Author Archives: Sam Pilku

NEW YORK — The Spizzwinks(?) took on a bigger stage than usual Monday night. Yale’s oldest underclassman a cappella singing group ushered in the holiday season with a medley of Christmas songs at a performance at Carnegie Hall Monday. In front of a crowd of approximately 1,500, the group sang a six-minute Christmas medley arranged »

Yale brought prestige, Nobel Laureate R. K. Pachauri brought expertise and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger brought star power to last week’s much-hyped climate-change conference, which University officials have long hoped would be an impetus for real momentum on the issue. Echoing President Theodore Roosevelt’s conference of governors 100 years ago at the White House, which »

Sweating for a cause, nearly 700 students, faculty members and Elm City residents swarmed the New Haven Green on Sunday morning to participate in the fourth annual AIDS Walk in New Haven. The event — a 5-kilometer walk through the city — is sponsored each year by the Yale chapter of AIDS Watch and is »

As housing draw season approaches, students in all 12 residential colleges have begun the angst-ridden process of deciding where to live. But for Calhoun College residents, this year’s process will be particularly difficult. With Calhoun set to undergo renovations next year, about 70 Calhoun students met with the college’s dean, Leslie Woodward, to discuss the »

Josh Sweren ’08 is the former chief strategy officer of Elmseed, a nonprofit organization run by Yale students that provides micro loans to New Haven entrepreneurs. Elmseed has provided around $50,000 worth of loans since its founding in 2001. Sweren spoke to the News about Elmseed and entrepreneurship in New Haven. Q: What are micro »

Yalies who enjoyed chocolate treats on Valentines Day may have indirectly aided rebels in the Ivory Coast in committing sexual violence against women. Semuteh Freeman ’08 and Maggie Mapondera ’09 held a “Blood Chocolate” drive in the Woolsey Rotunda on Thursday afternoon to encourage students to sign a petition against, and inform Yalies about, sexual »

Recent sub-freezing temperatures may have students complaining about the hardship of New Haven winters, but for the families of a handful of Yalies, the past week has brought much more than unpleasant weather. Tornadoes swirled through Tennessee, Arkansas and other parts of the South last Tuesday, killing more than 50 people in one of the »

With a $1.6 million gift from Yale in hand, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. announced a city-wide initiative Thursday to boost New Haven’s economy by stimulating local businesses. Although the specifics of the plan to revitalize the city’s commercial sectors are yet to be determined, the program calls for the formation of the Economic »

H. Bradford Westerfield ’47, professor of political science and the Damon Wells Professor Emeritus of International Studies, died Jan. 19 in Watch Hill, RI. He was 79. During his roughly 40 years at Yale, Westerfield taught numerous future foreign-policy heavyweights, including President George W. Bush ’68, Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA director Porter Goss »

William McGuire GRD ’54, an influential Yale social psychologist who spent decades researching topics from self-identity to persuasion, died in his New Haven home on Dec. 21, 2007. He was 82. Those who knew McGuire — he retired in 1999 after more than 30 years on the Yale faculty — described him as refreshing, quirky, »

American journalists might find Qian Dong a walking oxymoron: Dong is a Chinese reporter who endorses government censorship. Dong, a news anchor and commentator on political, social and economic issues for China Central Television, explained her take on Chinese-American relations, journalistic practices in China and government censorship during a Morse College Master’s Tea on Thursday. »

Bernard Gwertzman, who has traveled to the Middle East with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and witnessed the disintegration of the Soviet Union in Moscow, has had a front-row seat for the evolution of modern journalism. Gwertzman, one of America’s most respected journalists and foreign-policy experts, spoke Tuesday to a crowd of about 30 »