s something about women’s restrooms in dingy places that breeds lasting friendships. I was standing behind you in line at the Slug — aptly named for the permanent stickiness that seemed to coat everything. The two of us watched as the men’s door swung open and shut, open and shut. We shared an eye roll. Your cheeks were flushed with the appropriate amount of liquor and made the neon green winged eyeliner you had so carefully applied pop against your pink skin. Unfortunately, your neon green winged eyeliner you had so carefully applied was now smudged with sweat, but the effect was still the same. “Christ, I’m fucking sweating,” I heard you mutter to yourself. You were wearing latex pink pants and a silver halter-top.

The ensemble was both dizzying and awe-inspiring; the kind of outfit I wish I had the confidence to wear, but never could pull off.

Finally, someone stumbled out of the bathroom, granting us a sliver of space to squeeze through. You turned and grabbed my wrist, pulling me inside… only for us to walk straight into a cloud of dry shampoo and aerosol deodorant. About 20 girls were taking advantage of the free beauty products, attempting to mask their now disheveled appearances for the mirror selfies that promptly followed. “Can you all get out of the fucking way,” you shouted. “Some of us are trying to have a piss.”

// DORA GUO

WKND RECOMMENDS IKEA cinammon rolls.

ONLINE THIS WEEK: CAN YALIES FIND OUR SOULMATES THROUGH SCREENS? Claire Fang ‘23 gives us her take on the Marriage Pact.