THE OLDEST COLLEGE DAILY · FOUNDED 1878 CROSS CAMPUS INSIDE THE NEWS MORE ONLINE cc.yaledailynews.com y MORNING SUNNY 48 EVENING RAINY 54 BY NICK DEFIESTA AND BEN PRAWDZIK STAFF REPORTERS Less than 30 minutes after police began bulldozing the Occupy New Haven encampment on the New Haven Green, city ocials were forced to halt the eviction when a federal appeals court issued an injunction allowing the protest to survive at least another week. City officials first started prepar- ing to evict the protesters on Monday after federal judge Mark Kravitz issued a 26-page ruling on a lawsuit that Occupy lawyer Norm Pattis filed last month in hopes of preventing the protest- ers’ removal. Kravitz rejected Pattis’s argument that evicting the encamp- ment would violate the protesters’ First Amendment rights and ruled that the city could lawfully remove its tents and other structures from the Green start- ing at noon on Tuesday. In an eort that involved the police, fire and parks departments, the city began to disassemble the encampment immediately after noon on Tuesday, inciting a confrontation with protesters brandishing signs and makeshift shields and drawing a crowd of more than 100 onlookers. But shortly after the eviction began and police arrested two Occupy members, both city ocials and pro- testers got word that Pattis had suc- cessfully received a week-long stay for the protest from the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. “In the six months that the Occupy encampment has existed on the Green, the city has acted in a cooperative and supportive fashion in terms of free speech,” Mayor John DeStefano Jr. said at an afternoon press conference fol- lowing the ruling’s announcement. “But this has become an obnoxious use on the Green by a few people. I don’t think it’s appropriate for a few to monopolize one of the central assets of the city — the people of New Haven deserve the New Haven Green back.” City ocials — including New Haven Police department Chief Dean Esser- man — gathered on the Green before the noon deadline, facing a group of around 30 protesters who chanted slogans like “Hell no, we won’t go!” and “What do you do when you’re under attack? Fight back!” According to DeStefano, the city was notified around 11 a.m. that Pattis had filed a request for an injunction with the New York appeals court, and shortly afterwards received a request from the lawyer to delay the eviction until the court made its decision. DeStefano declined to delay the eviction, and said that even as late as noon it appeared Pattis’ efforts for another stay were BY CHRISTOPHER PEAK STAFF REPORTER Starting today, the repeal of Connecticut’s death penalty will be eligible for a vote in the state House of Represenatives, where a majority will ensure the punishment’s abolition. After more than 10 hours of debate, the state Senate last Thursday approved a mea- sure replacing the death pen- alty with life in prison with- out parole by a vote of 20 to 16. In hopes of pressuring state representatives in Hartford to approve the measure, city o- cials, including Mayor John DeStefano Jr. and New Haven Police Department Chief Dean Esserman, held a press confer- ence at City Hall Tuesday call- ing for repeal. Esserman said the repeal of capital punishment is “long overdue” in the state. “Discipline [that works] is End of an era? As the English Department’s longtime registrar, Ruben Roman gained a reputation for being kind and friendly. He moved to a new position in the University Registrar’s oce in 2010 — a position that has since been eliminated, leaving Roman out of a job. To help Roman find a new job, Tae-Yeoun Keum ’08 has begun circulating a draft letter of recommendation for Roman and is inviting all students who want to help out to sign. Town-gown stars. On Tuesday, President Richard Levin and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano presented the Yale University Seton Elm-Ivy Awards for improving town- gown relations. Winners of the Seton Elm include Bruno Baggetta, Nan Bartow and Robert Smuts ’01. Winners of the Ivy Award for members of the Yale community include James Boyle ’94, Sarah Demers, Bonnie Fleming, Gordon Geballe ’81, Kurt Zilm and LaTisha Campbell ’12. Sentenced. John Mazzuto ’70 — the former CEO of automotive chemical company Industrial Enterprises of America, Inc. and a Yale donor — was sentenced to between 1.5 and 4.5 years in prison Tuesday for his part in a $60 million stock fraud scheme, a portion of which was used to make a $1.7 million donation to the Yale baseball program in 2007. In memoriam. Reed Whittemore ’41, a former U.S. poet laureate and emeritus professor of English at the University of Maryland, died last week at his home in Kensington, Md. He was 92. Panlist explosion. Another incident of panlist spam occurred Tuesday, when an alum asked to be taken o the journalism_list panlist, starting a chain reaction of requests to be removed that went into the double digits. Even Mark Schoofs ’85, a senior editor at ProPublica who teaches the seminar “Journalism,” requested to be taken o the list. Celebrating today. Mayor John DeStefano Jr. and delegates from New Haven School Change, New Haven Promise, Solar Youth, New Haven Economic Development Corporation, New Haven Re-Entry Initiative, Shubert Theater, Arts and Ideas Festival and Market New Haven, among others, will visit the State Capitol in Hartford today for New Haven Day. Also in Hartford. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will campaign in the state’s capitol today, a day after chief rival Rick Santorum suspended his campaign. THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY 1962 Yale paleontologist Charles Reed receives a $35,000 grant to study life along the Nubian Nile. Submit tips to Cross Campus [email protected]CYCLING Yale club team finishes second in annual home race, behind MIT PAGE 14 SPORTS CLIMATE CHANGE Scientists predict global warming will have dire eects on public health PAGE 5 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY SOCIAL MEDIA @YALE TAKES TO TWITTER, FRIENDS FACEBOOK PAGE 3 NEWS FILM FESTIVAL ENVIRONMENT STARS ON SCREEN PAGES 8-9 CULTURE NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012 · VOL. CXXXIV, NO. 122 · yaledailynews.com Gender- neutral spreads BY ANTONIA WOODFORD STAFF REPORTER After the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences reviewed its doctoral programs last year, a similar eort is underway to evaluate the school’s terminal master’s programs. By meeting with directors of graduate studies and compil- ing statistics on each program — such as data on applications, admissions rates, enrollments and degree completion rates — administrators hope to deter- mine the reasons students enter these programs and how successful the programs are at meeting students’ needs, Assistant Dean of the Graduate School Carl Hashimoto said in a Tuesday email. The compre- hensive review will consider issues such as how master’s programs award course credit, the job placement of gradu- ates and funding arrangements master’s programs have with the Graduate School , admin- istrators said. Administrators have been gathering data since the fall, and they are now in the pro- cess of visiting individual departments to discuss those programs, Associate Dean of the Graduate School Rich- ard Sleight said in a Tuesday email. As of Tuesday, admin- istrators had met with seven of Yale’s master’s programs, and they will also seek feedback from a student survey, Hashi- moto said. “The review involves taking a ‘snapshot’ of the programs by gathering data and then shar- ing and discussing the infor- mation with departments and programs,” Sleight said. “We began this study with no spe- cific ‘action items’ in mind. We simply want to see where we are in master’s student train- ing.” Not all of the Graduate School’s 22 terminal master’s programs — which students enter to earn only a master’s degree rather than the degree en route to a Ph.D. at Yale — have new students each year. The current review focuses on the 14 programs that are “active,” which includes pro- grams that have a few students or as many as 30 entering in a given year, Hashimoto said. Sleight and Hashimoto declined to comment on the results thus far, as the review is still ongoing. They said they expect to finish collecting information by the end of this semester. SEE OCCUPY PAGE 6 SEE MASTERS PAGE 4 SEE DEATH PENALTY PAGE 4 SEE GNH PAGE 6 House to vote on death penalty repeal JENNIFER CHEUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Occupy New Haven won an injuction from a federal appeals court Tuesday shortly after the city began bulldozing the encampment. Occupy escapes eviction MINUTES AFTER CITY SENDS BULLDOZERS TO GREEN, FEDERAL APPEALS COURT JUDGE ISSUES INJUNCTION CHRISTOPHER PEAK/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER State Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney joined Mayor John DeStefano Jr. Tuesday in urging state repre- sentatives to approve a bill repealing the death penalty, which is now going to the House for a vote. This is enough to justify that the policy is working. JOSEPH YAGODA ’14 Chair, YCC gender housing committee BY MADELINE MCMAHON STAFF REPORTER For the first time, every resi- dential college will house stu- dents living in mixed-gender suites next year. In February, after working with the Yale College Council, admin- istrators announced that gender- neutral housing would be avail- able to both the junior and senior classes beginning in the 2012-’13 school year. Though the option to live in a mixed-gender suite has been available to seniors for the past two years, six out of 12 resi- dential colleges currently have mixed-gender suites. This year’s housing draws have yielded a sig- nificantly higher number of stu- dents in mixed-gender suites — Branford College alone will have more students in mixed-gender suites next fall than there were in all of Yale College this year. “This is enough to justify that the policy is working,” said Joseph Yagoda ’14, chair of the YCC’s gender-neutral housing com- mittee. Branford has just one mixed- gender double this year, said Rachel Ruskin ’12, a member of the Branford housing committee, and it will have three junior suites and four senior suites living mixed-gender next fall. Ruskin said these mixed-gender suites will house 40 Branford students, greater than this year’s Yale Col- Master’s stats under review
Transcript
T H E O L D E S T C O L L E G E D A I L Y · F O U N D E D 1 8 7 8
CROSSCAMPUS
INSIDE THE NEWS
MORE ONLINEcc.yaledailynews.com
y
MORNING SUNNY 48 EVENING RAINY 54
BY NICK DEFIESTA AND BEN PRAWDZIKSTAFF REPORTERS
Less than 30 minutes after police began bulldozing the Occupy New Haven encampment on the New Haven Green, city o!cials were forced to halt the eviction when a federal appeals court issued an injunction allowing the protest to survive at least another week.
City officials first started prepar-ing to evict the protesters on Monday after federal judge Mark Kravitz issued a 26-page ruling on a lawsuit that Occupy lawyer Norm Pattis filed last month in hopes of preventing the protest-ers’ removal. Kravitz rejected Pattis’s argument that evicting the encamp-ment would violate the protesters’ First Amendment rights and ruled that the city could lawfully remove its tents and other structures from the Green start-
ing at noon on Tuesday. In an e"ort that involved the police,
fire and parks departments, the city began to disassemble the encampment immediately after noon on Tuesday, inciting a confrontation with protesters brandishing signs and makeshift shields and drawing a crowd of more than 100 onlookers. But shortly after the eviction began and police arrested two Occupy members, both city o!cials and pro-testers got word that Pattis had suc-cessfully received a week-long stay for the protest from the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.
“In the six months that the Occupy encampment has existed on the Green, the city has acted in a cooperative and supportive fashion in terms of free speech,” Mayor John DeStefano Jr. said at an afternoon press conference fol-lowing the ruling’s announcement. “But
this has become an obnoxious use on the Green by a few people. I don’t think it’s appropriate for a few to monopolize one of the central assets of the city — the people of New Haven deserve the New Haven Green back.”
City o!cials — including New Haven Police department Chief Dean Esser-man — gathered on the Green before the noon deadline, facing a group of around 30 protesters who chanted slogans like “Hell no, we won’t go!” and “What do you do when you’re under attack? Fight back!”
According to DeStefano, the city was notified around 11 a.m. that Pattis had filed a request for an injunction with the New York appeals court, and shortly afterwards received a request from the lawyer to delay the eviction until the court made its decision. DeStefano declined to delay the eviction, and said that even as late as noon it appeared Pattis’ efforts for another stay were
BY CHRISTOPHER PEAKSTAFF REPORTER
Starting today, the repeal of Connecticut’s death penalty will be eligible for a vote in the state House of Represenatives, where a majority will ensure the punishment’s abolition.
After more than 10 hours of
debate, the state Senate last Thursday approved a mea-sure replacing the death pen-alty with life in prison with-out parole by a vote of 20 to 16. In hopes of pressuring state representatives in Hartford to approve the measure, city o!-cials, including Mayor John DeStefano Jr. and New Haven
Police Department Chief Dean Esserman, held a press confer-ence at City Hall Tuesday call-ing for repeal.
Esserman said the repeal of capital punishment is “long overdue” in the state.
“Discipline [that works] is
End of an era? As the English Department’s longtime registrar, Ruben Roman gained a reputation for being kind and friendly. He moved to a new position in the University Registrar’s o!ce in 2010 — a position that has since been eliminated, leaving Roman out of a job. To help Roman find a new job, Tae-Yeoun Keum ’08 has begun circulating a draft letter of recommendation for Roman and is inviting all students who want to help out to sign.
Town-gown stars. On Tuesday, President Richard Levin and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano presented the Yale University Seton Elm-Ivy Awards for improving town-gown relations. Winners of the Seton Elm include Bruno Baggetta, Nan Bartow and Robert Smuts ’01. Winners of the Ivy Award for members of the Yale community include James Boyle ’94, Sarah Demers, Bonnie Fleming, Gordon Geballe ’81, Kurt Zilm and LaTisha Campbell ’12.
Sentenced. John Mazzuto ’70 — the former CEO of automotive chemical company Industrial Enterprises of America, Inc. and a Yale donor — was sentenced to between 1.5 and 4.5 years in prison Tuesday for his part in a $60 million stock fraud scheme, a portion of which was used to make a $1.7 million donation to the Yale baseball program in 2007.
In memoriam. Reed Whittemore ’41, a former U.S. poet laureate and emeritus professor of English at the University of Maryland, died last week at his home in Kensington, Md. He was 92.
Panlist explosion. Another incident of panlist spam occurred Tuesday, when an alum asked to be taken o" the journalism_list panlist, starting a chain reaction of requests to be removed that went into the double digits. Even Mark Schoofs ’85, a senior editor at ProPublica who teaches the seminar “Journalism,” requested to be taken o" the list.
Celebrating today. Mayor John DeStefano Jr. and delegates from New Haven School Change, New Haven Promise, Solar Youth, New Haven Economic Development Corporation, New Haven Re-Entry Initiative, Shubert Theater, Arts and Ideas Festival and Market New Haven, among others, will visit the State Capitol in Hartford today for New Haven Day.
Also in Hartford. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will campaign in the state’s capitol today, a day after chief rival Rick Santorum suspended his campaign.
THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY1962 Yale paleontologist Charles Reed receives a $35,000 grant to study life along the Nubian Nile.
CYCLINGYale club team finishes second in annual home race, behind MITPAGE 14 SPORTS
CLIMATE CHANGEScientists predict global warming will have dire e!ects on public healthPAGE 5 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
SOCIAL MEDIA@YALE TAKES TO TWITTER, FRIENDS FACEBOOKPAGE 3 NEWS
FILM FESTIVAL ENVIRONMENT STARS ON SCREENPAGES 8-9 CULTURE
NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012 · VOL. CXXXIV, NO. 122 · yaledailynews.com
Gender-neutral spreads
BY ANTONIA WOODFORDSTAFF REPORTER
After the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences reviewed its doctoral programs last year, a similar e"ort is underway to evaluate the school’s terminal master’s programs.
By meeting with directors of graduate studies and compil-ing statistics on each program — such as data on applications, admissions rates, enrollments and degree completion rates — administrators hope to deter-mine the reasons students enter these programs and how successful the programs are at meeting students’ needs, Assistant Dean of the Graduate School Carl Hashimoto said in a Tuesday email. The compre-hensive review will consider issues such as how master’s programs award course credit, the job placement of gradu-ates and funding arrangements master’s programs have with the Graduate School , admin-istrators said.
Administrators have been gathering data since the fall, and they are now in the pro-cess of visiting individual departments to discuss those programs, Associate Dean of the Graduate School Rich-ard Sleight said in a Tuesday
email. As of Tuesday, admin-istrators had met with seven of Yale’s master’s programs, and they will also seek feedback from a student survey, Hashi-moto said.
“The review involves taking a ‘snapshot’ of the programs by gathering data and then shar-ing and discussing the infor-mation with departments and programs,” Sleight said. “We began this study with no spe-cific ‘action items’ in mind. We simply want to see where we are in master’s student train-ing.”
Not all of the Graduate School’s 22 terminal master’s programs — which students enter to earn only a master’s degree rather than the degree en route to a Ph.D. at Yale — have new students each year. The current review focuses on the 14 programs that are “active,” which includes pro-grams that have a few students or as many as 30 entering in a given year, Hashimoto said.
Sleight and Hashimoto declined to comment on the results thus far, as the review is still ongoing. They said they expect to finish collecting information by the end of this semester.
SEE OCCUPY PAGE 6
SEE MASTERS PAGE 4 SEE DEATH PENALTY PAGE 4
SEE GNH PAGE 6
House to vote on death penalty repeal
JENNIFER CHEUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Occupy New Haven won an injuction from a federal appeals court Tuesday shortly after the city began bulldozing the encampment.
Occupy escapes eviction
MINUTES AFTER CITY SENDS BULLDOZERS TO GREEN, FEDERAL APPEALS COURT JUDGE ISSUES INJUNCTION
CHRISTOPHER PEAK/SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER
State Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney joined Mayor John DeStefano Jr. Tuesday in urging state repre-sentatives to approve a bill repealing the death penalty, which is now going to the House for a vote.
This is enough to justify that the policy is working.
JOSEPH YAGODA ’14Chair, YCC gender housing committee
BY MADELINE MCMAHONSTAFF REPORTER
For the first time, every resi-dential college will house stu-dents living in mixed-gender suites next year.
In February, after working with the Yale College Council, admin-istrators announced that gender-neutral housing would be avail-able to both the junior and senior classes beginning in the 2012-’13 school year. Though the option to live in a mixed-gender suite has been available to seniors for the past two years, six out of 12 resi-dential colleges currently have mixed-gender suites. This year’s housing draws have yielded a sig-nificantly higher number of stu-dents in mixed-gender suites — Branford College alone will have more students in mixed-gender suites next fall than there were in all of Yale College this year.
“This is enough to justify that the policy is working,” said Joseph Yagoda ’14, chair of the YCC’s gender-neutral housing com-mittee.
Branford has just one mixed-gender double this year, said Rachel Ruskin ’12, a member of the Branford housing committee, and it will have three junior suites and four senior suites living mixed-gender next fall. Ruskin said these mixed-gender suites will house 40 Branford students, greater than this year’s Yale Col-
Master’s stats under review
OPINION .COMMENTyaledailynews.com/opinion
“I think this is the most consensus I’ve ever seen on a YDN comment thread of this length. It’s actually unanimous.” ‘CBKM’ ON ‘FEUDALISM IN THE COLLEGES’
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NEWS’VIEW
Yale College Council EndorsementsOn Sunday and Monday, the Managing Board of the News interviewed the candidates for the Yale Col-
lege Council executive board. We endorse the following candidates.
PRESIDENT VICE PRESIDENT
John Gonzalez ’14 Debby Abramov ’14
TREASURER SECRETARY
Joey Yagoda ’14 Leandro Leviste ’15
UOC CHAIR EVENTS DIRECTOR
Aly Moore ’14 Bryan Epps ’14
There is no shining star in this year’s Yale College Council presidential race.
The three candidates all have sim-ilar platforms and similar enthu-siasm. One candidate, though, showed most convincingly his ability to inspire all of the YCC — not just the executive board — to work hard and achieve meaningful changes, small and large. For his successes as leader of the Soph-omore Class Council and his no-nonsense, collaborative leader-ship style that emphasizes team-work, we endorse John Gonzalez ’14 to lead the Yale College Council next year.
As SoCo president, Gonza-lez turned a $3,000 budget into a series of dinners with professors, a barbecue, a sophomore class ball and more. This may seem standard work for any college government, but Gonzalez took over a SoCo that was known for irrelevance. He made an organization that needed help into something meaningful.
The other candidates have their strengths. We have faith that Eric Eliasson ’14 understands the inner workings of the YCC. He has expe-
rience on the YCC and as chair of the Freshman Class Council, and he has learned the problems the YCC faces. He knows that a pres-ident’s work does not always fit into a one-year term and that a president’s success depends on the relationships he forges with his council and the administra-tion. Eliasson is in touch with stu-dents’ interests and he could lead the council capably, but we can’t see him following paths other than those that have already been blazed.
Cristo Liautaud ’14 has an admirable energy and has set ambitious goals, all of which, he says, are backed up because he has had meetings with various Yale College o!cials. That sort of dili-gence is the right approach to the job, but Liautaud has not demon-strated that he can match his pol-icy ideas with a clear understand-ing of the logistics of leading the council or of the body’s strengths and limitations. His proposals, which include a Homecoming and a Yale Pulse App, are showy, but not much more.
We have our concerns about
Gonzalez’s candidacy: His focus on adding language certificates, getting exams back in students’ hands and adding power outlets to Commons is a bit overblown. He doesn’t have Eliasson’s YCC expe-rience. But his policies are funda-mentally in touch with students’ needs, and we are enthused by his commitment to letting his council do the work rather than putting it all on his own back. He wants to be remembered as the president who let others shine.
Today we are concerned with the state of the YCC — we see a problem with an organization that describes the addition of one more lamp to summer storage options as “substantial institutional change.” Change can come from within, but we don’t think Eliasson would add the new perspective YCC needs.
Gonzalez, on the other hand, has a track record of getting things done, and a demonstrated ability to take an ine"ective organization and make it work. In his campaign video, Gonzalez makes the claim that when he makes promises, he delivers. We think he’s right.
Because of her thorough roster of concrete ideas and her experience on the YCC,
we endorse Debby Abramov ’14.Abramov has served on sev-
eral committees on the YCC this year, and that sort of institu-tional knowledge will allow her to step easily into the vice presi-dent’s role. She knows that a large part of the vice presidency is to manage the heads of the council’s committees, and her experience as a committee chair this year will help her form easy relationships.
Although her competitor, Daryl Hok ’14, does not have that depth of experience, his outside perspective comes with a number of fresh ideas. Hok has not served on the YCC, but he is a member of the Sophomore Class Council. SoCo has instituted weekly din-ners, and Hok’s suggestion that the YCC hold a similar sort of o!ce hours to keep representa-tives in touch with constituents is a promising idea.
But Abramov surpasses Hok in the depth of her policies. She is not merely the insider who knows
how the council works; she has the momentum and the ideas to drive the council forward and to break through what is often a slow pace.
Her platform focuses on expanding this year’s successes. This year’s council started a mental health program for fresh-men; Abramov would expand it to include slumping sophomores. She would expand the YCC web-site to include a marketplace. She understands that the YCC needs a tech-savvy person to help launch many of its initiatives and to make its work more accessible to the student body.
Abramov also sees a role for the YCC in facilitating a broader campus discussion. She men-tioned a 2001 town hall meeting with University President Rich-ard Levin as an example of all-encompassing conversations that open communication between students and the administration.
On several recent occasions, administrative action has been unexplained and seemingly out of touch with student opinion —
think of the ban on fall rush for freshmen, the new tailgate poli-cies or the mandated Sex Week reform. Those are conversations the YCC should be a part of — and that doesn’t just mean talking to administrators behind closed doors. The student body should know what the council is doing, and the council should provide a forum for students to talk to each other about contentious issues. Abramov at least begins to sense the need for the YCC to fill that hole in campus discourse, and we hope she will be able to lead that e"ort.
Abramov’s experience on the YCC is a boon, but she may need at times to take a look at the YCC with the kind of outsid-er’s perspective Hok might have to ensure that she does not sim-ply get stuck in the council’s slow rhythms. But Abramov’s record makes us confident that she will hit the ground running, and we expect her to use her knowledge of the council’s internal workings to push it out of stagnation.
Having already proven his determination and acu-men in dealing with the
Yale administration, Joey Yagoda ’14 has plans for major initia-tives next year. He has proposed that the University provide meals during Camp Yale and fall break, and he wants to negotiate dis-counts for Yalies at local res-taurants. He’s rightly criticized some of this year’s 10K initia-tive spending as wasteful. He recognizes that buying squash racquets is not an expense that serves all students, and he has concrete plans about how to maximize every YCC dollar.
Yagoda has done his research, and his ideas, with the overarch-ing goal of strengthening the treasury’s position while max-imizing the YCC’s potential to improve student life, have earned
him our support.To be sure, Nathan Kohrman
’15 is an impressive candidate. He has experience on both the Freshman Class Council and the YCC. Like Yagoda, Kohrman wants to allocate the YCC’s money more e!ciently by find-ing policies that make the big-gest impact on student life. He has good ideas like expanding the summer storage options and making the YCC budget more readable.
But we have concerns about Kohrman’s proposal for a print-ing quota system, which ducks the problem of paying for print-ing. By deliberately not jumping on the bandwagon, Yagoda has shown he knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
In his experience on the YCC, Yagoda has already left a mark
on Yale. As chair of the Gen-der Neutral Housing Commit-tee, he wrote a report that led to the extension of gender-neu-tral housing to juniors, one of the YCC’s greatest achievements this year. As chair of the Soph-omore Seminar Committee, he spearheaded the e"ort that led to the creation of sophomore semi-nars in political science and his-tory.
We anticipate that Yagoda will take both those accom-plishments and his mentality of spending money e!ciently with him to the treasurer’s o!ce. He knows that sometimes the trea-surer has to turn a deal down so he can say yes to a better idea later. Kohrman has proven his interest in student government, but Yagoda has more promise as a diligent and innovative treasurer.
The YCC secretary is not a glamorous position. The secretary sends campus-
wide emails, takes minutes at meetings and manages the YCC’s website. The work is repetitive but crucial to the functioning of the YCC. Leandro Leviste ’15 under-stands this: He calls the secretary “the workhorse of the YCC.”
Both Leviste and Kyle Tramonte ’15 are full of ideas with the poten-tial to better life at Yale. From din-ing hall reforms to expansion of gender-neutral housing, both candidates’ platforms are thor-ough. But Leviste’s commitment to a grueling job and his emphasis on keeping the student body con-nected make him best suited for the duties of the YCC secretary.
Tramonte understands that an email’s visual appeal goes a long way towards winning readership.
He would provide students with information in a comprehensive and snazzy fashion. He has a good grasp of YCC policies beyond the immediate duties of the secre-tary, and he would ensure that the council’s driving vision does not just come from the president.
Both candidates worked on the Freshman Class Council this year, and both promise to be acces-sible to their constituents. Both want to fix the take-out meal sys-tem in the dining halls and the glut of information and invitations in students’ inboxes. Leviste won us over, however, with his clear record of technological innovation in col-laboration with student start-ups.
Leviste has demonstrated his drive to connect Yalies to infor-mation. He created YaleWiki and Freshman Lunch and compiled a summer directory of international
students. On each of those proj-ects, he approached students who had ideas he knew he could expand. The best advances in communi-cation may come from students una!liated with the YCC, and Leviste wants to work with student programmers to streamline web innovations on a revamped YCC website. He knows that the YCC needs a coder on sta" if it is to keep up with Yale in the 21st century.
We worry that Leviste might get buried in his tech enterprises and lose sight of the larger picture. We hope he involves other students as he has in his work on YaleWiki, and we hope his ambition does not interfere with his ability to del-egate. But his vision of individu-ally-tailored communication is admirable, and we have confidence in his abilities as the communica-tions point man of the YCC.
Candidates for Undergradu-ate Organizations Funding Committee chair are run-
ning for a new role this year, since administrators have granted addi-tional responsibilities to the com-mittee and stricken the F from its acronym. For her understanding of specific issues that hindered the old UOFC and her grasp of how the new committee will operate, we endorse Aly Moore ’14 as the UOC’s first chair.
In this trial year, the chair should facilitate an improved relation-ship between members of student groups, both unregistered and reg-istered, and the Yale College Dean’s O!ce — in particular opening dia-logue on sensitive topics such as sexual harassment and hazing in these groups.
Bobby Dresser ’14, charismatic and with an emphasis on being an ear to the concerns of student groups, could expand the com-mittee and lead it ably. But he lacks Moore’s specific agenda for how to do so.
Richard Harris ’15 also demon-strated an understanding of the inner workings of the previous UOFC. He has a bright future on the committee, but he needs more leadership experience before tak-
ing on the requirements of this job.The UOC’s future identity
remains to be fully formed, but it still has to work as a bureaucratic support system for undergradu-ate organizations. Moore’s expe-rience as a UOFC board member will enable her to increase the daily logistical support the committee can provide to registered under-graduate organizations: She cited tangible solutions such as desig-nating committee members to help distribute checks to organizations, holding o!ce hours and weekly roundtable discussions with stu-dent group members and improv-ing the capital equipment system.
Associate Dean for Stu-dent Organizations and Physical Resources John Meeske has said he plans to evaluate the success of the newly transformed UOC next year. Moore helped draft the proposal for the new UOC, so, although she hasn’t mentioned any ideas about how the role of the UOC could continue to grow to address hot-button campus issues a"ecting student organizations yet, we hope she will continue to analyze the larger picture. In the meantime, she certainly has the logistical skill and ingenuity to improve the com-mittee’s day-to-day functions.
This year’s events director candidates are both enthu-siastic about ensuring that
Yalies have a good time next year. Although we are impressed by the energy of Marissa Pettit ’14, Bryan Epps ’14 is the candidate with the experience to translate his ideas into reality.
Current events director Katie Donley ’13 set the bar high. She built on the role of planning annual events like Spring Fling and Mr. Yale by adding a number of low-cost diversions, including the hit “What Would You Do for a Wen-zel?” competition. Pettit and Epps have proposed similar platforms that build on the mix of events Donley organized. We applaud that goal.
But the role of events director requires more than just enthusi-asm and good ideas. With the pri-mary responsibility of overseeing events like Spring Fling, the job demands logistical e!ciency and practical know-how. While neither candidate has previously served on the Spring Fling Committee, Epps’ experience planning events for the entire student body as a member of the YCC events committee makes him best equipped to handle the challenges of organizing events of
this magnitude.Pettit is no inexperienced can-
didate; she boasts an impressive track record organizing events like Trolley Night as co-chair of the Calhoun Social Activities Com-mittee and as a representative on the Sophomore Class Coun-cil. Nonetheless, events director is a job for which prior experience in YCC event planning is crucial. Only Epps can o"er that.
Epps’ platform would expand the current role of events director beyond its traditional scale. Both candidates emphasize the impor-tance of campus-wide events in reducing students’ stress levels, but Epps, a current member of the YCC mental health commit-tee, goes a step further. His plans to build on the YCC’s previous work with a new mental health week show that the job can encompass events that are more than just fun.
With the responsibility of exe-cuting high-profile, annual events like Spring Fling, the role of YCC events director already carries with it a defined set of duties. What we need next year is an events direc-tor with the ideas and expertise to expand on that tradition, and we believe Bryan Epps can be that leader.
PAGE THREE
C O R R E C T I O N S A N D C L A R I F I C A T I O N S
TUESDAY, APRIL 10An Around the Ivies article originally published in The Harvard Crimson, “Warren outpaces Brown in fundraising,” was labeled incorrectly as being from The Brown Daily Herald.
A graph for the article “In race for rankings, SOM weighs identity” mistakenly switched the labels for rankings by the Financial Times and U.S. News and World Report.
MONDAY, APRIL 9The article “Title IX, one year later” paraphrased Joseph Breen ’12 as saying that Alexandra Brodsky ’12, Hannah Zeavin ’12 and Presca Ahn ’10 were the first individuals to begin discussions that eventually led to the Title IX complaint. In fact, the three were just among the early group of complainants to have those discussions.
The profile of YCC presidential candidate John Gonzalez ’14 paraphrased him as saying that he is the only candidate for YCC president to have led a council. However, fellow presidential candidate Eric Eliasson ’14 also has experience as a former Freshman Class Council chair.
TODAY’S EVENTSWEDNESDAY, APRIL 1112:00 PM “From Tenement Reform to Swamp Eradication: Managing Environmental Filth in New Haven’s Urban Landscape, 1880-1920.” Amity Doolittle FES ’94 GRD ’99, lecturer and research scientist at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies will speak. Part of Celebrate Sustainability. Kroon Hall (195 Prospect St.), Burke Auditorium.
3:30 PM “Bright Lights and Bling: An Integrative View of Sexual Selection in Fireflies.” Sara Lewis, professor of evolutionary and behavioral ecology at Tufts University, will give this lecture, sponsored by the Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman Memorial Fund and the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. Class of 1954 Environmental Sciences Center (21 Sachem St.), room 110.
4:30 PM The Politic Presents: A Conversation with Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell, sta! writer for The New Yorker and author of “The Tipping Point,” “Blink,” “Outliers” and “What the Dog Saw,” will speak. Sponsored by the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. She!eld-Sterling Strathcona Hall (1 Prospect St.), room 114.
“The Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes.” TED STEVENS FORMER SENATOR, ALASKA
BY TAPLEY STEPHENSONSTAFF REPORTER
As more students at Yale and people across the world incorpo-rate Facebook and Twitter into their daily lives, Yale administra-tors are increasing e!orts to mon-itor the University’s social media presence.
Over spring break, 30 mem-bers of Yale’s Office of Public A!airs and Communications, the Yale Broadcast and Media Cen-ter, and Yale art galleries attended a three-day “social media boot camp” in New York City, Univer-sity Secretary Linda Lorimer said. Yale spokesman Michael Morand said Yale’s public affairs offices have begun to analyze Web page traffic closely to better under-stand who is viewing the pages and how the University’s social media outreach can best engage that network.
“At OPAC, we sweat the details of our metrics closely and consis-tently,” Morand said. “A key part of the boot camp and our ongoing work with colleagues is to make sure we all make the most of the analytics to further improve our digital storytelling.”
OPAC oversees Yale’s Face-book page and Twitter, as well as the public relations website Yale News. Yale administrators
at OPAC keep statistics on which stories receive the most tra"c on Yale’s pages, which are then used to determine future content and press release times. Some of this information is available to the public, such as “likes” or “shares” on Facebook, but other statis-tics, such as Web tra"c, are only available to the University, as the pages’ owner.
Morand said social media ana-lytics also let OPAC consider the demographics of Yale’s online followers: Roughly 60 percent come from the United States and roughly 50 percent are between the ages of 18 and 34. Individu-als from India, Egypt and Mexico are Yale’s other top followers on Facebook, he added.
While these efforts are rela-tively new to Yale, Lorimer said the University has been “playing
catch-up” to other schools, who have already established their online presences.
“Yale is behind Harvard rather substantially in terms of an extended Facebook family,” she said. “But on the other hand, Yale has started up late and has been coming up dramatically. It’s up to 140,000 ‘likes,’ far lower [than] Harvard, but Harvard’s alumni body is huge compared to ours.”
Harvard had roughly 1.7 million “likes” on Facebook as of Tuesday night. Still, Track Social, a social media analytics group, recently rated Yale third on a list ranking American universities by social media outreach, one spot above Harvard.
Since each school within Yale has its own specific public a!airs sta!, public a!airs o"cials used last month’s workshops to com-pare social media use across the University’s schools, said Eliz-abeth Stauderman, chief com-munications o"cer for the Uni-versity. Before becoming eligible for the workshops, she added, administrators had to agree to connect with each other over var-ious social media pages in order to create “a network of social media experts” across the University.
“We felt it was important for our communications colleagues from across the University to have
a basic understanding of social media tools and of the ways in which social media can be used to tell the important stories of their respective units,” Stauderman said.
As of Tuesday night, Yale’s Facebook page had 140,956 likes and the University’s Twitter account has 35,197 followers.
Information Technology Services launched a version of Google Groups for its EliApps Gmail service Tuesday that aims to provide a more user-friendly alternative to panlists and mailman groups.
Loriann Higashi, manager of the Student Technology Col-laborative, said the app, called EliLists, was not released along with EliApps last fall because ITS wanted to test the “core functionally” of the email ser-vice before enabling all fea-tures. Higashi said she expects EliLists will reduce spam since it has a feature that will block emails when an address is receiving too much activity within a certain period, add-ing that she hopes the launch of EliLists will encourage stu-dents to voluntarily switch to EliApps before the automatic migration at the end of the semester.
Both mailman groups and panlists are slated to be decommissioned in the next few years, though students are still currently able to cre-ate mailman groups. Higashi said EliLists offers the secu-rity of mailman groups with the user-friendly capabili-ties of panlists, adding that creators of groups can decide whether subscribers can reply to an email thread and whether members of the Yale commu-nity can join their EliLists as they please.
Every year, email chains that include dozens of Yale panlists and mailman groups have gar-nered flurries of spam emails, along with messages from group members urging peo-ple to stop responding to the thread.
Yale College Council pres-ident Brandon Levin ’13 said EliLists provides a useful alter-native for reaching members of student groups in a Tuesday emai.
“The change will allow for panlist-type communication
among groups without the potential for spamming,” Levin said. “I think over time the panlists and mailman groups will be replaced by [EliLists].”
Harry Yu ’14, who manages several panlists for the student activities he is involved in, said in a Tuesday email that he expects to continue using his current panlists since he has grown accustomed to how they work, though he added that he knows mailman groups may be “a little harder” to manage.
Students can convert their current panlists or mailman groups into EliLists on the ITS website.
As of Monday, Higashi said roughly 45 percent of under-graduates had migrated to EliApps, adding that ITS is holding a raffle at the end of April, when it will award two iPads to students who have transferred by that time.
Students can use the EliApps migration process until mid-May, when ITS will automati-cally create EliApp accounts for students, who will then have 30 days to manually retrieve old emails from their former Pantheon accounts.
Besides EliLists, EliApps also features 25 gigabytes of storage along with access to Google Calendar, Documents, Sites and other Google appli-cations.
Three firms founded by Yale engineers are reaping the ben-efits of a startup incubator pro-gram launched last month by Connecticut Innovations, the state’s quasi-public author-ity responsible for technology investments.
TechStart Fund Accelerator Pilot Program began on March 5 as part of a $250 million invest-ment the state of Connecti-cut committed to startup tech-nology companies over the next five years. The TechStart pro-gram connects firms with men-tors and coordinates discussions with business professionals for 10 weeks, in addition to offer-ing each of its nine participat-ing startups a $25,000 loan. The three participating companies run by students, professors and graduates of the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science — Red Ox Technologies, Sel-dera and Scaled Liquid Systems — demonstrate a growing inter-est in entreprenuership within the school’s community, SEAS Deputy Dean Vincent Wilczyn-ski said.
TechStart selected its nine firms from a pool of 33 appli-cants, and two founders of Yale firms interviewed said resources provided by the program have been invaluable for their compa-nies’ progress.
Participating in TechStart has been essential for publicity, said Andreas Savvides, an electrical engineering and computer sci-ence professor who worked with his former student, Athanasios
Bamis ENG ’12, to co-found Sel-dera — a company that produces an energy-e"cient control sys-tem for buildings. Though Sav-vides said he found some of the program’s “technicalities,” such as specific talks and discussions, less applicable to Seldera, he said connecting with business part-ners and potential customers has been worthwhile.
“This opportunity really accelerates our business and introduces us to the right people fast,” he said.
Savvides said the $25,000 loan will help Seldera speed up its development while it contin-ues to seek capital. TechStart also requires its participants to pitch their companies briefly to inves-tors at the end of the program in May, which Savvides said will boost fundraising e!orts.
Claire Henly ’12, who founded green fuel cell producer Red Ox Technologies, said TechStart has been helpful for providing guid-ance and mentorship on running a business. But she said the pro-gram placed a strong emphasis on Internet startups, a topic she found less relevant to her com-
pany and needs. She noted that at least 50 percent of each firm’s leading group must attend every TechStart event.
Charlie Moret, managing director of Connecticut Inno-vations, said TechStart aims to teach aspiring entrepreneurs the “technical know-how” of mar-keting, human resources and other areas of business manage-ment.
“Technology by itself will never get its own market, there are many other issues that need a lot of skills and awareness,” Moret said.
Timothy Baylor SOM ’03, director of finance and opera-tions for Seldera, said TechStart “does a very good job” at provid-ing guidance and expert advice to new companies. He added that TechStart now numbers among several other startup devel-opment opportunities in New Haven, such the Yale Entrepre-neurship Institute summer fel-lowship.
Wilczynski said he estimates that around 5 percent of engi-neering students pursue entre-preneurial activities after grad-uation, adding that the YEI has aided a number of engineering majors’ startups.
As interest in startups has risen among students, SEAS has worked with the YEI to pro-vide opportunities for its stu-dents, Wilczynski said. The school emailed students last week about new Silicon Valley summer internships with Yale alumni, and received 22 soph-omore and junior engineering majors — roughly 20 percent of those classes’ engineering
majors — expressed interest in the programs, he said.
Henly said she decided to pur-sue her own business after she and her friend David Kohn ’11, the other co-founder of Red Ox Technologies, designed a fuel cell that they thought could be commercialized. She described entrepreneurship as “self-directed learning” and a way to “really put yourself in a bunch of new experiences.”
Savvides said he hopes that more engineers — both stu-dents and professors — will con-sider pursuing entrepreneurship, which he said is less prevalent at Yale than in universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley. He attrib-uted this di!erence to the small size and different “culture” of Yale’s engineering school.
“There is a lot of very interest-ing research [being conducted], and sometimes unless the pro-fessor puts energy to put it out into commercial world, it will sit there forever,” Savvides said. “Commercialization can cre-ate higher value and impact out of research than just writing papers.”
Faculty must go on leave to actively manage independent companies, but not if they are only serving an advisory role or contributing to the company through research, Assistant Pro-vost for Science and Technology Richard Burger said.
TechStart is held at 5 Science Park, and runs until mid-May.
Yale is behind Harvard rather substantially in terms of an extended Facebook family.
LINDA LORIMERSecretary, Yale University
Commercialization can create higher value and impact out of research than just writing papers.
ANDREAS SAVVIDESAssociate professor, School of Engineering & Applied Science
JOY SHAN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Firms founded by members of the School of Engineering and Applied Science community are benefitting from a state program that funds tech startups.
The change will allow for panlist-type communication among groups without the potential for spamming.
BRANDON LEVIN ’13President, Yale College Council
FA C E B O O K L I K E S
Harvard 1,688,764
Yale 140,956
Cornell 85,346
Princeton 76,242
Columbia 59,641
University of Pennsylvania 32,981
Brown 27,977
Darmouth 10,680
FROM THE FRONTPAGE 4 YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
“We might not be the best people, but we’re not the worst! Graduate students are the worst.” LIZ LEMON “30 ROCK CHARACTER”
When the Graduate School collected information during the 2010-’11 academic year for its review of doctoral programs, some professors worried that their programs would be com-pared unfairly to other programs. But administrators maintained that last year’s review aimed to increase transparency and to evaluate best practices.
Three directors of graduate studies in departments that have terminal master’s degrees said they did not know specific details of the current review.
One aspect of the review will involve making sure that mas-ter’s programs are in compliance with new federal standards about credit hours, administrators said.
The U.S. Department of Educa-tion announced a new defini-tion of a “credit hour” in October 2010 that has implications for the minimum number of credit hours students must complete to earn a master’s degree.
Because the Graduate School does not record credit hours on students’ transcripts, it must make sure all its master’s pro-grams meet a 30-credit hour requirement in total, as pre-scribed by the New England Association of Schools and Col-leges, Sleight said.
He added that Yale’s programs generally meet this requirement but may require clearer docu-mentation for compliance.
Five directors of graduate studies for master’s programs said they were unaware of the
credit hours issue or uncertain whether the new requirements would impact their programs.
The review will also look at student outcomes — such as what jobs master’s students take after graduation — and the pur-poses terminal master’s programs serve.
Students choose to enroll in master’s programs for a vari-ety of reasons, including gaining qualifications before applying to a doctoral program and boosting their career possibilities in fields where a master’s degree leads to a higher salary, Associate Dean of the Graduate School Pamela Schirmeister said.
Eckart Frahm, director of grad-uate studies for the Near East-ern Languages and Civilizations department, said master’s stu-
dents in his department use their time to improve their language skills and have been “fairly suc-cessful” in gaining admission to Ph.D. programs afterwards.
Francesca Trivellato, direc-tor of graduate studies for his-tory, said the History department does not keep records of master’s students’ job placements. But she said a general review of mas-ter’s programs seems like “a good idea” given the “wide variabil-ity” in arrangements the Gradu-ate School has with departments about these programs.
The Graduate School released its report on doctoral programs at Yale in August 2011.
swift and certain,” he said. “The death penalty is neither.”
At the press conference, state Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, a Democrat from New Haven who helped shepherd the repeal bill through the Sen-ate, and Jerry Streets, the pas-tor at Dixwell Congregational Church and former Yale chap-lain, emphasized the impor-tance of Connecticut’s repeal as a message to the rest of the nation. If the bill passes, they said, New Hampshire will be the only state in New England that allows the death penalty.
Looney said the death pen-alty is inappropriate because the criminal justice system is imperfect. He cited sev-eral cases of improper convic-tions in Connecticut, includ-ing James Tillman, who served a prison sentence for 16 years before being proven innocent, and Kenneth Ireland, who was exonerated after serving 19 years in prison.
In 2009, a similar bill repeal-ing the death penalty passed both chambers of the state’s General Assembly, but was vetoed by Republican then-Governor Jodi Rell.
“The death penalty sends a clear message to those who may contemplate such cold, calcu-lated crimes. We will not tol-erate those who have murdered in the most vile, dehumanizing fashion,” she wrote in her June 2009 veto message.
Should the House approve the current bill, however, Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, has promised he will sign it into law.
A major point of conten-tion in last Thursday’s Sen-ate debate involved the fate of the 11 inmates currently on
the state’s death row. Despite assurances by Democrats that the bill is “prospective,” apply-ing only to future cases, Repub-lican senators worried that repeal would give current death row inmates grounds to appeal their sentences. But Democrats cited the case of New Mexico, where the death penalty was prospectively repealed in 2009 and the state’s Supreme Court subsequently ruled that a pris-oner sentenced to death before the repeal could not have his sentence lowered on appeal.
Democrats also amended the bill to create a special felony charge, “felony murder with special circumstances,” which they said they designed specif-ically for the purpose of replac-ing the capital sentence.
Prisoners convicted of the charge will be placed in iso-lation in a maximum security prison and will be subject to increased searches.
In the past 50 years, Con-necticut has put only one per-son to death. In May 2005, the state executed serial killer Michael Ross, who requested the death penalty when faced with the alternative of life in prison without parole.
11Of the past 12 years are among the warmest since 1850 The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850. This confirms the fact that the Earth is already showing signs of climate change.
BY ALEKSANDRA GJORGIEVSKASTAFF REPORTER
CJ May FES ’89, the Yale O!ce of Sustainability’s recy-cling coordinator, praised the University’s transition to sin-gle-stream recycling at a Pier-son Master’s Tea Tuesday eve-ning.
May, who has been involved with Yale’s sustainability e"orts since 1989, explained the pro-cess of single-stream recycling and its advantages over dispa-rate systems in front of a crowd of around 20 students.
“People who never used to recycle before are starting to do so because single-stream has made it so easy,” May said, add-ing that when students know everything is supposed to go into one bin, they are more likely to recycle.
May said single-stream recy-cling’s two biggest advantages are the decreased use of trucks and the fact that it allows envi-ronmentally aware students to be involved with the creative and educational aspects of recy-cling. The Student Taskforce for Environmental Partnership has been empowered by the transi-tion to single-stream, he said.
The transition is taking hold statewide, he added.
“Everywhere in Connecticut, sorting facilities are being built
where all the trash that single-stream initially puts into one bin is sorted into separate cat-egories — glass, color, types of plastic — and is then sold back to manufacturing companies,” he said, adding that although Yale was ahead of everyone else in its e"ort to introduce single-stream, the movement is clearly becoming increasingly wide-spread.
May said that the most e"ec-tive way to institutionalize sin-gle-stream recycling is through legislation and community action, both of which have e"ectively spurred environmen-tal initiatives in the past.
Despite its many benefits, there are some downsides to sin-gle-stream, May said. Because it allows people to throw glass and
paper into the same bin, frag-ments of broken glass are often unintentionally sorted with paper and as a result, glass fibers enter and damage the paper-recycling machines.
Still, “the convenience of single-stream recycling trumps its downsides,” May said. “But there is a lot of development in this field that has yet to happen. Facilities need to be improved, and single-stream has yet to spread to some states where landfill sites are very cheap.”
Dure Aziz Amna ’15 said the talk highlighted Yale students’ obligation to learn more about sustainability.
“I think people at Yale really need to show more willingness to educate themselves about environmental awareness,” she said. “And what is better than hearing all of this from an expert such as CJ May?”
Dan Mitropolsky ’15 said he admires May’s passion and commitment to the environ-ment, and he said the talk made it clear that students are crucial to fostering a culture of environ-mental awareness.
CJ May became Yale’s recy-cling coordinator in 1990 and will leave the post in July 2012.
There may be more to fear from global warming than environmental changes.
According to several leading climate sci-entists and public health researchers, global warming will lead to higher incidence and more intense versions of disease. The direct or indirect e"ects of global warming might intensify the prevalence of tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, dengue and Lyme disease, they said, but the threat of increased health risks is likely to futher motivate the public to combat global warming.
“The environmental changes wrought by global warming will undoubtedly result in major ecologic changes that will alter patterns and intensity of some infectious diseases,” said Gerald Friedland, professor of medicine and epidemiology and public health at the Yale School of Medicine.
Global warming will likely cause major pop-ulation upheavals, creating crowded slums of refugees, Friedland said. Not only do areas of high population density facilitate disease transmission, but their residents are more likely to be vulnerable to disease because of malnutrition and poverty, he said. This pat-tern of vulnerability holds for both tuberculo-sis and HIV/AIDS, increasing the incidence of both the acquisition and spread of the diseases, he explained.
He said these potential e"ects are not sur-prising, since tuberculosis epidemics histori-cally have followed major population and envi-ronmental upheavals.
By contrast, global warming may increase the infection rates of mosquito-borne diseases by creating a more mosquito-friendly habitat. Warming, and the floods associated with it, are like to increase rates of both malaria and den-gue, a debilitating viral disease found in trop-ical areas and transmitted by mosquito bites, said Maria Diuk-Wasser, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.
“The direct e"ects of temperature increase are an increase in immature mosquito devel-opment, virus development and mosquito bit-ing rates, which increase contact rates (biting) with humans. Indirect e"ects are linked to how humans manage water given increased uncer-tainty in the water supply caused by climate change,” Diuk-Wasser said.
Global warming may a"ect other diseases in even more complicated ways, Diuk-Wasser said. The e"ect of global warming on the inci-dence of Lyme disease, a tick-borne chronic disease, is more di!cult to examine and mea-sure, though she said it will probably increase.
“One possible way in which temperature may limit tick populations is by increasing the
length of their life cycle from two to three years in the north, where it is colder,” she said. “Cli-mate change could be reverting that and there-fore increasing production of ticks. The trans-mission of the Lyme bacterium is so complex, though, that it is di!cult to ‘tease out’ a role of climate change.”
Diuk-Wasser added, however, that scien-tists do find an e"ect of climate change on the distribution of Lyme disease in their data, but are not yet sure of the reasons behind such results.
While the study of global warming itself is relatively new, research on the impact of global warming on disease is an even more recent endeavor that draws on the skills and expertise of a wide variety of scientists and researchers.
“The field is multi-sourced, and recently interest has been evolving among climatolo-gists, vector biologists, disease epidemiolo-gists, ecologists, and policymakers alike,” said Uriel Kitron, professor and chair of the envi-ronmental studies department at Emory Uni-versity.
Kitron said that in order to mitigate the e"ects of global warming on disease, the public must turn its attention to water management and an increased understanding of the con-necting between “global processes and local impact.”
Diuk-Wasser said that raising awareness about the public health e"ects of global warm-ing might aid climate control e"orts, because it made the potential impact of global warming more personal.
“There’s been a great interest in climate advocacy groups to look for negative e"ects of climate change on health, since studies have found that this motivates people to adopt measures to curb climate change,” Diuk-Was-ser said.
The Yale Climate and Engery Institute recently won a grant to study the direct and indirect e"ects of climate change on dengue transmission in Colombia.
People who never used to recycle before are starting to do so because single-stream has made it so easy.
CJ MAY FES ’89Recycling coordinator, Yale O!ce of
Sustainability
[Studying the] negative e"ects of climate change on health … motivates people to adopt measures to curb climate change.
MARIA DIUK-WASSERAssistant professor of epidemiology, School of Public
Health
YALE UNIVERSITY
Yale’s transition to single-stream recycling was praised at a Master’s Tea with CJ May FES ’09, the O!ce of Sus-tainability’s recycling coordinator.
unsuccessful.At 12:01 p.m., city officials
ordered the eviction to begin, first targeting Occupy New Hav-en’s “peace garden.” But when workers began to bulldoze a set of tents designated as an art instal-lation, protesters screamed at the driver of the bulldozer and pro-tester Don Montano lay down in front of the machine.
“This is an abortion of justice,” an Occupy protester who iden-tified himself only as “Moose” yelled at police o!cers through a megaphone. “[Occupy] is the people’s dream.”
Just when police officers moved to confront Montano, word spread among those at the encampment that Pattis had suc-cessfully obtained a stay from Circuit Judge Raymond Lohier Jr., who ruled that the eight Occupy protesters listed as plainti"s in the initial lawsuit could remain on the New Haven Green. It was within the city’s legal authority, however, to evict any or all of the other demonstrators. A stand-o" began between city o!cials and protesters as police awaited orders on whether to proceed and Occupy demonstrators chanted to the crowd of onlookers on and around the Green.
O n e Occ u py p ro te s te r approached police o!cers hold-ing a long plastic pipe with a doughnut tied to a string at the end and taunted police to eat it. Most onlookers stood apart from the Occupy encampment, though some engaged in heated argument with the protesters over their mission and prolonged presence in New Haven.
“They’ve clearly overstayed their welcome,” New Haven res-ident Bill Burleigh said. “I live here — I want everything out.”
Finally, Victor Bolden, the city’s top lawyer, arrived around 12:40 p.m. and, after confer-ring with Esserman, confirmed that City Hall had received word from the appeals court to stop the eviction. Bolden announced after his arrival on the Green that all protesters — not just the eight plainti"s — would be allowed to stay until at least next week, since it would be too di!-
cult to di"erentiate between the belongings of plainti"s and non-plainti"s.
According to DeStefano, two members of Occupy New Haven were arrested for inter-fering with the eviction while it was underway by climbing on city trucks. Both protesters who were arrested received probation before judgment, he said.
“I have no reason to believe the arrests weren’t appropriate,” DeStefano said during the press conference.
When police arrested Sara Ferah after he tried to retrieve his belongings from a public works bulldozer, protesters ran screaming after the o!cers Ferah was escorted o" the Green. Yet a
group of onlookers cheered and clapped for police as they placed Ferah into a patrol car and drove away.
Lohier’s court order mandated that the city allow Occupy New Haven to remain on the Green for at least a week until the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decides whether to hear an appeal of Kravitz’s decision in favor of the city. Should the appeals court hear the case, DeStefano said the city would continue to fight for control of the public space in court.
“We will represent the inter-ests of the city, which I want to be clear from my point of view are to return the entire Green to the use of the entire community,” DeSte-fano said.
Following the announcement of the appeals court’s decision, Occupy protesters celebrated, chanting at police and city work-ers involved in the eviction. Pro-testers said they are planning a party on the Green on April 15, to celebrate Occupy New Haven’s six-month anniversary, and will hold their regular general assem-bly meeting Wednesday evening.
Occupy New Haven, which o!cially began on Oct. 15, ini-
tially enjoyed a cooperative rela-tionship with City Hall. Then-City Hall spokesman Adam Joseph said the city’s only con-cern about the protest when its tents went up on the Green involved public safety around the encampment.
With the arrival of warmer temperatures, city o!cials and the Green’s legal proprietors — members of a private group that has perpetuated itself since the 17th century — said they were concerned that Occupy’s pres-ence on the Green was hinder-ing the ability of other residents to use the space. They also cited concerns that the encampment could cause long-term damage to the Green, including to the elm trees that give New Haven its nickname, the Elm City.
But protesters have claimed that the city sought Occupy’s removal at the behest of Yale administrators who they say wished to clear the Green in time for the University’s May Com-mencement ceremony. DeSte-fano, head Green proprietor Drew Days LAW ’66 and Univer-sity spokesmen have all said that Yale has had no involvement in the city’s decisions concerning Occupy New Haven.
After two February meetings between city officials and pro-testers failed to reach a compro-mise, city o!cials issued a notice that the Green would have to be cleared of tents by March 14. But following a last-minute lawsuit by Pattis, district court judge Janet Hall gave Occupy protest-ers permission to remain on the Green through March 28, when Kravitz was to hear the case. Kravitz then extended Occupy’s deadline to stay on the Green a second time to Monday in order to give himself time to issue a decision, which the court of appeals is now deciding whether to review.
Occupy New Haven, a branch of the international anti-eco-nomic-inequality Occupy pro-test, is the oldest surviving encampment of its kind in New England.
FROM THE FRONTPAGE 6 YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
“There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with your-selves. We have a nice time here — but remem-ber, carnivals come cheap.” SLAVOJ ZIZEK PHILOSOPHER
GNH FROM PAGE 1
With injunction, Occupy fights o! city All colleges to see mixed-gender suites
[T]he interests of the city … are to return the entire Green to the use of the entire community.
JOHN DESTEFANOMayor, New Haven
The possibility of gender-neutral housing allows some colleges to solve housing problems that they otherwise would have encountered.
JOHN MEESKEAssociate dean for student organizations
and physical resourcesSARAH ECKINGER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHEROccupy New Haven fought o! an e!ort by the city to evict its encampment with the help of a court injunction.
JENNIFER CHEUNG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Defiant Occupy New Haven protesters celebrated a court injunction that allowed them to remain on the Green for one more week. Some protesters erected barricades in anticipation of the city’s e!ort to evict the encampment.
lege-wide count of 29.“Mixed-gender suites seem
to have been very popular in the large room configurations, and these big suites tend not to go to seniors in Branford,” she said. “This could help explain why the expansion of this policy to rising juniors had such a large e"ect.”
Still, Yagoda said most col-leges will now have only a few mixed-gender suites, adding that he thinks more students did not apply because many students had made their housing deci-sions before the new policy was announced.
Trumbull and Silliman will both house mixed-gender suites for the first time next year. Trum-bull will have two gender-neu-tral suites and Silliman will have one, said Trumbull Dean Jasmina Besirevic-Regan and Silliman Dean Hugh Flick.
John Meeske, associate dean for student organizations and physical resources, said he has not received any specific numbers of students living in mixed-gender suites, as some colleges have not yet completed their housing pro-cesses. He added that one resi-dential college was able to forgo using an annex space because it could configure mixed-gender suites to accommodate all its stu-dents.
“The possibility of gender-neutral housing allows some col-leges to solve housing problems that they otherwise would have encountered,” he said.
Meeske said he has always sup-ported gender-neutral housing because it meets the needs of cer-tain students and “is not a terribly radical thing.”
Camy Anderson ’14, a Berke-ley sophomore who is living in a mixed-gender double in Swing Space next year, said she decided to live in a suite with a male stu-dent immediately after the new policy was announced. She said after talking to her parents about it, she came to the conclusion that “it wasn’t a big deal.”
According to the YCC gender-neutral housing proposal released in January, 92.7 percent of the class of 2014 said they supported or were indi"erent to the expan-sion of gender-neutral housing to juniors.
Questions or comments about the fairness or accuracy of stories should be directed to Max de La Bruyère, Editor in Chief, at (203) 432-2418.
Bulletin Board is a free service provided to groups of the Yale community for events. Listings should be submitted online at yaledailynews.com/events/ submit. The Yale Daily News reserves the right to edit listings.
SCIENCE HILL BY SPENCER KATZ
SMALL TALK BY AMELIA SARGENT
SATURDAY MORNING BREAKFAST CEREAL BY ZACH WEINER
7 21 4
6 1 9 2 72 8 1 35 8
3 58 1 5
9 5 8 74 7 9
SUDOKU HARD
ON CAMPUSTHURSDAY, APRIL 12
12:00 PM Tour of Kroon Hall. Register in advance for this tour of Kroon Hall, Yale’s greenest building and a symbol of the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Part of Celebrate Sustainability. Email [email protected] to register. Kroon Hall (195 Prospect St.), main entrance.
4:00 PM “Coexistence Regulations: Oops, Plants Can’t Read.” This event is part of the “Biotechnology in Agriculture” series and features Carol Mallory-Smith, a professor of weed science at Oregon State University. Her main areas of research are weed management in agronomic crops, weed biology, and gene flow and hybridization between crops and weeds. Kline Biology Tower (219 Prospect St.), room 1214.
FRIDAY, APRIL 134:30 PM “A Moving Story: Concert Dance Interpretations of Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet.’” Amymarie Bartholomew ’13 will give this talk and demonstration examining the ways that Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” has been presented. Part of Shakespeare at Yale. Davenport College (248 York St.), Davenport/Pierson Auditorium.
SATURDAY, APRIL 141:00 PM “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom.” This Academy Award-nominated documentary follows survivors in the hardest-hit areas of Japan’s recent tsunami as they revive and rebuild at the beginning of cherry blossom season. Discussion with special guests will follow the screening. Part of the 2012 Environmental Film Festival at Yale. Whitney Humanities Center (53 Wall St.), Aud.
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ARTS & CULTURETHIS WEEK
IN THE ARTS
4 P.M. WED. APR. 11LECTURE BY HOLLAND COTTER The New York Times’ chief art critic since 1992 and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, Holland Cotter, will deliver a lecture entitled “Criticism: Taking it Personally.”
Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St.
4 P.M. THURS. APR. 12A CONVERSATION WITH SHAH RUKH KHAN Having acted in over 70 Hindi films, Shah Rukh Khan — or “SRK” — has earned himself the title “The King of Bollywood.” The talk will be free, but requires advance registration.
Shubert Theater, 247 College St.
11 A.M. THURS. APR. 12EXHIBITION TOUR: “‘WHILE THESE VISIONS DID APPEAR’: SHAKESPEARE ON CANVAS” A guided tour of the British Art Center’s Shakespeare-centric exhibition, led by a center docent.
Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St.
FRI. APR. 13 - SAT. APR. 14“LULZ”: A TROLL MUSICAL Ben Wexler, Mark Sonnenblick and Corey Finley will deliver a fantastical theatrical creation ri!ng on the memes, dangers and message boards of the anonymous wasteland known as “the internet.”
Calhoun College Cabaret, 189 Elm St.
FRI. APR. 13 - SAT. APR. 14THE SAD GIRL’S GUIDE TO WALLOWING PROFESSIONALLY Alexandra Addison has conceived of a “romantic comedy about depression,” which explores both the available range of Ben & Jerry’s flavors and the human capacity for recovery from heartbreak.
Morse/Stiles Crescent Theater, 302 York St.
FRI. APR. 13 - SAT. APR. 14OYE’S FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY SHOW The spoken word group promises fun, laughter, rants and reflection in their fifth anniversary show.
Davenport College Theater, 248 York St.
FRI. APR. 13 - SAT. APR. 21HAMLET William Shakespeare’s classic play comes to life in this senior project for Justin Dobies, Ella Dershowitz and Tom Sanchez, directed by Deborah Margolin.
Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St.
THURS. APR. 12 - SAT. APR. 14CARNIVAL/INVISIBLE A Yale Cabaret production, written and directed by Benjamin Fainstein. Dinner and drinks will be served at 6:30 p.m.
Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St.
1-2 P.M. SAT. APR. 14THE TSUNAMI AND THE CHERRY BLOSSOM The Environmental Film Festival at Yale presents Academy Award-nominated “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom,” which focuses on the survivors in the areas hit hardest by the 2011 tsunami disaster in Japan.
“I was very interested in the multicultural nature of America and how people communi-cate and don’t communicate … I can’t stand it when people hate each other.” ALVIN ENG PLAYWRIGHT
BY URVI NOPANYSTAFF REPORTER
After opening Monday, the fourth-annual Environmental Film Festival at Yale (EFFY) has grown in size and scope from years past.
The student-run festival was launched as a small three day event in 2008 and has been expanding ever since, said EFFY managing director Paul Thom-son GRD ’12. He added that while this year’s festival spans a week, his team hopes that it will eventually become a year-long series of events at Yale. This year’s lineup includes 10 feature-length films and five shorts, Thomson said, as well as a filmmaking workshop and a conversation with the founder of the “No Impact Project,” Colin Beavan, an activist who has experimented with living an environmentally zero-impact lifestyle in New York City.
The festival was conceived by a group of graduate students at the School of Forestry four years ago as an attempt to help Yalies connect with the greater New Haven community while show-casing films about the envi-ronment, Thomson said. He noted that last year half of the 4,000 audience members who attended were unaffiliated with Yale.
“I think what’s unique about this film festival is that it’s run through a university so it’s not just a film festival that’s for commerce. It’s more about an academic issue, too, so I can see why there’s a focus on issues like sustainability,” said “Eating Alabama” filmmaker Andrew Grace, whose film played at the Whitney Humanities Center Tuesday evening.
The 14-member group of organizers selects each film, said
co-managing director Emily Schosid GRD ’12, adding that they watched more than 150 films during the selection process for the festival this year. Each film is followed by a panel discussion featuring a mix of Yale faculty, film-makers and people featured in the documentaries, Scho-sid added.
While there is no the-matic progression to the films being shown over the week, Thomson said that the opening film “Surviv-ing Progress” deals with broader environmental con-cerns, while the nine sub-sequent films each focus on specific issues, including the food system in the United States, the 2011 tsunami in Japan and nuclear power in the United States.
The organizers have a broader vision for the fes-tival than just “saving the environment” Thomson said, adding that the films convey a more macroscopic social message of how peo-ple interact with each other and the environment.
“A lot of films look at how people interact with the environment, how the envi-ronment affects us — there’s a lot of social issues and they’re really not narrow in scope at all,” Thomson said.
Five audience members interviewed after the screen-ing of “Eating Alabama” said they appreciated the festi-val’s use of film as a medium to convey important envi-ronmental and social mes-sages.
“A lot of times [film] pro-vokes or invokes thought and reflection which could foster action or even change of behavior, which as a cul-ture we need to look into,” said Chris Randall, the exec-utive director of New Haven Land Trust, who attended the screening.
Entry to each film and workshop is free. The festi-val closes on Saturday, April 15.
Eco film festival broadens scopeBY NATASHA THONDAVADI
STAFF REPORTER
A recently established lec-ture series at the School of Archi-tecture aims to rejuvenate the school’s joint degree program with the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
The series, which will feature conversations between profes-sors from the two schools with overlapping research interests, is meant to facilitate interac-tion between students and fac-ulty from the two disciplines, said Sheena Zhang ARC ’14 FES ’14, one of the series’ organizers. The coordinators of the series hope it will draw attention to the pro-gram, which o!ers both Master in Architecture and Master in Envi-ronmental Management degrees, Elisa Iturbe ARC ’14 FES ’14 said, adding that she feels students at both schools are not very aware of the cross-disciplinary enterprise.
Though the program was cre-ated in 2006, Zhang and Iturbe are currently the only two stu-dents enrolled. A third is taking a gap year.
Alexander Felson, the profes-sor who oversees the dual-degree program, called it a rarity among American universities, despite the pressing need for architects to consider environmental issues.
“There are very few examples of architecture programs in this country that have an integration with something like [the envi-ronment school],” Felson said. “That being said, as you’re thinking about urban sustainability and the future of the built envi-ronment, it’s an
important relationship to culti-vate. We have a critical opportu-nity to make that dialogue grow.”
Zhang said that most schools that o!er similar programs tend to emphasize either architec-ture or the environment at the expense of the other. Iturbe said that since Yale o!ers a joint degree, as opposed to programs that incorporate courses from both disciplines but award only one degree, it provides a unique opportunity to study each field from the ground up before stu-dents’ views are colored by cross-disciplinary analysis.
Felson added that the structure of the
program allows students to main-tain the integrity of their design process, since environmental concerns do not stifle the archi-tectural component of learning from the beginning of a student’s education.
But the physical separa-tion between the two schools often results in an intellectual separation as well, Iturbe said. While Felson said students are meant to serve as links between the o t h e r -wise uncon- nected
schools, Iturbe said this integra-tion is missing for much of stu-dents’ time in Yale’s program, since joint-degree students take only architecture courses for the first two of their four years.
Zhang said the new lecture series, which she and Iturbe hope will comprise one or two events per semester, is meant to bridge
the gap between the two schools. The first event,
which took place at the architecture school on
March 20, featured forestry profes-
sor Chad Oli-ver FES ’75 and
architecture critic Alan
O r g a n -s c h i
A R C ’ 8 8
sharing their knowledge about wood as both a sustainable mate-rial and a design element. She added that while many professors at the two schools share research interests, they often do not col-laborate because they have very little contact with each other.
Oliver and Organschi may co-teach a seminar on the topic of wood next semester as a result of the conversation, Zhang said, adding that she hopes all the lec-tures will lead to such tangible results.
Felson said the lecture series also offers an interesting look into the varying methodologies between the two schools, since the environment school tends to teach students how to make envi-ronmentally conscious deci-sions on a larger scale than
the Architecture School, which focuses on specific materials and design elements.
Zhang said that the audience of the first lecture filled the seminar room to capacity and contained an equal mix of students from the two schools, most of whom were not enrolled in an interdisciplin-ary program but were still inter-ested in issues investigated at the other school.
The School of Architecture also has a joint-degree program with the School of Management.
Chinese-American playwright Alvin Eng believes the e!ects of the-ater transcend scripts and actors. In a Tuesday evening talk, he said the greatest legacy of performance lies in its e!ect on the human soul.
Eng, a creative writing professor at Fordham University, spoke to a group of about 30 students and community members in the Office of Interna-tional Students and Scholars. In his presentation, Eng focused on the play “Our Town,” written by Thornton Wilder ’20, and the influences it has had upon Eng’s life and work. Theater often symbolizes broader cultural concepts, he said, and “Our Town” does so particularly e!ectively.
“Theater is the most ephemeral of art forms,” Eng said. “After the light comes up … the experience lives on in the memories of those who saw it.”
Much of Eng’s address dealt with the influence his mother had on his life. Growing up in a tight-knit fam-ily from Flushing, N.Y., during the 1960s, Eng said Chinese-Americans lived in the shadow of the ongoing Cold War conflict, and immigrants like his parents were expected to abandon many aspects of their cul-tural heritage when they arrived in the United States. His mother was particularly a!ected by this, he said, since she spoke no English and was often treated as “a Martian” in their predominantly white neighborhood.
Nevertheless, Eng said his mother
maintained a deep connection to her home in China. When she died in 2002, Eng dealt with the loss by delving deeply into playwriting and music. Eng said “Our Town” was par-ticularly helpful to him during this period, since he was able to sympa-thize with several of the work’s prin-cipal characters. His connection to Wilder’s work was strengthened by its Chinese influences, which Eng said resulted from Wilder’s time liv-ing in China during his father’s time as a U.S. ambassador in the 1930s.
Eng’s tie to “Our Town,” which takes small-town New Hampshire as its setting, led him to base several projects on the script, including a student group production he helped coordinate as a visiting professor at the City University of Hong Kong in 2011. Eng asked students to compose original scripts in English in response to Wilder’s work. The production was called “Hong Kong Time Cap-sule 2011,” a title drawn from a scene
in “Our Town” in which characters create a time capsule in hopes of pre-serving their lives for future genera-tions.
When he asked students what they would put in their own time cap-sules, Eng said the students said they would most like to preserve parts of Hong Kong that might disappear due to cultural and environmental changes, such as its Victoria Harbor. Eng’s students translated these ideas into the shows they wrote, capturing characters from headlines in Chinese newspapers and encounters in their daily lives, since these are people and events that might fade as society pro-gresses over decades and centuries to come, he said.
Eng added that seeing his own play “Last Emperor of Flushing” per-formed in China had a deep cultural significance for him.
“It was everything I could hope for,” Eng said. “Every movement, every line had a deeper meaning,
because there we were performing in a city where my ancestors once walked the earth.”
Aaron Ja!ris, a New Haven-based writer in attendance at the talk whose past work has dealt with Chinese-American theater, said Eng’s words helped him gauge how his own work and the work of his collegues might be received if they were to be staged in China.
Yale-China Association Executive Director Nancy Maasbach, who led a question-and-answer session after Eng’s presentation, said Chinese arts don’t draw as much interest in the country as other areas, such as eco-nomics. She said Eng’s talk attempted to combat this underappreciation by bringing Chinese arts to light.
Eng’s most recent play, titled “Three Trees,” will debut in Paris this May.
Alvin Eng, Chinese-American playwright and professor of creative writing, discussed the influence of theatre on cultural concepts.
There’s a lot of social issues and they’re really not narrow in scope at all.
PAUL THOMSON GRD ’12Managing director, Environmental Film
Festival at Yale
There are very few examples of architecture programs in this country that have an integration with something like [the environment school].
ALEXANDER FELSONAssistant professor, School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and School of
Architecture
BY ANISHA SUTERWALACONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Susan Farricielli, a sculptor, industrial designer and lecturer at the Yale School of Architec-ture, is founder and manager of Kinetic Innovative Seating (KiSS), LLC, a company through which she hopes to manufacture and sell a more ergonomically friendly wheelchair. The News spoke with Farricielli about KiSS, her wheelchair and her future plans.
Q What inspired you to pursue creating a more ergonomically
friendly wheelchair?
A In graduate school, I stud-ied … seating. And I did
my thesis on a seat that allowed the body to move instead of remaining stagnant. And a few years later, I realized my grand-mother was in a wheelchair, and I realized she was su!ering from symptoms that have to do with lack of circulation and [issues] related to poor seating. So it was really my grandmother.
Q When did you start working on creating the design, and
what was the process like?
A The wheelchair I started in 1992. In 1995 I got a National
Endowment for the Arts grant, and that was actually the first boost I had to spend time devel-oping the wheelchair.
Q Was this about the same time that you started Kinetic Inno-
vative Seating Systems (KiSS)?
A Well, I started a company called KiSS but I never
did anything with it. I actually started Kinetic Innovative Seat-ing Systems o"cially last year.
Q Tell us a little bit more about the mechanics of how the
chair works and how it’s better than a standard wheelchair.
A There [are] two compo-nents: there’s a seat back
and there’s a seat base. Wheel-chairs usually have cloth seats … so you take out the cloth seats and put in these seats. They allow the body to shift weight side to side and up and down. When the body moves, the motion is initi-ated at the joints, your hip and your joint, so you’re flexing at
the joint.
Q How is having that motion on the joints beneficial?
A It promotes circulation, and the shifting of the weight
dissipates the concentration of weight that is generally under the sit bones. That’s where people get sores. And then there’s the seat back … with a flex point that allows you to lean back without tipping over. So, you get to flex your spine; you get to move with-out tipping over. It’s very subtle. The idea was to make an incre-mental change that was would be a big improvement to comfort.
Q Is there anyone who’s been influential in helping get this
o! the ground?
A Oh, Yale, definitely Yale. I mean, I pretty much sat on
this and every now and then I would put the wheelchair out, work on it a little, move it for-ward. There were two things that propelled it forward. One is I got an investor, an angel investor, and before taking her money I went over to SOM and sat in on some classes and that was a big eye-
opener. I always thought, “Oh, why don’t I make this?” And I realized when I actually sat down and really worked on a business plan with a team how incredi-bly complex it was. It wasn’t just money — it was having the plan. I didn’t want to take my investor’s money and then just use it with-out knowing where I was going with it. Having that opportunity was incredible. The Yale Entre-preneurial Society … helped me find people and got the word out. SOM let me take classes, and the students that I worked with, the graduate students, were bril-liant. Each one of them contrib-uted something special. Gaylord Hospital [in Wallingford, Conn.] was great; they let me use their [physical therapy] department as a sounding board, so I went there and interviewed them.
Q By when do you aim to have the design of the chair ready
to sell?
A I can sell it now. We’re just waiting to get medical clear-
ances and medical reimburse-ment. We have to get it cleared by the Food and Drug Administra-tion, and then you have to get a healthcare reimbursement code
so that its paid for through insur-ance. It’s a product that is driven by the medical insurance market.
Q What led you to pursue indus-trial design?
A That’s my degree; I’m an industrial designer. I went
to Rhode Island School of Design and got my master’s there in 1989. I’m a sculptor, but I’m always looking at the mechan-ics of things and always taking things apart. I’m an artist, but I’m not a free spirit. I’m much more of a problem solver.
Q Are there any other projects that you’re working on right
now?
A Well, my little release proj-ect that I’m doing is I’m
designing wine labels, and then I have another project that I just got a patent for as well. That’s an equatorial sundial, a full-func-tioning sundial. But KISS is my main thing right now — it’s full time. I’m actually going to take a leave of absence at Yale this year [to work on it]. The next plan is to make the chair for soldiers com-ing back from Iraq. Right now
we’re experimenting with about 10 systems — ideally we’d like 100, but [10 is] based on the bud-get — to give to soldiers coming back.
Something like 96 percent of people in wheelchairs in the United States are on welfare. And there’s lots of reasons why, but most of them just want to lead lives where they can have a job. The reason they can’t is that they’re uncomfortable in their wheelchairs, they’re uncom-fortable sitting motionless for so long. If I could get them in a chair where they can do what every-one else does, that will be a great accomplishment.
In your o"ce chair at home, it has springs, it moves, and this started coming around in the 1970s, so then why do you put a person in a wheelchair for the rest of their life that doesn’t move? So I had to do this — my sister used my chair, my father used my chair, and now both of them have died, so I have to do this. It’s not just about me hav-ing a nice wheelchair at the end of it all. I want to leave something behind that’s useful.
The 2012 Environmental Film Festival showcased a wide thematic spectrum of environmental films.
JACOB GEIGER AND CHRISTOPHER PEAK/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER AND SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER
A new lecture series connects the environment and architecture schools in order to tackle the challenges of green design and other environmental issues.
Theater is the most ephemeral of all art forms. After the light comes up… the experience lives on in the memories of those who saw it.
4 P.M. WED. APR. 11LECTURE BY HOLLAND COTTER The New York Times’ chief art critic since 1992 and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, Holland Cotter, will deliver a lecture entitled “Criticism: Taking it Personally.”
Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St.
4 P.M. THURS. APR. 12A CONVERSATION WITH SHAH RUKH KHAN Having acted in over 70 Hindi films, Shah Rukh Khan — or “SRK” — has earned himself the title “The King of Bollywood.” The talk will be free, but requires advance registration.
Shubert Theater, 247 College St.
11 A.M. THURS. APR. 12EXHIBITION TOUR: “‘WHILE THESE VISIONS DID APPEAR’: SHAKESPEARE ON CANVAS” A guided tour of the British Art Center’s Shakespeare-centric exhibition, led by a center docent.
Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St.
FRI. APR. 13 - SAT. APR. 14“LULZ”: A TROLL MUSICAL Ben Wexler, Mark Sonnenblick and Corey Finley will deliver a fantastical theatrical creation ri!ng on the memes, dangers and message boards of the anonymous wasteland known as “the internet.”
Calhoun College Cabaret, 189 Elm St.
FRI. APR. 13 - SAT. APR. 14THE SAD GIRL’S GUIDE TO WALLOWING PROFESSIONALLY Alexandra Addison has conceived of a “romantic comedy about depression,” which explores both the available range of Ben & Jerry’s flavors and the human capacity for recovery from heartbreak.
Morse/Stiles Crescent Theater, 302 York St.
FRI. APR. 13 - SAT. APR. 14OYE’S FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY SHOW The spoken word group promises fun, laughter, rants and reflection in their fifth anniversary show.
Davenport College Theater, 248 York St.
FRI. APR. 13 - SAT. APR. 21HAMLET William Shakespeare’s classic play comes to life in this senior project for Justin Dobies, Ella Dershowitz and Tom Sanchez, directed by Deborah Margolin.
Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St.
THURS. APR. 12 - SAT. APR. 14CARNIVAL/INVISIBLE A Yale Cabaret production, written and directed by Benjamin Fainstein. Dinner and drinks will be served at 6:30 p.m.
Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St.
1-2 P.M. SAT. APR. 14THE TSUNAMI AND THE CHERRY BLOSSOM The Environmental Film Festival at Yale presents Academy Award-nominated “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom,” which focuses on the survivors in the areas hit hardest by the 2011 tsunami disaster in Japan.
“I was very interested in the multicultural nature of America and how people communi-cate and don’t communicate … I can’t stand it when people hate each other.” ALVIN ENG PLAYWRIGHT
BY URVI NOPANYSTAFF REPORTER
After opening Monday, the fourth-annual Environmental Film Festival at Yale (EFFY) has grown in size and scope from years past.
The student-run festival was launched as a small three day event in 2008 and has been expanding ever since, said EFFY managing director Paul Thom-son GRD ’12. He added that while this year’s festival spans a week, his team hopes that it will eventually become a year-long series of events at Yale. This year’s lineup includes 10 feature-length films and five shorts, Thomson said, as well as a filmmaking workshop and a conversation with the founder of the “No Impact Project,” Colin Beavan, an activist who has experimented with living an environmentally zero-impact lifestyle in New York City.
The festival was conceived by a group of graduate students at the School of Forestry four years ago as an attempt to help Yalies connect with the greater New Haven community while show-casing films about the envi-ronment, Thomson said. He noted that last year half of the 4,000 audience members who attended were unaffiliated with Yale.
“I think what’s unique about this film festival is that it’s run through a university so it’s not just a film festival that’s for commerce. It’s more about an academic issue, too, so I can see why there’s a focus on issues like sustainability,” said “Eating Alabama” filmmaker Andrew Grace, whose film played at the Whitney Humanities Center Tuesday evening.
The 14-member group of organizers selects each film, said
co-managing director Emily Schosid GRD ’12, adding that they watched more than 150 films during the selection process for the festival this year. Each film is followed by a panel discussion featuring a mix of Yale faculty, film-makers and people featured in the documentaries, Scho-sid added.
While there is no the-matic progression to the films being shown over the week, Thomson said that the opening film “Surviv-ing Progress” deals with broader environmental con-cerns, while the nine sub-sequent films each focus on specific issues, including the food system in the United States, the 2011 tsunami in Japan and nuclear power in the United States.
The organizers have a broader vision for the fes-tival than just “saving the environment” Thomson said, adding that the films convey a more macroscopic social message of how peo-ple interact with each other and the environment.
“A lot of films look at how people interact with the environment, how the envi-ronment affects us — there’s a lot of social issues and they’re really not narrow in scope at all,” Thomson said.
Five audience members interviewed after the screen-ing of “Eating Alabama” said they appreciated the festi-val’s use of film as a medium to convey important envi-ronmental and social mes-sages.
“A lot of times [film] pro-vokes or invokes thought and reflection which could foster action or even change of behavior, which as a cul-ture we need to look into,” said Chris Randall, the exec-utive director of New Haven Land Trust, who attended the screening.
Entry to each film and workshop is free. The festi-val closes on Saturday, April 15.
Eco film festival broadens scopeBY NATASHA THONDAVADI
STAFF REPORTER
A recently established lec-ture series at the School of Archi-tecture aims to rejuvenate the school’s joint degree program with the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
The series, which will feature conversations between profes-sors from the two schools with overlapping research interests, is meant to facilitate interac-tion between students and fac-ulty from the two disciplines, said Sheena Zhang ARC ’14 FES ’14, one of the series’ organizers. The coordinators of the series hope it will draw attention to the pro-gram, which o!ers both Master in Architecture and Master in Envi-ronmental Management degrees, Elisa Iturbe ARC ’14 FES ’14 said, adding that she feels students at both schools are not very aware of the cross-disciplinary enterprise.
Though the program was cre-ated in 2006, Zhang and Iturbe are currently the only two stu-dents enrolled. A third is taking a gap year.
Alexander Felson, the profes-sor who oversees the dual-degree program, called it a rarity among American universities, despite the pressing need for architects to consider environmental issues.
“There are very few examples of architecture programs in this country that have an integration with something like [the envi-ronment school],” Felson said. “That being said, as you’re thinking about urban sustainability and the future of the built envi-ronment, it’s an
important relationship to culti-vate. We have a critical opportu-nity to make that dialogue grow.”
Zhang said that most schools that o!er similar programs tend to emphasize either architec-ture or the environment at the expense of the other. Iturbe said that since Yale o!ers a joint degree, as opposed to programs that incorporate courses from both disciplines but award only one degree, it provides a unique opportunity to study each field from the ground up before stu-dents’ views are colored by cross-disciplinary analysis.
Felson added that the structure of the
program allows students to main-tain the integrity of their design process, since environmental concerns do not stifle the archi-tectural component of learning from the beginning of a student’s education.
But the physical separa-tion between the two schools often results in an intellectual separation as well, Iturbe said. While Felson said students are meant to serve as links between the o t h e r -wise uncon- nected
schools, Iturbe said this integra-tion is missing for much of stu-dents’ time in Yale’s program, since joint-degree students take only architecture courses for the first two of their four years.
Zhang said the new lecture series, which she and Iturbe hope will comprise one or two events per semester, is meant to bridge
the gap between the two schools. The first event,
which took place at the architecture school on
March 20, featured forestry profes-
sor Chad Oli-ver FES ’75 and
architecture critic Alan
O r g a n -s c h i
A R C ’ 8 8
sharing their knowledge about wood as both a sustainable mate-rial and a design element. She added that while many professors at the two schools share research interests, they often do not col-laborate because they have very little contact with each other.
Oliver and Organschi may co-teach a seminar on the topic of wood next semester as a result of the conversation, Zhang said, adding that she hopes all the lec-tures will lead to such tangible results.
Felson said the lecture series also offers an interesting look into the varying methodologies between the two schools, since the environment school tends to teach students how to make envi-ronmentally conscious deci-sions on a larger scale than
the Architecture School, which focuses on specific materials and design elements.
Zhang said that the audience of the first lecture filled the seminar room to capacity and contained an equal mix of students from the two schools, most of whom were not enrolled in an interdisciplin-ary program but were still inter-ested in issues investigated at the other school.
The School of Architecture also has a joint-degree program with the School of Management.
Chinese-American playwright Alvin Eng believes the e!ects of the-ater transcend scripts and actors. In a Tuesday evening talk, he said the greatest legacy of performance lies in its e!ect on the human soul.
Eng, a creative writing professor at Fordham University, spoke to a group of about 30 students and community members in the Office of Interna-tional Students and Scholars. In his presentation, Eng focused on the play “Our Town,” written by Thornton Wilder ’20, and the influences it has had upon Eng’s life and work. Theater often symbolizes broader cultural concepts, he said, and “Our Town” does so particularly e!ectively.
“Theater is the most ephemeral of art forms,” Eng said. “After the light comes up … the experience lives on in the memories of those who saw it.”
Much of Eng’s address dealt with the influence his mother had on his life. Growing up in a tight-knit fam-ily from Flushing, N.Y., during the 1960s, Eng said Chinese-Americans lived in the shadow of the ongoing Cold War conflict, and immigrants like his parents were expected to abandon many aspects of their cul-tural heritage when they arrived in the United States. His mother was particularly a!ected by this, he said, since she spoke no English and was often treated as “a Martian” in their predominantly white neighborhood.
Nevertheless, Eng said his mother
maintained a deep connection to her home in China. When she died in 2002, Eng dealt with the loss by delving deeply into playwriting and music. Eng said “Our Town” was par-ticularly helpful to him during this period, since he was able to sympa-thize with several of the work’s prin-cipal characters. His connection to Wilder’s work was strengthened by its Chinese influences, which Eng said resulted from Wilder’s time liv-ing in China during his father’s time as a U.S. ambassador in the 1930s.
Eng’s tie to “Our Town,” which takes small-town New Hampshire as its setting, led him to base several projects on the script, including a student group production he helped coordinate as a visiting professor at the City University of Hong Kong in 2011. Eng asked students to compose original scripts in English in response to Wilder’s work. The production was called “Hong Kong Time Cap-sule 2011,” a title drawn from a scene
in “Our Town” in which characters create a time capsule in hopes of pre-serving their lives for future genera-tions.
When he asked students what they would put in their own time cap-sules, Eng said the students said they would most like to preserve parts of Hong Kong that might disappear due to cultural and environmental changes, such as its Victoria Harbor. Eng’s students translated these ideas into the shows they wrote, capturing characters from headlines in Chinese newspapers and encounters in their daily lives, since these are people and events that might fade as society pro-gresses over decades and centuries to come, he said.
Eng added that seeing his own play “Last Emperor of Flushing” per-formed in China had a deep cultural significance for him.
“It was everything I could hope for,” Eng said. “Every movement, every line had a deeper meaning,
because there we were performing in a city where my ancestors once walked the earth.”
Aaron Ja!ris, a New Haven-based writer in attendance at the talk whose past work has dealt with Chinese-American theater, said Eng’s words helped him gauge how his own work and the work of his collegues might be received if they were to be staged in China.
Yale-China Association Executive Director Nancy Maasbach, who led a question-and-answer session after Eng’s presentation, said Chinese arts don’t draw as much interest in the country as other areas, such as eco-nomics. She said Eng’s talk attempted to combat this underappreciation by bringing Chinese arts to light.
Eng’s most recent play, titled “Three Trees,” will debut in Paris this May.
Alvin Eng, Chinese-American playwright and professor of creative writing, discussed the influence of theatre on cultural concepts.
There’s a lot of social issues and they’re really not narrow in scope at all.
PAUL THOMSON GRD ’12Managing director, Environmental Film
Festival at Yale
There are very few examples of architecture programs in this country that have an integration with something like [the environment school].
ALEXANDER FELSONAssistant professor, School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and School of
Architecture
BY ANISHA SUTERWALACONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Susan Farricielli, a sculptor, industrial designer and lecturer at the Yale School of Architec-ture, is founder and manager of Kinetic Innovative Seating (KiSS), LLC, a company through which she hopes to manufacture and sell a more ergonomically friendly wheelchair. The News spoke with Farricielli about KiSS, her wheelchair and her future plans.
Q What inspired you to pursue creating a more ergonomically
friendly wheelchair?
A In graduate school, I stud-ied … seating. And I did
my thesis on a seat that allowed the body to move instead of remaining stagnant. And a few years later, I realized my grand-mother was in a wheelchair, and I realized she was su!ering from symptoms that have to do with lack of circulation and [issues] related to poor seating. So it was really my grandmother.
Q When did you start working on creating the design, and
what was the process like?
A The wheelchair I started in 1992. In 1995 I got a National
Endowment for the Arts grant, and that was actually the first boost I had to spend time devel-oping the wheelchair.
Q Was this about the same time that you started Kinetic Inno-
vative Seating Systems (KiSS)?
A Well, I started a company called KiSS but I never
did anything with it. I actually started Kinetic Innovative Seat-ing Systems o"cially last year.
Q Tell us a little bit more about the mechanics of how the
chair works and how it’s better than a standard wheelchair.
A There [are] two compo-nents: there’s a seat back
and there’s a seat base. Wheel-chairs usually have cloth seats … so you take out the cloth seats and put in these seats. They allow the body to shift weight side to side and up and down. When the body moves, the motion is initi-ated at the joints, your hip and your joint, so you’re flexing at
the joint.
Q How is having that motion on the joints beneficial?
A It promotes circulation, and the shifting of the weight
dissipates the concentration of weight that is generally under the sit bones. That’s where people get sores. And then there’s the seat back … with a flex point that allows you to lean back without tipping over. So, you get to flex your spine; you get to move with-out tipping over. It’s very subtle. The idea was to make an incre-mental change that was would be a big improvement to comfort.
Q Is there anyone who’s been influential in helping get this
o! the ground?
A Oh, Yale, definitely Yale. I mean, I pretty much sat on
this and every now and then I would put the wheelchair out, work on it a little, move it for-ward. There were two things that propelled it forward. One is I got an investor, an angel investor, and before taking her money I went over to SOM and sat in on some classes and that was a big eye-
opener. I always thought, “Oh, why don’t I make this?” And I realized when I actually sat down and really worked on a business plan with a team how incredi-bly complex it was. It wasn’t just money — it was having the plan. I didn’t want to take my investor’s money and then just use it with-out knowing where I was going with it. Having that opportunity was incredible. The Yale Entre-preneurial Society … helped me find people and got the word out. SOM let me take classes, and the students that I worked with, the graduate students, were bril-liant. Each one of them contrib-uted something special. Gaylord Hospital [in Wallingford, Conn.] was great; they let me use their [physical therapy] department as a sounding board, so I went there and interviewed them.
Q By when do you aim to have the design of the chair ready
to sell?
A I can sell it now. We’re just waiting to get medical clear-
ances and medical reimburse-ment. We have to get it cleared by the Food and Drug Administra-tion, and then you have to get a healthcare reimbursement code
so that its paid for through insur-ance. It’s a product that is driven by the medical insurance market.
Q What led you to pursue indus-trial design?
A That’s my degree; I’m an industrial designer. I went
to Rhode Island School of Design and got my master’s there in 1989. I’m a sculptor, but I’m always looking at the mechan-ics of things and always taking things apart. I’m an artist, but I’m not a free spirit. I’m much more of a problem solver.
Q Are there any other projects that you’re working on right
now?
A Well, my little release proj-ect that I’m doing is I’m
designing wine labels, and then I have another project that I just got a patent for as well. That’s an equatorial sundial, a full-func-tioning sundial. But KISS is my main thing right now — it’s full time. I’m actually going to take a leave of absence at Yale this year [to work on it]. The next plan is to make the chair for soldiers com-ing back from Iraq. Right now
we’re experimenting with about 10 systems — ideally we’d like 100, but [10 is] based on the bud-get — to give to soldiers coming back.
Something like 96 percent of people in wheelchairs in the United States are on welfare. And there’s lots of reasons why, but most of them just want to lead lives where they can have a job. The reason they can’t is that they’re uncomfortable in their wheelchairs, they’re uncom-fortable sitting motionless for so long. If I could get them in a chair where they can do what every-one else does, that will be a great accomplishment.
In your o"ce chair at home, it has springs, it moves, and this started coming around in the 1970s, so then why do you put a person in a wheelchair for the rest of their life that doesn’t move? So I had to do this — my sister used my chair, my father used my chair, and now both of them have died, so I have to do this. It’s not just about me hav-ing a nice wheelchair at the end of it all. I want to leave something behind that’s useful.
The 2012 Environmental Film Festival showcased a wide thematic spectrum of environmental films.
JACOB GEIGER AND CHRISTOPHER PEAK/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER AND SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER
A new lecture series connects the environment and architecture schools in order to tackle the challenges of green design and other environmental issues.
Theater is the most ephemeral of all art forms. After the light comes up… the experience lives on in the memories of those who saw it.
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BY KASIE HUNT AND MARC LEVYASSOCIATED PRESS
GETTYSBURG, Pa. — Rick Santorum cleared the way for Mitt Romney to claim victory in the long and hard-fought battle for the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday, giving up his “against all odds” campaign as Romney’s tenacious conser-vative rival.
Santorum’s withdrawal sets up what is sure to be an acrimo-nious seven-month fight for the presidency between Romney, the former Massachusetts gov-ernor, and Democratic President Barack Obama, with the certain focus on the still-troubled econ-
omy.“This has been a good day for
me,” a smiling Romney told sup-porters in Wilmington, Del., saying he believes Santorum “will continue to have a major role” in the Republican Party.
In a preview of the personal attacks that lie ahead, Obama’s campaign manager declared that Americans neither like nor trust Romney, and the Romney camp said the fight had always been about defeating Obama, not GOP rivals.
“This game is a long, long, long way from over,” Santorum said as he bowed out of the con-test with Romney. “We are going to continue to go out there and
fight to make sure that we defeat President Barack Obama.”
Santorum had been facing a loss in the April 24 primary in Pennsylvania, the state he repre-sented in Congress for 16 years, and where the Romney campaign planned nearly $3 million in ads against him.
Whether or not there are lin-gering hard feelings, Santo-rum didn’t mention Romney, who has been the front-runner for months and was far ahead in the race for the 1,144 delegates needed to clinch the nomina-tion at the party’s convention in August.
Romney has tried to ignore his GOP rivals and campaign against
the president since he first entered the race last year with a pitch focused on the recovering but still frail economy. But Rom-ney was forced to go after Santo-rum and former house Speaker Newt Gingrich after Santorum showed strength in Iowa and Gingrich in South Carolina early this year. Then Santorum kept on, memorably winning three Southern primaries.
Romney’s campaign has long been the best funded, the best organized, and the most pro-fessionally run of the GOP con-tenders.
Despite Santorum’s refusal to get out of the race earlier - and Gingrich hasn’t officially
dropped out yet - Romney had already begun looking ahead with a unifying message. He told Pennsylvania supporters last week that “we’re Republicans and Democrats in this campaign, but we’re all connected with one destiny for America.”
And Obama has turned squarely to face Romney, recently assailing him by name, as his campaign has worked to paint Romney as a rich elit-ist who will win the nomination only because he buried his oppo-nents under millions of dollars in negative advertising.
“Neither he nor his special interest allies will be able to buy the presidency with their nega-
tive attacks,” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said Tues-day after Santorum left the race. “The more the American people see of Mitt Romney, the less they like him and the less they trust him.”
In response, a Romney cam-paign spokeswoman insisted that “for Mitt Romney, this race has always been about defeating President Obama, and getting Americans back to work.”
But Romney still has had to wage a drawn-out nomination fight that’s seen candidate after candidate try to block his path. That has highlighted Romney’s problem with the most conser-vative voters.
WORLD 10.6Percentage of youth and adult population of Spain who consumed marijuana at least once in 2010. The U.S. percentage for 2009 was 13.7. In Palau in 2007, 24.2 percent of the population consumed marijuana, and in Singapore in 2004 only 0.004 percent did.
BY ELIZABETH KENNEDY AND ZEINA KARAMASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIRUT — Syrian troops defied a U.N.-brokered cease-fire plan on Tues-day, launching fresh attacks on rebellious areas, but special envoy Kofi Annan said there was still time to salvage a truce that he described as the only chance for peace.
More than a year into the Syrian upris-ing, the international community has nearly run out of options for halting the slide toward civil war. On Tuesday, Annan insisted his peace initiative remains “very much alive” - in part because there is no viable alternative.
The U.N. has ruled out any military intervention of the type that helped bring down Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, and several rounds of sanctions and other attempts to isolate President Bashar Assad have done little to stop the blood-shed.
“If you want to take (the plan) o! the table, what will you replace it with?” Annan told reporters in Hatay, Turkey, where he toured a camp sheltering Syr-ian refugees.
Facing a Tuesday deadline to pull back its tanks and troops, the Syrian govern-ment had said it was withdrawing from certain areas, including the rebellious central province of Homs. But France called the claims a “flagrant and unac-ceptable lie,” and activists said there was no sign of a withdrawal.
Residents of Homs reported some of the heaviest shelling in months.
“Hundreds of mortar rounds and shells were falling around all day,” resident Tarek Badrakhan told The Associated Press. He said a makeshift hospital housing wounded people and dozens of corpses was destroyed in the shelling.
“It’s now on the ground,” he said.In a letter to the U.N. Security Coun-
cil, obtained by The Associated Press, Annan said Syria has not pulled troops and heavy military equipment out of cit-ies and towns, and that the regime’s last-minute conditions put the entire cease-fire at risk.
The council strongly backed Annan, with all 15 members - including Syr-ian allies China and Russia - urging Syr-ia’s leaders to halt all military action so
a cease-fire can take e!ect at 6 a.m. on Thursday, as called for by Annan’s plan. It also called on the opposition to stop all violence if the Syrian forces halt attacks.
“Obviously, members of the coun-cil are unified in their grave concern that this deadline has passed and the violence has not only continued but over the last 10 days has intensified,” said Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and this month’s council president.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Annan’s report made clear that “Assad is not complying with the commitments that he made under the six-point plan and that, in fact, violence has only gotten worse over this last week.”
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe accused Assad of lying and flouting Syr-ia’s commitments. “Not only has the use of heavy weapons not ended ...but what was presented as a withdrawal is in fact only a thinly disguised redeployment,” he said in a statement.
According to Annan’s peace plan, the pullback of Syrian forces was sup-posed to be followed by a full cease-fire
by all within 48 hours. The halt in fighting would then pave the way for an observer mission and talks between both sides over the country’s future.
After 13 months of bloodshed, a revolt that began as a mostly peaceful movement against Assad’s stagnant and entrenched regime has morphed into an insurgency.
The U.N. estimates more than 9,000 people have been killed since the upris-ing began, and the toll climbs every day. Regime forces assault their opponents with tanks, machine guns and snipers, and the Free Syrian Army rebel group launches frequent attacks against govern-ment targets, killing soldiers and security forces.
Syria’s main opposition group said about 1,000 people have been killed in regime attacks in the last eight days alone, a figure that could not be independently confirmed.
The conflict is among the most explo-sive of the Arab Spring, in part because of Syria’s web of allegiances to powerful forces including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Shiite powerhouse Iran.
Syria defies cease-fire BY DANIEL WOOLLS AND HERNAN MUNOZ
ASSOCIATED PRESS
RASQUERA, Spain — What about growing marijuana to pay off crushing municipal debt? One Spanish village put the idea to the vote Tuesday, and a major-ity of its citizens approved - but not the 75 percent needed.
The referendum in Rasquera, population 960, in the north-eastern Catalonia region rep-resented a quirky and legally touchy illustration of Spain’s deep financial woes.
The seven-member town council first approved the idea in March, but it ignited such con-troversy that the mayor agreed to put it to a referendum in the hamlet of mostly retirees.
For the plan to go ahead, the yes camp needed at least 75 per-cent of the vote, but just 308 peo-ple said ‘Si’ - only 56.3 percent - while 239 said ‘No,’ according to results published on the village’s Website.
The result e!ectively ends the idea to lease a plot of land to an association of marijuana buffs in Barcelona who wanted to pay Rasquera (EURO)1.3 million ($1.7 million) over two years. About 40 jobs - growing, harvesting and packaging the pot - were envi-sioned.
The payment by the pot-smoking group ABCDA would have been about equal to the debt owed by this picturesque pueblo that sits at the foot of a mountain range with a castle dating back to the 12th century.
Rasquera is not alone with its debt problems. Spain’s economy crashed after a real estate bub-ble and many cities and towns are desperately trying to cope by cutting spending for health care, education and jobs. Spain has the
highest unemployment rate in the 17-nation eurozone at nearly 23 percent - just shy of 50 per-cent for young workers - and it’s about to enter another recession.
Pallisa could not be reached for comment Tuesday. But Jose Maria Insausti, an adviser to the town council, said the mayor thought the pot-growing idea was “a good solution for the local economy and if somebody else has better idea, let them come forward.”
Under Spanish law, consump-tion in private of cannabis in small amounts is allowed. Grow-ing it for sale, or advertising it or selling it are illegal.
Officials with the govern-ment’s National Drug Plan have said growing marijuana in large amounts as planned in Ras-quera would be against the law, and have vowed to block any attempts.
Mayor Bernat Pallisa insisted that the initiative was legal, however, because ABCDA had pledged that the marijuana grown in Rasquera would have been for private consumption by its 5,000 members.
Pallisa had pledged to resign if the referendum failed. Insau-sti did not immediately return a message left on his cell phone seeking information about the mayor’s plans after the results were released late Tuesday.
Spain town nixes pot-growing plan
If somebody else has a better idea, let them come forward.
JOSE MARIA INSAUSSTIAdviser to town council, Rasquera, Spain
BILAL HUSSEIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Anti-Syrian regime protesters chant slogans against Syrian President Bashar Assad during a demonstration after Friday prayer in Beirut, Lebanon on March 30, 2012.
AROUND THE IVIESPAGE 12 YALE DAILY NEWS · WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
“AIDS is an absolutely tragic disease. The argument about AIDS being some kind of divine retribution is crap.” CALVIN KLEIN FASHION DESIGNER
BY NICHOLAS FANDOSSTAFF WRITER
Representatives of the Harvard Global Health and AIDS Coalition gathered outside of U.S. Senator Scott Brown’s Office on Monday to urge the Republican to endorse an effort to block proposed funding cuts to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
Dressed in Super Man-themed attire and wielding signs, a dozen protesters urged Brown to “be our hero” and sign a “Dear Colleague” letter, encourag-ing fellow senators to preserve funding levels for PEPFAR. The letter has gar-nered some support from Democrats, but Brown would be the first Republi-can to formally back the initiative.
The letter from GHAC is part of a larger e!ort to preserve PEPFAR fund-ing since President Obama proposed $562.9 million in cuts to the program earlier this year. PEPFAR provides funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and relief and is part of the President’s Global Health Initiative started by George W. Bush, which pledged $15 billion to fight HIV/AIDS around the world over five years.
The proposed cuts would be the first in the program’s relatively brief his-tory and would break Obama’s cam-paign promise to increase funding for the initiative during his presidency.
“We really don’t believe in the state-ment that we shouldn’t be funding AIDS research and relief abroad,” Cara S. Guenther ’13 said.
The GHAC representatives have met with various Massachusetts politicians in the past, including Democratic Sen-ator John Kerry, but after a series of meetings they were still unable to secure support. Isabel R. Ostrer ’14, one of the event’s organizers, said that GHAC members were optimistic after several meeting with Brown’s aides.
T h e g r o u p was told Brown was not avail-able and instead met briefly with a member of the senator’s staff. They presented the sta!er with a
letter to Brown, as well as a Super Man cape signed by Massachusetts voters in support of the action.
“Scott Brown likes to think of him-self as a maverick,” said Lily H. Ostrer ’14. “He prides himself on being inde-pendent of all the entrenched issues in Washington....This is an issue in which Scott Brown can kind of be a contrarian and stand up for this issue.”
Ostrer said Brown has been a strong supporter of human rights issues in the past, and it makes sense that he would support sustained PEPFAR funding.
The Senate will begin putting together its budget for the next fis-cal year in the coming weeks, leaving a critical window for action against the proposed cuts, protesters said.
“There needs to be a demonstration of support in order for the appropriate committee to restore funding,” Ostrer said. The group plans to follow up with Brown on Wednesday and reevaluate if he does not agree to take action.
BY SHELLI GIMELSTEINSTAFF WRITER
Less evidence will now be required for the Office of Stu-dent Conduct to find accused students responsible for sexual harassment or assault.
After receiving a set of guide-lines known as a “Dear Col-league” letter from the United States Department of Educa-tion’s Office of Civil Rights in April 2011, the OSC has made several revisions to its sexual misconduct policy in Penn’s Student Code of Conduct.
The changes were announced in today’s edition of the Penn Almanac.
Previously, in order to find a student responsible for sexual harassment or assault, the OSC applied a standard of “clear and convincing evidence” — mean-ing that it must be highly prob-able that an alleged incident occurred.
Based on the OCR’s guide-lines, however, the OSC will now employ a lower standard known as “preponderance of the evi-dence” — which requires proof that the accused student was more likely than not responsible for an alleged incident.
“In every forum where civil rights issues are decided, the standard of proof is a prepon-derance of the evidence,” OSC Director Susan Herron said. “The charter changes just bring the civil rights case within a school disciplinary system into the same framework as all other cases.”
She added that because Penn is an educational system rather than a court of law, it has more flexibility in its disciplinary processes.
According to Herron, the guidance in the Dear Col-
league let-ter reflects the OCR’s concerns about the increasing incidence of sexual assault on
college campuses.“Students have a right to
attend school in an environ-ment free of harassment,” she said.
In addition, the Code of Conduct will now require sex-ual violence investigations to be completed within 60 days — the length of time that the OSC believes investigations can “reasonably” take. Since there is “a lot at stake” in sexual harass-ment cases, “we want to make sure we get it right,” Herron said.
Political Science professor Rogers Smith explained that it is common to find a lesser stan-dard of proof used in civil pro-cedures or at academic institu-tions as opposed to the criminal justice system, where “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” is typically required.
The new standard — which Smith said is akin to being 51 percent sure of the accused person’s responsibility — will “change the outcomes” of cases at Penn, he added.
“It will mean that judgments that a person is guilty of sex-ual harassment will be easier to achieve,” he explained.
According to Smith, the pre-ponderance of evidence stan-dard is common in other areas of law, such as medical procedures that involve removing a patient from life support. Under this standard, courts permit testi-mony from parents or spouses who say what the patient would
have wanted.Herron emphasized that
despite the change in policy, the rights of the accused student will still be protected.
“We’d never bring forth a case that hasn’t met the threshold of required evidence,” she said.
She added that students always have a right to challenge the OSC’s findings by going to a hearing in front of a panel of three students and two faculty members, as well as appealing the panel’s decision to a disci-plinary appellate officer.
Organizations aimed at pre-venting sexual violence, such as Abuse and Sexual Assault Pre-vention and the Penn Women’s Center, said they are pleased with the change in the OSC charter.
“It’s important that we have a policy in place that suggests to the campus community that we believe what survivors say,” ASAP Chair and College senior Joseph Lawless said.
Penn Women’s Center Direc-tor Felicity Paxton agreed.
“This lower standard of evi-dence better supports victim’s rights,” she said. “[It] will hope-fully encourage more victims of sexual violence to pursue disci-plinary action following an act of assault or harassment.”
[Scott Brown] prides himself on being independent of all the entrenched issues in Washington.
LILY OSTRERHarvard student
Students have a right to attend school in an environment free of harassment.
SUSAN HERRONDirector, University of Pennsylvania O!ce
A federal judge demanded that Reebok buy back the Tim Tebow jer-seys it produced when Tebow went from Denver to the Jets in March. Nike is the exclusive licensee of the NFL, and the company sued Reebok when it made the Tebow jerseys.
ments, and Dorato explained that they are not appropriate even in jest, Samaha said.
The participants in Monday’s discussion said that as leaders and members of campus orga-nizations, Yalies need to think about how they talk, especially because there are probably some people within their organizations that are not straight and need to know that they have a sup-portive and welcoming community, regardless of their sexual orientation.
Samaha added that although his coach has been very supportive, he has heard some cases of coaches using homophobic slurs, and that “is just inexcusable.”
Palios asked if coming out is more di!cult within a larger group such as a fraternity or sorority, as opposed to within a smaller team like tennis or rugby.
Kelly said she does not believe team or orga-nizaton size makes a di"erence.
“It’s an issue within both sports teams and sororities, and it’s something Pi Phi, Kappa, and Theta should talk about,” Kelly said. “Events like these are great, and team captains should be required to go to these meetings.” Hilary O’Connell ’14, president of the LGBTQ Co-op, made it clear that a person’s sexual orientation
has nothing to do with his or her ability as an athlete.
But Samaha added that there is a certain “circle of masculinity,” and no one wants to put a dent in the success and unity of the team when all members are focused on a common goal, making it di!cult to come out while on a team.
Will Ferraro ’13, a member of lightweight crew, said he did not think that it was a mascu-linity issue.
“If someone were out on the team, I don’t think anyone would care,” Ferraro said. “We want the boats to move fast, and if they are tough and can move boats, their sexual orien-tation really doesn’t matter.”
Although the event was well-attended, Palios said that the same groups are attending Athletes and Allies events every time and yet the same large teams have no openly gay mem-bers. Athletes and Allies events are designed to provoke discussion on attitudes towards sexual orientation on sports teams and what can be done to increase acceptance of athletes who do not identify as straight.
This event was arranged by LGBTQ Co-op as part of Pride@Yale.
A History. George H. W. Bush ’48 was once the captain. Babe Ruth has played
here. And most importantly, we have great coaches.
Q Tell me about your most memorable match or moment.
A Last season, we swept Dartmouth, which was a defending champion back
then. It was awesome. We were in the last place and jumped to first place. Personally, Dartmouth is my least favorite.
Q Who was the toughest to play against?
A Besides Dartmouth, I would say Princeton.
Q How is your relationship with the coach?
A We have two coaches and two vol-unteer coaches, and I love them all.
We are having a tough season, but they are really positive.
Q Was there a time that you could not play because you were injured? How did you
feel?
A Not at Yale. I have started every game here. It is really bad to be injured, since
you cannot help your team.
Q Any plans on continuing baseball after graduation? The Major Leagues,
maybe?
A I hope so. Everyone in our team wants to play at the next level. My ideal place
to play would be professional baseball at some level.
Q Going back to the season, what do you think is challenging the team’s perfor-
mance?
A Baseball is a weird sport. When things are going good, hitting the ball well,
baseball is easy. At the beginning of the season, we had a few injuries — just pitch-ers cannot score runs, and we were on a losing streak. We had a lot of hits, but could not score runs. But we are going to keep our heads high.
Q What would be a practical goal right now for the team? What can Bulldogs
fans look forward to?
A We have 12 Ivy League games left. It might sound crazy, but we are not out
of it, and one big swing can change every-thing. The fans should watch for the Ivy Championship.
Q Who do you look up to, a possible role model?
A Derek Jeter, definitely. He is unbeliev-able. And Craig Biggio.
QWhat’s your favorite baseball team?
AThe Houston Astros.
Q Harvard is coming next weekend. Any comment on that?
A Yes, Harvard is coming up, and that will be the chance to turn the season
around, starting with the Crimson. We are not happy right now, but we are still trying so we are not worried. We need more lucky breaks and then will be fine.
single person who raced [for Yale] helped us get those results.”
Yale Bulldog Cycling cap-tain Alli Hugi ’13 agreed that the whole team did well in this race, and added that it is stronger than last year.
After its nine season races, the team will race in the ECCC Regional Championships in New Hampshire at the end of April, and will then send a full team (four men and four women) to the National Championship in Utah in late May. By contrast, DeWitt said last year the team did not send anyone to nationals.
All four members of the Yale team interviewed said the race was a success for Yale. But the Harvard team had a misfortune on Saturday night. After the time trial and circuit race were fin-ished, 11 Harvard bikes were sto-len from the team van at their hotel. Five were recovered by New Haven police, but the own-
ers of the other six bikes were not able to race on Sunday in the cri-terium. The stolen bikes have still not been found.
Nick Geiser ’13, who said he placed in all of his races and won the amateur criterium, said the annual race is important for the Yale team and the local commu-nity as it is the only home race of the season and allows the team to showcase Yale and New Haven.
The Yale Bulldog Cycling club dates back to 1891, making it one of the oldest clubs at Yale. According to the team’s website, the Yale-Vassar Bike Race was an annual mixer for the two col-leges, running through the mid-20th century. It centered around a race from New Haven to Pough-keepsie, N.Y.
The cycling team will race in the ECCC Regional Championships in New Hamphire at the end of the month.
Cycling team beats Ivy League competitors
Hanson looking forward to Ivy Championship
Panel discusses challenges of gay athletes
GRAHAM HARBOE/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Hanson and the rest of the Bulldogs will face Fairfield this afternoon at home.
CYCLING FROM PAGE 14
BASEBALL FROM PAGE 14 ALLIES FROM PAGE 14
Odom done in Dallas after exchange with Cuban
BY STEPHEN HAWKINSASSOCIATED PRESS
DALLAS — Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban had noticed Lamar Odom’s uninspired play numerous times before, and kept hoping things would change.
It took one reply by Odom during a heated halftime exchange in his last game, when Cuban questioned the player’s commitment to the team and Odom told him to quit playing games, to realize it was time for the two sides to part ways.
“Just his response to it. Everybody goes through ups and downs. Every player does. We tried to put him in a position to succeed. ... It didn’t work,” Cuban said Tuesday night, his first public comments since the team confirmed a day earlier that Odom was done in Dallas.
Their halftime exchange came after Odom played an uninspired four minutes Saturday night at Memphis.
“I just asked him, does he want to go for it or not. Is he in or is he out? I think he thought we were playing poker. I just didn’t get a commit-ment. And that was the end,” Cuban said. “This was a big game for us, and he wasn’t connecting to that. And if you’re not positive energy, you’re negative energy.”
When asked if that was the first time he noticed Odom having such a demeanor, Cuban responded, “No, but the first 17 times, I decided to try to help him and turn it into a positive.”
That never happened.Odom’s averages of 6.6 points, 4.2 rebounds
and 20.5 minutes in his underwhelming 50-game stint in Dallas were career lows. He was also often late for team activities such as practices and meetings.
The Mavericks didn’t release him and instead said Odom would be listed inactive for their remaining nine games. That started with Tues-day night’s game against Sacramento.
“He didn’t want to play. He decided to go elsewhere or do something else. Now we regroup and go forward,” Cuban said. “We kept on hoping things would turn out right. It just
got to the point where there weren’t enough games in the season to try to find out.”
The defending NBA champion Mavericks were only one game ahead of ninth place in the Western Conference standings going into the game against the Kings.
Dallas acquired the NBA’s reigning Sixth Man of the Year from the Los Angeles Lak-ers just before the lockout-shortened season. It was a low-risk deal for the Mavericks, who gave up a first-round pick and the trade excep-tion from a deal that sent Tyson Chandler to the New York Knicks.
The Lakers seemed compelled to move the 6-foot-10 forward, who made $8.9 million this season, after trying to send him to New Orleans in a Chris Paul deal that was nixed by the league. There were also the personal issues for Odom, whose 24-year-old cousin was mur-dered last summer only days before the player was involved in a fatal car accident that killed a teen pedestrian after the car he was riding in as a passenger collided with a motorcycle.
Cuban said the Mavericks knew about Odom’s fragile emotional state when they got him.
“Yeah, but we thought we could fight through it,” Cuban said. “We knew that’s why he was available.”
Cuban insisted that he failed in trying to make the situation work, and that he didn’t have to talk to anyone else to know the end had arrived.
“If I’m going to be the guy who smiles with my hand on the trophy, I’ve got to be the guy who takes the responsibility,” Cuban said. “It was just my initiative, just paying attention. ... I was working with him, tried to get him back on the horse. When I failed, it was my job to recog-nize it, and deal with it.”
Odom, the husband and reality TV co-star of Khloe Kardashian, still has a year left on his four-year contract. Any team that has the 13-year veteran on its roster on June 29 must give him a $2.4 million buyout or be responsi-ble for the full $8.2 million he would be due in 2012-13.
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THE NUMBER OF CONSECUTIVE GAMES IN WHICH BASEBALL SHORTSTOP CALE HANSON ’12 HAS GOTTEN ON BASE. HANSON HAS THE BEST BATTING AVERAGE, .361, ON THE TEAM. His on base percentage, .441, also stands out among his teammates.
STAT OF THE DAY 27
“We are still positive though we are not play-ing well. We still trust each other and have high hopes.”
CALE HANSON ’14SHORTSTOP, BASEBALL
GREG MANGANO ’12PLAYING IN INVITATIONALMangano, a center on the men’s basket-ball team, is playing in the Portsmouth Invitational, which begins tonight and goes until Saturday. The invitational gives Mangano the opportunity to play in front of NBA representatives. He had 1,213 points in his Yale career.
BRIAN O’NEILL ’12USCHO.COM ALL-AMERICAO’Neill, captain and forward on the men’s hockey team, was named to the USCHO.com all-America team yester-day. O’Neill is currently playing for the Manchester Monarchs. He scored 21 goals for the Bulldogs in the 2011-2012 season.
MLBDetroit 5Tampa Bay 2
MLBSt. Louis 3Cincinnati 1
MLBL.A. Dodgers 2Pittsburgh 1
NBAPhiladelphia 107New Jersey 88
NBABoston 115Miami 107
YALE DAILY NEWS · WENDESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
BY EUGENE JUNGCONTRIBUTING REPORTER
After the Ivy games against Princeton and Cornell over the weekend, the Yale baseball team is now more than halfway through its season with only 16 games remaining. Despite some tough losses, shortstop Cale Hanson ’14 has been a huge asset to the team, reahing based in the past 27 consecutive games. The News sat down with Hanson and talked about the state of the team.
Q What did you think about the matches over the weekend?
A It was a big improvement from week one, but we are
still having trouble scoring.
Q How is the atmosphere on the team? And how do practices
work?
A We go to stadium every day and practice about four
hours per day. We focus on team defense in the first half, and then in [the] second half, o!ense. We are still positive, though we are not playing well. We still trust each other and have high hopes.
Q How is it to be a shortstop for the Bulldogs? Why did you
choose that position?
A I was recruited to play any position. I was an outfielder
freshman year, and this year I got a chance to play as a shortstop. I like infield better since I played [there] in high school.
Q When did you start playing baseball?
A Very young, when I was about 4 or 5 years old. I have
not stopped. I played other sports when I was young, but my favor-ite is baseball.
Q What is the best thing about playing baseball at Yale?
Cale Hanson ’14 remains positive on baseball
BY MCLANE RITZELCONTRIBUTING REPORTER
On Monday night, athletes from women’s club rugby, men’s and women’s track and field, men’s tennis, and men and women’s basketball teams, some of whom are in sororities and fra-ternities, shared their views on the challenges gay students face both on athletic teams and in Greek organizations at Yale.
The panelists on Monday’s discussion included Gabby Kelly ’12, the captain of the women’s track and field team and a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, Andrew Goble ’15, a member of the track and field team and Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, and Joel Samaha ’12 of the men’s tennis team. Stefan Palios ’14,
a member of the track and field team, mediated the discussion.
Kelly and Samaha both discussed the frus-tration queer athletes experience on their teams. Their teammates’ ignorance seemed to be the main source of frustration for gay ath-letes. Most of the approximately 20 attendees of Monday’s discussion said that teams must set a standard of behavior to respect all athletes, regardless of sexual orientation.
Samaha said that on the first day of prac-tice his coach, Alex Dorato, brought the team together to lay down ground rules of things that would not be said on his courts. These words included racial slurs and homophobic com-
‘Unconventional allies’ gather for Pride Month
GRAHAM HARBOE/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Shortstop Cale Hanson ’14 has scored 11 runs for the Bulldogs this season.
DOROTTYA BLAHO NOBLE
The club cycling team bested Dartmouth, Harvard, and West Point in this weekend’s Lux et Velocitas race.
JONATHAN VILLANUEVA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
About twenty Yale students gathered on Monday night to discuss how athletic teams, sororities, and fraternities could be “unconventional allies” for students at Yale.
BY LINDSEY UNIAT AND JOSEPHINE MASSEY
STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Twenty-seven members of the Yale Bulldog Cycling Club spent Saturday and Sunday racing up and down East Rock in the fourth annual Lux et Velocitas race.
The race, contested by mem-bers of Yale’s cycling club, was the seventh of nine consecu-tive weekend races in the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference. It drew approximately 300 athletes from 35 di!erent universities, as well as around 50 local cyclists and a few high school teams.
Club member David DeWitt GRD ’14, who was the primary coordinator of the event, did not race but said that the event was successful and ran well.
He added that all the riders were challenged by the steep-ness of East Rock Park. Some divisions rode up the 500-foot incline, with gradations of over 15 percent, as many as 12 times in one race.
The two-day competition included three di!erent events:
a four-mile individual time trial and a four-mile circuit race on Saturday, followed by a crite-rium race on Sunday. Each event offered a women’s and a men’s race, as well as four di!erent lev-els for riders of di!ering experi-ence.
Teams received points for top finishes in each race, and Yale placed second with 186 points — just edging out the United States Military Academy with 185. MIT was the clear winner, with a whopping 278 points, but Yale earned bragging rights and a tro-phy within the Ivy League. Dart-mouth and Harvard were next-closest, with places of sixth and eighth respectively.
William Redden ’14, who raced in the Men’s B category and helped organize the event, said that since Yale does not have the largest cycling team in compari-son to other schools, the outcome was “really good” for its club.
Daniel Blizzard MED ’12 placed sixth out of 64 in the men’s A cat-egory, and Erica Blom GRD ’12 placed 13th out of 35 in the wom-en’s A/B combined.
“It was fantastic, everyone did a good job,” Redden said. “Every
Cycling team second in Lux et Velocitas raceCYCLING
