Author Archives: Jacob Leibenluft

One of the greatest mysteries surrounding the Yale Daily News is surely this: How, for 130 years, have generations of Yalies been convinced to spend night after night working on a college daily? After all, the proposition the News offers aspiring staffers has always been, to put it charitably, a bit of a tough sell. »

When Harvard revealed last month that it would significantly expand its financial aid next year, administrators at Yale and several other Ivies did not just notice what Harvard announced. They noticed when Harvard announced it. Harvard’s new policy — which cut the parental contribution entirely for all families with incomes less than $60,000, and in »

Just less than one quarter of students in the Class of 2009 were the only graduates from their high schools to enter Yale in the last five years, while more than two in five come from schools that have sent five people to Yale during that period, an analysis by the Yale Daily News found. »

Shortly after the Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr. ’49 DIV ’56 returned home to New Haven from Alabama in 1961, he received a letter marked “Confidential” from Yale provost Norman Buck. Coffin, Yale’s chaplain, had been arrested for leading “freedom rides” protesting segregation, and Buck was not happy. Coffin, wrote Buck, owed Yale his resignation. »

After weeks of apparent success in combating a spike in street crime that began last fall, four robberies this week offered the first serious test of whether the University’s response has been sufficient to maintain security on and around campus. As the first major crimes around campus in six weeks, the robberies — at least »

Gary Fencik ’76 did not know what he was getting into in the fall of 1985. The Chicago Bears’ All-Pro safety had been asked by his teammate, wide receiver Willie Gault, to join nine Bears on a rap song they were making for charity. Fencik agreed, thinking he was simply taking part in a goofy »

By the time the 1905 Harvard-Yale game ended, American football was in a state of crisis. At Yale and Harvard, the game was as popular as ever. On Nov. 25, 1905, roughly 43,000 spectators watched the Bulldogs take on the Crimson in Boston with the national championship on the line. The New York Times offered »

This article has been corrected. You may view this article’s correction here. As Nick Shalek ’05 decided during the summer whether to run for Ward 1 alderman, he knew that he had virtually no experience in New Haven politics, no knowledge about how to run a campaign in Ward 1, and few established contacts among »

Among his former classmates, there is almost universal agreement on what Samuel Alito LAW ’75 was not when he attended Yale Law School. He was not loud. He was not a radical. He did not call attention to himself. Instead, his classmates said, the man nominated by President George W. Bush ’68 to the U.S. »

A little-noticed amendment that passed the New Haven Board of Aldermen last month may have political implications for development projects undertaken by Yale and other large institutions in the Elm City. The approved changes to the city’s zoning ordinances are largely technical and passed with little fanfare, designating a maximum size for so-called “Planned Development »

New Haven officials hope to finalize in the next month a controversial plan to change how the city’s waste treatment is managed, setting up a potentially messy debate in the Board of Aldermen. New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. and leaders in East Haven, Hamden and Woodbridge said their efforts to establish a joint agency »

As waiters serving lobster and shrimp return to the kitchen at Valbella in Riverside, Conn., John DeStefano begins to explain why he wants to be governor in Connecticut. “New Haven has done one thing to me,” DeStefano tells a group of potential supporters at the fancy Italian restaurant. “It’s made me an optimist.” DeStefano relates »