Yet another false alarm. A fire alarm went off yesterday afternoon at Payne Whitney Gymnasium, requiring students, including volunteers and donors for the Red Cross Blood Drive, to wait outside while firefighters investigated. Everybody in the gym was evacuated after the alarm went off — from swimmers clutching towels to the track team, which decided to change its practice to an impromptu outdoor session.

JE students lived up to their college color yesterday. Jonathan Edwards ranked first in Project Lux’s intramural energy-reduction competition with a 13 percent reduction in consumption since the start of the contest earlier this year. Pierson College had no change in consumption, and Timothy Dwight, Branford and Silliman colleges had actually increased their overall energy consumption.

The Yale Hindu Students Council will hold its fourth annual Diwali Pooja today at 7:30 p.m. The service, which will take place in the President’s Room above the Woolsey Rotunda, will include meditation and singing. The ceremony is meant to inform the Yale community about the Festival of Lights, a celebration of good’s epic triumph over evil.

Ray Fair strikes again. Using his prediction model based on quarterly economic indicators, the Yale economics professor successfully forecasted the share of the popular vote won by both Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois with an error of no more than about 1 percentage point apiece. Fair, for his part, was pleased: “The vote equation did well,” he said. See story, page 7.

Rudolph’s legacy, renewed. Yesterday afternoon, Charles Gwathmey ARC ’62 led a tour of the recently unveiled arts complex — which includes the Paul Rudolph Hall and the new Jeffrey Loria Center for the History of Art. The tourists included Yale School of Architecture Dean Robert A.M. Stern ARC ‘65, architectural historian Vincent Scully ‘40 GRD ‘49 and eminent architect Richard Meier, who was commissioned to draw a design for the renovation. “When Rudolph made the building everybody — students and faculty — hated it. Now it has become sacred,” Scully said in an interview.

This day in Yale history

1969 Connecticut Attorney General Robert Killian ruled that the New Haven Housing Authority’s plan to run a special police unit was illegal. Unfortunately, this ruling also threatened the existence of the Yale Campus Police. The case decision explained that only public municipalities, as “creatures of the state,” may legally operate police units. Yale Police Chief James McNulty expressed uncertainty about the ruling’s application to the Yale Campus Police, which was paid and promoted by the University, saying, “I don’t know the first thing about it.”

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