Yale Daily News — Week of Nov. 13

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, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · VOL. CXLIII, NO. 11 · yaledailynews.com

Election results bring students relief, though questions linger

BY JULIA BIALEK AND EMILY TIAN STAFF REPORTERS As the Associated Press and various American cable news networks called the results of the presidential election for former Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday — after the country was left in limbo for four days — Evan Roberts ’23 said that streets in her Colorado town were filled with neighbors cheering, ringing bells and banging pots and pans for hours.

Similar celebratory scenes unfolded across the country as Yale students reacted — some with optimism, others with relief tempered with fatigue and doubt — to the results of a historic election year.

“I think the [Biden/Harris] ticket's win indicates that we have been anxiously waiting to have serious, bold and prepared leaders govern our country

over the past four years,” Ananya Kachru ’22 wrote to the News.

“The ticket’s historic win, in terms of popular vote count and margin, is notable, too.”

That the announcement stretched late into the week after ballots took multiple days to be counted — and have yet to be certified in full — marked just one of the many ways this race registered differently with voters.

Eight students interviewed by the News shared their reactions to the presidential election.

For many, last Tuesday’s race felt particularly personal.

“Saying the words ‘Madam Vice President Kamala Devi Harris’ still gives me chills,” Kachru wrote to the News. “After the 2016 Election, I didn't anticipate watching a South Asian American and Black woman become Vice President of the United States within four years.

SEE STUDENTS PAGE 4

Faculty react to Biden winning the Presidency

YALE DAILY NEWS

Nine Yale professors interviewed by the News reacted to election results with a mix of elation, relief and fear.

BY MADISON HAHAMY STAFF REPORTER When Daphne Brooks, professor of African American studies, first heard MSNBC announce that Joe Biden had won the presidency, she was unloading laundry in her basement. Immediately, she ran onto her front porch and screamed at the top

of her lungs: “It’s over! It’s over!

We got him!” on repeat for three minutes, as her partner jumped for joy.

The News interviewed nine professors on their reactions to the results of various races in this year’s election. Their responses ranged from elation SEE FACULTY PAGE 4

Backlash against comments

by TFs, professor

VAIBHAV SHARMA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The TF's comment drew widespread backlash from students on Piazza after the video was posted to Canvas.

BY MADISON HAHAMY AND EMILY TIAN STAFF REPORTERS As Election Day sprawled into a nearly weeklong wait for the president-elect to be announced, a professor and multiple teaching fellows faced backlash for their response to students’ requests to change the testing schedule of a core molecular, cellular and developmental biology class, “Biochemistry,” in the days following Nov. 3.

In anonymous posts on Piazza — a question-and-answer forum used in many classes — several students asked the MCDB 300 professor, Ronald Breaker, to reschedule their Nov. 6 exam to a later date in light of the election. The conversation spiraled into a heated discusion as Breaker maintained that the exam would go ahead as planned while several students detailed SEE BACKLASH PAGE 5

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Students reacted to the news of a Biden win in the 2020 presidential election.

YSM rof to chair Biden task force

BY SYDNEY GRAY AND BEATRIZ HORTA STAFF REPORTERS Associate Dean for Health Equity Research Marcella NunezSmith will serve as one of three co-chairs on President-elect Joe Biden’s coronavirus task force.

Biden announced on Saturday that Nunez-Smith will chair the task force alongside former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy MD ’03 and former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner and former Yale School of Medicine Dean David Kessler. On Monday, Biden also announced the remaining 12 members of the task force.

"The transition advisory board is setting a course for everyone in our country to experience recovery," Nunez-Smith wrote in a statement to the News. “I'm honored to help lead on that work and thank President-elect Joe Biden for the opportunity to serve."

Nunez-Smith’s career has centered around promoting health equity for marginalized populations. In a project funded by the National Institute of Health and National Cancer Institute, Nunez-Smith developed a tool to assess patient-reported discrim-

inatory experiences in healthcare.

As the founder of Eastern Caribbean Health Outcomes Research Network, Nunez-Smith also worked to support chronic disease research in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago.

Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging Howard Forman, who collaborated with Nunez-Smith in 2018 on a School

of Management initiative to address health disparities affecting minority populations, spoke to Nunez-Smith’s qualifications for the co-chair position. “[Dr. Nunez-Smith] is exceptionally well qualified to serve in this critical, timely, and important role,” Forman wrote in an email to the News. “Dr. NunezSEE COVID PAGE 5

BOE critical of COVID-19 bus protocols

BY CHRISTIAN ROBLES STAFF REPORTER At Monday night’s Board of Education meeting, board members asked tough questions about a recent cluster of COVID-19 positive cases stemming from a school bus company contracted by the city.

On Oct. 30, Mayor Justin Elicker’s office announced in a press release that 11 bus drivers associated with First Student, Inc. — a company the city contracted for the transportation of New Haven public, parochial and private school students — tested positive for COVID-19. Effective that same day, the New Haven Department of Public Health announced that it would shut down the transportation company’s operations for two weeks, extending a previous two-day closure to Nov. 16.

P u b l i c H e a l t h D i re c tor Maritza Bond has since launched an investigation into the COVID-19 outbreak. While Bond was not present at the meeting, outgoing NHPS Chief Operating Officer M ichael Pinto revealed new details about the investigation and was questioned and criticized by BOE members.

CROSS CAMPUS

INSIDE THE NEWS

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 1976.

RUBENFELD

Almost 3,000 members of the Yale community receive a swine flu vaccine in Payne Whitney Gymnasium. Despite nationwide reports of adverse reactions to the vaccine, University Health Services heard no reports of significant illness.

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Faculty praised Nunez-Smith’s dedication to promoting healthcare equity for structurally marginalized populations and said she would serve the nation well.

Salovey responded to a case study on sexual misconduct allegations against tenured law professor Jed Rubenfeld, but students remain unsatisfied.

Page 3 UNIVERSITY

ARTSPACE

“There are currently 27 positive cases arising out of First Student [as of Monday afternoon],” Pinto said at Monday night’s meeting.

“There was definitely poor judgement on the part of some of the employees. A number of people attended a birthday party outside of work.”

Pinto said that First Student bus drivers first reported COVID19 symptoms on Oct. 23 and 24.

On Oct. 27, an employee with the company tested positive for the

virus, prompting the initial shutdown of company operations on Oct. 28. The shutdown aimed to contain the spread of the virus and allow time for contact tracing.

Pinto said that First Student was initially “defensive” about providing information to city health officials about the case and the company’s response but has since cooperated with city investigators.

SEE BOE PAGE 5

KAREN LIN/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The A.C.E. campaign aims to connect with NHPS students who are absent from virtual classes.

An new exhibit titled "Who Governs?" is now on view at Artspace New Haven. It's based on a book by late Yale professor Robert Dahl GRD ’40.

Page 7 ARTS

COVID-19

Researchers at the School of Medicine have identified genes that could be targets for COVID-19 treatments, based on a study of a monkey genome.

Page 8 SCITECH

THE GAME

If Ivy League athletic competition can occur in fall 2021, the 137th edition of the Yale-Harvard football game is set to occur in New Haven. Page 14 SPORTS

PAGE 2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION G U E S T C O L U M N I S T A L I C E YA N

GUEST COLUMNIST HANWEN ZHANG

My myth of selfsufficiency

America’s moment of reckoning

I

like to do things alone. If you know me well, you know this.

I’ve been to a concert in an abandoned warehouse in Brooklyn alone. I’ve enjoyed a candlelit dinner at a restaurant in a Manhattan skyscraper alone. I’ve flown out to Joshua Tree and camped in an RV in the middle of the desert alone.

It started as a practical thing. I found myself missing out on things I wanted to do if I couldn’t find friends who were free and willing to go with me. So, rather than not do things I wanted to do, I just went alone. It was uncomfortable at first. Would people judge me? Think that I had no friends? I quickly learned that people are too absorbed in their own worlds to look twice at me. The more things I started to do by myself, the more I found myself actively seeking to do things alone.

There’s nothing pitiful about being alone. I found tremendous value in spending time by myself. There’s no pressure to make conversation if what I really want is just to be alone with my thoughts. I’m also more likely to approach new people and strike up conversations if I’m by myself. Back in August, I took the train by myself to New Canaan to see Philip Johnson’s Glass House. I learned more about mid-century modern architecture that day just from chatting with the guides than I did in my architecture classes at Yale. I’m certain those conversations wouldn’t have happened if I were with other people.

Learning to love being alone, while at first uncomfortable, was ultimately incredibly rewarding.

I was so happy with myself. I thought I’d achieved complete self-sufficiency; not only did I not need other people to have fun, but I was making myself happy. I was a poster child for those cringey selfhelp books. I loved that my happiness and self-worth weren’t tied to other people.

All of this came to a crashing halt at the start of this school year.

I moved into my apartment in New Haven two weeks before anyone else I knew had even gotten back to campus. Even after my roommate arrived, she was happily spending all her time with her boyfriend, and another close friend had recently gotten into a relationship. One by one, my friends messaged me saying that they were taking time off or enrolling remotely from home. I felt completely and utterly alone — this time, not by choice.

Before, when I’d spent time by myself, it was always by choice and I’d never felt lonely even though I was alone. Walking in the streets of New Haven by myself in August, however, I’d never felt more lonely.

I would pass by JoJo’s, remember all the time my friends and I’d spend typing away at our keyboards and instantly feel a deep sadness and longing for a virus-less and maskless past. It pained me to walk around the city because I would see these reminders of just how alone I was everywhere I went.

I texted my friend one afternoon as I passed by Arethusa, “I miss you randomly asking me to get Arethusa,” mentally kicking myself for all the times I’d said no because I

was deep in Bass working on a problem set. This friend was now halfway across the country and taking a gap year. He responded, “We will get there again at some point.” I don’t want to wait for “some point.” I want to share our two scoops of almond coconut ice cream now.

Not only would I be upset that I couldn’t see the people who mattered to me the most, but I would also get mad at myself for not being able to be happy on my own. It felt like I was regressing back to my old self, the one who depended “too much” on other people for emotional fulfillment.

A dear friend said to me recently, “I trick myself into thinking I’m more of an introvert than I actually am. It feels dangerous and hard for me to admit to myself that I actually do need other people.”

ONE BY ONE, MY FRIENDS MESSAGED ME SAYING THAT THEY WERE TAKING TIME OFF OR ENROLLING REMOTELY FROM HOME. I FELT COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY ALONE — THIS TIME, NOT BY CHOICE. I tell myself that I am perfectly content on my own, and most of the time I am. I tell myself that I don’t need or want people looking after me — that I can take care of myself. I tell myself that I never feel lonely because to admit that I sometimes do would be a weakness, a flaw in my carefully constructed I-love-self-sufficiency narrative. Oftentimes, the things we say we don’t want are the things we want the most.

We Yalies like to think of ourselves as being perpetually unfazed. That boy we really liked who just ghosted us? No big deal, onto the next one.

Those friends we really cared about who are all of a sudden being unsupportive? Not a problem, we’ll find new ones. Allowing ourselves to feel sadness is admitting our vulnerability – admitting that we cared. In a way, my desire to spend so much time by myself is a defense mechanism. I know I won’t ever tire of my own company, that I’ll never be too busy for me.

But in a time where the closest I can physically get to the people I care about the most is a socially distanced dinner on Cross Campus, I’m learning that it’s okay to admit that I feel a little more lonely.

ALICE YAN is a senior in Morse College. Contact her at alice.yan@yale.edu .

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F

our days. As if to blur four long years in an 88-hour whirlwind of ballot-counting and news updates. As if to erase away the pencil scratches of a presidency. As if nothing had ever happened.

Saturday morning, we purged that oval, high-ceilinged room in Washington D.C and declared that the parasite would have to pack up his bags. We set things back to normal. We clicked our ruby heels together three times and found our way back home.

Still, I can’t help but taste the bitter edge of victory on my tongue.

This was the country that at long last salvaged democracy. But this was also the nation that had left both my suitemate and I cradling our heads in our hands on Tuesday night, wondering if déjà vu would come to haunt us again. I saw a Florida that slipped away, a North Carolina that quietly squirmed out of our grasp and a Georgia that teetered on the brink of Republican takeover as what should have been a resounding denunciation played out in an agonizing, nail-biting fashion. After an impeachment trial, two contentious justice nominations, the most criminal advisers in all history, an economic recession and over 200,000 deaths, America didn’t so much as show Donald Trump the White House door than it held his hand and guided him down the steps. For a megalomaniacal madman who has paraded stunt after stunt in never ending succession, a mere Democratic victory almost seemed underwhelming.

Last week was another rude awakening. A cruel reminder that, four years later, we barely managed to learn from our mistakes. A record-breaking 75 million votes were cast for Joe Biden. But an equally record-breaking 70 million votes revealed a disquieting truth: Trumpism is no fluke — if anything, his supporter base has only grown. We only narrowly averted another disaster. Once again, we bought into the lies. We turned on our partisan blinders four years ago, this past Tuesday, and even now, as post-election media coverage glosses over Trump’s continued sway to trumpet a decisive Democrat victory.

On Tuesday night, Donald Trump proved to us he was not the disease afflicting America but merely a symptom of it. Over the past four years, he flouted laws, shirked responsibility and hurled insults. He cried foul and tweeted to no end. He was — and still is — America’s son: the proud product of political factions, misinformation and shameless self-promotion. The offspring of a nation beset by that ugly strain of chauvinism, ignorance and xenophobia.

You can snap yourself out of a nightmare, but you can’t squeeze out a bad dream from your memory.

You simply can’t will away the frolicking anti-maskers and Proud Boys and throngs of red hats clustered in a subfreezing Omaha airfield. In an administration whose incompetence and utter recklessness have ventured beyond the reach of any descriptive adjective, Trump and his cronies showed us all what we were capable of. They painfully revealed the lows America will sink to; the great lengths we’ll travel for the sake of justifying our illusions; the easeful willingness by which we’ll dispense with any semblance of truth and decency. Crossing a Rubicon it couldn’t uncross, America had forfeited its integrity — Trump merely helped the nation in tossing it out.

Beyond the loss of virtue, we saw just how fragile and vulnerable our government was as Trump wriggled through its loopholes — not only that, but the complicity of groveling politicians who abetted and enabled the demagogue. Lindsey Graham, U.S. Senator of South Carolina, shapeshifted from condemnation to total sycophancy. Susan Collins, U.S. Senator of Maine, couldn’t make up her mind. Current U.S. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell kept quiet. And, in the way, sealed lips can sometimes speak volumes, the Republicans’ silence on Capitol Hill proved they were more concerned with defending their prospects of reelection than their own dignity. Donald Trump, unhinged and unrepentant, held a mirror up to America.

The election was by no means a restoration of normalcy. Now, normalcy is the eerie quiet of a White House, an almost-foreign, preTrump past we can’t quite return

to. While Trump may have finally met his long-awaited moment of reckoning, America has yet to confront its own.

This shouldn’t discount what happened Saturday morning, which was proof that American democracy could still prevail in spite of its faults and flaws. Before a sea of waving flags and honking cars, Biden and Kamala Harris blew a hearteningly fresh breath of air into the night and reawakened a sense of boundless possibility.

They reminded me what it meant to be an American: to never lose sight of justice, even if the path grows narrow and treacherous.

But an election alone can’t cure everything. There’s no silver bullet, no cure-all panacea for the underlying ills of inequality and radicalization that continue to ravage this country. Of course, Biden gives America a much-needed chance to heal — but the nation will ultimately need a pill that’s greater than just another man in the White House. Our country’s woes call for a fundamental end to its longstanding socioeconomic immobility and inequality and our own self-constructed realities. Now, more than ever, we need to hold ourselves accountable to the truth. We need to reclaim a morsel of the grace we’ve lost to the decades of bickering and self-willed myopia. The truest struggle for “the soul of America” will have to take place within ourselves. The battle is only half-won.

There are no easy answers ahead.

Though who knows what will happen in four years — maybe America will emerge from the rubble for the better. Maybe a humble, hardy Delawarean might just return compromise to our lexicon and politics will not be the self-defeating joke it is right now. Let us take these next few years as an opportunity to reinvent, reimagine, tend to our battle wounds. But above all, let us not forget the smirking, yellow-haired man lest the false comfort of this election creak open the door for his specter to haunt our American dreams again.

HANWEN ZHANG is a first year in Benjamin Franklin College.

Contact him at hanwen.zhang.hhz3@yale.edu .

GUEST COLUMNIST ISAAC YU

The plight of the red-state liberal

I

’m proud to be Texan. No, I’m not happy that once again, a majority of my state chose a racist bigot for president. But I won’t apologize for it, either.

Simply put, as a red-state liberal, I’m tired of getting discounted.

We really tried so, so hard. While I’ll be the first to raise a glass for Stacey Abrams (who deserves every ounce of credit she’s getting), my heart can’t help but break for people like Beto O’Rourke, whose organizing efforts brought 10,000 volunteers to register 200,000 likely Democrats and make 18.3 million calls to Texan voters. Or Democratic candidates, like Theresa Greenfield and Jaime Harrison, who worked so incredibly hard to build momentum in ruby-red states only to have their hopes dashed on Election Day. After two years of organizing, postcard-writing and phonebanking, we’ve lost the tossup election for Texas State House District 112, my home district, by less than 300 votes, or 0.3%. Like you, I’m incredibly disappointed that my state and district couldn’t muster up enough energy to cross the finish line — but that doesn’t mean we didn’t try our darndest to get where we are.

So when someone from New York, Boston or the Bay Area tweets about selling middle America back to the French, it hurts a little bit inside — and my state wasn’t even included in the Louisiana Purchase.

For someone to scrunch their nose or curl their lips at the mention of a person’s home in North Dakota, Kentucky or Alabama because they failed to single-handedly flip their state is a wound to red-state liberals everywhere. TikToks saying “Florida can pay for its own hurricane relief” don’t just demean the Republicans there; it’s the ultimate insult to Floridian liberal leaders and constituents. Trashing on red states, however jokingly, not only ignores the hard work liberals do put in but also erases the history of gerrymandering and systematic voter suppression that continues to choke our efforts.

And I get it; trashing our states

from your high horse makes you feel proud of your state for being so blue and so moral. But the reality is that many families in Texas are being denied affordable health insurance, coughed on by maskless goons at grocery stores and being told to go back to where we came from. We’re living with the consequences of our elections — no need to rub them in.

The thing is, some of our states aren’t that red in the first place. A +23 margin for Trump in Tennessee, daunting as that may be, still equals more than a million blue voters. Now, we’re watching historically safe states like South Carolina (+8 Trump) and Missouri (+15 Trump) enter new territory. Meanwhile, some of your uncalled House races in California and New York aren’t looking so hot for incumbent Democrats.

Some may think of Arkansas and Mississippi as unredeemable, hopelessly red states full of racists and bigots (crude but not entirely unfounded claims). I was shocked, however, to learn that each of these states sent majority-Democratic congressional delegations to Washington as recently as 2008. Heck, both Dakotas voted for Democratic representatives that year. That these sparsely populated, mostly rural states ever voted liberal simply isn’t in the political vocabulary of someone who grew up under the maps of coastal-heartland divides we see today. But let’s not pretend that the heartland isn’t capable of producing (albeit moderate) Democrats like Heidi Heitkamp and Claire McCaskill.

Of course, I’m citing elections of a different political era, before Democrats openly (for the most part) embraced groups like the LGBTQ+ community and the Black Lives Matter movement, and before terms like Medicare for All and Green New Deal became common vernacular. I acknowledge it is natural for party platforms and voting patterns to shift over time, and that addressing issues in one area may lead to political fallout elsewhere. But even if our party is to make these shifts, an atti-

tude of disdain towards entire states or regions deepens existing divides and makes hard-to-reach voters even harder to reach.

If you want to continue belittling the constituencies in these states for voting red this cycle, that’s your prerogative. After all, we didn’t even need states like Texas or Florida to retake the White House this year.

But don’t be surprised if Republicans, elected by voters disillusioned with the “party of coastal elites,” continue to block important progressive policies during the next four years.

You can interpret this as the overreaction of a sore loser. I’m certainly feeling sore right now, and looking at Georgia, now the center of the political universe, my jealousy burns bright. But remember that Georgia was like these states not too long ago. How can we expect Democrats in red states to pull off an Abramsstyle victory when we keep dampening their voices, thereby denying funding and attention to states we deem unworthy?

It’s high time that blue-voting Yale students re-examine our identities as Democrats and what it means to be liberal. By making condescending comments about America’s (yes, Trump-majority) heartland, Yale students at best demonstrate their ignorance and at worst propagate a narrative of coastal elitism.

I implore you to check — are your words being lobbed from the safety of blue coastal bubbles? Do they account for uphill battles your fellow liberals are fighting? Do they entrench a deeper sense of regional division?

There will always be racists and bigots in America, and yes, most of them will reside in states like mine for many generations to come. But for America’s sake, stop undermining Democrats’ efforts in red states and start being the supportive allies we need so desperately.

ISAAC YU is a first year in Berkeley College. Contact him at isaac.yu@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 3

“For me to forgive my ex, he would have to sign a marriage contract with his tears and seal it with his blood.” NATALYA VOROBYOVA CROATIAN-SOVIET ACTOR

Salovey breaks silence on Rubenfeld case

BY JULIA BROWN AND ROSE HOROWITCH STAFF REPORTERS University President Peter Salovey has responded to a case study on the sexual misconduct allegations against tenured law professor Jed Rubenfeld.

Rubenfeld was suspended for two years following a 2018 University Wide Committee investigation into allegations of verbal harassment, unwanted touching and attempted kissing in the classroom and at his home. He “categorically and unequivocally” denies these allegations, Rubenfeld wrote in an email to the News.

Last month, students from the Yale Law School Title IX Working Group and Yale Law Women sent Salovey a report outlining how Rubenfeld’s case has demonstrated flaws in Yale’s policies around allegations of sexual misconduct. They demanded that the University make Rubenfeld’s suspension permanent, release the findings of its investigation to the extent legally possible and make critical changes to the UWC adjudication process.

In a Nov. 3 email obtained by the News, Salovey responded to the leaders of the two groups.

He addressed broader concerns around the University’s management of misconduct allegations, but did not offer any specifics about Rubenfeld’s case.

Salovey’s email largely focused on explaining why Yale’s policies would remain the same, instead of implementing the suggestions outlined in the groups’ report.

“It is disappointing that President Salovey took so long to send a response that neither meaningfully addresses the serious concerns we raised in our report nor indicates that Yale is working to fix a flawed system and actually protect students from predators on campus,” Yale Law Women chair Margaret House LAW ’22 wrote in an email to the News.

“We are committed to continuing this work to make the process fairer and to continue advocating for justice for survivors.”

When asked for comment, University spokesperson Karen Peart referred the News to Salovey’s letter to the student groups and outlined the resources available to complainants.

Transparency in the Rubenfeld investigation Rubenfeld faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct going back to April 2008, including claims that he attempted to kiss and touch students without consent.

“I believe it took courage for these students to come forward, and it came at a personal cost to them,” Rubenfeld wrote to the News. “I respect them for that, even if I deeply disagree with their claims.”

According to the student groups’ report, the University’s handling of misconduct allegations has been unnecessarily secretive. For exam-

ple, Yale did not announce Rubenfeld’s suspension — news of that came instead from an Aug. 26 New York Magazine article.

The report requested that Yale release a “community impact statement” if a UWC investigation leads to disciplinary action.

The statement would detail how the punishment protects the Yale community and how the panel decided on what information about the investigation to release.

But according to Salovey, Yale informs the community about individual cases “when disclosure is deemed necessary to safeguard the campus environment or to support ongoing activities within a department or school.”

“I agree that there are merits to transparency as you point out in your report,” Salovey wrote in his email. “That said, the University also places a high priority on maintaining confidentiality in these cases. We continue to believe that parties in sexual misconduct cases would be discouraged from bringing their complaints forward if they understood that their matters would become public through University disclosure.”

Three students from the groups — House, Yale Law Women advancement chair Sarah Baldinger LAW ’22 and former co-chair of the Title IX Working Group Mollie Berkowitz LAW ’21 — spoke to the News in response to Salovey’s email. Their responses do not represent official stances for either student group.

“The University should support accusers by releasing the findings of the [Rubenfeld] investigation,” Baldinger wrote in an email to the News. “Jed Rubenfeld has commented on the record about the investigation to reporters at publications like New York Magazine and the ABA Journal. When Rubenfeld is the only person who is allowed to speak publicly about the investigation, he gets to control the narrative and minimize the severity of the claims against him.”

According to Rubenfeld, these confidentiality rules apply to him as well, and there are “many things [he] can’t say.” Rubenfeld did tell the News that “completely false” information has been circulating about his case, disputing media reports that say he faced accusations of unwanted sexual touching.

The University has not disclosed the specific allegations he faced.

But Rubenfeld has said in previous news stories that he has made comments he now regrets.

“Like a lot of professors from my generation,” Rubenfeld wrote to the News, “I said some things I now regret — comments I wouldn’t make any more, stories I wouldn’t tell, and I of course will not repeat these mistakes in [the] future.”

After Rubenfeld’s two-year suspension, he will be able to return to teaching on campus.

He is barred from teaching small groups or required courses and will be restricted in social gatherings with students.

YALE DAILY NEWS

Salovey’s email largely focused on explaining why Yale’s policies would remain the same, despite demands from two groups.

The Yale Law Women and Title IX Working Group report urged Yale to permanently remove Rubenfeld from campus. The groups argued that Rubenfeld may harass students when he returns to campus, but the students aware of his earlier actions will have graduated, hampering institutional memory.

Salovey did not offer any information regarding Rubenfeld’s return to campus in his response to the report. He also did not indicate that the University would release any findings from its investigation into Rubenfeld.

The fight for pro bono representation The groups also asked that the University provide free legal representation to all parties involved with University-Wide Committee, or UWC, proceedings. These proceedings, per new Title IX rules promulgated by the Trump administration, could include cross-examinations of those bringing forward allegations.

As UWC hearings more and more resemble trials, Yale students who can afford private lawyers have already used them, the report said. It explained that, by not providing all students with pro bono representation, students from less privileged backgrounds are at a disadvantage when navigating the UWC process.

“Jed Rubenfeld has tremendous financial resources and unmatched connections within the legal profession,” the report reads. “An individual student with no professional guidance is likely to be outmaneuvered by a skilled lawyer and possibly deterred from pursuing their legal claims in the first place.”

On Sept. 1, the two student groups emailed UWC Chair professor Mark Solomon and University Title IX Coordinator Stephanie Spangler about this request. The

two responded on Oct. 9 that they were informed that the University would not “provide or pay for” such legal representation, according to an email obtained by the News.

Salovey’s recent email echoed Solomon and Spangler’s response from last month. He wrote that the University “carefully” considered the question of whether to provide complainants with lawyers. The University, Salovey wrote, decided that bringing lawyers into a “community-derived and community-focused” process would not be more equitable. Instead, Yale opted to maintain the existing system of having advisers from Yale’s Title IX Office — only some of whom have legal training — support students involved in Title IX investigations.

To evaluate whether this system works, the UWC has agreed to a review after a “reasonable” period of time, Salovey added. When asked how long until the UWC reviews its policies, Peart said it would happen “after the University has had experience using them.”

“On the attorney resource question, Salovey really misses the mark,” Berkowitz wrote in an email to the News. “Because they are not lawyers, the UWC’s advisors can’t help students meaningfully understand the potential legal consequences of their decisions around the UWC process and the conversations they have with the students they advise are not protected by attorney-client privilege.”

Berkowitz and Baldinger told the News that Salovey’s argument against adding lawyers to the UWC process fails to consider how lawyers are already involved — but only to students who can afford their own lawyers or secure their own pro bono representation. As such, Berkowitz said Salovey’s refusal to provide counsel to those who can’t otherwise afford it “exacerbates existing inequities” at the University.

The report’s other requests Salovey also responded to the groups’ request that the University alert claimants if there are multiple accusations against the person they accuse. Yale needs a technology that allows people to make anonymous, sealed allegations and be alerted if another person accuses the same offender, the report reads. Students may be more likely to speak out against a professor if they know others had a similar experience, the report argued.

Yale’s Title IX Office already keeps a confidential central record of all complaints, Salovey wrote.

If there are multiple accusations against the same person, Title IX coordinators may alert the UWC. Yale also conducts “climate reviews” to identify when someone’s behavior may have affected multiple people, Peart added.

“We feel that the existing processes offer effective means for bringing forward multiple complaints,” Peart wrote in an email to the News.

Salovey said that he also agrees with the report’s stance that the UWC should take into account public safety when making decisions. He wrote that the UWC considers the safety and wellbeing of “all those who may be affected” by the committee’s findings, including members of the community who were not parties to the complaint, as well as the community at large.

Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken has encouraged students who have experienced misconduct to reach out to Associate Dean Ellen Cosgrove, who is the law school’s Title IX coordinator and oversees the offices of student affairs.

Contact JULIA BROWN at julia.k.brown@yale.edu and ROSE HOROWITCH at rose.horowitch@yale.edu.

Students, faculty react to spring course planning

BY MADISON HAHAMY STAFF REPORTER On Nov. 2, Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Tamar Gendler sent an email to the Yale undergraduate student body with details for next semester’s course registration, notably the Dec. 18 preliminary schedule deadline.

While students and faculty alike criticized the message for coming right before the presidential election and for the course selection deadline during finals week, some faculty noted that the extra time between the preliminary course schedule submission and the start of the spring semester is useful for course planning.

Concerns rested both on the content of the email — the pre-registration system, which is similar to that of last semester, and the finals week deadlines — as well as the timing of the email, which came right before Election Day, during midterm season, and, for those living on campus in the spring semester, housing deadlines.

“I was really shocked and frustrated by [their] email, because it seemed so tone-deaf,” Dania Baig ’23 told the News. “[The email] was like, I know all of you are really stressed about the election and midterms and stuff and then he sent an email about pre-registering for classes the day before the election starts, which is the peak of everyone’s anxiety at that point.”

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

On Nov. 2, Chun and Gendler sent an email to Yale undergraduates with details for next semester’s course registration.

Baig also described the Dec. 18 deadline as “ridiculous,” especially considering that the spring semester, which will start on Feb. 1, is delayed by approximately two weeks. A firstyear counselor interviewed by the News, Joe Allen ’21, agreed.

Allen, who is taking a majority of seminar-based classes this year, said that the application process for seminars is “quite lengthy” and can distract from school work around finals.

“Part of the confusion in my mind is we have this entire month of January where nothing is going to be happening, people are going to be home, they probably have more free time than in December,” Allen told the News. “Why couldn’t the process happen then?”

Baig, who is applying to Yale’s Multidisciplinary Academic Program in Human Rights, also has the extra anxiety of having to make two schedules: one if she is accepted into the program, and one if she is not, as she will not hear back until sometime in December.

Gendler told the News that the pre-registration timeline was created both so that, in December, courses could be adjusted to help match the demand from students, and so that students and faculty alike could have an “honest break” from late December through January.

Gendler also noted that, while the email came in early November, the email was supposed to be one of reassurance rather than stress.

“This is a message that says relax, when you come back after Thanks-

giving, thinking about next semester, you will have all the information you need,” Gendler said. “Don’t worry about it until then.”

Three professors interviewed by the News said that the pre-registration system and the early deadline were conducive to their own course planning, while one, echoing student concerns, told the News that the early deadlines would only add more work and stress to both students and faculty.

Claudia Valeggia, professor of Anthropology, told the News that extra time built into the course planning schedule is something faculty have been requesting for a while.

“I usually teach courses that draw large enrollments (large compared to other Anthropology courses, I mean) and I have struggled to organize my teaching around the demand in relation to the availability of TFs,” Valeggia wrote in an email to the News. “I did not know the enrollment until one week into the semester. If I do not know the estimated enrollment, I cannot request the correct number of TFs with enough time to find them. So, from the point of view of instructors this new schedule makes a lot of sense.”

Valeggia acknowledged how the deadlines may be anxiety-inducing for students, but also noted that there is an add/drop period at a later point that can help accommodate schedule changes.

Andrew Johnston, director of undergraduate studies for the Classics Department, agreed with

Valeggia, telling the News that the extra time allows for appropriate lecture and teaching fellow staffing, as well as timely advising and curriculum planning.

“Without presuming to fully understand all of the diverse and complex concerns of the undergraduate community around this issue, I would nonetheless suggest that students’ educational experience in the spring semester will be most successful and most robust if their instructors are allowed the extra time to plan the courses that they will teach, rather than if the extra time were given to the students for planning the courses that they will take,” Johnston said.

Not all faculty, however, feel the same. Professor Jacqueline Goldsby, the chair of the Department of African American Studies, told the News that the new pre-registration system only accelerates deadlines, instead of alleviating stress.

Goldsby spoke specifically of the Nov. 30 expanded course description deadline for faculty, which she called “distracting” from the current moment and teaching for this semester.

“Any way I cut it now, though, moving to a preregistration system entails more, not less, work,” Goldsby wrote in an email to the News.

Friday, Feb. 5, at 5 p.m. is the deadline for students to submit their final OCS schedule worksheet.

Contact MADISON HAHAMY at madison.hahamy@yale.edu .

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“People see me and they squeal like tropical birds or seals stranded on the beach.” CARRIE FISHER AMERICAN ACTRESS

Students react to the elections with relief mixed with uncertainty STUDENTS FROM PAGE 1 This moment means a lot to me, and my family, and I think I'm yet to even fully process it.”

Kachru and her family moved to the United States from Dubai in 2005, and, after 15 years, they finally became U.S. citizens this past summer. This was the first election in which they could vote.

Up until the polls closed, Kachru recalled reaching out to South Asian American voters in Pennsylvania and Nevada together with her parents in their dining room. It was inspiring, she said, to listen to her parents tell voters why this election mattered to them as citizens and first-time voters themselves.

K a c h r u d e sc r i b e d fe e l ing grateful to have observed “democracy in action during an immensely critical time,” and danced with her family in celebration the moment the election was called.

Nicholas Kidd ’24, the Communications Director of Yale for Biden, said that members of the student group anxiously refreshed their screens as the mail-in ballots were being counted across several battleground states.

“We have a lot of faith in a Biden-Harris administration and what they can accomplish,” Kidd said. “They will get our country back on the right path and help us move forward, creating long-lasting, effective change through healthcare, education and combating climate change.”

Despite the victory for the presidency, Kidd expressed disappointment that Democrats lost seats in the House and did not flip more seats in the Senate. But Kidd noted that the Senate races are not over yet. Yale for Biden will spend the next few months supporting the campaigns of both Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock, the Democrats running in Georgia’s two Senate run-off races that will take place in January.

“What a time to be in Georgia,” Jyot Batra ’21, who lives in Atlanta,

LUKAS FLIPPO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Many Yalies worked on campaigns across the country this year in advance of Election Day. said. “You could feel the change coming. It's a historic moment here.”

Although electoral vote counts currently show Biden’s lead to be decisive, Robby Hill ’24 said that high voter turnout was “driven by antagonism toward the Trump administration but not fueled by any deep passion in the future of the Democratic party.”

In many voting districts, Hill added, ballots were “blue at the top, red on the bottom” — like when Maine voters reelected incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins over Democratic challenger Sara Gideon while also supporting Biden.

For Kennedy Bennett ’22, the fact that several projected Dem-

ocratic victories for the Senate and congressional races ended in defeat signaled a need for the party to rethink its political strategy.

“The Democratic Party continues to depend on marginalized communities for turnout, but does not center progressive policies that would benefit their voter base,” she said.

Kate Kushner ’21, who served as a North Carolina state captain for Yale Votes, said that while she doesn’t necessarily envision a career in grassroots organizing for herself, the election has led her to think more about “how to make [her] work and personal life, going

forward, invested in progressive and anti-racist change.” Many of the students interviewed by the News expressed similar sentiments regarding the work that still needs to be done.

Elections Coordinator for the Yale College Democrats Armin Thomas ’21 expressed hope and relief at the ultimate election results, commenting that he was finally “able to breathe again.”

However, Thomas also noted how the Biden win would not have been possible without the hard work of all of the organizers and election workers.

“This victory would not have been possible without all of

the organizers and campaign staffers who put their lives on hold to fight for the soul of this nation,” Thomas wrote to the News. “Special gratitude is also owed to our election officials and poll workers who turned the wheels of democracy and are still making sure that every vote is counted.”

While Election Day was Nov. 3, Biden was officially projected to be President-elect by several major news outlets on Nov. 7.

Contact JULIA BIALEK at julia.bialek@yale.edu and EMILY TIAN at emily.tian@yale.edu .

Yale professors discuss election results FACULTY FROM PAGE 1 — as described by Brooks — to surprise, fear, relief and a mix of them all.

“I am shocked at what it feels like to not wake up with a kind of existential anxiety about my government terrorizing me,” Brooks said. “I feel hopeful and comforted by the idea of a government that will engage in a politics of care in the midst of the worst health crisis we’ve seen in a hundred years.”

In a previous article, the News interviewed 16 professors on their predictions for the presidential election: two of them, Matthew Jacobson, professor of American studies and history and David Simon, director of undergraduate studies of political science, both initially told the News that they believed that Biden would win

the popular vote. Simon believed that this would translate into an electoral college victory, albeit one that might take a while to come to fruition, while Jacobson expressed only 50 percent confidence in a Biden victory.

Simon wrote that the results on Saturday largely match his initial thoughts of a “Red Mirage,” where the initial reported results are overwhelmingly Republican in certain states because of laws governing when provisional and absentee ballots can be tallied. But Simon also thought that Biden would win Michigan and Wisconsin with larger margins.

“I predicted a ‘scorched earth retreat’ from the outgoing administration — and so far I appear to be wrong there,” Simon added. “The Trump administration doesn't appear to be retreating at all, so far.”

Jacobson told the News that, because he was not confident in a Biden win, he is currently “relieved” with the Biden victory.

He added, however, that Trump’s false claims of voter fraud and an illegitimate election are “dangerous” and could seriously damage the incoming administration.

In an email to the News, history professor Sunil Amrith characterized his reaction, similarly to Jacobson, as a mix of both relief and anxiety. Both expressed worries about the long-lasting damage of Trumpism: Amrith wrote to the News that, in the short term, he fears an attempted coup

by Trump’s supporters, who may become even more emboldened and violent due to Trump’s false claims of a rigged election.

B ro o ks ex p re sse d s i m i lar fears, telling the News that she fears the spread of misin-

formation and lack of trust in facts and media — as well as how those factors might affect the Biden administration’s ability to implement a “transformative” agenda. Brooks also worries about the two Senate runoff races in Georgia and the “cruel and underhanded” voter suppression tactics that could make the races unwinnable.

Roderick Ferguson, the chair of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality studies, felt pride towards his native state of Georgia for “the ways that people very bravely and forthrightly have refused voter suppression.” He noted the high turnout among voters of color during the presidential election, specifically.

“I’m really inspired by the level of participation and interest in the overall political and social situation,” Ferguson said. “What’s so

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Some professors compared their predictions of election results to how the events unfolded on Election Day.

interesting about this moment for me is that people are developing a sense that voting is simply one item on what must be a menu of interventions. Hence, I’m not seeing a lot of romanticism about this or that person winning but a real clarity that there’s more at stake than this office being filled or that person being elected.”

Professor of linguistics Veneeta Dayal told the News that, while she is feeling both “relief” and “elation” at the prospect of a Biden presidency, she also questions what the future of American politics will look like.

Dayal is looking forward to a shift towards a “more normal, more civil tone in public discourse,” which, she notes, is not yet guaranteed and depends on whether much of the trends of the past four years can be reversed.

“I should be excited about the first woman as Vice President of the US, a woman of color, a woman whose parents were immigrants, a woman of South Asian origin,” Dayal wrote to the News. “It's unfortunate that these major landmarks in American political history are overshadowed by relief at the prospect of a return to normalcy.”

Dayal was also surprised by how many people voted for President Trump, as well as how poorly Democrats fared in some Senate and House races.

While Brooks described a scene of joy, screaming on her East Rock porch after hearing that Biden won, she also spoke of deep sadness in the more than 72 million people who cast their ballots for the incumbent president.

“I’ve been very concerned by this focus on what the Democrats did wrong,” she added, noting that Biden received more votes than any other candidate in history. “I wish that we could have a more imaginative and rigorous and brave conversation about why is that portion of the electorate [who voted for Trump] so morally broken. Because there’s no other way to describe it than that.”

The Associated Press declared Biden the winner of the presidency at 11:25 a.m. EST on Saturday, Nov. 7.

Contact MADISON HAHAMY at madison.hahamy@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

FROM THE FRONT

“Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.” JOHN STEINBECK AMERICAN AUTHOR

YSM professor to chair Biden’s COVID-19 task force COVID FROM PAGE 1 Smith has dedicated her career to shining a light on disparities in health and promoting health and healthcare equity for structurally marginalized populations.”

Forman said he presumes Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris recognize the urgency of combatting this pandemic. He also said, however, that Biden must be aware that there is no “single silver bullet” that will solve the extreme hardships posed by COVID-19. Forman noted that, in appointing NunezSmith to the position, he believes the Biden administration is signaling the pandemic cannot be solved without addressing its disproportionate effects on marginalized populations.

During a speech on Saturday night, Biden said that combatting the pandemic with a plan built on “a bedrock of science” will be the first priority of his administration. The appointment of NunezSmith and other COVID-19 task force members comes before any announcements from Biden about senior White House staff members and cabinet appointments.

“Our work begins with getting COVID under control,” Biden said.

“We cannot repair the economy, restore our vitality, or relish life’s most precious moments — hugging a grandchild, birthdays, weddings, graduations, all the moments that matter most to us — until we get this virus under control… I will spare no effort — or commitment — to turn this pandemic around.”

Yale School of Medicine Dean Nancy Brown emphasized NunezSmith's knowledge of the pandemic’s effects on "the health of specific groups in the community," which will be essential in addressing the challenges posed by the virus.

Department Chair of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health Albert Ko also said that Nunez-Smith’s prior work as a clinician and researcher will make her an exceptional professional to co-chair the task force.

He said that given how COVID19 disproportionately affects Black and Latinx communities in the U.S., Nunez-Smith’s ability to construct “out of the box solutions,” her commitment to serving vulnerable populations and

her leadership skills will benefit the nation.

“Superb leader. I couldn’t think of anyone better,” Ko said. “Of course we are proud here at Yale, but, more important, is what she is going to be doing for people, the broader communities and nation.”

In addition to Nunez-Smith, the two other chairs of the committee have ties to Yale. In an email to the News, University President Peter Salovey congratulated them, stressing the importance of the transition team for the future of the country.

He also described the University's pride in having "three members of the university family" in the committee advising Biden on his public health strategy.

"Drs. Kessler, Murthy, and Nunez-Smith exemplify Yale’s commitment to research excellence, and to improving the world today and for future generations," Salovey wrote in the email.

Brown expressed similar sentiments, praising all of the scientists and policymakers affiliated with Yale who are addressing different aspects of the pandemic.

According to her, many Yale-

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Two other Yale affiliates, Vivek Murthy MD '03 and former Yale School of Medicine Dean David Kessler, were also named to the new task force. affiliated experts have been actively involved in addressing the pandemic, but the three scientists in the advisory group will be even closer to generating change.

"We are delighted that the three co-leaders of the task force, all with ties to Yale, are poised to have an even greater impact," Brown wrote.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been 9,913,553 total COVID-19 cases in the United States as of Nov. 9.

Contact SYDNEY GRAY at sydney.gray@yale.edu and BEATRIZ HORTA at beatriz.horta@yale.edu .

TFs, professor comments draw student backlash BACKLASH FROM PAGE 1 their personal stakes in the presidential contest.

In a review session following the initial online discussion, a TF in the class called the student posters “animals [that have been] let loose” in a video obtained by the News. Student reactions populated Piazza after the video was posted to the course Canvas page.

“I am considering dropping this class not because [I’m] doing bad, but because I can no longer trust the very people that grade my exam,” one student wrote in an anonymous post dated Nov. 5.

The controversy started with an anonymous Nov. 4 post regarding the upcoming exam, titled “I can’t focus on anything but the election.”

The post described the student’s inability to study for the Friday exam knowing that the result of “the most important (and inconclusive) election of our lifetime” was pending.

Still, the responses they received from the course’s TFs and Breaker, a Sterling Professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, were not what some had hoped.

In a message entitled “Hang in there!” Breaker wrote to the anonymous student that the “world needs well-trained life sciences professionals in good times and bad.”

Breaker’s response elicited a public Piazza post — students on the site can choose to either remain anonymous or be named — from Yousra Omer ’22, who described her personal stakes in the election and called Breaker’s previous message “disrespectful and offensive.”

“This election is a deciding factor in who is allowed to be in this country, which dictates who is allowed to be in your class,” wrote Omer. “It is not a tall ask for an exam to be postponed when our security is in jeopardy and our lives are actively at risk.”

Professor Breaker and Douglas Kankel, director of undergraduate

studies for MCDB, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Some students who responded to Omer’s post shared how the election is similarly affecting their ability to focus and study for the exam.

Others explained that taking the exam in the subsequent week would be difficult due to other pushed deadlines, and they proposed solutions like offering the exam on both the normal Friday time and holding an alternate one the following Monday. Other students disagreed entirely; one student noted that the exam date has been in the syllabus since the start of the semester.

Later that night, at a TF-led review session, three of the class’ TFs discussed the series of posts at the Zoom session before any students arrived, according to a video obtained by the News.

It was then that Tianjiao Su GRD ’22, one of the TFs, commented to the other TFs assembled that the students making the

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The controversy kicked off after the professor refused to move the exam due to election concerns.

posts were like “animals [that have been] let loose” and added: “You can’t talk to us the day before the exam. If this was going to distress you should’ve mentioned it awhile ago so we could prepare for it.”

Another TF, Eduardo Encina SPH ’21, was recorded saying, “Like honestly, I get it, but I feel like you probably should have said something last week.”

According to a Piazza post obtained by the News, as well as subsequent interviews, multiple students said that while the full recording of the session was originally posted to Canvas, the controversial section of the video was later edited out.

None of the TFs for the class responded to multiple requests for comment.

Multiple students reacted with criticism and action after watching the video. Some said they were going to send the video to Kankel while others lambasted the remarks as unacceptable. In a separate interview with the News, Omer added that “as a Black woman, while I don’t think the [TF] was intentionally meaning to be racist, hearing those comments targeted at me was hurtful.”

On Nov. 5, after students discovered the TF remarks, Breaker sent an email to the class, obtained by the News, saying that he talked to students, TFs and other professors about the events that transpired.

Breaker added that he hopes to achieve the objectives set out for the semester: helping undergraduates understand biochemistry, introducing TFs to the teaching experience in the MCDB Department and forming a community of “students and scholars.”

“Please know that this entire class is an educational experience - for the undergraduate enrollees as well as for the TAs,” Breaker wrote. “TAs are more than support staff to course instructors - this is an apprenticeship where they get their initial hands-on experience in teaching.

So, your feedback is actually part

of the mechanism by which course instructors help guide and shape the TA learning experience.”

According to Yale College Dean Marvin Chun, exam dates and coursework deadlines are at instructors' sole discretion and can be changed only by them.

“It would be unusual to reschedule an exam stated in the syllabus without significant advance notice,” he added.

Should students find instructors’ or TFs’ comments to be generally insensitive, Chun recommended that they speak directly with an instructor, Dean of Student Engagement Burgwell Howard or Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd to receive guidance or facilitate an informal resolution.

In an email to the News, Tamar Gendler, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, wrote that faculty, especially those in large courses, need to take into account the needs of “hundreds of students.” She added that instructors worked last week to try to be fair, humane and respectful while maintaining predictability, consistency and rigor.

Ultimately, Breaker did not accept the requests for various class-wide testing accommodations — students took the exam during its originally scheduled slot on Friday morning. In an email to students enrolled in the class, he wrote that “there are many ramifications to changing the original exam schedule, and therefore we will keep the exam date for tomorrow.” Breaker also added that he scheduled an additional review session and was willing to meet individually with students to discuss the issues further.

According to a roster of the class obtained by the News, 139 students are enrolled in “Biochemistry” this semester.

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

School bus COVID-19 cluster draws backlash at BOE meeting BOE FROM PAGE 1 Pinto said that the company will conduct “widespread testing” of its employees on Thursday at a makeshift drive-through testing site. He said that the company plans to conduct random COVID-19 testing of its employees every four weeks thereafter.

The Department of Public Health also said it expects the company to submit a “corrective action plan” sometime on Tuesday.

At t h e m e e t i n g , P i n to attempted to reassure the BOE that the city has the situation under control and will take appropriate action.

“We are trying to address this in a remedial fashion because this is a partnership and we do need to have First Student,” said Pinto “We do not downplay how serious this outbreak is.”

However, Pinto’s reassurances did not satisfy all board members.

Some pressed Pinto for more answers and a promise to punish the company more severely.

“I am very concerned because the way this was discovered was that someone told [on the company],” said board member Tamiko Jackson-McArthur.

“Had no one told, then they would have continued to drive our students.”

Jackson-McArthur said that First Student is the only bus company with the capacity to offer transportation services to the Elm City’s students. However, she said she felt that the Department of Public Health’s reaction was too lenient on the company. She urged city officials to demand that the company conduct widespread testing for all bus drivers every four weeks.

In response to Jackson-McArthur’s concerns, Pinto called the city’s negotiations with First Student “tough but fair.”

At the meeting, BOE member Darnell Goldson argued that the city has mishandled the situation. He said he believes that health officials were wrongfully placing the blame on First Stu-

dent employees rather than company managers, claiming that he had heard from a source that employees who reported COVID19 symptoms were still asked to drive buses.

Goldson added that the company should have taken steps to address the reports of sick bus drivers, such as conducting temperature checks, well before the initial batch of 11 employees tested positive for the virus.

“To blame the staff is not correct,” said Goldson. “I agree with Dr. Jackson that we can’t [do] this kid-gloves approach with them.

A week or two later, this could have infected a whole bunch of our kids.”

Before the shutdown by the Public Health Department, First Student transported students to city meal drop-off sites.

In addition to the First Student outbreak, the Board of Education discussed updates on the city’s first student council meeting, school resource officers and a recent decrease in magnet school funding.

New Haven Public Schools were originally slated to reopen on a hybrid in-person/remote basis on Monday. However, after the city saw a spike in its COVID-

19 infections, NHPS is continuing online indefinitely.

Contact CHRISTIAN ROBLES at christian.robles@yale.edu .

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Organizers emphasized that students may be facing various circumstances preventing them from attending class.

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

ARTS Yale College Arts presents

‘Marjorie Prime’

from actors’ bedrooms COURTESY OF SARAH VALEIKA

BY DOMINIQUE CASTANHEIRA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Four actors stare straight at the audience from the makeshift sets of their bedrooms. Last weekend, Yale College Arts presented “Marjorie Prime,” a virtual production that turned its online format into an opportunity for creativity.

“Marjorie Prime,” directed by Sarah Valeika ’22 and produced by Eliza MacGilvray ’22, is a play that touches on themes of control and grief — pertinent topics during a global pandemic. Valeika leaned into the present significance of these themes when bringing the play to life. The show tells the story of an 85-year-old Marjorie who “drifts through her final years alongside her beloved husband Walter … or rather, an artificially intelligent version of the deceased, Walter Prime,” according to the show’s Yale College Arts page, and illuminates the way in which Marjorie interacts with memories and reality.

“This is a production about artificial intelligence, connection, and the ways in which we try to use technology … and I felt like all of those questions are so relevant right now,” Valeika said.

Valeika came up with the project

proposal for “Marjorie Prime” over the summer as an independent project for her internship with the Cape Cod Theatre Project. As the fall semester approached with restrictions on in-person gatherings, Valeika looked for new ways to engage with theater.

She realized that her production of “Marjorie Prime” would be a good fit for a virtual medium.

“I wondered what I could do to produce work that would be meaningful — that would actually utilize a digital format rather than trying to shy away from it,” Valeika said.

Valeika secured funding through a Creative and Performing Arts Award — a grant that supports on-campus artistic production in residential colleges — and worked with Kerry Cripe, senior technical director of Yale Undergraduate Production, to obtain streaming rights for the play. Valeika then conducted auditions virtually.

During rehearsals, the inability of cast members to physically interact with one another presented a challenge. Ellie Burke ’24, the show’s costume designer and technical supervisor, noted that it was difficult for actors to get into the right “headspace” over Zoom. To combat this,

actors disabled the self-view feature so that they wouldn’t see themselves acting. Valeika also encouraged actors to harness their anger and feelings of isolation induced by the pandemic and use this to emote and connect with their characters.

But according to Samantha White ’21, who played Marjorie, there is another way to find intimacy in Zoom theater: the audience could now see actors’ expressions magnified on screen, which is not possible on physical stages in-person.

“It allows you to be seen more closely,” White said. “There’s less ways to hide.”

Audience member Arnold Setiadi ’22 also cued into the intimacy of Zoom. Setiadi said that “it’s just the actor on the screen, staring at the camera, talking to you moment to moment. You see everything.”

During rehearsals, which often occurred at night, Valeika checked in with cast members and crew to mitigate Zoom fatigue. She said she understood the difficulty of acting before a screen — a two-dimensional object — and encouraged members to engage on a multi-sensory basis, clueing in to different senses in different ways.

For example, sometimes actors would simply turn their cameras off and listen to music during warm-up sessions.

Just like with in-person rehearsals, the Zoom hours spent on the project created a strong sense of community, according to assistant stage manager William An ’24, who said the closeness of cast members eliminated a “sense of [physical] distance.”

MacGilvray, the show’s producer, agreed, saying that the production showed her that “it’s still possible to make theater together.”

The show was performed live over a Zoom webinar, allowing actors to virtually perform in the presence of an audience. During the performance, both attendees and actors tried to replicate the ambiance of in-person theater. Setiadi said he dimmed his room lights and set the webinar on full screen. White, whose bedroom was her performance space, tried to make the space “feel as much like a theater as possible.”

The webinar format also increased the performance’s accessibility.

While attendance at in-person shows is constrained by the size of each venue, Zoom’s unlimited capacity allowed for any number of people to join. Burke said the online platform makes the production process “a lot more democratic.”

“I wanted [audience members] to remember to treasure the moments of connection that we do have with each other, in whatever form they take,” Valeika said. “We can’t always connect with people in a way we want to — sometimes you have to accept a relationship for its beauties, even if you still want to change it.”

“Marjorie Prime” had four shows from Nov. 5 to Nov. 7.

Contact DOMINIQUE CASTANHEIRA at dominique.castanheira@yale.edu .

Latino & Iberian Film Festival at Yale goes virtual

BY TANIA TSUNIK CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The annual Latino & Iberian Film Festival at Yale, or LIFFY, is celebrating its 11th anniversary in a new virtual format. The festival runs from Nov. 9 through Nov. 15, thematically highlighting notions of “diversity, truth and justice.”

LIFFY’s goal has always been to promote cultural diversity and awareness. With the support of the MacMillan Center Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies at Yale, the festival achieves this through presenting movies by filmmakers from Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula.

“This year especially, our team felt an urgent need to call attention to the problems of intolerance, divisiveness, and disinformation,” said Margherita Tortora, founder of LIFFY at Yale.

“We want our filmmakers to get a platform to speak their truths, to show different stories and to really put the focus on justice and diversity.”

The festival’s origins can be traced back to a film series conducted by Tortora in the 1990s.

The series then took the form of a collaboration with the New England Festival of Ibero American Cinema in 2010. Five years later, it became the Latino and Iberian Film Festival at Yale.

This year, the festival includes screenings of around 60 feature and documentary films from 15 countries. These selections have been made from more than 400 submissions.

Several films this year touch on the subjects of gender roles and cultural stereotyping.

Tortora said the aim of the festival is to “open

people’s eyes to the human side of life” and rid viewers of “prejudicial concepts” in their vocabulary and minds.

Luis Guevara-Flores ’24, a student in Tortora’s “Spanish in Film” class this semester, emphasized the festival’s relevance.

“The films selected for LIFFY present a diverse set of narratives and characters,” Guevara-Flores said. “For example, a few of them focus on Indigenous cultures, which is something that isn’t discussed enough today but remains extremely important for our cultural education and appreciation.”

Tortora said featured films include “Historias de ajedrez” by Emmanuel Martín Hernández, a minimalist take on everyday life in Cuba that is “free from propaganda,” as well as “Maria Luiza” by Marcelo Díaz, a documentary about the first transgender woman to serve in the Brazilian Air Force.

At the festival, a jury comprising a professional filmmaker, a producer and a film critic will award honorary prizes for three main categories — best feature fiction film, best short film and best feature-length documentary.

Experts can also list honorable mentions for additional categories, such as best actor and best script. This year, the jury includes Víctor Gaviria from Colombia, Bea Gallardo from Guatemala and Cynthia Sabat from Argentina.

“Since we went virtual, I actually had more options in terms of whom I could invite as jurors, as well as who could watch the festival,” Tortora said. “Now even more than ever, LIFFY goes international and reaches people worldwide.”

In a regular year, the festival includes film screenings, panel discussions, workshops and Q&A sessions at Luce Hall and the Whitney Humanities Center. But this year, the festival’s virtual format presents new opportunities for involvement.

Feature films will be streamed to the audience via Zoom webinar, while short films will be available for a 24-hour period on a private YouTube channel. All films will be immediately erased afterward to avoid copyright concerns.

In addition to movie screenings, LIFFY will also feature workshops and Zoom conversations with filmmakers, covering topics such as Latin American cinema and movie production during a pandemic.

Ellie Burke ’24, another student in Tortora’s “Spanish in Film” class, said Tortora took advantage of digital platforms to bring filmmakers together and elevate the festival to “a whole new level.”

According to Tortora, LIFFY can help people “regain their lost focus and a 20/20 vision of the truth.” By bringing the movies by Latin American and Iberian filmmakers to a wider public, she hopes to counteract “poisonous misconceptions and prejudices against Latinos spread by the government and the media.”

All LIFFY events are free and open to the public, and viewers can register for blocks of films on the LIFFY website. The films are presenting in their original languages with English subtitles.

Contact TANIA TSUNIK at tania.tsunik@yale.edu .

LATINO & IBERIAN FILM FESTIVAL AT YALE

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

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Yale School of Music utilizes Woolsey Hall with safety protocols

HEDY TUNG/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

BY MARISON CARTY AND ILANA ZAKS STAFF AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS Woolsey Hall’s 2,560 seats have remained largely vacant this semester as the pandemic put the majority of live performances and rehearsals on pause.

Several music organizations at Yale and in New Haven have traditionally used Woolsey Hall for concerts and rehearsals. In the past few years, the construction of the Schwarzman Center limited rehearsal time at Woolsey Hall due to high noise levels. This semester,

safety concerns further limited the use of Woolsey for some groups. But at the start of the School of Music’s performance block, Yale’s Environmental Health and Safety department and the University Safety Committee approved use of the space for curricular activities. “[Environmental Health and Safety] did aerosol testing in the space and determined that with masks and social distancing it was safe for limited use,” said Michael Yaffe, associate dean of the Yale School of Music.

The use of Woolsey Hall is restricted to the curricular activ-

ities of the School of Music and the Institute for Sacred Music.

Groups using Woolsey this semester include the Yale Philharmonia and the choral conducting program at the School of Music, and students are also using the hall for organ practice. While using the space, these groups must comply with health and safety precautions, which include wearing a mask and practicing social distancing.

The hall can only be used by musicians whose instruments allow them to wear a mask, such as string instruments. The stage is

set up to facilitate social distancing and limit the number of players. Yaffe noted that groups maintain at least an hour gap between uses for air circulation purposes.

Additionally, groups adhere to strict rules for entry and exit and no audience members are permitted inside the hall.

This semester, the Yale Philharmonia planned four concerts, which are recorded and will be livestreamed on a later date. Yaffe explained that the School of Music needed a recording space for the Yale Philharmonia as part of the curriculum. He said Wool-

sey was the only “workable space” since it currently contains the necessary recording technology.

The Yale Philharmonia follows extensive safety protocol for rehearsals, including checking in with staff upon entry and keeping talking to a minimum. After each rehearsal, students disinfect their stands and equipment.

Typically, undergraduate music groups such as the Yale Concert Band, the Yale Symphony Orchestra and the Yale Glee Club utilize Woolsey Hall during the academic year.

But this year, they have not been allowed to use the space because they are not curricular activities. Undergraduate groups must adapt to virtual platforms to continue programming.

Professor and director of University Bands Thomas Duffy explained that the band plays six concerts in Woolsey Hall over the course of a regular year, but this year all performances must take place virtually.

Yale Symphony Orchestra director William Boughton said that the orchestra uses Woolsey for dress rehearsals and concerts usually.

New Haven Symphony Orchestra also conducts its rehearsals and concerts in the space.

Elaine Carroll, chief executive officer of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, said that while the group hopes to return to its “traditional concert home,” they are pursuing alternative and even unconventional venue options. In October, they held outdoor concerts at the Canal Dock Boathouse on Long Wharf.

“Safety is our top priority.” Carroll added. “We have been longtime partners with Yale and Woolsey Hall and have been working with their teams to look at the longterm outlook for getting back in the concert hall.”

Woolsey Hall is located at 500 College Street.

Contact MARISOL CARTY at marisol.carty@yale.edu and ILANA ZAKS at ilana.zaks@yale.edu .

New Artspace installation shows ‘Who Governs?’

BY ANNIE RADILLO STAFF REPORTER A new exhibition called “Who Governs?” at Artspace New Haven celebrates the 60th publication anniversary of the book titled “Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City,” authored by late Yale Sterling Professor of Political Science Robert Dahl GRD ’40.

The exhibition, on view from Oct. 30 to Dec.12, features the work of four artists, two of whom were commissioned specifically for the exhibition. Like Dahl’s book, the exhibition is centered around themes of city management, governance and how we live today.

“I think this exhibition provoked some important conversations about the concept of power, where it comes from and how it exists both directly and indirectly in the trajectory of society’s evolution,” said Bayeté Ross Smith, one of the exhibition’s featured artists.

When Dahl wrote his book in the 1950s, he approached city government in America in what was a radical way at the time. Rather than directly examining politicians or the government, Dahl looked into the attitudes of citizens. At the time, the nation was in a state of political upheaval due to a building civil rights movement, transformative Supreme Court decisions like Brown vs.

Board of Education, developments in television and radio programming and the looming 1960 election. To understand the local

political structures underpinning this upheaval, Dahl turned to the residents of New Haven.

The exhibition “Who Governs?” commemorates Dahl and his book and emphasizes the role of creative thinkers and citizens in critiquing political leadership. Frank Mitchell, who curated the exhibition, said the book’s anniversary comes at a time when these political questions are particularly important.

For the exhibition, Artspace commissioned graphic designer and printmaker Emily Larned ART ’08 to create an installation called “Police Others as You Would Have Others Police You.” The installation examines the work of Kay Codish, a feminist theater director and New Haven activist, and traces her journey as director of the New Haven Police Academy. Codish was the first director of the Center for Women in Medicine at Yale and wrote Yale’s first sexual harassment policy. She worked with Larned to put the installation together.

In 1991, Codish approached Nick Pastore, then chief of police, about the New Haven police’s harassment of gay men. Pastore, who was implementing community policing in the city, invited Codish to help solve the issue. What followed was the creation of an arts-focused, community-based police training curriculum.

The installation includes Larned’s prints showing old newspaper clippings and advertisements, as well as original archival materials. The clippings showcase Codish’s community efforts, including an article about police students attending a workshop by the New York City Ballet. Another part of the installation is an old television set with a collection of VHS tapes of old police training videos. Viewers can ask gallery attendants to play these tapes.

A r ts pa ce a l so co m m i s sioned Bek Anderson ART ’17 for the exhibit, who created an installation called “Power Portraits.” Mitchell said the installation depicts “glamorous,

campaign-style” portraits of New Haven community members — some of whom led protests in New Haven in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. The installation includes a pop-up booth, where viewers can have their picture taken to create their own “power portraits.”

Ross Smith’s installation comprises a series of boombox shells constructed from sugar and cotton. These are part of a larger ongoing series called “Got The Power: Boomboxes,” which includes installations in Hartford, Connecticut, Shafer, Minnesota and Kyiv, Ukraine. The boombox shells are painted in pan-African colors of red, gold, black and green and arranged to abstractly resemble a flag. A narration by scholars — exploring the creation of race as a class distinction in 17th century Virginia and the historical role of the cotton and sugarcane industries — accompanies the pieces.

Also on display is an installation referencing an iconic 1988 collab-

orative art piece by Bev Richey. His work commented on the bureaucracy of New Haven government.

In the installation, viewers can participate in tiresome bureaucratic procedures — such as filling out paperwork, getting approved stamps and standing in long lines — to get a slice of the “Amazing Bureaucratic Birthday Cake.”

Larned noted that the exhibition interrogates forms of governance and “hopes for the better.”

“What if there were more official, paid roles for activists and artists in city governance?” asked Larned. “Just as Codish was a prominent activist and community leader who was given a position of transformative power, how can that be done today?”

Chief of Yale Police Ronnell Higgins and the Assistant Chief of Yale Police Anthony Campbell, are both graduates of Codish’s police academy.

Contact ANNIE RADILLO at annie.radillo@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF JESSICA SMOLINSKI

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Yale scientists discover genes that could be COVID treatment targets

BY BEATRIZ HORTA STAFF REPORTER Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine have identified genes that could be future targets for COVID-19 treatments.

In a partnership with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, researchers at the School of Medicine’s Department of Immunology performed a genome-wide CRISPR screen, which evaluated each of the 20,000 preselected genes in the African green monkey genome that could affect coronavirus infections. This technique allowed researchers to quickly and effectively evaluate the genetic information from over a million modified cells.

According to assistant professor of laboratory medicine and immunobiology Craig Wilen, using a genetically modified virus called a CRISPR library, certain genes of interest were knocked out in the monkey cells in order to stop their products from being made and used in the cell.

The cells were then infected with the coronavirus, and those that survived were analyzed to detect what genes were knocked out and could be affecting viral infection.

The results pointed to over 25 possible host genes related to infection, but two specific hits — for receptor and enzyme encoding genes — seemed most promising as treatment targets.

“We think it’s possible that you could develop drugs that affect human targets,” Wilen said. “And the advantage there is it would be conserved and function across different coronaviruses.”

Jin Wei, the study’s primary author and a postdoctoral associate at Wilen’s lab, explained that he was directly involved in identifying the host genes critical to coronavirus infections.

According to Wei, the lab had prior experience in studying the modes of infections of RNA viruses such as MERS and other coronaviruses. This previous work meant they were uniquely prepared to study the genes that affect the SARS-CoV-2 virus infection — which had never been done before.

“We found there is no CRISPR screens

Mia Madel Alfajaro, another postdoctoral associate at Wilen’s lab, explained that they found two important genes during their screening process that, when absent, helped cells survive the virus infection. One of them encodes the SARS-Cov-2 receptor, while the other is translated into an enzyme that aids the coronavirus in entering the cell.

ERIC WANG/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

for host genes for any coronaviruses, which may reveal novel therapeutic targets and inform our understanding of COVID-19 pathogenesis,” Wei wrote in an email to the News. “We leveraged our expertise with RNA virus pathogenesis and CRISPR screening to identify the host factors that are essential for SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

Scientists at the Broad Institute provided the Yale researchers with the CRISPR library to be used in the monkey cells and the analyses they ran on the surviving cells’ genetic material.

“Our group has significant expertise and capacity in terms of making CRISPR libraries, turning them from an idea into an actual

test tube of particles,” John Doench, an institute scientist at the Broad Institute, said.

Wei and Doench believe one of the main findings of the study comes from the comparison between SARS-CoV-2 and another coronavirus, MERS-CoV. These genetic hits that affect coronaviruses in general could be useful in finding “pan-coronavirus” treatments, according to Wilen.

According to Alfajaro, one of the limitations of this study is that there is no way to mimic exactly the behavior of a human being’s lung cells, which means there are still many steps to be taken before a treatment is developed.

“If we have [found] molecules, peptides or chemical inhibitors or COVID-19, that would be great,” Alfajaro said. “It will take time because some of the hits need to be developed.”

Alfajaro believes drugs that are already approved by the FDA could be a possible focus for future research, since some of the drugs already on the market could affect the molecules found during the screening.

Doench does not believe that the main goal of the study was finding a drug that would end the pandemic. He argued that a future drug may be able to target the genes they found to create therapeutics for COVID-19, but that more work needs to be done.

“From doing a genetic screen in a cell line in a monkey to having a drug target, there is so much science that needs to happen,” he said.

According to Doench, the only way to stop the pandemic is through social distancing, wearing masks and eventually developing a vaccine.

The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard was founded in 2004.

Contact BEATRIZ HORTA at beatriz.horta@yale.edu .

As the flu season approaches, YNHHS braces itself for a possible “twindemic”

BY MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO STAFF REPORTER In the wake of recent surges in COVID19 hospitalizations, the Yale New Haven Health System is preparing for a potential overlap between the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and this year’s flu season.

This scenario, which has been popularly dubbed as a “twindemic,” comes at a time when many health care systems are still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. In preparation for the co-circulation of both viruses, the YNHHS has been bolstering the promotion of the flu vaccine, increasing the number of telehealth consults and looking into whether current COVID-19 testing sites could also test people for the flu.

“This last coronavirus surge was a never before seen reallocation of resources,” Matthew Grant, assistant professor of infectious diseases at the School of Medicine and infectious disease specialist at Yale New Haven Hospital, told the News.

“If we were to have concomitant activ-

ity of both viruses, it could lead to not just increased hospital wait times to get a bed and people having to stay in the emergency room for many nights, but it could also lead us to a place where we have ... limited intensive care unit doctors [and] limited space to put patients who require an intensive care unit level of care.”

Grant said that while the YNHHS did not reach full capacity in the first COVID-19 surge, it still saw a substantial increase in patients, requiring massive logistical restructuring. Hospitals within the YNHHS had to move clinical services, create new intensive care unit floors, cancel elective surgeries and shut down outpatient services. He also noted that because of the significant patient influxes in past flu seasons and the uncertainty about future COVID-19 hospitalization spikes this year, he is concerned about the potential impact of a “twindemic” on the hospital.

Caitlin Hansen, pediatric infectious disease specialist and professor at the

YALE DAILY NEWS

School of Medicine, said that because so much is unknown about COVID-19, the scientific community is still uncertain about whether there could be serious effects should people contract the flu and COVID-19 at the same time.

“There’s no vaccine as of yet for COVID, but we do have that tool against the flu, so it’s important to make use of it,” Hansen said.

In an interview with the News, Richard Martinello, medical director for infection prevention at YNHHS, explained that the similarity in symptoms of COVID-19 and influenza — such as fever, fatigue and difficulty breathing — can make it difficult for doctors to clinically distinguish between the two diseases. Therefore, all patients will likely have to be treated under the assumption that they could have COVID19, according to Martinello.

Given that the onset of the flu season will likely result in a greater demand for hospital resources, he also said that YNHHS is taking a number of precautions.

“In our ambulatory offices, we’re working on pathways to safely care for patients who may be sick,” Martinello said. “Likewise, we’re working on ensuring that we have blood draw stations ... where people who may be sick with COVID may get lab tests safely.”

Adding to those efforts, the YNHHS has also set up outdoor COVID-19 testing sites in Connecticut and is currently exploring whether or not other viruses — including influenza — could also be tested for at those stations, Martinello explained.

He added that the YNHHS has adapted to provide telehealth services for patients who might need an assessment but are not urgent enough to go to the emergency department. This could prevent them from risking unnecessary exposure to either the flu or COVID19. According to him, while Yale New Haven Hospital held only 100 or so virtual consults in January, the hospital will soon reach 400,000 telehealth appointments performed since March.

Martinello also emphasized that while it is always important to get a flu shot, the context of the pandemic has made it even more necessary.

“People usually think of the flu being a risk for those who are elderly, immunocompromised or young children, but of course the flu is a potential risk to everybody,” Martinello said. “While we see most of the complications due to the flu … in those at the extremes of age, unfortunately each year we see young patients who have very poor outcomes.”

He said the YNHHS has also had a mandate for many years that requires all hospital employees and medical staff, including those who work mostly in private practices in the community, to be vaccinated against the flu.

In a press conference on Tuesday, Oct. 27, Yale New Haven Health Senior Vice President and Chief Policy and Communications Officer Vincent Petrini and Chief Medical Officer Thomas Balcezak mentioned that YNHHS is joining statewide efforts to promote the flu vaccination for this season.

“We’re working in partnership with the state of Connecticut to get that word out,” Petrini said. “I don’t think it has ever been more important.”

Because the flu is seasonal, becoming more prevalent in the fall and winter months, medical practitioners in the United States tend to look toward the Southern Hemisphere for a foreshadowing of what might be in store for the flu season in North America, according to Balcezak.

Because the Southern Hemisphere seems to have had a light flu season this year, Balcezak explained, the hope is that the same will occur in the United States.

However, he also emphasized that due to the unpredictability of flu seasons — which often have varying degrees of severity and virulence — the hospital and the wider community need to do whatever they can to prevent a large volume of infections, especially during a pandemic.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that there were between 24,000 and 62,000 flu-related deaths nationwide during the 2019-2020 flu season.

Contact MARIA FERNANDA PACHECO at maria.pacheco@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

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NEWS

“They were of many types of seals, all bearing the insignia of the King.” HOWARD CARTER ENGLISH ARCHAEOLOGIST

City leaders continue calls for increased financial contribution from Yale

JAMES LARSON/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

City leaders are still calling on Yale to contribute more to the city, despite a $1 million increase in the voluntary payment.

BY THOMAS BIRMINGHAM AND NATALIE KAINZ STAFF REPORTERS According to Yale’s Office of New Haven Relations, the Elm City has a lot to be thankful for.

On the office’s “About Yale and New Haven” page, the University states it is the largest contributor to the city’s budget other than the state of Connecticut. The site says that Yale pays New Haven roughly $15 million annually in “taxes, voluntary payments, and fees,” which the University says help fund schools, safety and other services.

Yale’s $13 million voluntary payment — up $1 million for fiscal year 2020-21, which started on July 1, 2020, and ends June 30, 2021 — makes up the bulk of that spending.

The University is New Haven’s largest employer — and, according to Yale officials, its key tourist attraction and one of the city’s biggest sources of community volunteers.

And yet, many leaders in the city of New Haven describe Yale’s contributions to the city as small, inadequate and in need of immediate reform. “[Yale] has a $4 billion annual operating budget, and they contribute $15 million to the city of New Haven,” New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker told the News.

“There has never been a more important time for the University to follow through on its ethical responsibility to the city.”

Local social justice organization New Haven Rising is one of the groups spearheading the effort

to increase contributions to New Haven from the University and Yale New Haven Hospital. A petition from their “Yale: Respect New Haven” campaign — which has more than 2,500 signatures — asserts that Yale’s refusal to “contribute their fair share” is part of the reason why the city has struggled to address inequality and poverty.

University spokesperson Karen Peart said that if the University spent more, it would not be maintaining a “prudent level of spending” from its endowment based on “sound economic theory and analysis.” She added that Yale’s $12 million voluntary payment to New Haven in fiscal year 2019-20 was “the highest from a university to a host city anywhere in the United States.”

“This is as much as we can responsibly spend without unfairly taking from those who will come after us,” said Peart.

“The strength we are experiencing derives from the generosity and care of those who came before us, and we have similar obligations to the future students, faculty, and staff of this university.”

But many New Haveners say Yale has an obligation to the city, too.

According to a report released

by DataHaven last year, the city’s poverty rate sat at 27 percent.

More recent reports say that number has increased during the coronavirus pandemic, particularly for residents of color.

At the end of October, Yale released its annual financial report, detailing endowment figures, revenue sources and enroll-

ment statistics. According to the report, the University finished the year in a “strong financial position,” even generating a net surplus of $203 million. The surplus is nearly 14 times Yale’s annual contribution to New Haven.

Included in the report was a message from University President Peter Salovey in which he congratulated the Yale community on “carefully managing” its financial resources. He also thanked his colleagues for “coordinating” with New Haven and the state.

Elicker, however, said that given the large surplus reported by the University, it is clear that the largest obstacle to the city receiving more money from Yale is simply the willingness of Yale’s leaders to invest in their home. A key promise of Elicker’s campaign for office was seeking an increased financial commitment from Yale — $50 million a year, to be exact.

“I think that the University’s position on this is disappointing and frankly immoral,” Ward 1 Alder Eli Sabin ’22 said.

Elicker declined to give specifics concerning ongoing financial discussions with Yale but emphasized that his office and the University “are talking.” He listed issues New Haveners face that an increased contribution from Yale could help combat. For example, he said the University could help give newly released prisoners a network of resources and provide funding for housing to reduce New Haven’s homeless population. Additionally, he said, Yale could help the city

avoid cuts in its existing programs due to budgetary concerns.

Elicker also highlighted the issue of education when asked about the potential impact of an increased financial contribution from Yale.

He said the city could use additional funds to put a librarian, guidance counselor and social worker in every school in New Haven. He did not specify how much additional funding would be required to carry out that plan.

But Peart said that Yale has already promised a $1 million increase in its voluntary payment to the city for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2020. According to Peart, Yale also commits significant resources to New Haven public schools through New Haven Promise, a scholarship program promoting college education for local public school students.

“Yale contributed $4 million this year to cover full tuition at any public university in Connecticut for eligible New Haven public school students,” said Peart. “Yale is working with the city to get through the pandemic together and will continue to do so.”

Local unions and New Haven Rising said on their website that Yale’s tax-exempt status means that the Elm City has lost $146,079,896 in annual taxes.

State and federal legislation allow institutions to gain tax exemptions on educational and administrative buildings. According to the city’s non-taxable grand list in 2019, the value of Yale’s tax-exempt properties lies at $3.54 billion. That amount has been steadily increasing over the past six years due to the University’s consistent investment in its facilities.

The Rev. Scott Marks, the founder of New Haven Rising, said taxes are not the only area where the University has failed to contribute its fair share. He told the News that Yale also does not hire enough New Haven workers, despite the University’s efforts over the past five years.

In 2015, Yale committed to hiring 1,000 workers from New Haven by April 2019, with at least half of them coming from low-income neighborhoods. Although the University succeeded in the first half of its promise, it failed to hire 500 people from low-income neighborhoods such as Dixwell and Newhallville.

“Yale should be hiring good, solid jobs in those unions, bringing [in] more of the people in order to not back up, but to move forward at this time in making sure that people have their lives filled with dignity,” said Marks. “COVID is creating a lot more opportunity for there to be a greater

reach out with the huge resources that [Yale] has to feed people.”

In light of its failure to fulfill the latter half of the agreement, the University last year committed to 300 additional hires from “neighborhoods with high unemployment rates” by the end of 2021. Although that was put on hold temporarily due to a hiring freeze, Peart said the freeze has been partially lifted to hire faculty for fiscal year 202021 — but the hiring freeze remains in effect for other staff positions. The University hired 239 academic, staff and construction workers during fiscal year 2019-20, including 86 from neighborhoods in need.

Although Yale’s contribution to the city has been a cause of concern among some New Haven residents for years, Ward 21 Alder Steve Winter said Yale’s financial support is even more vital now in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Winter said that while he believes the city has done as well as it can to manage the crisis, additional funding would lead to a more comprehensive response.

The newly activated Yale Community for New Haven Fund was founded to help soften the negative impact of the pandemic on the Elm City. It has distributed over $2 million to local nonprofits to support residents negatively impacted by the pandemic.

Bob Proto, president of the Yale blue-collar union Local 35, said economic hardship and job loss due to the pandemic may lead people to call out wealthy institutions like Yale to pay their fair share.

“I remember when they were a university before they changed into a hedge fund and started to talk about risk management and not talk about how to be a partner to the city,” said Proto. “They worried about their investments but they didn’t worry about the neighborhood surrounding their own college.”

The mayor also noted that Yale needs to recognize the damage the pandemic has done to New Haven’s long-term economic stability.

“It’s become overwhelmingly clear that New Haven will suffer permanent, long-term negative economic impact because of COVID-19,” Elicker said. “While at the same time it’s also clear that Yale University continues to thrive and prosper economically.”

According to Yale’s 2019-20 financial report, the University currently has an endowment of just over $31 billion.

Contact THOMAS BIRMINGHAM at thomas.birmingham@yale.edu and NATALIE KAINZ at natalie.kainz@yale.edu .

Amid pandemic, Yale builds relationship with Africa

BY ROSE HOROWITCH STAFF REPORTER Despite travel restrictions during the pandemic, the University has continued to prioritize strengthening its ties to Africa, an area which University President Peter Salovey has emphasized throughout his tenure.

While former University President Richard Levin outlined relations with China as a key priority — even saying that the next 100 years would be a “China century” — President Salovey has moved the University’s focus to Africa.

Salovey has long called for Yale to develop its ties to the continent, outlining it as a priority in his 2013 inaugural address as University president. In 2018, he became the first sitting Yale president to visit the continent, traveling to Kenya and Ghana. Even during the pandemic, the University has continued to develop its relationship with Africa through research collaborations, virtual programming, alumni connections and personal relationships.

“Africa, continent of 54 countries, population of 1.2 billion plus people, it’s an important continent, cradle of mankind and also a place where there are tremendous transformations happening in technology and innovation in mobile money and finance,” said Eddie Mandhry, the director for Africa and the Middle East at the Office of International Affairs. “It’s an interesting place, very dynamic.”

Yale administrators and researchers alike have increased their physical presence on the continent in recent years. Vice President for Global Strategy Pericles Lewis visited Ethiopia, Uganda and South Africa in 2019.

The School of Public Health and School of Medicine have also

engaged in research with colleagues in Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia, among other countries.

Though the University would ordinarily have administrators and researchers traveling to and from Africa, the pandemic has made such travel impossible.

Yale has therefore shifted some of its programming online. For example, the Yale Young African Scholars Program — a program to identify talented, underserved students in Africa and help them on a pathway to higher education — was remote this year.

“The global pandemic has created significant constraints in terms of our ability to navigate and travel around the world, including around Africa,” Mandhry said. “There are challenges in not being able to interact and create a sense of community that you might have in person.”

Yet multiple departments at the School of Public Health are currently expanding their collaborations with colleagues in Africa, Dean of the School of Public Health Sten Vermund told the News, most recently with new grants to work with scientists in Sudan and Rwanda.

“Life expectancies are lowest and child/maternal mortality rates are highest in Africa, so anyone interested in alleviating and preventing disease will be interested in Africa,” Vermund wrote in an email to the News. “Much progress can be made with an emphasis on prevention, public health, and primary health care.”

One of the chief areas of academic collaboration with Africa is in public health, Mandhry said.

The Yale Institute for Global Health has set up a site in Ethiopia to conduct research and provide technical assistance. Additionally, some public health officials from Ethiopia have come to Yale for leadership training.

Epidemiology professor Luke Davis said he hopes for more similar partnerships in the future.

Davis, who does research in Uganda, said that the country has built up a strong public health infrastructure and approach to health crises. It has dealt with the AIDS epidemic, Ebola crisis and a number of other outbreaks in recent years. As such, community members have faith in their leaders, Davis said.

In normal times, administrators’ trips to and from Africa also allow them to keep up contact with people in the private and public sectors, particularly with alumni on the continent. The governor of the Central Bank of Kenya received his doctorate from Yale. The former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Rwanda is a graduate of Yale Law School.

And the most recent former president of Malawi is a Yale graduate, according to Mandhry.

“Wherever possible, we bring the University’s leadership to the continent so they can update our alumni of what we’re doing on campus, we can learn more about what their interests and priorities are and look for ways to deepen our connections with the party,” Mandhry said.

Yale has supported an “ongoing effort” to fundraise for scholarships and programs in Africa, he added. The University has focused on bringing students from the continent to Yale and on creating an alumni network and finding career opportunities for alumni in Africa.

Yale researchers have also developed personal connections through frequent travel between the United States and Africa.

“As soon as we heard about the pandemic coming, of course, all of us immediately thought, what would happen in Africa?”

Davis said.

COURTESY OF THE YALE OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Yale administrators and researchers alike have increased their physical presence on the continent in recent years.

After colleagues at Zhejiang University led a webinar to share their experiences battling the coronavirus with Yale experts, the University reached out to colleagues in Africa to lead a similar webinar with researchers and government health officials in Africa.

“This was so inspiring to us that we decided to immediately pay this forward,” Vermund wrote. “We initiated webinars with our colleagues in multiple African nations.”

These countries included Senegal, Burkina Faso, Uganda, Sudan and Ghana. Additionally, Yale worked with Egypt to identify the outbreak that introduced SARS-

CoV-2 into the country.

The researchers have developed a bidirectional information flow during the pandemic.

The United States has seen more coronavirus patients and can provide information on how to equip hospitals to handle the capacity.

Meanwhile, some African nations have experienced greater success than the United States in controlling the virus and can therefore offer advice with regard to public health.

The Yale Africa Initiative started in 2013.

Contact ROSE HOROWITCH at rose.horowitch@yale.edu .

PAGE 10

SPORTS

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

“I was selfish, I wanted to do with my life what I felt I had to do and I wanted to play tennis wherever I wanted to play, so that’s what I stood up for. Then all of a sudden, I [became] this pioneer.” RENÉE RICHARDS ’55 FORMER MEN’S TENNIS CAPTAIN, FORMER PROFESSIONAL TENNIS PLAYER AND CELEBRITY FEMALE TRANSGENDER ACTIVIST

In fall 2021, The Game at Yale Bowl THE GAME FROM PAGE 14 “We’ve really just pressed the reset button because we would have finished our season next week,” Reno said. “So hopefully, in December, we’ll be back on track to play football in 2021.”

Last November, the Bulldogs’ dramatic 50–43 win over Harvard capped a 9–1 season and secured the Bulldogs an Ivy League championship. Quarterback Kurt Rawlings ’20 led the Elis with 417 passing yards and 101 yards on the ground in a game that lasted four hours and 36 minutes, delayed by halftime protesters and two overtimes.

Yale wide receiver Mason Tipton ’24, who hauled in a crucial touchdown for the Bulldogs with 1:10 remaining in the fourth quarter during last year’s edition of The Game, expressed excitement about being able to play in New Haven again next fall.

“I’m not complaining,” Tipton said. “The atmosphere at the Yale– Harvard game was pretty dope. So I’ll take it, I’ll take that again.”

Although fall-semester play has been canceled, Yale student-athletes enrolled in residence have been able to engage in limited training for most of the fall. Phase I weight training has given enrolled players the opportunity to get into the weight room

in order to regain any strength that was lost during quarantine.

Punter Jack Bosman ’24, who is on a leave of absence, said there are weekly meetings for remote players to receive updates on Yale’s training and the University’s COVID-19 situation. He said the team breaks out into their position groups on Zoom, where unenrolled or off-campus students can discuss footage taken of the players enrolled.

Bosman believes that starting when the players get back from winter break, the team will begin preparing like they would for a normal fall season. He thinks the coaches will have them in a regimen that is pretty much identical to other years’ postseason plans.

Although the future of athletic competition remains uncertain, Tipton is certain the group will be ready for next season, regardless of when it begins.

“I know the team,” Tipton said.

“Everybody on the team will be ready when [the game] comes. The guys have definitely taken advantage of the time we’ve gotten off.”

After 136 meetings with Harvard, Yale leads the series, 68–60–8.

Jared Fel contributed reporting.

Contact KAITLIN FLORES at kaitlin.flores@yale.edu .

MARISA PERYER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Both teams and their respective fan bases are set to meet back in New Haven for the second consecutive time in fall 2021.

10 baseball players in Florida this fall BASEBALL FROM PAGE 14 Bryant Reese ’24. Both pitchers and batters work under the same general training program with the more minute details tailored specifically to each player’s needs.

The typical Cressey workout program starts with a diagnostic with one of their trainers. Using the diagnostic as a baseline, director of performance for Cressey’s Florida facility Tim Geromini said, Cressey trainers prepare personalized training and workouts for each of their athletes. The facility has a public-private partnership with the local government that allows athletes to use public baseball fields and facilities right on the same grounds as the gym for live pitching and hitting.

“The kids [Yale’s 10 baseball players] have been great,” Geromini said. “They show up every day with good energy, they all have good personalities, [and] it’s definitely been fun to work with them. They’ve come in here at a time when they’ve been able to work out with a lot of minor league and pro guys, and it’s a pretty cool mix to see that.”

Loyal Cressey customers include Mets ace Noah Syndergaard and Nationals’ Cy Young winner Max Scherzer, who currently share facilities with the Bulldog baseball players. Yale players in Florida said they rarely see Scherzer, who works out in the mornings when they are in class, but often see Syndergaard and former White Sox pitcher Steve Cishek in the afternoons.

Before training in Florida, Cleary had already worked out at the CSP location in Massachusetts in the summer of 2019. During winter break last year, two teammates traveled to Massachusetts to join Yale’s submarine pitcher for extra practice.

When Cleary heard that the sophomores were spending the fall in Florida, he and fellow pitcher Grant Kipp ’22 decided to join them, switching from practicing at CSP in Massachusetts to the sunnier Florida location. In mid-October, after spending the start of the semester with Cleary’s family, they drove from Massachusetts to Washington, D.C. before hopping on an Amtrak that took them from the DMV to just outside Orlando in a little over 17 hours. From there it was a more manageable two-hour drive to their rented house near the Cressey facilities in Palm Beach Gardens.

Sailors prioritize team bonding SAILING FROM PAGE 14 practices before the shift to Phase 0; the rest are either enrolled remotely or not taking classes and are therefore not able to practice in person.

Zoehrer discussed the efforts of her teammates, especially those in her class year, to preserve their team dynamic in spite of the pandemic and with so many of them away from New Haven. They have organized Zoom calls to replace missed team dinners, study sessions and quality time together.

“Even though we’re now technically split between the classes of ’23 and ’24, there’s a sense of connectedness from starting Yale together and our communal experiences as first years on the team last year that we’ve been able to hold onto despite being separated by geography, enrollment status and now class year,” Zoehrer said.

Leonard also highlighted this sense of cohesiveness, in addition to conveying his excitement about reconvening with the entire team once normal practices and competitions return.

If not for the pandemic, the fall season would be winding down at this point in the year to give the team a break before resuming competition in mid-February. Zoehrer explained that regattas start the second week of September and run through early November, and that the team sends several boats to between two and five regattas each weekend.

Regarding Yale sailing’s return to competition, Leonard explained that the probability of there being racing events, like the national championship that would be hosted at Tulane University, later this year depends on the status of the pandemic. As of Thursday evening, the Ivy League has postponed the spring season until at least February, with an updated decision to come in January.

“We’re going to play it where it lies, and we’re staying happy and optimistic and upbeat … we’re ready to go when we’re allowed to go,” Leonard said.

One ‘perfect’ day As a part of this preparation, Leonard said that during the majority of the fall semester, the sailing team was only able to do gym workouts two days a week as part of Phase I. They were only able to sail out on the water once during Yale’s week in Phase II. Bill Healy, the program’s associate head coach, who has worked with the co-ed and women’s sailing teams since 2003, described the one day out on the water as “perfect.”

“It was just one day,” Healy said.

“A Friday [and it was] a perfect day for what we were allowed to do, which was single-handed sailing.

It wasn’t too windy so they could control the boats easily, but there was enough wind where it was a competitive, fun practice.”

Healy described how the team did “some practice starts” and short course racing, a nice reminder of past seasons when practices would be held six days a week. While he said sailing with only one person per boat was something the program does not usually practice, the Bulldogs enjoyed spending the time together distanced out on the water.

Sailing over to Hanover Although COVID-19 restrictions at Yale have prevented more on-water practices for the sailing teams, sailors at Dartmouth have been able to enjoy practices in Phase II, Dartmouth head coach Justin Assad told the News. He said they typically sail at least three times a week.

“Up in Hanover, you know, we kind of benefit a little bit from not being as close to major cities as most of the Ivy League schools,” Assad said. “We got approval from our COVID Task Force to have two people per sailboat, which we’re really fortunate about [and] it’s made it a really rewarding fall despite how abnormal it’s been.”

Out of his co-ed roster of 28 sailors, Assad said 14 of his team members are on campus and practicing. Each wears a neck gaiter

and works in pods for small practices on the water and strength and conditioning training sessions.

According to Assad, throughout the week, they have been able to practice for a maximum of two hours per day, which gives him hope for even less restriction on practices and competitions in the coming months.

An optimistic outlook “I try to be as optimistic as possible on everything,” he said in a Monday afternoon phone call.

“I think I’m going to hold that hope that we can do something this spring. … Until we know that we’re not having a championship, we’re gonna treat it as if we’re gonna have a championship in May.” Leonard and Healy shared Assad’s hope for the spring semester and the possibility of a season with competition. Both emphasized the strength and empathy of their student-athletes during this fall of altered practices and uncertainty.

Mentioning Monday morning’s positive news about the effectiveness of Pfizer’s vaccine during his interview with the News, Healy expressed his hopes for the sailing team to become even closer as in-person practices return in the future.

“You learn how tight the kids really are with each other,” he said.

“They’re all supportive of each other, [and] they’ve got each other’s back. … We can all get back to what has been normal in the past, which is face-to-face contact, competition, being able to be with each other on long car rides … and just enjoying it.”

To close their fall season last year, the Bulldogs finished fourth for the Nickerson Trophy at Tufts, placed second for the 79th Professor Erwin Schell Trophy at MIT and won the Dave Perry Team Race Trophy at Yale.

Contact AMELIA LOWER at amelia.lower@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF QUINN CLEARY

Ten members of Yale’s baseball team are living and training in Florida this semester.

Cleary and Kipp were not the only ones to join the sophomore contingent late. Pitcher Clark Klitenic ’23, a sophomore who was able to live on campus this fall as a transfer student from Duke, was the tenth player to arrive at CSP in Florida — he changed his enrollment status to remote after a cluster on the men’s hockey team reverted Yale Athletics to Phase 0 and arrived in Florida on October 18.

“Having the opportunity to split time between Yale and Florida was ideal,” Klitenic said. “Having the chance to work with [Assistant Strength and Conditioning] coach [Anthony] ‘TJ’ [Belanger] and his incredible staff in the weight room as well as get some time on the field with our coaching staff was integral in my transition to Yale … In that same spirit, the move to Florida made the most sense for me because it gave me the opportunity to join my fellow sophomores and develop a bond with the boys that I will be spending the next few years of my life with.”

Reese, a 2019 high-school graduate who took a year off because he was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, is now enrolled remotely and back to baseball.

He said he is “all-clear healthwise” to start at Yale.

“Cressey is an awesome place to train and obviously in the context of the pandemic and being rightfully worried about health and safety, it’s hard to get people to Yale and get a consistent schedule for training,” Reese said. “But down here in Cressey, where we’re all living and quarantining together, Cressey happens to be open for athletes — it’s easier and safer to train on a consistent schedule.”

Joining Cleary, Kipp, Reese and Klitenic in Florida are sophomores

Alex Frey ’23, Michael Walsh ’23, AJ Gaich ’23, Carson Swank ’23, Jamis DeKay ’23 and Carter Kessinger ’23. Although they do not all live together, the group is creating a pandemic-era college experience outside of New Haven, like several other groups of friends at Yale.

Cleary estimated that about a third of the team is still living in the New Haven area this fall. Additionally, two other players are spending the semester with shortstop Mason LaPlante ’22 in Houston and working at a comparable facility. Despite the differences in geography, the team still stays in touch with weekly Zoom meetings.

“It’s been great,” said catcher Jake Gehri ’22, who is in New Haven, about training in Yale during Phase I. “It was something that I knew I missed, but I didn’t know how much until I stepped foot in the weight room again. We’re definitely taking a lot of precautions which is very good that all the student-athletes are on board with that and taking these things very seriously.”

During the pandemic, Gehri has been safely working to improve his game. During the summer, he and Kipp were invited to the Collegiate Summer Baseball Invitational, which aired on ESPN2. The CSBI was an invitation-only tournament that gathered players from over 70 Division I schools and safely bubbled them in Texas with proper testing and social distancing procedures.

Seven baseball players from Brown University are also training at Cressey’s Florida facilities this fall, Geromini said.

Contact EUGENIO GARZA GARCIA at eugenio.garzagarcia@yale.edu .

YPMB adapts rehearsals during COVID-19

JOSH CHOUGH/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

This year, the Yale Precision Marching band has found themselves especially focused on cultivating team relationships through virtual means.

YPMB FROM PAGE 14 Auditionees were asked to play “Down the Field,” one of the songs the band regularly plays, but the band welcomed anyone that expressed interest in joining the organization, regardless of how well they performed.

James stressed the open and accepting environment of the group, noting that it is not as intense or competitive as other marching bands at some other schools. Even those who do not play an instrument are able to be a part of the band, as there is a section in which members can build props for halftime shows or even play the rubber chicken.

While the band members initially joined the YPMB for the music, James’ co-section leader Laszlo Kopits ’23 explained that it is not what has ultimately kept them unified. Instead, he credits the marching band’s supportive and tight-knit community.

“My favorite part is how hard everyone tries to include everyone and everything,” Kopits said. “[The band is] very tight and it’s intentionally so. It’s a really nice norm that exists here

that I haven’t really seen anywhere else.”

Calabresi, the marching band’s drum major, has also been thoroughly impressed by the drive and resilience of the group. The positivity and dedication exhibited by each member is one of the reasons why the YPMB has been able to remain active this semester, she noted.

She told the News that there has been a good amount of participation at every rehearsal and even though the times are hard, Calabresi said that she appreciates the positive energy and willingness of the members to go above and beyond expectations.

“Everything is completely optional,” Calabresi said. “People’s attendance and participation stems from their love for the band. That’s something that I really appreciate, and I’m so grateful that I get to be the leader of such a special group.”

The YPMB includes six core sections: Kappa Kappa Banga percussion, low brass, saxophones, squaaangs, trumpets and upper woodwinds.

Contact TRISHA NGUYEN at trisha.nguyen@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

NEWS

PAGE 11

“Killing a baby seal is about the easiest thing you can do if you’re inclined to be sadistic; you certainly can’t say there’s any sport in it — the animal is totally defenceless.” PAUL WATSON CANADIAN ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST

Yale lobby report shows University priorities in DC

BY ROSE HOROWITCH STAFF REPORTER The University recently lobbied against legislation that would make more stringent rules for reporting foreign funding and in support of legislation that would give a safe harbor from liability if someone should contract coronavirus when the University reopened.

Yale’s most recent lobbying disclosures show that the University took stances on many bills that could potentially affect its operations and financial status and spent a total of $110,000 on lobbying efforts between July and September. Along with addressing issues of foreign funding and COVID-19 liability, the University lobbied for numerous bills that would help international students get visas, supported the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and advocated for more funding for federal science agencies.

Yale has previously come under fire from the U.S. Department of Education for failing to report $375 million in foreign gifts and contracts over a period of four years. Last February, the DOE opened an investigation into Yale and Harvard University’s financial disclosures. In June, Republican Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma introduced the America: FIRST Act, which would lower the financial threshold for reporting foreign funding and require individual departments within Yale to report such gifts and contracts. Yale opposed the legislation, Associate Vice President for Federal and State Relations Richard Jacob told the News.

“Yale believes the additional reporting would impose considerable administrative burden without providing additional useful information,” Jacob wrote in an email to the News.

The bill would require institutions of higher education to disclose the value of foreign gifts in the byline of every professorial publication. Additionally, it would mandate that departments within Yale — rather than just the

University as a whole — disclose foreign gifts.

The DOE and Republican representatives have continually criticized the University for its failure to report the foreign funding. But Vice President for Global Strategy Pericles Lewis explained that the DOE has a complicated procedure for reporting foreign gifts. Through an oversight, Yale failed to report some gifts, he said, but once the University became aware of the oversight, it went back and completed all the required filings. Lapses in reporting are fairly common, Lewis added.

“I think we’ve been totally upfront and open with the government about where all foreign funds have come from,” Lewis said. “That’s quite a complicated matter, because you can imagine we have a lot of foreign activity, but we’ve declared it all and we’re up to date.”

Along with the bill related to reporting gifts, Yale lobbied for a safe harbor from liability if someone should contract coronavirus when the University reopened. The provisions of the SAFE TO WORK Act, part of the HEALS Act package, would create a “targeted, temporary safe harbor from liability for organizations, including colleges and universities, that comply with federal, state, and local public health standards during the pandemic,” Jacob wrote in an email to the News.

Last May, the American Council on Education sent a letter to Congressional leaders asking for liability shields for schools that decided to open up campus this fall. The Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges, of which Yale is a member, signed onto the letter.

“As colleges and universities contemplate whether and how to safely reopen this fall, their overriding concern is keeping students, faculty, staff, and local communities safe,” the letter reads. “These decisions are not premised on making a trade-off between safety and the economy. Nor are institutions of higher education seeking a free pass to avoid responsibility,

YALE DAILY NEWS

The University’s lobbying efforts between July and September came to $110,000, according to the disclosure. much less immunize themselves for their own or others’ bad acts.”

The letter added that colleges should have to follow all “applicable public-health standards” to be shielded from liability. Still, “truly bad actors” should be liable for misconduct, the letter explained.

The letter came prior to July and therefore was not included in the most recent lobbying disclosures — which only includes three months.

Still, it provides insight into Yale’s stance on the issue.

Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Donald Trump, were largely supportive of creating safe harbors for businesses, while many Democratic representatives opposed the idea.

In an email to the News, law professor Jonathan R. Macey LAW ’82 wrote that Democrats may have opposed creating a liability safe harbor for colleges and universities because lawyers are a large source of donations for the Democratic Party.

Safe harbors reduce litigation and legal fees, Macey wrote.

He explained that someone might be able to win a case against

a University if they contract the coronavirus on campus.

“The questions are whether the university was acting reasonably in general and, with respect to following public health guidelines, [and] whether there is any basis for the university to rely on the particular set of guidelines at issue in formulating policies to protect students, faculty and staff,” Macey wrote.

In its stance on foreign gift reporting and coronavirus liability, the University aligned with its peers. The Association of American Universities signed onto the American Council of Education letter asking for a safe harbor. The Association is made up of 65 leading research universities, including Yale, Harvard and Princeton.

“In each of these cases, Yale’s position was consistent with the views of higher education associations and peer institutions,” Jacob wrote in an email to the News.

The University’s other lobbying efforts included supporting bills that would help international students get visas to come to the U.S. Additionally, Yale lobbied in support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arriv-

als program and supported increased funding for federal science agencies.

“We try to be as supportive as we can of DACA students,” Lewis said.

“The program has been in a bit of legal limbo the past few years so it’s been hard to join the program. We hope to see that revived so that students in that situation will be able to participate fully as part of the United States and as Yale students.”

Yale spends about $500,000 per year on its lobbying efforts. The disclosure amount represents the approximate salary cost for people engaged in these efforts. The University’s lobbying efforts include writing comment letters, filing amicus briefs and speaking with government officials. University President Peter Salovey frequently meets with lawmakers over Zoom. Often, Lewis said, Yale’s views will align with the state of Connecticut’s, and the University will work with the state government as a partner.

Yale is required to disclose its lobbying activity under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995.

Contact ROSE HOROWITCH at rose.horowitch@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · yaledailynews.com PAGE 12

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NEWS

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

“Think about it: You’re trying to raise cash to save an endangered animal. You’ve got orphaned pandas getting 3 trillion YouTube hits, and you’ve got seals being clubbed over the head by roughnecks. The money flows in. But what about the poor shark?” STEPHEN RODRICK AMERICAN JOURNALIST

OCS summer report shows differences from past years

BY AMELIA DAVIDSON STAFF REPORTER

Yale’s Office of Career Strategy released its annual summer activities report in late October, showing how undergraduates spent their summers during the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s report differs starkly from previous years’ due to the irregular nature of this past summer.

In light of the pandemic, Yale College did not sponsor any international travel this summer. As a result, only 8.1 percent of survey respondents said that they spent their summer abroad — a sharp dip from the previous five summers, during which an average of 27.8

percent of students spent the summer abroad, according to past summer reports. The percentage of students who participated in language study and field research also fell, while the number of students who engaged in non-language academic studies rose to 17.6 percent from a previous five-year average of 11.2 percent. 3,639 students completed the survey.

“Summer 2020 was very complicated,” Jeanine Dames, director of OCS and associate dean of Yale College, told the News. “We had a lot of interactions with students who were pivoting and brainstorming and changing what they were going to be doing for a variety of reasons. But it wasn’t until

we got the report that we knew holistically what happened to the whole group. And I have to say, across the board, this summer worked out much better than it could have.”

As the COVID-19 pandemic developed over the spring, many students had to reschedule their plans, according to Dames. This is indicated in the survey, as 36 percent of respondents shared that they made their summer plans in May or later — a major increase from the previous two years, when on average only 21 percent of students made their summer plans that late.

The activities hit hardest by the pandemic were language study and any other field

ZOE BERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The OCS summer report showed that more Yalies than usual enrolled in YSS and fewer went abroad.

research or internships abroad, as the University canceled all sponsorships and funding of international activities.

According to Dean of International and Professional Experience Jane Edwards, this decision was met with a significant increase in interest in Yale Summer Session, which was entirely remote this year. As students’ summer plans were in flux, YSS increased its offerings, and Yale allowed students on financial aid to use the Domestic Summer Award to fund YSS. Enrollment of Yale College students in YSS increased by 67 percent this year, according to Edwards.

“I have to say, we found that students were exceptionally flexible, resilient and sensible in planning for a very different summer in 2020,” Edwards wrote in an email to the News.

Although students were unable to spend time abroad this past summer, some found ways to carry out their programs domestically. Dames told the News that OCS was very impressed with how many international programs “honored their commitment to students” and rescheduled programs remotely instead of cancelling them outright.

Monique N ikolov ’23 planned to study abroad in Shanghai over the summer as a recipient of the Richard U. Light Fellowship, an award that provides funding for East Asian language study.

When Yale announced its ban on study abroad, Light Fellows were given the opportunity to reallocate their funding to a remote language study program. Nikolov ended up studying Mandarin through one such program from her home in Connecticut.

Nikolov said that although she was not in China, her

language skills “definitely” improved, as her online program was rigorous. Since she was not engaging in other social activities during the pandemic, Nikolov said she was able to direct all her efforts toward her studies.

“Everyone had their own bummers over the summer, and I feel like I was lucky to be able to have my online classes funded by Yale, and to be able to do something, because I know that a lot of people were struggling with finding anything to do given the special circumstances of this summer,” Nikolov said.

Many students with international internships or jobs also had to change their plans this summer.

Marco Marsans ’24 — a sophomore who is currently on a gap year — was planning to intern this past summer at Worldpay, a London-based payment processing firm.

He obtained the internship in September of his first year and was planning to spend time with friends in London.

But due to the pandemic, his internship became entirely remote, and he conducted it from New York City.

“I thought it was just going to be a surreal college summer,” Marsans said. “I do feel like I missed out on a very unique experience.”

Marsans told the News that now that he is on a gap year and will have an additional summer before he begins his sophomore year, he is less disappointed that his internship this past summer was remote.

Yale has not yet announced whether it will sponsor international travel during summer 2021.

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

CORRECTIONS MONDAY, NOV. 2

A previous version of this article stated that McGivney was a pastor at St. Mary’s until his death in 1890. In fact, he served at St. Mary’s until 1884, before pastoring at St. Thomas until 1890.

MLS Union 2 Revolution 0

CSL Beijing 1 Shanghai 1

SPORTS

CSL Wuhan 2 Shijiazhuang 1

NCAAF Ohio 24 Akron 10

FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE goydn.com/YDNsports Twitter: @YDNSports YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

FOYE OLUOKUN ’18 NFC DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK Linebacker Foye Oluokun ’18 was named NFC Defensive Player of the Week after his performance against the Denver Broncos in which the Atlanta Falcons won 34–27. This season, Oluokun leads the Falcons with 64 tackles.

IVY LEAGUE PRESIDENTS CANCEL WINTER, POSTPONE SPRING On Thursday, the Ivy League Presidents announced that winter athletic competition is canceled for the 2020-21 season and spring competition is postponed until at least the end of February. An updated decision will come in January.

For more, see goydn.com./YDNsports.

Yale set to host The Game in fall 2021 FOOTBALL

“It will be more challenging to reach [fundraising] goals ... We have to try to be creative to find ways throughout the year to engage our people and to find things that they’re interested in giving to”

SCOTT LUKAS ASSOCIATE ATHLETIC DIRECTOR OF ADVANCEMENT AND EXTERNAL PARTNERSHIPS

Some Yale baseballers training in Florida

BY EUGENIO GARZA GARCIA STAFF REPORTER Baseball training in Florida is normally an early spring affair for MLB players, but 10 members of Yale’s baseball team have made training in the Sunshine State a fall activity this semester.

BASEBALL

DANIEL ZHAO/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

If not for the pandemic, Harvard would have hosted this year’s installment of the rivalry on Nov. 21 in Boston.

BY KAITLIN FLORES CONTRIBUTING REPORTER If Ivy League athletic competition can occur in fall 2021, the 137th edition of the Yale-Harvard football game is set to occur in New Haven.

In 2019, the Bulldogs hosted The Game at the Yale Bowl, capturing a dramatic double-overtime victory over the Crimson in front of 44,989 fans. This November, Harvard would have hosted the 2020 installment of the rivalry on Nov. 21 in Boston.

But with the COVID-19 pandemic putting a stop to fall-semester competition in the Ancient Eight, both teams and their respective fan bases are set to meet back in New Haven for

the second consecutive time in fall 2021.

“We’re going to be following our 2021 schedule,” Yale football head coach Tony Reno told the News. “I just think from a big picture standpoint, and from the perspective of all eight teams in the conference, if you’re going to change the league scheduling, it would create a lot of inequity in home and away games. So for the athletic directors to just reset it and aim for what the original 2021 fall season would have looked like makes much more sense.”

Mike Gambardella, Yale’s associate athletic director for strategic communications, also confirmed to the News that the Bulldogs are set to host The Game in fall 2021. Ivy League

Yale sailing focuses on bonding for the future

Executive Director Robin Harris and Harvard’s Associate Director of Athletics Tim Williamson did not respond to the News’ requests for comment.

The Ivy League Council of Presidents announced the cancelation of fall-semester intercollegiate athletic competition in early July, and the conference has not yet released an update on the status of competition after Jan. 1, 2021. On Thursday, the Ivy League announced that fall sport competition will not be happening in the spring.

According to Reno, the football team has mainly focused on preparing for fall 2021 this past semester.

SEE THE GAME PAGE 10

YALE ATHLETICS

The sailing team has focused on maintaining cohesion, morale and fitness as they await news about the spring.

Far from the Yale Corinthian Yacht Club in Branford and without weekend regattas, the Yale sailing program has been making the most of its fall semester despite limitations on practices and the teams’ ability to be on the water.

SAILING With Yale only in Phase II for six days this semester, the Bulldogs’ sailing teams — Yale has both a co-ed and women’s sailing team, though the two practice together — have been faced with the challenges of staying connected and preparing for an eventual return to their boats. As many of the program’s student-athletes are on leaves of absence or taking gap years, the sailing team has been working on supporting its mem-

bers, regardless of their location and enrollment status.

“Every single one of them found some really interesting and great things to do with themselves to make themselves better,” said Zachary Leonard, who has led the sailing team to 17 national championships over his 18 years as head coach. “That’s something that I’ve been trying to do and we’ve been trying to talk about as a team … how can we come out of this better people than we were when we went in.”

Out of the entire program’s pool of just under 40 sailors, over a quarter are taking leaves of absence this fall, and over half are living in the vicinity of New Haven, according to Sydney Zoehrer ’24, who walked onto the sailing team in the fall of 2019 and is currently taking a leave of absence.

She said only 16 to 18 sailors were permitted to participate in Yale’s phased

STAT OF THE WEEK

SEE SAILING PAGE 10

17

Amid the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, several members of the Yale baseball team decided to enroll remotely in Florida to pursue high-level training while enrolling in classes at the same time. All 10 of these players are working with Cressey Sports Performance, a training facility that operates specialized fitness centers in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida and Hudson, Massachusetts. While not all Bulldog baseball players are in Florida this fall, everyone on the team is enrolled in classes this semester, players said.

Eric Cressey, who joined the New York Yankees as Director of Player Health and Performance

in January, established Cressey Sports Performance in 2007 and remains its president today.

“When the sophomores heard that they weren’t going to be able to live on-campus this semester, they were looking for places where they could go and be able to prepare for the season,” pitcher Quinn Cleary ’22 said. “I recommended [Cressey] to them … and they knew Cressey as well because there’s actually a good amount of professional baseball players who are training down here [in Florida], so I’d say it’s a pretty well-known facility.”

The Yale baseball players are working at Cressey six days a week Monday through Saturday. The Bulldogs schedule their training sessions for the afternoons when they are all done with classes and can carpool together. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays are lifting days, while Wednesdays and Saturdays are reserved for movement and agility sessions, according to first-year pitcher SEE BASEBALL PAGE 10

COURTESY OF QUINN CLEARY

A group of 10 Yale baseball players are enrolled remotely and spending most of the semester training at a high-level performance facility in Florida.

YPMB staying energized this fall

BY TRISHA NGUYEN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Members of the Yale Precision Marching Band have continued with practice this fall with one big change: They have traded in their instruments for computer screens.

MARCHING BAND

BY AMELIA LOWER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

NCAAF Kent State 62 Bowling Green 24

The YPMB, which usually performs in front of thousands at the Yale Bowl during home Saturday football games before moving to Ingalls Rink and John J. Lee Amphitheater in the winter, has been holding its usual rehearsals every Friday over Zoom this fall.

Except this semester, the members are not actively practicing with their instruments. Instead, the group uses an arranging software to play pieces, and members spend rehearsal time listening to and familiarizing themselves with their songs. While this rehearsal format is unable to fully compensate for the lack of in-person

practices, it has provided the band members with many opportunities to grow their relationships with one another.

“Going into the school year, I wasn’t really sure how rehearsals would work because it’s over Zoom and we can’t really play any music together,” Emmy James ’23, section leader for the band’s Kappa Banga Banga percussion fraternity, told the News. “But given all of that, I think the rehearsals have been doing a really good job to capture the spirit of what we’re trying to do here and the community building that the YPMB tries to foster during the school year.”

During a typical year, section leaders are tasked with responsibilities such as sorting music, dealing with logistics and facilitating bonding between members of their section. With the pandemic, they have now found themselves especially focused on cultivating team relationships by coordinating trivia nights, hosting games of Among Us and

LUKAS FLIPPO/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

IThe group has used an arranging software to play and hear pieces remotely, but community building is the big focus.

building their TikTok presences.

The band has even begun using rehearsal time to write scripts for “The Office”-style mockumentaries that showcase its lighthearted spirit.

Through these mockumentaries, Elizabeth Calabresi ’22, who occupies the position of drum major and conducts the Yale Precision Marching Band, hopes to relieve some of the stress brought on by the uncertain times.

“The YPMB has always been the kind of group where members can have fun and be themselves,” Calabresi said. “I hope that through the mockumentaries we can spark joy and maintain positive energy even as we’re dealing with COVID.” Although the YPMB has been making the most of their time apart, there are many aspects and experiences that virtual meetings cannot replace. Catherine Zhang ’24 told the News that she misses performing with fellow band members at games and yelling at the top of her lungs after a long and stressful week.

Saxophone section leader Alina Martel ’23 also expressed her longing to be back in the atmosphere of the Yale Bowl, citing performances for fans who regularly show up to watch the YPMB in action as one of her favorite parts of football games.

“It’s stuff like that where people are just really excited to see you and people know you,” Martel said. “That’s definitely something that feels really special from the outset.”

At the beginning of the semester, the YPMB held a formal recruitment process that involved “faux-ditions” held over Zoom.

SEE YPBM PAGE 10

NUMBER OF NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS YALE SAILING HEAD COACH ZACHARY LEONARD HAS LED HIS TEAM TO OVER HIS 18 TOTAL YEARS WITH THE UNIVERSITY.

WEEKEND FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020

“There’s nothing normal about what’s happening right now:”

I // W

NNIE

JIAN

G

Professors and Students Respond to This Semester // BY MADISON HAHAMY This semester is hard. For everyone. I asked students and professors the same question — if you could tell the other group one thing about this semester, what would it be? Below are their responses; hopefully, they make you, whoever you are, feel a little less alone.

Kahlil Greene ’21 I wish professors knew how hard it was to be a Black student recovering from the trauma of the summer and constantly worrying about the outcome of the election — all whilst carrying the burden of being the demographic that turned out the most and put in the most effort to retain some semblance of democracy in our nation.

Daniel HoSang, associate professor of ethnicity, race and migration and American studies [Students should] give thought and attention to how they can use their skills, trainings and gifts to support those communities and groups who are organizing in the face of the pandemic.

Not just in providing service or charity, but in using what means we have to support their efforts to build power and capacity.

Irene Vazquez ’21 I’ve been disappointed to see how little syllabi have changed considering the unprecedented time we’re living in. Though study can be a refuge at times, it feels like there’s a strange desire to deny the outside world when it comes to actually easing up reading and writing assignments.

Marci Shore, associate professor of history In some ways, I only now appreciate just how dependent I was on the exchange of energy [in the classroom], on the responsiveness of the students and of my intuition about the mood in the room. Now that I’m lecturing to little boxes on a screen, or to my 8-year-old daughter’s stuffed animals, I feel like I’m speaking into a void. I lose my sense of timing. I have no intuition about when I’m reaching someone and when I’m just inside my own head. The classroom is my space. In German, I would call it “heimisch”: a space where I feel at home, at ease, grounded, in control. Interestingly, I’ve found that this is true for me in all different kinds of classrooms, in different cities and different countries — which makes me think there must be something universal about that classroom space. It’s been very disorienting to lose that.

Sydney Bryant ’23 This burnout is in no way indicative of our passion for these subjects or our dedication as students. We’re giving all the energy that we can muster but because of the lack of support from the administration, students are being spread too thin. I really appreciate professors who have been considerate of these circumstances; it makes a difference.

Luka Gawlinski Silva ’23 I feel like lots of professors saw figuring out how to measure our performance as the big challenge with going virtual, and not instruction. More energy should have been put into finding innovative ways to teach us material than into finding new ways to test us on it.

Jennifer Hirsch, lecturer in psychology It [isn’t] a sign of weakness or failure to seek support. Attend office hours, utilize Yale tutoring centers, seek accommodations from SAS or dean’s excuses when there are barriers preventing you from fully engaging in your learning experience. I tell my students that if they aren’t taking the best care of their physical and mental self, then they won’t be able to be their best academic self. Learning work/life balance starts now and the “life” part is important!

Charles Hill, Brady-Johnson Distinguished Fellow in Grand Strategy There’s nothing about this semester that warrants significant change. Do the reading and participate in class.

Saket Malhotra ’23 I wish profs knew how difficult it is to concentrate and keep deadlines when studying from home. I have way more family obligations that I have to prioritize.

Nico Taylor ’22 This semester will be memorable, no doubt.

But I don’t know if — among the biweekly nasal swabs and code yellows and oranges and the hockey team, etc. — there will be room in what I remember for what I’m learning in your classes.

There is a fear that all these hours on Zoom, all this work, will come to naught. Time will tell if this is true, so I don’t know what to ask for. But I hope, at least, that you’ll consider this as the semester concludes — that is, I guess, how to make this knowledge memorable.

James Berger, senior lecturer in English and American studies This term is strange, unprecedented, difficult, unnatural. I teach small seminars, so we’re able to Zoom pretty effectively. We talk about books, about politics, about pasts and futures.

I try to run the class so that we’re able, as well as we can, to form real relationships as the term develops. And I tell them that this weirdness will, ultimately, pass. We will be back in classrooms together as we ought to be. At the same time, public health and the decaying environ-

ment are linked, and this will not be the last pandemic of our (certainly of their) lifetimes.

We can hope that our society and our schools will be better prepared for the next one. I tell them pretty obvious things: get enough sleep and exercise; talk with friends and family; meditate; do work; take courses that you enjoy. Live with purpose. Be kind.

James Hatch ’23 Thank you. Thank you for being flexible and for being invested in making my experience amazing, despite the new world we live in. It is an exceptionally challenging time and you have made this semester very worthwhile.

Leah Mirakhor, lecturer in ethnicity, race and migration (ER&M) and the Program in American Studies Imagine and participate in remaking the social order not just within the University, but beyond. Practice refusal and non-cooperation with injustice; build collectively, build community. Have a capacious vision for the world you want to live [in].

Lauren Lee ’23 There’s nothing normal about what’s happening right now and honestly I feel like things have only gotten worse since the spring. You’ve got a pandemic on top of many students staying at home in sometimes really stressful or dangerous situations on top of a wall of unemployment on top of financial insecurity on top of police and state violence, etc. On the individual scale, it just all leads to so many people being in a poor mental and physical state. A lot of academic spaces I’ve been in are just like, we’ll acknowledge that the pandemic is happening, among so so [many] other stressors that are specific to this year and semester, but we’re going to have to keep going. It’s like a messed up form of denial. Endurance is helpful but that’s different from working yourself until you’re hurting yourself.

Adriane Steinacker, senior lecturer in physics In the current dearth of human interactions and general propensity for gloom, highlighting positive thoughts is more important than ever.

This semester, I often heard from students, “Oh, I wish I could have seen those demonstrations in the classroom!” My reply to that: You get to see them unfold in slow motion. Nobody has looked at them this way before. I realized that we spend too much time fast-forwarding and not enough time contemplating slow motion.

Meghanlata Gupta ’21 I am exhausted and overwhelmed right now.

I’m doing my best, but it’s hard to keep up with

the workload of this semester while prioritizing my health and my family.

David Simon, director of undergraduate studies for political science As hard as it’s been, this is one of those trials that I hope will make us stronger in the longer run. We will surely appreciate many aspects of our community that we might have been starting to take for granted. In addition, it’s been necessary for faculty to rethink their pedagogy in many ways.

Wren Wolterbeek ’24 This semester has held a lot of challenges between COVID, online learning and the stress of an election as well as personal struggles as I grappled with loss. I am so grateful for the academic and personal support you have given me which has not only helped my writing and analytic skills improve, but has also greatly aided me in a difficult time. I will always remember the feeling of getting a check-in email at a time when I felt isolated.

Mark Oppenheimer, lecturer in English Finishing an elite college on-campus experience in four years is a historical anomaly; throughout time, most people haven’t had that opportunity, and many have had it interrupted by war, famine, immigration, natural disaster.

Many of those people endured, even thrived, in the long run. You will too.

Rachel Merrill ’23 Just because I can connect to a Zoom call doesn’t mean my Wi-Fi can also support my video being on, streaming your screen-shared video/audio/media, downloading documents and navigating to websites — all during the Zoom call! (It really can’t.) And to the profs that have tried their hardest to accommodate all levels of technological access — thank you so, so much. It means a lot.

Daniel Sorial ’24 This school year was the end of a half-year journey that lacked discipline, organization and consistency. I was all out of sorts coming in, and warming up to workloads — Yale workloads — was one of the hardest adjustments of my life. I know most of my work, especially in the beginning, was unsatisfactory by my own standards, so I just want to tell them: my bad. I’ll get ‘em next time. I’m learning.

Steven Smith, professor of political science and professor of philosophy This, too, shall pass.

Contact MADISON HAHAMY at madison.hahamy@yale.edu .

PAGE B2

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND SPIRIT

A Spiritual Exhalation // BY LUKE BELL

// MALIA KUO

Just as his own fond hopes aspired To deeds by which bright minds are fired Death snatched him hence in youthful bloom And sunk those hopes beneath the tomb Isaiah Whitman Son of Mr. David Whitman and Elizabeth his wife Student of Yale College who died July 25th, 1759 In the 20th year of his age

In the late 1790s, consecutive epidemics of the yellow and scarlet fevers ravaged New Haven residents. The overcrowded, 150-year-old cemetery on the New Haven Green reached maximum capacity. To secure a more dignified burial ground for the community, Sen. James Hillhouse and wealthy New Haven residents purchased a new burial plot on the northern outskirts of New Haven. Construction ended in 1797, marking the first chartered burial site in the United States.

The cemetery sparked a revolution in future graveyard designs. Unlike contemporary cemeteries, which randomly interred their dead behind churches and meetinghouses, this cemetery was the first in the country to organize plots of land, first by religious parish then by family name.

Architects modeled avenues after the New Haven city blueprints to enhance the organization of and access to burial sites. The city later transferred the remaining headstones from the New Haven Green to the cemetery, leaving to this day over 20,000 unmarked graves.

The original wooden fences, however, proved insufficient to prevent vandalism and trespassing. By 1830, cemetery trustees resolved to reinforce the cemetery with new, stately architecture, a hallmark of the cemetery’s uniqueness and grandeur. New Haven residents raised over $25,000 for cemetery renovations and hired renowned architect Henry Austin as chief of construction. After erecting its brownstone wall and iron-railed fences, the pinnacle of Austin’s design remains the Egyptian Revival-style gateway. The entrance recalls across the archway the solemn promise in 1 Corinthians 15:52: “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, The Dead Shall Be Raised.” I love 1 Corinthians 15, especially what the Apostle Paul says three verses later: “Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?”

I stroll under the columns of the archway at 3 p.m. on a breezy New England afternoon. Having always viewed the cemetery from the outside, I expect to see a very morbid, dreary landscape akin to those in scary

movies. I arrive at the Grove Street chapel.

The groundskeeper has parked his cherry-red Ford F-250 here, and several visitors in the distance peruse the tombstones with their kids and cameras. The trees shiver in the wind. Hawthorne Avenue, the pathway parallel to Prospect Street, spans the southern flank of the cemetery. Shuffling several steps to the right, I see it stems into 10 parallel avenues racing toward its northern end, the chapel with five on each side. I’m curious to see how many avenues there are, so I note the signposts as I stroll rightward along the gently descending terrain.

I pass four of them until Hawthorne becomes Sylvan near the intersection of Grove and Prospect Street. A sizable blue spruce tree tucks itself away at this corner. Here, most graves are a darker tinge of gray than that of SSS or the CEID, which loom in the background. Norway and red maples rest in this section. Labeled with its own plaque, the weeping Higan cherry tree catches my attention. Its trunk reminds me of my grandmother’s cherry trees I used to sit in with my siblings during the summer. We would always play in her pool and eat popsicles as we dried in the sun, relaxing after too many games of Shark and Minnows. The sagging twigs resemble those of my neighbors’ weeping willow tree near the edge of my home’s pasture, the one out of which I always wanted to snatch a few twigs to swing around. But trespassing is illegal, just like stepping over these headstones gives me a sense of breaking some unspoken graveyard etiquette.

The white, black and gray tombstones look like scattered chess pieces. I reach out to touch a few. Some are flat slabs of granite; others are thin slices of limestone. Iron fences enclose some while Japanese yew enshroud others. Some thick graves lie horizontally while other thin columns stand like balanced pencils. The crosses, tables, obelisks and sarcophagi seem designed to catch tourists’ eyes. While walking, I spot a sarcophagus so big I walk closer to see whether I recognize the inscription. Sure enough, it’s Louise Farnam, the one in whose building I do my laundry every Friday afternoon.

WKND RECOMMENDS Enjoying the warm November weather.

I turn right down Ivy Avenue and peer through 200 yards of neatly flat terrain lined with columns of trunks. At the right angle, the sunlight-suffused foliage seems to coddle a small campfire. The trunks and canopies of dogwoods and silver maples form long tunnels whose entrances are shaped like chubby pentagons. They resemble the chicken houses at my barn. I would feed the baby chicks with my grandfather. Whenever I stepped into their territory, they scattered like splashing water just to refill the sea of feathers as soon as I lifted my foot. Now the chickens are gone, and the chicken houses are untended. Their decaying wood and rusted tin roofs signal they earned their right to retire.

The tombstones on this side of the cemetery appear newer. Some look like ivory bath tubs; others have spindles like Russian architectural onion domes. Some smaller graves look like semicircles peeking through the soil; others rival the design of Murray Tower in the background. Eli Whitney is buried here. Though his monument is impressive, it’s more modest than the immaculate crosses of Townsend and Trowbridge. Noah Webster and Roger Sherman also lie nearby. It’s humbling to stand over the historical luminaries I read about in American history.

On my right, I stumble across the hand-carried headstones that once belonged on the New Haven Green. Stacked flush against the northern flank of the wall, they have rested 200 years in the same alphabetical order.

I challenge myself to find the oldest grave.

Most of them I can’t read due to erasure from time and weather, but some still have the names and dates intact. I keep a mental checklist: 1794, 1792, 1785, 1766 … 1749 … 1742 … 1733 … When I was a child, I used to search for the oldest graves at nearby churches. At one family reunion, I found a grave from 1799 and thought about how this person was still alive during George Washington’s last year of life. But as I squat in this cemetery to read what’s on the portly gray brick, I hardly decipher the number — 1673. He died before George Washington

was born.

By now, I’ve reached the third corner of the cemetery, the one near the intersection of Lock and Ashmun streets. A mighty sugar maple guards this corner along with a stubby white pine. I adjust my stroll away from the perimeter and toward the center of the cemetery. This part of the graveyard feels like walking through a botanical art gallery.

The magnolia tree is hard to spot, but it’s nestled away next to some modest headstones. It hasn’t yet bloomed its smooth, creamy seeds that look like albino pine cones. Among the sea of gray headstones, I notice a patch of dark brown slabs.

Most in this patch died in the 1700s. I notice one in particular. Isaiah Whitman was a student of Yale College when he died at 20 years old. I’m a student at Yale College — and 20 years old. What was his major?

What was his hopeful career? Was he in love? What was his religion? I view this grave not as a headstone, but as a person. I wonder if he would be happy with his epitaph.

The gates close at 4. I stop at the intersection of Spruce and Myrtle Avenue. A robin mourns in the background and I hear a faint siren in the distance. I listen some more, pause and sit down. I look around and lean back until my head touches the asphalt.

Above me lies a network of branches from the overhanging honey locust.

It’s 3:54 and I close my eyes. For a moment, all the p-sets, all the papers, all the midterms and deadlines just disappear. I think about the dead lying beside me.

This place is so full of stories, memories and dreams — sometimes cut short. It’s a place for grief and also for solace and recollection and reflection. It’s oddly soothing, a world designed for a spiritual exhalation, for those above or below ground. I think about how much time the dead get to spend in this place. Isaiah isn’t buried far from here. For a moment, I envy him.

Contact LUKE BELL at luke.bell@yale.edu .

ONLINE THIS WEEK: GOING VIRAL: Jacob Cramer ‘22 tells the story behind his rise to 70K Tiktok followers.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B3

WEEKEND MOMENTS

Too Close to Call

// WINNIE JIANG

// BY JULIA HORNSTEIN

Lesson one of Wyoming came as a shock: Get your driver’s license at 16. Unlike Jackson, Wyoming, lesson one of being a city girl is to never touch the steering wheel. Stuck between these disparate worlds, I decided to cash in on what was always comfortable — trusting my parents at the car’s helm — and passed the road test by pretty slim margins; my inspector nearly failed me for my narrow left turns.

Driving makes me anxious. Well, everything makes me anxious. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I think I might croak while merging onto a highway. Leaving for Wyoming during our country’s looming constitutional crisis did anything but calm my nerves. But Dad insisted we leave on Election Day so he could make it back to the City before next week’s snowstorm. And who am I to refuse mediocre company? After all, 2,500 miles is quite the undertaking for a solo, newly minted driver. With my flimsy license tucked into my wallet, I am ready to run for the hills. As talk of the presidential election swirls through the City’s streets, I shove my ski boots into the car.

I voted moments before leaving home.

Bleary-eyed from standing in the voting line and sleeping through my 5:30 a.m. alarm, I waltz into the middle school poll site. I sit down at my district’s booth and wait for the woman across from me to fill our awkward silence with mundane instructions. Noticing my restlessness, her face softens.

“It’s my first day doing this,” she says.

My shoulders unclench and I sink into the plastic chair.

Change gears. Sit back for Christ’s sake — you shouldn’t be this nervous.

You passed (maybe you shouldn’t have).

Keep your foot on the brake and reverse.

Don’t rely on the backup camera: Put in the work and turn around. Dad was lecturing me again.

I flick the radio onto CNN at 7:13 a.m. — as soon as we’ve cleared the Lincoln Tunnel. Entertaining the anchors’ speculations, Dad and I make our own predictions: He thinks Biden will win handily and on election night while I maintain that the road ahead will be bumpier than anticipated.

As I barrel down Interstate-70 on cruise control, Dad doesn’t have much

faith in my driving. And I don’t blame him — I still don’t know how to set the windshield wipers. Latching onto those permit test trick questions, those what-do-Ido-whens, I floor it with trepidation, and we skid along.

Quivering in the left lane, I realize I’ve never hit the gas west of Jersey City. The world as I know it drops off at the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and I clench the wheel as if it were all I had left.

While I drive through Cincinnati, flirting with death at 75 mph, Dad proclaims he knows best. He always thinks he does. It’s all about Ohio.

Ohio. I don’t know much about Ohio.

I know that it’s the birthplace of aviation.

Oh, and that seven presidents are from the Buckeye State. This is my second time driving through Ohio: Well, last time, I was fast asleep as Dad darted westward 15 mph above the speed limit. Some early exit polls show Biden leading in Cincinnati, but John King is waiting for more votes to pour in; after all, Hillary Clinton lost Ohio by 8 percent in 2016.

At a gas station in South Vienna, we change drivers and refresh our dwindling power bar stockpile. Dad teaches me how to pump gas; apparently the car takes regular. Then, he plops into the driver’s seat and pushes it back until it brushes my suitcase.

Fix the mirrors, I tell him. He looks at me and cracks a wry smile. Twenty-two miles later, he quips that I’m an irritating backseat driver.

I’m on radio duty now. Spinning the dial, I shimmy between every news network reachable with 3G. Soon, I’m halfasleep, half-listening to Wolf Blitzer.

Somewhere amid the rolling hills, Dad tells me to change lanes. Indiana looks like Ohio; Ohio looks like Kansas. Flat as Hell.

We pass cornfields and drive into the sunset.

“Look back when you merge,” Dad mumbles into near incoherence. He’s asleep again.

How you’re supposed to turn around while coasting onto the multilane interstate... I still can’t tell you. I’ve resigned myself — driving will never come naturally. City driving school doesn’t teach you how to navigate the heartland’s whirring freeways.

Indiana was called first. They announced it as Dad (it was his turn again) passed through New Castle, Indiana. Biden lost by 16 points; no surprise there. While perched in our Indianapolis hotel room, Trump pulls away in Ohio.

Dad’s face sinks.

Static, then, connection. The next morning, I rev the engine and merge back onto I-70 as Dad raises the volume.

“Stop with the nonsense,” Dad tells CNN. “Just talk about Nevada.” He texts his friends via Apple CarPlay, asking why Nevada’s taking a sick day in the thick of the vote count.

I slam the brakes, and the car comes to a grinding halt. The driver in front of us clearly fell victim to his road rage, and I’m trying to remember how to breathe.

Dad jolts awake and asks if our near-collision is my fault, and I swear it’s too close to call.

Ohio’s a goner. Pennsylvania’s a toss-up at best. Just based on the Trump billboards I saw out my rearview mirror the after-

noon prior, I could’ve told Wolf it was over in Ohio hours ago.

As we make our way through Missouri, Kansas and Colorado, we become jaded by the rolling plains. “This is like watching paint dry,” Dad asserts, raising his voice at the news seeping through the stereo. At some point, Dad switches back to the ’80s rock station and recalls that he “listened to this one in college” during every other song.

After our three-day pilgrimage, Dad and I took a few days off; we were tired of packing around the center console for hours on end. I — still groggy from a second-rate slumber, doomscrolling through Twitter — find out Biden has 270 votes.

Dad is out on a hike.

Now we’re on the road again, completing our last leg of the drive. Scanning the heartland’s highways through my glasses, one thing’s for sure: Unity feels far off the horizon.

Contact JULIA HORNSTEIN at julia.hornstein@yale.edu .

STRANGERS: Taking It All in Stride with Deja Chappell // BY ÁNGELA PÉREZ

// DEJA CHAPPELL As I sat down on Zoom to meet Deja Chappell ’22, the first thing I noticed was the yellow sweater she was wearing. Behind her was an overflowing bookshelf — she would later tell me some of her favorite authors are June Jordan, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Zora Neale Hurston and Ursula K. Le Guin. Deja said that yellow is her favorite color, but the specific shade has to be mustard yellow, almost greenish.

“If I see something that’s this color, I’ll usually just get it,” she said through a laugh. “The color itself is just soothing to me. I just feel good when I look at it.”

Being with Deja for five minutes will make you realize that she smiles easily and laughs often. She hopes that when

people meet her, they get good energy from speaking with her. In my 40-minute interview with her, I swear I could feel this through the screen. Despite bringing this positivity with her wherever she goes, Deja clarified that this wasn’t always the case.

“Yale is structurally hostile to Black students and Black women,” she said, with an air of calm understanding. “It’s college; everybody is going through something, but especially for Black women, it’s hard to adjust.”

Deja said that if someone had met her four years ago, she’d be a very different person than she is now. It’s hard to imagine her as anyone other than the smiling woman sitting across from me,

in a yellow sweater and with an overflowing bookshelf behind her.

After growing up in Montgomery, Alabama, and spending a gap year in Morocco, arriving at Yale was a culture shock in more ways than one. She said the places she has been and the ideas she has been exposed to have “radicalized” her in thought, though she doesn’t consider herself a radical person. Deja believes that college has helped her reevaluate her own beliefs because of her classroom experiences and the people she’s met.

Deja has a calm sureness to her ideas, and told me about herself with a smile, taking time to think about her answers.

She works at the Yale Sustainable Food Program, dyeing material with natural pigments, and was part of the Yale Outdoors club for a long time. She finds empowerment in the music of Megan Thee Stallion, City Girls and Flo Milli, although she said most people expect her to listen to indie music.

When I asked her about where she sees herself after Yale, she responded that she’s not sure, but that she’s fine with not knowing what’s in store.

“Everybody changes, even if you’re doing something right after school, that doesn’t mean you’re going to do it for the rest of your life,” she said with a shrug.

As an Ethnicity, Race and Migration major, she believes that spending time in the university and learning about colonialism and race has made her realize that “it’s not all about taking, taking, taking — it’s about giving back.”

If you spot her in the manuscripts and

archives section of Sterling Memorial, or in the Beinecke, she is likely digitizing old books for her friends to give others a glimpse of the knowledge that so fascinates her.

Deja took a leave of absence last spring semester, spending some time in Alabama with family before coming back to New Haven this fall. She says it was one of the best decisions she has made.

“It was really, really healthy just to have distance. … Just because you’re far away from school, doesn’t mean you’re going to stop learning, it just means you’re no longer on the timeline of classes.”

Reflecting on her time at Yale and how much she has changed during these years, she noted that “being at an Ivy League school just puts you in proximity to a lot of power and also a lot of complicity, and it can really affect how you see the world around you.”

While Deja has faced challenges at Yale, they have not overshadowed the joy she has found in community, especially among students of color.

“You get so much strength from people, you start to really dig down and see where your strength comes from, what do you really care about, what matters to you, where does your happiness come from. It might seem like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s really about adjusting to your needs and your joy.”

Contact ÁNGELA PÉREZ at angela.perez@yale.edu .

ONLINE THIS WEEK: WKND RECOMMENDS Supporting the Green New Deal.

SAUCY YET SOPHISTICATED: Adam Levine ’25 reviews Ariana Grande’s new album Positions.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2020 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND HERO

We’ll Always Have Paris // BY ELLA ATTELL // DORA GUO

It’s estimated that the average person tells a lie about one to two times a day. At most, then, I’ve already lied 13,870 times. At least 12,000 of those lies have had to do with “Gilmore Girls.”

In middle school I evolved from a dresscode breaking mean girl to a law-abiding good girl. As I transitioned into a person of the most genteel nature, everyone and their mother asked me the same question: “Have you seen ‘Gilmore Girls’?”

Inevitably, they wanted to draw a comparison between me and, you guessed it, Rory Gilmore. And why wouldn’t they?! I lugged big books I never read from place to place, annexed myself to underpopulated lunch tables, and tried to master the facade of a forlorn WASP. I was wordy and demure, well-liked but often alone. Parents and teachers called me “mature” in a way that was both complementary and not so.

This state of being, I should mention, was entirely cultivated in the style of one Miss Rory Gilmore. And yet, when people asked me if I had seen the show, I always said no.

Having yet to appreciate the Sontag level “camp” of Rory’s love for bad TV, I thought that watching television, something on the CW no less, was a confession of anti-intellectualism — very “not Rory.”

So I lied. But did I have a choice? Rory was everything to me. She could eat all the time and never gain weight, be the recipient of generational wealth but also woefully down-to-earth . She was “fiercely independent” like her single mother, Lorelai Gilmore, but never without a boyfriend. Even with her crushing workload, Rory could always find the time to nibble on French

fries for hours and participate in storybook small town festivities. On more than one occasion she was called “angelic.” So after only one failed test, a slew of boyfriends and a handful of extracurricular accomplishments real admissions committees laugh at, Yale picked her.

Forget DC Comics and Gotham City. Amy Sherman-Palladino’s Stars Hollow was a true home to heroes, to my personal hero.

As I get older, though, I watch my idols fall from grace, including Rory. This past weekend, film critic Manohla Dargis wrote for the New York Times about the way female action stars use their bodies to fight and sweat their way to fair representation.

Dargis focuses on female physicality, the way Charlize Theron’s character “slams and pummels, kicks and grunts.” All of this, according to Dargis, is significant because “The grunts heighten the realism but they also signal Theron’s intense physicality and her extreme effort. Women in old Hollywood worked punishingly hard, too, and were pushed to their physical limits — Ginger Rogers rehearsed one dance so many times that her shoes filled with blood — but you scarcely ever saw those stars sweat.”

Rory rarely sweats. When she does, it’s mostly a handkerchief to her porcelain forehead and audible sigh kind of thing. “Life’s hard for me too, guys,” she mutters while sheepishly accepting the award for talks the least says the most — you know, the superlative that was designed to keep smart girls just quiet enough to be pleasant.

Paris Geller, on the other hand, is very unpleasant and very sweaty. Positioned as Rory’s frenemy, Paris wants all the same

things as Rory but is just daring enough to speak above a whisper. While Rory floats from scene to scene, Paris stomps with ferocity, extending a handshake so strong it takes everyone aback. No, Paris is not delicate, and some would say she isn’t all that nice either. We are asked to see Paris as a socially stunted bully, someone so hellbent on her goals that she’s willing to sacrifice everything.

The varying treatment of Rory and Paris is hauntingly unjust. While Rory has her loyal mother to dump her problems on, Paris is left alone to cope with her nonexistent family and debilitating mental wellness.

This is a girl who, despite earning the title of editor-in-chief of the Yale Daily News, has a mental breakdown and must concede the position to Rory. Paris’ relationships, too, are always tinged with self-flagellation.

When Paris does get a romantic interest, she asks Rory to “hide in the closet because if he sees you, he won’t want to date me.” Rory obliges and shrugs her shoulders. Ha-ha, classic Paris! With her neuroses always in tow, Paris — one of the only outwardly Jewish characters by the way — is consistent comic relief.

Oh, and if you thought things couldn’t get worse for Paris in the romantic department, remember that she loses her virginity just as she’s rejected from Harvard while Rory is warmly embraced by her mother for not only getting in but also still being a virgin.

My complaint of women in Sherman-Palladino’s universe being too perfect for their own good isn’t unique. Emily Nussbaum for the New Yorker wrote a wonderful piece about Sherman-Palladino’s “The

Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” Swap out shabby chic Connecticut farmhouse for a retro classic six and you’ve got another set of women who are swaddled to death in their own fabulous femininity.

And that’s the worst part. Amy Sherman-Palladino has made her legacy out of shows that dare to put unconventional women on the screen. “Gilmore Girls” was supposed to be a show about mothers and daughters who go it alone, listen to punk and defy conventions of the patriarchal norm.

Rory is meant to rule supreme, a beacon for ambitious young women. But as Amy March in Gerwig’s adaptation of “Little Women” noted, “The world is hard on ambitious women.” Paris knows this truth all too well, sprinting after what she wants. While her body contorts in the pain of feminist realism, Rory tiptoes home with trophies, having never broken a sweat.

Serena Lin ’23 wrote for the News last year about her own breakup with Rory. The fact is that “Gilmore Girls” is something of a cloying smog that hangs heavy over the Yale campus. I sometimes wonder what my adolescent life would have been like if I felt I had permission to see Paris as my hero and Rory as her fictional scaffolding. Would I have confused being quiet with being poised for so many years? Would I have been as ashamed of my nervous sweat and unease?

Maybe I wouldn’t have felt so guilty for the times when I demanded things that Rory was breezily handed. Would I have been better off ?

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

Tying it All Together:

Reflections on Taylor Swift’s “invisible string” // BY NANCY WALECKI Last week, I was walking on my hometown’s beach — the one where, four years ago, I found out I got into Yale — when I heard “invisible string” for the first time, a song from Taylor Swift’s surprise quarantine album, “folklore.”

The song kicks off with a fingerpicking intro — pizzicato, like cherry pits plinking into a porcelain bowl, one by one. A rubberized bridge modification on the guitar deadens the string vibration and produces that old school, mystical, Sufjan Stevens-esque sound that always makes me feel very in love and very lonely all at the same time. “Oh, this song is really going to be something,” I thought.

The lyrics center on the image of an “invisible string” that, unbeknownst to the two of them, has connected Swift to her current boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, their entire lives, long before they ever met. The image feels fresh, but it’s not new. The invisible string could be a nod to the red thread of fate from Chinese mythology — the unseeable red string said to connect two people who are destined to be together — or it could be an allusion to the line in “Jane Eyre” when Mr. Rochester says he and Jane are tethered by a cord knotted to their respective left rib cages.

From the green grass of Nashville’s Centennial Park where Swift used to read and hope to meet boys in high school, to the teal shirt that a 16-year-old Alwyn wore when he worked at a London yogurt shop, the verses usher us through color-filled snapshots of the couple’s separate lives before they knew the other existed.

Like the lyrics, the song’s instrumentation evokes pieces of Swift’s past as an artist. The fingerpicking of Swift’s teenaged eponymous and “Fearless” country albums, the barely-there strings sections of “Speak Now,” the synth-heavy pop production of “reputation” and the dreamy, retro-inspired soundscapes of “Lover,” all

reunite to tell the story of “invisible string.”

The chorus pushes Swift’s well-established talent for earworm hooks into new atmospheric, electro-folk territory. With each chorus refrain, Swift wonders aloud about whether she’d been unknowingly led by fate all along, asking Time directly, “Were there clues I didn’t see?”

Swift paints a picture of the kind of life that I, and probably many others, long for

// ASHLEY ANTHONY

— one in which failed relationships, pain and moments of doubt secretly conspire to prepare us for the wholeness of our bright future. The song’s hook is full of the clarity and deep contentment that only hindsight can bring, as it refrains, “Isn’t it just so pretty to think / All along there was some / Invisible string / Tying you to me?”

I’ve spent this fall searching for the kind of wholeness Swift sings about. Living in my childhood bedroom on a leave of absence, fresh out of a relationship I

WKND RECOMMENDS Dogs.

thought could be The Real Deal and contemplating a job offer I’m not sure I want — my past, present and future selves are now in constant, uneasy contact. I recently ended my college relationship less than a mile from the place where I had my first kiss in high school. Most of my clothes are still at Yale, so I apply for post-grad jobs on the couch, wearing my high school sweatshirt that says “MHS SENIOR CLASS

OF 2016” all over it. I eat dinner with my hometown friends in their childhood backyards and we try to talk about high school as if it were some unimportant research project we collaborated on 15 years ago, instead of something we’re reminded of daily now that we’re home during the pandemic.

I spent most of college trying to keep my past and present selves separate, partially because I was afraid of what one might think about the other. Unlike most of my

college friends, I’ve never really figured out whether I’m more myself at home or at Yale. I’m afraid that being more at ease in my hometown is a sign that either I peaked in high school or I’m prone to regression.

It made my life easier to treat my past and present selves as entirely separate entities and keep my eyes on the future. I was performing this mental gymnastics routine fairly successfully until the pandemic sent me home with nothing but a carry-on.

Dividing my life into distinct chunks though, by definition, precludes me from wholeness. I’ve heard my entire life about how looking backward leads to living in the past, but no one ever told me about how empty and disorienting a solely forward-focused life feels. It wasn’t until quarantine reunited me with the bookcase of my old diaries — the ones filled with aspirations of writing books and starting my own school — that I wondered whether Past Nancy might’ve known something that Present Nancy, the one considering a corporate job, needed to hear.

Swift brings “invisible string” full circle at the end with a vignette of she and Alwyn walking around Centennial Park where her past self used to dream of meeting someone like him. She embodies the retrospection musically, underscoring the final verse with the fingerstyle guitar and country influences emblematic of the music she made as a teenager. It’s the kind of whimsical ending that could induce an eyeroll, because we can’t all live the cinematic life of Taylor Swift. We can, however, look back at our pasts and find gratitude, like she did.

Maybe Swift’s feeling of wholeness, rather than the result of her charmed life, is what happens when we remain open to the invisible strings binding our past, present and future together.

Contact NANCY WALECKI at nancy.walecki@yale.edu .