Timothy Dwight College students woke this morning to the news that their dean, John Loge, was involved in a serious car accident Wednesday night.
According to e-mails sent by the college’s master, Jeffrey Brenzel, Loge was hit by a car just before 11 p.m. while crossing Union Avenue in front of Union Station. Brenzel said Loge is in a stable condition, but suffered multiple fractures in his lower right leg, a complicated fracture in his upper right arm, and extensive bruising.
Loge will be in surgery until at least 4 p.m. to treat his fractures, Brenzel said. Doctors have confirmed that Loge suffered no head trauma from the accident.
“I do not know how long Dean Loge will be in the hospital as yet,” Brenzel said. “But I feel confident after talking to his doctors and surgeons this morning that he will be back among us reasonably soon if all goes well with the surgeries today. Clearly he will be here at least a couple of days, maybe a couple more than that.”
Loge’s brother-in-law, who Loge was picking up from the station, was also hit by the car and is in a similar condition.
According to New Haven Police Department spokesman Joseph Avery, circumstances suggest that Loge and his brother-in-law were at fault in the collision.
Those who will get into vehicular accidents similar to this case may contact auto accident lawyers who can help victims build personal injury claims and seek compensation for the damages other drivers cause.
A day after a chaotic shoot-out took place one block from Old Campus, Yale officials have not notified the community about the violence and do not plan to.
All universities that participate in federal financial aid programs are required to disclose information about crimes that occur near their campuses. Associate Vice President for Administration Janet Lindner, who oversees Yale security, said the University is not obligated to report Sunday morning’s incident because it did not occur on University property or involve University affiliates. But students interviewed, upon hearing of the gunfight, said they were alarmed by the incident and by the University’s silence.
The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, passed in 1990, requires colleges and universities to inform students of any crime that occurs in “any building or property owned or controlled by an institution of higher education within the same reasonably contiguous geographic area of the institution and used by the institution in direct support of, or in a manner related to, the institution’s educational purposes, including residence halls.” The gunfight occurred one block from Bingham Hall on Old Campus.
Lindner said Yale officials looked into the shooting and decided that it did not merit a campus-wide alert. Before sending such a message to the community, she said, administrators consider whether there is an imminent threat to the Yale community, whether the incident directly affects Yale community members and whether the incident took place on campus property.
“It was judged that the factors in this incident do not warrant an alert,” she said.
For incidents that do, the University may either send a campus-wide e-mail (a familiar “Message from Assistant Chief Ronnell Higgins”) or activate the Yale ALERT emergency notification system, which sends the entire community a text message, automated phone call and e-mail.
Sunday’s shooting involved three gunmen, one of whom opened fire on police officers and is still at large. The gunmen shot as many as 30 bullets on both sides of College Street, just as hundreds of bar patrons, some of whom may have been Yale students, streamed onto the street.
Of 17 Old Campus residents interviewed Sunday evening, only one knew the shoot-out had occurred, and she, Rachael Ett ’13, said she heard about it from an acquaintance who works for the News.
Pierson freshman counselor Cecilia Wright ’11 said the administration should do a better job of communicating information to freshmen counselors about safety concerns that could affect the class of 2014.
“It seems like violence is getting closer and closer to Old Campus,” Wright said.
Ten of 11 freshmen interviewed Sunday night said it was disconcerting that the administration decided not to notify them of the incident, even if it did not take place on University property and no Yale community member was directly involved.
“I think it would definitely be useful if [the chief of Yale police] still sent out e mails so that we know what’s happening around campus and we don’t feel like we’re being hidden from the truth,” said Leon Zhang ’14, who lives in Bingham Hall. “I think [the policy] should be expanded to the Yale bubble as opposed to only properties owned by Yale.”
Gene Kim ’13 said he would have liked to know about the shooting because he would have been more aware of the area around Old Campus, even though the shooters were not targeting Yale students.
“It’d be nice to be aware of my surroundings,” he said. “To be not totally ignorant.”
Trumbull freshman counselor Mo Lecaro ’11 said that though she does not feel a need to gather her freshmen and tell them of the shooting, the University as an institution has a duty to notify its students.
Broadway was closed to pedestrian and vehicular traffic for two hours Friday afternoon after an unattended bag left near the bus stop outside A-One Pizza prompted a bomb scare. The suspicious item turned out to be nothing more than an empty laptop bag — but police took no chances.
With the New Haven Police Department’s bomb squad on the scene, police officers took cover behind trash cans and ordered bystanders into an alley while a member of the bomb squad approached the suspicious package in full protective gear. The bomb squad technician made three trips to the package and appeared to X-ray it before declaring the area safe.
Prosecutors in Massachusetts say they will drop the disorderly conduct charge against former Yale professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. ’73, who was arrested last week for, in his words, being “a black man in America.” The Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office and the Cambridge Police Department released the following statement a few minutes ago:
The City of Cambridge and the Cambridge Police Department have recommended to the Middlesex County District Attorney that the criminal charge against Professor Gates not proceed. Therefore, in the interests of justice, the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office has agreed to enter a nolle prosequi in this matter.
The City of Cambridge, the Cambridge Police Department, and Professor Gates acknowledge that the incident of July 16, 2009 was regrettable and unfortunate. This incident should not be viewed as one that demeans the character and reputation of Professor Gates or the character of the Cambridge Police Department. All parties agree that this is a just resolution to an unfortunate set of circumstances.
One can only hope that the Rev. Al Sharpton didn’t already book his Acela ticket to Boston.
(Photo: Cambridge Police Department, via The Harvard Crimson)
Updated Tuesday 11:17 a.m. Former Yale professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. ’73, the director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard and one of the country’s most prominent black intellectuals, was arrested Thursday by Cambridge police officers investigating a reported break-in.
The only problem: The house Gates was accused of breaking into was his own.
According to a police report, Gates told an officer that he was being targeted because “this is what happens to black men in America,” which seems like a pretty prescient observation considering the officer arrested him on the spot despite the fact it was Gates’ house that the professor was accused of burglarizing.
More than ten years after the murder of Davenport senior Suzanne Jovin ’99, investigators are looking into performing DNA tests on a soda bottle she was carrying the December night that she was fatally stabbed.
Lead investigator John Mannion told the New Haven Register that he would ask the state crime lab if the bottle of Fresca soda could still be tested even though it had previously been dusted for fingerprints.
James Van de Velde, Jovin’s senior thesis adviser and a once-popular Yale lecturer, has called for the DNA test on several occasions as a way to clear his name. Van de Velde is the only person to ever be publicly named a suspect in the Jovin case, although no evidence linking him to the crime has ever been made public.
The Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale has indirectly fallen victim to Bernard Madoff, forcing the center to launch a fundraising campaign in an effort to save two positions from elimination.
When the Madoff scandal erupted this winter, Yale officials said that the University had no money invested with the disgraced financier. But two positions at the Slifka Center that were funded by a nonprofit organization that had invested money with Madoff may now have to be eliminated, the center said this week.
Slifka’s Orthodox rabbinic educators, Rabbi Jason and Meira Rappoport, had been funded by the New York-based Heshe & Harriet Seif Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus, which had invested money with Madoff. As a result of its losses, the organization informed the Slifka Center earlier this spring that as of mid-August, it would no longer be able to support the Rappoports’ positions at Yale.
Police arrested a West Haven man Friday night for, among other things, throwing a Molotov cocktail at Yale’s Central Power Plant on June 7. No one was hurt in the ensuing fire, which workers quickly extinguished.
Robert Thompson, 30, told police that he was glad about being arrested so he could tell them what he did.
According to news reports, Thompson told police that he was trying to “melt down” the plant, which is located next to Swing Space and actually happened to melt itself down last year. He explained that Allah told him to steal the fuel from a North Haven hobby store in order to carry out the firebombing.
A second suspect has been arrested in connection to the fatal shooting that occurred in a Harvard dorm last month.
Blayn Jiggetts, 19, of Mount Vernon, N.Y., was taken into custody in New York City late Tuesday night and charged with first degree murder in the slaying of 21-year-old Justin Cosby, according to The Associated Press. Jabrai Jordan Copney, 20, was arrested last month and is being held without bail after pleading not guilty.
So far, no Harvard affiliates have been charged in connection with the killing but two seniors — one of whom was Copney’s girlfriend — were ordered off campus by the university and denied diplomas at graduation.
The University distributed a letter to members of the class of 1999, asking for their help with the ongoing investigation of Suzanne Jovin’s slaying. (Read the story here.) Jovin, a political science and international studies double major, was found stabbed 17 times on the evening of Dec. 4, 1998.
A dispute in the Dixwell neighborhood escalated into some sort of a knife brawl this evening, according to the authorities.
Three men sustained stab wounds at approximately 7:40 p.m. in an altercation at 374 Sherman Ave., the New Haven Police Department reported. None of the injuries was life-threatening, and an investigation is ongoing, police said.
