Comments Off on Silhouette E18: Will Walker on bubble science, building community and nurturing your inner child
Will Walker ’26 is best known around campus as the “Bubble Guy” for his regular bubbling sessions on Cross Campus. Join us for a special on-site episode where host Joanne Lee ’26 and Will discuss the behind-the-scenes process behind making bubbles, his potential plans for expanding his bubbling endeavors and what inspires Will to bubble so frequently.
Producers: Joanne Lee ’26 and Xavier Guaracha ’25
Music: Blue Dot Sessions
Comments Off on The Yalie Ep 23: Inside Yale’s presidential search
In this episode, Andre Fa’aoso ’27 is joined by Yale College Council (YCC) President Julian Suh-Toma ’25 to discuss the role of students in the search for Yale’s next University President, as incumbent Peter Salovey intends to step down at the end of the 2023-24 academic year. Also, Diego Alderete ’25 joins Fa’aoso for an exclusive on-the-street interview segment where Yale students share their perspectives on the presidential search and how it affects campus life.
Guests: Julian Suh-Toma ‘25
Producers: Andre Fa’aoso ‘27, Diego Alderete ‘25, Alyssa Michel ‘24
Music: Blue Dot Sessions
For 362 days out of the year, the Yale community and the athletics department stay mostly separate. The annual Yale-Harvard football game, however, changes everything.
School spirit reaches an all-time high in the days leading up to the game. Students who don’t know the difference between a home run and a touchdown spend their days tailgating and proclaiming “Beat Harvard!” Tailgating, that nearly-lost tradition on Yale’s campus, makes a grand revival every year at The Game. During the football season, only about 40 students will make the trek to the Yale Bowl to partake in burgers and beer before each game. Against Harvard, however, most of the student body partakes in some form of tailgating.
Linton Roberts ’24, President of Yale’s tailgating club, the Whaling Crew, spoke about the environment at the game.
“Every student group on campus is throwing parties before and after the game,” Roberts said. “The alumni association typically throws a massive tailgate… If I was a student going to the game for the first time, the best thing you can do is just show up to everything. That’s the most fun part.”
The Game –– along with the tailgates and parties that come with it –– is one of the biggest community events of the year. To many, the actual athletic competition is far outweighed by the time spent with friends and fellow members of the Yale community.
Most groups hold open Yale-Harvard events. Students do not have to plan out their day, but can float between groups enjoying various activities and social scenes. Carla Sanchez-Noya ’22 spoke of the welcoming and fun nature of these events.
“It was really great when I was there, [the official tailgate] was organized by college,” Sanchez-Noya explained. “Everybody really wanted to be there. And you’re hanging out with people in your college… Everybody just wants to have a good time and beat Harvard.”
While Sanchez-Noya and Roberts have experienced Yale tailgates before, a large segment of the Yale community has not. First-years and sophomores who did not take gap years have not attended Yale-Harvard before.
For them, the week marks an entirely new experience. Some, like Eli Buchdahl ’25, expressed excitement about experiencing the tailgating and pageantry surrounding the game.
“I’m really excited for the experience of the entire school coming together in a spirited way where we are really one community with one goal and one enemy,” Buchdahl said. He also explained that he was excited “to get some of that big-school football Saturday vibes that Yale isn’t exactly known for.”
According to Judy Schiff — Yale Library’s chief research archivist — the tradition of tailgating ahead of sporting events started at Yale.
“Not only did football start at Yale with Walter Camp… but also the custom of tailgating,” Schiff told NBC Connecticut in 2019.
Then, those who wished to see the Bulldogs take on the Crimson would either take the train or drive their newfangled automobiles to New Haven and potluck ahead of the kickoff.
Yale tailgates can be traced back to 1906, eight years before the Yale Bowl was constructed.
Kristof reported that an international study ranked China first in school performance in math, science, and reading, while the United States ranked 15th in reading, 23rd in science, and 31st in math. The U.S., Kristof says, needs to make education a higher priority so our students keep pace with Chinese students, but “without relinquishing creativity and independent thought.”
But Lew doesn’t think that suggestion is plausible. He spent a gap year in China with a State Department program, and after seeing these top students in action, he says it’s not a love of learning that’s motivating students there to learn.
“But we cannot take those successes and implement them here. A cafeteria approach to Chinese culture – ‘I’ll take the work ethic, but not the stress-producing, creativity-killing exam, please” – doesn’t work; the baby is inseparable from the bathwater,” Lew wrote in his article. “Kristof often measures his praise with criticism of the Chinese model, acknowledging that it causes stress or stifles creativity. But these criticisms are more than disclaimers: they are inextricably linked to the model’s successes.”
Lew told the News that it was an honor to have Kristof himself publish his writing.
“I’ve admired Nick Kristof’s work for years, so no question it’s very exciting for me to have had him read this,” Lew said. “I just wanted to show that if you look at the successes of the Chinese model, which are really impressive, they’re not transferable to an American context. In fact, they’re all tied up with aspects of the Chinese system that tend to draw the harshest criticism.”
The news didn’t stop this summer, and neither did the News. In case you haven’t been keeping up, here’s a digest of the top stories of the past few months.
Unease over civil liberties at Yale-NUS College surged this summer when a July 16 article in the Wall Street Journal cited Yale-NUS President Pericles Lewis as saying protests and political parties would not be permitted on the school’s campus in Singapore.
Lewis said the article paraphrased him incorrectly and told the News in July that “all forms of political expression consistent with Singaporean law” will be allowed at Yale-NUS. But when pressed on how Yale-NUS will handle political expression that goes beyond what is permitted by Singaporean law, Lewis and University President Richard Levin were unwilling or unable to give clear answers.
In a July 19 interview, Levin said he did not know whether Yale-NUS will be obligated to report any unregistered political parties or protests, or whether the college will allow Singaporean police on campus to break up protests or meetings of political parties.
“I’d rather just have no comment on these things,” he said.
Protests in Singapore are only allowed in Hong Lim Park’s Speakers’ Corner. While students at NUS may participate in established national parties, Singaporean law forbids them from forming political parties or campus chapters of national parties, akin to the Yale College Republicans or the Yale College Democrats.
Lewis said in July that, to his knowledge, the college will not be obligated to report political parties or protests to Singaporean authorities. He said at the time that he will ultimately be responsible for developing Yale-NUS’s policies on student parties and protest, but declined to give details. Lewis said in July that the policies will become public by the time the college opens in fall 2013. Reached Thursday, he and Levin declined to comment on the policies until September.
The Journal’s article prompted a wave of criticism. Human Rights Watch accused Yale of “betraying the spirit of the university as a center of open debate and protest,” and Chee Soon Juan, chairman of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party, wrote to Lewis to express his “extreme dismay.”
“They say, ‘You have total freedom to express yourself’ — and there’s a but in there — ‘but everything within the confines of what the Singapore government says,’ ” Chee told the News. “You can do anything within those confines, and therein lies the problem, because very soon you’ll find that circle getting smaller and smaller.”
The Yale College faculty passed a resolution in April expressing concern over the historical “lack of respect for civil and political rights” in Singapore.
Months after reaffirming its partnership with Peking University, Yale announced in July it was cancelling its program that sent undergraduates to live and study at the prestigious Chinese school.
University President Richard Levin called the program a “great success” when Yale renewed the partnership in December, but said in July that it consistently failed to achieve “critical mass,” with only four students signed up for fall 2012. Yale College Dean Mary Miller said the program was not financially viable with such low enrollment.
“Programs like this one depend on developing a successful constituency each and every year in order to make them work,” Miller said in a July 26 email. “A program where our staff, including Yale faculty members, who move to Beijing and take up residence for a semester or a year, exceeds the number of students, is not sustainable.”
Yale-PKU was the only program that allowed students from other universities to live and study with students at PKU. Administrators expected the program to attract 15 students per semester when it was launched in 2006, but it averaged around 10, Levin said.
Yale and PKU considered increasing enrollment by adding other American schools to the partnership, such as Brown University and Wellesley College, but Levin said they were unable to secure commitments from peer institutions.
A July 24 email from a faculty member on the program’s advisory committee described the Yale-PKU language program as “notoriously weak,” causing many students to struggle with re-entering the Chinese language program at Yale.
“I enjoyed my time [at PKU], but had difficulty coming back into the language classes at Yale because the PKU program had me studying out of a different book and taking language classes four days a week compared to Yale’s five,” Lucy Brady ’12 said.
Yale and PKU students interviewed in July said they were surprised to hear the program had been shut down. The PKU students also said they were not informed of the program’s closure.
“I think the change may interfere with Yale’s reputation here,” said Shiyao Liu, a PKU student who lived with Yale students in spring 2011. “Making promises and then, after several months, breaking them isn’t a very good action that a prestigious or top-tier American university should do.”
PKU students can still take summer courses at Yale through a program established in 2005.
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights completed its investigation into Yale’s sexual culture in June following a series of changes made by administrators to the University’s sexual misconduct policies.
The 15-month investigation ended after Yale and OCR reached a “voluntary resolution agreement,” announced by OCR on June 15. Under the agreement, the University will continue to uphold its newly implemented grievance mechanisms, such as the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct, and inform the community of available resources devoted to issues of sexual misconduct. Yale will not face any disciplinary action but will be required to report to OCR until May 31, 2014, according to Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education.
Though the investigation did not find Yale in noncompliance with Title IX, it did conclude that the University had under-reported incidents of sexual misconduct “for a very long time” and kept inadequate and confusing records of sexual harassment and violence, Ali said.
The investigation into Yale’s sexual climate began March 2011, just weeks after 16 students and alumni filed a complaint with OCR alleging that Yale had allowed a hostile sexual environment to persist on campus.
Hannah Zeavin ’12 and Alexandra Brodsky ’12, two of the Title IX complainants, pointed out in June that while OCR did not find Yale in noncompliance, it also did not find Yale in compliance with Title IX regulations. Zeavin added that a June 15 letter from OCR to Yale administrators regarding the investigation demonstrated that Yale was “not necessarily within the bounds of Title IX law” before the investigation began.
Still, complainants said in a June 15 statement that they were grateful for OCR’s investigation and plan to form a standing committee to oversee the University’s progress and serve as a “conduit of information” between Yale and OCR.
Former wrestling magnate Linda McMahon and current U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy will face each other this November in the race for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Joseph Lieberman ’64 LAW ’67.
McMahon bested challenger Chris Shays by a 73 to 27 percent margin in the GOP primary, and Murphy led former Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz ’83 by a moderately smaller margin of 68 to 32 percent for the Democratic nomination. The two have turned their attention to the November general election, in which polls show Murphy enjoying a substantial lead.
“Chris Murphy won tonight, and he’ll win in November because people know he’s not like a lot of politicians in Washington,” Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, said in a statement after results were released. “He spends his time working to advance the interests of the middle class, especially when it comes to job creation.”
McMahon, who lost to Sen. Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73 during the 2010 Senate election despite spending over $50 million of her own money, spent an additional $12 million in her primary campaign. She is expected to spend even more during the general election, a fact Murphy acknowledged in his victory speech.
McMahon, meanwhile, characterized Murphy as a picture of Washington’s dysfunction in her victory speech after the primary.
“He’s been there six years, and what do we have to show for it?” McMahon said. “More spending, more debt and higher unemployment.”
But McMahon faces an uphill battle, as a July poll by Public Policy Polling gave Murphy a 50 to 42 percent lead over McMahon, substantially wider than a Quinnipiac poll conducted in May that gave Murphy only a three-point lead.
Forty-nine cases of sexual harassment, assault or other misconduct were brought to Yale officials between Jan. 1 and June 30, according to the University’s second semi-annual report compiling sexual misconduct complaints.
As part of the University’s efforts to improve transparency, administrators began releasing semiannual reports last year that compile all sexual misconduct cases. The second such report contains the first instance of expulsion imposed by the newly created the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct.
According to the report, the complaint that led to expulsion was filed on behalf of a female Yale College student and alleged that a male undergraduate with whom she had been in a relationship “committed acts of intimate partner violence.” The UWC, which was established last summer to streamline Yale’s sexual grievance procedures, found sufficient evidence to support the allegations and decided to expel the male student given his “prior history of similar conduct.”
The punishment was the first instance in which any student had been expelled from Yale College since at least 1998, according to annual reports of the Executive Committee archived online.
Deputy Provost Stephanie Spangler, who was appointed University Title IX Coordinator last November during the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights’ investigation into Yale’s sexual culture, said administrators will continue working to “clarify and communicate” the University’s sexual misconduct policies and see whether anything needs to be changed.
“The goal is to be fair and consistent given the complexities of the case,” Spangler said in July about evaluating cases. “It’s not a formulaic process.”
According to the University’s first semi-annual report, which was released in February, 52 cases of sexual misconduct were brought to officials between July 1 and Dec. 31 of 2011.
After more than five years of planning and review, the $135 million Downtown Crossing project, New Haven’s largest urban development effort in generations, received final legislative approval this month to move forward with construction.
Downtown Crossing, the City’s plan to convert the eastern section of Route 34 from a limited access highway into a pair of pedestrian-scale city streets, was first revealed in 2007. The roadwork will reclaim reclaim 11 acres of land, officials said, and a 2.4 acre parcel of that space will be home to a new 10-story, 426,000-square-foot medical office tower.
The project began a lengthy legislative review process last April, when the real estate developer, Carter Winstanley, formally submitted a 199-page proposal to the Board of Aldermen. After months of review and deliberation, the full Board voted unanimously to approve the project on Aug. 6, paving the way for Downtown Crossing to move forward into execution.
“For half a century, the highway divided the city and served as a reminder of the homes and businesses that were lost,” Mayor John DeStefano Jr. said at a press conference on Aug. 7, referring to the destruction of the Oak Street neighborhood to make way for an extension of Route 34 under former Mayor Richard Lee in the 1950s. “No more. This January, work will finally begin to remove the highway and restore the street grid, employing thousands of people and propelling our local economy for decades to come.”
The first phase of Downtown Crossing will focus on the project’s road construction work. Exits 2 and 3 of Route 34 will be closed, and the old Route 34 Connector at the North and South Frontage roads will be converted into an urban boulevard that officials hope will reconnect the Hill neighborhood with downtown. College Street will then be reconstructed at grade level.
In the project’s second phase, the city will transfer the 2.4-acre land parcel Winstanley Enterprises, and Winstanley will develop the site into a medical sciences office tower at 100 College St. with ground level retail space.
Gov. Dannel Malloy announced in June that multinational drug company Alexion Pharmaceuticals will relocate its headquarters to 100 College St. — becoming the central tenant of the new development. Alexion plans to move 350 of its current employees to New Haven and make an additional 200 to 300 new hires at the facility by 2017.
The three-part lineup leaked online in March. The new website features bios of the headliners, as well as the three openers — Jamestown, The First Town in America, A Streetcar Named Funk, 9 Tigers — who won WYBC’s Battle of the Bands competition Tuesday night.
A quick roundup of the performers: T-Pain is a two-time Grammy-winner who’s famous for songs like “Buy U A Drank” and “Bartender” and for his use of auto-tune. Passion Pit hit it big with 2008’s “Sleepyhead.” 3LAU is a DJ and current student at Washington University in St. Louis who serves as the official DJ for fratmusic.com.
Gates to Old Campus will open at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Beginning next fall, freshmen hoping to joining Greek organizations will not be able to rush until spring semester, Yale College Dean Mary Miller and Dean of Student Affairs Marichal Gentry announced in an email Thursday.
“Adjusting to the rigors of college life and academics is a major transition for entering undergraduates,” the email stated. “We hope this change will provide freshmen adequate time to orient themselves more thoroughly to the richness of the broad Yale experience.”
Miller and Gentry added that spring rush is the “standard practice” among many of Yale’s peer institutions, a practice that both administrators said will allow freshmen more time to explore the “full range of activities” available on campus. Miller and Gentry’s email said administrators would speak with student leaders in the next few months about ways to implement the new regulation.
Most of Yale’s fraternities are not registered with the Yale College Dean’s Office.
In response to recent reports that the New York Police Department kept track of Muslim students at Yale, a group of students has launched a “Call the NYPD” photo campaign on Facebook.
The campaign’s Facebook page features photos of Yalies holding handwritten “I am…” signs in various campus locations, including Cross Campus. Some students used the signs to declare their religious and ethnic affiliations. Others described their sexual orientation or political perspective. The signs range from “I am a Muslim” and “I am a woman” to “I’m sexy and I know it” and “I’m secretly a unicorn.”
“Together, these Yalies refuse to endorse profiling based on race, religion, or status as a history major,” the group’s description read.
The students who participated in the photo campaign are not the only Yalies opposed to the New York Police Department’s recent investigations. University President Richard Levin said in a Feb. 20 email that “police surveillance based on religion, nationality, or peacefully expressed political opinions is antithetical to the values of Yale, the academic community, and the United States,” adding that he wanted to assure members of the Yale Muslim Students Association that “they can count on the full support of Yale University.”
Mixed-gender housing will be extended to juniors for the 2012-2013 school year, the Yale College Countil announced in a Sunday email.
In January, the Yale College Council submitted a proposal to administrators calling for a mixed-gender option for juniors. The proposal included feedback from seniors who had lived in gender-neutral suites in the past two years and survey data from current juniors and seniors. University President Richard Levin presented the report to the Yale Corporation this weekend, and the measure was approved.
“I was optimistic about the proposal when we presented it to President Levin and Dean Miller because the YCC gender-neutral housing committee put together such a strong and well researched report,” YCC President Brandon Levin ’13 said.
The change comes two years after seniors were given the option to live with the opposite sex.
New York Police Department officers monitored Muslim students at Yale and at least 14 other colleges around the northeast, the Associated Press reported Saturday.
Detectives went undercover and trawled the websites of Muslim student associations at colleges including the University of Pennsylvania and New York University, according to the AP. The names of students and professors were recorded in reports prepared for New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, though none were charged with any crime.
“I see a violation of civil rights here,” Tanweer Haq, chaplain of the Muslim Student Association at Syracuse, told the AP. “Nobody wants to be on the list of the FBI or the NYPD or whatever. Muslim students want to have their own lives, their own privacy and enjoy the same freedoms and opportunities that everybody else has.”
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne told the AP his department deemed it “prudent to get a better handle on” what was occurring at Muslim student associations around the Northeast. At least 12 people arrested or convicted on terrorism-related charges around the world were associated with Muslim student associations, Browne pointed out. He said the NYPD’s monitoring only took place in 2006 and 2007, but the AP documented cases of undercover monitoring as recently as 2009.
University spokesman Tom Conroy could not immediately be reached for comment.
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a new ranking claims that all the single Yalies aren’t looking too good these days.
A college dating site — yes, those are real — called DateMySchool.com is claiming that, based on a mysterious “hotness ratio,” Yale is the ugliest college in the Ivy League, according to an article posted to the Atlantic Wire Tuesday morning. The dating site used statistics on how often a user’s profile picture was saved by other users on the website to get to this “hotness ratio.” We’re guessing the data is pretty accurate, since profile pictures are usually a good description of what someone looks like in real life.
Yale women came up last in the Ivy League, while Yale men eked out a victory in hotness over Harvard, Cornell and Penn. With the two scores combined, Yale ranked dead last. Yikes.
The website, started by two Columbia MBA grads, has 50,000 active users from 1,000 different schools, according to the Atlantic Wire.
