Author Archives: Jessica Marsden

Black mortarboards got a fashionable upgrade at Yale’s 305th Commencement ceremony on Monday as the graduates added an assortment of personal touches to their traditionally plain caps. Graduates of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies wore garlands of plants and flowers atop their graduation robes, while Nursing School students added paper hearts with band-aids »

Farallon Capital Management, a hedge fund that invests a portion of Yale’s endowment, has sold all of its stock in a private prison company that has been criticized for alleged human rights abuses, though such criticisms have not been cited as a factor in the sale. The fund’s May 12 filing with the Securities and »

Waving U.S. and Mexican flags, thousands of people marched through downtown New Haven late Monday afternoon and staged a rally on the New Haven Green to protest pending legislation on immigration reform. The New Haven events were part of the national “A Day Without Immigrants,” which brought hundreds of thousands of activists–many of them immigrants–out »

Graduate Employees and Students Organization Chair Melissa Mason GRD ’08 was arrested with more than 50 other protesters when they blocked a street in front of New York University, in an act of civil disobedience in support of NYU’s graduate student union. The NYU union, the Graduate Student Organizing Committee, first went on strike in »

More than 35 years after the first women graduated from Yale College, females now represent half of every entering class. But men and women are not equally represented everywhere on campus, just as administrators predicted in 1969. Elga Wasserman, who coordinated planning for the arrival of women on campus, told the 1969 Yale Banner that »

For a study of graduate education conducted several years ago, doctoral students were asked to draw pictures representing their journey through graduate school. “They were all pictures of people trying to go across chasms or climb mountains,” said Jody Nyquist, an associate dean emeritus of the graduate school at the University of Washington. “We were »

University of Chicago professor George Chauncey ’77 GRD ’83, a specialist in the history of sexuality and American social history, has accepted an offer to join the Yale History Department next year, administrators announced yesterday. Chauncey and his partner, Ron Gregg, who will teach in the Film Studies Department, will arrive at Yale in time »

Controversial University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole is a top candidate for a senior faculty position in modern Middle East studies, two members of the search committee said Monday. Cole writes about contemporary politics on his blog, “Informed Comment,” and has drawn criticism from conservatives for his opposition to the war in Iraq. But »

Yalies can be grateful for the campuswide philosophy that safety, rather than punishment, should guide the enforcement of Yale regulations governing alcohol use by minors on campus — at least for now. Students said they generally agree that administrators do not attempt to crack down on underage drinking, although they do encourage students to behave »

The University will begin a detailed evaluation of the quality of academic programs and mentoring for students in the middle years of doctoral programs at the Graduate School next fall, Graduate School Dean Jon Butler announced Thursday. In his introduction to the project, Butler asked departments to pay particular attention to years two through four »

The Yale College Council urged the Health Studies Advisory Committee to expedite the creation of a new health studies major on Wednesday night, and passed a resolution calling on the University to create new courses in the field — the first step in the process. The authors of the YCC resolution said the administration has »

A single card made a difference of almost $700,000 to Alex Jacob ’06, when he went all in with a king and a jack in the final hand of the World Poker Tour tournament at Foxwoods Casino on Sunday night. A jack fell on the “river,” the fifth community card in Texas Hold ‘Em, giving »