Yale Daily News

28/04/2023

ARTS | Yale’s Center for Collaborative Arts & Media commenced its two-day spring 2023 symposium, “Ultra Space,” on April 27.

The symposium is designed to bring together artists, scientists and scholars to examine the intricate relationship between space, design and the human body, according to organizers. The event pays tribute to the pioneering ideas of artists-turned-architects Shusaku Arakawa and Madeline Gins, who advocated for the potential of architecture to extend human life.

The symposium examines the relationship between space, design and the human body, according to organizers.

28/04/2023

SCITECH | A new initiative from the Yale School of Public Health and Yale Pathology Labs hopes to bring low-cost, accessible health services to New Haven — all on four wheels.

Unveiled at an April 20 meeting on Yale’s West Campus, the Laboratory-in-a-Van initiative aims to bring public health services to historically underserved communities. Using a van retrofitted with laboratory-grade diagnostic equipment, the mobile clinic will employ SalivaDirect — a saliva-based COVID-19 PCR test developed at YSPH — to facilitate on-site testing with a turnaround time of two to three hours.

A new initiative from the Yale School of Public Health and Yale Pathology Labs hopes to make health screening more accessible through a retrofitted mobile lab.

28/04/2023

ARTS | Over 200 Yale students dressed in “chaotic cocktail attire” gathered at the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking last Saturday to watch Yale’s first fashion show in five years.

The event, titled “Entropy,” was hosted by MAISON at Yale, the University’s newest arts and fashion collective. MAISON arose from the “fallout” of the previous club Yale Fashion House, as previous YFH member Mona Chen ‘25 wished to continue promoting fashion at Yale. Chen now serves as MAISON’s co-president.

The University’s newest arts and fashion collective saw over 200 attendees at their show, which celebrated the “beauty of imperfection.”

28/04/2023

SCITECH | As a third grader, Sandy Chang ’88 was culturing protozoans, taking photomicrographs and recording telescope observations in a little lab he had set up in his Bronx, New York bedroom.

Since then, he’s moved into a slightly bigger lab at Yale to study telomeres. As a physician scientist and professor of laboratory medicine, pathology and molecular biophysics and biochemistry, Chang also serves as the Yale College associate dean for science & quantitative reasoning education. He founded the Science, Technology and Research Scholars program, or STARS, for underrepresented minorities in STEM, revamped STEM recruitment, teaches first year seminars and diagnoses cancer patients as a pathologist, all while running his NIH-funded lab.

Associate dean for science & quantitative reasoning Sandy Chang prioritizes democratizing science through mentorship and improving research accessibility.

28/04/2023

NEW HAVEN | The Study at Yale hosted a conversation with writer Kate Manning ’79 about her latest book, “Gilded Mountain,” on Tuesday.

The book talk was hosted for prospective students and their families who were staying at the hotel for Bulldogs Days. The News spoke with Manning about being back on campus, her latest novel and her process for research and character building. Manning highlighted her passion for storytelling, which she said comes as an impulse. Driven by her passion for storytelling, she has navigated through various industries, working in documentary television and journalism. Manning has won two Emmy Awards and has published pieces in The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Manning highlighted her research process and inspiration for her latest novel, “Gilded Mountain,” during a discussion at the hotel on Tuesday afternoon.

28/04/2023

UNIVERSITY | Bella Taylor ’23 has spent her last few weeks at Yale testing various paints, inks and pens on flat rocks to see which would stick on the surfaces best.

Taylor is hosting a rock-painting session open to Saybrook students in the Saybrook College courtyards on April 28 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., where she will be encouraging each person to write down a positive message on a stone. She will then hide these painted stones all over campus for all members of Yale to find during reading week — the period that Yale designates between the end of classes and the start of final exams — in an attempt to cultivate a campus community that fosters mental health and wellbeing.

Students can expect to find rocks with positive messages painted on them all over campus during reading week, thanks to a project by Bella Taylor ‘23.

28/04/2023

UNIVERSITY | Yale quizbowl won the Academic Competition Federation’s national championship in the undergraduate division for the second time in two years.

The team was led by a trio of high-scoring seniors Daniel Ma ’23, Michal Gerasimiuk ’23 and Daniel Sheinberg ’23 — and featured Arthur Delot-Vilain ’25, a self-described “lower level getter of questions.” The Yalies went 12-5 over two days of gameplay at MIT in which the Yale cohort pulled away from their opponents over a dominant 17 games. They placed fifth overall in the country and the highest of any team that was made up solely of undergraduates.

The Bulldogs excelled across 17 games at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last weekend.

28/04/2023

UNIVERSITY | Yale’s campus was abuzz this week as prospective students and their parents flocked to campus for Bulldog Days, an annual on-campus program for admitted students.

Over 1,400 prospective students attended this year’s event, making it the largest Bulldog Days Yale has hosted to date. From their arrival on Monday afternoon to their departure on Wednesday, future Yalies participated in a variety of events, including an extracurricular bazaar, campus tours and Yale professors’ master classes.

Over 1,400 admitted students and 800 family members traveled to New Haven this week to explore Yale’s campus before the May 1 matriculation deadline.

28/04/2023

UNIVERSITY | While working in Brian Scholl’s psychology lab, Sami Yousif GRD ’22 said that he felt belittled and disrespected.

Scholl allegedly forced him to hold meetings in the early hours of the morning, and Yousif — a graduate student in the department of psychology — feared retaliation if he declined. Yousif also said that Scholl would make demeaning comments about other faculty and students.

Advisers are graduate students’ lifelines at Yale: they provide guidance in academic and professional matters and boost students into their postgrad lives. But when these relationships turn sour, few resources exist for graduate students to equitably resolve faculty conflicts.

28/04/2023

UNIVERSITY | Seeking feminizing hormone replacement therapy, F. first went to the Yale Health website — only to find a single paragraph stating that she would be referred to an endocrinologist in specialty services, with no phone numbers or further information.

The website was not organized in a “clear and compiled way,” said F., who has been granted anonymity to protect her privacy. Instead, she had to move through multiple different web pages to get the information she needed and still could not figure out which numbers to call.

The News spoke to 17 students and faculty about their experiences seeking gender-affirming care at Yale Health. All but one of those interviewed described having to work around numerous hurdles within a confusing system of care.

27/04/2023

EDITORIAL | "The Yale Daily News Editorial Board calls upon the University to reconsider its decision to remove student organizations from their on-campus spaces at Crown Street 305 and Welch Hall. The University plans to use the space for storage, arguing that it will remove inequities in assigning offices to specific organizations. However, the Editorial Board argues that the decision feels illogical and that the University should work towards true equity by engaging in conversations with student groups about their needs and investing in improving unsafe buildings instead of exiling students."

The Yale Daily News Editorial Board calls upon the University to reconsider its decision to remove student organizations from their on-campus spaces at Crown Street […]

27/04/2023

UNIVERSITY | The Likoni Library Project is calling upon the Yale community to help inspire Mombasa youth.

The project — which aims to cultivate foundational literacy skills in Mombasa, Kenya by disseminating donated books — will host a book packaging event on April 27 at the Afro-American Cultural Center. Student volunteers will gather to close out a months-long campus book drive.

“When I think back to my first moments of falling in love with learning, and I think it’s the case with everyone, it started with reading,” Nadja Umlauf ’22 said.

On April 27, The Likoni Library Project, spearheaded by Yale alum Nadja Umlauf and fellow English Fullbright Scholars, will be hosting a book packaging event for Mombasa youth at the Afro-American Cultural Center.

27/04/2023

UNIVERSITY | When Dinny Risri Aletheiani first stepped foot on Yale’s campus in 2013 and reviewed the curriculum for Indonesian, she was dissatisfied.

Aletheiani, who identifies as part of the Indonesian diaspora in the United States, had taken notes on how to develop curriculum on the national language of the fourth largest country in the world during her early days at Arizona State University — where she received her doctorate in curriculum studies 15 years ago. There, in a county with approximately 1,000 Indonesian Americans, Aletheiani would teach undergraduate courses on Indonesian language, research and culture, designing instructional materials to reach students who were geographically and culturally disconnected from Southeast Asia’s most spoken language.

So Aletheiani was disappointed at Yale’s existing Indonesian curriculum when she arrived at the University 10 years ago.

For Aletheiani, a curriculum studies scholar with Javanese roots, Indonesian is more than about language skills — it’s about people.

27/04/2023

OPINION | "Yale’s sexual misconduct policies are failing its students. I quickly understood this when I reported a case of sexual misconduct during my first year. After speaking to and surveying other students, it became clear that it wasn’t just me: rather, I uncovered a more widespread problem with Yale’s practices.

For my senior thesis, I surveyed 245 Yale undergraduates about their perceptions and experiences with Yale’s Title IX policies. I asked students how they would rate their (or a friend’s) experience reporting sexual misconduct at Yale. Out of all the respondents, 75 percent rated their experience as bad (49 percent) or very bad (26 percent). Title IX must be held accountable for their harmful actions and the misinformation that they have spread to vulnerable students seeking help."

Yale’s sexual misconduct policies are failing its students. I quickly understood this when I reported a case of sexual misconduct during my first year. After […]

27/04/2023

UNIVERSITY | Incarcerated students enrolled in the Yale Prison Education Initiativewill walk across the stage in the program’s first ever commencement ceremony this spring.

YPEI, officially founded at Dwight Hall in 2016 by Yale alumna Zelda Roland ’08 GRD ’16, offered its first for-credit courses in the summer of 2018 at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, a high to maximum-security facility for adult males.

The YPEI received a $1.5 million grant two years ago to further support its mission of bringing rigorous, credit-bearing Yale courses to incarcerated students in the state of Connecticut. The donor, the Mellon Foundation, serves as the largest benefactor of the humanities in the nation; their donation to the YPEI was part of a larger $125 million project to foster intellectual and creative freedom for those affected by the carceral system. The most substantial development that ensued from the additional monetary funds was the expansion of the YPEI to a second prison in the fall of 2022 — the program now also provides classes at the Federal Correctional Institution, a low-security women’s prison in Danbury.

https://buff.ly/40OKCsx

27/04/2023

UNIVERSITY | Grammy award-winning artist Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, better known by his stage name Lupe Fiasco, will join Yale’s community as a Saybrook Associate Fellow in the fall of 2023.

The program allows Fellows and Associate Fellows — who can be faculty, staff and other Yale affiliates — to form connections with each other and with students over a four-year renewable timespan. Head of College Thomas Near described Saybrook’s Fellowship as a sort of college “social network,” wherein students are able to reach out to specific Fellows based on individual interests and expertise.

Though Fellows are often associated with the University, colleges can nominate and appoint non-Yale employees per year as Associate Fellows. This year, Head Near nominated Fiasco, and Fiasco accepted.

The Grammy-winning rapper, singer, record producer and entrepreneur will become a member of Saybrook’s Fellowship program.

27/04/2023

UP CLOSE | New Haven resident Richard Youins has been clean since 2010.

After battling drug addiction for over two decades, he now serves as a peer mentor for others struggling with substance use disorder, often working directly with his neighbors and friends of friends as they navigate recovery. Because of the nature of his work and his personal experiences, he is no stranger to the horrors that substance use disorder can wreak on the lives of individuals and families, especially in communities of color like his own.

At the same time, the drugs on the street today are different than they were when he battled addiction decades ago. More people are dying of overdoses, too.

“Compounding” pandemics: Among Black and Latino New Haveners, fatal overdoses skyrocket during COVID-19 New Haven resident Richard Youins has been clean since 2010. After battling drug addiction for over two decades, he now serves as a peer mentor for others struggling with substance use disorde...

25/04/2023

UNIVERSITY | When the sun enters the constellation of Aries in the middle of April, many South and Southeast Asian communities usher in a new year. Last weekend, almost 150 Yale affiliates gathered in Sudler Hall for a cultural showcase in celebration of Pohela Boishakh, the first day of the Bengali calendar.

The program, which was organized by the Yale Bengali Students Association, took place from 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on April 16 and included dances, musical performances and poetry recitation, as well as a Bengali meal at the event’s conclusion. Individuals from across the University — undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty and other staff — came together to celebrate Bengali culture and the new year.

“I planned the event with two goals in mind: to create a space that fosters stronger relationships within the Bengali community and share the rich art and literature of our culture with the wider Yale community,” YBSA cultural chair and showcase director Mrinmoyee Guha ’25 wrote to the News. “Over hours of rehearsal with singers, dancers and instrument players, we were already successful in creating an atmosphere where Bengalis felt at home.”

https://buff.ly/40BuD1c

25/04/2023

OPINION | "When someone asks me what it means to be Asian-American, I think about my family — about my memories growing up and the things I learned we shared with a broader community. It’s an identity that is ever-changing, but always permanent — and centers around my relationship to a culture.

But when I think about the question in the context of being an athlete, the focus shifts. That understanding of my identity was formed more narrowly, through a relationship between myself and the “public.” Separate from the people around me, I learned to be aware of how I was projecting myself and how it was being received. I was developing a relationship with my image— which felt both powerful and fragile at the same time."

When I was 12 years old, I attended my first international rhythmic gymnastics competition. After being named to the junior national team of the United […]

25/04/2023

NEW HAVEN | An estimated 1,000 people, including Yale students, New Haveners and out-of-town guests, gathered on the New Haven Green at 5 p.m. last Wednesday for a time of Christian prayer and worship.

The Yalies led worship from a stage facing Phelps Gate; behind them stood the three churches on the New Haven Green. The event, called “Rekindle,” was organized by Yale students in collaboration with Times Square Church in New York City. The church provided lighting, sound equipment, instruments and some musicians. Summit International School of Ministry, the Bible college associated with Times Square Church, led the second set of worship music. Yale students led the first and third sets of worship, organized outreach on campus and handled logistics for hosting the event.

Around 1000 attendees gathered on the New Haven Green on Apr. 19 for Rekindle, a worship event organized by Yale students in collaboration with Times Square Church.

25/04/2023

UNIVERSITY | The decades-long push by students, alumni and members of the Yale Divinity School to grant the late Reverend James W.C. Pennington a degree has finally come to fruition.

On Monday morning, University President Peter Salovey announced in an email that the Board of Trustees has agreed to issue Pennington, along with the Reverend Alexander Crummell, posthumous M.A. Privatim degrees.

Both Pennington and Crummell studied theology at Yale during the 1830s and 40s, respectively, but because of their race, were denied various privileges that their white classmates had — including the ability to participate in discussion or borrow books from the library. They were also not allowed to matriculate for a degree. Pennington was a formerly enslaved person who went on to publish an autobiography and the first African American history textbook. Crummell was a scholar of pan-Africanism and the founder of the American Negro Academy in Washington, D.C.

The push to award Pennington his degree 186 years after he studied at Yale has been far from easy, but student groups see the Board of Trustees’ decision as a step in the right direction.

25/04/2023

UP CLOSE | Highly selective universities like Yale consider an applicant’s potential to succeed within the college community. The Yale Office of Undergraduate Admissions states on its website that they seek out “students who will make the most of Yale and the most of their talents” and that they consider how a prospective Yalie would, if admitted, “engage the resources” that the University has to offer.

This framework of potential success at the University is further complicated by the persistent nature of mental illness that Gutierrez notes. For students with chronic mental health conditions, or whose past experiences may have yielded permanent psychological consequences, the question of what to disclose or not disclose in a college application is a complex one, as they seek to find the mix of poignant and palatable that will make an application successful.

Yale’s admissions office told the News that it does not discriminate against applications on the basis of any kind of health condition, including mental illness. In fact, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan wrote in a statement that an applicant’s choice to share details about any sort of health issue can provide further insight on challenging circumstances that a student has had to navigate.

UP CLOSE | Pressure to project growth Gabriella Gutierrez ’23 has just completed her senior thesis — a research project exploring behavior in different subtypes of schizophrenia — and is rapidly approaching commencement, when she will officially receive her Yale College degree in psychology. A...

21/04/2023

UNIVERSITY | One Yale course got the chance to hear from a political leader in the midst of an active resistance movement.

Students in the Yale course “Colonialism, Nationalism, and Identity in Myanmar” hosted Myanmar resistance leader, Lian Hmung Sakhong, the minister of foreign affairs in Myanmar’s National Unity Government — a resistance government formed after the February 2021 coup in Myanmar. Sakhong spoke about various topics including federalism, repression against ethnic minorities, peacebuilding and resistance efforts in Myanmar.

The Yale class “Colonialism, Nationalism, and Identity in Myanmar” hosted Myanmar resistance leader Lian Hmung Sakhong, the minister of foreign affairs in Myanmar’s National Unity Government, on Wednesday.

21/04/2023

NEW HAVEN | While New Haven has adopted various efforts to address climate change in recent years, local activists remain firm in their resolve that residents and policymakers must do more to combat the ongoing climate crisis.

Four panelists who spoke at Albertus Magnus College on Monday evening acknowledged ongoing city efforts while also providing novel solutions to climate change. The panelists represented various city organizations, including the New Haven Coalition for Active Transportation, the Yale School of the Environment and the New Haven Climate Movement.

Representatives from various local organizations gathered at Albertus Magnus College to discuss responses to climate change in New Haven on Monday evening.

21/04/2023

SCITECH | Since the start of the year, at least 102 people in Connecticut have died from a drug overdose. That death toll tacks onto over 1400 drug-related fatalities in 2022, over 90 percent of which involved an opioid.

State harm reduction advocates and government officials hope that the United States Food & Drug Administration’s March 29 decision to authorize over-the-counter distribution of Narcan — a nasal Naloxone spray that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose — will help save the lives of people who are overdosing.

Following the FDA’s authorization of over-the-counter naloxone, New Haven prepares to roll out over-the-counter Narcan.

21/04/2023

NEW HAVEN | After a six-month search process, the New Haven Board of Education announced and confirmed Madeline Negron as New Haven Public Schools’ Superintendent in a Special Session on April 19. Her term will begin on June 1.

Negrón currently serves as the Interim Assistant Superintendent at Hartford Public Schools and previously as the Director of Education for NHPS under former Superintendent Carol Birks. When she takes office, she will become the first Hispanic Superintendent of a district that now has a plurality Hispanic population.

Negrón was confirmed this week to start her three-year contract as New Haven Superintendent in June.

20/04/2023

UNIVERSITY | As Western government officials grow increasingly concerned about the possibility of Chinese military action around the South China Sea, Taiwanese Admiral Richard Chen shared his nation’s contingency plan for a Chinese blockade of the Taiwan Strait.

The Yale Foreign Policy Initiative hosted Chen, Yale Law School visiting fellow Jason Hsu and Rear Admiral Hope Yuan in Linsly-Chittenden Hall on Apr. 18 to discuss the future of U.S.-China-Taiwan relations and the economic, military and societal factors at play in ongoing diplomatic efforts.

Chen, a former Vice Minister for Policy of Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, told the roughly 30 attendees that Taiwan is much more vulnerable to a naval blockade than an amphibious invasion because the western coast of Taiwan does not have suitable beaches for a large-scale naval landing.

Yale Foreign Policy Initiative hosted Taiwanese military officials to discuss U.S.-China-Taiwan relations this week.

20/04/2023

SCITECH | Actress, author and model Dominique Jackson and Whiting Award-winning writer Esmé Weijun Wang will speak to the Yale community in both virtual and in-person events at the Women’s Mental Health Conference on April 28 and 29.

WMHC is the first-ever academic and trainee-led conference focusing on the field of women’s mental health. The event aims to bring clinicians, researchers and advocates together to share knowledge with health trainees, the greater New Haven community and, in recent years, a global audience.

The conference will feature individuals from diverse backgrounds — both within and outside of academic and medical spaces — to highlight and discuss the mental health experiences of women from different communities.

Dominique Jackson, known for her leading role in the television series “Pose,” and Esmé Weijun Wang, author of “The Border of Paradise,” will address the Yale community as part of the Women’s Mental Health Conference.

20/04/2023

NEW HAVEN | A group of tenth and eleventh graders from Hill Regional Career High School brought their biology and chemistry knowledge from the classroom to the laboratory on a field trip this week.

Huân M. Ngô, who conducted his post-doctoral training in cellular and molecular parasitology at the Yale School of Medicine, helped lead the field trip as part of a new “classroom to the workforce” curriculum model for science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine, or STEMM courses at Career High School. After observing both the professional and educational sides of developmental science, Ngô wants to help New Haven youth launch into local careers in bioscience.

To shift the standard attitude towards science education, tenth-grade teacher Huân M. Ngô introduced his students to the bioscience industries of New Haven.

20/04/2023

UNIVERSITY | University President Peter Salovey has responded to student concerns over his involvement at the Yale U.S.-China Colloquium alongside Ping Huang, who serves as the consul general of the People’s Republic of China in New York.

In a letter published by the News, students from China and Hong Kong criticized Salovey’s participation in an event with Huang, who denied the Uyghur genocide at a World Affairs Council meeting in Philadelphia last year. In August 2022, a United Nations human rights report found that China was responsible for “serious human rights violations” of the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang province.

“Your silence on the Chinese government’s human rights abuses and the impact they have on the Yale community, coupled with your presence alongside a Chinese government official who has publicly defended the abuses against the Uyghurs, could be perceived as an endorsement of the Chinese government’s oppressive policies and a cover-up of the human rights violations under the guise of ‘peaceful coexistence’,” the students’ letter read.

Salovey told the News that Yale must prioritize relationships between academic institutions in the United States and China in spite of political tensions between the two countries.