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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2026 · VOL. CXLIX, NO. 9 · yaledailynews.com · @yaledailynews
Yale admissions stops Yale made most cuts for tax hike sending likely letters BY ARIA LYNN-SKOV AND LEO NYBERG STAFF REPORTERS
Ellie Park
BY LEO NYBERG AND DAVID LIU STAFF REPORTERS Yale will no longer use likely letters to recruit highly competitive applicants starting this undergraduate admissions cycle, according to the admissions office. Mark Dunn, the director of recruitment in the admissions office, said the office scrapped likely letters because an internal analysis showed the letters had little impact on yield rates. The letters are a tool used by many elite universities to give some applicants, typically those expected to receive offers from other top universities, early notice that they are likely to be accepted when official decisions are released. Likely letters for recruited athletes will continue, according to Dunn.
“We basically couldn’t find evidence that that intervention was making the students more likely to yield and raising their overall yield rates closer to the overall regular decision yield rate,” Dunn said in an interview. “It’s something that we have been thinking about for a long time because the likely process is a pretty resource-intensive program for the admissions office.” While the change has not yet been publicly announced, Dunn and Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeremiah Quinlan confirmed to the News that the admissions office has eliminated the program. Dunn said the admissions office plans to redirect the time and resources devoted to outreach for likely letter recipiSEE LETTERS PAGE 4
Yale has already made 78 percent of the budget cuts it planned to implement over three years in response to last year’s endowment tax hike, according to Yale’s fiscal year 2027 budget that was released last month. The endowment tax hike, which was part of President Donald Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is costing Yale $247 million this fiscal year, after the tax jumped from $52 million to $299 million, according to the budget. The increased
figure represents 3.6 percent of the University’s total spending this fiscal year. The cuts leave 22 percent left to achieve for the remaining two years of the three-year target. “The FY27 budget maintains a focus on advancing Yale’s strategic academic priorities despite significant financial pressures,” Provost Scott Strobel and Senior Vice President for Operations Geoff Chatas said in the opening statement of the budget book. “Most notably, the federal government increased the tax Yale pays on its endowment investment income.”
Last year, administrators estimated that the tax on the University’s endowment investment income, which was increased from 1.4 to 8 percent, would cost Yale around $300 million per year, and planned budget cuts over a threeyear period in response. The budget for fiscal year 2027 — which began on July 1, the same day the endowment tax hike went into effect — details how much the tax will impact individual schools across the University. “This increase and the continued uncertainty around federal SEE BUDGET PAGE 4
Some librarian workloads grew BY PREMRUDEE MEPREMWATTANA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Some Yale librarians have been obliged to take on multiple positions as a result of budget-tightening measures made in anticipation of an increased tax on the University endowment. A year before the tax hike from 1.4 percent to 8 percent took effect this July, Yale paused hiring and reduced its non-salary expenses by 5 percent. A spokesperson said on Thursday that Yale Library tightened its budget over the summer by consolidating services that were previously conducted separately. As a result, many staff positions have been combined or restructured within the library system.
Ellie Park “I used to be instruction librarian, now I’m instruction and pedagogy librarian,” Ava Calpino, who began working as a librarian one
year ago, said on a bus drive to the Library Shelving Facility in HamSEE LIBRARY PAGE 4
Faculty senate urges non-tenure support BY JOLYNDA WANG AND HAILEY YOUNG STAFF REPORTERS
Martin Peralta / Photographry Editor
‘Ma Rainey’ returns home to Yale BY LENA KATIR STAFF REPORTER “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” will return to the Yale Repertory Theatre this Friday for the first time since it premiered at the theater 42 years ago. Written by Tony-winning play-
wright August Wilson, the show is set during a 1927 recording session in Chicago and follows blues singer Ma Rainey alongside her band and producers as tensions over ambition, race and artistic agency come to a head. The production was directed by Lloyd Richards, a former dean of the
drama school, for its world premiere at the Rep in 1984. Evan Yionoulis ’82 DRA ’85, dean of the David Geffen School of Drama and artistic director of the Yale Rep, said she was “excited” and SEE PLAY PAGE 5
Following a spring hiring season that saw several instructional faculty let go due to budget cuts, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Senate called on Yale administrators to improve job security and institutional support for instructional faculty. The report, adopted by the senate on Sept. 10 and published over the weekend, laid out several recommendations, including greater job security, professional support and institutional transparency. It also calls on University leaders to establish a clear implementation schedule for the recommendations to track progress annually. “Instructional faculty are indispensable to Yale’s teaching mission, yet the structures governing their appointments have not always recognized their work through commen-
surate job security, compensation, opportunities for advancement, professional support, and institutional voice,” the report reads. Instructional faculty, which includes lectors and lecturers on non-ladder tracks, account for more than 40 percent of the faculty, according to the report. The report, which was written by the FAS-SEAS Senate’s Instructional Faculty Committee, consolidates recommendations from four previous reports, dating back to 2017. The report laid out 34 recommendations in total, organized around three major areas: compensation, professional recognition and transparency. Significant proposals include transitioning lector and lecturer titles into a “teaching professor” model, which would offer employment security analogous to tenure. The committee also SEE FACULTY PAGE 5
Football looks to bounce back in home opener BY BRODY GILKISON STAFF REPORTER The Yale Bulldogs (1–1, 0–1 Ivy) are set to host the Merrimack Warriors (2–3, 0–0 FCS Independent) on Saturday for the team’s first home game of the year. Last weekend, Team 153 struggled to get anything going on either side of the ball and dropped its first game of the season to Cornell, losing 38-25 in Ithaca. This week, the
Bulldogs will look to get back in the win column and may have some help returning from the injury report. Who will be behind center? Last weekend, many fans were shocked to see #7 Charles Hewitt ’29 trot onto the field to lead the Yale offense. Just a week earlier, the regular starting quarterback, Dante Reno ’28, threw for 454 yards and five scores to lead the Bulldogs to a comeback vic-
INSIDE THE NEWS Yale studies are offering students compensation to be research subjects. Several Yale students said they have enjoyed participating in studies. PAGE 6 NEWS
tory against Holy Cross. But after sustaining an elbow injury during that game, Reno did not play against Cornell last weekend. Hewitt, normally the second-string quarterback, took over the offense and threw for 244 yards, two touchdowns and an interception in his first-ever collegiate start. This week, though, after working hard to rehab his elbow, Reno SEE FOOTBALL PAGE 5
PAGE 2 BULLETIN PAGE 3 OPINION PAGE 9 ARTS PAGE 11 SPORTS PAGE B2 WKND
Liza Kaufman / Photography Editor
MUSIC The founder of the Yale Undergraduate Music
Mentorship Initiative said 50 mentors hope to support the musical education of New Haven middle schoolers. PAGE 10 ARTS
MIDTERMS Yale professors said Democrats are likely to see victories this November, pinpointing the affordability crisis as an issue motivating voters. PAGE 6 NEWS
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2026 · yaledailynews.com
BULLETIN This Day in Yale History, 1993 October 2, 1993 / Levin speech will conclude procession after formal inauguration By Sasha Smith Yale’s new president, Richard Levin, will be inaugurated today. The ceremony will be attended by 500 Yale College and graduate students, who have been selected to attend by their residential college masters and deans.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of Brett Penk and Zora Penager Davidson’s article, “Alley Cats tap two women, including one of color, for the first time,” misstated the order in which Yale’s second and third oldest a cappella groups were founded. The Spizzwinks are the University’s second-oldest group and the SOBs are the third-oldest, not vice versa.
Behind the Headline By Evelyn Ronan I thought covering the first Civilian Review Board meeting of the production year would be a good first step into covering policing in New Haven, so I brought Ida, who’s heeling the News and trying out the City Desk. I can’t say the CRB didn’t deliver. Contrary to what the agenda promised, the entire meeting was devoted to one board member’s vehement denial of a private sexual harassment complaint that another member had lodged months earlier. We rushed back to break the story, sending the city and its team of lawyers into a minor PR crisis in the process. After two days of reflecting and beginning to plan followup coverage, we’re still balking at the dysfunctional, bumbling machine that is New Haven’s Civilian Review Board. While we don’t know what the future of New Haven’s police oversight program looks like, we are patiently awaiting the second coming of the CRB and still sifting through the cryptic WhatsApp messages we’ve been receiving from its members.
Read “Police oversight board member denies harrassment allegations” on page 8.
An earlier version of Gillian Peihe Feng and Irene Kim’s article, “School of Medicine, Law School students share Trump concerns,” mischaracterized a statement from Yale President Maurie McInnis. She said the settlement negotiations with the Justice Department do not concern the Law School investigation, not that the Law School was excluded from investigations.
ILLUSTRATION BY LUCAS CASTILLO
ILLUSTRATION BY NELLIE KENNEY
ILLUSTRATION BY EMILY CAI
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2026 · yaledailynews.com
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OPINION GUEST COLUMNIST
GUEST COLUMNIST
NICHOLAS SKEVIS
MADDY CORSON
We are all Jane Doe Content warning: This article mentions sexual violence. SHARE is available to all members of the Yale community who are dealing with sexual misconduct of any kind, including sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking, intimate partner violence and more. Counselors are available any time, day or night, at the 24/7 hotline: (203) 432-2000. More than 50 fraternity brothers shared a group chat. Seven of them allegedly perpetrated acts of gang rape against a fellow student known as Jane Doe. Two were expelled. The other five fulfilled an essay requirement. The outrage at the so-called Cornell Seven is warranted. But mere outrage — in this case, a slew of black-text Instagram posts and a feature story on the nightly news — continually falls short and fails survivors. Last year, I reported a man who’d recently acquired a position of power in the Yale community. I was told by a Yale administrator that my story wasn’t enough to invalidate his role — one which required extensive contact with others, a steady temperament and an ability to discern the difference between yes and no. In fact, I had informed the relevant officials before his hiring, warning that the role would place him in close contact with young women. My pleas were rejected.
IF WE MEAN IT WHEN WE SAY WE ARE ALL JANE DOE, OUTRAGE IS ONLY THE BEGINNING. I had reported an assault. An administrator responded as if I’d been dumped: one day, I’d find my “special man,” they assured me, verbatim. They added that I would make a good consent educator. I sat there in shock, waiting for an explanation of what that could possibly mean. The administrator provided no such clarification. The person I had reported was trusted to tell yes from no. I was offered a way to teach it. I keep hearing the now-cliche phrase, “not all men.” It’s a rhetorical crutch that shields the complicit from accountability. Yes, not all of the more than 50 fraternity brothers in that group chat inflicted direct, definitional violence upon Jane Doe. But who among them spoke out? How many read the “free pussy” message and questioned it? Which ones witnessed and did something, did anything? With an n of 50, “not all men” is not an adequate answer. I see this in my own story, too. In the weeks and months that followed a series of repeated assaults, I catalogued every instance of violence inflicted upon me in the back of an old notebook. I sat up straight in my bed, my pen shaking as I pulled my hand across the yellowed, lined
pages. Nearly half a year later, I contacted a confidential sexual assault hotline run by the University. In a meeting with my counselor and an official from the Title IX Office, I recounted, page by page, what I had survived. In response, I was told that bringing my case before a disciplinary committee would most likely result in an unfavorable outcome. Jane Doe ultimately left Cornell. I, too, sought time away from campus after my sexual assault, and was fortunate to have institutional support in making that decision. I wasn’t only seeking separation from the person who hurt me. Rather, I needed distance from a community that had tolerated that violence — a community that, as the Cornell institutional response demonstrates, was not singular in its indifference to sexual violence. The Title IX officers who sat across from me were doing what the system allows. That is my indictment: the system allows so little. Survivor support is the backend of a structure built to shield the University from scrutiny and protect its most privileged members from liability. That’s exactly why I’m not surprised by what Cornell did — or, rather, failed to do — for Jane Doe: not because I accept it but because I have lived it. Two expulsions do not themselves demonstrate a system built to protect survivors; such responses raise more fundamental questions about whether accountability is an institutional priority. Jane Doe deserves more than our indignation. She deserves friends who refuse to exploit her. She deserves a community which protects and heals her, rather than covers up its own shortcomings. And, most of all, she deserves a system that is designed from the start to prevent such violence from happening, and when it fails in this regard, responds with justice rather than an essay requirement. Outrage is easy; the Instagram stories will fade, and the news cycle will move on. Jane Doe will not. If we mean it when we say we are all Jane Doe, outrage is only the beginning. More than 50 men were in that group chat. The next time — trust me, there will be a next time — someone might speak. And the next time, there must be a system built to listen and respond. That means consequences that match findings so that no sexual assault ends with an essay. It means independent review so that the office supporting survivors isn’t bound to the same institution whose interests it may be called upon to criticize. And, it means holding organizations accountable, both within and beyond the University, for the violence they enable and the silence they reward. We are all Jane Doe. Let that be a promise, not a caption. MADDY CORSON is pursuing a dual bachelor’s degree and master’s of public policy degree at Yale College and the Jackson School of Global Affairs. She can be reached at maddy.corson@yale.edu.
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U.S. jobs can be for foreign students Over the past two years the United States government has dedicated itself to restricting the access of foreigners to American higher education and amplifying the bureaucratic roadblocks for those already admitted to American universities. This makes it all but surprising that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is now enforcing a stricter interpretation of Curricular Practical Training — or CPT — regulations. In complying, Yale thus would restrict international students’ access to the American internship market. Tom Dawber ’28 in his piece argues in support of this restriction, citing that “American jobs should go to Americans first.” It should be noted here that American jobs already go to American students first. International students are disadvantaged in the internship market, since, as Sullivan Ho ’29 discusses in his column, companies have to assume additional administrative and immigrationrelated burdens to hire them. So, restricting CPT is not a question of prioritizing Americans, but rather of adding additional obstacles in the path of international students. It is true that international students benefit from CPT: for many degrees, practical training or research is an essential component to the undergraduate education — irrespective of whether it is in the mandatory curriculum. From aspiring graduate school applicants who have the opportunity to conduct research in prestigious universities through summer programs, to engineers and pre-med students, CPT is a major incentive to come and study in the United States. Moreover, it is not as if America is not receiving anything in return. If anything, the benefits far outweigh the costs. Besides the common talking points on the matter, that international students contribute billions of dollars to the American economy, promote diversity and give American universities the opportunity to brag about admitting “the best in the world,” integrating foreign students in the United States’ institutions is
integral to America’s geopolitical position. Ensuring that the world’s future leaders receive an American education helps build long-lasting relationships between the United States and other countries and bet that the graduates of its universities will, if nothing else, be more sympathetic to American dominance. For example, in my home country and close ally, Greece, five out of the last six non-caretaker prime ministers have been American educated. Within the past couple of years, though, the image of America as a destination for higher education has changed drastically. Restrictions in international students’ lives, increased scrutiny and difficulties in obtaining visas have resulted in potential candidates thinking twice before applying. Common App’s data showed a 10 percent decrease in international applications in the 2025-2026 application cycle. Restricting CPT stands to further disincentivize the next generation of world leaders from choosing the United States as an option for their studies. Of course, the damage caused by this decision is not limited to higher education itself. In defending the government’s proposed restriction on CPT, Dawber writes: “America isn’t the land of limitless opportunity that it once was. The frontier is closed, the cities are full, the suburbs are unaffordable and there aren’t enough places in the 21st century job market for those of us who are already here.” Aside from the obvious point that the frontier has been closed for well over a century, his point contains certain truths. America, along with most of the Western world, is facing a period of economic uncertainty — maybe even a period of stagnation in comparison to its rival China. However, restricting international students and scholars does not solve the problem. If anything, it exacerbates it. America won the Cold War on the premise that free market capitalism and liberal democracy are superior to planned economies and state interventionism.
Yet, when faced with a new geopolitical rival it seems to move away from these principles. Hos t i l i ty to in te r n a t i o n a l students contradicts America’s foundational business model. By removing restrictions and fostering free market competition in the job market, the United States has thus far been able to attract talent from all around the world, talent that was then absorbed by research and industry alike. Regulating who companies can hire — especially when it comes to positions that require skilled professionals — ultimately forces companies to restrict themselves to a smaller applicant pool, while opening the door to its competitors, most notably China, to take their pick from students America spent years educating. Thus the problem with the potential restrictions in CPT is twofold. On the one hand, it leaves currently matriculated international students in a state of uncertainty. No CPT means that we will have to search for internships and research positions abroad, with all the additional bureaucratic, practical and financial complications associated with such an endeavor. On the other hand, limiting opportunities for CPT will inevitably result in prospective students choosing destinations in Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada or — as stated before — even China for their professional and academic pursuits, much to the detriment of American academia and economy alike. It is under these circumstances that Yale has to choose between maintaining its CPT program — and thus both supporting international students and doing what is best for the nation long term — and capitulating to ICE to avoid a confrontation with the federal government. We can only hope that its choice will be remembered as the correct one. NICHOLAS SKEVIS is a sophomore in Timothy Dwight studying physics. He can be reached at nicholas.skevis@yale.edu
S TA F F C O L U M N I S T HANNAH OWENS PIERRE
Clean up the trash It’s an all-too-familiar sight: as I walk to class from Science Hill, I pass heaping piles of trash. Garbage cans near Beineke overflow with half-eaten food and cardboard boxes. Discarded wrappers and flyers blow across the street from the New Haven Green. Yale has begun to resemble a garbage dump. The contrast is striking; the picturesque beauty of Yale’s gothic architecture appears grey and flat when lined with filth. And yet we tolerate these conditions. Why? I see Yale’s trash problem as one small instance of a larger issue in our society: the decline of social cohesion and, with it, a sense of responsibility toward our fellow citizens. Robert Putnam GRD ’65 ’70 diagnosed part of this problem in his bestselling book Bowling Alone, published more than two decades ago, arguing that Americans were becoming increasingly atomized. Young people today increasingly reject forms of social cohesion entirely, as declining rates of patriotism illustrate. Yet social cohesion is essential to maintaining our social norms. Society functions only when people follow the rules — both the formal rules written into law and the informal rules that make everyday life pleasant, such as that one ought to wait for an empty trash can to discard their belongings when the nearest one is full. We are more likely to follow those rules when we feel a sense of responsibility toward the people around us. Absent social cohesion, we feel inclined to disregard the norms in pursuit of a marginal selfish gain. We see this in the domain of
shopping carts. A simple moral norm states that we ought to put the shopping cart away after we use it. When we feel a strong sense of community, this rule is easy to obey. But as we begin to privilege ourselves and reject our role in the broader society, the rule becomes a seemingly arbitrary nuisance. Likewise, in the domain of trash, I am not the first to observe that Yale students feel disconnected from one another. Richie George ’27, writing in the News, noted that students commonly ignore people whom they know on the street, feeling that it is not worth the effort to greet those who are not in their immediate social circle. Perhaps we obey the unspoken rules of social decency when it comes to our close friends, but we are all too willing to pass on hardship to a stranger in the form of social isolation or discarded trash. In doing so, however, we unwittingly harm ourselves. When we toss our used tissue on the ground below the trash can, we encourage the breakdown of this simple social norm. It feels distinctly wrong to be the first person to place an empty cardboard box on the top of the garbage can, but perfectly fine to be the 50th person to do so. This is how social norms deteriorate. Each individual act may seem insignificant, but the decline of social cohesion leaves us all worse off, living in a lonelier and dirtier city. Of course, this isn’t the only problem driving Yale’s abundance of trash. Much of the blame belongs to Yale itself. One might ask why Yale doesn’t simply provide more trash cans.
But the number of trash cans makes little difference if they are not consistently emptied. With Yale tuition now costing $94,100, it should be easy for the school to pay workers enough to regularly empty the garbage cans, right? Apparently not. The trash cans remain filled, day in and day out, and people continue to pile up trash. Whatever the source of this administrative neglect, the result is the same: an unpleasant environment for students and community members alike. Yet even if Yale gets its act together and empties the trash cans more regularly, students will still have to resist the temptation to fill a garbage can to the rim between collection shifts. We cannot outsource every act of civic responsibility to u n ive rs i ty e m p l oye e s. Keeping our shared spaces clean requires something from us: a simple sense of responsibility toward our community and a willingness to follow the unspoken rules that make communal life possible. The trash piling up around Yale and New Haven may seem like a trivial problem. It isn’t. Not only is trash destroying the beauty of our school and spreading disease, it is also a reflection of how we think about our obligations to one another. HANNAH OWENS PIERRE is a junior in Benjamin Franklin College studying ethics, politics and economics and psychology. Her column examines Yale policies and broader politics. She can be reached at hannah. owenspierre@yale.edu.
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2026 · yaledailynews.com · @yaledailynews
FROM THE FRONT
“Her eyes and words are so icy, oh, but she burns / Like rum on a fire” CHERRY WINE HOZIER
Likely letters were intended to increase yield rate LETTERS FROM PAGE 1 ents toward “more personalized recruitment efforts that can benefit all regular decision students.” The shift is set to be budget-neutral, according to Quinlan. In past years, likely letters were rolled out before regular decisions were released in the spring. Dunn said they did not use likely letters for applicants in Yale’s winter round of restrictive early action since students applying early are more likely to matriculate. Dunn said it is standard practice in the admissions office not to share exact data or yield figures for subgroups, like demographics or whether a student received a likely letter. Of the 2,328 students Yale admitted to the class of 2030, 1,652 matriculated — a rate of 70.9 percent. On a 2021 episode of the Yale admissions podcast, admissions officers said they have traditionally offered around 200 letters to the candidates they deem most likely to receive offers from other elite universities. “The yield rate on students who had received a likely letter has consistently been lower than the overall regular decision yield rate over the years,” Dunn said. Dunn said the decision was driven in part by the growing vol-
ume of applications and the larger size of Yale’s incoming class. The admissions office is now exploring an online portal that would allow admitted students to browse profiles of current students who have opted in to connecting with them, according to Dunn. He said rather than segmenting admitted students based on their background or interests, the portal would let all prospective students seek out current undergraduates they would be interested in connecting with. “I think that this small shift in our recruitment strategy will enable the admissions office to provide more admitted students with opportunities to connect with current Yalies as they make their college decision,” Quinlan wrote in an email. Dunn said one of the most valuable aspects of the likely letter program was the opportunity for recipients to connect with a current undergraduate, giving prospective students a consistent point of contact as they considered their college options. “We survey admitted students every summer, including students who’ve chosen Yale and students who haven’t chosen Yale, and we ask them for insights about what helped to make their decision,” Dunn said. “What comes up over and over and over again from students who are choosing Yale is that the community
Kalina Sabala Montes / Photography Editor
Undergraduate admissions officers said they eliminated the program because it had little impact on yield rate. Officers and recruitment coordinators will focus on pitching Yale to a wider pool of students accepted in the regular decision round. is what really stood out to them, the friendliness of the Yale students.” The likely letters have also been used to recruit elite students in science fields, through programs such as Yale Engineering and Science Scholars used to attract applicants with scientific research experience. While
the program will continue, Dunn said the scholars will be notified with the rest of the admitted students pool. The yield rate in 2023 for YES Scholars — before they started receiving guaranteed summer research funding that year — was around 35 percent.
The early action application deadline for Yale is Nov. 1. Contact LEO NYBERG at leo.nyberg@yale.edu and DAVID LIU at david.c.liu@yale.edu.
Trump tax hike is costing Yale $247 million annually BUDGET FROM PAGE 1 research support—a crucial funding source—prompted the university to establish three-year budget reduction targets, enabling schools and units to adapt gradually to new financial constraints,” Chatas and Strobel said in the statement.
Budget cuts announced last year included a 5 percent reduction in non-salary expenses, a 1 percent cut to the salary pool for faculty, managerial and professional staff and a reduction in graduate school enrollment. In the College, budget cuts included a 7.5 percent decrease in
Martin Peralta / Head Photography Editor
Schools faced budgetary headwinds as they pitched fiscal year 2027 budgets to administrators. Despite what top officials called “significant financial pressures,” the University achieved 78 percent of the cuts it aims to make in the next three years.
staffing, reductions to financial aid for summer opportunities and the contract non-renewals of several instructional faculty. Revenue from grants and contracts — both public and private — continued a downward trend from last year, falling $9 million, or 0.7 percent. Yale spokesperson Karen Peart wrote in a statement to the News, on behalf of University Chief Financial Officer Katrina Spencer and deans of several schools the News contacted for comment, that “some areas of the university will feel more financial strain than others.” “This is primarily because areas of the university are funded differently,” Peart wrote, noting that sources for schools’ budgets include endowment income, patient care, grants and tuition. “The university has consistently provided support to deans and other leaders across campus as units explored workload redistribution and operations strategies and we will continue to do so.” The budget notes the School of Music receives the highest share of its income from Yale’s endowment returns, at 98 percent, while endowment investment income revenue accounts for only 7 percent of the School of Medicine’s income.
Endowment tax payment accounts for 12.4 percent of the School of Music’s planned spending in the next fiscal year, while that expense accounts for less than 1 percent of the School of Medicine’s spending. The Jackson School of Global Affairs, Divinity School, Law School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences also receive over 50 percent of their respective incomes from endowment returns, according to the new budget. The School of Public Health receives more money from grant and contract revenue, as does the School of Medicine, which also receives money from medical services. Evan Yionoulis ’82 DRA ’85, the dean of the David Geffen School of Drama, wrote in an email to the News that her school’s “program chairs and department heads have thoughtfully and prudently made difficult cuts to the budget with an eye to preserving jobs and maintaining the excellence of the student educational experience.” The tax is responsible for 6.1 percent of the School of Drama’s expenses this year, $2.9 million of $47.7 million, according to the new budget. This year’s budget includes a line-item “tax reserve charge,”
which represents the estimated cost to support the heightened 8 percent rate, according to the budget book. Last year, the 1.4 percent endowment tax was recorded “as a reduction in endowment income in the external revenue” and not its own line-item. Income from Yale’s endowment is the largest source of revenue for the University, bringing in $2.33 billion for the 2027 budget from a $44 billion endowment. Endowment spending is determined by a long-term rate approved by the Yale Corporation and a smoothing rule to account for variations in endowment performance. Last year, a quarter of endowment spending went to teaching and research, 19 percent went to facilities and operations and 18 percent went to financial aid, according to the budget. “General support” and “Other Specific Purposes” account for the rest of endowment spending. The budget for fiscal year 2027 has a total external revenue of $6.732 billion. Contact ARIA LYNN-SKOV at aria.lynn-skov@yale.edu and LEO NYBERG at leo.nyberg@yale.edu.
‘Significant number’ of staff took retirement incentive LIBRARY FROM PAGE 1 den for a Wednesday tour. “The Arts Library director has moved into my department. Now the Arts Library is directed by our film archive person.” Calpino said the changes happened over the summer. According to Patricia Carey, a Yale Library spokesperson, a “significant number of staff” accepted the University’s early retirement offer last year, “which afforded additional opportunities for us to rethink what we do and how we do it.” The retirement incentive program, which was announced last September, allowed employees of a certain age and experience to receive a healthcare subsidy and compensation package if they chose to leave their positions. “Like all departments at the University, Yale Library is working within the budget parameters and targets set by University leadership last year in response to the increased endowment tax,” Carey wrote in a Thursday email to the News. New positions at the library are still opening up, according to Carey, but before they are posted roles are now reviewed by the Yale Library leadership team “in the context of budget and mission.”
“Each position that opens up provides an opportunity to look at the whole organization and consider how the position can best support us in anticipating and innovating in response to users’ needs,” Carey wrote. Gary Burcheski, the library’s strategy analyst for collection services, operations and shelving, said the budget cuts have not significantly affected the library as a whole. “What gets impacted sometimes would be staff processing the material, but we haven't really seen that drop off at all,” Burcheski said, adding that some of the library’s budgets are from “endowments and things that are very specific” which were not affected. Calpino said she does not think library functions have changed. “They’re all still within Yale. No positions were cut. I don’t think that was even on the table.” Calpino said, “All the libraries are still there. They’ll all still be open. They’re all staffed.” Yale Library has more than 500 staff members, according to its website. Contact PREMRUDEE MEPREMWATTANA at premrudee.mepremwattana@yale. edu.
Abby Ahuero / Contributing Photographer
Yale Library has consolidated operations and tightened job posting procedures after a “significant number of staff” took the University’s retirement incentive last year, according to a Yale Library spokesperson.
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2026 · yaledailynews.com · @yaledailynews
FROM THE FRONT
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“Face on lover with a fire in his heart / a man undercover but you tore me apart” LAST CHRISTMAS WHAM!
Faculty recommendations arrive after instructor layoffs FACULTY FROM PAGE 1
Ellie Park
The new report calls for greater compensation and institutional support for lecturers and lectors, who make up more than 40 percent of the faculty. It arrives after several instructional faculty were let go due to budget cuts last year.
detailed plans for longer contracts, salaries adjusted for inflation and more supportive paid leave and professional development opportunities. “Yale’s commitment to excellence in teaching must include a renewed commitment to all of the people who provide it,” Michael Farina, a senior Italian lector and the chair of the FAS-SEAS Senate, said in a Tuesday press release. The report cites an April 2026 anonymous survey included in an interim report of instructional faculty, which found that 52 percent of respondents felt a sense of belonging at Yale and 43 percent reporting feeling respected by senior colleagues. Out of the respondents, 47 percent said their teaching responsibilities were fairly distributed, and 20 percent reported effective formal mentoring. Additionally, respondents described feeling “disposable,” “invisible” and like “second-class citizens,” according to the survey. Faculty also reported concerns about exclusion from decision-making and inadequate compensation. The report emphasizes that many concerns have been heightened from the past year. Budget reductions resulted in the non-reappointment of 20 instructional faculty, making up 9.1 percent of Faculty of Arts and Sciences lecturers, which has
intensified anxiety over job security, according to the report. In April, the News reported that at least three lecturers attributed their non-renewal of their contracts due budget cuts, and FAS Dean Steven Wilkinson told the News attributed those decisions to “difficult tradeoffs” due to Yale’s “unprecedented budget challenges.” In July 2025, Congress passed an endowment tax hike that administrators estimated would cost the University around $300 million annually and went into effect this July. Other budget-saving measures included cuts to graduate school enrollment and staff reductions. Instructional faculty also reported concerns about academic freedom, feeling that they experience increased vulnerability when teaching controversial subjects, according to the FAS-SEAS Senate report. The report also calls for clearer procedures regarding promotion and increased inclusion of instructional faculty in department meetings, committees and University-wide decision making. They also recommend that Yale create a dedicated physical unit for instructional faculty within the FAS dean’s office for “advice and information.” “Instructional faculty have repeatedly described what they need to build sustainable, fulfilling careers at our university: greater security, fair compensation, clear paths for advancement, and a meaningful
voice in their departments,” Cynthia DeRoma, a senior lector in the English Language Program and the chair of the Instructional Faculty Committee, said in the press release. The recommendations follow the Committee on Trust in Higher Education’s report, which suggested the University reaffirm teaching and research as central to its core mission. The Yale mission statement was later narrowed to reflect that ethos, removing references to diversity and “improving the world.” Yale President Maurie McInnis then said in a response in April that she had tasked Senior Vice President Geoff Chatas, in collaboration with faculty, to direct more of the budget “toward teaching, research, and scholarship.” Lectors are faculty trained in language instruction, as opposed to lecturers, per the faculty handbook. Prior to 2017, instructional faculty were previously referred to as “non-ladder faculty,” but the University renamed the position following a push from the FASSEAS Senate due to perceived negative connotations. The FAS welcomed seven new instructional faculty members for the 2026-27 academic year. Contact JOLYNDA WANG at jolynda.wang@yale.edu and HAILEY YOUNG at hailey.young@yale.edu.
Seminal Black play Yale to play Merrimack Warriors premiered in 1986 PLAY FROM PAGE 1 “grateful” the play was returning to the Rep stage. “It is a wonderful celebration of the strength of Black artists,” Yionoulis said in a phone interview. Previews for the play will begin on Oct. 2, with the show officially opening next Thursday. Yionoulis also said the production represents something “the Rep does so beautifully: nurturing young writers.” Yionoulis said that at the time, Wilson was still an emerging playwright, and the production helped begin a relationship between Wilson and Richards that would become central to Wilson’s career and to American theater. “His career was really launched here,” Yionoulis said. “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is the second play in Wilson’s “American Century Cycle,” which is a series of 10 plays chronicling Black American life across each decade of the 20th century. The play examines the conditions and institutions under which Black artists create, said director Timothy Douglas DRA ’86. Douglas said the production marks both a return and a milestone. “This is a real full circle for me,” he said in a phone interview. His connection to the play stretches back to its premiere, when he was a drama student. “When Wilson came on the scene with this play while I was a drama student, there was really nothing like it in terms of a Black
theatre and cast,” Douglas said in a phone interview. “We suddenly had a voice in an American theater we didn’t have before. As an actor, it was exciting to think about what it’d mean for my career.” With this production of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” Douglas will have directed all 10 plays in Wilson’s cycle. Maiesha McQueen, who plays Ma Rainey, emphasized that, although Wilson drew inspiration from the real-life blues singer Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, the play is not an account of her life. Rather, Wilson places the historical figure within a fictional moment, imagining her at a precarious point in her career, McQueen said. “I think what August Wilson is trying to do is show the vulnerability of someone who had command in her artistic life,” she said in a phone interview, adding that Ma Rainey is protective of the people she cares about as well as her artistry. Jimmie “J.J.” Jeter, who plays Levee, described a similar process of discovery. He’s learned much from the hot-headed trumpet player, despite not feeling connected with the character at first, Jeter said. “There is something beautiful that August is doing with this play by taking ordinary people and putting them in extraordinary places,” he said. “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” will run until Oct. 24. Contact LENA KATIR at lena.katir@yale.edu.
Liza Kaufman / Photography Editor
This weekend, Team 153 will host Merrimack for its home opener, just a week removed from dropping its first game of the year to Cornell. Quarterback Dante Reno ’28 said he expects to return to the field for the game. FOOTBALL FROM PAGE 1 told the News he expects to return to the field barring any new obstacles to his recovery.
Christina Lee
More than four decades after “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” had its world premiere at the Yale Repertory Theatre, the August Wilson play is returning on Friday to the stage where its theatrical life began.
Previewing Merrimack The Bulldogs will face the Warriors, one of two independent FCS teams and whose squad has been susceptible to defensive breakdowns as of late. After dropping their first two games of the season, in which they allowed a combined 76 points, the Warriors picked up their first win of the year over the University of Maine (1–4, 1–1 CAA), winning 23-14. The following week, they lost 45-20 to No. 4 Tarleton State (4–0, 0–0 UAC) before bouncing back with a 17-10 win over the University of New Haven (1–4, 0–1 NEC). Merrimack’s offense started the season with a quarterback battle, as Cole Meehan and AJ Hairston Jr. split reps during the first couple of games of the sea-
son. Hairston Jr. eventually won the contest but since then has played more as a game manager rather than an offensive weapon. Hairston Jr. has surpassed 150 yards passing just once this season, and has thrown four touchdowns and interceptions each. Part of the reason why the Warriors have such lackluster passing statistics is due to their focus on their rushing attack, as they have averaged 228 yards per game on the ground over the past three games. Matthias Latham has led the way rushing the ball, averaging 60 yards per game and five and a half yards per carry. Merrimack has also leaned on its second and third-stringers at times, who together average about four and a half yards per carry and have scored twice. How do the ’Dogs bounce back? Last week, despite having a less-experienced quarterback, the Bulldogs still managed to put up 25 points. Though the team has
struggled to protect the quarterback and create holes for the running backs, the main focus will be on the defense this week. The team this year is captained by two-time All-American and Team 153 Captain Abu Kamara ’27, and many expected Yale’s defense to be just as strong as years prior and keep its place as one of the top squads in the Ivy League. However, in week one, the Bulldogs allowed 28 points to a weak Holy Cross team, and last weekend it gave up 38 points to the Big Red. Though it remains uncertain who will fill the quarterback position, it is vital that the Yale defense finds a way to respond and limit scoring opportunities for Merrimack this week. Yale is set to kick off against Merrimack at noon on Saturday at the Yale Bowl. The game will be streamed on ESPN+. Contact BRODY GILKISON at brody.gilkison@yale.edu.
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2026 · yaledailynews.com
NEWS
“Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again” WE DIDN’T START THE FIRE BILLY JOEL
Some Yale students make a quick buck as research study subjects BY SASHA CABRAL STAFF REPORTER When he was a first year, Oscar Solberg ’28 became a lab rat for cash. Research study opportunities, which are plastered around campus on bulletin boards and
advertised on email lists, offer Yalies the chance to become study subjects and get paid. Compensation for subject work can vary from as low as $16.50 to as high as $2,000, according to flyers. Solberg learned he could make money by participating in studies that
placed electroencephalogram — or EEG — caps on his head. “I remember she put the cap on me, and she was calibrating the machine,” Solberg said of the lab assistant he worked for. “She was like, ‘You really have to think less right now,’ which is really trippy because she’s
ETHAN SULLIVAN / CONTRUBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Studies facilitated at Yale are offering student volunteers compensation up to thousands of dollars to be research subjects. Several Yale students said they have enjoyed the studies in which they have participated.
reading my brainwaves. That was kind of wild.” Solberg said he got into the side hustle after taking an introductory psychology course, which required that students partake in studies for credit. The EEG technology he worked with last year detected brain activity, allowing researchers to see how subjects react to stimuli.
He said he often participated in studies that compensated well — around $90 each — and that some might even involve follow-up sessions. Studies are often conducted by the Yale Stress Center and the Wu Tsai Institute, which studies human cognition. E s m e ra l d a A l e jo ’ 2 5 , a postgraduate associate in the Psychology Department who said she conducts research on individual identity and personal beliefs, wrote in a statement that compensation for studies can encourage “participant recruitment and retention.” She noted that providing compensation to participants can “improve the quality of the data collected.” “Burden can be affected by things such as the length of your study, the amount of effort it requires, and the amount of stress it induces, though this is not an exhaustive list,” Alejo wrote. “The greater the burden your study places on participants, the more they
should be compensated.” Cameron Davis ’28 began participating in research studies after accompanying her firstyear suitemate to one. Now, Davis said she is often a subject in psychology studies, which range from testing video game stimuli to building a drink brand on the spot. She said she gets satisfaction from helping researchers complete their goals. “They’re all over,” Davis said. “Just take time to read them and see if it’s something that you’re interested in, and make sure you have the actual time commitment to do these and follow through them, because they’re actual researchers who are trying to get data for an important project that they’re working on.” When asked to give advice for students who might be interested in starting their journey as a research subject, Solberg noted the ease of being and making money as a participant. “I mean I’d say just do them,” Solberg said.“They’re not hard. They’re not stressful. Psych studies are not as scary as they used to be, so nothing’s gonna happen. You know, just do it.” The Yale Stress Center was founded in 2007. Contact SASHA CABRAL at sasha.cabral@yale.edu.
Professors forecast midterm blue wave, but diverge on extent of gains BY SHENHAO DENG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER With just over a month remaining before the closely watched congressional midterms, some Yale professors said Democrats have an edge heading into November’s elections — though opinions differ on how far recent polling gains will go at the ballot boxes. President Donald Trump’s approval rating is at a historic low, and recent polling lists affordability among voters’ top concerns heading into the fall. According to trends in American politics, the party in power — Republicans, in this case — rarely wins elections during a midterm year, and polling for seats in both the House and Senate have been shifting to favor Democrats’ chances. Still, professors said it is difficult to forecast results. “Making predictions with Trump is risky,” political science professor Adam Meirowitz wrote in an email. “Economic indicators make me think larger than normal midterm losses for the President’s party are likely.” Since 1934, the party of the president has lost seats in nearly every midterm election — and Yale faculty say this year is unlikely to break that pattern. “I’m going to go with conventional wisdom that the Minority party will pick up some seats in the Senate and House,” Meirowitz wrote.“Historically, this happens, especially when the economy is not doing wonderful.” The consumer price index, which measures price changes over time, rose 3.4 percent between last month and August 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In an email, political science professor Joshua Kalla ’14 pointed the News to pollster VoteHub, which as of Tuesday gives Democrats an 86 percent chance of winning the House of Representatives and a 59 percent chance of winning the Senate. “These are probabilities, not guarantees,” Kalla wrote, “but Democrats are clear favorites for the House and slight favorites for the Senate.” Currently, the House of Representatives is controlled by the Republican Party under Speaker Mike Johnson, with a 219-214 majority and two vacancies. The Republican Party also controls the Senate, with Majority Leader John Thune leading a 53-47 majority. Kalla singled out the Senate as the more competitive congressional chamber this cycle. Thirty-five U.S. Senate seats are up for election. With competitive races unfolding in Michigan, Alaska and Maine, Kalla noted a rough threshold for gauging momentum: “If Democrats can’t win North Carolina, they’re unlikely to win the Senate. If they’re competitive in Ohio and Texas, that’s a sign of a strong blue wave.”
Not every interviewed professor agreed on the smaller chamber’s competitiveness. “I think Democrats will win the House though lose the Senate,” Gregory Collins, a lecturer in ethics, politics and economics, wrote in an email to the News, citing “Trump fatigue, the Iran war, the decline in disposable income, tariffs, energy prices, and Latinos’ reaction against Trump’s muscular deportation policies” as important to November’s outcomes. Still, Collins argued that the political landscape isn’t uniformly bad for Republicans. “Trump generally won the public debate over DEI and related culture war issues,” he wrote, though he said the Iran war “has proven to be more unpopular than many Republicans expected, which explains why some Republicans have separated themselves from Trump over the war.” Political science professor Steven Smith said democracy was on the ballot this fall. Republicans have been deploying tactics such as voter suppression to “dampen the vote” and “keep numbers lower,” Smith said, referring to voter turnout figures. He said that during a midterm election, outcomes are dependent on such turnout, as the center-aligned electorate determines who wins, not the “extremes” of either side. Asked about the implications of a potential “blue wave,” in which Democrats make major electoral gains, Yale professors said Congress may be more likely to pursue investigations into the White House and scrutinize the Trump administration more closely. “There’s a danger to this too,” Smith said. “People are not necessarily voting for more subpoenas and legalism.” He said instead that voters may care most about “bread and butter issues,” such as gas and grocery prices. Kalla predicted that if the Democrats take back the Senate, Trump would have a far more difficult time getting his judicial picks, including those nominated to the Supreme Court, confirmed during the second half of his term. At the same time, academics’ predictions remain only speculation, and voters are not always motivated to turn out. “They have four choices: Republican, Democrat, other, stay home,” Yale political science doctoral candidate Basil Bastaki GRD ’28 said. “It’s not enough to look at how they feel about one candidate or the other; you always have to think about how they are going to make this decision between these four choices.” This year’s congressional midterm elections will take place on Nov. 3. Contact SHENHAO DENG at shenhao.deng@yale.edu.
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2026 · yaledailynews.com
NEWS
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“My world’s on fire, how ‘bout yours?/ That’s the way I like it and I’ll never get bored” ALL STAR SMASH MOUTH
Writer reflects on Rachel Carson’s legacy and prophecy at lecture BY EMMA SHIN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Wr i t e r, activist and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams reflected on the life and legacy of acclaimed environmentalist Rachel Carson at a Tuesday lecture. The talk at the Yale University Art Gallery, titled “Rachel Carson: Prophecy, Oracles, and Omens,” was designed to be in conversation with the exhibition “Silent Springs, Windswept Seas: Rachel C a r s o n ’s Environmental Vision,” which is on view at the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library through Oct. 4. “I so honor Yale’s place in this country of environmental confusion. This feels to me like a place of environmental commitment,” Williams said during the lecture. The curators of the exhibition, Yale librarians James Kessenides GRD ’03 and Carla Baricz GRD ’13 ’17, gave introductory remarks. Baricz said that when learning about Williams’ work, she “became convinced that this was someone whom I needed to meet, someone who should be present as we celebrate, and think about the life and work of Carson, and who would speak in Carson’s spirit and example.” Williams is “in deep dialogue with place, and its human and nonhuman inhabitants,” Baricz said. Williams, a writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School, began her talk by describing her experience at the Beinecke Library in the past three days. “Full disclosure: I came with one talk, and I’m leaving with another,” she said, referring to the experience she had encountering two newly discovered boxes of Carson’s notebooks related to Silent Spring. The book, which is Carson’s seminal work, exposes the harmful ecological effects of pesticides such as DDT, which was commonly used in the 1940s.
She said it was emotional to be able to view Carson’s list of
endangered birds alongside her own, along with a picture of her and her husband, at the Beinecke display. “If I’m unduly emotional, it’s
because I just feel like I’ve been with a beloved,” she said, tearing up. To begin her lecture, Williams discussed Carson’s technical research on the effects of chemical war on human and ecological health, highlighting the significance of Carson’s investigation into the causes of cancer. Carson herself was diagnosed with breast cancer in the 1960s. “So she was not just talking about the earth’s body, but also investigating her own,” Williams said. The speaker also spoke extensively about Carson’s character. Despite being attacked by “the industries,” William said, Carson persistently wrote letters to government agencies, writers, spiritual leaders and readers of her work. She said Carson “dared to touch bone with her pen,” writing about the consequences of widespread industrial pesticide and chemical use. “A Pandora’s box of troubles has been let loose,” she said, referencing a note Carson left in one of her journals. “But she refused to close the lid.” According to Williams, Carson’s work led to the establishment of environmental a ge n c i e s a n d re g u l a t i o n s including the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Environmental Policy Act, the precautionary principle, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act. Turning to current events, Williams criticized the current political climate surrounding environmental conservation and the policies of the Trump administration. The federal government has been reported to have undone years of environmental activism by redefining “harm” under the Endangered Species Act, a change blasted by Yale faculty. “This is the cult of death that we
EMMA SHIN / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Acclaimed writer and environmental activist Terry Tempest Williams spoke about the biologist Rachel Carson, who wrote the influential 1962 book Silent Spring. She reflected upon her experience viewing boxes of Carson’s notebooks at the Beinecke. are facing with this administration,” Williams said, asserting that “violence toward nature is no less an evil than violence toward fellow man,” quoting Carson. Williams described growing up in Salt Lake City, Utah, and lamented the retreat of the Great Salt Lake over her lifetime, which has resulted in approximately 1,000 square miles of exposed land. “Our governor, our legislature, our congressional delegation, and our president view it as new land for the taking,” Williams said, criticizing proposals by the local government and the Trump administration for the construction of detention centers,
a data center and a national repository for nuclear waste. “If Great Salt Lake disappears, so do the eared grebes and phalaropes. And three million human residents will be displaced along with migratory birds,” she said. Williams said the solution to the issue is not turning away from pressing environmental issues of today, but “turning toward and embracing that which both breaks our hearts and opens them.” “ D o n ’t a c q u i e s c e ; a s k questions,” Williams urged, encouraging the audience to turn to Carson as a relevant source of guidance and wisdom. “Rachel Carson carries both
the prophetic voice, the voice of revelation, prediction. She holds the voice of the oracle,” she said. “We are of privileged minds and opportunities, education, means,” she continued. “We cannot be afraid.” Williams also expressed her gratitude to Yale for the housing of Carson’s and her own work in archival collections, as well for faculty environmental advocacy. Rachel Carson died from cancer in 1964 at the age of 56, at her home in Silver Spring, Maryland. Contact EMMA SHIN at emma.shin@yale.edu.
In Jackson talk, Iraqi citizen journalist describes time under ISIS BY BEATRIX LOZACH CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Iraqi author Omar Mohammed visited the Jackson School of Global Affairs on Wednesday to discuss his book, “Mosul Eye: A Scholar’s Clandestine War Against ISIS,” which recounted his investigative blogging while living under the Islamic State. In the talk, which came on the same day the last United States troops left Iraq after two decades of involvement, Mohammed discussed how the absence of free speech from his childhood carried over into his adulthood, from the American invasion beginning in 2003 to life under Al-Qaeda to ISIS’s domination. Mohammed was a Yale World Fellow at the Jackson School in 2018. “It’s that constant advice we get from our parents or grandparents telling us, ‘be careful, the walls
have ears,’” Mohammed said during the talk. “And then you live in the constant fear that you’re going to say something wrong and get your family killed. You’ve got to care about today only — tomorrow is not part of your planning. The talk was moderated by Emma Sky, founder of Yale’s International Leadership Center and lecturer at the Jackson School. Mohammed was born in 1986, during the regime of Saddam Hussein, amid economic and political turmoil. He described his childhood as one marked by sanctions, embargoes and warfare. He recounted one anecdote of his grandmother telling genealogical stories to his family during the Gulf War. “In the 90s, during the Gulf War, there was six weeks of bombing, and we were hiding in a basement,” Mohammed said. “My grandmother, she began to tell
stories of who we were, our origin, our family lineage. Years later, I realized that after one month, all that history would’ve disappeared.” Mohammed said one year after he entered college to study history in 2004, Iraq entered a civil war, due to growing radicalization from Al-Qaeda. Then, in 2011, the United States largely withdrew from Iraq. The United States had first invaded in 2003 as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. “It was a mistake,” Mohammed said, referring to the 2011 American withdrawal. “The situation completely deteriorated,” describing the power vacuum that emerged which he said set the stage for ISIS’s complete takeover of Iraq. In 2014, Mohammed began the blog Mosul Eye to provide a source of accurate information for Iraqis and the international community on his city, Mosul. During the talk, Mohammed explained that he was
forced to conceal his blog from his family to ensure their safety and his own. “I found my rule of, ‘Trust no one and document everything,’” Mohammed said. After the United States-led Operation Inherent Resolve, which started in 2014, struck blows to ISIS, Mohammed decided to reveal his identity as Mosul Eye in 2017 through the Associated Press. Mohammed then became a 2018 Yale World Fellow after Sky recommended he apply via email. “The most important thing here is that I got to meet with people who were policymaking,” Mohammed said, referencing visits to Congress and meeting General David Petraeus. “I got to meet people who, for the first time, were able to answer questions I had in Iraq. It started filling up gaps in the historical record I had.” Mohammed also said he hopes his
GAURI GUPTA / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
At a book talk hosted by the Jackson School of Global Affairs, Omar Mohammed described his experience running the clandestine news outlet Mosul Eye, which reported on conditions under the Islamic State.
book will spark conversations about when militarization is necessary to establish peace. “It’s not because I’m against the military,” Mohammed said. “I need the military to feel safe in my home. But also, the task of an intellectual is that we never need the military to go fight, because we can solve our issues with diplomacy. I want to make war the very, very last resort.” Syrian journalist and 2026 Yale World Fellow Lina Sinjab attended the talk and said she appreciated Mohammed’s detailed descriptions of life under ISIS. “It’s important to have people from the country owning the narrative of their own countries and their own stories,” Sinjab said. “For someone to have lived under the atrocities of ISIS for years and be able to tell their own story is powerful.” Sinjab said she also resonated with Mohammed’s experiences on a personal level, as a Syrian, and articulated broader existential questions relevant to contemporary counterterrorism efforts. “We already had ISIS in Syria and they committed atrocities,” Sinjab said. “There are still lots of pockets of radicalism in Syria that could emerge at any moment. But the big question we need to answer, and that I’m not sure we have an answer to, is, ‘How do we learn from history?’” Hannaneh Akbarpour GRD ’29 said getting the opportunity to speak with Mohammed after the book talk was a revelation. One of her main takeaways from the talk was the contrast between what she described as the extraordinary nature of Mohammed’s reporting and his demeanor. “I found him a very modest person as someone who has done so much sacrifice for the sake of saving human lives,” Akbarpour said in a voice message to the News. “He was very approachable, which was wonderful.” The Iraq War officially began in March 2003. Contact BEATRIX LOZACH at beatrix.lozach@yale.edu.
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2026 · yaledailynews.com
NEWS
“There’s a fire within my soul / Just one look and I can hear a bell ring.” MAMMA MIA ABBA
Police oversight board member denies harassment allegations BY EVELYN RONAN AND IDA NJIE STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER At a Monday night meeting of the Civilian Review Board, New Haven’s police oversight body, board member Germano Kimbro discredited allegations that he sexually harassed a female member of the body, which is tasked with reviewing civilian complaints against the New Haven Police Department. In a winding speech, Kimbro described a series of allegations that the member made against him, including “inappropriate touching” and an incident during which he asked the member to rub suntan lotion on him. The member, who confirmed to the News that she filed a complaint of sexual harassment with the city’s corporation counsel, requested anonymity due to concerns about safety. “The city takes any allegation of sexual harassment very seriously,” Lenny Speiller, a city hall spokesperson, wrote in an email to the News. “The allegations of sexual harassment by a CRB board member were referred by the Office of Corporation Counsel to an independent outside investigator, and the results of the investigation were shared with the appointing authority.” At the Monday meeting, Kimbro described the allegations as “unfair” and said they impaired his ability to serve on the board. Kimbro denied the allegations in a text message. “These things are egregious, and anybody that’s from this community knows that I have put in my life, blood, sweat, tears and body on the frontline to make New Haven a better place,” Kimbro said about the allegations during the Monday meeting. The board member who made the allegations was not present at the meeting during Kimbro’s remarks. Kimbro invited friends and members of his family to
EVELYN RONAN / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
At a Monday night Civilian Review Board meeting, board member Germano Kimbro described a series of sexual harassment claims that another member raised against him. He said they were part of a “conspiracy” to remove him from the board. testify as character witnesses about his general behavior at the meeting. In a text message, Kimbro described the claims as a “conspiracy to have me removed from the board.” At the meeting, he accused New Haven’s corporation counsel, who is the city’s chief legal advisor, of having “colluded” with the board member. Speiller wrote that any allegation of collusion “is completely baseless” and wrote that “no CRB members have been removed to
date from their positions.” In a phone interview, the board member who filed the harassment complaint denied any accusations of conspiring with the corporation counsel to remove Kimbro. The accusations against Kimbro and his retaliation against the city’s litigators come as the board faces several vacancies and inconsistent member attendance. At Monday’s meeting, board members called into question the group’s function and whether it was fulfilling its
civic mission. Board member and Fair Haven alder Frank Redente attributed the board’s lack of direction to its many vacancies and an absence of diverse perspectives on policing. “I would like to see this board have more people of color and more people who have actually had negative experiences with police,” Redente said in a phone interview. “Until we fill this board, it won’t have credibility.” According to a city website, the
15-member Civilian Review Board has nine vacancies and two members whose terms have expired. Update, Sept. 30: This article has been updated to include the anonymous board member’s comment on Kimbro’s accusation of collusion. Contact EVELYN RONAN at evelyn.ronan@yale.edu and IDA NJIE at ida.njie@yale.edu.
Teachers, students denounce dilapidated facilities at public schools BY CHANTAL EULENSTEIN, NELLIE KENNEY AND NAUSICAA CHU STAFF REPORTERS AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER S t u d e n ts, tea c h e rs a n d a d m i n i s t ra to rs decried neglected conditions in New Haven schools in front of a crowd of over 60 people in City Hall Tuesday night. Speakers called for increased school funding and transparency and slammed the city’s Board of Education, which they said has not addressed dangerous conditions, including broken HVAC systems, poor air quality and mold. Alders at the meeting floated the possibility of shutting down schools while maintenance work was done. The city’s schools have long faced a deferred maintenance crisis. “We’ve reached a breaking point,” Leslie Blatteau ’97 GRD
’07, the president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, said in a speech to the board. The school district’s contract with ABM Industries, which has handled facility repairs since 2022, ended on Wednesday, and New Haven Public Schools is shifting to an in-house facilities management strategy. The school system’s former facilities director left his position after two days last month, and the role is currently empty. In August, members of the Board of Alders Education Committee issued a formal request for a city inspection of school buildings after alders i d e n t i f i e d fa c i l i t i e s i ss u e s during a walk-through. “We couldn’t even breathe,” Ward 7 Alder Angel Hubbard said, describing conditions in the four schools the alders toured. In response to the alders’
request, Mayor Justin Elicker and NHPS Superintendent Madeline Negrón released a joint statement saying that “all of our schools are safe for operation as we begin the school year.” Elicker, in a separate statement, said the alders’ “misleading and false message that our schools are not safe” was “disappointing.” Blatteau, who spoke on behalf of the teachers’ union, alleged that the Board of Education has displayed a “continued pattern of neglect” towards teachers’ complaints. As Blatteau spoke, audience members hoisted signs showing pictures of school buildings in disrepair. “I think the biggest problem is, we’d never have all of the money and resources to address all of the problems as quickly as they arise,” Daniel Juárez MUS ’02, a member of the New
DANIEL ZHAO
In a nearly-five-hour meeting, students and teachers slammed the conditions at New Haven Public Schools. The school district’s contract with a facility repair company ended on Wednesday, and the district is set to take up in-house management.
Haven School Board, said in a statement to the News after the meeting. “These problems are not new. We’ve inherited them.” Since Aug. 26, Blatteau said, the union has filed 52 grievances — complaints that allege a breach of their union contract — against the Board of Education. Of those complaints, 16 have addressed HVAC issues, and the board has initiated responses to only 14 of the union’s other complaints, Blatteau said. Blatteau proposed a raft of solutions, including prioritizing city funds for capital improvement, establishing a designated safe temperature range for school buildings and providing compensation for teachers who replace damaged classroom supplies. A f te r B l a t tea u s p o ke , re p re s e n ta t ive s f ro m c i ty agencies described the current process for identifying and a d d re ss i n g p ro b l e m s w i t h school facilities. “Nobody is arguing with the fact that there are significant issues that we have with our schools,” New Haven’s Chief Administrative Officer Justin McCarthy said. Supervisors are “doing our best to prioritize that,” he said. Hubbard expressed frustration with the officials’ responses. “I have not heard one clear answer yet from this panel,” she said. The alders also raised the possibility of shutting down schools. Hubbard asked the panel what it would take to temporarily close the schools for repairs, while Ward 10 Alder Anna Festa also suggested that due to inadequate conditions, “we might need to shut down schools.” In a speech to the committee, Negrón described the city’s schools as underfunded and understaffed. “We should be spending between $5.5 and $11.5 million more than what we currently spend on maintenance,” she said. Paul Whyte, the district’s chief of school operations, said that administrators intend to submit a “master plan” for funding maintenance projects across the districts to alders by Dec. 31.
Alders called on Negrón and Whyte to provide the community with more transparency on the district’s facilities and budget. “Nothing that has been said tonight is disputed,” Whyte told the committee. Te a c h e r s , p a r e n t s a n d students condemned the condition of the school buildings to the committee. Karlee Ciarcia, a Truman S c h o o l E n g l i s h t e a c h e r, described dealing with cockroaches, mice, ant infestations and ceiling leaks. “After a rainstorm, you come in wondering whether this is the one that finally made it collapse,” she said. Ciarcia said she has found mold growing on supplies, along with rotting plywood and mushrooms growing in the corner of her classroom. In the fall and spring, she said, the temperature in her classrooms ranged anywhere between 80 to 90 degrees. Last spring, Ciarcia said, she sent at least one student to the nurse every day due to headaches, dizziness or lethargy. Ciarcia said she has placed work orders for each of the problems in her classroom, but nothing was done. “Those work orders feel like screaming into a void,” she said. Some students criticized the disconnect between the student body and administrators. “I’m tired of students being told to accept conditions that adults would never accept in their own workplaces,” Brandon Daley, a Metropolitan Business Academy student and lead liaison for the Citywide Student Council, told the alders. “This is not about politics. This is basic dignity we’re asking for.” The meeting lasted nearly five hours. Contact CHANTAL EULENSTEIN at chantal.eulenstein@yale.edu, NELLIE KENNEY at nellie.kenney@yale.edu and NAUSICAA CHU at nausicaa.chu@yale.edu.
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2026 · yaledailynews.com
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“Honey, I’m on fire, I feel it everywhere / Nothing scares me anymore” SUMMERTIME SADNESS LANA DEL REY
New Yale Cabaret season aims to break out of Drama School bubble BY ASPYN KASKALLA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The Yale Cabaret’s 59th season opened this month under a new leadership team pursuing a specific goal: to make the David Geffen School of Drama’s student-run theater feel less like an
insider’s space and more like a hub for Yale and New Haven. According to the Cabaret’s mission statement, which is updated annually, this season is built around “coalescence, connection, creation,” with core values emphasizing transparency, collaboration and art that reaches “far and wide” across the
drama school, Yale and New Haven. The Cabaret traditionally provides a space for students to explore production and performance. “We really want to be a hub of connection and creativity across the different spheres of DGSD, Yale, New Haven,” Raekwon Fuller DRA ’27, the managing director of the Cabaret,
ILLUSTRATION BY BEATRICE BARILLA
The student-run theater at the David Geffen School of Drama officially opened its 59th season last month with new objectives to incorporate new mentorship programs and community partnerships
said in a video interview, adding that the Cabaret has sometimes felt insular in the past, drawing mostly from within the Drama School. The team has already partnered with the Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology and worked with a regional domestic abuse treatment center to raise awareness during its first show, “dirty butterfly” by debbie tucker green, which concerns domestic violence. The season, titled “Nexus,” officially opened on Sept. 17 with that production. Each season, the Cabaret is led by a new team of Drama School students: a managing director, two co-artistic directors and two associate artistic directors. One of this season’s newest initiatives is a mentorship program spearheaded by Richard Lee DRA ’27, one of the associate artistic directors. The program pairs the Cabaret’s student advisory board — made up of representatives from each discipline at the Drama School — with newcomers curious about theater but unsure where to start. The program is open not just to Drama School students working outside of their usual disciplines, but to any Yale student or New Haven community member, Lee said. “We do believe that knowledge is not just owned by us,” he said. “We would love to share this knowledge and also share the joy of making together with the whole community.” Mia Van Deloo DRA ’27, one of the Cabaret’s co-artistic directors, said in a Zoom interview that the season began with members of the artistic team modeling the kind of cross-disciplinary work the season is built around. She and co-artistic director Jeremy Fuentes DRA ’27 directed the season’s first show while both working outside their usual disciplines — Van Deloo in dramaturgy, Fuentes in acting. The show also included a playwright student and a public health student as actors and an actor working as costume designer, she said. “It was intentional for us to kind of start the season off by showing we, as the artistic team, will also work outside of our discipline,” Van Deloo said. “We also
want to learn something new and challenge ourselves and see what the scope of our artistry can be.” The Cabaret’s commitment to community-building shows up in concrete partnerships, according to Fuller. Before opening this season, the Cabaret teamed up with the Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology, bringing in two students from its culinary program who will serve as chefs for the entirety of the season. Olamide Oladeji DRA ’27, who also works as an associate director at the Cabaret, said they are taking a “formative, educational approach” to partnerships this season. For their opening production of this season, “dirty butterfly,” the team worked with the Umbrella Center for Domestic Violence Services to incorporate informational pamphlets since the show centered around themes of domestic violence. “It was quite heavy, so the focus was on our audience, on the resources that exist in the New Haven area for them,” Oladeji said in a phone interview. Oladeji also said the team is finalizing a discount ticket arrangement with the New Haven Free Public Library for cardholders, and she’s hoping to bring in the New Haven Pride Center before the season ends. Fuller said one of the season’s most concrete pushes for change will come in November, when the Cabaret opens its call for spring semester show proposals. He said the team is aiming to draw pitches from beyond the Drama School. “I do want people to know that we do exist,” Fuller said, “and that they can always email us at any time that they want to get involved.” For the team, success this season isn’t defined by one metric. “We really want Nexus to be a public communication and connection,” Fuller said. Van Deloo put it more simply: “People having fun — that’s a win for me.” The Yale Cabaret is located at 217 Park St. Contact ASPYN KASKALLA at aspyn.kaskalla@yale.edu.
Meet Desta, the dance team preserving East African culture at Yale BY ALISSA SUNDRANI AND EMILY NGUYEN CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS One thing that choreographer Meti Negewo ’28 likes to tell aspiring members of Desta, her dance group is, “You don’t know how to dance? Come learn.” Founded in 2022, Desta is the only Ethiopian and Eritrean dance group on campus. While the group focuses on dances from the two countries, they are also guided by other East African influences, incorporating Somali and Sudanese dances into their repertoire. “It’s a very inclusive group of dancers and artists who are really passionate about experiencing all that the Eastern African region has to offer,” Hermela Shimelis ’29, another one of Desta’s choreographers, said. In the last year, the team has performed at the Black Solidarity Conference, the Yale African Innovation Symposium and events for the Yale Ethiopian and Eritrean Students Association and the Yale African Students Association. On Sept. 19, Desta held its first performance of the year on Beinecke Plaza to celebrate Enkutatash, or the Ethiopian and Eritrean New Year. Members of the group, which recently introduced dance workshops and auditions for hopeful members, said they do not seek to foster an exclusive environment. “We’re not the type of organization that cuts people,” Negewo said. I n s tea d , D e s ta d a n c e rs find other ways to strengthen relationships with their art and each other in order to build community. The team coordinates their own tap night, a special tradition that fosters a sense of camaraderie in their new members. “We tapped all the freshmen who were new to the team and everything, and we did the same thing again this year,” Negewo said. “It’s been really beautiful.”
EMILY NGUYEN / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The group incorporates dance traditions from Ethiopia and Eritrea, along with some from Somalia and Sudan. When Desta was formed, according to Sityana Abdu ’27, one of Desta’s three founders, there was no student organization focused on East African dance. “It really just started because I didn’t feel fully represented,” Abdu said. “Fall 2022 is when we had our first performance.” Desta is not only a space for dancing, but also a place for members to explore themselves and express their identity. “Ethnicity is a very contentious thing in Ethiopia and in the diaspora, and I think that dance is a very interesting way to explore ethnicity,” Abdu said. “I think it’s very important for spaces to exist like this.” Ethiopia is comprised of 12 regional states and the c h a r te re d c i t i e s o f Ad d i s Ababa and Dire Dawa, most of which have been historically controlled by different ethnic groups. The country’s northern Tigray region was once the site
of a violent civil war ended by a 2022 peace deal. Last week, fighting returned to Tigray and has spread to the regions of Amhara and Afar. While the most well-known Ethiopian dance globally is Eskista, a type of dance originating from the Amhara region, Desta also practices and performs dances from other parts of Ethiopia and Eritrea. “I do think, for the diaspora, dance is one of the ways to express your ethnicity in a way that is not combative,” Abdu said. “I think it was something that I always thought about, but never talked about.” By honing their art and exploring their identity together, Desta has grown to become a vibrant community. Negewo said it is difficult to explain to her peers why she dedicates so much time to Desta and how much she loves the group, especially against the backdrop of Yale’s hypercompetitive club environment. “You could argue that it has
no resume value,” Negewo said. “I care about Desta a lot. It’s something that I’ve put so much of my time and effort into these past three years.” Though Desta members concentrate on creating and giving great performances, they also create memories in the process. Negewo said one of her fondest Desta memories was at late-night dance practices. “It was like midnight, we were tired, and we recorded a final runthrough of our entire performance, took a video of it, and then everyone was running to the phone to see the video,” Negewo said. “And I was so proud of them.” Shimelis said her best memories at Desta were made following their rehearsals, when the group would simply talk and share stories about themselves. “I think that those moments are always the best,” Shimelis said. “Practice for sure, but also what happens outside of practice is just as precious.”
“If this place did not exist, I don’t know how my experience at Yale would be,” Negewo said. Moving forward, current leadership said they hope Desta will continue to serve its members as a space for creating art, expressing identity and cultivating community. “I think there’s such a beautiful cultural preservation aspect to what Desta is. I don’t think there’s any other space on Yale’s campus like it,” Negewo said. “I hope it continues to be something 10 years from now.” And there is always that next performance. “We are gonna have our first showcase this semester,” Negewo said. “Stay tuned.” Desta’s workshop auditions were held at the Broadway Rehearsal Lofts on Elm Street. Contact ALISSA SUNDRANI at alissa.sundrani@yale.edu and EMILY NGUYEN at emily.nguyen@yale.edu.
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2 · yaledailynews.com
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“Tonight we are young / So let’s set the world on fire / We can burn brighter than the sun” WE ARE YOUNG FUN.
From Broadway to sketch comedy, child star broadens horizons BY JOANNE HWANG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER When Alyssa Marvin ’29 watched her first Broadway show, “Annie,” at four years old, she felt an irresistible urge to act. The impulse has held for her ever since. Marvin has toured internationally with “Annie” and nationally with the musical “School of Rock,” and filmed Hulu’s “Not Suitable for Work” during her first semester at Yale. On campus, Marvin is a theater major and member of the sketch comedy group Red Hot Poker, the improv group The Purple Crayon and the Yale Dramatic Association. “I started acting professionally when I was six, where I did an off-Broadway play, and that was my first sort of introduction to what it means to be a professional actor,” Marvin told the News. “I think it was something that was always kind of a part of me.” After booking that role, Marvin got an agent, which she said has opened many doors for her. She attended acting classes, dance classes and voice lessons, and performed in a string of tours and productions. By eighth grade, she was playing in an o!-Broadway run of “Trevor: The Musical.” By her freshman year of high school, she’d booked “Grey House” and the Tony Award-winning “Appropriate” on Broadway. She starred in a Sundance-selected film, “Run Amok,” while finishing high school and preparing to enroll at Yale. Marvin said the realities of the acting industry have affected her approach to the field.
“As I’ve grown up, my mindset has definitely shifted,” Marvin said. “Understanding the difficulties of rejection is more apparent now, which makes the love stronger because you have to work through that.” According to Marvin, most of her opportunities run through the same channel: her agent. Marvin’s agent sends auditions for roles that suit her and helps coordinate submissions once the actress sends self-tapes back. Though their audition processes share similarities, Marvin said Broadway and film di!er in terms of the preparation time actors dedicate to each. On Broadway, Marvin said she rehearsed for several weeks before beginning recurring performances on stage. With film, she said she’d arrive, rehearse for 30 minutes, record the scene and move on to the next without repeating what she had done. Marvin filmed “Not Suitable for Work,” which premiered this summer, during her first semester at Yale — while commuting between auditions, set and classes. She said she chose the University because of its arts community. “Even people who aren’t interested in the arts will come to the shows at Yale or to go see comedy,” Marvin said. “It’s just embedded in the culture in a way.” Her castmates and friends said they have noticed what her professional training adds to a rehearsal room. Harry Lowitz ’28, a fellow member of Red Hot Poker and The Purple Crayon, said that in Marvin’s
audition for the sketch comedy group, she built a whole narrative as a special agent “sniping” the alphabet with nothing but the letters A through Z. “We were all kind of amazed at her,” Lowitz said. “You can tell it in her sketches, her improv, in her line readings. She comes at it in a heavily trained and experienced way, and it really heightens our comedy.” At Yale, Marvin said she has had the opportunity to explore new facets of acting, since she had never written comedy before or been behind the scenes of a production. “It can be really scary, but in a good way,” Marvin said. “If you want to try something, you can just do it here, which is challenging, but it also forces you to figure it out.” That willingness to explore shaped how she directed “Machinal” last semester, according to Julia Weston ’28, who acted in the play’s lead role, and Mya Osei ’29, the show’s stage manager. Since Marvin had performed Weston’s role herself outside of Yale, she said she could direct from inside the character. “She had a good understanding of how to create blocking that is naturalistic,” Weston said in a voice message. She added that Marvin let actors feel out a scene themselves and activate their imagination before o!ering notes. Osei, who said the play was the first theater production of any kind in which she had participated, noted Marvin’s willingness to share control of the rehearsal room.
CASEY NEWELL VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Alyssa Marvin ’29, who has toured with Broadway musicals including “Annie” and “School of Rock” and acted in several films and television shows, has juggled an acting career with being a full-time student at Yale. “The fact she, being so wellversed in theatre, gave me, someone who had basically no experience, space to also run elements of rehearsal speaks to how gracious she is when it comes to creating things amongst peers,” Osei wrote in an email to the News. Outside rehearsals, Weston described Marvin as someone who brings the same excitement to conversation that she brings to a role. “She is just a wonderfully curious person who really aims to investigate anything that she is a part of,” Weston said. “She really tries to dig into any text, any art piece that she’s involved in.”
Marvin said she is grateful that her academic coursework directly contributes to her career, since she wouldn’t have been exposed to the content in classes such as dance improvisation and Shakespeare seminars otherwise. “I love Yale so much, and I also love acting so much, so it doesn’t ever feel like a sacrifice,” Marvin said. “I feel so invested in both of those things. I will always make space to do both.” Marvin’s film “Run Amok” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this January. Contact JOANNE HWANG at joanne.hwang@yale.edu
Music mentoring program for local middle schoolers expands BY ALIZA SHYOVITZ CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The Yale Undergraduate Music Mentorship Initiative is gearing up for a second semester of bringing music to New Haven middle schoolers. Founded last spring by Quincy Rosenzweig ’26+1, YUMMI, pronounced “you-me,” is a registered nonprofit focused on making music education more accessible to New Haven youth. According to Rosenzweig, about 50 Yale students signed up to be paired with public school students this semester, compared to the 15 mentors who worked with students last semester. YUMMI’s goal is “filling the gap of one-on-one support for
young musicians in New Haven who otherwise might not have access to it,” Rosenzweig, who is also the initiative’s current president, said. Joelle Kim ’28, the group’s outreach chair, said personalized mentorship is critical for musical growth. “I’ve played the flute for 12 years now, and I’ve taken private lessons for most of that, all the way up until the end of high school,” Kim said in a voice memo. “I was definitely very lucky to be able to have so much musical training, so I’m really excited that I’m able to pour that back out into students.” This semester, YUMMI is expanding its programming to all New Haven middle schools.
P rev i o u s ly, t h e p ro g ra m functioned specifically as a supplement to the music program at Worthington Hooker School in East Rock, Rosenzweig said. Yale mentors met with students at the school for about 45 minutes after school once a week, helping them with music theory, rhythm, composition and specific pieces. According to Rosenzweig, 17 Worthington Hooker students were mentored under the initiative last year across about 10 different instruments, including vocal technique. Frank Parker, a music educator at Worthington Hooker, said last semester’s students were enthusiastic about the program. “I’ve heard from students that once they have a couple of
sessions and get to know their mentor, they look at them as a friend,” Parker said in a phone interview. “If a mentor is sick or running late, they’re like, ‘What? But I want to see them!’ They start to get attached to them.” Rose n z we i g said that s u p p l e m e n t i n g a n a l rea dy established educational program at Worthington Hooker enabled him to develop the structure to expand the initiative to all New Haven students. He said the experience taught him a lot, “both about structure and logistics of the program, but also about actual mentoring practices.” Rosenzweig said YUMMI’s leadership has reached out to local middle schools asking for help publicizing the program. Once the
younger students sign up, they will be paired with a Yale mentor, who will meet with them at Dwight Hall for one 45-minute session each week. He said that the program’s location on Yale’s campus might present a challenge for some students, however. “The unfortunate matter is not all students have the means to get to Dwight Hall, especially if their parents are both working fulltime jobs with nonflexible hours,” Rosenzweig said. “We’re still thinking about ways that we can increase the accessibility of the program.” Rosenzweig — who last year was a member of the Whiffenpoofs, the world’s oldest collegiate a cappella group — said he founded the program after realizing that the biggest impact on his own musical education came from out-of-school opportunities. In addition to singing, Rosenzweig is classically trained on the piano. “One-on-one support was a really foundational part of my music growth throughout my childhood. I was very fortunate to have private tutors, as are a lot of Yalies,” he said. “But that isn’t possible for a lot of New Haven youth.” Last spring, Kim mentored a sixth grader who played the flute. Kim said that the student was initially timid, but eventually warmed up to her. “I saw her become a lot more confident over the course of the semester, and that was exciting -– her opening up more,” Kim said. Joseph Kayne ’27, the vice president of YUMMI, worked with a fifth grader on vocal technique last spring. Kayne said that he enjoyed watching the student’s musical growth. “She developed a ton over the course of the four months,” he said, adding that it was exciting to see her get advanced technical things that even he struggles with. Parker said he was excited about the expansion, saying he was “all for equity and accessibility.” “New Haven has so many public schools and students who would benefit from this opportunity,” Parker said in a phone interview. “I believe music has the capacity to reach everyone, so by being able to have access to this, it’s community-building and promulgating a shared sense of pride in practice and traditions that have been going on for centuries.” Dwight Hall is located at 67 High Street. Contact ALIZA SHYOVITZ at aliza.shyovitz@yale.edu.
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“It means the world to me to be able to contribute to such a great program as a first-year.” SKYLAR JACKSON '30, VOLLEYBALL
Yale aims to shock defending champions Princeton after Cornell loss WOMEN'S SOCCER BY GIAN LOMBEYDA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The Yale women’s soccer team (5–5–0, 0–1 Ivy) will face defending champions Princeton University (4–4–1, 0–1 Ivy) as the Bulldogs seek to continue their good run of form at home. After frustrating weekends for both the Bulldogs and the Tigers, the matchup is expected to feature high-scoring attacks as the teams seek to regain momentum and launch their sides up the Ivy League standings. “Princeton is always a top team in our conference and won the regular season last fall,” head coach Sarah Martinez wrote in an email to the News. “Our group knows the rivalry with them and I have no doubt will get up and be prepared to come out with energy and intensity.” The big match comes at an especially crucial moment for the Bulldogs, who suffered a 1-0 loss to a defiant Cornell University (4–3–2, 1–0 Ivy) side last Saturday to start conference play. This weekend, Yale will be eager to prove their quality by stunning Princeton in an otherwise strong season for the Bulldogs. After earning a 5–2–0
conference-topping record last year, the Tigers have struggled to find their footing so far this season. Big wins against Colgate University (1–8–2, 0–2 PL) and Lehigh University (0–8– 1, 0–2 PL) have been tainted by defensive lapses against Villanova University (7–0–3, 2–0 Big East) and, most recently, Harvard (7–2–1, 1–0 Ivy). Yale will aim to do even better than their Crimson rivals, who scraped out a 4-3 victory over Princeton last Saturday amid the nor’easter. H istory has favored the Bulldogs in recent matchups between Yale and Princeton. Three of the last four games were wins for the Bulldogs, including a 1-0 upset in front of a 2,000-person crowd in Princeton last season. The Bulldogs will hope history repeats itself this coming weekend. It did last Saturday, although in that case, history worked in Ivy opponent Cornell’s favor. A penalty kick goal within the first minute of Yale’s match against Cornell proved to be the match winner for the Big Red in a tense 1-0 affair. The scoreline was identical to last year’s matchup between the two sides, in which a first-minute goal also cost Yale the match. Goalkeeper Isabel Willems continued her clinical run with
ALYSSA CHANG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Putting a frustrating away trip to Cornell behind them, the Bulldogs plan to make the most of home field advantage on Saturday against perennial title contenders Princeton. six saves on the night, but Yale’s defensive resilience was not enough to find a result in Ithaca. “A disappointing performance for us at Cornell and certainly not true to our identity as a team this season,” Martinez wrote. “We’re excited to learn and grow from it and put our focus on Princeton.” So far this season, the Bulldogs have shown that they have the tenacity to bounce back from tough results. Star attackers Jojo
DeNegri ’29, Abigail Solomon ’26 and Anita Thorvaldsdottir ’27 have led the charge, each scoring in comeback wins. “We’ve challenged our group to reflect on individual preparation,” Martinez wrote. “They’ve learned from results and learned from performances and I have no doubt you will see an inspired, energetic and organized group this weekend.” As the Bulldogs work their way through conference play, with
a difficult road trip to Brown (7–2–1, 1–0 Ivy) and Harvard up next, the Bulldogs will need a strong performance against the Tigers in the biggest game of the season yet. Yale will host Princeton at 7 p.m. this Saturday at Reese Stadium in New Haven. Contact GIAN LOMBEYDA at gian.lombeyda@yale.edu.
Bulldogs to play rivals Harvard and Dartmouth this weekend at home VOLLEYBALL BY TANNER BATTLE STAFF REPORTER Yale (7–2, 1–0 Ivy) will face the undefeated Harvard Crimson (10–0, 1–0 Ivy) squad on Friday night before taking on the Dartmouth Big Green (6–5, 0–1 Ivy) on Saturday. The Bulldogs are returning home after three weeks on the road, on the heels of a 3-1 Ivy opener win at Brown (2–7, 0–1 Ivy). The Crimson narrowly beat the Big Green 3-2 last Saturday in its only Ivy League match thus far. While Harvard has yet to
lose a game, the strength of its schedule has been weaker than Yale’s. The Bulldogs’ only two losses of the season came to two highly-ranked opponents, No. 9 TCU and No. 5 SMU. In the Ivy League Preseason Poll released in August, the Bulldogs were projected to finish second, while the Crimson were projected four spots below them at No. 6 and the Big Green in seventh. When these teams met last season, Yale swept Harvard and Dartmouth, never dropping a set to either the Crimson or the Big Green at home or away through four games. This season, the Elis will rely on senior captain Laurece Abraham ’27
and talented rookie Skylar Jackson ’30 to carry them through the crucial weekend ahead. “It means the world to me to be able to contribute to such a great program as a first-year,” Jackson wrote in an email. “I am extremely grateful for this opportunity.” In her first collegiate season, Jackson has consistently contributed offensively and defensively to the Bulldogs’ team dynamic. The Bulldogs will return home to John J. Lee Amphitheater on Friday night to face Harvard. The game, which will be white-out themed, will also be a chance for Yale students to scan their student IDs for an extra lottery entry for The Game at Fenway Park.
TANNER BATTLE / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
After beating Brown 3-1 last week, Yale will continue conference play at home with two Ivy League matchups less than 24 hours apart. Friday’s game will be white-out themed and offer attendees an extra Harvard-Yale football game ticket lottery entry. Yale will take on Harvard at 6 p.m. on Friday and then play Dartmouth at 5 p.m. on Saturday.
Contact TANNER BATTLE at tanner.battle@yale.edu.
After Cornell loss, Yale faces Princeton in season’s first road game FIELD HOCKEY BY VINCENT HUANG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The Yale Bulldogs (5–1, 1–1 Ivy) will travel south to Princeton on Friday for a road matchup against the No. 10 Princeton Tigers (4–4, 1–1 Ivy), as both teams seek a return to form following narrow Ivy losses. So far, Yale field hockey’s 2026 campaign has closely resembled that of their successful 2025 season. The Bulldogs won their opening five games for the second time in two years, before once again having their unbeaten record undone by the Cornell Big Red. The Bulldogs hope to break that trend against the Tigers, having lost their two 2025 matchups against Princeton, first during the regular season and then in the Ivy League Tournament semifinals by an aggregate score of 1-5. The close nature of Saturday’s 3-2 loss to Cornell — which saw the Bulldogs fall out of both the NFHCA and NCAA Rating
Percentage Index’s national top 20 — has proven to be a significant motivating factor for the Bulldogs as they hit the road for their first away game of the season. “We are all really excited to play Princeton, after such a tough loss to Cornell, we are more motivated than ever to get back on a winning streak,” midfielder Carys Isherwood ’29 wrote in an email to the News, adding that the team “will be working hard this week to make sure we are physically and mentally prepared to put out our best game on Friday night.” Princeton, the defending Ivy League champion, is ranked 10th in the country by the National Field Hockey Coaches Association poll and 16th by the NCAA’s Rating Percentage Index. T h e T i ge rs ’ a p pa re n t ly middling record of 4–4 (1–1 Ivy) is deceptive, though — a product of the program’s exceptionally difficult strength of schedule. Five of the team’s seven opponents — No. 18 Old Dominion University, No. 10 University of North Carolina, No. 17 Rutgers University, No. 10 University of Connecticut and
STAT OF THE DAY
LIZA KAUFMAN / PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Following last Saturday’s narrow loss to Cornell, the Bulldogs will seek a return to the win column in Friday’s prime time road game against the Princeton Tigers, the defending Ivy League champion.. No. 10 Harvard — were nationally ranked when facing the Tigers, and six of their seven contests have been on the road. All three Princeton losses have been in penalty shootouts, and all came against top-10 teams. Though the Tigers will certainly be favored leading up to Friday’s game, Yale’s players will have the advantage in physical rest and time for preparation. With the team’s Sunday game against Hofstra
having been canceled for inclement weather, the Bulldogs will take to Bedford Field having enjoyed five full days without game action, during which preparation will have solely focused on the Tigers. Princeton, on the other hand, had to first play a Tuesday home game against the No. 2 University of Maryland Terrapins (10–0, 2–0 B1G), where the Tigers fell in overtime by a score of 4-3. They will have had only
a two-day turnaround before their contest against Yale. Yale will face Princeton on Friday at 5 p.m. at Bedford Field and then travel an hour eastbound to play No. 18 Monmouth University (7–1, 2–0 CAA) at So Sweet A Cat Field on Sunday.
THE FIELD HOCKEY TEAM WON THEIR FIVE OPENING GAMES BEFORE LOSING TO CORNELL LAST WEEKEND.
Contact VINCENT HUANG at v.huang@yale.edu.
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2026 · yaledailynews.com
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2026
WEEKEND THE LANGUAGE WE HAVE FOR LOVE
MISCHA PERZANOWSKI CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
ILLUSTRATION BY TASHA FU
“! "#$%&'() *+,#-,+) ./') 01%&23) 45#) 6(') %&7) -&8) 9:#) ;+,#<,+) 01) =+5&>#) 6?@) -&A.,#$)6?)45#)-'7)&23)$B#)9C) .76C3D;+2#$6',#E” Earlier this week, I learned this sentence in my Chinese class, roughly translating to: “I hear there are quite a few people nowadays who only date and don’t get married; it’s best to make a clean break with someone like that.” It seems even my Chinese textbook has noticed that something about dating has changed. We grew up with stories that gave love a clear trajectory: meet someone, fall in love, get married and live happily ever after. We grew up with grandiose imagery of chasing one another to the airport before the plane leaves or standing outside the window with a boombox and a rose in hand. Now, dating feels more like a landscape of low-commitment, non-exclusive situationships than clearly labeled relationships. The internet has only expanded the vocabulary: the three-month rule, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, the loneliness epidemic and more. We may have fewer rules for how dating is supposed to work, but we have invented increasingly specific language to rationalize the irrationality of falling in love. There is the talking stage, which is somehow both more and less than dating. There are situationships, which can apparently last months without either person knowing they are in one. There are rules about how long to wait before texting back, how long to date before becoming exclusive and how long to know someone before deciding whether your feelings are real. Warren Deaton ’30 offers his own explanation for why dating looks this way. “I believe the most significant shift in contemporary dating has been from that of perceived necessity and convention to that of spontaneity,” he wrote in a text message. “This spontaneity has made the emotion much more vivid behind authentic connections but can also cause transience.” That transience takes on a different weight in college, an unusually strange place to fall in love. Thousands of young
adults with stars in their eyes arrive on campus at the same time, having left behind the people and places that previously told them who they were. In trying to figure out who we are, we naturally attempt to figure out who we want. Deaton points to a similar tension between the way Yale students date and the relationships they ultimately want. “We engage in things like hook ups and other things to sometimes distract ourselves from the reality that our actions are of much more weight and significance now,” he wrote. “We yearn for relationships yet subject ourselves to passing joys.” Perhaps part of that tension comes from the strange position we occupy when we’re 18. We might want something lasting while still having no idea what we want our lives to look like at 22, let alone 30. We might not even know what we want our Friday night to look like next week. And yet a relationship asks us to make room for another person in a life, the shape of which we can barely predict for ourselves. “Who am I?” becomes “Who are you?” and “What are we?” These questions sound almost embarrassingly serious for a first-year relationship, yet they are also strangely difficult to answer. Meeting his current girlfriend before first semester, Abel Mamo ’30 has an experience that is, in some ways, the opposite of the stereotypical first-year relationship. One of the common concerns about entering a relationship during the first semester is that the student will spend too much time with their partner, making it harder to branch out and build a wider community. For Mamo, his relationship has done the opposite. “Having met my girlfriend at FirstYear Scholars at Yale gave me a group of friends and people I knew coming in,” he said. “Having that relationship gave me access to the people she became friends with, allowing me to widen my circle of people.” For Min Mandy Chen ’29, however, a partner can easily become a substitute for the broader community students are still trying to build. “A surprising amount of people (including myself) found them-
selves entering their first relationship in college,” she wrote in a text message. “The novelty of such coupled with the standard honeymoon phase can make it difficult to branch out, after all, your partner is a built in best friend.” She added that “community comes at the cost of discomfort,” while having a partner can provide “an easy out to awkward interactions” and the friend-making that happens during first year. Maybe this is what makes first-year relationships different from relationships later in college. You are not simply adding a person to an already-established life; you are adding a person while life itself is still being built. You might grow together or grow apart. You might learn something you could not have learned alone. Or it might simply be a relationship you had at 18. At Yale, though, a relationship rarely exists in isolation. A breakup does not make someone a stranger when you still share friends, dining halls, parties and the walks between classes. When dating becomes so woven into the life you are building, being single can feel like something you are supposed to solve. “There is a lot of pressure I feel to be in a relationship, where I feel like a chud because I haven’t found someone here,” Zachary Minter ’28 said. “Thinking that you have to check a box or get something out of this makes sense because it’s such a short amount of time, where I think about graduating and going to another city, where it’s going to be awkward. But nobody knows, and I’m not going to stand here and fight and beg to be in a relationship.” Maybe Zach is right. Maybe the problem isn’t that we don’t know enough about relationships. Maybe we expect ourselves to know too much about ourselves. Fall semester is already a period of uncertainty and transition; perhaps that is why relationships formed in it can feel like such an additional weight to carry. You are already trying to figure out who you are, where you belong and what your life here will look like. Adding another person means accepting uncertainties that are no longer entirely our own: We can control our own feelings,
but never fully predict another person’s. And that uncertainty does not necessarily end with the relationship; sometimes, it follows you out of it. Since move-in day, I have wondered what exactly we mourn when a relationship ends. Do we mourn the person, or the life we imagined with them? Do we miss them, or who we were with them? And how much of what we remember belongs to the relationship itself, rather than the life we were living at the time? I still don’t have a particularly satisfying answer. Yet maybe that is the point. I arrived in New Haven sure of who I was as a person, a student and a future professional. Now, a month has passed, and I have accumulated only more questions. Not only “Who am I?” but also “Who do I want to become?” “What do I actually want from another person?” And “How do you know when it is time to let a relationship become part of your past?” Maybe these are questions I was always going to ask at 18. Maybe Yale just gave me more reasons to ask them. Oh, and, most importantly, will I ever master Chinese? My textbook seems to be teaching me something other than Chinese: that love can be neatly defined — date to marry, or cut your losses. However, maybe love is like Chinese. There are rules. There are patterns. There are words for things you didn’t know had names. And no matter how much you study, sometimes you still 不懂 F01)6/#$, don’t understand). Contact MISCHA PERZANOWSKI at mischa.perzanowski@yale.edu
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2026 · yaledailynews.com
WEEKEND CULTURE & ARTS PERSONAL ESSAY
How to know someone you’ve never met // BY LIZETH ORTIZ-CALLEJA Raindrops hit my windowpane and the melancholy inside me grows. I start to miss California, the laughter of my hometown friends and late night In-N-Out burgers. But nothing hits harder than the emptiness I feel without my mother’s presence. I miss her cooking, her booming voice and the warmth of her hugs. She is still living, but 3,000 miles away from me. Homesickness is rarely about a place. It’s a familiar face, a cat waiting on your bed, the small rituals in a house that you no longer live in. Our call logs home are proof enough. This yearning for home is not a new occurrence in my family. I have seen my parents live it every day for all 19 years of my life. Twenty-two years ago, my mother and father left Mexico, leaving behind a piece of themselves they couldn’t carry across the border. I never met my mother’s mother. When she passed away, I grieved not the memories I had of her, but the lost opportunity of knowing her love. While studying abroad, I was asked to write a short story about her. My classmates around me wrote with ease, writing about grandmothers who had spoiled them rotten. My pen and paper didn’t touch for a while. I didn’t have those memories. How can I write about someone I never knew? The image of my grandmother, Juani, is trapped in a wooden frame beside my mother’s bed. Every morning before she leaves,
ILLUSTRATION BY ISABEL LI
COURTESY OF LIZETH ORTIZ-CALLEJA
my mother prays for a blessed day and gives a kiss to the picture of her parents. When her children and grandkids all get together and the wine runs out, the stories of my grandmother’s love start pouring out. One of my favorite stories is the origin of my mother’s name. My grandmother was 42 years old when she was pregnant with my mother. Worried about her own age, she entrusted my mother to the Virgin of Talpa to ensure that she would be born without complications. So when my mother arrived healthy, my grandmother named her after the Virgin herself: María del Rosario. My Juani was a short woman. She always wore her hair in a braid — black strands mingled with gray. Her skin was olive, marked by brown spots and the wrinkles that appeared whenever she smiled. Her eyes were just like my mom’s: warm and brown. She was the woman who taught my mom how to cook the meals that bring me so much bliss and how to prepare the remedies that make me feel better when I am ill. She was the woman who let her daughter build a life far away — much like my mom did when I went to a university across the country. My mom didn’t have the same privilege I do of returning home. Although I’m stuck in New Haven completing problem sets and midterms until the holidays, I get to go back to California. It has been 22 years since my mother left Mexico and nine years since my
grandmother passed away. My mom will never see her mother; she will never hug or kiss her again. Maybe my mom doesn’t see it, but mi Juani never left her. I didn’t have the chance to meet her, but the stories I’ve been told remind me so much of my mom. The picture by my mother’s bed could be a photo of my mom 30 years from now. The love my mother gives me is a reflection of how her mother treated her. And now, I carry that with me at all times. Whether I am flipping tortillas for quesadillas at the Silliman buttery, listening attentively to the heartaches of my friends or doing gestures of love for those around me, I am reminded of how my mother moves through the world. She can’t be here with me but her tenderness lives on at Yale. It is the greatest inheritance I have. We are all far from someone we love. Someday, we will lose some of them for good. But distance doesn’t erase them, and neither does death. They live on in the way we cook, the way we comfort, the way we pray before a long day. As long as we keep loving the way they taught us, they never really leave. My grandmother lives in my mother, and my mother lives in me. I once wondered how to write about a woman I never knew. It turns out I’ve known her all along. Contact LIZETH ORTIZ-CALLEJA at lizeth.ortiz-calleja@yale.edu.
PERSONAL ESSAY
Cerebral decay in 72 hours of algorithmic deprivation: a study // BY CLAUDIA LOIZAGA A team of Yale undergraduates set out to investigate why everyday conversations feel overwhelmingly understimulating and devoid of narrative velocity. They isolated an anonymous test subject from all short-form media, doomscrolling and algorithmic input for 72 hours. The researchers isolated the subject in a windowless study room in Bass Library, depriving them from all devices, providing them only with analog stimulation. This included classical novels of the Western canon, a medium of intellectual stimulation entirely unfamiliar to the subject. Over 72 hours, the team recorded observations in the subject’s changes in behavior. Find the test results below. Observation log 12 hours: We have decided to call this stage Mild Inconvenience. The subject exhibits moderate physical distress when attempting to receive stimulation in reading “The Iliad.” They repeatedly swiped up on the pages of the book, expressing confusion when the paper failed to autorefresh or display comments. When they were asked their thoughts on the chapter, the subject’s lexical range only contained words related to gastronomy. “Homer ate with this” and “Wow, Achilles cooked” were frequent comments. This could be interpreted as a sign of evasion or genuine inability to process
our request for their personal opinion. We hypothesize the confusion is due to a lack of access to other people’s opinions, causing the subject to be forced to process a thought of their own. 24 hours: This stage will be known as the Split Screen Craving stage. We attempted to engage the subject in conversation to observe the effects of dopamine deprivation. They began showing acute distress. The most notable manifestation was the subject’s inability to look at the person talking unless someone else was actively cutting a piece of kinetic sand or playing a simple mobile game right next to their head. Additionally, the subject became visibly restless if the speaker took a breath or paused between thoughts, mistakenly believing this was due to internet lag. Other than Subway Surfers, researchers found the second best way to keep the subject’s heart rate stable was to squeeze and manipulate slime in front of them. 36 hours: The consequent stage is the Syntactic Collapse. At this point in the experiment, the primary language center begins to degrade. When the subject was asked standard questions like “How was your lunch?”, they were unable to form full sentences. The team wants to highlight that the subject interrupted to request coconut water. After various attempts to engage in small talk with the subject, involuntary physical and vocal spasms were recorded at four-minute
intervals, including obsessive tracing of the jawline and repeating the name “Nina.” We additionally noted an immediate 40 percent drop in conversational engagement when the topics became “too deep,” according to the subject. We believe this alarming linguistic deterioration can be attributed to the lack of dopamine peaks every five seconds, causing the subject to co-exist with boredom. 72 hours: The final stage of the investigation is known as Complete Catatonia. To finalize observations, we investigated the effects of re-entry into a normal social space; the subject was exposed to a standard fiveminute conversation about class schedules. The subject’s brain activity flatlined due to the total absence of sub-second dopamine cuts. This resulted in their collapse onto the Cross Campus grass while muttering about their loss of social status: “This is crazy aura loss.” Conclusions and Recommendations After spending two weeks analyzing our observations and results, we have come to the conclusion that human conversation is no longer capable of competing with three-second algorithmic pacing. As a result of our fast cognitive deterioration as a species, we advise immediate administrative intervention. Discussion sections must be capped at 15 seconds in length, and professors must incorporate
ILLUSTRATION BY MAIA WILSON
ambient video game footage into all lecture slides to maintain baseline eye contact. The only exception for the inclusion of this footage is if the professor is simultaneously cutting kinetic sand or stretching slime as they speak. Until these protocols are implemented, we recommend that all students avoid prolonged eye contact with physical books, as exposure to uncurated thought
carries a severe, documented risk of existential panic. Or, at least, implement informal comment sections in the book margins. Further research is required to determine whether this report itself has exceeded the average human attention span. Contact CLAUDIA LOIZAGA at claudia.loizaga@yale.edu.
WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: SENDING LOVE LETTERS
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2026 · yaledailynews.com
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WEEKEND CULTURE & ARTS REVIEW
Phoebe Bridgers and the Gen-Z urge to document // BY JULIA YAKIREVICH As much as I wish I was one of those wise Yalies who deleted their social media before their first step on campus, I am no such student. In reality, social media plays a conflicting role in my life. On one hand, it’s often the reason I procrastinate my p-sets or end up going to bed far later than I’d planned on. On the other, it gives me a way to engage with media that inspires me and keep in touch with friends and family — a much more resonant justification now that we’re geographically separated. Gen Z has been a guinea pig generation for social media use and regulation. We’re the first to post our lives, our politics and even our concert-going experiences for the world to see. We’ve become so accustomed to preserving each moment that the moment itself gets away from us. It has instead become defined by the impulse to memorialize it. Last weekend, I, along with 60,000 others over three nights at Barclay’s Stadium, was challenged to embrace a moment knowing I would never have access to it again. I attended The Lost Tour, a Phoebe Bridgers concert and, for the first time, experienced a mass digital detox. I’ll attempt to preserve the moment now. The experience began with a rarity. For the first time in years, I had to use a physical ticket, unaided by my Apple Wallet. From there, I approached the security line where I was given a Yondr pouch to lock up my phones. It wasn’t only the performance that was phone-free, but the entirety of our time in the stadium. Even while waiting between the opener and the main set, I felt more present than ever talking to my friends — one of whom I met that night — in the absence of our handheld distractions. During Bridgers’ set, the no-phone difference became even more apparent. I noticed that people appeared more free to move their bodies and allow for physical connection to the music without risking
an arm cramp from holding up their phone. Body language also came without the inherent self-regulation imposed by recordings. There was an unspoken acknowledgement that the 90 minutes we chose to experience together could not ever be restored; for that reason, we responded to the music and the experience’s ephemerality in the best way we could. We were hungrier to connect with it, and carve it into our memories — not our camera rolls or Instagram stories. In the middle of the show, Bridgers thanked the audience for accepting and participating in her no-phone policy. In her spiel, she acknowledged a merit of the no-phone concert I was completely oblivious to: lighting. Of course, with no iPhone or camera flash, darkness easily settles over the stadium, a quality that is valuable to Bridgers’ moody set in particular. There were times it was so quiet and dark we could hear security guards’ walkie talkies and follow the glow of their flashlights from across the stadium. Throughout the show, she used a lighting effect that I can only describe as being inside a plasma globe — a radiating glass sphere you might recall playing with at the science museum as a kid. The practice of banning phones at a concert has two main effects: keeping attendees present and more engaged with the music — and maintaining that those attendees are the only people to engage with the concert. Before experiencing it for myself, the former felt more obvious, but the outcome of the latter is what has resonated with me most in the days since. Without phones and, by extension, no social media, Bridgers removes participation from anyone not actively in the stadium. This effect inherently makes the experience more intimate: she is performing with only the people she can see, not the troves of people who will engage with her show secondhand. While this makes the concert
more special for the attendees, it could also be exclusionary to the fans who can’t attend which, frankly, is a majority of her listeners, especially given the price barrier of ticket sales. As we’ve seen with strikingly popular concerts such as Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Sabrina Carpenter’s Short and Sweet Tour, the social media phenomenon comprised of videos and livestreams of tour-related content has become a legitimate form of alternative entertainment to actual attendance. For better and for worse, the 2020s have shown us that you don’t have to be in the room to achieve the experience. This posed the question of what embracing a live performance could look like. Is it standing the entire time and screaming at the top of your lungs? Is it closing your eyes and attempting to receive the music by osmosis? Truthfully, I’m not sure, and I have to assume it looks different for everyone, even when our phones and social media are removed from the situation. Roughly a year ago, I attended Lorde’s Virgin Tour in Boston. After consulting my camera roll, I can confirm I took eight videos of the opener, Blood Orange, and 10 videos and 12 photos of Lorde. Reflecting on that quantity, I give more credit to my iPhone 13’s crappy quality than my inclination to record the show — the three other people I went with made up for my lack of content. While at the concert, I remember my motivation for recording stemmed from my intent to rewatch and reminisce. Over the year since the concert, not once have I meaningfully watched one of those videos. In fact, trying to relive the concert through my phone would be fruitless. The true experience rested in the ambiance of the stadium, the feeling of being part of the crowd, and Lorde’s presence and live vocals; it can’t be recreated by viewing my cracked phone screen in broad daylight. This experience leads to my conclu-
JANE CALLANAN / CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR
sion: while I don’t regret having my phone with me at the Lorde concert, it didn’t improve the performance or make it more memorable in any noteworthy way. I attended the Phoebe Bridgers concert on a whim, only securing a ticket after a friend gave up his Friday night in New York for a weekend a cappella retreat. The night invited a lot of reflection: mostly on my seventh-grade self who insisted on playing Phoebe Bridgers before school every morning, surrendering to middle school existential dread. But it was a single line from Bridg-
ers’ “Garden Song” that inspired further contemplation on the no-phones of it all: “And when I grow up, I’m gonna look up / From my phone and see my life.” So while Phoebe Bridgers took the pro-Yondr pouch stance, her own lyrics might offer another conclusion on the matter. Keep your phone, document as you will, but don’t forget to look up, and turn your flash off. The lighting designer will thank you.
the bond that's between us two” from the song “stupid song” technically belongs to autumn’s chapter of the story, I think it fits best during “honeybee,” a song about the vulnerability that comes with being in love. When played live, the song creates a bond not of a romantic nature, but of a human one with the audience. At the concert, Rodrigo invites her fans to dissect a past relationship. She created an album millions have listened to under their covers, cherished, cried to and felt kinship with. Something divine hung in the air. Sharing the moment with the person you brought with you, surrounded by bored fathers with the daughters they love. Rodrigo in the center, playing piano, dressed in white, skin like moonlight, every flick of her wrist so graceful. Angelic strings building. Everyone gathered from all walks of life, sitting together, carrying the grief that means you loved. Every distant light someone who has felt the same thing as you, someone who, just like you, is human and indulging in the beauty of art. And in that moment God did exist in the space between us. And so the concert continues from winter back to spring, when it all begins again. Overall, Rodrigo and her team created a phenomenal experience, from visual storytelling to her haunting live performance. They captured the essence of love. Love, in my opinion, is not a feeling. Love is what makes
you feel a depth like no other. It is not simply happiness or infatuation, but an intangible, amorphous substance. I mean, sure, it’s oxytocin and dopamine, but there’s also this ether-like quality to it. Something beyond the physical, something innate, something primal and human. Transcending the metaphysical, indescribable. Love creates a multitude of emotions, and it makes you feel those emotions deeper than anything else could. Love can make you feel like you’re at the peak of your favorite crescendo, but it can also make you feel like the world is ending. And Rodrigo managed to recreate the sensation for thousands of audience members: that, in and of itself, is an incredible feat. Rodrigo not only told her own story, but also created a bond between herself and the audience, and within the audience itself. I can only try to replicate the experience through this article, but inevitably words will fail me, as there is nothing like experiencing the Unraveled show live. My only regret is that I was neither in love nor heartbroken myself, so I couldn’t experience the show to its fullest. Overall, the Unraveled tour is one you do not want to miss.
Contact JULIA YAKIREVICH at julia.yakirevich@yale.edu.
REVIEW
The “Unraveled” tour // BY AZUL SANCHEZ The opening synth-pop beat begins spilling from the stage, and a frenzy erupts. Girls as young as six and as old as forty, dressed in pink, scream at the top of their lungs. Breathless excitement colors the air, and an undercurrent of suspense crawls up your spine as you wait for Olivia Rodrigo to take the main stage. As the melody progresses, the half-moon screen flashes to a brunette girl lying on a bed of flowers. She flashes a cheeky smile and begins to sing. The Unraveled tour begins. On Sept. 26, Olivia Rodrigo began her Unraveled tour at PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford, Connecticut. The setlist included a few fan favorites as well as tracks from her latest album, “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love.” The album — which was released in June and since then has broken multiple charts, streaming and sales
AZUL SANCHEZ / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
records — traces a relationship’s progression from conception to termination. Some fans have divided the album into a “so in love” portion and a “pretty sad” portion. Rodrigo herself divided the concert in a manner that tells the love story through seasons. A hazy dreamscape greets you as you set foot in the stadium. The main stage transforms into a field of idyllic flowers, and the stadium lights cast a soft, warm glow. It’s like stepping into a meadow at dusk. It’s as if you risk getting drunk on ambrosia and on the faint perfume of fauna if you get too close. You arrive in the spring, the season when nature and love bloom. You, as an audience member, become entangled in this web of tentative touches and flickering hope, when love is young and nothing bad has happened yet. The flashing colorful visuals, wristband lights worn by audience
members and general playfulness of the singer elicit the same elation and adrenaline that a new relationship brings. Ending with “good 4 u,” spring transitions into summer with a montage. The visuals are more intimate. The twinkling notes and haunting vocals evoke melancholy and nostalgia. Even from the beginning, it is clear that this specific affair will end. Summer brings its tumultuous storms. Conflict arises: jealousy, fights, dizzying make-ups. A rock electric-guitar sound crescendos, the pressure building as we arrive at “my way,” a vengeful territorial anthem. The anger is palpable, and the urgency to fight is too. In autumn, the trees shed their leaves and love begins to lose its shine. When the life of the party dies out and the rot in the walls is revealed, we witness the tale of a girl coming to terms with the fact that romantic love cannot fix you. It turns out that love does not conquer all and that the tiny flame ignited in your chest does not survive the blow of depression. You may flip between mania and depression and conflate that with passion. Autumn ends with shouts of sorrow during “cigarette smoke.” The live version conveys the palpable loss and Rodrigo’s tumultuous pain — an explosive build-up within a heartbroken chest. Mournful wails and a desperate electric guitar signal a last hint of warmth. Winter is quiet and solitary, but a bit of hope emerges in the montage’s score. Although the lyric “and if there is a God, he’s
Contact AZUL SANCHEZ at azul.sanchez@yale.edu.
WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: A DIGITAL DETOX
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2026 · yaledailynews.com
WEEKEND CULTURE & ARTS REVIEW
Lend me your ears: The Deluxe Edition epidemic // BY CIELO GAZARD In the world of pop music, sometimes less is more. If only some of today’s biggest names in music took this to heart. Deluxe editions of newlyreleased albums have become inevitable in the world of pop music. If you can’t seem to get enough of the latest hit record from your favorite pop singer, then you won’t have to wait too long to hear everything else left off the cutting room floor! Releasing a handful of new songs a few years or a few months or less than a few weeks after an album’s initial release date can be a way for artists to keep up the hype around their newest album — or make up for unsatisfactory sales. T he d elu xe e d it ion h a s lost its magic as a release for d ieh a rd fa ns who wa nt to learn more about the creative process behind their favorite a lbu m s. A r t i sts who h ave m a n ipu l ated t he power i n t he delu xe ed it ion for m at recognize that a lot of their ride-or-die fans will listen to and purchase anything they release, even if it was better left shelved. Deluxe editions of albums a re not a creat ion of t he st re a m i n g era . Sp eci a l or l i m ited releases of cer ta i n p ro d u c t s a re a l s o n o t a strictly musical phenomenon — speci a l “d i rector’s cut” editions of movies available on DVD or BluRay are widely sought by cinephiles. I don’t persona l ly have a problem with the concept of a deluxe edition of an album. I actually ow n a few specia l ed it ion releases by some of my favorite bands. As is clear in the name, a deluxe edition includes more than a regular release. T his usually consists of B-sides, alternate takes of songs, demo recordings and songs left off the official album. For music fans, these deluxe editions can be incredible releases to add to one’s collection. However, I th i n k that a delu xe edition of an album should only be released for retrospective pu r poses, namely album anniversaries. On Friday, the Beatles a re releasing a “special edition” of their 1965 classic “Rubber Soul.” This deluxe edition will consist of four CDs — or five LPs for the vinyl collectors — that include the original mono mix of the album, a new stereo remix and a bunch of demos and early takes of the songs from the original record. For the completionist, it’s an incredibly expansive — and expensive — release. But, it isn’t like the Beatles, a band that has been broken up for nearly 60 years, is desperately trying to get to No. 1 on the c h a r t s w it h t h i s s p e c i a l release. T h is is my problem. T he mu sic sta rs of tod ay a re releasing special editions of t hei r a lbu m s i m med i ately to turn a bigger profit and get an inf lated boost on the charts. The Billboard Charts have started to take notice of t h is trend. Sta r ti ng i n 2025, “Billboard” updated its rules so that only four digital direct-to-consumer exclusive version s “w i l l be a l lowed for the life of an album.” So artists can still release a deluxe version of an album, along with three other exclusive versions, which can count toward the sales of the original release, but nothing more. But there are still artists who release more than one version of an album with one or two changes from the original. Perh aps no p op sta r i s
ILLUSTRATION BY BEA TRENTO
synonymous w ith the term “album variant” than Taylor Swift. Her last album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” has 29 different variants, including the recently released “The Life of a Showgirl: T he Encore” with four new songs, “The Life of a Showgirl: So Glamorous C a b a r e t Ve r s i o n” w h i c h includes the songwriting and voice memos of four tracks and “The Life of a Showgirl: Deluxe D re ssi n g R o om R ehe a rsa l Ve r s i o n” w h i c h i n c l u d e s “S et t le d D ow n A c ou s t ic” versions of two tracks. T he titles are a mouthful, the bonus four songs released last Friday are getting some of the worst reviews in Swift’s entire career and the added voice memos of songs recorded on Swift’s iPhone add nothing to an album that is already bloated and poorly written. I was at a birthday pa rty the day that “T he Life of a Showg i rl” was released. I n my friend’s common room, we sat in a circle and took turns
reading the lyrics to some of the songs on “T he Life of a Showgirl.” None of us in the room were Swifties, and none of us were converted after I read the line “Did you girlboss too close to the sun?” When the album got mixed to poor reviews, the billionaire popstar said to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe,“The rule of show business is, if it’s the first week of my album release and you are saying either my name or my album title, you’re helping.” The album debuted at No. 1 with around 3.4 million in pure album sales, an unprecedented figure helped a lot by Swifties buying those special editions in bulk. With the boost from the “Encore” tracks, the album could easily return to the No. 1 spot next week. But what is the point of an encore when no one asks for it? While she openly likes and h a s nor m a l i zed pa ra soci a l behavior from her fans over the years, it’s clear from the lack of qua l ity of her more
recent songs and the lack of quality control on her records and rollouts that Swift doesn’t actually think too highly of her fans. I saw a v ideo of a fa n re cord i n g her re act ion to t he cou ntdow n on Sw i f t’s website revealing “The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore.” The fan is hysterically screaming and crying “W hat is this??” but t hen proceed s to buy the product even though she hasn’t a clue what it sounds like or what it even is! A re Sw i f t’s fa n s t h is g u l l ible? They will lap up any amount of slop to keep the Swift train rolling, no questions asked. In 202 4, when Sw i ft released six special editions of her album “T he Tortured Poets Department,” available for five hours in the UK, the move prevented Charli XCX from hitting No. 1 with “Brat.” Her fans defended the move a s show b u si ne ss. T h at’s not show business — that’s corporate greed.
More artists should allow for the dust to settle on their ca reer before t h i n k i ng of releasing deluxe editions of their albums. Not everything that was worked on during the sessions for an album needs to be released. Not everything recorded is gold, and that’s a good thing! I’d rather an album have only ten tracks that are all stellar than an album with 30 tracks where 20 are skippable. It’s u n for t u n ate t h at t he hypercapitalistic ways of the strea m i ng era have forced artists’ marketing teams to think up anything to try and keep up w ith other a rtists worth billions of dollars. T he qua l ity of the music shou ld m at ter more t h a n t h e q u a n t i t y. We c a l l m u s i c i a n s “a r t i s t s ,” n o t “ b u s i n e s s p e o p l e ,” f o r a rea son. T hey shou ld sta r t acting like the former. Contact CIELO GAZARD at cielo.gazard@yale.edu.
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