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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, MARCH 31, 2023 · VOL. CXLV, NO. 17 · yaledailynews.com · @yaledailynews
Yale accepts 2,275 students into class of 2027 BY ANIKA SETH STAFF REPORTER Yale College admitted 2,275 students to the class of 2027 from its largest-ever pool of 52,250 applicants, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions announced on Thursday. 776 students were admitted during the early action round and 66 matched through the QuestBridge National College Match program. The remaining 1,433 received their offers of admissions Thursday. An additional 1,145 applicants were offered spots on the waitlist.
The admitted cohort overall includes students from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, four United States territories and 78 countries. The admissions office withholds detailed statistics about the demographics of the applicant pool as well as the group of admitted students each year, but told the News it would release a profile of matriculates in August. “The strength and diversity of the applicant pool is much more important than the number of applications we receive,” said Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jere-
miah Quinlan in the announcement. “I am pleased that Yale College continues to appeal to promising students from a wide range of backgrounds. I am also proud that the admissions office has been able to continue its thoughtful whole-person review process of each applicant, even as the volume of applications has increased.” The number of applicants is up by nearly 50 percent compared to the pool of students that sought entry to the class of 2024. Quinlan attributed this shift to the University’s choice to adopt a test-optional policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which the admis-
sions office has renewed for each of the intervening application cycles. Last month, the admissions office extended its test-optional policy through to class of 2028’s application cycle, with plans to decide on a long-term testing policy in the winter of 2024. The 4.35 percent acceptance rate for the class for 2027 is the lowest in recent history, down from 4.46 percent for the class of 2026, 4.62 for the class of 2025, 6.54 percent for the class of 2024 and 5.91 for the class of 2023. SEE ADMISSIONS PAGE 5
Elicker bulldozes West River tent city Cox case BY YASH ROY, NATI TESFAYE & YURII STASIUK STAFF REPORTERS For Eric Pullen, a resident of the West River Tent City who has diagnosed PTSD, a shelter is not a comfortable or viable option. Until recently, he was living in a tent city with roughly a dozen other residents off of Ella T. Grasso Boulevard. A March 10 removal order that cited city health code violations forced most of the unhoused people, including Pullen, to leave on March 15. As the sun rose the next day, police bulldozed the site and forcibly removed three remaining residents of the tent city. Officers of the New Haven Police Department arrested Mark Colville, a local housing activist, for criminal trespassing at the site on March 16. The tent city had stood off of Ella T. Grasso Boulevard for three years. Opponents of the move have questioned why the removal was necessary after the tent city had peacefully existed for more than three years. The tent city has at times been a home to more than 40 unhoused New Haveners. “There comes the point when, when law no longer matters. Then one has to use one's body to simply dramatize the fact that the law is being broken by the state,” Colville said.
Colville said that he has “appealed to the law” and claimed the city violated human rights laws including the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In response to criticism from housing advocates and mayoral candi-
dates about the removal, city officials insisted that they have constantly worked with people living in the tent city to relocate them and provide SEE BULLDOZE PAGE 5
officers violated NHPD policy BY NATHANIEL ROSENBERG & YASH ROY STAFF REPORTERS
The officers who arrested and paralyzed Randy Cox were reckless, lacked compassion and were in violation of both state law and numerous department policies, according to a New Haven Police Department Internal Affairs report obtained by the News. The report concluded that the officers involved were at fault in the June 19 arrest, which left Cox paralyzed from the chest down. Charges against the five officers cited behaviors including “recklessly handling” Cox during the incident, failing to turn on their body cameras, swearing at Cox while he was injured and giving “untruthful” statements to investigators.
Mayoral candidates and elected officials have accused Elicker of “mismanagement” after the demolition of the tent city off of Ella T. Grasso Boulevard. /Courtesy of Sam Taylor
SEE COX PAGE 4
New mural debuts in Murray dining hall CT hospitals report losses BY PALOMA VIGIL & ANIKA SETH STAFF REPORTERS
Students returned to the Pauli Murray College dining hall after spring recess to see a new mural of Murray — the first person of color to receive a JSD from Yale Law School — brightly displayed across the once-empty wall.
Contemporary American artist Mickalene Thomas ART ’02 put the piece together over spring recess and officially introduced it at a celebratory event on Monday afternoon. Thomas depicted Murray as a young adult, the same age as many of the students who live in the college. “I always knew I wanted something BIG to represent someone whose life did not obey frames: who literally imagined themselves out
Muralist Mickalene Thomas ART ’02 crafted a mural of Pauli Murray in the college’s dining hall over spring recess. / Michael Paz, Contributing Photographer
CROSS CAMPUS
THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY, 2993.
Temporary repairs begin in the Divinity School after multiple students were evacuated over fears of roof collapse during spring break. $5 million repair estimate delayed potential projects for years.
INSIDE THE NEWS TRUMBULLAND PIERSON GET NEW HEADS OF COLLEGE PAGE 11 NEWS
of Jim Crow North Carolina, out of patriarchy, out of so many limitations that were imposed on them,” Murray Head of College Tina Lu told the News. “I also wanted a portrait that would always exist in a little bit of tension with the room itself; as Mickalene says, Pauli in the mural is looking outward.” Monday’s mural celebration included refreshments, musical performances and speeches. Local private school Trinity Girls Choir — the choir for the Trinity Church on the New Haven Green — performed selections including Murray’s grandmother’s favorite hymn. Yale’s gospel choir sang “Amazing Grace” and their alumni song. At Monday’s event, Lu also commended Thomas for her work on the mural, calling her an “artist for the ages” and commending her “rockstar energy.” Murray was born in Baltimore in 1910 and raised in Durham, North Carolina. They became a prolific civil rights lawyer and activist, challenging racial segregation. Murray worked within frameworks of intersectionality decades before Kimberlé Crenshaw would formally coin the term in 1989. They helped found the National Organization for Women in 1966 and coined the term “Jane Crow,” which is used to describe the unique structures of oppression that Black women faced during the twentieth century during the twentieth century. In the 1940s, Murray, who attended Yale Law School, wrote a paper encouraging civil rights lawyers to challenge state segregation laws as unconstitutional. Murray's argument would go on to form the basis of the 1954 landmark Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that overturned segregation in schools. It also would shape the basis of former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s successful arguments against
Yale-New Haven Health lost $240 million in the last fiscal year. They were not alone — in 2022, Connecticut hospitals faced their worst financial year since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 7, the Connecticut Hospital Association, which represents hospitals and health-related organizations across the state, released an analysis of the pandemic’s impact on the financial health of the hospitals they represent. Commissioned by the American Hospital Association, the report revealed that the median operating margin dropped nearly 67 percent from pre-pandemic levels across Connecticut hospitals, compared to a national average decline of 20 percent. “This is not a sustainable situation,” Syed Hussain, chief clinical officer of Trinity Health of New England, told the News. “Ultimately … we will be forced to look at programs and offerings and initiatives that we're currently able to offer to the community and say, ‘Okay, what can we not offer?’ Because we can’t continue running in the red.”
SEE MURAL PAGE 5
SEE HOSPITAL PAGE 4
PAGE 3 OPINIONS PAGE 6 NEWS PAGE 13 AD PAGE 14 SPORTS PAGE B1 WEEKEND
BY KAYLA YUP & SAMANTHA LIU STAFF REPORTERS
TESTING Yale extended its test optional policy thr0ugh the next year. PAGE 6 NEWS MUSSELS A new Yale study uncovers how mussels shape the Florida ecosystem. PAGE 8 SCITECH