Yale Daily News — October 3, 2025

Financial aid not stunted by tax hike

BY FABEHA JAHRA STAFF REPORTER

Yale students’ financial aid packages will not be impacted by the tax hike to the University’s endowment investment returns, administrators told the News.

According to Jeremiah Quinlan, the dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid, maintaining current financial aid packages for students is “a top priority.” Quinlan confirmed that “no current student financial aid offers have been modified because of the endowment tax.”

Quinlan’s assurance appears to contradict messaging students received over the summer about the potential effects of the endowment tax proposal. In late May, after the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that would raise the tax on Yale’s endowment investment income from 1.4 to 21 percent, University President Maurie McInnis urged Yalies to contact their senators to urge them to reject the legislation.

“This increased endowment tax would strip from Yale’s budget hundreds of millions of dollars that currently fund financial aid,” McInnis wrote in a May 22 email to the Yale community. “This legislation presents a greater threat to Yale than any other bill in memory.

SEE AID PAGE 4

Yale got student statements for lobbying

BY ISOBEL MCCLURE AND ASHER BOISKIN STAFF REPORTERS

Colten Danelski ’27, a Yale junior from Minnesota, received an email on May 17 asking him to share a brief statement about his home state, his college experience and post-graduation plans. University President Maurie McInnis was meeting with Minnesota representatives in Congress the next week, it read.

“The hope is that individual stories can help lawmakers understand the stakes of government policy beyond the abstractions,” read the message from his head of college and also signed by his dean. McInnis was concentrating on “making the case

for federal funding for financial aid” and “urging Congress not to raise the endowment tax to exorbitant levels.”

The email noted that if Danelski received financial aid, that “would be good to note as well.” When sharing his statement, McInnis would use only his first name and only in “private, closed-door meetings.”

Danelski was one of about four dozen students who provided statements about their Yale experiences solicited by administrators for use in a lobbying push to defend Yale’s interests in Washington, according to Richard Jacob, the University’s associate vice president for federal and state relations. The escalated efforts came amid an onslaught of

Report suggests crime decreased at Yale in 2024

BY ADELE HAEG STAFF REPORTERS

Results from an annual Yale Public Safety security report show that the number of reported crimes on campus decreased between 2023 and 2024.

Yale Public Safety released the report — which includes statistics about crime and fire incidents on and around campus from Jan. 1, 2024, through Dec. 31, 2024 — Tuesday, before an Oct. 1 deadline mandated by federal law.

Reports of crime on Yale’s campus decreased in every category except stalking, burglary and robbery, compared to the 2023 data released a year ago.

There were 55 reported instances of stalking in 2024, up from 44 in 2023. There were 50 reported burglaries and 21 reported robberies in 2024, up from 29 burglaries and 19 robberies in 2023. Last year, the News reported an overall increase in recorded crime on Yale’s campus in 2023. But according to the 2024 report, reports of crime are trending down, returning to pre-2023 levels, as evident in the graph above. “Any crime committed has a profound impact on those affected, and the safety and security of the community continues to be Yale’s top priority, ” Duane Lovello, the head of Yale Public Safety, said.

Sexual, domestic violence numbers drop from 2023

The annual security report is released in compliance with the federal Clery Act, which requires colleges and universities who receive federal funding to disclose information about specific crimes that occur on or near campus, according to the Yale Public Safety website.

In 2024, there was a decrease in reported sexual violence and rape from an almost decade high in 2023. In 2024, Yale Public Safety recorded 19 instances of reports of rape, a decrease from 56 reports in 2023. According to a footnote in the security report, the data is narrower

funding cuts and other aggressive policies toward higher education by President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress.

The University’s lobbying campaign, which focused in May and June on opposing Republican proposals to increase a tax on university endowment returns, has also included record-high spending on lobbyists and broad calls for Yale affiliates to speak up for the University’s priorities. But the requests for student testimonials were a previously unknown tactic to persuade lawmakers of Yale’s value for the country.

On May 22, the House of Representatives would pass an earlier iteration of the One Big Beautiful Bill, under which Yale

Yale plans to reduce budget in light of tax

Administrators announced Tuesday how Yale will adjust to federal legislation that will increase the tax on the endowment’s investment returns, which they estimated will cost the University about $300 million per year.

To offset the cost of the endowment tax, which will begin on July 1, 2026, schools and divisions across Yale will have to reduce their budget targets for fiscal year 2027, which begins the same day that the endowment tax hike kicks in. Those reductions will take place over a threeyear period to offset the burdens of the tax, according to the email, which was addressed to “Faculty and Staff Colleagues.”

The University previously confirmed that its endowment spending rate will remain constant, at 5.25 percent per year, despite the tax hike.

“This tax will significantly increase our expenses, and we must now identify ways to decrease costs in other parts of our budget,” the Tuesday email from Provost Scott Strobel, Senior Vice President for Operations Jack Callahan Jr. and Chief Financial Officer Stephen Murphy reads.

4

Yale donor said to aid Harvard-Trump talks

BY JERRY GAO STAFF REPORTER

Stephen Schwarzman ’69, the chairman and chief executive officer of the investment firm Blackstone and a prominent Yale donor, has spoken with President Donald Trump in recent days to facilitate Harvard’s negotiations with the government, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

The News could not verify Schwarzman’s mediation role in talks between Harvard and the Trump administration, which the Times attributed to three anonymous sources.

But the revelation means that Schwarzman — who in 2015 donated $150 million, the second-largest donation in the University’s history, to establish the Schwarzman Center — has personally discussed higher education policy with Trump amid his administration’s crackdown on universities, which has so far spared Yale from direct funding threats.

When asked whether Schwarzman has participated in Yale’s approach to the Trump administration, a University spokesperson declined to give specific details on the extent of the donor’s potential involvement with Yale’s government relations.

“It is not our practice at Yale to comment on the activities or governance of other universities,” Tina Posterli, a University spokesperson, wrote to the News on Wednesday, in response to a question about Schwarzman’s reported involvement with Harvard’s negotiations.

Posterli wrote that Schwarzman is an “active alumnus” who visits Yale’s campus regularly. She wrote that Schwarzman is one of “hundreds of alumni” whom University President Maurie McInnis has met with in the past year.

Matthew Anderson, a Blackstone spokesperson, declined

This Day in Yale History, 1956

October 3, 1956 / New Haven May Play Host To Eisenhower-Nixon Team

By J. Steven Renkert

President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vice President Richard M. Nixon may visit New Haven in the near future, according to unofficial sources in Hartford, where Republicans from all over the state rallied to hear Mr. Nixon spoke yesterday. Throughout the morning informed sources expressed the opinion that the stepped up Republican campaign might bring both the president and the vice president to Connecticut and New Haven.

ACROSS

1. Site of the Large Hadron Collider

5. Jewish month prior to the High Holidays

9. Mecca resident 14. Water buffalo 15. Actress Loughlin 16. Benefit 17. American experimentalists

20. To be, in Mexico

21. Understands 22. Plank’s curve

23. Actress Long 25. Above 28. Small business

34. In the past 35. Enthusiastic

36. Code often used in the military

39. Curtain in Europe?

41. Twangy

44. South African settler

45. Blood-sucker

47. Lake or Canal?

49. Hostile card game?

50. Type of offspring

54. Drink option in Mexico?

55. Harry and Hermione’s best friend

56. Plant part

59. Implores

62. Entitled, perhaps

66. Massive ‘80s hit in “Thor: Love and Thunder”

70. Type of walkway

71. Shade of blue

72. Miscellaneous things, with 64 across 73. Climber’s tool

74. Developer of Sonic the Hedgehog

75. Classic strategy board game

DOWN

1. Coffee place

2. Grandson of Adam and Eve

3. Utter defeat

4. “Hey Jude” refrain

5. Yale student?

6. Desire 7. Desire 8. Raise 9. College admissions test

10. Fire remnant 11. Takes advantage of 12. Bruce or Laura 13. ____-bitsy 18. Bar option?

19. European vipers

24. Yemen’s capital

26. Unit of resistance

27. Total rookie, to a gamer 28. Letters

29. Shrek, for one 30. Acted like a cow

31. Pod component?

32. Beginning 33. Stalk, like an animal

37. Close tightly

38. Makes a mistake

40. College sports governing body

42. “___ you sure?”

43. Line to Penn Sta.

46. Embrace

48. _____-Lodge

51. Salsa alternative, briefly

52. Yard markers

53. Enchant

56. Right away, in slang

57. Setting for Normandy

58. Tree house?

60. Quadrilateral that could be a diamond

61. Hit hard

63. Type of skirt

64. Miscellaneous things, with 72 across

65. Writer’s space

67. Chess rating

68. End of many a seeker’s count 69. Genetic code

Corrections

• An article on Sept. 26 about a rally for Yale’s unions misidentified the organizers of the gathering. The unions themselves, not union advocacy group New Haven Rising, organized the gathering. The article also misstated the position of Norah Laughter ’26 in Students Unite Now. Laughter is an organizer for the group, not its head.

• An article on Sept. 26 about a protest against censorship misstated the name of New Haven’s Nexstar Media Group station. It is WTNH News 8, not WTNH 8 News.

• An article on Sept. 26 about the University-wide hiring freeze being scheduled to end mischaracterized a remark byYale College Dean Pericles Lewis. Lewis said the hiring pause was on track to end on Sept. 30, and he expected his office would be able to resume hiring on Oct. 1. He did not confirm that the pause would definitely end on that timeline.

GUEST COLUMNIST

PENELOPE DAY

Our freedom of speech is next

It has been a tumultuous few weeks for free speech in America.

Two weeks ago, ABC News suspended popular late-night talk show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in response to pressure from the Federal Communications Commission — FCC — over comments Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk’s murder during his Sept. 15 show. President Donald Trump encouraged the FCC’s actions, asserting his belief that broadcasters should lose their licenses over hosts’ criticisms of him and his administration. But after facing bipartisan backlash from politicians and the public alike, ABC retracted Kimmel’s suspension last Monday.

While “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” may live to see its next show, the significance of this week’s events should not be minimized. Whether or not you agreed with Kimmel’s original statements, it is undeniable that the Trump administration’s recent pressure on national media corporations threatens the sanctity of the First Amendment. And as students at a university that receives almost $900 million in federal funding annually, our freedom of speech is equally in peril.

This conversation is not new. Since Columbia University reached an agreement with the federal government in July, surrendering some of its autonomy over curriculum, admissions, hiring and regulating student protest, many Yalies, myself included, have feared that we would be the next target of the Trump administration’s ultimatums. But when news of Kimmel’s suspension reached campus last week, I heard classmates speaking in agreement with ABC’s initial decision.

Here’s the blunt truth: If we endorse the censorship of one American, we enable our own censorship. Anything other than unequivocal support for our freedom of speech makes it more likely that those in the halls of power could strip it away.

Just as the FCC had the power to threaten ABC’s broadcasting license over Jimmy Kimmel’s content, the current administration has demonstrated its ability to jeopardize a university’s federal funding over student speech. At Columbia, student protesters have been targeted. I personally fear that the administration could go even further, threatening to withhold university funding or even accreditation over the free press of student publications. This may not be happening right now, but kneeling to political censorship has historically been a slippery slope.

The FCC’s sway on national broadcasting corporations is just the latest example of federal efforts to push the boundaries of the First Amendment. Such instances have been numerous throughout American history, dating back to

the implementation of the Sedition Act of 1798, an instrument of press censorship against those who publicly criticized the Federalistcontrolled government at the time. Under the Sedition Act, Americans were arrested and fined for dissenting in the press. In 1918, the Sedition Act was revived as an extension of the Espionage Act of 1917, the two laws criminalizing any public dissent of the US government and its activity during World War I. Though this new Sedition Act was repealed in 1920, The Cold War would later bring forth renewed federal overreach under the legislative efforts of Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy and his supporters in Congress conducted invasive investigations of Hollywood writers, as well as censored and burned communist “Red Books” which had been originally donated to US troops as educational examples of diversity in political thought.

In today’s history classes, we are rightfully taught to view these acts as unconstitutional and prejudiced. But the administration’s recent actions carry echoes of them.

This week, Trump also filed a joint lawsuit against the New York Times and Penguin Random House, accusing their publications of defamation during his 2024 campaign. This suit follows one filed against the Wall Street Journal in July over its publication of a letter that confirmed Trump’s friendship with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Wall Street Journal has since filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, holding that the letter published is real. Trump’s attempts to silence both the Times and the Journal, as well as CBS News and Paramount in another settlement this year, reflect the level of government censorship that plagued the United States under the Sedition Acts.

If the nation’s preeminent journalists cannot publish and speak the truth for fear of being sued by the President, freedom of the press can’t live on. If these publications lose their voices, it is only a matter of time before our free speech as students and citizens is next. Moreover, if our generation fails to use our voices in the face of this censorship, we inch dangerously close to enabling a repeat of history.

Protecting free speech is an action. Across the aisle, we have the collective responsibility to denounce government censorship. If we fail to do so, we put our nation’s founding principles at risk, and compromise our own rights to freely debate, exchange ideas and critically develop our voices.

PENELOPE DAY is a sophomore in Pierson College studying Political Science. She can be reached at penelope.day@yale.edu.

GUEST COLUMNIST

FATIMA EL-TAYEB

No institutional neutrality under fascism

There has been much debate about the possibility of institutional neutrality, the duty of universities to take a stand, or not, on issues that deeply affect us. Yale recently had its own version with the administration opting for a limited “institutional voice.” The debate envisions universities as respected institutions whose important role in democratic societies is not in question. This is not the world we currently find ourselves in.

Fascist regimes from Mussolini to Modi follow a simple playbook: they attack and destabilize the judiciary, the media and the educational system, three of the core pillars of society. They claim to be above the law, arrest judges, ignore and then abolish laws meant to protect democracy. They intimidate, censor and shut down news outlets. They demonize teachers and student activists, paint universities as hotbeds of leftist culture wars and gain control over curricula.

The result is called, in German, “Gleichschaltung,” meaning there is no space left where one could legally and safely criticize the government. But before Gleichschaltung comes anticipatory obedience. Whether the motive is opportunism or the hope to protect many by sacrificing a few, the result, invariably, is the erosion of democracy.

A good part of the world is moving rapidly in this direction, the U.S. included. It is high time to turn the tide.

As a historian of modern Europe, I know that appeasement has never stopped fascism. Fascists have no interest in meeting in the middle. Every concession made moves them closer to power.

Yet appeasement is the overwhelming response chosen by both the mainstream media and university administrations. It has not slowed down anything but the collapse of the values we are supposedly committed to.

Columbia’s decision to cave to blackmail — by agreeing, among other things, to hand over to the government

information about disciplinary actions against student visa holders — did not end attacks on academic freedom. Instead, it paved the way for the University of California, Berkeley, to voluntarily hand over names of students, faculty and staff accused of Title VI violations before any inquiry has taken place. The University of Pennsylvania’s choice to exchange withheld funding for the protection of transgender students likely made it easier for Yale New Haven Hospital to quietly end gender-affirming care for people younger than nineteen. University administrations are wrong in thinking that making “reasonable” concessions to a movement that is not reasonable will slow down its radicalization. What we see instead is the opposite: the willingness to concede to unreasonable demands lowers the bar for what is considered acceptable. There is no neutrality in this situation. Academics self-critically admitting to a lack of “viewpoint diversity” are not helping to save themselves or their institutions; they are helping to destroy them. Racism, censorship and antiscience bias are not viewpoints; they are key ingredients of fascism. Most authoritarian regimes want their populace fearful and quiet. Fascism wants it fearful and angry. As a fundamentally modern movement, fascists use mass media to provoke mass anger that then can be turned into mass action. You could call them the original rage-baiters. The targets for this rage invariably are already marginalized groups within society — Jews, Muslims, transgender people, immigrants. They are framed as mortal threats to the very survival of the nation. They are accused of having disproportionate influence over the media, the law and education.

When DEI is considered racist identity politics but white supremacy is not, we have conceded territory to the extreme right that we should be defending with everything we have. The more fascist moves are rationalized by their opponents as “playing politics the right way,” the

GUEST COLUMNIST

LEVIN LI

more the limits of what is possible are pushed towards violence. Speaking out is becoming more costly by the day and there are many reasons to remain silent. But we should not kid ourselves that this silence equals neutrality. I was born and raised in Germany. I’ve never forgotten something I read as a high school student: as soon as the Nazis gained power in January 1933, many schools started to expel Jewish students. There was no mandate yet to do so, but it was in keeping with the spirit of the times. It was being on the safe side.

This kind of anticipatory obedience was made possible by those who chose to remain silent, to let it happen while reassuring one another and the public that it surely wouldn’t get worse, that the new system would collapse by itself, that the best one could do was to keep one’s head down and stay quiet. With the luxury of hindsight, we should know that it is not the new moral order that is destroyed by this strategy; it is our own.

There are small but hopeful signs of a turning tide, from Harvard to the University of California.

Yale should add its weight to this effort. Defending our right to speak truth to power without fear of persecution should be the common ground we stand on — as it was 55 years ago when Yale found itself at the center of an equally tense political moment — the New Haven Black Panther trials. Rather than staying quiet, then president Kingman Brewster chose to affirm Yale’s responsibility to its students, the larger community and society as whole. “On the fundamental matter of the fact and feeling of justice in our own community,” Brewster wrote,“Yale cannot be neutral.” This institution has a voice and needs to use it.

FATIMA EL-TAYEB is a professor of Ethnicity, Race and Migration and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies . She can be reached at fatima.el-tayeb@yale.edu.

Yale should follow Wharton’s lead on club recruitment

Over the summer, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School implemented significant updates to its guidelines for the recruitment processes of university-affiliated clubs. This follows years of student complaints about the process being stressful, unfair and discouraging. Notably, multi-stage application processes and other “activities that create barriers to access or impose undue stress” were banned.

As a first-year student here at Yale, I was also caught off guard when club applications quickly filled up my schedule in the first month. I hear similar complaints echoing through Old Campus on a daily basis, as the process has been stressful for many involved. The fact is, many clubs’ application processes are more tedious than they need to be. Competitiveness alone does not justify their tedium, and it’s time for Yale to step in and set limits.

Some examples of tedious application processes included those for Yale Alternative Investments — YAI — the Yale Undergraduate Consulting Group — YUCG — and several other organizations, including some clubs that had smaller applicant pools. YUCG, for example, asks for one 250-word essay, two 150-word essays and an 800-word case — an application longer than Yale’s own admissions supplement — for the first round of its recruitment. Then, applicants must present another case in the second round and participate in an interview for technical and behavioral assessments. Some other clubs, including YAI and Yale Student Investment Group, have up to four rounds of applications in total.

That is not to say that clubs couldn’t or shouldn’t be selective. At the end of the day, most of these issues boil down to high demand and limited spots. Given the volume of applications some clubs receive, selectivity may be a necessity due to

limited resources or to maintain their culture and identity. The need to manage application volume is often cited as the reason club application processes are stressful and tedious here at Yale, but having a long and tedious application process is not the only way to achieve selection.

Another common argument for difficult and time-consuming applications, aside from the fact that they provide recruiters with more information, is the inherent ability of a tedious application process to select candidates based on interest. The idea is that making the club application a significant commitment can help the clubs weed out the undetermined “throw-in-the-hat” applicants so that only the most interested and enthusiastic people will apply.

While selecting for interest is reasonable, using time as a constraining factor, especially when the majority of applicants, first years, are adapting to college, may not be the healthiest way to achieve that goal. A high-commitment application also doesn’t necessarily select for interest, as anxiety, stress and a desire to fit in can compel many firstyear students to overextend themselves on these applications without a significant interest in many of the clubs they are applying to. Furthermore, the assumption that a longer application equals a more informative one is also flawed, as tedium does not necessarily yield better results.

A club’s recruitment process should better reflect what the club is selecting for. Whether or not clubs should be selecting based on professional experience is a separate debate, but if a club indeed chooses to select based on professional knowledge and experience, then that should be made clear in their application; if they are not, then perhaps a long or multi-round process designed to do so is tedious and unnecessary. Clubs are fundamentally different from companies, as while the need to maximize profit is the primary

emphasis for companies and, to some extent, a necessity, clubs do not share the same concern. As a result, social and educational goals are more important in clubs than in companies, and their selection processes should therefore better reflect these values rather than simply mimicking corporate hiring practices.

More sustainable alternatives that are better suited for clubs exist. For instance, if a club wants to select members based on interest, a system evaluating participation or contribution could be a healthier approach. One such example is the “heeling” process at the News, where a prospective writer is invited to join as a staff writer if their contributions during that semester meet the requirements.

Questions about whether clubs should be competitive are subjects of another article. Needless to say, the excessive workload caused by many demanding applications is a real concern, and it brings significant stress to first-year students without convincing arguments for its necessity. Selectivity often prompts students to apply to numerous clubs in fear of rejection, and if club selectivity is non-negotiable, then something should be done about the workload the applications impose. Yale should limit the length of written applications and the number of rounds allowed in club applications. This does not necessarily impede the clubs’ ability to select their members, but simply demands that the clubs be more efficient and creative with their processes. A regulatory intervention similar to Wharton’s will likely not make clubs any less selective, but it will push the student clubs that want to remain selective to redesign a more efficient recruitment process with less unnecessary stress or corporate-style hurdles for applicants.

LEVIN LI is a first-year in Pierson College. Hecanbereachedatlevin.li@yale.edu.

FROM THE FRONT

Tax hike will not stunt financial aid, administrators say

“What is at stake is Yale’s ability to offer financial aid,” she continued, explaining that the endowment enables the University to provide $564 million in financial aid for students across all of Yale’s schools.

Ultimately, President Donald Trump signed a tax-and-spending bill into law on July 4 that will place an 8 percent tax on Yale’s endowment investment returns, after senators suggested reduced tax rates in a proposal they eventually passed. The tax, which will begin on July 1, 2026,

is set to cost Yale approximately $300 million per year, University administrators estimated. But University leaders now say the increased tax will not impact Yale’s ability to provide financial aid. In an interview with the News on Sept. 19, McInnis said that she was not worried about

reductions to financial aid due to the new endowment tax rate.

“If I ever implied in any of my messages that I was worried about financial aid, I was not,” McInnis said. “It is the thing that the public can understand. When we say we spend the proceeds or the earnings from our endowment on financial aid, that is a purpose they understand.”

In an email to the News, McInnis clarified that once the proposal was signed into law, she spoke about financial aid for the purpose of explaining how the endowment is used. In fiscal year 2024, 18 percent of Yale’s endowment income was allocated toward financial aid, according to a University webpage.

“Increasing affordability to a college education is something that many of us care deeply about, but I am not worried about our ability to meet our commitment to financial aid,” she wrote.

“Part of the reason we talk about the impact on financial aid is that taxation policies could also limit what we could do in the future if we wanted to increase financial aid to cover additional students.”

Riley Getchell ’27, a student

who went to Washington in June with a group of peers to rally against the proposed endowment tax hike, felt that McInnis’ messaging from the summer implied that her financial aid would be at stake.

In a recent interview with the News, Getchell explained that she felt “more secure” after the Senate reduced the proposed endowment tax rate from 21 to 8 percent and “figured that any cuts to financial aid would be lessened.” However, she did not receive any communication from the University about her financial aid after the rate was lowered.

“Yale’s financial aid policies and methodology are given close examination every year by university leaders,” Quinlan wrote to the News. “This year is no different and, of course, the impact of the endowment tax on the university budget is being closely considered in these conversations.”

More than half of Yale College students receive financial aid, according to a University webpage.

Contact FABEHA JAHRA at fabeha.jahra@yale.edu .

Annual report suggests crime decreased at Yale in 2024

than Title IX office reports of sexual assault because the Title IX office’s “report uses a more expansive definition of sexual assault and misconduct and includes cases from a wider geographic jurisdiction.”

A similar footnote was included alongside the 2023 data.

In 2024, there was a decrease in recorded domestic violence reports.

In 2024, Public Safety reported four instances of domestic violence, a decrease from 19 recorded instances of domestic violence in 2023.

In 2024, Public Safety also recorded 19 reports of fondling, four reports of domestic violence, 22 reports of dating violence and 55 reports of stalking.

Hazing added to list for 2025

In December 2024, Former President Biden signed the Stop Campus Hazing Act into law.

In compliance with that act, Yale will have to report instances of hazing on campus starting in 2025.

“Yale Public Safety, Campus Security Authorities and other

stakeholders across the university have been sensitized to the hazing requirements and reporting as it relates to the Clery Act,” the report says. Hazing “includes activities that endanger physical or mental health, or that intimidate, denigrate, or humiliate,” Burgwell J. Howard, dean of student engagement, reminded Yale College students in a Sept. 24 email. The bill, passed Dec. 23, 2024, defines hazing to mean “any intentional, knowing, or reckless act committed by a person” in the course of an initiation into a student organization that “creates a risk, above the reasonable risk encountered in the course of participation in the IHE or the organization, of physical or psychological injury.” IHE refers to the institution of higher education.

The Clery Act was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush ’48 in 1990.

Contact ADELE HAEG at adele.haeg@yale.edu

Over the summer, Yale implemented a 90-day hiring pause, reduced non-salary expenses by 5 percent, delayed several construction projects and decreased the pool of staff eligible for salary increases in anticipation of a provision in Republicans’ tax-and-spending bill that would increase the tax on Yale’s endowment investment returns from 1.4 to 8 percent.

The reduction in non-salary expenses and pool of staff eligible for salary increases resulted in Yale saving $85 million, the Tues-

day email said. Given the success of those cost-saving measures, the administrators wrote that Yale will not revise its budget for the rest of the academic year and that hiring will resume on Wednesday, ending the three-month pause.

“We will utilize the university’s recent surplus and reserves that units and programs have set aside to cover short-term deficits; however, reductions will still be necessary,” the email said. “We must avoid delaying hard decisions and directly address this challenge as quickly as possible.”

Murphy did not immediately respond to emailed questions about

what the reduced budget targets for the next fiscal years will look like.

University announces retirement incentives

Though divisions across the University will be reducing expenses, the University will also offer a “onetime” retirement incentive program for managerial and professional staff to further tighten the budget, the email announced. The retirement program will provide a healthcare subsidy, as well as two weeks of pay for every year an employee has worked for Yale, for a maximum of 40 weeks total, the email says. Staff who are at least 55

years old and whose sum of age and time spent working at Yale is at least 75 years or staff who are at least 65 years old and have worked for Yale for at least five years by the end of April 2026 will be eligible for the program.

According to a 2021 letter from Strobel to the News’ editors, managerial and professional staff include “residential college deans, lead administrators, nurses, clinical practice managers, research associates, dining hall managers, librarians, human resource generalists and mental health counselors.”

Strobel’s letter, written in response to an article that highlighted the rapid expansion of that group of employees, emphasized that managerial and professional staff have important roles on campus — roles that were particularly vital during the COVID19 pandemic.

According to the University’s compensation structure, salaries for full-time managerial and professional staff range from $52,000, the minimum earnings for a position on the lowest salary grade, to $380,000, the maximum earnings on the highest grade.

The retirement incentive program offers compensation in the form of a taxable lump-sum payment.

Eligible employees will receive an email from the University next week, and staff who volunteer for this program must retire between February and April of 2026, the Tuesday email states. They must opt into the incentive program between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31 of this year, per a new website on the program linked to the email.

McInnis addresses faculty and staff

Less than three hours before the email was sent, Strobel and University President Maurie McInnis hosted a 3 p.m. livestream for faculty and staff to address these financial updates, according to a reminder email for the event obtained by the News. Jing Yan, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology who attended the livestream, wrote in an email to the News that McInnis and Strobel also answered presubmitted questions from faculty.

In answering one question, McInnis discussed her role highlighting Yale’s contributions to the world and New Haven to people in Washington D.C., including Yale alumni, according to Yan.

“I can but say that the arbitrary and capricious increase in the tax on the university endowment is having a devastating effect that the administration is trying to deal with,” John Wettlaufer, a physics professor who attended the livestream, wrote in an email to the News.

Yale’s 2026 fiscal year runs from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026.

Contact JAEHA JANG at jaeha.jang@yale.edu , OLIVIA WOO at olivia.woo@yale.edu , and ISOBEL MCCLURE at isobel.mcclure@yale.edu

FROM THE FRONT

Yale donor aiding Trump-Harvard talks, Times reports

to comment on Schwarzman’s behalf.

Unlike Harvard and all but one other Ivy League institution, Yale has been spared from targeted federal funding cuts.

Harvard sued the Trump administration in April in response to Trump’s extensive list of demands for the university to regain access to federal funding. The Trump administration has attempted to freeze billions of dollars in federal research funding to Harvard and launched a series of investigations into the university, citing antisemitism on campus and other issues.

In June, Yale and 23 other universities jointly filed a brief in support of Harvard’s case against the government.

On Sept. 3, a federal judge ruled in Harvard’s favor, ordering the administration to unfreeze the related funding.

The Trump administration has vowed to appeal the ruling, and later initiated a process that

would cut off Harvard’s future federal funding.

Trump said Tuesday that the White House was closing in on a $500 million deal with Harvard in which the university would agree to use the money to fund trade schools.

“We’re in the process of getting very close. Linda’s finishing up the final details, and they’d be paying about $500 million,”

Trump told a group of reporters on Tuesday, referring to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.

The Times reported that Schwarzman aided in the negotiations by speaking with Trump over the weekend and on Tuesday.

Since beginning his second term, the Trump administration has attacked various aspects of universities, including increasing endowment taxation, investigating more than 50 universities for civil rights violations and freezing federal funding.

In April, Trump’s task force on antisemitism wrote in a statement that it was “cautiously encouraged” by Yale’s

response to a burst of pro-Palestinian protests — which included referring some protesters to the Executive Committee, or ExComm, and revoking the club status of Yalies4Palestine.

Yale has significantly increased its lobbying efforts in Washington during the second Trump administration. It spent $320,000 in the second quarter of 2025, nearly double its spending in the second quarter of 2024.

Schwarzman’s connection with Trump has long been a subject of discussion at Yale. Schwarzman chaired Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum, a business council, at the beginning of Trump’s first term in 2017. Schwarzman endorsed Trump in 2020 and 2024.

In 2015, Schwarzman donated $150 million to Yale, an amount that made it the second largest donation in the University’s history after a $250 million donation in 2013 by Charles Johnson ’54 to fund the construction of two new residential colleges.

The donation and subse -

quent renaming of Commons and Memorial Hall in 2015 were controversial among students and alumni, with some applauding the upcoming improvements while others criticizing Blackstone’s alleged exploitation of the real estate foreclosures.

Jim Sleeper ’69, once a political science lecturer at Yale, was in the same class in Davenport College as Schwarzman. Sleeper told the News that he felt the renaming of Commons in Schwarzman’s name signaled the donor’s style of “self-exculpating philanthropy.”

“While I have no proof that he persuaded Trump to hold off on Yale, one can imagine the scenario,” Sleeper said in a phone interview Wednesday. “He would have told Trump, ‘Go light on Yale because I have a stake there, and you respect me.’

It’s the art of the deal.”

The Schwarzman Center opened in 2021, with a renovated Commons dining hall, the Bow Wow, a theater and a dance studio in The Underground, and

a satellite location for the Good Life Center.

Schwarzman, who attended Yale College, is also an alumnus of Harvard Business School, where he earned an MBA in 1972. He is a prominent donor to several universities. In 2013, he donated $100 million to Beijing’s Tsinghua University to establish Schwarzman Scholars, a scholarship program, and the construction of Schwarzman College on campus. Since his $150 million gift to Yale, Schwarzman has made a $350 million gift to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018 to establish the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, as well as a £150 million gift to the University of Oxford in 2019 to establish the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities.

Schwarzman donated $5 million to Harvard Business School in 2018.

Contact JERRY GAO at jerry.gao@yale.edu and

Private student testimonials part of McInnis’ push in D.C.

would be subjected to a 21 percent rate, an increase from the flat rate of 1.4 percent. The legislation signed into law on July 4 raised Yale’s endowment investment income tax to 8 percent.

Danelski provided a statement on the same day that he was emailed by Saybrook Head of College Thomas Near and Dean Adam Haliburton. He told the News he was thanked for his contribution and was excited to support the University.

“I haven’t heard anything else,” Danelski said in an interview on July 10. “I’m also kind of confused as to the whole situation, because

I never got any closure after the fact.” He suggested that administrators may have been trying to “keep things a little bit quieter.” He confirmed in a text on Thursday that he has not received any further information regarding the comments that he provided and whether the statement was conducive to lobbying efforts.

McInnis said in an interview on Sept. 19 that she visited Washington monthly over the course of the spring semester, for approximately two days at a time. She told the News she has tried to meet with lawmakers on committees that deal with issues pertinent to higher edu -

cation and confirmed that students were asked by administrators to provide statements to be shared with lawmakers.

“You really want to help lawmakers see the ways in which universities, even though they might be 2000 miles away, are actually making a difference for residents in that state as well,” McInnis said.

She said she was unaware how particular students were chosen to be contacted.

“Maybe it made a difference that all of us were there talking with lawmakers,” McInnis said, “that they realized that a 21 percent reduction, or a 21 percent tax — maybe they understood that that would have put a lot of things at risk, and therefore maybe that’s why they ended up at 8 percent. Who knows?”

The same day Danelski was contacted, Missouri resident Yogev Angelovici ’27 received a message signed by his own residential college head and dean. Their email explained that McInnis planned to highlight student perspectives with “one or more” Missouri representatives in Washington early the following week.

The emails to Danelski and Angelovici, both reviewed by the News, contained parallel phrasing, including identical statements regarding McInnis’ focus on financial aid and advocating against an “exorbitant” tax on endowment returns. They each mentioned that if the student received financial aid, the information would be “good to note” in their message.

During her conversations with lawmakers, McInnis said, she would convey information

including the number of students from their district and the amount of financial aid that they may be receiving.

The day that the earlier version of the bill passed in the House, McInnis urged Yale community members in a University-wide email to contact their senators and advocate against the 21 percent rate. She noted her own work, as well as that of other university presidents, in promoting to elected officials the universities’ contributions to society.

“What is at stake is Yale’s ability to offer financial aid,” McInnis’ wrote on May 22, noting that the University provides $564 million in financial aid for “students across all schools” through Yale’s endowment.

In June, Yale students — with financial support and coaching from the University — spoke at a Capitol Hill press conference against Trump’s tax bill. Student speakers bolstered arguments that the tax could endanger Yale’s ability to offer financial aid through personal anecdotes.

Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid

Jeremiah Quinlan recently told the News that current financial aid packages for undergraduates have not been impacted by the elevated endowment tax.

The email came during the second quarter of 2025, within which the University would spend $320,000 on its federal lobbying efforts, then exceeding $500,000 in spending since Jan. 1.

Haliburton, Saybrook’s dean and a signatory of the email to Danelski, wrote in an email to

the News that he has experience supporting Yale’s lobbying efforts in the past.

“Lawmakers’ authority and scope to issue laws is broad and deep,” Haliburton wrote in an email to the News. “The goal of the conscientious lobbyist is simple: to try to ensure that, with respect to how lawmakers’ actions will affect people, institutions and society, their knowledge is as broad and deep as their authority—that is what I learned in that job.”

Near, Saybrook’s head of college, did not respond to requests for comment about his role in the lobbying effort.

Jacob, Yale’s longtime lobbyist, wrote in a statement to the News on Sept. 24 that the University was “exploring new ways of describing the positive impact that Yale has across the country and the world as well as in our home city and state.”

He said personal narratives “go well beyond” messaging reliant on statistics alone.

“We hope to do more to document the ways in which faculty and students are engaged in communities across the country and globe through their research. Developing these stories will remain a priority for the coming year,” he wrote.

The endowment tax hike, which has already prompted budgetary changes at Yale, is scheduled to go into effect on July 1.

ISOBEL MCCLURE at isobel.mcclure@yale.edu and ASHER BOISKIN at asher.boiskin@yale.edu

“Children

aren’t responsible for their parents’ happiness, but they still try.”

African American Studies Department renamed to Black Studies

BY BRADY PAYNE CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

The Yale department that studies people of African descent in the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America has changed its name to the Black Studies Department, after 55 years of being called the African American Studies Department.

Three professors in the department told the News that the change was made to reflect a growing number of new professors whose regions of study extend beyond the United States.

“We study the lives and histories and movements and creative expressions of Black people around the world wherever they are, not just in North America and not even just in the Americas,” department chair Erica Edwards said.

According to Edwards, the change emerged naturally through a yearslong process of evaluating the goals and direction of the department. This evaluation started in the 2022-23 academic year under the leadership of thenchair Phillip Atiba Solomon, formerly known as Phillip Atiba Goff.

Elleza Kelley, the director of undergraduate studies, wrote that the department changed its name

to reflect a “commitment to the study of black life, history, and culture beyond the continental United States.”

She added that the department in recent years has “welcomed incredible new faculty members who work on Brazil and the Caribbean.”

The department welcomed Marlene Daut in 2022 and Kaiama Glover in 2023, both of whom teach courses cross-listed in the French department. Both have published books on Haiti. Nana Adusei-Poku, who studies artistic productions from the Black diaspora, joined in 2023, as well. Christen Smith, who studies anti-Black state violence in Brazil, also joined the department in 2024.

Glover said that though she “would have argued, and did argue, when the name was African American Studies, that the label could be applied to the Americas writ large,” the old name conjured in people’s imaginations something “fairly U.S.-centric.”

Glover further said that she has heard from students “good things so far, maybe with some weariness,” which she attributed to students’ wondering whether the new name is “concretizing something that’s already in process, and that’s commitment, or is the name an aspiration.”

Similar changes have occurred at Northwestern and Georgetown, schools which also renamed their African American studies departments to Black studies. Edwards said that the name more broadly “reflects where we are as a field.”

This name calls back to the history of Black studies at Yale. In 1968, the Black Student Alliance at Yale hosted a symposium titled “Black Studies in the University.”

Following the conference, students and faculty petitioned for a major in Afro-American studies.

In the preface to the book “Black studies in the university; a symposium,” a compilation of what happened at the conference, scholar Armstead L. Robinson ’69 recognized “significant omissions; for instance, little attention is paid to the Caribbean or to Latin America.” Edwards said that the department would be “convening a panel to commemorate that symposium on Oct. 27.”

Though the department name has officially changed, the Black Studies Department’s course code is still “AFAM.”

Contact BRADY PAYNE at brady.payne@yale.edu.

Faculty group hosts panel on possible Trump intervention

BY JAEHA JANG STAFF REPORTER

Faculty leaders from three universities that have settled or are negotiating with the Trump administration spoke to Yale professors Monday at an event hosted by Yale’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

The panelists –– which included leaders of AAUP chapters at Brown, Columbia and Harvard –– stressed the importance of faculty organizing in the face of the federal government’s attempts to influence universities. The three represented schools have each faced scrutiny from the Trump administration, which threatened to restrict their federal grants. Brown and Columbia have since brokered agreements with the administration, making school policy concessions in exchange for the restoration of funding.

The panelists spoke virtually to an audience of more than 70 professors across Zoom and in person.

“Our greatest success has not been with influencing university policy,” Michael Thaddeus, the acting president of Columbia’s AAUP chapter, said. “Our greatest successes have been in the court of pub-

lic opinion, where we’re all aligned about something and we’re able to stand together and speak together.”

According to Daniel HoSang, the president of Yale’s chapter of AAUP, while Yale hasn’t had a formal settlement with the federal government, yesterday’s panel provided “the benefit of thinking ahead about what could be on the horizon.”

He added that in a recent meeting with AAUP chapters across Connecticut, Sen. Chris Murphy asserted that Connecticut universities like Yale that have been spared from direct funding cuts so far may ultimately face serious threats from the federal government.

“The notion that unless there is some kind of settlement or unless funds are held up, the University and faculty are free and clear, is just erroneous on so many accounts,”

HoSang said.

Amy Kapczynski LAW ’03, a professor at Yale Law School who kicked off the panel, discussed the Trump administration’s general demands to universities and the differences between Brown and Columbia’s settlements. While Columbia’s settlement focused on campus discipline and oversight of certain academic areas, Brown’s settlement adopted the federal

government’s executive order on the definition of gender, Kapczynski said.

Thaddeus said that while Columbia has a long-held reputation as an “argumentative, contrarian place where everyone has a different opinion,” recent developments have highlighted the importance of faculty organization and forming coalitions with students, alumni, the press and local communities.

The panel also featured Veena Dubal, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the general counsel for the national AAUP, who emphasized that legal strategies against the federal government cannot be successful “in the absence of really robust organizing” among faculty.

Alessandro Gomez, a Yale professor of mechanical engineering and materials science who attended the event, said although Yale has not yet been “hit directly,” he thinks the event successfully prepared faculty for the potential negotiations between Yale and the federal government.

“I don’t think in the long term, maintaining a low profile would eventually bear fruit because sooner or later, they will pass certain restrictions or laws or certain

whatever it is that they will do, they will affect us, and we better be prepared by that point with faculty organization,” he said. Gomez said he would like to see hundreds of faculty attending these meetings. Monday’s panel came as Yale’s chapter of the AAUP shifts its priorities from receiving a pub -

lic statement from the University administration in defense of higher education to supporting and advising faculty with more specific initiatives.

The national AAUP was founded in 1915.

Contact JAEHA JANG at jaeha.jang@yale.edu.

Free coffee, tea turns from weekly to monthly at Law School

BY HENRY LIU STAFF REPORTER

After an unexplained hiatus, a Yale Law School tradition providing a boost of caffeine on Monday mornings is back — but diminished.

“Caffeinated Mondays” offered free coffee and tea to the Law School community from 8 a.m. to noon each Monday in the Ruttenberg Dining Hall.

“A free coffee may not seem like much, but once the cold snap hits the New Haven air and the never-ending churn of clinic work reaches its full swing, my Monday morning bulldog blend sparks joy and motivates me to continue on another day,” Hannah Terrapin LAW ’26 wrote to the News.

But at the start of the school year last month, Frederick Liu LAW ’27 said he went to the cafeteria one Monday and was told by an employee that it no longer had free coffee.

On Wednesday morning, Karen Alderman, the managing director of human resources and administration at the Law School, announced the beginning of “Monthly Morning Coffee and Tea” in an email to the Law School community that the News obtained. According to Alderman’s announcement, free coffee and tea will be available one Monday morning a month, starting this week. After Sept. 29, it will be offered on Oct. 6, Nov. 10 and Dec. 1 — four

mornings over the entire semester. In response to the announcement, law students expressed some relief. But Liu still cast the move as a loss compared to previous years.

“I still remember dragging myself into SLB 129 for my 8:10 a.m. Contracts class with Prof. Brooks and downing the glorious $0 ‘promissory espresso’ (my only defense against unconscionability),” Liu wrote to the News, referring to a course with Professor Richard Brooks in the Sterling Law Building.

“With that luxury downgraded, I’ll start accepting my Monday mornings ‘as is,’ with no implied warranty of wakefulness,” Liu added. “I’m still grateful to the school for keeping it once a month – it’s better than nothing given the current budget situation.”

Yale administrators have in recent months taken measures to reduce spending due to an increase in the federal tax on the school’s endowment returns.

Law School spokesperson Alden Ferro did not answer the News’ emailed question about whether the reduction of caffeinated Mondays from weekly to monthly was a symptom of budget cuts.

The Yale Law Dining Hall was renamed the Ruttenberg Dining Hall in 2016.

Contact HENRY LIU at henry.liu.hal52@yale.edu.

“Every time I say, ‘no’ my kid hears: ’ask again, she didn’t understand the question.”

SARAH COTTRELL INSTAGRAM INFLUENCER

At debate, mayoral candidates spar over immigration, crime

BY ELIJAH HUREWITZ-RAVITCH AND JOLYNDA WANG STAFF AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS

Mayor Justin Elicker and Republican mayoral challenger Steve Orosco squared off in a debate under the bright lights of the Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School’s Main Stage Theater on Tuesday evening.

As the crowd cheered and hissed, the candidates traded barbs while trying to stick to their respective messages.

The debate, the first of the campaign, was attended by about 180 people and organized by the New Haven Democracy Fund, a public campaign finance program established in 2007. Thomas Breen, the editor of the New Haven Independent, moderated. Local journalists and radio hosts Babz Rawls-Ivy, Norma Rodriguez-Reyes and Vinnie Penn also asked the candidates questions.

Elicker, a third-term Democratic incumbent, and Orosco, a businessman and former mixed martial arts fighter, diverged sharply on several issues including immigration, crime, homelessness and education.

Asked what New Haven should do in response to the federal crackdown on undocumented immigrants, Orosco said that federal law “always supersedes local law.”

“There’s not much you can do as a local municipality if ICE or ATF or FBI and DEA come into your city,” Orosco said, referring to various federal law enforcement agencies. “I truly believe that ICE should not be an issue.”

Elicker responded with indignation, citing the story of Esdrás Zabaleta-Ramirez, an 18-year-old Wilbur Cross High School student arrested by federal immigration agents in July and released in early September.

“We need to be a city that stands up for supporting people that

are productive members of our community.” Elicker said.

Addressing the recent spate of violent crimes, Elicker maintained that New Haven was “making progress” on public safety.

But Orosco accused Elicker of “defunding the police” and said that if elected, he would “fully fund the police at all costs.” He also pledged to require all police officers to get blue belts in Brazilian jiujitsu, which he said would improve deescalation tactics.

Elicker disputed the notion that he had defunded the police and pointed to recent increases in New Haven Police Department funding.

He framed struggles to address NHPD staffing shortages as a national challenge which “communities around the nation have been struggling with since the murder of George Floyd” in 2020.

Asked how he would respond if President Donald Trump sent the National Guard to New Haven, Elicker said the National Guard is “not needed nor welcome in New Haven.”

“At some point, yes, the National Guard could be needed if Mayor Elicker doesn’t fix this city,” Orosco said. Several audience members yelled “No!” at the stage.

The candidates were similarly split on their view of New Haven’s public schools.

“Everyone in this room knows that the New Haven public school system is failing our children,” Orosco said.

“Our kids can’t read, our kids can’t do math, so at some point we need to change the whole entire curriculum.”

The mayor automatically receives a seat on the Board of Education and appoints four of its voting members. Orosco said that if elected, he would relinquish his seat and move to make all seats of the body elected positions.

Elicker acknowledged the longstanding problems plaguing the city’s schools but discussed progress made during his five-year tenure: decreased rates of absenteeism,

improved student scores in math and reading, and increased funding for the Board of Education.

On combating homelessness, the mayor praised the city’s shelters but stressed that New Haven “can’t do it alone” and needs more support from surrounding towns.

In his response, Orosco criticized Elicker for “putting a Band-Aid” on the issue instead of addressing its causes. Orosco proposed building a professional narcotics task force to attack the fentanyl crisis.

“Until we clean the streets via police, which is what we need, homelessness isn’t going to change,” Orosco said.

Elicker fought back, asserting that “homelessness is not a choice.”

Each candidate accused the other of deflecting responsibility instead of solving problems.

Orosco said that his opponent “likes to blame and point fingers,” while Elicker criticized Orosco’s rhetoric.

“If you look at his Instagram posts, every single Instagram post is about blaming and pointing fingers and negativity, and that is not what we need in New Haven,” he said.

Elicker also attacked his challenger’s engagement in New Haven.

“I’ve gone to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of meetings, and I have seen Mr. Orosco once in over a decade of heavy involvement in the city,” Elicker said. “We need someone that doesn’t just run for office all the time. We need someone that does, and that’s what I am.”

Ultimately, the candidates presented starkly different visions of New Haven.

Orosco painted a picture of a community in decline.

“The city is falling apart,” he said. “Crime is through the roof. The streets aren’t safe. Our education is falling apart. We’re short in every single department.”

Elicker, meanwhile, touted his administration’s accomplishments. He doubled down on his vision of New Haven’s progressive values, which he said stand in contrast to those of the Trump administration.

“We are the most welcoming city in our nation, and we really pride ourselves in making sure that we welcome everyone, no matter what you look like, what your document status is, what your economic situation is,” Elicker said.

As the audience filed out of the theater, Elicker told the News that “debates are always a little stressful” and added, “I feel good.”

Orosco said in an interview that the debate “was just like a fight. Get the jitters — why am I doing this? But just like a fight, when the bell goes off, you kind of just autopilot.”

Joe Fekieta, who lives in the Hill, told the News that he plans to vote for Orosco but thought Elicker, as the sitting mayor, made for a formidable debate opponent because of the information and detail at his disposal.

Mariellen Chapdelaine, another Hill resident, supports the current mayor. She said that Orosco took “a lot of opportunities to put Elicker down. He couldn’t help but spit something negative every time he spoke, and that got on my nerves.”

New Haven’s mayoral general election will be held on Nov. 4.

Contact ELIJAH HUREWITZ-RAVITCH at elijah.hurewitz-ravitch@yale.edu and JOLYNDA WANG at jolynda.wang@yale.edu

Climate tech leaders energized despite federal cutbacks

BY KINNIA CHEUK STAFF REPORTER

Signatures from the founders of local climate startups pepper a wall at the office of ClimateHaven, the city’s Yale-backed incubator for green ventures. Ryan Dings, ClimateHaven’s president, stood opposite that wall Wednesday as he spoke to 20 people in the sustainability industry about how climate tech entrepreneurs can raise capital.

Freshly back from ClimateHaven’s first-ever event at Climate Week NYC, the second-largest climate gathering worldwide, Dings hoped to help Connecticut’s climate startups navigate decreasing market enthusiasm for green ventures.

President Donald Trump’s victory last November and his subsequent rollback of federal support for green technologies, including ending clean energy subsidies and slashing environmental research funds, have thrown the climate world into uncertainty.

Climate venture investment from April to June 2025 hit its lowest point since the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from Sightline Climate. Currently, ClimateHaven is adjusting to the loss of a $1 million federal grant from the Department of Energy, which was frozen earlier this year.

Despite the recent political and macroeconomic headwinds, the climate tech scene in New Haven has remained energized.

Since its founding in late 2023, ClimateHaven has helped more than 20 startups. In August, Yale announced the launch of the Planetary Solutions Impact Accelerator, which will provide six climate startups with $100,000 to $250,000 apiece in grant funding, Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe ’97 SOM ’02 said.

The News spoke with ClimateHaven leadership, local startup founders and industry experts about how the city’s burgeoning climate tech sector is navigating the downturn in climate venture funding and the loss of federal support.

ClimateHaven loses federal funding

Direct cuts to ClimateHaven’s budget may delay its services for the development of New Haven startups, Regina Sung ’25, an associate at ClimateHaven, said.

In December, ClimateHaven received a $1 million Department of Energy grant to provide business support to sustainable climate tech startups in the city.

ClimateHaven scheduled follow-up meetings with the Department of Energy at the start of 2025 to finalize grant documents, but the Department of Energy canceled those meetings without explanation, Sung said.

According to Sung, since losing the grant, ClimateHaven has downsized internally and cut down on networking events for entrepreneurs.

“We’ve been greatly affected.

That’s kind of undeniable,” Sung said. “That definitely took a toll on our programming and community aspect.”

With a smaller team, ClimateHaven has adopted stricter guidelines about whether to let a new startup join, Sung said.

The company hopes to maintain its support for the existing startups in its portfolio while still expanding, she added.

ClimateHaven is now looking for other loans, support from corporate partners and private philanthropy to fill the gap in federal funding, according to Sung.

The company fills a niche in New Haven’s burgeoning climate tech industry. Many startups launched through Yale Ventures, the University’s innovation hub, find mentorship and industry partners needed to scale their technologies through ClimateHaven, per Geballe.

“We’ve seen a lot of success with ClimateHaven, both in helping advance these early stage startups and keeping them local so they can stay close to Yale and benefit from those connections,” he said.

The climate tech slump In 2021, the climate venture capital market was flourishing amid low interest rates and the passage of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which provided billions of dollars of incentives for green technology.

“There was this perception that if you had some level of innovation, even minor, there was a plenty big market and enough momentum behind the climate movement to actually make a successful business,” Perry Bakas SOM ’24, the co-founder of Oxylus Energy, a methanol production startup under ClimateHaven, said.

But in the few years since then, climate entrepreneurs have struggled to raise capital, not only because of recent policy shifts in Washington, but also because of post-pandemic increases in interest rates that dampened market enthusiasm, Drew D’Alelio GRD ’22 SOM ’22, who runs the $100 million ClimateTech Fund under Connecticut Innovations, the state’s independent venture capital fund, said.

Climate tech startup funding slowed internationally in both 2023 and 2024, according to PwC analyses. In the first half of 2025, climate tech venture and growth investment worldwide dropped 19 percent compared to the same period last year, according to data from Sightline Climate.

Since July, the passage of Trump’s megabill has played a role in market uncertainty, Kevin Gallagher ’21, the founder of Decarb Energy Partners, a water treatment startup under ClimateHaven, said.

But Gallagher believes this market volatility does not involve actual binary risk or “company-killing problems.”

D’Alelio believes that climate startups are not in as bad a state as the industry expected after Trump’s election — but it’s still too early to tell for sure.

While the best startups are still raising money successfully, a lot of fledgling companies are getting pushed out of the industry because investors are seeking less risky investments. Having breakthrough technology is no longer enough to succeed in the venture capital sphere, Bakas said.

“The amount of money you can raise without deep commercial traction has shrunk quite a bit,” he said.

Many investors are doubling down on spending on the startups in their portfolio to keep them afloat amid political uncertainty, he added.

Marketing is key

In an era of polarizing buzzwords, local climate entrepreneurs said half the challenge is to market their product in the “right way.”

In 2025, discussions within ClimateHaven revolved around reframing the company’s and its startups’ work to align them with the current political context and access more funding sources, Sung said.

ClimateHaven reworked its tagline, removing buzzwords like “community-centered” that Sung said have acquired negative connota-

tions under the Trump administration. Currently, the tagline spotlights “energy and climate resilience.”

A March report by investment firm Carlyle found that energy security concerns drive decision-making around energy sources much more than environmental issues.

Instead of “decarbonize,” Oxylus Energy now uses “defossilize” in its grant applications, Bakas said.

“Pretty much every grant application you put out is being run through a filter because there are words that are now non grata in the granting world,” he said.

The applications also focus on strengthening America’s position in energy security, revitalizing “the economic heartland” and bringing back jobs that will be depleted in oil and gas sectors, Bakas said.

By emphasizing the universal dangers of PFAS, or forever chemicals, in wastewater, Decarb Energy Partners achieved bipartisan buy-in for their solution to the water technology issue, Gallagher said.

“It’s like crafting a narrative to make sure that folks know you’re doing it for the right reasons, and you’re aligned with what they want to happen and communicate to their constituency,” he said.

Since the start of 2025, ClimateHaven has scaled up programming for its entrepreneurs to learn how to craft desirable narratives and diversify their grant sources. In June, the company hosted a workshop with Scout Climate, an AI grant writing service, on navigating cuts in federal funding and tailoring grant applications to the current political context.

Practicality wins

Recent political and economic turbulence has sparked a more practical way of managing climate startups, according to D’Alelio, Dings, Bakas and Gallagher.

Investors are now more economically cautious due to the “unsustainable” hype around climate tech dying down in the past few years, D’Alelio said.

The challenge for ClimateHaven, Dings said, is to ensure that entrepreneurs are solving customers’ problems, building out market-based financial plans and not assuming that the moral imperative will drive purchasing decisions.

“That value proposition could be return on investment, it could be enhanced performance, it could be reducing risk,” Dings said. “But your

value proposition cannot be lowering carbon emissions.”

Many in New Haven’s climate tech industry find this emphasis on market-based solutions beneficial for startups in the long run, D’Alelio, Bakas and Gallagher said.

“We all have to recognize that low carbon products have to be based on market fundamentals and have to ultimately be sold to companies and to customers that are as interested in their own profit motive as they are in planetary health,” Bakas said.

To customers and investors, Bakas focuses on the inevitability of Oxylus’s technology taking over a trillion-dollar market. By converting recycled carbon dioxide waste into methanol, Oxylus Energy has a greener and cheaper method to make one of the largest commodity chemicals on Earth, he said.

Third-party analyses have shown that once Oxylus’s technology works at scale, it is going to beat biomethanol prices, regardless of electricity input, Bakas said.

Despite the federal government pulling back on sustainability, New Haven and Connecticut’s climate tech scene remains supported on multiple fronts by Yale Ventures, ClimateHaven and the state, Gallagher said, citing ClimateHaven’s 2024 partnership with the Regional Water Authority to build a water innovation hub.

With time, the city’s climate tech scene is looking to catch up to New Haven’s booming biotech industry.

“In the biotech community, here in New Haven, it probably took 20 to 30 years to get to where we are now,” Geballe said. “But we’ve had great success, and I’m very confident that we’ll see similar steady progress in the climate tech industry in New Haven as well.”

Existing physical infrastructure for biotech is also helping climate tech expand more quickly in New Haven, Geballe said.

ClimateHaven established a partnership with local lab BioLabs New Haven that would allow startups to access BioLabs laboratory spaces in 2024. Prototyping spaces are also available in ClimateHaven’s office, and the company collaborates with local nonprofit MakeHaven to refine prototypes.

ClimateHaven is located at 770 Chapel St.

Contact KINNIA CHEUK at kinnia.cheuk@yale.edu.

“So much is asked of parents, and so little is given.”

VIRGINIA SATIR, AMERICAN AUTHOR

Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Spunk’ to premiere Friday at the Yale Rep

BY KIVA BANK STAFF REPORTER

The Yale Repertory Theatre will open its season Friday with a performance of a little-known play recovered from a well-known writer’s manuscripts.

Originally a short story written by

Zora Neale Hurston — the American writer and anthropologist known for her novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” — “Spunk” is a three-act play that tells a story of romance, community and Black Christian spirituality.

The Yale Rep’s production of “Spunk” will be the first performance of Hurston’s play to a public audience, its website says. Hurston’s original “Spunk” is not to be confused with another play called “Spunk,” which is an adaptation composed by George C. Wolfe of three of Hurston’s other short stories.

The plot centers around the titular character Spunk, who is new to town – a Black community in the south — and Lina, who has a history, and a husband, there.

“The actual main narrative of ‘Spunk’ is one of love,” Nehemiah Luckett, the composer, arranger and music supervisor for the production, said. “It is one of a love that finds its way regardless of what the world around it thinks and the powers that try to stop it. I think that is something that regardless of age or race, that is a story that we all need to hear.”

Catherine Sheehy, the chair of dramaturgy and dramatic criticism at the School of Drama and and a dramaturg at the Yale Rep, explained that the short story “Spunk” won the second prize in an Opportunity magazine contest in 1925. Then, after Hurston conducted field research in Florida over the next decade, she wrote the story into a play but

changed the ending to better suit a live performance.

Hurston’s play was recovered from the Library of Congress archives, which was sent to Sheehy upon her request in 2001.

“I think they’re going to be surprised and satisfied,” Sheehy said of audiences who will see the production this weekend. “I think almost everybody who encounters it for the first time is surprised by the ending. But I think in a way that will still be delightful.”

Five preview performances open to the public are scheduled for the upcoming days, with the first scheduled for Friday evening. Opening night is set for Thursday, Oct. 9.

The conflict within the story involves the community’s reaction towards the love between Spunk and Lina.

“What’s the fallout of a great love story?” Sheehy asked. “Does it water the ground and everything grows? Does it water the ground and flood?”

Music also plays a central role in the production, with characters singing and playing instruments on stage. There are 28 distinct songs referenced in Hurston’s manuscript, many of them Florida folk songs she discovered through field research.

“It’s been a beautiful collaborative process of how we create the musical world of this piece and one that serves the story that we are trying to tell,” Luckett said of his work to recover the songs alongside other members of the creative team, including director Tamilla Woodard, musical director John Bronston and choreographer nicHi douglas. Luckett said that music and movement are used as modes of celebration, collaboration and collective grief throughout the play.

Actor J. Quinton Johnson, who

plays Spunk, emphasized the role songs played in the lives of enslaved peoples and their descendants that developed from “Negro spirituals,” which uplifted them through burdensome times.

Johnson said that music is deeply important to the Black community and humankind, saying it makes “a community a chorus.”

Luckett said he appreciates how the show “blurs” the boundaries between traditional music theater, folk opera and plays. He explained that there is a “musicality” to all of the dialogue in the play.

Sheehy agreed, comparing Hurston to Shakespeare because both playwrights’ writing allows actors to “ride its rhythm” to give them “propulsion” into a scene. Sheehy said she wants the world to recognize Hurston as a playwright, in addition to her fame as a novelist.

“She finds a way to reintroduce herself to a new set of people,” Sheehy said.

Johnson, known for playing the dual role of Hercules Mulligan and James Madison in Broadway’s Hamilton, said he was “heartbroken” that he hadn’t been exposed to Hurston’s works in his study of musical theater in college or during the nearly 10 years he spent working in New York City.

Johnson said he hopes the audience feels “seen” by Hurston’s story. He recalled Luckett saying during rehearsal that recordings of Hurston singing some of the songs in the play remind him of his grandmother.

“I want that moment for as many people that need it,” Johnson said.

“I just hope that someone sees an image of someone that they know in real life and feels like they can weep for that person, if it feels correct, and laugh with and at that person, if they need that.”

Johnson said that, despite being written in the 1930s, the play feels timeless because faith and belief in God was integral for enslaved Black people and continues to be integral to the emotional wellbeing of Black Americans.

Luckett echoed, saying he believes audiences should see the play now because of parallels between the historical events of the 1930s and present day, remarking that facism was on the rise during that time period.

“I desperately believe that the arc of the universe bends towards justice,” Luckett said, quoting Martin Luther King, Jr. “There are lots of cycles, and we happen to be back at a place that feels very familiar, and so in that way, it’s just even more exciting to be lifting up Zora Neale Hurston’s work at this time.”

“Spunk” will be staged at the University Theatre, located at 222 York St. Contact KIVA BANK at kiva.bank@yale.edu

Djo performs to sweaty crowd at College Street Music Hall

BY KIVA BANK STAFF REPORTER

Fans packed together in a sweat filled crowd Saturday night to see Joe Keery, who performs under the stage name Djo, begin his “Another Bite” tour alongside Post Animal, a psychedelic rock band.

The band opened for Keery, their former bandmate who had been part of the Chicago group’s formation in 2014. Keery reunited with the band this year for their album “Iron,” which was released on July 25.

“Unfortunately I can’t write two songs that sound like they’re on the same record so you guys are going to have to hang on,” Djo told the crowd, which included his father, whom the singer shouted out.

Djo played several songs from his genre-mixing discography, opening with the techno-pop song, “Awake.” He played many of his most popular songs throughout the night, including the ’80s-esque nostalgic rock hit, “End of Beginning.”

Quinn Matteson ’28, who has been a fan of Djo since the release of his debut album, “Twenty Twenty,” in 2019, likes that the artist shifts genres. Matteson saw

Djo perform earlier this year in Denver for his “Back on You” tour, before Djo released new albums

“The Crus” in April and “The Crus Deluxe” on Sept. 12.

“I really like the new album and the new Deluxe,” Matteson said.

“It’s definitely a little bit different of a mood, but it works super well.” Throughout the show, Djo explored a variety of musical modes. He sang, played guitar and mixed music live on stage, sometimes cycling through all of these in a single song.

Fan Victoria Thurber enjoyed his stylistic choices, the lighting and his “vocal runs.”

“I think he’s a musical genius,” she said. “I think that everything he does is really awesome.” Thurber, who has been a fan since 2022, was accompanied by friend Eden Mata, both wearing pink sleeved baby tees that read “Who the fuck is Djoel Keeny?” They explained the shirts were a play on words inspired by an interview in which Keery joked he had an evil twin named Joel Keeny. Mata said she has been a fan of Keery since he was in Post Animals in 2016, before he left the band in 2017 to focus on his role as Steve Harrington in the hit Netflix

series “Stranger Things.” With the release of his first single “Roddy” in July 2019, Keery began using the musical alias “Djo” — pronounced like his first name, “Joe.”

As longtime followers and frequent concert attenders, both Mata and Thurber said they have enjoyed seeing him improve over the years.

“I remember going to early shows, and they weren’t the greatness you see today,” Mata said, remarking that he has developed more stage presence. Thurber added that his ability to be vulnerable with the crowd has made his performances even more enjoyable to watch.

Djo led the audience through an electrifying musical score, until, in the midst of singing “Delete Ya,” he abandoned his microphone. The singer halted his performance when he noticed a member of the audience had passed out.

While the apparently unconscious fan was escorted out of the pit, Djo surveyed the state of the audience.

“Anyone need water?” he asked the crowd.

Numerous people raised their hands, and Djo and his band proceeded to toss water bottles to the

audience members.

The sold-out show had 2,000 people in attendance, packing people next to each other. Ian Bunting, operations manager at College Street Music Hall, said that younger crowds, like the one at Djo’s show, tend to be high energy and “super sweaty,” which contributes to a dehydration problem.

He explained people often hang outside the venue all day without eating or drinking much, so they come into the concert hot, leading to dehydration.

“When you have this many people in a crowded area, it’s gonna get hot,” Matteson said, adding that he thought the venue handled the situation well by handing out as much water as they could.

Typically someone who looks unwell is escorted to the lobby, and according to Bunting, once they drink water and their complexion returns to normal, they can usually return to the concert to enjoy the rest of their evening.

But on Saturday, two attendees were transported by ambulance to Yale Hospital, where Bunting assured they would be taken good care of. Thurber and Mata, who were in the middle of the crowd by the bar-

ricade, said they thought Keery handled the situation well too.

“I think he did a fantastic job,” said Mata.“There’s been a lot of shows where he has shown a lot of care for the audience.”

Yet, the crowd still wasn’t satisfied when the lights came up. They continued to chant for Djo, asking for one more song.

After a few minutes of suspense, the pit lights dimmed again and Djo came out to perform a twosong encore. The crowd roared with the opening notes of “Chateau (Feel Alright),” one of his most popular songs.

“This song and dance is only possible because of you guys listening to the music,” Djo said as he thanked the crowd before performing his last song of the night, “Flash Mountain.” The energy to the crowd reached its peak as Post Animal came out to perform alongside Djo for the finale, ending the night with a rock bang.

Post Animal is set to return to Connecticut on Nov. 5 for their performance at Space Ballroom in Hamden.

Contact KIVA BANK at kiva.bank@yale.edu.

SCI-TECH

“The more you don’t want to be like your parents, the more you

NATASHA BEDINGFIELD

YNHHS settles hospital acquisition dispute with $45-million deal

BY HARI VISWANATHAN STAFF REPORTER

After nearly three years, Yale New Haven Health system has gotten out of its deal to acquire three Connecticut hospitals owned by Prospect Medical Holdings, a private equity company that manages various medical organizations around the country.

According to the settlement, which was filed Friday, the health system will pay Prospect $45 million to “to settle the disputes between them,” the agreement states.

“Following years of negotiation and litigation, Yale New Haven Health signed a settlement agreement with Prospect. This settlement will officially end all pending litigation between our health system and Prospect allowing both parties to move forward and focus on the future,” YNHHS spokesperson Carmen Chau wrote in a statement.

According to the settlement, YNHHS’s counsel said that “everybody’s pretty satisfied” with the outcome, although “I don’t think anybody’s happy with it,” and Prospect Medical Holdings agreed with the court that the sentiment was indicative of a good compromise.

Prospect did not respond to the News’ request for comment.

History of the suit

In October 2022, YNHHS signed a $435 million agreement with Prospect Medical Holdings to acquire three Prospect-owned Connecticut hospitals: Waterbury Hospital, Manchester Memorial Hospital and Rockville General Hospital.

The deal proved difficult to close.

In May 2024, YNHHS sued Prospect, claiming that the company failed to uphold its end of the agreement. YNHHS claimed that Prospect was “driving away” physicians and

vendors, engaging in “a pattern of irresponsible financial practices” and neglecting to follow cybersecurity practices, resulting in a ransomware attack. As a result of Prospect’s mismanagement, YNHHS claimed the acquisition deal was overpriced, CT Insider reported.

In response, Prospect countersued, accusing Yale of trying to renege on its agreement.

At the time, Gov. Ned Lamont encouraged the two parties to complete the deal, arguing that a collapse would hurt local communities.

In January, Prospect filed for bankruptcy, which YNHHS took as further “proof of disinvestment and mismanagement.” Since Prospect filed for bankruptcy, the three Connecticut hospitals now owe over $200 million in unpaid property taxes and other overdue invoices.

In addition to the debt, a report released by Sen. Christopher Murphy in August 2025 claims that Prospect’s Connecticut hospitals are in acute disarray: they face crumbling infrastructure, staff report to paying for supplies out of pocket, patients face long wait times due to a lack of supplies and staff shortages are reportedly affecting patient health. The report claims that Prospect, as a private equity firm, “decimated” Connecticut hospitals.

Now, with the recent settlement, YNHHS has officially abandoned its deal to acquire the hospitals.

What now?

According to the settlement, the agreement “preserves estate resources that may otherwise be spent on litigation.” Friday’s deal also “provides clarity to the Debtors and potential bidders in connection with the Debtors’ ongoing sale process for the Debtors’ CT Assets,’” the settlement reads.

After Prospect filed for bankruptcy in January, Hartford HealthCare bid to buy Manchester Memorial and Rockville General for $86.1 million in a bankruptcy auction two weeks ago.

UConn Health has also said it would bid for Waterbury Hospital.

Connecticut Sen. Jeff Gordon views the saga as a lesson to keep private equity out of healthcare.

“This is why I want to ban private equity from being involved in hospitals,” Gordon said. “Because

they make a mess of things, and they even make a mess of trying to sell their hospitals to a big entity like Yale, when Yale was very interested.”

While Gordon said he is hopeful that the settlement will close the chapter of Prospect Medical Holdings being involved with Connecticut healthcare systems, he believes that damage has already been done in the hospitals, and that it is necessary for the state to step in and fix it.

Gordon said he hopes to enact state laws that will protect patients and healthcare employees from a similar story of litigation and hospital mismanagement, which he believes “decimated the hospitals,” from happening again.

Yale New Haven Health first announced an acquisition agreement with Prospect on Oct. 6, 2024.

Contact HARI VISWANATHAN at hari.viswanathan@yale.edu.

Yale representatives ‘power on’ at Climate Week NYC

BY MICHELLE SO STAFF REPORTER

Yale faculty, students and representatives recently returned from Climate Week NYC, the world’s largest climate gathering outside the United Nations’ Conference of Parties.

From Sept. 21-28, attendees participated in thousands of Climate Week NYC activities, including Yale @ Climate Week — two days of programming hosted by Yale Planetary Solutions at the Yale Club of NYC.

This year’s theme — Power On — emphasized climate progress across sectors including energy, finance, technology, green jobs and climate justice.

“At Climate Week NYC, our faculty, alumni, and students shared expertise and insights on everything from the role of AI in delivering climate progress to how working forests can serve as natural climate solutions,” School of the Environment Dean Indy Burke said. “Their participation was a powerful reminder of how much determination there is to address the climate crisis, and the important role that our school plays in generating new ideas and exploring pathways to progress.”

At Climate Week, Yale Program on Climate Change Communication Partnership Director Joshua Low spoke on a panel titled “Moving from Data to Dialogue to Doing.” For Low, Climate Week was a chance to come together with people from all different sectors to discuss, strategize and connect on how the world is powering through climate action.

“Climate Week can be overwhelming, with over 1,000 public-facing events and many more behind-the-scenes events such as gatherings and coffee chats,” Low said. “You can’t do it all, you have to pick and choose.”

Low aimed to connect with those partners to “build political will in climate action.” He was able to meet with partners in the Northeast who work with businesses to cut climate waste, as well as climate communicators across the globe, he said.

Another panel hosted by Yale @ Climate Week featured the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture Co-Director Peter Raymond. Ray-

mond’s goal was both to share climate solutions and share the center’s messaging, he said.

“Our goal is to let people know what we’re doing, but also try to make progress on scaling natural climate solutions,” Raymond said.

According to Raymond, the most important climate solutions involve managing natural ecosystems such as forests, agricultural lands and blue carbon systems to management to remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere.

“Some countries and companies are really leaning in, so that’s hopeful for sure. The U.S. isn’t necessarily leading policy right now, but other countries are trying to pick up the slack,” Raymond said.

School of Environment alum

Natasha Feshbach ENV ’23, a funds manager for the Activate Fellowship, which supports scientific researchers become founders, spoke on a panel about purpose-driven careers in climate.

“We discussed what we did, the highs and lows of our career, how to balance and prioritize working with great people and building skills for your career toolkit,” Feshbach said.

“I thought it was a great opportunity to bring people together both Yale and non-Yale audience members to discuss to drive this kind of career forward.”

Feshbach and other panelists noted the challenges and uncertainties of being in the climate space right now.

Before arriving at Climate Week, Low was also worried this year’s attendance would be diminished due to federal-level changes to climate change attitude and policy. However, he said he was pleasantly surprised by the turnout.

“What’s most helpful is that there are so many people from so many walks of life in New York working to address climate change,” Low said. “It makes me incredibly hopeful. For the 100,000 people in town, there are a hundred more back home who care.”

The first Climate Week NYC took place in 2009.

Contact MICHELLE SO at michelle.so@yale.edu.

“We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.”

HENRY WARD BEECHER MINISTER

Report says police who killed New Haven man were ‘justified’

BY REETI MALHOTRA STAFF REPORTER

Tenants Connecticut’s inspector general cleared the police officers who shot and killed Jebrell Conley in September 2024, writing that the officers’ use of deadly force was “legally justified” in a report published Tuesday.

On Sept. 19, 2024, State Police Sergeant Colin Richter, New Haven Police Sergeant Francisco Sanchez and Officer Michael Valente fired multiple rounds at Conley after he shot a firearm from inside his vehicle at West Haven’s Splash Car Wash, the 37-page report says. At the car wash, the officers were attempting to arrest Conley, who was indicted for alleged federal robbery and firearm charges two days prior and had an outstanding warrant for his arrest.

“I conclude that the use of deadly physical force by Sergeant Sanchez, Sergeant Richter and Officer Valente was objectively reasonable in response to the use of deadly physical force used by Jebrell Conley in this incident,” Inspector General Eliot Prescott wrote in the report.

“Accordingly, I find that their actions were legally justified.”

Officers allege Conley posed deadly threat

In a sworn written statement provided on Oct. 11, 2024, Valente wrote that members of various task forces were conducting “crime suppression” throughout New Haven on the day Conley was killed. Crime suppression, Valente wrote, includes serving active arrest warrants and enforcing narcotics and firearm violations.

According to the inspector general’s report, officers identified Conley in a Hyundai Tucson at around 5 p.m. that day and decided to attempt to take him into custody at the West Haven car wash.

Law enforcement had identified Conley, then 36, as a member of the Grape Street Crips gang, a New Haven imitation of the Los Angeles Crips group. In 2015, Conley was arrested for possessing cocaine, a felony charge. The next year, he was convicted of possessing the drug with intent to distribute and sentenced to five years in prison, according to a 2016 press release from the Connecticut U.S. Attorney’s office.

In late 2024, Connecticut’s Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms unit, or ATF, notified task force officers that Conley “supposedly always” carried a gun outside his home, according to the inspector general’s report. The ATF attributed Conley’s behavior to a law enforcement investigation into his alleged involvement in a Hamden shooting and robbery in early July. The incident prompted Conley’s Sept. 17 arrest warrant, per the report.

According to a sworn written statement provided by Richter on Oct. 17, at least six unmarked police vehicles containing 10 to 13 police officers from the crime suppression unit were following Conley from New Haven to Splash Car Wash on Sept. 19.

After spotting Conley exiting his vehicle, officers decided it was “the optimal time to serve the warrant and apprehend him,” Richter wrote. Sanchez was one of the officers who tried to approach and arrest Conley at the car wash, according to an Oct. 11 sworn written statement. Conley got back in the driver’s seat and tried to flee the scene by reversing his car, but struck a police vehicle behind him.

According to Richter, officers began to shout commands, including “let me see your hands” and “don’t you fucking move,” when he saw Conley grab a “cross-body bag” from the center console. Richter believed that the bag, which was pointed at him, contained a weapon.

Valente wrote that he deployed a window breaker to shatter the passenger’s side front window, which would allow him to tase Conley and prevent him from firing his gun. Valente then “heard a gunshot coming from the Hyundai.”

Richter, Sanchez and Valente all began to fire rounds at Conley upon hearing the gunshot, according to their respective statements.

“When I began to shoot, I lost my sense of hearing,” Valente wrote. “I don’t remember exactly how many times I shot, but I estimate it was between 6-10 rounds. I could not hear if any other Police personnel fired their weapons, or whether Conley continued to fire his weapon.”

Valente wrote that he stopped shooting when he saw “Conley’s arms were down by his body and his body was slumped in the vehicle.”

Conley then fell from his vehicle and was lying on the pavement outside

of his car covered in blood, Richter’s body-worn camera footage shows. Richter then handcuffed Conley. Valente, in his statement, wrote that officers began chest compressions and administered oxygen to Conley, who was “unresponsive and not breathing” on the ground. Body-worn camera footage taken by Valente, Sanchez and other officers at the scene cuts off when officers begin to provide Conley with medical aid due to its graphic nature, the report says.

The New Haven Fire Department and an American Medical Response ambulance responded to the scene and transported Conley to the Yale New Haven Hospital. There, he was pronounced dead on arrival, the inspector general’s report says.

Autopsy report and evidence gathered from the scene

According to the report, detectives retrieved a bag from the front passenger area of the vehicle after the shooting. They found that the bag had a hole consistent with a bullet’s trajectory. Frame-by-frame analysis of body-worn camera footage suggested Conley had fired a round out of the front driver’s side window as he removed his handgun from the bag, the report says.

When Conley fell out of the car, his handgun fell out as well. Sanchez picked up the handgun, observing a “partially ejected fired cartridge casing stuck in the ejection port of the firearm,” per the report. An improperly ejected semi-automatic weapon is jammed, and cannot be fired, until the shell casing is cleared, the report added.

The state police Firearms Tracking Unit determined the weapon to be a Glock 27.40 caliber pistol with a high-capacity magazine containing 22 rounds. According to the report, the weapon was purchased in 2011 in Waterbury. Its owner reported the gun as stolen in 2012, the report said.

Further forensic examination of the officers’ firearms concluded that they fired a total of 32 rounds at Conley. Richter fired 13 rounds, Valente fired 8 rounds and Sanchez fired 11 rounds.

An autopsy conducted by the state’s Chief Medical Examiner’s office on Sept. 20, 2024, concluded that Conley suffered a total of 12 gunshot wounds to his head, neck, torso, arms and buttocks. His cause

of death was determined to be gunshot wounds to his torso and upper extremities, fired by Valente and Richter.

Legal conclusions and community reactions

A Connecticut statute justifies the use of deadly physical force when an officer believes it necessary to defend themselves or a third party from the use of deadly physical force, or when an officer determines that there are no available reasonable alternatives to their use of deadly physical force.

“There is no dispute in this case that, by discharging their firearms at Jebrell Conley, Sergeant Richter, Sergeant Sanchez and Officer Valente each used deadly physical force against him,” Prescott, the inspector general, wrote in his report.

“I conclude that each of the three officers honestly and subjectively believed that during the incident Jebrell Conley had used and would continue to use deadly physical force against themselves and/or their fellow officers.”

Prescott also wrote that none of the officers knew that Conley’s firearm was jammed and no longer capable of firing additional rounds.

While Prescott concluded that the necessity for deadly force “arose from the violent conduct of Conley,” he wrote that he had “reached no conclusion about the ultimate wisdom of attempting to serve the warrant when Conley was located at the car wash.”

“It’s disturbing seeing photos because it looked more like an execution than just protecting someone’s life,” Barbara Fair, a local criminal justice activist, said in an interview with the News after the report was released. “He supposedly fired a shot. I can see them firing back to protect themselves, but all of the bullets that I saw, it was more like an execution.” Prescott recommended that the law enforcement agencies involved in the shooting review the three officers’ decision-making in the case and consider policies for choosing how to serve felony warrants to suspects who are likely to be armed.

There are 14 pending use-of-force and in-custody death investigations in Connecticut.

Contact REETI MALHOTRA at reeti.malhotra@yale.edu.

Why do liquor stores in New Haven close so early?

BY ELEANOR LAW CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

In the minutes before 10 p.m. on Friday or Saturday night, Yale students can often be spotted rushing to the door of Temple Wine & Liquor in downtown New Haven.

By law, Connecticut liquor stores must close their doors at 10 p.m. sharp, and store manager Anthony Simmons does not want to risk a fine by selling a bottle of liquor a minute past that.

“People try to rush in when they only have like a few seconds left,” Simmons said. “But anything after 10 o’clock would be against the state.”

The restrictions on liquor store hours have long been a part of Connecticut law and, historians say, are rooted in the state’s Puritan past. These religious restrictions are known as “blue laws.”

From 1854 to 1872, Connecticut completely banned the sale of alcohol, but enforcement was largely nonexistent. From 1919 to 1933, alcohol was prohibited again under the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In 1933, the Liquor Control Commission was created by the state to regulate the sale of alcohol after the repeal of prohibition under the 21st Amendment, and the Liquor Control Act was passed.

Weekday hours were gradually extended throughout the twentieth century. On May 20, 2012, liquor stores were granted permission to sell alcohol during limited hours on Sundays. The current weekday and weekend hours were set on July 1, 2015.

Among other states, Maine and Massachusetts have loosened their restrictions on alcohol sales over the years, but Connecticut remains one of the strictest in New England when

it comes to alcohol. Liquor stores in Connecticut are forbidden from making sales past 10 p.m., and they must close by 6 p.m. on Sundays.

Laws vary across the region, according to 360 Training, an online educational service that offers food and alcohol worker certification courses. In Maine, liquor stores can remain open from 5 a.m until 1 a.m. all week. In Massachusetts, liquor stores can remain open until 11 p.m. all week, including on Sundays. In New York, they can remain open until midnight on Monday through Saturday, and until 9 p.m. on Sundays. Neighboring Rhode Island has the same regulations as Connecticut. Connecticut’s restrictions on alcohol sales may soon feel more outdated. On Oct. 1, Connecticut will officially lift another centuries-old blue law banning hunting on Sundays.

This marks another step in the gradual repeal of Connecticut’s

blue laws. The state’s earliest blue laws strictly regulated behavior on the Sabbath, banning work, travel, and drinking on Sundays to fit with Puritan values. Most have since been repealed, but liquor restrictions still remain.

For Simmons, who manages Temple Wine & Liquor, the effects of the laws are not straightforward. Simmons said that extended hours could help his business on weekends, but could cost him money during the week when demand is lower.

“Maybe Fridays and Saturdays, weekends, we could potentially make more money,” Simmons said. “Sometimes we might be losing money by staying open later.”

Simmons believes that these laws protect small businesses. Unlike some other states, Connecticut doesn’t permit the sale of wine or liquor in grocery stores, which ensures that liquor stores maintain business. Blue laws may be frustrating for customers late at night, but they keep corporate competition away.

“We still have the market,” Simmons said. “So I think the law on that one does help us out a lot.”

The persistence of these restrictions has its roots in New Haven’s history. When English Puritans Theophilus Eaton and Reverend John Davenport — the namesake of Davenport College — founded the colony in 1638, they set some of the strictest moral codes in New England.

“The Puritans in New Haven were so incredibly religiously strict,” Emma Norden, a librarian at the New Haven Museum, told the News.

“They were a lot more strict than people in Connecticut Colony and people in Massachusetts Bay.”

Among the museum’s archives are copies of “The Temperance Journal” and other records of historical laws from the 1800s and earlier, which explain how seriously Connecticut’s early leaders took religion and morality.

“There’s still so much religion in New Haven,” Norden said. “There’s still so many churches that are active in a huge way.”

Connecticut’s conservative approach to liquor is not unique, Michael Morand, New Haven’s official city historian, said. Many states across the United States still restrict alcohol sales.

“Liquor tends to be more of a thing that people tend to put restrictions on than other things,” Morand said. However, in a state that has legalized cannabis and is known for its progressive nature, these residual liquor laws stand out, Morand acknowledged.

“Liquor has been the place that the sort-of Puritan sensibility stayed the longest,” he said.

Why do these rules persist? Morand thinks a mix of tradition and pragmatism have kept them around so long.

Courts have historically upheld a Sunday “day of rest” as a public good, even as it has disconnected it from its religious history. Additionally, liquor store owners themselves haven’t always pushed for a change.

“Nobody wants the whole place to be ‘on’ twenty-four-seven,” Morand said.

As Connecticut repeals its longheld Sunday hunting ban, the liquor restrictions remain a reminder of how the state’s Puritan past shapes its present. For some store managers, like Simmons, blue laws simultaneously protect and limit business. For many customers, however, they may be a frustrating and outdated formality.

These restrictions — some of the last remnants of the state’s historic blue laws — are a “weird one-off,” Morand said.

One of Connecticut’s nicknames is “The Land of Steady Habits.”

Contact ELEANOR LAW at el872@yale.edu.

“When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.”

NORA EPHRON JOURNALIST AND WRITER

Admissions may fact check more after first-year removal

BY OLIVIA CYRUS STAFF REPORTER

Yale College may alter its fact-checking processes for applicants during the 2025-26 admissions cycle, administrators said, in light of the recent removal of a firstyear student who a Yale College spokesperson said included false information on her Yale application. Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis said in a Sept. 22 interview with the

News that the admissions office may strengthen its processes for verifying extracurricular activities and activity positions.

“We have a vetting process, and we may be ramping it up a little bit next year,” Lewis said. “We’ll probably do more of those calls next year.”

On Monday, Mark Dunn ’07, the director of outreach and recruitment for undergraduate admissions, and Jeremiah Quinlan ’03, the dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale, confirmed Lewis’ statement in an email to the News. Earlier this month, Yale rescinded the admission of a Davenport College first-year after determining that she submitted falsified information on her application. In a move that sent shockwaves across campus, the student was escorted from her Old Campus dorm on Sept. 19 by Head of College Anjelica Gonzalez and an armed police officer.

Jordan Sahly ’24, an undergraduate admissions officer covering North Dakota, where the removed student’s profile on the Yale Face Book said she was from, declined to comment on the student’s admission or Yale’s undergraduate admission process, instead directing the News’ questions to Quinlan. Quinlan did not answer the News’ questions about what information the student falsified on her application, how the fabrication was discovered or how the admissions office will strengthen its verification processes for applications.

Davenport first years live in Lanman-Wright Hall.

Olivia Woo contributed reporting Contact OLIVIA CYRUS at olivia.cyrus@yale.edu

Epstein’s birthday album signed by three former professors

BY ASHER BOISKIN STAFF REPORTER

Three former Yale faculty members and other Yale affiliates left personal notes in a 50th birthday book for Jeffrey Epstein that a congressional committee released last month.

The House Oversight Committee on Sept. 8 published scans of the 238-page album, which was assembled in 2003 by Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell and later obtained through a subpoena of his estate. The outcry over the financier’s sexual abuse of women and girls intensified over the summer after the Justice Department released a memorandum saying it would not release extensive evidence related to him.

The album’s table of contents identifies Mortimer Zuckerman, who once lectured on city and regional planning at Yale, physicist Lee Smolin, a former assistant professor in the 1980s, and psychiatrist Henry Jarecki, an adjunct who retired from the School of Medicine last year, as contributors.

None of the three former faculty members responded to the News’ requests for comment.

The album also features notes or images from Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann ’48, Epstein’s longtime attorney Alan Dershowitz LAW ’62 and former President Bill Clinton LAW ’73. Yale is not the only university with affiliates who appear in the 2003 album.

The Daily Pennsylvanian reported that University of Pennsylvania alumni such as President Donald Trump, Zuckerman, 1972 Nobel Prize winner Gerald Edelman and Philadelphia 76ers owner Josh Harris signed the album. And the Harvard Crimson reported that two-time acting Harvard President Henry Rosovsky, among several other university affiliates, also contributed.

Lee Smolin, who taught physics at Yale from 1984 to 1988 as an assistant professor and has made major contributions to the field of theoretical physics, appears in

Epstein’s birthday book under the category “Scientists.”

In 2019, Smolin told The Verge, a technology news outlet, that he saw Epstein at a scientific conference in 2007 and had “had no contact with him since 2008.”

“I was one of his first students,” Viqar Husain GRD ’85 ’89, who took a course on general relativity with Smolin at Yale and later had him as his doctoral advisor, wrote to the News. He noted that it was “difficult at first” working with Smolin as he “approached research like an artist, loved crazy ideas, did not encourage regular meetings and let students explore freely.”

Husain added that Smolin’s inclusion in the album came as “a bit of a surprise, but on the other hand, Epstein was known to ‘collect people,’ including prominent academics, by organizing fully funded conferences in exotic locations.”

Henry Jarecki, identified as a “Friend,” praised Epstein in his note for teaching him “more than I expected to at this time of my life.”

He included a message from his “house astrologer” describing Epstein as a “fiercely intelligent, highly complex individual” who favored “working in private, or better yet, utter secrecy.”

Jarecki was sued last year in federal court in New York by a woman claiming to be a victim of sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein. In the complaint, which refers to the woman as “Jane Doe 11,” Jarecki is accused of raping her on multiple occasions between 2011 and 2014, after Epstein referred her to the psychiatrist for mental health treatment following his own alleged sexual abuses.

In April 2025, the unnamed woman voluntarily dropped her lawsuit against Jarecki, according to court filings.

In November 2023, Jarecki was celebrated in a medical school press release for having been awarded the Pardes Humanitarian Prize in Mental Health by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.

Jarecki retired from the School of Medicine in 2024, according to a University spokesperson.

Zuckerman, also listed as a “Friend,” was the editor in chief of U.S. News and World Report and owner of the New York Daily News. He pledged $200 million to Columbia University in 2012 to establish the Mind Brain Behavior Institute, though he paused millions in funding in 2024, citing the university’s “failure to address rising antisemitism” on campus. Zuckerman was invited to speak at a Yale Political Union event in 1993.

Gell-Mann, a Yale alumnus who won the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics and taught at Caltech, signed a page with a photo of himself yawning.

Dershowitz, who edited the Yale Law Journal and graduated first in his class, also wrote an entry in the birthday book. Dershowitz, a longtime Harvard law professor, served on Epstein’s legal defense

team and helped Epstein secure the 2008 plea deal in which Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to two state charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution.

Dershowitz has said that he did not recall contributing an entry to the birthday book.

An entry attributed to Clinton is included in the birthday album. Clinton flew on Epstein’s private plane on four separate occasions for trips on behalf of the Clinton Foundation.

In the album, Clinton notes Epstein’s “childlike curiosity” and a “drive to make a difference.”

“President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to,” Angel Urena, a spokesperson for Bill Clinton, said in a statement posted online by a spokesperson in 2019.

Epstein was a visiting fellow in Harvard’s psychology department during the 2005-06 school year, according to a 2020 Harvard report on his ties to the university.

Baala Shakya contributed reporting.

Contact ASHER BOISKIN at asher.boiskin@yale.edu.

College Dems focused on voter advocacy to counter Trump

BY CORINNE COWAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Yale College may alter its factThe room in Linsly-Chittenden Hall buzzed with activity as dozens of members of the Yale College Democrats convened for their fifth meeting of the year on Monday, following a weekend of advocacy in the nation’s capital.

After former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss in the 2024 presidential election sent Democrats reeling, Yale Dems leaders noted that this year’s group has renewed energy.

Over the weekend, Dems sent students to Washington, D.C. where members advocated for three immigration-focused bills, and Virginia, where they canvassed for former Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s gubernatorial campaign. “I think it’s really important — I think particularly this year, to be honest — for us to be going on these trips, to be talking to people, to not be sitting here and just like complaining and commiserating about how horrible everything is,” Julia Murphy ’27, a Dems member, said.

The organization is looking ahead to more canvassing trips,

including one with the group Swing Left in New York’s 17th District, currently represented by Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican.

The student advocacy on the immigration bills came as the Trump administration has undertaken a mass deportation campaign, which has included heightened Immigrant and Customs Enforcement activity in New Haven.

Yale Dems President Christian Thomas ’26 highlighted the importance of supporting the three bills. The first would prevent ICE from entering certain spaces such as churches, the second advocates for extended visas for immigrants and the third increases health care access for immigrants.

Alexandra Martinez-Garcia ’26, the vice president of the Yale Dems, said attendance and interest took a hit in the spring due to the apathy, disappointment and “commiseration” after Trump’s election victory last year.

“It was really hard to reckon with the fact that we had put so much work into the federal election in November,” Martinez-Garcia said. “It was really hard to see that culminate in Harris not winning.”

However, both Martinez-Garcia and Thomas underscored recent shifts in the organization’s culture and direction. Martinez-Garcia described members as “really excited” about the D.C. trip and said the weekly meetings have “great energy.”

Dems at Monday’s meeting had to grab more chairs from another room in Linsly-Chittenden to have enough seats for all attendees.

Last weekend’s canvassing was a jumping off point for more opportunities in the semester. Monday’s meeting also included letter writing for California voters concerning CA Proposition 50 – an effort to redraw the state’s congressional districts for Democrats’ advantage to counter a Republican redistricting push in Texas.

“I think we’re having more canvasses this semester than potentially last semester, and definitely any other semester before,” Martinez-Garcia ’26 said.

Many members stressed the importance of communicating with individual voters on canvassing trips. Other initiatives this semester include partnering with Yale

organizations and public schools in New Haven. Thomas also cited the new plans within the Dems’ election branch as an important way that members can be engaged with the national Democratic party.

Thomas said students are partnering with campaigns ranging from the Virginia governor’s race to others in Colorado and Maine.

One first-year student appreciated the emphasis on action and recent efforts the Dems have offered for students to join.

“I was honestly very interested in all the action that they’ve been doing,” Lizeth Ortiz-Calleja ’29 said when asked about why she joined the Dems. She mentioned immigration policy as one of her top interests.

Thomas called on the Dems to stand strong against the federal government’s actions.

“We’re not going to back down. We’re not going to be silent,” he said.

During fall break last year, Dems members canvassed for Harris in Philadelphia.

Contact CORINNE COWAN at corinne.cowan@yale.edu

SPORTS FOOTBALL: Bulldogs

to play No. 8 Lehigh on the road Saturday

BY BRODY GILKISON STAFF REPORTER

The football team will be back in action Saturday when they travel to Lehigh to take on the Battle Hawks in the Bulldogs’ first away game of the year.

Yale (2–0, 1–0 Ivy) enters the matchup with two well-earned victories against Holy Cross and Cornell under its belt. Lehigh (5–0) comes into Saturday’s bout as the eighth-ranked team in the Football Championship Subdivision, the second highest level of Division I football, after picking up five straight victories to begin the year.

Suppress the ground game

Part of the reason why Lehigh has had such a successful start to the season is due in large part to their ferocious rushing attack. In five games, the Battle Hawks have gained over 1,200 yards on the ground. Leading the way with 596 yards and four touchdowns is standout junior Luke Yoder, and he is supplemented by Jaden Green, who has accumulated 449 yards and five scores.

They will square up against a Yale defense that has proven itself to be capable of making bigtime plays and shutting down opponents. Led by defensive backs Inumidun Ayo-Durojaiye ’26 and Abu Kamara ’27, both of whom received national recognition for their outstanding games last week, Yale’s playmakers will need to come out swinging in an attempt to stop the Battle Hawks. The team should also look to stack the box early on to try and prevent Lehigh’s ground game from dictating the game.

“This is about running to the ball and playing to our standard,” Ayo-Durojaiye said. “There are no individuals on this team who make plays by themselves.”

Collapse the pocket

In their first two games, Yale’s defense showed a knack for stopping opposing quarterbacks and disrupting plays.

Mack Johnson ’28 has two sacks so far this season, and five other Bulldogs have also added sacks in the first two

BY CAROLINE LEE CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

The Yale swim and dive team is set to hold their annual Blue and White Exhibition Meet on Friday at Paine Whitney Gymnasium.

The event will mimic a typical intercollegiate meet and include a packed slate of events — including dives, distance races, and sprints. The intrateam competition will offer Yale’s swimmers and divers a chance to showcase their training and strengthen camaraderie ahead

games. However, Lehigh’s offensive line has proven stout. They have only given up two sacks of their own through five games, so creating pressure and collapsing the pocket will be no easy task for the Elis.

The Bulldogs have also been successful this season with stunts at the line of scrimmage — when the Yale defensive tackles create havoc with misdirection — which opens up gaping holes in the opposing quarterback’s protection. While it did not always result in sacks last week, the strategy pushed Cornell quarterback Devin Page out of the pocket and led him to throw four interceptions.

On Saturday, the Yale coaching staff will look to draw up similar schemes in hopes of throwing Lehigh quarterback Hayden Johnson off his game and causing turnovers.

“As a defense, we like to play hard,” Kamara said. “Whenever our back is against the wall, we find a way to make a play.”

Protect the ball

With four fumbles on the year, the Bulldog offense needs to do a better job at protecting the ball to stand a chance in the matchup with Lehigh.

The Battle Hawks have shown the ability to jump on teams early in games by capitalizing on their opponents’ mistakes, so it will be imperative that Yale finds a way to eliminate turnovers in order to stay in the ballgame.

The Yale defense generates plenty of turnovers that lead to more drives for the offense, and this may be a reason why Lehigh is only a 3.5-point favorite despite the home-field advantage and high ranking. For the Elis, winning the turnover battle against the Battle Hawks will be crucial if they not only want to cover the spread but come back to New Haven with a big-time victory.

Yale kicks off against Lehigh this Saturday at 12 p.m. at Goodman Stadium in Bethlehem, Penn.

Contact BRODY GILKISON at brody.gilkison@yale.edu

of the season.

“The focus is more so on getting points for your team versus getting a specific time,”

senior Noah Millard ’26 said.

“It’s really fun seeing who can be the toughest.”

Arshak Hambardzumyan ’28, from Budapest, Hungary, recalls his teammates cheering one another on during last year’s Blue and White Exhibition — which was his first American competition.

“Meets in Hungary usually are just concentrated on you.

“You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.”

FRANKLIN P. ADAMS COLUMNIST

Three alumni over 80 to compete at Head of the Charles Regatta

BY AUDREY KIM

CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

In mid-October, three Yale alumni will participate in the world’s largest three-day rowing competition: the Head of the Charles Regatta.

DeLane Anderson Jr. ’66, Peter McGowan ’65 and Bill Becklean ’58 are members of the Octogenarian 8, a coed team of rowers all over the age of 80. This year, the team will make their fourth appearance at the Head of the Charles Regatta, and they are set to row the 4,800 meter course.

“It’s certainly the feel

ing of accomplishment when you successfully complete an event like the Head of Charles,” McGowan said about rowing with the Octogenarian 8.

“They always say it attracts about 250,000 people, and so it’s pretty exciting to be rowing that race with crowds all along the riverside. And so that really keeps your energy up doing it.”

McGowan competed on the Timothy Dwight College intramural crew team during his time at Yale and has since been rowing with Community Rowing, Inc., the organization that

started the Octogenarian 8.

Anderson, a sweep rower alongside McGowan, recently got involved with Community Rowing in 2024 and joined the Octogenarian 8 last year.

“There are a lot of private rowing clubs on the Charles River, and a lot of prep schools and universities have boat houses on the Charles River, but there’s no place for the average citizen that wants to row, to go row,” Becklean, a coxswain for the Octogenarian 8, said.

“The people that started Community Rowing said, ‘Hey, there ought to be a place that people can sign up to row that don’t belong to a club or go to one of these schools.’”

At Yale, Becklean was a coxswain for the heavyweight team, and he coxed the team to a national championship and Olympic gold medal in 1956.

Originally from Kansas City, Mo., Becklean began his journey as a rower at 14 years old. He was a coxswain for the crew team at Phillips Exeter Academy before competing as a Bulldog for four years. Becklean has remained heavily involved with the rowing community since graduating, and his passion for the sport eventually led him to join the Octogenarian 8.

“First off, no one else was doing

this. Secondly, when people get older their worlds tend to shrink and I’m just facilitating their worlds growing,” Catherine Saarela, coach and founder of the Octogenarian 8, said in a phone interview. “They get to meet a bunch of new people and expand their networks at an age when people tend to lose friends. It makes them so happy, and it makes everyone else around them happy when they see this going on.”

Saarela coaches at Community Rowing and said that she got the idea for the Octogenarian 8 a few years ago when she saw how many 80-year-olds were on her roster.

Since founding the Octogenarian 8, Saarela has seen interest for the team grow at an exponential rate and said she now gets calls from rowers interested in joining the team instead of having to recruit herself.

“What’s cool is that they’re the last race of the day. Everyone is waiting for them and they get cheered on from their walk to the start until the finish,” Saarela said.

The team, coached by Saarela, will compete on Oct. 19 at the Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston.

Contact AUDREY KIM at audrey.kim.ajk234@yale.edu

It’s more the individual performance, the whole team aspect of it is not that important as it is here,” Hambardzumyan said. “Here people actually really care about how you’re going to do and really try to get the best out of you.” Jumping into the pool on Friday will also mark the unofficial collegiate debut as Yale athletes for the team’s new members. At Friday’s races, new Bulldogs — three transfers, six first-years on the men’s side and eight on the women’s —

will reveal what they will contribute to the team.

“Every year I find myself saying we have the strongest team yet, but this season truly feels special,” Millard said.

“With only a small graduating class last year we didn’t face the same gaps other Ivy programs did so we’ve been able to build upward rather than just replace.”

In the locker room, the team captains have worked to center team culture around collective success. Women’s captain Jessey Li ’26 pointed to upcoming beach days and an Outdoor Education Center trip as two examples of team bonding. For her, this year’s squad already seems to be forging the tight-knit bonds that have helped the team succeed in recent years.

“Every year the team evolves, and I love seeing how each group of newcomers brings fresh energy,” Li said. “This year, the team feels incredibly determined and unified.”

Last February, the men’s team sent six athletes to the NCAA Championships and finished in 20th place overall, making Yale the only mid-major school to make the top 25. Millard, who made the 2025 All-American first team in the 1,650 meter freestyle and All-American honorable mention team in the 500 freestyle, envisions reaching new heights at this year’s NCAA championship.

“Continuing to compete with the top programs and establishing Yale as a serious and respected contender would be a lasting legacy I want to be part of,” Millard said. “The thought of going back to NCAA with my teammates and reaching our true potential is what fuels me most.”

The women’s team — bronze-medalists at last year’s Ivy League championship — has an equally ambitious outlook. Sophomore Mabel Koff ’28, who broke Yale’s school record in the 200 meter backstroke (1:54.79) last season and has been passionate about the sport since kindergarten is excited to see what the team has in store for their 2025-26 campaign.

After a stellar first year, Koff is also eager to help her new teammates adjust to collegiate life, both in and out of the pool.

“I look forward to stepping into a new role on the team and becoming a person of support for our freshmen to look for,” Koff said.

Meanwhile, her teammate Li looks forward to “one more ride with this amazing group of teammates,” this time as she leads as captain.

The simulation meet will take place at Kiputh Exhibition Pool on the west wing of Paine Whitney Gymnasium.

Contact CAROLINE LEE at caroline.lee.csl66@yale.edu.

CELESTIAL GARDEN

The clothes I get from my mother are more than just accessories.

// CAMERON DAVIS

There’s no better present than the gift of inheritance. And no, I’m not talking about acquiring estates, family heirlooms, or money. I’m talking about inheriting clothes from your mother’s closet.

I can distinctly remember sneaking into her closet when I was 7 years old and shoving my tiny feet into her three-inch heels that were about five sizes too big for me, walking around like I was the next Naomi Campbell. Her clothes make me look back at a time when Forever 21 had quality clothing and remind me that trends always come back into the cycle. I was recently bestowed a white and black polka dot skirt from my mom’s closet that perfectly matched the polka dot craze that took every girl by storm this past summer.

I am, unfortunately, not like my mother. I’m quick to list and sell my old pieces that no longer fit me — or have lost currency on the microtrend cycle — and I use that money to buy into new trends. I fail to realize that my iconic Brandy Melville plaid mini skirt from 2019 might serve my future daughter in the years to come. Of course, I’d want to be known as the cool, fashionable mother who influences my daughter’s sense of fashion, but that might not be in the cards.

What will be the brands that future teenage girls reminisce about? Brandy Melville? Reformation? Edikted? Princess Polly?

Walking into my mom’s closet always felt like stepping into a time capsule of the best trends and styles of the early 2000s. Pieces that Depop resellers would search for hours in the Goodwill bins and upcharge on Depop for an exorbitant price were always casually lying around. I felt like I had hit the jackpot and had found a manifestation of my Pinterest “outfit inspo” board.

How did it take me so long to realize the potential of my mom’s clothing, hidden away in the tangled depths of hangers and fabric? When I reached the age and size where I could finally fit into her clothes, I didn’t hesitate to add some pieces to my own wardrobe.

The first piece of clothing I ever borrowed from my mom’s closet was a white linen button-down top sprinkled with red polka dots and frilly sleeves. The top makes me feel like a journalist in an early 2000s movie, running around the office and trying to make a deadline for a very important story. Safe to say it is permanently mine now.

But who was my mother when she pranced around with this frilly button-down on? What dreams and aspirations did she wish to accomplish when she threw this top on? A whole part of her life exists before me. I get to witness the fragments of her

youth through embellishments on blouses, lace on skirts, and mini bows along the sweetheart neckline of a maxi dress. I’m now motivated to probe into my mom’s life B.C. — Before Cameron. I want to know if we’ve both encountered the same life problems, if we’ve both looked to our clothes for solace. Is this cardigan I’m wearing right now the same one she wore when she tried to figure out the complexities of adulthood? Even though I’m separated from my mom by the 3,000 vast miles between us, I carry a piece of her everywhere I go. The gold rings on my fingers and the warm jackets that feel like a hug from her remind me I’m never alone. And unlike my Brandy Melville baby tee, I know these pieces will last a lifetime. Contact CAMERON DAVIS at cameron.davis@yale.edu.

PERSONAL ESSAY

To bridge the gap

My mom and I have sent songs back and forth every day for two years.

// BY LILY SCHECKNER

When I was in the womb, my mom performed ultrasounds with music. Rather than smoothing echo gel over her stomach, she mapped my heartbeats with her fingers, tapping a gentle pattern against her skin. I like to think that in my own, barely sentient way, I was tapping right back. Then I was born and every aspect of my life was built on music. Sleeping? Only alongside Iron & Wine’s “The Trapeze Swinger.” Car ride? Only if I could listen to “1234” by Feist over and over again. Before I could speak, music was the winking, subtle language I shared with my mom. Staring up at her in the hazy smoke of song, we held a mutual understanding that went beyond words. Now, in college 18 years later, I no longer live in my mom’s womb or in her house. It’s only from within the walls of my dorm or on the way to class that I call to give her innocuous updates. Yes, the weather is getting colder. No, I haven’t done my laundry this week. Our relationship is much more complicated now. It’s marked by the bumps and bruises of teenagehood and divorce. Sometimes we talk as easily as best friends. Other times, we snipe at each other to the point of tears. Yet, again and again, we’ve returned to a long familiar chorus.

My mom has sent me a song every day since September 2023. The first was “Girl Anachronism” by the Dresden Dolls — a sharp, deranged ode to female rage — but the tunes have been endlessly diverse. From

“Between the Bars” to “Edge of Seventeen,” each song met the demands of the day it was sent: Elliott Smith for a rain-soaked depression and Stevie Nicks for a birthday eve. Every day, I reciprocated with my favorites: Mazzy Star’s “Blue Light,” Hozier’s “Wasteland, Baby!” and Big Thief’s “Shark Smile.”

The best part of this ritual was how our preferences bled into each other. My favorite artist, Sufjan Stevens, became my mom’s rocking chair go-to. Likewise, Radiohead and The Shins are carried over from my mom, whether in text or in utero. And, in turn, she now adores Lana Del Rey, Ethel Cain and boygenius. In the car, we scream along to the lyrics of any genre with equal enthusiasm. On the couch at home, we record our favorites with her on guitar, my sister and I harmonizing on aux. My mom and sister are both in actual bands, by the way — but I like to think we’re all in one of our own, too.

Unfortunately, the beginning of college was a busy time. In the hustle and bustle of club applications and class schedules, my mom and I had forgotten to send our song of the day since June. After a three month hiatus, my mom broke the dry spell a week ago. It felt like seeing an old, familiar friend. A jolt of homesickness hit me for the first time since arriving at Yale in August. It urged me to scroll back through my texts, glancing over each song that my mom had sent me for the past two years. As I write this article, I’m listening to a playlist that I made from those very tunes. The Magnetic Fields’ “All My Little Words” are filtering through my airpods, and it feels almost like my mom is standing at my side. Despite our imperfections, she is offering me edits — which I might pettily reject — and holding my hand. She is loaning me jeans and lip liner, snuggling up with me to watch “The West Wing” and snapping at me to do the dishes. In a time when we all, inevitably, drift away from our parents both geographically and emotionally, my mom and I are tied together. A guitar string stretches between us — 18 years and 300 miles long — endlessly strumming.

Contact LILY SCHECKNER at lily.scheckner@yale.edu.

Road trips through war zones are a good idea, right?

// BY MARIEM IQBAL PERSONAL ESSAY

My grandfather is the most fearless person I’ve ever met.

I don’t mean that he’s fearless in the inciting-global-change way of the Malala Yousafzais of the world. I mean fearless in the literal sense. He lacks any and all fear.

Case in point: the time he traveled through a civil war zone for a vacation.

It was 1993, and my grandfather, Sohail Rabbani, whom I call Nana, was taking a break from his obligations in Birmingham, Alabama and visiting family in Karachi. Ann, his American friend whom he had met while backpacking through Scotland — a story for another day — had ventured across the Atlantic to explore Pakistan. Coincidentally, so had a cousin of Nana’s half-sister’s cousin-in-law — Pakistani family trees are complicated, y’all — named Mehmooda. Mehmooda had grown up in England and was on an Eat, Pray, Love “reconnecting with my roots” trip in Pakistan. The three of them met up and quickly became a dynamic trio, exploring beaches together in Karachi. But the sun and sand bored them and they grew restless, itching for another, greater adventure.

Nana resolved on going to Chitral, a city in the extreme northwest corner of Pakistan, right next to the border with Afghanistan. It was perfect, he reasoned: they could see the towering mountains and clear lakes, affectionately dubbed the “Swiss Alps of Pakistan,” and he could act as a guide and protector for his foreign female companions, who couldn’t go by themselves.

They formulated a plan: they would drive to Peshawar, a major city in the north of Pakistan, and take a flight to Chitral from there. They thought it was perfect, foolproof even.

Yet, as often happens, nothing went according to plan. No sooner had they arrived in Peshawar than they learned that every flight had been cancelled due to the inclement weather in the mountains. Never one to give up without a fight, Nana began searching for a route through the treacherous mountains. No dice. Not only would it have been incredibly challenging even without the weather, but all of the roads were blocked. There was no path to Chitral from anywhere in Pakistan that they could feasibly get to.

Now, a normal person at this point would have cut his losses, said “sayonara” to his plans and booked it back to Karachi to soak up the sun. But not Sohail Rabbani, the most fearless man I know. As often accompanies fearlessness, he is also, and I say this with so much love, the most cuckoo person I know.

Hell-bent on going to Chitral, he decided to call up and ask the advice of an old teacher of his who lived in Chitral: Major Geoffrey Langlands. Langlands, who passed away in 2019, was a retired British major who resided in Pakistan long after colonial rule ended in 1947 and

dedicated his life to teaching Pakistani schoolchildren. He was a beloved, valued member of the community, so much so that when he heard Nana’s plight, he put him in touch with a contact who could get him to Chitral. The only catch? They would have to detour through Afghanistan, while it was in the middle of the Afghan Civil War, in a smuggler’s caravan. Naturally, he said yes. Do you see where the cuckoo of it all comes in now? He made the arrangements, and by 4 a.m. the next morning, Nana, Ann and Mehmooda were in a van on their way. The girls, who were bundled up and had most of their faces

covered, were sitting in the front with the driver, while Nana sat in the back with 11 other people, mostly smugglers and refugees. Thus, they began their 18-hour journey. Nana, a social butterfly by nature, slowly broke through the silence and got to talking with the people in the van. They asked him questions about medicine, history and his life in America. He learned about their hardships and joys, their troubles and triumphs. Their hours-long conversation was cut short by the Mujahideen, an Afghan militant group that represented one side in the civil war. The van was on a thin, barely two-lane mountain road when the military

truck drove up to them from the opposite direction. On their left lay a ravine with no guardrails and the promise of a quick death if they were to fall, and on their right, the threat of military capture. Everyone caught their breath, barely daring to move as the van slowly rolled past the truck, mere inches between the vehicles. When the military truck was in the distance and they were home free, everyone let out a collective sigh of relief. Everyone, that is, except Nana, who had never been worried about the imminent threat of capture in the first place.

Aside from the appearance of another Mujahideen truck, the next few hours passed without any issues. Then, they stumbled upon the Kunar River. The river itself was not so bad: knee-height water, only about 50 feet across. Only, there was no bridge. Nana and all of the backseat passengers exited while only the driver and the women carefully navigated through the river in the van, whispering prayers that the rocks wouldn’t damage the tires. Nana and the others had to trudge through the river, shivering from the glacial water and hoping their thick clothes would dry out in time for their arrival. The van’s dip in the river wasn’t enough to negate the blistering heat of a summer sun, and they were forced to stop and air out the van only a few hours later. While the passengers chatted, Nana spotted the driver pacing restlessly and muttering to himself while glancing at the sun, which was beginning its descent. Abruptly, he yelled at everyone to get back in the van because “safety is not guaranteed after sunset.” The driver put the pedal to the metal, and they crossed back into northern Pakistan just as the sun disappeared from the horizon.

Nana and his companions spent many days in Chitral, meeting Major Langland for tea and exploring the three major valleys in the area. “The scenery was so beautiful — meadows and crystal clear lakes everywhere,” he told me. I, still gobsmacked after hearing the story, had nothing to say. I always knew he was adventurous, but this set even my heart racing, and I wasn’t even there. I asked him if he was scared. As nonchalant as ever, he responded in the smooth tone I know is his patented grandfather voice, “There’s no sense in being afraid of things you can’t control. You have to do the things you want to do.” Still dumbfounded, I responded, asking what possessed him to travel through a civil war for something as trivial as a vacation. He smiled, shrugged and uttered the most simple, stupid, genius, cuckoo-crazy response possible: “Why not?”

Contact MARIEM IQBAL at mariem.iqbal@yale.edu.

PERSONAL ESSAY

For God, for country and for my Dad

Dinner table disagreements and my decision to become political.

// BY MADISEN FINCH

Since the beginning of my life, there has been an unspoken expectation that my dad would be gone. He seemed to always be donning the camo that marked his career. I was constantly reliant upon Skype, email — once I learned to read — and then FaceTime. I grew up with a dad whom I knew digitally. The global conflicts that shaped the world shaped my familial upbringing.

I didn’t like war simply because it was war, but because it took my dad from me.

Becoming political felt like a natural consequence of growing up as an Army brat. To me, it was just the next step after realizing that my life was the reality of laws that, for most, were just written down on paper.

But for my dad, it went directly against what he wanted for me — why would I seek to criticize the country he fought so hard for? Why would I want to change the political sphere that for so long influenced our lives – to have an opinion when we would still have to follow the opinions of politicians regardless?

Much of this early rumination was influenced by my anger with America for taking my dad from me, for making decisions that incited conflict. While my pacifist tendencies never really left me — I still believe I would lose in the Hunger Games because I refuse to pick up a weapon — my love for my dad and for his honor taught me a lot about myself.

Instead of accepting the polarization that defines modern politics, I analyzed my familial politics. While knocking on doors, I walked through my family’s and talked with them about issues that impacted us. My dad might not agree with my choice to fight for policy or ask the hard questions, but he’s the reason I do it.

He might not have approved of my interest in politics, but he never wanted to stop me from chasing my dreams. It was in pursuit of these dreams that I read a quote from James Baldwin: “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on

STYLE

the right to criticize her perpetually.” This singular quote marked a shift in the way I understood my life as an Army brat. I realized that I could love something while still fighting it. I realized that every disagreement I had with my dad was just an act of love. I could keep fighting, just like my dad did — with the motivation to help our country — in the only way we knew how.

Every dinner table disagreement was charged with political feelings that developed because of my dad. Every time I started a debate defending veteran rights, advocated demilitarization or pushed against a candidate that used rhetoric calling people like my dad “suckers,” he was in the back of my mind. He might not have agreed with my choices, my choice to become political, but it was all for him.

The older I get, the more I realize that my interest in politics is not a form of rebellion — it is a love for my family, for my country and for who I am. The same political environment that sent my dad to Iraq, Kuwait and South Korea made me care about veterans. I knew the birthdays he missed were for good reasons.

I still don’t agree with the military industrial complex, or the devaluing of our nation’s heroes or anything that could potentially fall under a “Project 2025.” The same experiences that informed my development have become talking points for a polarized America — for polarizing politicians — but I believe that the love we have for where we come from — the shared love beyond ideological debate — can shift that political sphere.

This Family Weekend, I ask you to remember where you come from — to remember the people who made you who you are — and to not be discouraged from having the hard conversations. Not everyone gets to be an Army brat, but I’m grateful that I do.

Contact MADISEN FINCH at madisen.finch@yale.edu.

Boots and burgundy: Fashion for fall

// BY ANGELINA KOVALCHUK

With October imminent, fall is beginning to creep through campus. Whether strolling along Hillhouse Avenue or on Old Campus, the air feels colder and windier and the leaves are gradually fading into red and yellow. Our wardrobes also begin to change, welcoming sweaters and a variety of scarves. Dressing seasonally can help us cheerfully hail this turn of the year.

The ideal fall wardrobe should be all about layers. Great fashion must first and foremost be practical; and as the weather gets ever-more crisp, it is best to be well-insulated. This is not a time to compromise on basics, which form the foundation of a well-layered outfit. But basics can only take you so far. Some funky fall experimentation is key for a layered wardrobe. With that in mind:

Textures: Mixing materials and patterns can be a way of adding texture to an outfit and making any simple piece seem like a “staple.” Lace and chiffon appear to be coming back into season, likely in response to Ralph Lauren’s Fall/Winter 2025 collection. There are a multitude of “autumnal” patterns and materials that we can mix in: houndstooth, plaid and pinstripes, leather, corduroy and denim. These more dimensional materials mimic the textures of the season, like the crunchiness of fall leaves or the smoothness of pumpkin spiced lattes. Visual appeal is the objective, and that can only be achieved with seasonal awareness and the knowledge of when texture gets to be too much.

Tights: Practical and versatile. Aside from offering warmth, these add a preppy touch to any outfit and can also be worn under virtually anything. There is still time to wear the shorts and skirts we frequented throughout the summer.

Knitwear: There is an endless variety of knits and fabrics on the market, meaning infinite choices when it comes to sweaters and cardigans. One can never go wrong with collecting these. I encourage building an arsenal of shapes and sizes — boxy, baggy, slouchy, you name it. Subtly layering these with a simple white tee fits any context. I also recommend the sweater vest, an homage to prep school uniforms, worn over anything with a collar.

Scarves: Should be big enough to practically swallow us. However, an ultra-thin scarf can still add elegance while the weather permits it. And on the topic of layering, what could be more quintessentially fall than outerwear? Use this fall as an opportunity to seek out pieces to not only live in,

but also bring out season after season. Counter the wind tunnels along Science Hill with a bomber or windbreaker. Procure a warm, double-breasted wool trench coat, preferably in a dark heather grey or deep brown, in preparation for the cold. Hunt, once and for all, for the perfect vintage leather jacket.

A fall wardrobe also hinges on color: the beiges, browns and reds that crowd the view when we look outside our windows. But neutrals can only take you so far. When your wardrobe appears to be a beige blob, burgundy is the solution — a color more fun to wear than black, white or brown yet just as easy to style. Burgundy compliments any tone and enriches any basic outfit while still embodying the autumnal spirit and paving the way for winter.

And of course, one cannot discuss fall fashion without touching on footwear. We’ve all heard the heavy heeled boots clicking through the paved campus walkways. A knee-high boot in all types of shapes and silhouettes is an investment well-worth it.But from Blundstones to Doc Martens, don’t count out an ankle boot. Loafers, which walk the line of office wear and casual fashion, will soon see their day on campus. And we all know how rainy New Haven gets in the fall, so why not harken back to 2005 Kate Moss and splurge on a rain boot? Fashion does not always have to sacrifice functionality.

Many of the aforementioned pieces come back into style every season — an ode to autumn itself. Seasonal dressing is one part functional and the other part fully aesthetic. So the best way to prepare for the cooler weather is to embrace all the cliche, gimmicky, Gilmore Girls aesthetics that we’ve come to associate with the season. By making it a little more romantic, it could become a little more bearable, too.

Contact ANGELINA KOVALCHUK at angelina.kovalchuk@ yale.edu.

ILLUSTRATION BY MIA ROSE KOHN

HOROSCOPES

This upcoming weekend, parents and family drama will be welcomed onto campus — some with open arms, and others with less enthusiasm. Regardless of whether your parents are visiting or not, you’ll still be caught in the middle of a family reunion you never signed up for.

Family dynamics are tough — especially when your schedule is already packed with midterms, essays and existential crises. As if you weren’t busy enough, now you have to deal with 5 million questions about what classes you’re taking, how your suitemates are doing and whether the dining hall food is edible. It’s not, and you’ve answered 3 million of these questions before.

The interrogation is relentless, yet somehow you will be expected to smile through the intrusion and give a brochure-worthy campus tour. At the end of the day, Family Weekend isn’t about school pride — it’s about survival. Let the games begin. The stars foretell an upcoming filial dilemma in your future:

Aries

You probably forgot it was Family Weekend until you started reading this. You’re welcome for the much-needed reminder. Your family might not be visiting, but your roommate’s parents definitely are. It’s time to clean your side of the room before they take an unexpected tour of the suite. They will judge your collection of two-week-old takeout boxes and the unidentifiable stench that your bed reeks of.

Taurus

Your family has been too excited about this upcoming weekend, but not to visit you. They don’t care to see their precious baby, their pride and joy, suffer through midterm season. Instead, they want to take advantage of the potential opportunity to witness a celebrity sighting in the wild jungle known as Cross Campus. When else will your mother have the chance to question Ben Affleck in person? She needs to know his opinion on who is most responsible for the Red Sox losing the ’86 World Series. If he says Bill Buckner, he is not a real fan.

Gemini

You have to hide your double life from your strict parents when they visit. They were so proud when you were accepted as a Biomedical Engineering major, and you don’t know how to tell them that you’ve given up on your med school dreams, replacing them with “Archeological Studies” and Indiana Jones fantasies. Your decline into the humanities coincides with your decline into partying and blacking out every weekend. Make sure to brief your suitemates on the situation so they can corroborate your fake life: you stay in each night, study faithfully for your soul-crushing biology exams, and you’ve never even seen a Solo cup.

Cancer

Your parents are not visiting this weekend, but that’s okay because you don’t have time for them anyway. Or, at least, that’s what you say to comfort yourself. In any case, your weekend plans will be uninterrupted, so you are free to cry alone while watching your favorite comfort movies, self-inserting into the plot of yet another found family trope. You’ll be fine. Really. Totally fine.

Leo

You’re afraid your dirty family secrets will be exposed this weekend when your parents come to visit. You’re a double legacy AND your parents are divorced? Pick a struggle. Fortunately, those around you already know because they can tell by your lack of empathy and constant state of ignorant bliss towards global conflicts. The pre-distressed Golden Goose sneakers you wear every day weren’t fooling anyone, babes.

Virgo

Your parents are not divorced, but they should be. It will become painfully obvious this weekend when they get into a nasty argument on Beinecke Plaza, debating whether they should eat at

Sally’s or Pepe’s for lunch. Your father prefers gooey heaps of mozzarella on top of chewy crust, but your mother demands a thinner, crispier, charred finish. Their marriage was doomed from the start. Luckily, their spousal issues are not your problem anymore since you’ve already moved out and you’ll be eating some of New Haven’s best pizza either way.

Libra

You’ve been dating this guy for a while now, and you’re ready to take your relationship to the next level: meeting the parents. Unfortunately, it looks like he is not as prepared for commitment as you are. Enjoy spending the entire weekend avoiding him and his family while trying to give your own parents an informative tour of campus. They will ask if every man they see on College Street is your “boyfriend.” Good luck trying to explain to them that modern-day romance is dead.

Scorpio

Do NOT fall into the trap of hooking up with the hot dad at ADPhi this weekend. His cologne may be intoxicating, but it’s just masking his midlife crisis. Or maybe it’s the copious amounts of tequila that are clouding your judgment. With alcohol consumption involved, that means no Zeta Zaddy™ for you either. Take a break from your usual party antics this weekend before you embarrass yourself in front of people who still think Duran Duran is the epitome of pop rock.

Sagittarius

You’re especially looking forward to Family Weekend because you’ll get a brief respite from dining hall food. You’re ready to be spoiled by your friend’s family, who will take you out to dinner and treat you lavishly to the gourmet restaurant of your dreams: Chili’s. You need to be chauffeured to the exclusive location far away in East Haven, and luckily, their parents have the perfect vehicle: a minivan that will fit all of your suitemates. Revel in the triple success of the night: good company, a free ride and of course, the Triple Dipper.

Capricorn

Your parents are excited to immerse themselves in Yale — and revisit their treasured days of youth — by living vicariously through your college experience this weekend. That includes meeting some of the cool people you spend your days with. The problem is you have no friends. Sure, you say hello to 10 different classmates you pass walking through Commons, but how many of them will actually sit down to have a meal with you? You can’t continue to pass off every wave as “networking.” Otherwise, your parents might start to realize that the only people eating with you are … them.

Aquarius

For you, family visits include your annoying siblings who will be tagging along all weekend, bothering you while you try to get work done and stealing your guest swipes only to complain about how gross the food is. They are right about the lack of flavor, but their presence is still a nuisance — especially when your parents start loudly bragging about your older sister’s robotics program at MIT. Don’t worry, though, because you have the whole weekend to convince your parents that you’re the prodigy instead, not just the “quirky” liberal arts sibling used for comic relief.

Pisces

Your situationship wants you to meet his parents, but he still won’t commit to you. He’s led you on for too long, and it’s time to get revenge for all of the gaslighting he put you through. Try out his techniques of lovebombing this weekend … not on him, but on his parents. Make them absolutely adore you, right before publicly dumping him inside of Sterling. The vaulted ceilings will echo your rejection like a Shakespearean tragedy. Iconic.

Contact KIVA BANK at kiva.bank@yale.edu.

PERSONAL ESSAY

When the apple clings to the tree

I built my identity around my parents. Honestly, it worked out pretty well.

// BY ELSPETH YEH

“You are the perfect synthesis of your parents.”

It was an August mid-morning, one of the last lazy late summer days before I departed for my second year of college. The humidity had crept into the quaint, colonial bistro where I sat across the table from the woman who quite possibly knows my soul most intimately: my high school English teacher.

Sabrina’s eyes danced over the lip of her mug as she sipped her cappuccino and watched her words settle into my heart. The air was so thick I had to swallow before I could respond.

“That is the best compliment I’ve ever received.”

It is not revelatory for a child to take after their parents. We have the term “black sheep” to communicate the exception that proves the rule:. progeny, by virtue of proximity and repeated interaction, almost invariably adopt attributes and tendencies from those who raise them.

So, hearing that I exhibit this similarity was not profound for its novelty. Rather, I realized in that moment that my entire life had been spent in pursuit of this perception. My worship of my parents had transformed into a teleological imperative to be as similar to them as possible. I felt that if I could emulate them in every way, I too could become a person who I believed truly made the world a better place.

The ethos of college is to amass the listless young adults struggling to self-actualize into one pseudo-reality and say: figure it out. Nobody knows who they are at nineteen, but it was not until this breakfast with Sabrina that I discovered my specific disorientation stemmed from the fact that the framework that had structured my childhood identity was one that no longer held up for a semi-independant adult.

Now that I don’t see my parents every day, it is increasingly harder to form myself perfectly into their image in the mirror every morning. Whispers of originality are beginning to seep through the cracks.

So I parse through my personality to find the parts of myself that are my parents that I took for granted and am terrified might begin to slip away.

The first phase of my imitation scheme was to appropriate their interests. Since my parents were necessarily models of successful 21st century adults, I decided that liking what they liked might guide me toward a comparable position.

My parents met singing together in their university’s glee club. Their love was born out of making music together, and they continue to sing in a professional vocal ensemble in the evenings after work. Growing up I would sit during concerts in the stiff wooden pews at the back of a church, mesmerized by their voices. I joined my elementary school choir the first year I was eligible.

For eight years of my life, singing in a traditional choir defined my identity. Between auditions, rehearsals, concerts, lessons and competitions, I cannot understate the amount of my life I dedicated to vocal performance. Yet my passion had a peculiar motivation. Whereas for so many making music is a method of self-expression, for me it was an exercise driven by the hope one day my voice would mature into my mother’s effortless soprano.

At times the ways they shaped me were much more deliberate. When Covid-19 kept me from

classes, my father enrolled me in a thorough education of film history, which he earnestly dubbed, “The Curriculum.” We watched a movie almost every night — or at least every week — for almost two years. Since the curriculum was my father’s original design, we began in 1984, the year when the films of his childhood started to hit the box office.

“The Curriculum” was not an education in movies, it was an education in my dad’s favorite movies, the ones he deemed seminal for

up for has had mixed results. It has both led me to the amazing, chaotic family of Yale Model UN and to muddy frat house yards.

For this reason, freedom is terrifying. With every new endeavor, I am no longer sure whether it will be to my benefit, since it has not been previously vetted by my parents. Where I can, I still cling onto those things they gave me: Marvel comics, true crime documentaries, live theater, and Billy Joel. This time, however, making the conscious decision that yes,

I don’t think my parents are perfect. I just think they’re the best.

his daughter to see. I was a dedicated student.

Yet the most emblematic instance of my usurpation of my parents’ interests is my unwavering and frankly overzealous support of the Boston Red Sox.

For my father, who grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts, baseball is an integral aspect of his identity and experiences. His closest friends to this day are those he travels with across America to visit ballparks, not a game night goes by that NESN doesn’t occupy our living room TV, and he keeps a physical scorebook in which he records every game he sees in person.

I remember toddling through Fenway Park at three years old. In one hand, my dad held the reused plastic Walgreens bag in which he kept that scorebook, in the other, he held mine. I had barely begun to write by the time I began to score.

Flipping back to 2010 reveals my crooked pencil etchings that refused to stay inside the boxes from the games my dad brought me along to. In one of these margins, I scribbled an impassioned testament: “I love Daddy.”

People often ask incredulously why baseball is my favorite sport. While I can provide an itemized, rigorous argument in its defense, I think my mother put it best:

“You really liked spending time with your father,” she said with a shrug, “doing things that you could see he really enjoyed doing with you.”

Baseball could never be boring if it meant sharing something with my dad.

It is a classic case of syllogism. I love my parents, when they hang out with me we do things they enjoy, therefore I love those things.

In retrospect, I begin to see how I received essentially all of my childhood passions and enterprises from my parents. I saw rejection of their interests as a rejection of their love, and perhaps mistakenly believed that saying “no,” meant we would no longer spend time together.

College has liberated me to explore a plethora of new pastimes that I doubt my parents would elect to participate in themselves. This novel capacity to choose my activities for myself, rather than happily accept whatever form of recreation my parents signed me

“this is for me,” as I continue into adulthood, truly embracing these traits as my own.

Even as I experiment, one thing is certain: I will always be a Red Sox fan.

Still, my dad was skeptical that our shared interests were anything exceptional. From his perspective, you’re always going to develop an affinity for what you’re surrounded by. However, he concedes other realms are not so easily influenced.

“In terms of personality, I don’t think you can really control that,” he said.

That may be so, but I nevertheless have gradually commandeered my parents’ ways of being. I internalized everything from their dispositions, to their world views, their politics and their mannerisms. There are small congruencies: my mom and my perpetual bad posture or our shared habit of collecting little things that bring us joy. There are more significant similarities, too.

“I think you have

growing up: “polite, helpful and kind.” She leads her life fully devoted to these ideals — truly, my mother is the kindest woman alive. There is not a moment of her day she does not spend caring for or worrying about others.

It is from her that I get my soft optimism in people’s inherent goodness. My mother’s profound empathy invests her so deeply in others’ well-being that a dead turtle in our yard is utterly devastating. I am always working to cultivate that in myself.

My mom is also a workaholic, and as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to understand that part of why my mom works so hard is to ensure that she fulfills her obligations to those around her. She strives for perfection in her work for her students’ benefit, not her own advantage.

As the valedictorian of her high school, my mother set a towering standard for my childhood self. I suffered from an entirely self-imposed mandate to live up to her achievements despite my parents’ constant reassurance that they in no way shared those expectations of me.

I think we are both tormented by a fear of disappointing others, which manifests in an anxious discipline when it comes to our responsibilities.

What my dad calls a “short fuse” I prefer to reframe as a low tolerance for bullshit.

I think this traces back to my father’s resolute convictions of how the world ought to be. He is highly opinionated, but also equally pragmatic, which means his opinions are usually correct. And he holds no reservations about expressing these opinions in the appropriate contexts.

a big heart,” my mom said when I asked which of their own traits they see in me.

“You get that from Mummy,” my dad added. When it came to what I inherited from him:

“You have a short fuse. That you got from me.”

My mom drilled into my brother and I the same mantra that guided her family

My father has always been the planner in my family, and my years spent answering his incessant questions has bestowed upon me an aptitude for logistics that often leaves me to be the one ensuring plans make it out of the group chat.

Further, his confidence in his understanding of the world makes winning an argument with him an impossibility. That’s not to say that I haven’t tried — and I can’t count the number of times I’ve laid in bed an hour later and realized that he was right. We are both fierce defenders of what we believe in. Where my mom taught me it’s ok for things to matter to me, my dad ensured I would never be ashamed to show that they matter. My father complements my mom’s sensitive idealism with his just sense of initiative. And they instilled both demeanours, with their accompanying advantages and disadvantages into their daughter.

I am not a carbon copy of either of my parents, but, as Sabrina framed it, their synthesis. It is the blessing and curse passed down from my parents that I simultaneously feel so strongly and so loudly. This sentimental intensity which has defined much of my life experience is one I can only attribute to being the offspring of two of the most vivid feelers I know. I wonder whether I am alone. I wonder if any other kid idolized their parents, loved them so fiercely that to be anyone other than them was equivalent to personal failure. I am sure I am not. I no longer sing in college. Maybe it’s a sign that I am becoming my own person. The thought is so terrifying it makes me want to peel off my skin. For my whole life, I have organized my identity around living up to my ideal of my parents. Without this structural framework, I am lost, an untethered and directionless ego with no method of affirming my value. I don’t think my parents are perfect. I just think they’re the best. Who wouldn’t want to be like that?

Contact ELSPETH YEH at elspeth.yeh@yale.edu

BY NELLIE KENNEY

ILLUSTRATION

The scenes that stick with us

MANGO HOURS // BY LEONARDO CHUNG

On summer nights back in Korea, we gather in the kitchen. The electric fan whirs weakly next to the window as it blows humid air, and our hand fans barely cool our cheeks. But we don’t mind the warmth.

My mom stands at the counter peeling mangoes. Every time she drops the skins into a bowl, they ring like a bell to signal a new slice is ready to be devoured.

My dad, hovering near the stove, pretends to help, but he’s really only waiting to steal the ripest slices. I sit at the table recounting my day to anyone who will listen.

In these hours, the entire family is focused on the cool, sweet mangoes. Time stands still. The bowl chimes as it fills with peels, the fan clicks like a metronome and the fruit disappears faster than my mom can slice it.

As the next mango is on the chopping block, we holler about stories I can’t remember anymore or lick mango juice off our chins in sultry silence. During my time in Korea, mango hours weren’t scheduled.

Now at college 5,000 miles away, I feel the absence of the mango hours. Sometimes, companionship is felt most after you leave it behind.

PLAYLISTS FROM HOME // BY MADISEN FINCH

Phoebe Bridgers and Ms. Lauryn Hill. The Marías and Fiona Apple. David Bowie. Billy Joel. That playlist was the framework of our lives.

Every Sunday night, my sister and I drove from Mom’s to Dad’s, then Dad’s to Mom’s. For once we didn’t need to discuss the transition, explain it to some outside audience, instead we could just listen to someone else’s story. They were a routine in an otherwise divorced life.

SUNDAY KIND OF LOVE // BY MARIEM IQBAL

Every Sunday, like clockwork, chai is brewing in my house. Well, technically it is every day, but Sundays are special. Bleary-eyed and barely awake, I traipse down the stairs into the kitchen at noon. My dad, finally home from a long week at work, stands vigil over the old gas stove that my mom swears is the secret to her good food. There’s music playing softly: “Bejeweled” by Taylor Swift — or as my dad, the world’s biggest undercover Swiftie, calls it “Shimmer.” Slid - ing across the wood floor in my Notorious RBG socks, I belt out the next line, breaking my dad from his watchful reverie. He turns around, smiles his mega-watt smile and sings along with me, using his ladle as a microphone.

ILLUSTRATION BY MAIA WILSON

Home was never an address. It wasn’t a place you could simply point to on a map — it was wherever my little sister was. Under the guise of listening to music, I built a stable home for us — with every song added, I crafted the keys that would unlock our front door. For my sister and I, home is not a four letter word. It’s a list of songs that soundtracked the eight minute drive between Mom and Dad. The moments driving in the rain, driving through the snow, driving with her are my moments of home.

When I’m 1,300 miles away, walking with my earbuds in, we are still walking together.

REVIEW

Fatal mistake. Anyone who’s made chai knows that it’s a dangerous game. You have to let it boil until the exact second before it bubbles out of the pot. It waits for the one moment you’re distracted and decides to somersault over the ledge faster than Simone Biles.

Eyes widening at our error, we rush to turn off the heat and salvage the chai still left in the pot, laughing all the while. Sipping my spoils of war while sunlight streams through the bay windows and bathes the scene in swathes of honey, I feel something settle in my stomach. I’m home.

WATCHING WORLDS // BY CHANEL MOHAMED

Something beautiful happens when you decide to take the long way. You replace the familiar with the unexpected. These moments of discovery are what make a place home.

The independent cinema, nestled in Forest Hills, Queens, was the sight of this discovery for me. An art house theater with vintage charm and six screening rooms where I empathized with Jo March watching “Little Women” and cried watching “The Holdovers.” There are newer and bigger movie theaters in Forest Hills, but I always find myself coming to the Kew Gardens Cinema, strolling along the streets that wind through this enclave of the city. Along Austin Street, there is extra charm in the small moments where the tree-lined streets dappled with English cottages are the backdrop to the long conversations I have with my mom on the walk there and watching the leaves fall as I turn past an old pub. Suburban Queens has a certain rare calm. This cinema, always one of my favorite parts of home, is a fragment of the mosaic of my memories and experiences. Whether it is the walk down the garden’s tree-lined streets or sitting in screening room two, here I am reminded to keep an eye out for the next piece of the picture I call home.

Ratatouille: A Family Recipe

A review of the childhood classic.

// BY LILLY PRICE

My favorite icebreaker question has always been “What was your favorite movie growing up?” Although preferences change with the times, I think the movies we watch in our formative years truly shape us: they represent our family’s values, instill in us a moral compass and have possibly inspired many years of Halloween costumes. When I’m asked the question in return, I proudly respond “Ratatouille!”

Many years before I could properly place the vowels in the word “ratatouille,” I was mesmerized by the coppery kitchen, cowered in fear when Remy lost his family in the sewer tunnel, and bobbed my pigtails to “Le Festin” as the closing credits rolled. Sitting beside me each time I watched it — always eager to point out Thomas Keller’s cameo — was my dad. Often, we would rise from the movie to cook together, grabbing “Everyday Cooking” by Jacques Pépin from our bookshelf. We were inspired by Pépin and Gusteau’s shared mantra, “everyone can cook.” I’d groan with exasperation when he’d show me again his trick for peeling a clove of garlic, or the ingredients in a béchamel. “I know!” I’d huff, but I share his rejection of the

host, Alton Brown, calls it.

Rewatching my childhood favorites, I find my reactions split into two camps: either I’m horrified that I once enjoyed them, or I’m enveloped in nostalgia, noticing with glee the innuendos I missed or drawing connections to larger cultural or political phenomena. “Ratatouille” falls squarely into the second category. It isn’t just nostalgic because of my childhood associations; the movie captures the push-and-pull of family dynamics that play out in our everyday lives. “Ratatouille” represents the complex relationships that arise from both the genealogical and cultural definitions of family: Remy, the rat protagonist, feels torn between his passion for cooking and his father’s expectations that he continue in the family’s traditions. Conversely, Alfredo Linguini, the trash boy extraordinaire, feels the immense pressure of having the late, renowned Chef Gusteau as his father, despite not knowing their relation until after his death.

Although it is a children’s movie, “Ratatouille” reveals — in classic Pixar fashion — something deeply profound about what it means to care for someone

through the evolution of Remy’s connection to his family and colony. His unorthodox culinary ambitions feel at odds with his father’s fear-driven priority for the safety of their colony. Humans, a group his father views as fundamentally opposed to the survival of their kind, enchant him. But Remy puts his adoration for cooking on the back burner, using his mastery of the culinary senses to identify rat poison in food, to his father’s delight. Remy is separated from his colony and has a stint working at the restaurant of his idol Chef Gusteau. Later in the film, when he reconnects with his dad, the first thing his father says is, “Finding someone to replace you as poison checker has been a disaster!” Rather than being intrinsically valued as a member of the family, he is valued only for his utility. The colony then jumps at the opportunity to use Remy’s access to a fully stocked pantry. He is reluctant, but succumbs. While he can follow his dreams in the human world, he will always be out of place and detested. The promise of belonging draws him to abuse his access to human resources. His father says, “The world we live in belongs to the enemy. We must live carefully.” Remy is doubtful, naive about humans’

do and we’ll get it done!” Remy reconciles his desire to create and innovate with his father’s emphasis on safety and tradition. Together with his colony, and the help of Linguini, Remy opens a bistro with a rat section serving garbage-based culinary innovations, which fuse Remy’s appreciation for the art of cooking with his nature as a rat.

Alfredo Linguini has a parallel arc of self-discovery. He must fail again and again, with the immense pressure of his heritage looming over him, to find his own ambitions and talents. When he eventually rises to success, with Remy at the reins, he credits his lineage. Remy sulks at this, as he has been the mastermind behind Linguini’s culinary triumphs. Linguini’s relationship to Gusteau becomes a point of pride only insofar as he feels he can live up to it. When confiding in Remy’s colony, Linguini admits that he’s “never disappointed anyone before because nobody’s ever expected anything of me.”

deep-

seated hatred, which his father is all too familiar with. He sees humans as a force for creation. It’s only when Remy’s family sees his cooking save Linguini’s restaurant that they come to understand his passion and rally behind him. In this moment, his father changes his tune, finally recognizing Remy as a son and saying, “We’re not cooks, but we are family. You tell us what to

The final, most subtle family portrayal is that of Anton Ego, the lanky, hardened critic and skeptic of Gusteau’s open-minded principles. He has sharp taste buds and a scathing baseline for his reviews. Remy’s final bid to impress him, with the titular dish ratatouille, draws concern from other chefs. When Ego bites into the “peasant food,” his head snaps to attention and his eyes widen: cue flashback. He is transported to his mother’s kitchen, freshly bleeding from a juvenile bike crash, as his mother wipes his tears and spoons the stew onto his awaiting plate. The nostalgia factor alone softens him, showing that no matter how cynical or jaded we become, the comfort of family remains. His willful exterior crumbles in an instant, revealing his enduring longing for care.

“Ratatouille” persists as a cultural staple nearly two decades later. The film owes its status as a childhood classic to its universal nature: within these three distinct portrayals of family, there is something for everyone. I’ve certainly never learned of my deceased father’s status as a celebrity chef; my father is alive and well, and not a celebrity in any sense. But I have felt the pressure of following in family footsteps. I feel drawn to create and add to the world as I transition to this new stage of my life. And, like Anton Ego, I feel the tug of home across the chasm of 3,000 miles, the longing for the familiar, for my ratatouille.

Contact LILLY PRICE at lilly.price@yale.edu.