Archive: 2014

  1. Stannard named men’s soccer head coach

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    Following the 19-year tenure of former head coach Brian Tompkins, Yale athletics has named Kylie Stannard to be the next head coach of the men’s soccer team, according to a Monday announcement.

    Stannard joins Yale after six years of coaching at Michigan State, where he helped recruit a team that made the NCAA tournament in five of those years and entered the most recent postseason as the No. 3 overall seed. He spent his first five years as an assistant coach and was promoted to associate head coach at the beginning of this year.

    “Yale University is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I am extremely honored and humbled to be named the next head coach to lead a program that has an excellent history and tradition dating back to 1908,” Stannard said in a Yale athletics press release. “It is a great privilege to be involved with such a world-class institution and that is something that will be emphasized on a daily basis.”

    The hire ends a nearly three-month-long nationwide search for a head coach after Tompkins announced in August that he would step down at the end of this season. Tompkins steps into a new role in the Yale athletics administrative office as the second winningest coach in Yale men’s soccer history. His final season, however, ended in ignominious fashion, as the Bulldogs stumbled to a 1–13–3 record, the fewest wins for a Yale team since the 1922 squad finished 1–3–2.

    Stannard, who also served as an assistant coach at Northern Illinois for four years, earned accolades in 2013 as the Great Lakes Region Assistant Coach of the Year and was also named as one of the College Soccer News top 15 assistant coaches in the nation. The Spartans made the Elite Eight in the NCAA tournament that season, and they did the same in 2014 with Stannard as associate head coach.

  2. Football lands WR Hines in transfer

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    Set to lose key wideouts Deon Randall ’15 and Grant Wallace ’15 to graduation, the Yale football team quickly reinforced its receiving corps by landing a transfer from a major NCAA program.

    According to reports, former North Carolina State wide receiver Bo Hines — who led the Wolfpack with 45 catches in 616 receiving yards as a freshman in 2014 — will transfer to Yale for the 2015 season. Hines announced his decision to transfer from NC State via Twitter on Saturday. NC State subsequently released a statement confirming Hines’ plans to head to an Ivy League school in order to pursue a career in law and politics.

    The 6′ 1″, 190-pound receiver was a standout in his freshman season, which included a three-catch, 79-yard performance in the Wolfpack’s 34–27 win over Central Florida in the St. Petersburg Bowl on Friday. Hines played slot receiver for NC State, and could inherit Randall’s former role as the spread offense’s Y-receiver. The Elis led the Ivy League in passing last season.

    “I will always love [my former teammates] and will always consider myself a member of the Wolfpack Nation,” Hines said in an NC State Athletics statement. “My goal is to pursue a specific career path in law and politics, and I believe that transferring to an Ivy League institution will help me reach that goal.”

    Morgan Roberts ’16 was the last player to transfer from a Football Bowl Subdivision team to Yale, going on to set the Yale record for passing yards and completion percentage in a season this fall.

  3. YNHH extends cancer and outpatient services to Old Saybrook

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    Yale-New Haven Hospital will open a Smilow Cancer Center branch in Old Saybrook in spring 2015.

    YNHH has signed a 13-year lease on 633 Old Middlesex Turnpike, a 24,360-square-foot building that previously housed Lawrence and Memorial Hospital’s outpatient facilities. Yale-New Haven will also extend its specialty services to the branch, which will offer musculoskeletal, urological and oncological care.

    “We are a logical geographic destination for YNHH to offer its superior outpatient medical care,” Old Saybrook’s First Selectman Carl Fortuna Jr. said in a press release. “YNHH’s world-class services will be of great benefit to our residents and the entire southeastern Connecticut community.”

    Yale-New Haven will continue to work with Lawrence and Memorial to improve specialty care in Waverford and New London.

    Lawrence and Memorial Hospital closed its offices at 633 Old Middlesex Turnpike in December 2012.

  4. Accolades roll in for Yale football

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    Several members of the 2014 Yale football squad were recently honored with local and national awards.

    The New Haven Register bestowed upon running back Tyler Varga ’15 the Dave Solomon Memorial Sportsperson of the Year award. In the article describing the award, the Register called the reigning Ivy League Offensive MVP “a complex athlete with NFL ability.” Varga will pursue a professional football career and has signed with Branford local agent Joe Linta, who complimented Varga in the Register for his work ethic and intelligence. Varga will next take the field on Jan. 24 in the Senior Bowl as the first Yale player to participate in the event in 64 years.

    Varga and wide receiver Grant Wallace ’15 were named second-team All-Americans by The Sports Network and Beyond Sports, respectively. The two senior offensive stars were also named first-team All-Ivy League and All-New England team after their Football Championship Subdivision-leading seasons. This season, Varga led the FCS in scoring, averaging 15.6 points per game, thanks to his school-record 26 touchdowns, 22 of which were on the ground. Wallace led the FCS in receiving yards per game with 113.9.

    Further, quarterback Morgan Roberts ’16 and left guard Will Chism ’15 were two of 80 student-athletes named to the fall Academic All-Ivy team. Both players started all 10 games in 2014 and were key members of the top offense in the FCS.

    The Bulldogs went 8–2 this season en route to a third-place finish in the Ivy League.

  5. Hayden ’17 to serve as alternate captain on junior national hockey team

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    Forward John Hayden ’17 has played an integral role in the success of the men’s ice hockey team this season, leading the squad with three goals and seven assists so far. Now, the 2013 Chicago Blackhawks draft pick has the chance to lead another team, this time on a global stage as an alternate captain for the U.S. National Junior Team.

    Hayden was selected along with the University of Denver’s Will Butcher as alternates behind Jack Eichel, a Boston University freshman who has eight goals and 19 assists in the Hockey East conference this season.

    The national team has already won practice matches against Germany and Sweden, where Hayden notched an assist. The United States is looking to build off last year’s fifth-place finish when the World Junior Championships begin on Dec. 26 with a game against Finland in Montreal’s Bell Center.

    A member of the 2013 U18 World Junior Championship silver medal squad, Hayden is no stranger to international competition. Hayden served as one of the captains on the U.S. National Development Team, and was selected 74th overall in the 2013 NHL Entry Draft. The forward was second among Yale freshmen last season with 16 points and already has 10 on this season.

    The Bulldogs return from their break with a match against the Russian Red Stars on Dec. 27 at Ingalls Rink.

  6. Arthur Howe Jr., prescient on coeducation, dies at 93

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    Updated: Jan. 3, 2015

    Arthur Howe Jr. ’47, the first Yale admissions dean to publicly advocate for a co-ed student body, died on Dec. 16. The cause of death was bone marrow disease, according to his son Tom Howe.

    Arthur Howe served as dean from 1956 to 1964, and was described as “an aggressive liberal reformer whose mandate was to open up Yale’s student body and nationalize it,” in “The Big Test: The Secret History of American Meritocracy” by Nicholas Lemann. According to Howe’s family and friends, he was a modest and diplomatic man with an oftentimes self-deprecatory sense of humor. Tom Howe said his father was constantly thinking, analyzing and writing.

    “Reference any eulogy, be mindful that nothing people might say about me could reflect adequately the kindness that countless individuals in various relationships have shown me throughout a long and privileged life,” Arthur Howe wrote on a scrap of paper before his death. “I’ve been allowed to soar on the wings of privileges derived from wonderful people, places, programs and purposes.”

    Howe’s granddaughter Beth Lowenstein said Howe was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and played rugby during his time as a student at the University. Although Howe is classified as a member of the class of 1943, he did not actually receive his degree until 1947, due to intervening wartime service, according to his son. Howe, who described himself as a pacifist, left his studies in 1941 to enlist in the American Field Service, an organization of volunteer ambulance drivers in combat zones, and commanded 120 ambulances and 200 men, Lowenstein said. He returned to the University to complete his degree in education after World War II.

    Howe joined the Yale administration in 1951, four years after finishing his degree.He accepted a position managing a new admissions and scholarship program supported by the Ford Foundation’s Fund for Advancement of Education, and his titles and duties shifted over the next half decade until he was named dean of admissions, his son said.

    Serving under then-Yale President A. Whitney Griswold, Howe pushed for new admissions policies in response to the influx of applications throughout the early 1960s, according to The Washington Post. Sociologist James Karabel noted in his 2005 book “The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton” that throughout Griswold’s tenure, Yale often rejected high-achieving Jews and minorities in favor of “well-rounded” applicants who had graduated from elite boarding schools.

    But as admissions dean, Howe worked to downplay reliance on figures such as SAT scores and grades, and increase the use of other sources of information about an applicant’s character and potential, Tom Howe said. According to Karabel’s “The Chosen,” Howe said in a 1961 interviewt hat he worried about the University “taking a lot of brainy kids who are too egocentric ever to contribute much to society,” and he was reported by The Post to have played a role in altering policy to increase the likelihood of children of Yale alumni receiving offers of admission.

    “If high academic ability were the only criterion, we would have to eliminate quite a few future presidents of the country,” Howe said to The New Yorker in 1960.

    Howe was also an open advocate of admitting women to Yale College. Though the University had begun admitting female graduate students in 1869, Yale’s undergraduate program was still entirely male when Howe served as dean of admissions. Tom Howe and Lowenstein said Arthur Howe was influenced by strong women such as his maternal grandmother, his mother, his wife and his daughter.

    According to Peggy Howe, his wife, Arthur Howe originally pitched the idea of admitting female undergraduate students during a confidential faculty meeting in 1956, and received a standing ovation from his fellow staff members. This information was leaked to the press and criticized by the public, but Howe continued to push for coeducation and speak out against what he described in 1964 as Yale’s practice of “endlessly excluding one-half of the population.”

    The success of his efforts was seen in 1969, five years after Howe left the University, when the first group of female undergraduate students arrived at Yale.

    Howe was also responsible for the initiation of Yale’s Summer High School Program, an experimental project for high school students who were educationally deprived but showed exceptional potential, according to his son.

    Howe left his deanship in 1964 to serve as president of the AFS. The organization, which transformed into a student-exchange program once its ambulance services finished at the end of WWII, expanded to 13,000 exchanges of high school students per year, during Howe’s presidency. Additionally, Tom Howe said his father initiated the practice of multi-national exchanges between foreign countries, as all exchanges prior to that point had involved the U.S.

    “He also worked to place women, volunteers and foreigners into positions of greater programmatic responsibility throughout this structurally complex organization, with its nationally managed offices in 60 countries across the globe,” he said.

    He added that the extensive travel and long flights demanded by the presidency took a toll on Arthur Howe’s health, leading to his retirement in 1972. However, Howe continued volunteering for AFS from his retirement until his death, and became a Life Trustee.

    Tsugiko Scullion, who served on the AFS Board of Trustees with Howe, said he was a man of strong principles and compassion who will be dearly missed by the organization. Howe’s commitment to expanding horizons for those with a desire to learn and his policy of building bridges instead of walls are the types of legacies he left behind, she said.

    “It’s a sad time for us right now, but it’s also a time for AFS as an organization to celebrate the enormous contributions [Howe] made to us,” Scullion said.

    Howe, a Connecticut native, was born in July of 1921. In addition to AFS, he served on the boards of numerous other educational, religious, civic and conservation organizations, such as the Hotchkiss School, Hampton Institute and the Institute of World Affairs, according to his son.

    Howe is survived by his wife, brother and four children — plus 10 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren who knew him as “Poppy,” according to Lowenstein.

  7. Yale group appears on “The Sing-Off”

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    The Yale a capella group “a.squared” performed on NBC’s “The Sing-Off” Wednesday evening, but failed to crack the top three in the a capella competition.

    The group, formed at Yale in March 2013, is made up of Nimal Eames-Scott ’15, Paul Holmes ’13, Jacob Reske ’14, DJ Stanfill ’16, Jackson Thea ’16, and is managed by Emily Bosisio ’16. All besides Reske and Bosisio participated in a capella extensively at Yale and were members of The Duke’s Men. Additionally, Stanfill and Thea are current members of the Yale Whiffenpoofs, with Eames-Scott having been a member last year.

    A.squared isn’t a typical Yale a capella group, however. As an electronic a capella group, it blends new music technology with traditional vocals. During live performances, the voices are manipulated electronically to create the illusion of many more than five singers. By bridging the gap between traditional a capella and techno, the group is exploring the potential for new genres.

    Wednesday night’s episode of “The Sing-Off” featured six a capella groups from across the nation. Although A.squared’s rendition of Bastille’s Pompeii failed to land them in the top three, Judge Shawn Stockman, of the group Boyz II Men, called the performance “revolutionary.”

    The Vanderbilt Melodores placed first in the competition and received a $50,000 prize, becoming the first collegiate group to win the competition.

  8. Yale admits 16 percent of early applicants

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    Yale admitted 753, or 16 percent, of its early applicants to the class of 2019 from a pool of 4,693. Just over half, 57 percent, were deferred for reconsideration in the spring, while 26 percent were denied admission and 1 percent withdrew or submitted incomplete applications.

    This year’s early acceptance rate is not much higher than last year’s of 15.5 percent. Slightly fewer students applied early this year than last year.

    Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeremiah Quinlan said this year’s early applicant pool was one of the most diverse pools the Office of Undergraduate Admissions has ever considered.

    “We’re seeing more diversity in our early applicants, and we’re responding to that diversity by admitting a few more students in our early action rounds,” he said.

    The University, which is aiming for a freshman class of about 1,360 students to enroll in the fall of 2015, plans to admit somewhere between 1,300 and 1,400 more students in the spring.

    Mark Dunn, director of outreach and recruitment for the Admissions Office, said applications from international students and students who self-identify as members of minority racial/ethnic groups grew significantly in this year’s pool.

    The Admissions Office has made great efforts to produce outreach messages for prospective students who self-identity as members of these groups, Dunn said. He added that Yale’s targeted campaigns to high-achieving, low-income students as well as the University’s long-standing partnership with QuestBridge have encouraged many students to take a closer look at Yale and its financial aid policies.

    “Through our new video showcase of Yale’s uniquely vibrant cultural houses, the Multicultural Open House we hosted in October and other targeted messages, I think our team is doing a great job helping students from all backgrounds see that Yale is a place that celebrates diversity in every imaginable form,” Dunn said.

    Forty of the admitted students were “matched” to the University through the QuestBridge National College Match program — the highest number of matches Yale has made since partnering with QuestBridge in 2007.

    That number represents a 67 percent increase from last year’s figure of 24 students. The National College Match helps high-achieving, low-income students gain admission and full-ride scholarships to universities like Yale, Princeton and Columbia by allowing students to rank preferences from QuestBridge’s list of partner colleges, and apply to schools through a single application.

    Students “match” to the school ranked highest on their list that also wants to admit them through the program, and are guaranteed scholarships covering 100 percent of their financial need. Applicants who neither match with Yale nor bind to another QuestBridge partner college are then transferred to Yale’s regular decision pool.

    “This was the strongest group of QuestBridge finalists I have reviewed since beginning the QuestBridge partnership with Yale in 2007,” Quinlan said. “It is wonderful to be able to offer these 40 students admission to Yale and a financial aid award that does not require their parents to pay anything towards the entire cost of attendance.”

    University President Peter Salovey made a commitment at the White House Summit on College Opportunity last January to increase the number of QuestBridge finalists enrolling at the University by 50 percent. While Yale has traditionally enrolled roughly 50 to 60 QuestBridge finalists each year, 80 QuestBridge finalists enrolled in the class of 2018. Twenty of these students were admitted through National College Match.

    QuestBridge CEO and co-founder Ana McCullough said the organization is impressed by Yale’s commitment to recruiting students from all backgrounds, and the strides they’ve made in increasing the number of QuestBridge finalists enrolled at Yale.

    She added that QuestBridge saw a 14 percent increase from last year in the total number of matches that were made across their 35 partner colleges.

    “We were able to match just over 500 students nationally, which really symbolizes the commitment our colleges have towards increasing socio-economic diversity on their campuses,” she said.

    Quinlan said the Admissions Office is looking forward to reviewing more applications from QuestBridge finalists during the regular decision round, and that the number of finalists enrolling as freshmen next year will most likely meet or exceed last year’s number of 80, which was a record-high for the University.

    All other schools in the Ivy League have released their early acceptance decisions. Princeton and Brown both saw higher early acceptance rates this year, admitting 19.9 and 20 percent of applicants, respectively, while Harvard admitted 16.5 percent of its early applicants. Meanwhile, the early acceptance rates of Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania dropped to 26 and 24 percent, respectively, this year. Cornell and Columbia have released admissions decisions to their early applicants, but have not published figures.

    Although students who apply to Yale early do not have a better chance of acceptance, Quinlan said, the admissions rate for the early applicant pool is typically higher than the regular decision pool because of the number of students applying with ties to the institution, such as recruited athletes or children of alumni. He added that students who have their applications ready by the early action deadline of Nov. 1 tend to have some of the highest credentials of any secondary school students in the world.

    “The entire Admissions Office is looking forward to connecting with our Early Action and QuestBridge admitted students,” Dunn said. “Our admitted students are an amazing group of young people with much to contribute to Yale and much to gain from four years on Yale’s campus. We are fortunate to have the opportunity to help introduce these admitted students to the Yale experience over the next few months.”

  9. Grad School to fund sixth year for humanities, social science students

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    Updated: Jan. 12

    The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences will soon provide Ph.D candidates in the humanities and social sciences with a sixth year of funding, a welcome change for students pressed to complete their research within six years and find teaching positions. But debate continues as to whether the new policy goes far enough.

    The funding, which will be provided through teaching positions or an equivalent stipend, will begin in the 2015–16 academic year. Previously, funding packages in the humanities and social sciences only covered five years, though many graduate programs typically take up to six years to complete, with some students continuing for even longer.

    “We have learned from our students in the humanities and social sciences in particular that the increasingly competitive job market favors students who have had more teaching experience than we have been able to provide,” Graduate School Dean Lynn Cooley wrote in an email to Ph.D candidates on Dec. 15. “The sixth year of guaranteed funding will enable eligible students to develop teaching portfolios of more depth and to plan ahead for their sixth year with more certainty.”

    Students in the sciences and engineering will continue to be funded according to their programmatic financial aid packages for the number of years it takes to complete their degrees, the email said.

    Chair of the Graduate Student Assembly Joori Park GRD ’17 said the policy change comes after nearly five years of negotiations between the GSA and the University. Park said the policy change will remove significant stress from sixth-year students who rely on teaching opportunities to financially support themselves.

    “The number of teaching spots fluctuates each year based on enrollment, and as a result [graduate] students … may or may not get funding,” Park said. “There’s a lot of stress and anxiety that comes with that for students finishing their dissertations that need to stay in New Haven.”

    Yale is the only Ivy League school to currently offer such a package for sixth-year students, Park added.

    Brian Dunican GRD ’15, the 2013-—14 GSA chair who was involved in previous conversations with the University about the policy change, said not having to hunt for sixth-year funding will help students who may have required seven years to complete their Ph.Ds to do so in six. Dunican said the issue of sixth-year funding has been raised for years in department meetings and school-wide surveys, adding that the policy change would make the Graduate School more attractive for future applicants.

    The announcement comes less than two months after over 1,000 supporters of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization protested for GESO to be recognized as a student union. Since the protest, which was the second in six months, the University has shown no sign of negotiating with GESO.

    “We welcome the University’s actions to recognize the value of our teaching work, but only by negotiating a contract can we fully address the issue of job security for graduate employees in our upper years and especially in the sciences,” GESO Chair Aaron Greenberg GRD ’18 wrote in an email to the News.

    Cooley said this improvement in the funding package comes as the result of work begun several months ago by former Yale College Dean Mary Miller and former Graduate School Dean Thomas Pollard, and has nothing to do with GESO.

    However, several graduate students interviewed differed on whether the policy goes far enough.

    “Yale is making a push to shorten Ph.Ds, and while graduating in five years was often not realistic, this policy change may incentivize students to graduate in six years rather than seven,” said William Gray GRD ’18, GSA’s current Academics and Professional Development Committee chair. “For students that do take seven years I think we will go back to the old system of stress and uncertainty and hopefully we can work with the administration to alleviate this issue in the future.”

    But economics graduate student Chiara Margaria GRD ’17 said she believes funding a sixth year is enough, explaining that in her field, taking longer to finish the degree program diminishes a student’s job prospects.

    Currently, the median numbers of years required for students to complete their Ph.Ds varies widely, such as 5.7 for economics and 7.3 for history.

    Cooley said she does not expect funding to be expanded to support graduate students in a seventh year of study. With the resources available to them, she added, graduate students should be aiming to finish in six years at most. Past experiences at Yale and peer institutions indicate that more funding can encourage students to take longer with their degrees, she explained.

    Further, Cooley said she hopes faculty will advise students to undertake dissertations that can be completed within the six-year time frame, as hiring departments often “look askance” at candidates who take a long time to complete their studies.

    Dean of Strategic Initiatives, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Graduate School, Yale College Pamela Schirmeister, who chaired the working group that put forth the new policy, said seventh year students will still be able to teach, though positions will not be guaranteed. This does not represent a change in policy, she added.

    Three history graduate students said they frequently have to seek teaching opportunities in other departments, while two economics graduate students reported that it is not difficult to find teaching positions in the department. Margaria said that uncertainty about sixth-year funding has never been felt in her department, where it is easy to find teaching or research assistant positions.

    Still, many administrators and graduate students extolled the virtues of the policy shift, explaining that the new funding plan may make Yale a more attractive destination for prospective graduate students and a less stressful work environment for current ones. 

    “The anxiety about financial support for the sixth year had weighed heavily on doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences for years,” Pollard said.  “This new plan should allow them to focus on their work and help them finish their dissertations rather than worrying about financial support.”

    Professor of English and American Studies Wai Chee Dimock said the existing graduate financial package was already noteworthy compared to Yale’s peer institutions. However, the creation of sixth-year funding is a show of support for the University’s graduate education, she added.

    The policy change would be especially welcomed by philosophy students, said philosophy professor Stephen Darwall, as many struggle to complete their dissertations within six years. Darwall, who previously taught at the University of Michigan, said guaranteed sixth-year funding had existed there for the past decade.

    As of fall 2014, 2,643 students are enrolled in the Graduate School.

  10. We Are in Good Hands

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    One often takes for granted the subtle pleasantries in life. Little things like the light flashing “Walk” just as you approach the crosswalk on Broadway, or the ten-dollar bill you find after you forgot you left it in your pocket, or the last of the daylight glowing deep red and orange off the side of Sterling Library. Yes, little things — ephemeral, quaint, fragile, all too fragile. You see, just as we fail to notice many of these little joys, we fail to notice their fragility, the tender balance of the world we live in, and just how quickly it can all incinerate into ashy oblivion.

    Why, just a week ago we were very close to that fiery ending. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis? The U-2 Spy incident? Mutually assured destruction? Dr. Strangelove and the doomsday machine? Project X? Maybe I’m thinking of the wrong thing . . . Well anyway, a moment of equal magnitude, nay greater magnitude, occurred at our very own Yale University.

    In his final Cold War class of the year, legendary Professor of History John Gaddis sat in a chair at the front of a massive lecture hall in SSS. Shortly after his opening remarks, the doors of the hall flew open and US government officials, dressed like college students dressing like US government officials, and high ranking members of the Soviet politburo, with fake Russian accents, masking their fake American accents, masking their real Russian accents, came flying down the aisles. They flanked the surprisingly calm Professor, and yelled:

    “Professor Gaddis, the fate of the Cold War is in your hands! You must chose: peace, or mutually assured destruction.”

    At that moment an angel and a man in a black suit holding a big red button appeared next to the Professor.

    “Which will it be?” the delegates asked.

    To our dismay, the Professor paused. His eyes twinkled. One could see the power, the fire, the sheer allure of destruction in his kind, old eyes. For a moment, it appeared as if the world were over. I clutched the arms of my chair. But then his face relaxed, he smiled, and he uttered, “Oh, all right.” And chose peace. Who knew politics could be that easy?

    So rest easy over these last few days of finals, Yalies. For, as Professor Gaddis affirmed, we are in good hands.

  11. Senate confirms Murthy MED ’03 SOM ’03 for Surgeon General

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    Despite right-wing opposition, the Senate confirmed the nomination of Vivek Murthy MED ’03 SOM ’03 to become the 19th Surgeon General at 5:58 p.m. Monday evening, with a 51 to 43 split.

    Murthy, who is the first Indian-American Surgeon General, was nominated in November 2013 but saw his application stall after he claimed that gun control was a public health issue on Twitter in 2012. Opponents expressed concern that Murthy’s open support of the Affordable Care Act and background in public health advocacy work would prevent him from being an impartial spokesperson for public health. However, the Senate was still able to confirm Murthy’s nomination without Republican support.

    “The vote would not have happened in the first place without a miscalculation on the part of the Republicans,” said Howard Forman, director of the M.D./M.B.A. dual-degree program at Yale.

    While numerous health authorities including the American Public Health Association supported his nomination, a vote was not pushed forward until after the November elections due to fear from both parties that they would lose the support of the National Rifle Association, Forman said. Monday’s Senate session was intended for a vote regarding Obama’s executive order on immigration, but Ted Cruz stopped the vote, inadvertently opening time in the Senate calendar to vote on Murthy’s nomination.

    Before arriving at Yale in 1998, Murthy had already co-founded two organizations, including a non-profit focused on HIV/AIDS education in India and a technology company supporting the operations aspect of clinical trials. Currently, Murthy is a physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. Murthy founded and served as president of Doctors for America in 2010, an outgrowth of Doctors for Obama, which aided Obama’s 2008 campaign. At 37, Murthy will be one of the youngest Surgeon General’s to ever be appointed.

    Yale faculty and administrators expressed how well suited they thought Murthy was for the job. Nancy Angoff SPH ’81 MED ’90, associate dean for student affairs at the Yale School of Medicine, stressed that Murthy is highly accomplished and deserving of the role. She noted that his ability to negotiate would prove particularly useful given the recent Republican takeover of the Senate.

    “It’s a difficult congress, getting people to agree on anything is very difficult.” she said. “But if anyone can bring people together, I think he can.”

    Dean of the School of Medicine Robert Alpern said he had not heard of any criticisms of Murthy’s appointment in relation to his age, and that Murthy’s appointment will bring great excitement to everyone at the medical school.

    Regarding the concerns voiced by the National Rifle Association that Murthy would use his position to advance political ideals, including gun control, Alpern said, “Surgeon Generals fight for the health of our country. It is rare that the Surgeon General has to make a political decision.”

    The absence of a Surgeon General proved most evident in September, when the first American case of Ebola emerged in Dallas, Texas. Without a crucial figure informing Americans of how the public health crisis was being handled, avoidable hysteria spread throughout the country, Forman said.

    Murthy will serve as Surgeon General for four years.

    Correction: Dec. 16

    A previous version of this article contained a quote that incorrectly stated that no Republicans voted for Murthy, when in fact one Republican voted in favor of his confirmation. The quote has since been removed.