Commencement Special Issue by Yale Daily News

Mia Rose Kohn, Illustrations Editor

COMMENCEMENT

SECTION

SECTION C: SPORTS

C2 — Transfer Portal Scramble? No Sweat for Yale Football

C3 — Recaps: Men’s Squash, Men’s Tennis and More

C4 — Recaps: Volleyball, Women’s Hockey and More

C5 — Recaps: Gymnastics, Women’s Lacrosse and More

WEATHER

All commencement ceremonies are scheduled to take place regardless of weather conditions. In the unlikely event of a cancellation due to severe weather, an official notice will be posted on the university’s commencement website.

In the case of inclement weather, Yale advises guests to prepare by bringing rain ponchos rather than umbrellas.

Any guest can watch the commencement ceremony live stream in the Humanities Quadrangle at 320 York Street, Rooms L01 and L02. All ceremonies will be stream on the Yale 2025 website: Yale2025.yale.edu .

Friday, May 16

11:00a.m — Middle Eastern & North African Graduation Celebration Brunch: Middle Eastern & North African Cultural Community Suite, 305 Crown Street

3:00p.m. — Asian Graduates

Ceremony: Omni New Haven Hotel Grand Ballroom. 155 Temple Street

6:00p.m. — Yale Symphony Orchestra Commencement Concert: Battell Chapel, 400 College Street

8:00p.m. — Yale Dramat

Commencement Musical: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee: University Theatre, 222 York Street

Saturday, May 17

2:00p.m. — Service of Remembrance: Dwight Chapel, 67 High Street. This service is o ered for those who gather this weekend at Yale to celebrate a graduation, yet for whom the circle of celebration is incomplete. It is a chance to remember and include those who have died.

2:00p.m. — Yale Dramat Commencement Musical: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee: University Theatre, 222 York Street

3:00p.m. — Yale College Senior Reception: Commons Dining Hall, 168 Grove Street. President McInnis will welcome Yale College seniors, their families, and their guests for a reception in Commons Dining Hall, Schwarzman Center.

4:00p.m. — Afro American Cultural Center Stoling Celebration: Woolsey Hall, 500 College Street

8:00p.m. — Yale Glee Club Commencement Concert: Sprague Hall, 470 College Street

8:00p.m. — Yale Dramat Commencement Musical: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee: University Theatre, 222 York Street

Sunday, May 18

10:00a.m. — Baccalaureate Ceremony: Old Campus, 344 College Street. This one-hour ceremony features an address by President McInnis, as well as remarks by the Dean of Yale College.

10:30a.m. — University Church in Yale Commencement Worship: Marquand Chapel, 409 Prospect Street

2:00p.m. — Class Day: Old Campus, 344 College Street. Class Day, a Yale College tradition, includes the awarding of academic, artistic, and athletic prizes; the celebration of undergraduates; and an address by a notable speaker.

3:45p.m. — Receptions in the Residential Colleges. Receptions are held after Class Day in the residential colleges for Yale College seniors.

7:00p.m. — Yale Concert Band Twilight Concert: Old Campus, 344 College Street.

8:00p.m. — Yale Dramat Commencement Musical: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee: University Theatre, 222 York Street

8:00p.m. — Whi enpoofs and Whim ‘n Rhythm Commencement Concert: Woolsey Hall, 500 College Street Monday, May 19, 2025

Monday, May 19

10:30a.m. — University Commencement: Old Campus, 344 College Street. All university degrees are formally conferred during the Commencement ceremony on Old Campus. During the ceremony, the dean of Yale College and deans of the Graduate and professional schools formally present their approved candidates to the president. The ceremony lasts approximately 1 hour 15 minutes. Tickets are required to enter Old Campus.

12:00p.m. — Residential College Diploma Ceremonies. Diploma ceremonies in each of the residential colleges take place immediately after university Commencement on Monday. These ceremonies last approximately two hours, and an optional Commencement luncheon follows in each college.

3:30p.m. — All School of Engineering Reception: Sterling Courtyard and Lower Becton Courtyard, 1 Prospect Street

4:30p.m. — Joint ROTC Commissioning Ceremony: Battell Chapel, 400 College Street

COVID Limits Recede; Mental Health Resources Swell

B9 — COVID Rules Receded; Mental Health Resources Swelled

B10 — Growing up Under President Trump, Again

SECTION D: WEEKEND

D2 — Class Day, Dr. Seuss and the Hats of Yale College

D3 — A Tribute to Yale Brunches

D4 What’s to Come: Commencement Horoscopes

D5 —

C6 — Recaps: Heavyweight Crew, Sailing and More

C7 — Men’s Basketball’s Winningest Class

PARKING AND TRANSPORTATION

University lots will be open to the public from 5:00 p.m. on Friday, May 16 through 12:00 p.m. on Tuesday, May 20. A full list of lots can be found on Yale’s Commencement website.

To access Old Campus, guests should enter via Whitman Gate or Dwight Gate on High Street; or Cheney Ives Gate or Phelps Gate on College Street.

At the end of the commencement ceremony on Monday, May 19, shuttle service will be provided to transport guests from Phelps Gate on College Street to a number of residential colleges and schoolspecific celebrations. Each shuttle route will be marked by a distinct, color-coded feather ﬂag to assist attendees in identifying the correct bus to their destination.

The shuttle lines and their corresponding stops are as follows:

Green Line: Divinity School

Yellow Line: School of the Environment

Orange Line: Medical School

Pink Line: School of Architecture, School of Art, David Ge !en School of Drama, Pierson College, Davenport College, Ezra Stiles College, Morse College, Timothy Dwight College and Silliman College

Purple Line: Pauli Murray College, Benjamin Franklin College, Jackson School of Global

Mia Rose Kohn, Illustrations Editor

OPINION

The world’s most expensive concert is coming to an end and the audience doesn’t know what to do. Some have been packing their bags. Others have been taking photos of what they will miss. All have been waiting for the silence, the absolute stillness that follows the very last movement, for which no one feels ready. All are afraid because that silence means something: the show is over. It’s dark out. We’ve got to ﬁnd the car.

Yale really has felt like a fouryear-long concert. I’ve watched students on the streets and chefs in the dining halls sing Lauryn Hill and George Frideric Handel. Walking to my dorm at night in the rain, I’ve heard violins in WLH, and while trying to fall asleep, I’ve heard from across the street the winds of the Newberry Organ. A hundred times I’ve stepped to the beat of the bells of Harkness Tower, and a hundred times I’ve witnessed spontaneous piano concertos in all the places pianos reside — classrooms, art galleries, butteries.

It’s no surprise, then, that at least twice a week, I’ve felt at Yale a familiar but ﬂeeting sensation. It’s the same feeling I got when I ﬁrst listened to Gustav Holst’s “Jupiter”

GUEST COLUMNIST

JUSTIN CROSBY

All this beautiful noise

in fourth grade band, and the same feeling I got when the girl from Unorthojocks sang “Billie Jean” in SSS 114. I’ve heard people call it “chills.” It’s a feeling of limitlessness. It’s a happiness so overwhelming that one might explode from it. Before college, I thought only music could induce it, but I’ve felt it at Yale the times we got dizzy from laughter, during the game nights the courtyard could hear, in that cultural criticism class we all loved.

It’s the sense that life has become impossibly wonderful. And it’s the fear that it might never get this good again. During those moments, I’ve tried to press pause, to slow time, to hold onto that feeling forever, and of course that’s never worked. Until now, that’s been alright. The promise of any long concert is that the chills will come back. Slow movements might come — that science credit, that bad election, the ﬁrst semester of junior year — but then they go. The momentum rebounds. Until it can’t anymore. The silence is coming and we all know what it means: there will be no more chills at this concert because this concert will be no more. For this reason, graduation has felt

STAFF COLUMNIST

ARIANE DE GENNARO

In defense of

At the end of my first year, I wrote an opinion piece on a whim.

“In Defense of the Western Canon” was the culmination of my time in Directed Studies and my reﬂection on the value of studying Western history in a rapidly changing present. At the time, publishing an article was quite a bold thing for me to do. I had grown up shy, hesitant to share my thoughts even among the classmates I had known for years. Now, I was professing my opinion for all the world to see — or at least, the readership of the Yale Daily News. In publishing such a piece, I was consenting to any number of responses, from praise, to criticism, to outrage.

To my surprise, I received many positive responses from Yale students and alumni alike. One message led to the beginning of a relationship with one of my most important mentors at Yale. Writing for the News ended up being one of my most meaningful experiences in college. Through my column, I not only honed my writing, but I practiced the skill of expressing even my most unpopular opinions. Now, with my time at Yale coming to an end, I am all the more grateful for this lesson than nearly anything else. In an increasingly polarized world, it can feel harder than ever to deviate from the ideological mainstream. Freedom of speech has long been a hot-button issue on college campuses. For at least the past decade, the Right has heavily criticized academic institutions for fostering environments perceived as hostile to conservative views. More recently, the Left has invoked freedom of speech to defend campus protests opposing the war in Gaza. In the past year, responses to these protests, debates over institutional neutrality and the presidential administration’s actions against Yale’s peer institutions have all brought questions of free expression to the forefront of our shared discourse. There is broad agreement that free expression is essential to a liberal arts education, but there is little consensus on what it should look like. Regardless of what stances Yale takes, students will always be able to speak up, to agree or disagree with the institutions around them. We can help shape the intellectual climate of our campus ourselves, fostering diversity of thought from the ground up. Protest is one way to do so, but so is writing. The Yale Daily News o!ers undergraduates an opportunity typically reserved for professional journalists or public intellectuals. The chance to publish and be widely read should not be taken for granted, and I would urge all students to make use of this platform.

deathlike. I tried writing a “thank you for college” note to my parents and found myself thanking them for life. I’ve gone on very sad goodbye walks during which everything said could’ve come from an offbrand dirge. “And so it ends,” they muttered, “but at least it happened.”

As though watching the reel that ﬂashes before one’s dying eyes, I’ve broadcast in my mind reruns of chills past: the night we sang karaoke and played “Vienna” on the keyboard while a strange fellow in the corner kept shouting “woooo,” the time we played manhunt in the yard of that house in Weston.

That’s done now. People say “life goes on,” and I know it does, but I’m not so easily assuaged. I’ve seen what getting older looks like. I don’t want to be chronically bored, tired, in pain. I don’t want to spend my nights watching television and listening to bad theme songs. I’m a little worried that life has peaked, that I’ll never ﬁnd a better way to spend Halloween than huddled with everyone in Woolsey Hall, dressed in costume, listening to the Yale Symphony Orchestra.

Nevertheless a small piece of me knows that there will be more concerts, just different ones with different chills. A friend from my

something

But the spirit of opinion writing goes beyond publication. There are countless ways to embody the values of thoughtful, opinionated discourse. It begins with simply sharing your opinions, listening to those of others, and being willing to disagree. It means everything from contributing a hot take on Shakespeare in seminar to hearing out the person who, you discover, voted for the presidential candidate that you despised. It means listening to the person who supported last year’s encampments and the person who hated them. It means listening to them all the way through, before deciding whether their position is wrong, illogical, or morally reprehensible.

I’m not asking you to agree with everyone you meet or to stop becoming upset over beliefs you ﬁnd indefensible. I’m asking you to talk, to write and to listen. The antidote to ideological conformity, on any side of the political spectrum, is to remain ever-critical, self-assured and radically empathetic in how we engage with ideas and each other. It is because opinion writing embodies all of these traits that I have so valued it. Over the years, I have touched on everything from the controversial, to the silly, to the sentimental. I have commented on October 7 and the presidential election, a cappella, my love of Christmas and reﬂections on entering my senior year.

Now, as I write my last piece as an undergrad, I feel certain it will not be my last ever — maybe not even my last in the News. Commencement is not the end — it is, literally and etymologically, a new beginning, the so-called start of our real adult lives. Any skills I have learned from writing for the News are ones that I take with me into my real adult career. With any luck, my column may even help me professionally — already, it has been a subject of discussion in various interviews during my time at Yale.

But all of that is in the future, over the horizon that is my graduation ceremony. For now, I am simply grateful that I had the opportunity to write and to be read. I encourage faculty, students and alums alike to take advantage of these pages, of this platform that remains available to the entire Yale community. What a privilege it is to be a part of this intellectual world, now and forever. These are the conversations that can ﬁll lifetimes.

ARIANE DE GENNARO is a senior in Branford College. Her column “For Country, For Yale” provides “pragmatic and sometimes provocative perspectives on relevant issues in Yale and American life.” Contact her at ariane.degennaro@ yale.edu.

poetry class just went to the United Kingdom to meet his ﬁrst nephew, and an alumna pen-pal of mine just went to DC to see the wedding of her former roommate’s son. So that small piece of me has bought kitchen supplies, has acquired a jar for making kombucha, has made the next bucket list — the Derby, the caves, the county fairs. But the other pieces of me still want to hold on, want an encore. During this past season of final exams, I overheard someone in the Silliman common room telling his friend, “Earlier, I played ‘Ode to Joy’ in my headphones, full volume, and I ran around a lecture hall in WLH.” He went on, “I stood on the desk and moved my arms like I was conducting.” All his friend asked was, “So you’ve gone crazy?” This is precisely what I don’t want to leave, all this brilliant craziness. All this beautiful noise.

After that conversation ended, and after the quiet resumed, a man came in and played the piano. For half an hour, he ﬁlled the room with a certain verve, with “Moonlight Sonata,” with chills. Then he stopped. Before his performance, the silence in the room was unnoticeable, but now that we were reminded of what life could

GUEST COLUMNIST ASHER ELLIS

feel like, the silence we were left with was absolutely imposing. It was near paralyzing. We stayed, and felt sad, and eventually got up and left.

The ending of the concert that is Yale will be more consequential. Life after graduation will probably feel, at least initially, quiet and inadequate and lonely. It’s bound to; our time here has set the bar for future concerts very high. We can only hope that that’s a good thing, hope that we are better o! for knowing just how impossibly wonderful life can get, hope that someday we will achieve elsewhere a similar frequency of chills.

But that’s regarding the long term. What are we to do in this impending silence? I read this in the news a while ago, and I’ve very slowly realized its moral lesson: at a concert in Boston some years back, at the end of Mozart’s “Masonic Funeral Music,” when the silence fell and the audience didn’t know what to do, a nonverbal boy said aloud what none could articulate, said aloud the only thing left to say: wow.

JUSTIN CROSBY is a senior in Silliman College studying Political Science. He can be reached at justin. crosby@yale.edu .

Wearing the uniform at Yale

Every Thursday at 6:00 a.m., while most of campus is still asleep, I’m at Payne Whitney for physical training, known as PT. By 9:10, I’ve logged an hour-long workout and another 100 minutes of military training. Afterward, I stay in uniform all day — class to class, meeting to meeting. No skateboard. No jaywalking. No earbuds in. Most days, I’m just like any other student. But the moment the uniform goes on, I’m reminded — and so is everyone else — that I’m slightly di!erent. This is the double identity ROTC cadets at Yale carry. On one hand, I’m a normal undergrad. But I’m also contracted to become a military officer. Yale celebrates academic freedom and encourages exploration; military training demands discipline and adherence to standards. We rarely talk about this tension explicitly. Only once a semester, we briefly review guidelines about balancing academic freedom with the responsibilities of wearing the uniform. Navigating these two worlds can be complicated, but it’s precisely this tension — this constant negotiation — that makes my time at Yale uniquely valuable.

Unlike my classmates, I already know my employer after graduation. I don’t scramble for internships or chase job offers. I won’t choose my ﬁrst city. Oddly, it feels liberating. I can spend my summers on work that genuinely interests me rather than padding my résumé. I can take risks others won’t. My career path is set in one sense, yet out of my control and uncertain in another.

I HAVE ACADEMIC FREEDOM, BUT I ALSO HAVE A COMMISSIONIN-WAITING. THE “VIEWS ARE MY OWN” DISCLAIMER ONLY GOES SO FAR.

Wearing the uniform also makes me a de facto ambassador. I’m not here to recruit. I don’t want to be a walking press release. But every comment I make — in class, online, or passing through Cross Campus — reﬂects on the Air Force, fairly or not. I have academic freedom, but I also have a commission-in-waiting. The

“views are my own” disclaimer only goes so far. You can see Yale’s military heritage just by walking around campus. On Old Campus, Nathan Hale, a member of the class of 1773 and arguably America’s ﬁrst spy, stands immortalized above his famous words: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” Nearly 19,000 Yalies served in World War II, including President George H. W. Bush ’48. That legacy is a big part of why I applied: Yale is a place where service matters, where I can train as a cadet without living inside a service-academy bubble.

But Yale’s relationship with the military hasn’t always been easy. In 1969, amid protests during the Vietnam War, the faculty voted to strip ROTC courses of academic credit. By 1972, all ROTC programs were gone. It took four decades before ROTC returned in 2012, after “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed. Yale is now one of the few places where you can get a top-tier liberal arts education and train on campus to become an o cer.

Tensions still exist today. Last spring, during protests over the Gaza war on Beinecke Plaza, someone tore down the American flag while others in the crowd cheered. Out of caution, our cadre told us to switch into civilian clothes after our military training sessions for a few weeks. That felt like a low point, although some faculty who’ve been at Yale for decades reminded me that Yale’s relationship with the military has seen many ups and downs — and it was once much worse. In the early 1970s, cadets had to commission in private, and enlisted sta! were sometimes spat on while walking around campus. We’re nowhere near that now.

Today’s reality is surprisingly mundane. Most students are either supportive, indifferent, or just curious about my military path. “Why did you join the Air Force?” has become the default conversation starter — not asked in judgment but as a simple icebreaker. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I’ve noticed a rise in student interest around national security and defense. Perhaps it’s selection bias in my friend group, but the shift feels real. More students approach me with questions, and several of my nonROTC friends have pivoted their careers towards defense tech or policy. I’m not naïve — for every student who wants to “support the mission,” there’s someone with a “Books Not Bombs” pin or someone who silently disapproves of ROTC’s

I’M BIASED, BUT I BELIEVE YALE IS THE BEST PLACE IN AMERICA TO EARN A COMMISSION.

presence at Yale. But that’s not just ﬁne — it’s necessary. Studying alongside people who question the military’s purpose makes us better cadets and better humans.

Yale’s administration has been unambiguously supportive. When President McInnis took office, we continued our annual President’s Review tradition, marching for her just as we did for President Salovey. Last fall, the newly created Office of Veteran and Military A !airs hosted Yale’s ﬁrst-ever Veterans Day reception, where they handed out Yale sweatshirts with the American ﬂag, now regularly spotted around campus. They organize barbecues connecting ROTC cadets with veterans, art gallery tours, study breaks, mentorship chats and more. Sometimes the attention feels uncomfortable, like unearned recognition for service we haven’t yet provided. But the message is clear: we belong here.

I’m biased, but I believe Yale is the best place in America to earn a commission. The dual identity — immersed fully in Yale’s liberal arts environment and the structured world of military training — creates an experience impossible to replicate elsewhere. We cadets bring a fresh military perspective to campus, reminding fellow students that service members are just regular people pursuing a particular career path. And we, in turn, beneﬁt enormously from studying alongside students from around the globe, including those who don’t understand or even disagree with our career choices. It’s in these exchanges that real growth happens. Whether you’re left or right, military-family or ﬁrst-generation service, Yale will challenge you — and you’ll graduate with both a diploma and a gold bar. You’ll thank me later.

ASHER ELLIS is a senior in Ezra Stiles College studying Applied Mathematics. After Yale, Asher will be attending graduate school and serving as an Air Force officer. He can be reached at asher.ellis@aya.yale.edu .

GUEST COLUMNIST

PETER TRAN

GUEST COLUMNIST

TREVOR MACKAY

Reviving Yale and America Seniors, have faith in the journey ahead

Rümeysa Öztürk, Mahmoud Khalil, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Merwil Gutiérrez, Badar Suri Khan, and Mohsen Mahdawi: these names and faces of the many who have been illegally, unjustly and unceremoniously detained have been seared into my mind in recent months. Some were involved in pro-Palestine protests; others were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. As of this writing, only Rümeysa and Mohsen have been released from detention. What were their crimes that they should be snatched from the street and whisked away?

This is not the America that I was taught to love. This is certainly not the promised land my family ﬂed to as refugees from Vietnam. Least of all, the neverending cruelties the current White House administration dishes out to ordinary working class Americans and our undocumented neighbors run counter to the Catholic faith I was raised in. My faith does not allow me to look away — nor does my Yale education.

“Justice, justice you shall pursue,” goes the famous line in Deuteronomy. The Lord Himself commands me to work in whatever way I can to advance goodness in this world. Who am I to dare refuse His call? This dearly cherished commandment forms the bedrock of the type of person I strive to become. As I prepare to graduate and take my leave from Yale, I can only hope that my privileged education can be used to help bring light into this often cold, unforgiving world.

The road ahead will be anything but easy. Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas centuries ago wrote about the four idols of money, power, pleasure and fame that each take us further and further away from God. In today’s world, we have at our fingertips ample access to the many social media inﬂuencers, celebrities and politicians who ﬂaunt these idols while most of us could only dream of such luxuries. Closer to home, many of our own are hell-bent on using Yale as a springboard to climb the social ladder in pursuit of any one of these idols.

It’s not that we should deny ourselves the simple pleasures money can buy. Moreover, not all who have power and fame wield them for selﬁsh reasons. What I’m trying to say is that the blind and unabashed pursuit of these idols hampers any attempt at answering the fundamental question: “Am I not made for more?”

Several years ago, Father Ryan Lerner of St. Thomas More gave a

homily in which he invited us to contemplate what kind of legacy we want to leave behind. When our obituaries are written, would we want our loved ones to harp on about the wealth and prestige we had accumulated or would we want to be remembered by the lives we have touched? To the little ones yet to be born, I hope to be an ancestor that they can be proud of.

Whether you come from a faith tradition or want nothing to do with religion, I encourage the class of 2025 to find a moment of solitude and think hard about what your unique talents can o!er to the world. No one is obligated to reach the heights of Malala Yousafzai, Greta Thunberg or any other young visionary. Yet we all have something to pitch in. After all, when we all received those acceptance letters all those years ago, Yale made no mistake in choosing us. There was something in us that Yale recognized even when we didn’t see it. Imagine the combined e!ort of humanity in pursuing “Lux et Veritas” and what that could do for our topsyturvy world.

As I graduate, I still have doubts about whether I myself am up to this task. I am not musically gifted so that I may soothe the brokenhearted with my melodies. I certainly have no aptitude for anything STEM-related in which I could help engineer healthier cities or contribute to cutting-edge biomedical research. People say that my writing isn’t half that bad, so that’s all I have going for me. Yet, the funny thing about faith is trusting that the universe recognizes our sincerity and moves accordingly to have all of our actions ﬁt like interlocking pieces in the grand scheme of the Creator.

So yes, even as our climate turns into our worst enemy and far-right governments globally collude to hasten the apocalypse, I doggedly hold onto revolutionary optimism. It’s an active commitment to the hope that a more just world is possible through solidarity and action within and between communities. Certainly, my Yale education has prepared me to take on this task. Let us lean on and have empathy for each other. Let us move mountains out of love for one another. “Lux et Veritas” — light and truth — may not seem so far o! after all.

PETER TRAN is a senior in Davenport College studying anthropology. He can be reached at peter.tran@yale.edu.

GUEST COLUMNIST

AYA OCHIAI

The name “Yale” was once synonymous with American statesmanship, intellectual rigor and cultural pride. Today, Yale’s reputation stands diminished in the eyes of the public. The erosion of public trust confronting our grand university arises from a drift toward intellectual abstractions and ideological utopianism divorced from the historically rooted traditions of the United States.

At Yale, academic departments elevate only those who challenge conventional truths and Western ideals. These departments have lost serious scholars of the classics, military history and the West, and chosen to replace them with scholars who reject the very validity of our great heritage. We must recommit our institution to engaging thoughtfully with our civilization’s founding beliefs and history, rather than recklessly deconstructing them and casting students into the wide maw of “progress,” expecting they will somehow emerge fulfilled and morally prepared to be engaged citizens.

A university and a society cannot live in self-hatred. Yale should remember that it exists not outside of time or a nation but within a civilizational context — one grounded in Judeo-Christian, classical and constitutional traditions. Yale must serve our civilization, not posture against it.

Intellectual inquiry and the pedagogy of the academy are, by nature, conservative. How can we even begin to learn without looking to the knowledge of the past? Our current refusal to acknowledge this truth has fostered serious errors in thinking in the academy. Edmund Burke captured the essence of this tragedy by lamenting the collapse of reverence for tradition and inherited wisdom in favor of “sophisters, economists, and calculators.” Abstract rationalism, divorced from historical continuity, has come to undermine the very foundations of our culture.

Restoring trust in Yale and recovering it as the great American institution that it should be demands a restoration of that dignity and reverence for the past that once defined its intellectual mission. In this way, intellectual conservatism not only teaches respect and gratitude for our civilizational inheritance, but sustains both society and scholarship into the future.Yale dooms itself and our society to obsolescence if it does not.

Yale worships so-called “rationalism” — embracing systems of thought prioritizing abstraction, critique, and

Tulips of past, present, and future

Recently, a friend asked me, “Would ﬁrst-year you be proud of you now?” The question made me cry. Of course she would be proud of me. Nearly four years ago, I arrived in a city and a state I’d never been to before. I came from a place wildly different from Yale, but so did most of us. I wasn’t naive or inexperienced. There’s a lot I learned in my hometown that I couldn’t’ve at Yale and places like it. I graduated from an incredibly average American high school in rural-ish Washington, where football players and cheerleaders reigned, and most kids didn’t go to college, much less fancy schools like Yale. Back home, I learned to be a person outside of academic and career achievements, something I fear that many Yalies didn’t get to do before, or even during, college.

At Yale, I got to be a kid again. The ﬁrst snow day, I had a snowball ﬁght with friends and held a boy’s hand. I didn’t worry about how I would drive to work or take my mom to the hospital like I had during snow days the year before.

I still worried and cared for my family, but I couldn’t be there to take responsibility anymore. I cried a lot, missing home and feeling insecure. I embroidered a blanket that represented a tree by the observatory that I often cried under. The falling leaves made me miss the evergreens of the Paciﬁc Northwest. I cried walking down Science Hill after my ﬁrst physics exam. I struggled in school and still do.

I told stories about my ruralish hometown to mostly urban and suburban Yalies: lawn mower races at the Berry Dairy Days, working at McDonald’s, the grocery store’s trash compactor, Friday night football concessions, selfserve honor-system roadside corn stands. I shared about the annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival and that my hometown grows the most tulips in the U.S. Every year at Yale, I’ve chosen a day in April, the first day that feels like spring, to be Tulip Day, a day on which I buy a bucketful of tulips from the grocery store and hand them out to whoever I see that

day, whether I know them or not. First year, I did Tulip Day because I missed home so damn much and I wanted to feel close to it here. The years since, I’ve done Tulip Day because I wanted to share a piece of my hometown, a piece of my heart, with friends and community at Yale. It’s become my favorite day of the year. Yale indulged me and allowed me four years to think about the world and my place in it. Classes, dining halls, and butteries gave me the tools, time, and space to think, talk, and learn. I learned about the ways and places where others grew up and reﬂected on my own background. My experiences at Yale expanded the limits of my world and contextualized the places I’d been before. I admit I can be self-centered and perceive the world through main character syndrome, in that I narrativize the seasons of my life, but I think Yale encourages it. So, what have I learned in college? All the cliche things — the world is bigger and more complicated than I ever knew —

deconstruction above all others. This rationalist drift is evident in the Yale Art History Department’s decision to eliminate its renowned European art history survey course because of the prominence of white, male artists. And in the English Department, students can graduate without ever reading Shakespeare or Milton. These are not isolated instances of ideology; they reﬂect a deeper commitment to abstract, progressive, rationalist systems that claim to know better than the moral and intellectual authority of hundreds of years of civilizational inheritance.

Today, Yale is rightfully held in suspicion and distrust for its shameful discarding of the past, as evidenced by Yale’s negative relationship with its own namesake. Elihu Yale was once honored as a foundational benefactor whose generosity enabled the existence of the college we hold dear. Today, he has been relegated to near-silence in official discourse. Despite never actually owning slaves, his portrait was subjected to controversy regarding even being displayed at the Yale Center for British Art. At the same time, his legacy has been quietly minimized in o cial narratives.

Rather than teach complexity and moral conflict honestly, Yale has chosen widespread erasure. This is not isolated; 2017 saw Yale renaming Calhoun College in an act of moral sanitization rather than educational engagement. Historical plaques have disappeared from view, and the living, active commemoration of its alumni that shaped early American civil life is now only found in the statues and plaques that do remain. For the rare commemorations of Yale and America’s past that do exist, they are heavily qualified with apologies and minimization. These acts reflect an institutional posture of disavowal and a disowning of the very history that has given Yale its identity and prominence. A renewed emphasis on practical knowledge, historical consciousness and meaningful application of tradition in Yale’s curriculum and campus life would reconnect the academy to the public and endear our campus to the nation it once served. The survival of Directed Studies is both remarkable and shocking — but it should not be the exception. As a former student in the program, I can attest to its intellectual rigor and formative power as one of the few serious institutional commitments to engaging with the Western canon.

and friends make most things better. I wish I didn’t know some of the things I know now. New Haven landlords taught me that in a big city, landlords can do nearly whatever they want. I learned that if you’re competent and helpful, you’ll be taken advantage of and that institutions that pretend to care about you, often don’t. I worked for the federal government and almost committed to working there my whole career. Now, I’m real glad I chose not to. Our stories don’t fit neatly into marketable TV series with nicely wrapped up narratives and happy ever afters. It’s all messy and fucked up and beautiful.

Today is commencement — most of life is ahead but it’s the close of a chapter. I know my next step — I’m going to be a mechanical engineer working on wind turbines for GE Vernova — and I’m okay with what comes after being a mystery. When I left for college, my dad made me a poster that includes a map and pictures of Skagit Valley, along with photos of my family around the edges. It’s hung above my desk everywhere I’ve lived. When I left the valley, I thought I’d be back as soon as I graduated. It wasn’t until late sophomore year that I realized that I could end up anywhere in the country, doing anything.

We’ve been blessed with opportunities few others are

But there is no guarantee of Directed Studies’ continuation. Every year, it must defend its existence against criticism that it is “too Eurocentric,” “too traditional” or not “diverse” enough. E !orts have been made to create a parallel or alternative curriculum decoupled from Western intellectual history. Programs like Directed Studies were once assumed to be central to a liberal education. Now, it feels like a contested outlier at Yale. My time at Yale let me personally experience this tension between intellectual tradition and institutional culture. In Directed Studies, I discussed and debated the great works of the West. Outside of the classroom, in my role as president of the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program and chairman of the Tory Party, I saw how the broader Yale community and environment treats tradition, patriotism and cultural inheritance as relics to be dismantled, rather than starting points for serious inquiry.

A coherent cultural foundation is crucial to the survival of all that Yale and America hold dear: liberty, justice, equality and republicanism. True intellectual diversity and academic freedom thrive within this tradition — not outside of it. Yale has inherited a moral and civilizational legacy forged in the blood, sweat and sacrifice of generations. We should not be ashamed of that history — nor of our nation’s. It is this disconnect that lies at the root of Yale’s public credibility crisis. Yale must stop treating its deepest traditions as liabilities and begin to once more champion them as strengths.

Yale once cultivated leadership devoted to the common good, as embodied beautifully in: “For God, for Country, and for Yale.” Today, Yale positions itself as a global institution training global citizens. It has distanced itself from national obligations and diluted its commitment to the cultural and moral framework that once grounded its public legitimacy. Yale has severed itself from the nation, despite the fact that this relationship once served Yale and America alike. Is it any wonder that our American system falters, just as our university loses its standing? We must reclaim and restore Yale as the American university.

TREVOR MACKAY is a senior in Timothy Dwight College studying history. He plans to work at McKinsey & Company in Washington after graduation. He can be reached at trevor.mackay@ aya.yale.edu.

afforded. Windows into new worlds have been unshuttered. And while we have potential for incredible academic and career futures, I hope we can also find grounding and meaning beyond shiny achievements and certain visions of success.

In her first speech to us TD firstyears, the iconic Dean Mahurin said, “Go to class and take the class with you.” I’ve taken that to mean, be true to yourself, but absorb and consider the ideas and people around you. I’ve learned to take the opportunities that feel honest and meaningful to me while finding joy in community, in relationships, and in giving out tulips on the first day that feels like spring.

Some part of me is still just a girl from Skagit Valley. This crazy, stressful, exciting place has changed me, but it’s also made me sure of who I’ve always been.

“Would ﬁrst-year you be proud of you now?” Yes, she would. No matter where the ﬁrst-year versions of ourselves imagined we might be now, I’d think they’d all be proud of us today.

AYA OCHIAI is a senior in Timothy Dwight College double majoring in Environmental Studies and Engineering Sciences (Mechanical). She plans to work for GE Vernova in South Carolina after graduation. She can be reached at aya.ochiai@yale.edu.

“The last thing the endoscopist asks me before I go under is my ethnicity. Jewish, I say. Already it sounds like a joke out of my father’s old orange jokebook.

Ah, the endoscopist says. Crohn’s is more prevalent in Ashkenazi Jews.

Whoa, I protest. I’m only half Ashkenazi; I’m Moroccan on my mom’s side.

GUEST COLUMNIST

NETANEL SCHWARTZ

Of time

tell them. I do not say that it is the ﬁrst time in my life that I’ve yet to impress, that I’m lost.

My nephew is five days old when I hold him in my arms. He looks up at me with the blue eyes of my late father. At the synagogue my brother explains that his name — Shimshon, Samson in Hebrew — means “little sun.”

take away from this place that’s permanent, the voice says.

It makes no di!erence in the end, half-Moroccan is not protection enough. I tell the joke to my friend who is waiting for me outside the procedure room. I also tell him how angry I am at myself: I could have found out two years ago if I had just done the tests the doctor ordered. But I didn’t do the tests then, for the same reason I’ve avoided them this year: it’s March. When in my last months of school was I going to justify taking two days to, as my specialist calls it, “get scoped?”

I am responsible for you, little man, I whisper. You are worth it. Little sun. I think, if I am to be responsible for him I will have to be responsible for myself, too.

* The infusion center is on the fourth floor of Yale Health. My girlfriend insists she come with me for the ﬁrst dose. We eat bagels ﬁrst. It is the kind of kindness you can’t pay back. Any questions? The nurse asks. What if I need to go to the bathroom in the middle?

OPINION Will the Son of Man find faith at Yale?

The joke, the real joke, is that it takes more than two days. The diagnosis comes after two weeks of visits to Yale Health, after which there are only more. Twice a week for a month I stand outside Linsly-Chittenden Hall and decide which class to skip, the 1:00 p.m. or the 2:30. They’re both English classes, I tell myself: skip the one you’ve done less of the reading for. Then one Wednesday I am at the door to LC, not having done the reading for either. That is when the problems start.

* I meet with my thesis advisor over tea every week of the semester. This week he can’t do tea and asks to meet in his o ce instead. I’ve barely touched my project, I say, I’ll have to turn in work I’m not proud of. He lets me talk. He is quiet but sharp and has always looked out for me. When I’ve exhausted myself he does not take over, does not try to change the facts. Don’t beat yourself up over the project, he says. There will be time to write the rest of it. You will. Then he points to the kettle on the shelf behind me, asks me to press the switch. So there is tea.

* It is almost May, two weeks before the end of the term. My brother and sister-in-law in London have a baby boy. I fly to meet him. How am I managing?

My family asks. Managing, I say. I have to ﬁnd a place to stay for my second and third infusions over the summer, then a job with insurance that will cover the injections to follow indeﬁnitely. Worse are the inquiries after the fellowships I didn’t win: the Cambridge ones? The poetry one? It’ll be good for me to try my hand at real life, I

“You see her?” The nurse asks my girlfriend, pointing to the IV pole where my medication hangs in an amber bag. “This is gonna be his second girl while he’s here. Everywhere he goes she goes too.”

We laugh. “She’s not supposed to know,” I whisper to the nurse. I think, my girlfriend has done more for me than two or three people could hope to do for a fourth.

* My papers are due. The Renaissance paper has not shaped up to the masterpiece I wanted. Neither will the Old English.

Only my paper on Robert Frost’s A Masque of Reason — his parody of the book of Job — comes easily.

Frost’s revision, I argue, is to shift Job’s complaint against God from theological to aesthetic grounds: it isn’t about life being fair, it’s about life exhibiting a form we can appreciate. If all the world’s a stage, Job asks, then why does the drama so rarely hang together?

I run into a student of mine in Sterling nave. I was his TA for Hebrew in the fall. He asks me how it feels to be graduating.

I regurgitate the wisdom that is proffered to us at the end of college: good things are not supposed to last forever. I shake his hand, ask him to keep in touch. And the voice of self-pity whispers to me the new word I carry around: chronic. It enters English by way of Latin and French, from the Greek “khronikos,” or “of time.” It should be a neutral word, just as “sonic” means “of sound” and “lyric” means “of the lyre.” But in English we reserve “chronic” for diseases that persist, that stick and poke and ache. Chronic, Crohn’s: it’s in the bones of those words, isn’t it? There’s at least one thing you’ll

Back in the reading room Frost’s Job goes on arguing with Frost’s God. As in the original, Frost’s God fails to explain himself. Finally Job concludes that whatever sense we can make out of life will not be beyond chaos but in chaos itself, in the shapes that chaos takes: “Yet I suppose what seems to us confusion / Is not confusion, but the form of forms, / The serpent’s tail stuck down the serpent’s throat, / Which is the symbol of eternity / And also of the way all things come round, / Or of how rays return upon themselves. . .” Not confusion but the form of forms. At the end of college the illusion of order that brought us here is over, no matter how secure the job or fellowship to follow. We perform ceremonies like commencement to mark the time whose passing we did not control, to give order to the confusion we feel at the base of our experience. Still, some things do ease. I finish the papers. I find a way to keep my specialist without Yale insurance. I close on a sublet for my treatments. In exchange I do not get to say goodbye to everyone I want to, or feel like a serious scholar, or find the job I want with the insurance I need. There isn’t time. There won’t be. Next week my mother and brother are coming from England, along with cousins, friends, professors. My father will look on from his own place; probably he will make an awkward and endearing toast. We will toast to my accomplishments, yes, but I will more readily celebrate the experiences I didn’t curate, the relationships I couldn’t have predicted. I will celebrate that I came to Yale in part to escape my Orthodox upbringing, only to find myself writing my last papers on Jews in English literature. I will celebrate the faculty who have supported me and the best friend I found here who picked me up from my colonoscopy and called me every day afterward. That I and my friends and my friends’ friends find ourselves surrounded this way, that we stumble and are caught — that is cause enough for celebration. It is not that aches alone can be of time, that good things must end. It is that more good things like these must come.

NETANEL SCHWARTZ is a senior in Timothy Dwight College studying English with a certificate in Hebrew. He can be reached at netanel.schwartz@yale.edu .

“When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” [1]

The same might be asked by any prospective student about Yale College. The faith of generations past glows everywhere at this institution, originally founded in 1701 to train ministers for the Congregational Church. It is seen in the Commencement Weekend exercises, the residential college namesakes, the alma mater and coat of arms. This light reaches everywhere, everywhere except perhaps, the students. Where then, and in what state, might one ﬁnd religious life on campus today?

In 1968, at the height of the enormous religious, cultural, and social upheavals tearing through the West and the United States in particular, Pope Benedict XVI, then known as Father Ratzinger, wrote his classic spiritual work, “Introduction to Christianity.”

In the book, Ratzinger explains that both the believer and unbeliever are mutually haunted by each other’s existence; the one’s inescapability from the other creates a persistent, mutual self-doubt in both men’s beliefs, preventing either from being too shut in himself and becoming the “avenue for communication” between the two.

How insightful he was.

On campus today, religion, for both the believer and unbeliever, finds its clearest expression in this uncomfortable tension.

The mutual inescapability of the two sides — their constant, unavoidable dialogue — deﬁnes the faith experience at Yale.

I am a practicing Catholic: I arrived at Yale in August 2021 as one and will leave as one four years later. When I first stepped on campus, I came with many preconceived notions about religious life here, almost all negative. I imagined the bulk of my fellow classmates as a great mass of atheistic temptation threatening my soul and my education, spiritual hazards to be avoided during my time of study. But as the months and years passed, my self-constructed fortress, the intentional shutting in of myself, could not, and did not hold in the face of the reality of the unbeliever.

As the token religious friend in many circles, my nonreligious friends and classmates increasingly would ask me questions about doctrine, rituals, and moral or political positions; they came to me when they wanted to know what Catholics thought about this or that topic. I began to have ever deeper conversations, and arguments, with them about the nature of faith and religion. They would challenge me directly.

“Why do you think you’re right and everyone else is wrong?”

“Why does religion matter if I’m already happy without it?” And I would respond with equal force.

“Why are you so sure that this is all that there is?” “What do you stand to lose if you’re wrong?”

Yet, just as my faith perhaps sparked some of their doubt, their doubt, too, led to greater reflection on my faith. From these encounters, I realized these people were not the obstacles or temptations I had so made them out to be, but rather individuals just like me, whose different backgrounds and experiences led them to their current

convictions. In fact, some of the reasons I gave for my belief were the very same reasons for their unbelief: the dogmatic claims, the counter-intuitive paradoxes, the hierarchical structure. My futile attempts to close o! this avenue for communication had ultimately revealed my own spiritual failings: my pride and my lack of charity towards others.

Also, much to my surprise, most of those whom I met at Yale were not hostile to religion, not the atheist caricatures celebrating the death of God that I had envisioned when I first arrived on campus. Rather, many showed genuine curiosity, even openness, toward exploring religious faith. Several friends who had never before been to church have asked to join me for Sunday mass, to check out for themselves the faith which I spoke and argued about so passionately. And in the local Catholic churches, I have witnessed the extraordinary growth of student conversions, reversions, baptisms, and confirmations over the last four years.

The search for that mysterious, unfamiliar Other — which calls out from beyond ourselves — is undeniably alive at Yale. While it is seen most explicitly in the vibrant religious communities and student groups, a quieter spirituality also stirs beneath the surface, an undercurrent of latent faith perhaps moved by the inescapable specter of the believer floating above it.

I cannot help but see the rhetoric on issues such as the environment, the popularity of courses like “The Good Life,” and the widespread embrace of meditation and mindfulness practices as signals of an unspoken yet profound desire for a deeper, more spiritual life. All of this gives me great hope that Father Ratzinger remains correct today: that the believer and unbeliever are simply unable to ignore each other for very long — they exist not as isolated entities, but as mutually dependent participants in an enriching and enduring faith conversation.

Saint Mary’s Church sits prominently on Hillhouse Avenue, its noon bells marking the rhythm of university life. Every day, students head to and from Science Hill, passing Saint Mary’s along the way. They exchange glances with people, like me, entering and leaving daily mass. It is in precisely interactions like this — brief moments of shared curiosity and acknowledgement — that one most clearly sees this religious dynamic, with all its complexities and contradictions, as it exists on campus today.

To the casual observer, Yale may appear as just another secular institution, where religion faded away generations ago, never to return. But beneath the surface, something more nuanced, more mysterious, is unfolding. So yes, when the Son of Man returns, He will indeed find faith at Yale; it just might not look quite like what anyone expects.

[1] see Luke 18:8

EVAN KWONG is a senior in Ezra Stiles College studying History. He can be reached at evan.kwong@yale.edu.

Mia Rose Kohn, Illustrations Editor

TODAY’S NEWS

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to deliver 2025 Class Day address

BY CHRIS TILLEN AND BAALA SHAKYA STAFF REPORTERS

Former New Zealand Prime Min-

ister Jacinda Ardern will take the stage on Old Campus to deliver the Yale College Class Day address to the graduating class of 2025.

Ardern, who served as New Zealand’s 40th prime minister from 2017 to 2023, led her country through a series of global and domestic challenges — namely, the Christchurch mosque shootings, a volcanic eruption and the COVID19 pandemic. In the University’s announcement, Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis cited Ardern as “someone who embodies empathy and excellence, character and commitment, innovation and inclusion.”

“Ms. Ardern speaks so candidly about how she has faced her own doubts and struggles, and I expect that her story will resonate deeply,” Lewis wrote to the News.

Class Day, which typically takes place on the Sunday before University commencement, will be held this year on May 18 — starting at 2 p.m. on Old Campus — and is open to the public. Seniors will begin the day with a baccalaureate service featuring remarks from University leaders before gathering for a celebratory brunch.

Previous Class Day speakers have included television journalist Fareed Zakaria ’86, actor Tom Hanks and then-U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden. The 2024 Class Day Address was delivered by United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy MED ’03 SOM ’03.

“It’s deeply humbling to be this year’s Class Day speaker,” Ardern said in the announcement, “not only for the privilege of spending time with a new generation of leaders who will shape the future of their communities and countries — but because they will also change what leadership itself will look like.”

To many New Zealanders on campus, who praised her leadership back home, Ardern’s selection carries personal meaning.

Violette Perry ’25 told the News that as a Maori woman graduating from Yale, she felt incredibly proud and moved that Ardern was provided such an honor.

“She represents so much of what I love about Aotearoa (New Zealand) — the idea that even from a small nation, we can lead with global impact, integrity, and heart,” Perry wrote. “Her presence here reminds me that the values we carry from home — humility, community, and care — have a place on the world stage.”

During her time in o ce, Ardern became internationally known for her swift response to the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks, which resulted in a nationwide ban on military-style semi-automatic firearms. She was also credited with helping New Zealand achieve one of the lowest COVID-19 death rates among developed nations through early lockdowns and public health coordination.

Ruby Barton ’26, also from New Zealand, noted how Ardern has “redefined what it means to be a powerful and e!ective leader.”

Echoing Barton, Stephen Liu ’27, a fellow Kiwi, emphasized how

Ardern turned moments of tragedy into opportunities for broader global impact.

Michael Yao ’27 recalled being in high school when the Christchurch mosque attacks happened.

“None of us thought anything like that could happen in New Zealand,” said Yao. “I tuned into Dame Jacinda’s address right after I came home, and her leadership helped the country pull closer together in the aftermath.”

Eva Hofmans ’25, who met Ardern in high school while receiving the Prime Minister’s Scholarship, recalled the former prime minister’s warmth and accessibility.

Hofmans added that she plans to recreate the photo she took with Ardern at the scholarship ceremony in 2019, now ﬁve years later, on Yale’s Old Campus.

“Despite being our Prime Minister, she remained personable and down to earth,” Hofmans said. “She broke barriers — leading a country as a young woman, having a child in

YALE NEWS

o ce — and showed that you don’t need to pause your life to lead.”

Perry said that she “resonates” with Ardern’s authenticity — a trait she believes is especially important for a speech addressed to Yalies who have experienced impostor syndrome and questioned whether they belong.

Te Maia Wiki ’28, on the other hand, cited critiques of Ardern’s ability to follow through on legislation, especially to address a growing housing crisis.

Wiki, however, noted that as an American, she believes “the bar for elected leaders at this level is low” and that as a Native American, “the bar for recognizing Indigenous communities by elected leaders at that level is even lower.”

Wiki added that she is appreciative of Ardern “paving the way” for other women leaders worldwide.

Other students echoed the significance of choosing a global leader amidst political unrest within the U.S.

Josh Ellis ’25, though excited to hear Ardern speak, speculated that her pick “won’t upset Yale’s spot in the fragile political climate of today,” as she is from outside the U.S. political sphere.

Ellis furthered that picking a more decisive speaker would play into the discourse surrounding whether Yale should be taking more of a public political stance, mirroring statements made by Princeton and Harvard.

Most recently, Harvard sued the Trump administration over cuts to federal funding. Princeton’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, has also vowed to fight the Trump administration’s attacks. Earlier, Yale President Maurie McInnis told the News she prefers working behind the scenes rather than making public statements.

Risha Chakraborty ’25 described this pick as a “strong and subtle” message from the institution. She noted that the pick for Ardern is in line with the support of safe expression and academic freedom.

“A lot of seniors were hoping we’d get a speaker who would be cognizant of the world we’re stepping into and give us genuine inspiration and advice,” Chakraborty wrote.

Ardern was previously selected as Harvard’s 2022 commencement speaker. In her speech, she warned of rising political polarization and called for a renewed commitment to democratic dialogue.

“One of the Māori kupu (words) for a leader or chief is rangatira — someone who weaves people together,” Perry wrote to the News. “Jacinda embodies this concept so beautifully. She leads not by commanding others, but by connecting them — by empowering people to move, act, and lead together. That spirit of collective leadership, of binding people through purpose and compassion, is something I believe will deeply inspire our graduating class.” Yale’s 2025 Class Day will be held on May 18.

Contact CHRIS TILLEN at chris.tillen@yale.edu and BAALA SHAKYA at baala.shakya@yale.edu.

Commencement musical points graduates back to childhood

BY ISABELLA SANCHEZ STAFF REPORTER

The Yale Dramatic Association’s 2025 commencement musical,

“The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” will be showing at the University Theatre this weekend from Friday through Sunday.

The musical features themes of growing up, facing failure and friendship — combining humor with nostalgia for childhood.

“It’s very fun, it’s very silly, it’s very heartwarming, and I love it dearly,” Emiliano Cáceres Manzano ’26, the director of the play, said.

The musical centers on an elementary school spelling bee, with six children competing for the championship. Between spelling words, each character shares sweet stories about their lives.

The show is produced entirely in the period between the end of the semester and commencement

weekend. Producer Rhayna Poulin ’25 called it “a musical in ten days.”

“Spelling Bee” will continue to evolve after opening night, since it involves improvisation and audience participation.

Each night, four different audience members are selected to be part of the show as competitors in the spelling bee. Audience members who are interested in volunteering will have the chance to fill out an application when they enter the theater. From these applications, the volunteers will be selected just before the play begins.

“The script is written in such a way that there are all of these ﬂexible elements, but there’s also a very inherent structure to the show,” Cáceres Manzano said. “So really, rehearsing is a lot about ﬁguring out how to maintain that balance and spontaneity and keeping the show moving.”

Since the audience spellers add an element of unpredictability to each show, the performers must be able to react quickly to anything an audience member could do or say — all while staying in character. Improvisation has been essential to rehearsals, where different members of the production team have stood in for the audience spellers.

Hannah Kurczeski ’26 — who plays Schwarzy, one of the children competing in the bee — described the improvisation as a “fun challenge.”

“It’s sort of like adopting a new set of instincts,” she said. Kurczeski said her character is the most well-read and politically conscious among the young spellers. At one point in the show, Kurczeski must improvise a political speech based on current events. Kurczeski said that her goal is to deliver a slightly di!erent speech every night.

To help the performers develop the right instincts, Manzano said he encouraged them to bring something from their own childhood memories. Whether it’s a certain mannerism or a piece of a costume, Manzano said he wants the actors to “give a gift from their younger selves to their characters.”

That childlike playfulness makes its way into the show’s comedy, which Kurczeski said brings an exciting “combination of humor and heart.” Kurczeski added that “you will not be able to leave the show without laughing your face o!.”

The inner child even shines through in the few adult characters in the play.

For example, the proctor of the spelling bee, Rona Lisa Peretti, played by Nneka Moweta ’27, won the spelling bee herself when she was a child.

“Even though she is one of the adults, she still has that inner child in her, and you see that in the competitiveness and the spiritedness that she has for the spelling bee,” Moweta told the News.

That sense of nostalgia permeates the play — perhaps an apt emotion for commencement weekend. Other themes, such as facing the unknown and deﬁning oneself, also ﬁt seniors’ transition out of college.

“I think the graduating seniors, much like the characters in the spelling bee, are facing pivotal moments in their lives, moments where they’re really defining themselves,” Cáceres Manzano said. Poulin, the producer of the musical and a graduating senior herself, has worked on every commencement musical since her ﬁrst year.

She said that Yale students, like the children competing in the spelling bee, think a lot about material success.

“I think that a lot of your four years of college, now looking back on it, especially at Yale, is learning that there is more to life outside of the big trophy at the end of the day,” Poulin said. “Maybe the moments that you have with other people are probably what you’re going to remember more than getting a good grade on an exam.”

The University Theatre is located at 222 York St.

Contact ISABELLA SANCHEZ at isabella.sanchez@yale.edu.

Jacinda Ardern, who served as New Zealand’s 40th prime minister from 2017 to 2023, will join commencement celebrations as Yale’s 2025 Class Day speaker.

COURTESY OF ELORA SPARNICHT

The commencement musical will run from May 16 to 18 at the University Theatre. In a unique twist, four audience volunteers will be selected each night to be part of the play.as Yale’s 2025 Class Day speaker.

Drag and debt take center stage in Yale Rep’s electrifying season ﬁnale

BY CAMERON NYE STAFF REPORTER

For a ﬁerce three weeks, Mara Vélez Meléndez’s “Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members” has dazzled and educated audiences, tucking lessons about self-determination between exhilarating drag shows and bureaucratic assassinations.

As the ﬁnal production of the Yale Repertory Theatre’s 2024-25 season, Meléndez’s work leaves theatergoers craving more of the show’s queer exuberance — underpinned by its Puerto Rican pulse to reﬂect the pent-up frustration of an entire country in one person.

The show follows Lolita, a young transgender woman and pseudo-vigilante who seeks justice for her beloved homeland of Puerto Rico. Donning a two-piece work suit with three stripes on the vest — in homage to the Puerto Rican nationalist Lolita Lebrón — Lolita inﬁltrates the Wall Street o ce of the Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board for Puerto Rico to kill the seven board members responsible for managing the island’s debt. The debt exceeded $70 billion when the board was created in 2016 by the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act, or PROMESA. Along the way, a flamboyant receptionist transforms the space into a drag-fueled stage where each board member is embodied and symbolically “assassinated.” As Lolita navigates this surreal journey, she is forced to reckon with identity, liberation and the cycles of colonial power.

The set evokes a cold, sterile corporate office: an elevated platform framed by stark white walls, furnished only with a minimalist desk and a staircase descending to a lower level. Below, a wall of glowing security monitors dominates the space — an eerie nod to the surveillance

and government scrutiny faced by generations of Puerto Rican activists under the watchful eye of agencies like the CIA. Lolita is played by the immensely talented Christine Carmela, whose performance is so heartfelt and refined that it is difficult to imagine anyone else in the role. From her somber opening monologue detailing her father’s ﬁrearm to an ABBA lip sync, Carmela’s acting caliber shines for the entire time she is on stage. Hysterical and emotional at times while dry and sarcastic at others, the

passionate character is embodied in Carmela’s commitment to the role.

Aside from magnetic emotional highs, Carmela’s talent lies in the way she can fill time. During the inevitable downtime required for numerous quick changes, Carmela was left on stage with the duty of keeping the audience engaged before the story could progress further. She never leaves a dull moment, whether by rummaging through drawers while a soulless bossa nova drones on, hitting a piña

colada-flavored vape or defiantly dismantling the PROMESA sign on the wall. Complementing Carmela is Samora la Perdida, the equally talented actor playing a receptionist-turned-drag queen whose elegance and charisma are only rivaled by drag legends like Tommie Ross, Alexis Mateo and Nina Flowers. Embodying seven different drag personas — from the materialistic mosaic of “Andrea Bags” to the authentic Puerto Rican loverboy Carlos — in just under two hours is no easy feat. La Perdida’s emotional depth and growth over the course of the show are poignant and unexpectedly tender, revealing the quiet strength beneath and the vulnerability behind the bravado and glamour. While the pageantry and spectacle are entertaining, the meat of la Perdida’s performance lies in their journey to explore the receptionist’s identity. By the end of the show, the receptionist has transformed from an ambiguous figure in an identity crisis to a confident nonbinary drag queen who takes the name Lolita after the woman who inspired her.

Between the opulent entrances and the back-andforth quips lies a genuine lesson for audiences who may be ignorant of the plight of the Puerto Rican people. Alongside the high-energy drag performances are important conversations regarding decolonization and identity: Would statehood equal

liberation? What about the complex role faith plays in one’s life?

Those lessons matter, especially in a political climate where trans people are routinely villainized. Such captivating performances explaining the challenges faced by Puerto Ricans left space for more. There should have been more development of the relationship between Lolita’s Puerto Rican and trans identities. While the receptionist’s character arc felt ﬂeshed out, Lolita’s was less satisfying by comparison.

The true standouts of the production were la Perdida’s lightning-fast costume team. Pulling off such intricate and varied transformations in a matter of seconds was nothing short of extraordinary. Each look emerged flawless, a polished showcase made possible by behind-the-scenes artistry that made clear the team’s precision, creativity and sheer talent.

“Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members” runs until May 17, offering audiences a few more chances to witness a bold, hilarious, and deeply moving journey. By spotlighting queer Puerto Rican voices, the show is a powerful statement on traditionally underrepresented populations — unapologetic in its politics, rich in its emotions and unforgettable in its theatricality.

The Yale Repertory Theatre is located at 1120 Chapel St. Contact CAMERON NYE at cameron.nye@yale.edu .

BY ADA PERLMAN STAFF REPORTER

With the recent death of Pope Francis, the papal conclave took 33 hours to select Cardinal Robert Prevost, who will be known as Pope Leo XIV, to lead the papacy.

Stephen McNulty ’25, who is involved with Catholic life at Yale, wrote to the News that it is “so strange” to have an American pope.

“To hear the pope of all people speaking perfect English in a Midwestern accent will take some real time to get used to. I’ll be able to understand Pope Leo without being filtered through translation — that is, with a type of direct understanding that English-speakers never had,” McNulty wrote to the News.

McNulty stands as one of many Yale community members shocked at the choice of an American pope. Others reﬂected on their hopes for the new pope’s stances on inclusivity in the church.

Carlos Eire, a history and religious studies professor at Yale, wrote to the News that he was further stunned by the speed at which Leo XIV was chosen.

“I also laughed out loud simultaneously, for the possibility of an American being elected had been preventively ruled out by all the so-called ‘experts,’” wrote Eire.

Eire suggested that one of the reasons Pope Leo was chosen is that he is not a “full-blown American.” Despite being born in Chicago and graduating from Villanova University, Pope Leo is a Peruvian citizen who spent over two decades in Peru as a missionary and as a bishop.

Eire also emphasized Pope Leo’s multilingual capabilities as a potential reason for his selection. Pope Leo is fluent in some of the most widely spoken languages in the Catholic world: Spanish, English and Italian.

Both Eire and McNulty discussed the various implications that the election of Pope Leo will have on the world political order.

While Pope Francis left behind a progressive political legacy, such as permitting priests to bless gay couples, Leo’s stance on political topics remains to be seen.

“I hope and pray that Francis’s efforts to build a more inclusive Church — with doors open to

everyone — will be picked up and developed concretely, not just with pastoral gestures of warmness, but with tangible action to build a Church that can better serve those who it has too often left on the margins,” McNulty who leads the LGBTQ ministry at St. Thomas More, Yale’s center for Catholic students, said.

Eire stated that Leo has a “clear record of displeasing folks” who lie on the left of the political spectrum regarding issues like abortion and samesex unions. He theorized that this might be due to “cognitive dissonance” that some American liberals have about Catholic consistency on respect for life.

Though Leo criticized Vance and Trump for their immigration policies before his selection as pope, Eire wrote that “it’s very difficult and risky to make any predictions” about how he will act politically during his papacy.

William Barber II, who is not Catholic but leads the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at the Divinity School, echoed hopes for the Pope in a recent New York Times article. Barber emphasized the importance of

the Pope’s role in the world even beyond the Catholic community.

“We’re in a moment when the moral forces of the world and religious forces of the world have a deep responsibility to say it doesn’t have to be this way,” said Barber.

Beyond hopes for the Pope to be a moral voice in the world, McNulty emphasized his desire to be “challenged” by Pope Leo in the coming years.

“I hope to be challenged by Pope Leo to live in closer service to Christ alongside his Church. I hope he is challenged by the whole People of God, too -- after all, to worship a triune God is to worship the God of dialogue,” wrote McNulty.

Pope Leo XIV was elected on May 8.

Contact ADA PERLMAN at ada.perlman@yale.edu

COURTESY OF YALE REPERTORY THEATRE

“Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members” explores trans identity, liberation and Puerto Rico’s colonial wounds.

COURTESY OF YALE REPERTORY THEATRE

CRISIS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Yale avoids targeted federal funding cuts

BY ASHER BOISKIN AND ISOBEL MCCLURE STAFF REPORTERS

Four months into the Trump administration’s tenure, Yale remains one of two Ivy League universities that have not faced targeted cuts to their federal funding.

While the Trump administration has cited a range of justiﬁcations for cutting grants to other universities — such as unchecked antisemitism, failures to maintain campus order and a perceived lack of intellectual diversity — Yale has largely avoided confrontation. Although the University has not faced targeted attacks to its federal funding, the Department of Education opened an investigation into antisemitism at Yale on March 19 in response to a discrimination complaint ﬁled in April 2024 by the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Anti-Defamation League.

In early March, the administration froze $400 million in funding to Columbia University after releasing a set of demands for institutional reforms that ask Columbia to enforce disciplinary policies, combat antisemitism and change its admissions standards. The same month, the administration froze $175 million in funds to the University of Pennsylvania over its policies regarding transgender people’s participation in sports. On April 14, it halted $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to Harvard University, citing its refusal to reform programs with alleged records of antisemitism, discontinue diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and promote more “viewpoint” diversity in academic departments.

Meanwhile, Yale has drawn occasional scrutiny and rare praise from figures aligned with the Trump administration over its handling of pro-Palestinian protests. Simultaneously, University President Maurie McInnis has responded to criticism of higher education by ramping up the University’s lobbying e!orts in Washington and limiting her own public statements.

University response to student protest draws “cautious” praise

In response to an April 22 pro-Palestinian demonstration in which student protesters briefly set up eight tents on Beinecke Plaza in anticipation of a visit by a farright Israeli minister, the University ordered the protest to disperse and referred multiple student partici-

pants to the Executive Committee for disciplinary review. A University spokesperson told the News that the student participants are facing disciplinary action for “failing to comply” with Yale’s policies on use of outdoor spaces.

The following day, the University revoked the club registration status of Yalies4Palestine, a group that promoted the event on social media, citing the alleged violations of campus policy at the demonstration.

On April 24, the federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism — which has been investigating universities for antisemitism and potential civil rights violations — released a statement expressing that its members felt “cautiously encouraged by Yale’s actions” in response to the April 22 protest.

In a video taken at the brief encampment that garnered millions of views on X, a Jewish student claimed that “Jewish students aren’t allowed to walk through Yale’s campus anymore!” Harmeet Dhillon — assistant attorney general for the civil rights division at the Justice Department — tweeted about the incident, writing that the department “is tracking the concerning activities at Yale, and is in touch with a!ected students.”

The House Education Committee was also quick to also comment on the demonstration. In one post on X, the committee wrote, “Schools like Yale need to follow the law and protect all students—including Jewish students.” In another, posted after Yalies4Palestine’s registration status was revoked, it stated, “Yalies4Palestine brazenly violated campus rules in an attempt to occupy space on Yale’s campus. Schools across the U.S. continue to permit this kind of out-of-control behavior with virtually no consequences to those who break the rules.”

Republican Reps. Elise Stefanik and Virginia Foxx, who formerly chaired the House Education Committee during the committee’s hearings on campus antisemitism last year, have both called to defund elite universities over pro-Palestinian campus protests. In late March, Stefanik credited herself for Yale Law School’s termination of Helyeh Doutaghi, a research scholar who has faced allegations that she was a part of a designated terrorist organization. Similarly, Republican Sen. Mike Lee described pro-Palestinian protesters as “woke fascists.” But while

Lee has repeatedly targeted Harvard — calling it “a mess,” declaring that “we shouldn’t be funding it” and, as recently as April 20, urging the government to not “give Harvard another dime” — he has made no such defunding calls for Yale.

Yale limits public statements, increases lobbying in Washington Amid threats to higher education from the Trump administration, McInnis told the News in January that she would prioritize working with legislators and limit her public statements on the current political climate. In October, she recommended that Yale leaders broadly refrain from issuing statements on matters of public importance.

McInnis did release one statement in February, however, criticizing the National Institutes of Health’s plan to dramatically strip funding for indirect research costs. Blanket cuts to federal grants, particularly those funding academic research, have cost Yale millions, and the University expects to reduce spending on faculty raises, faculty and sta! hiring, campus construction and general non-salary expen-

ditures, per its proposed 2026 budget. In April, she also signed onto an AACU statement denouncing the Trump administration’s interference in higher education.

When Harvard refused to comply with the Trump administration’s demands for a chance to restore billions in frozen funds, McInnis declined to tell the News or make any similar public statement about whether she supports Harvard’s decision.

Meanwhile, in the first quarter of 2025, Yale significantly ramped up its lobbying e!orts, spending $250,000 — $20,000 more than Harvard and $70,000 more than it spent during the same period last year. Through the lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, the University recently brought on former Republican Rep. Lamar Smith ’69 — who previously chaired the House Science Committee, House Judiciary Committee and House Ethics Committee — and Hans Rickho!, a seasoned Capitol Hill lobbyist, to aid in its federal advocacy.

Yale has also enlisted the services of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, one of Washington’s most prominent lobbying ﬁrms. According to Politico, the firm recently “launched a new

higher education task force to advise universities on how to navigate the whims of the Trump administration.” Marc Lampkin, a strategist at the ﬁrm, told Politico that many universities “don’t intuitively get Washington” and need support to “understand how to navigate it.”

In early April, Yale quietly added the contested International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance deﬁnition of antisemitism to its webpage on anti-discrimination procedures. The update came days after Columbia received a letter from the Trump administration urging adoption of the same deﬁnition.

In a 2024 report card assessing antisemitism on U.S. college campuses, the Anti-Defamation League rated Yale’s campus climate as a “high” concern. At the same time, the ADL found that the University was “meeting expectations” in its e!orts to address antisemitism. Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025.

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

McInnis silent on Harvard’s response to federal pressure

BY JOSIE REICH STAFF REPORTER

Yale University President Maurie McInnis refused to tell the News whether she supports Harvard University’s decision not to cooperate with the Trump administration’s demands.

“We cannot answer hypothetical questions,” she wrote to the News when asked about her opinion on Harvard’s stance. “And I have said in the past that it is my practice to not comment on the actions of other

schools because each school faces di!erent circumstances, and I cannot know what they are from the outside, so I think it’s best not to comment on what one school or another does or does not do.”

The Trump administration sent Harvard a list of demands requiring the school make changes at the will of the federal government — such as agreeing to a review of Harvard’s programs and governmental audits of hirings and admissions — for a chance to restore billions in frozen funds. Unlike Columbia University, which

acquiesced to similar demands, Harvard repudiated what it called government overreach. Harvard has since sued the Trump administration for cutting its funding.

McInnis’ sparse responses come after her office rescheduled her monthly interview with the News in April twice, ultimately postponing it indefinitely. The office then requested that immediate questions be sent by email instead of being asked in person.

When pressed by email about whether she will support Harvard’s lawsuit against the Trump administration, McInnis also characterized the question as a hypothetical.

“What we do know is that we will keep advancing our mission and focusing on supporting our community,” she responded. “I also want to encourage students to be ambassadors for higher education. We need that right now: people who will share the purpose and promise of higher education with our critics and with our supporters.”

McInnis did not directly respond to a series of other questions about her response to the Trump administration’s attacks on universities. She did not answer whether she thinks her attempts to lobby lawmakers have been working, whether she is considering making any changes to Yale to avoid funding cuts or whether she opposes the federal government’s attempt to inﬂuence the college accreditation process.

“We’ve discussed that I’m working on preserving and upholding Yale’s mission and supporting our community,” she wrote instead.

McInnis added that she is collaborating with peer institutions and working with the Association of American Universities. Recently, she signed an American Association of Colleges and

Universities statement alongside over 360 other university leaders, opposing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” in higher education.

In response to questions about the reschedulings, McInnis wrote that she is “prioritizing meeting requests from faculty, students, staff, and alumni groups who want to speak with me about their concerns and recommendations.

The volume of requests from members of our community has increased this semester, and it is important to me to make as much time as possible to meet with colleagues and students who wish to speak with me about pressing matters.”

The News’ monthly interview with McInnis was originally scheduled for Tuesday, April 22, before the president’s office rescheduled for Thursday, April 24, citing an “urgent meeting.”

The office then postponed the rescheduled interview — due to a “busy week” — to an indeﬁnite date in the future, after the News ﬁnished production for the academic recess.

McInnis postponed the rescheduled interview on the backdrop of that Tuesday night’s protest, at which students erected eight tents and promised to “stay the night” before following administrative warnings to disperse.

The protest was organized in opposition to far-right Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s talk that Wednesday evening at Shabtai, a Jewish intellectual discussion society founded by Yale a liates.

The only question McInnis responded to directly by email concerned Yale’s dispersal of the Tuesday night pro-Palestinian protest and subsequent revocation of Yalies4Palestine’s club status. McInnis reiterated a message the

University spokesperson previously gave the News, emphasizing that the group was “involved in” a protest that violated Yale’s policies. Yalies4Palestine did not organize the protest, but it promoted it on social media.

The federal government was “cautiously encouraged” by how Yale handled the protest, the Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism stated in a press release.

The task force cited Yale’s dispersal of the protest, revocation of Yalies4Palestine’s club status and disciplinary action of student protesters as reasons why it was “encouraged.” Yale has referred at least three of those protesters to the Executive Committee for discipline, according to a student who received notice of impending disciplinary action for her participation in last Tuesday’s action.

The task force’s statement added that it “will be keeping an eye on the situation and aftermath.”

Uri Cohen, executive director of the Slifka Center for Jewish Life, wrote that he was in “close contact” with McInnis throughout the protest. They first spoke on Tuesday to “discuss the situation as it was unfolding,” then again later that night when McInnis told Cohen they had cleared Beinecke Plaza, he wrote in an email to the Slifka Center.

“I’ve been in touch with the administration throughout these days to respond in real time to the roller coaster of events,” Cohen wrote. “These actions show decisive and impactful leadership by President Maurie McInnis and her team.”

McInnis has never before canceled or rescheduled an interview with the News. Contact JOSIE REICH at josie.reich@yale.edu.

BAALA SHAKYA, STAFF REPORTER

As elite universities face federal funding threats and congressional grilling over antisemitism, Yale has avoided direct targeting through concessions, careful messaging and a growing presence in Washington.

ELLIE PARK / SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

As Harvard rebu s the Trump administration, University President Maurie McInnis postponed two interviews then declined to respond to questions about Harvard via email.

CRISIS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

McInnis signs statement against ‘government intrusion’

BY YOLANDA WANG STAFF REPORTER

Yale President Maurie McInnis signed a statement against the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” in higher education on Tuesday, April 22.

The statement, which was published by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, was signed by over 360 university leaders, including the president of each Ivy League school except Dartmouth College.

“We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight,” the statement reads. “However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses.”

McInnis did not respond to the News’ questions regarding her decision to sign the letter.

The statement comes after multiple letters from faculty and alumni as well as a faculty rally last week, each urging Yale’s leaders to take the lead in resisting President Donald Trump’s moves to cut research funding, end diversity initiatives and crack down on student protesters.

The statement says that colleges and universities have the freedom to “determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom,” and threats of “retribution, censorship, or deportation” threaten this freedom.

Multiple faculty members have applauded McInnis’ participation in the statement.

“I am proud and gladdened that so many universities have come together so quickly in support of higher edu-

cation,” Professor Mark Solomon, chair of Yale’s faculty senate, wrote to the News. “I hope that this is just one step in our collective defense, which will undoubtedly involve additional public actions by Yale as well as work behind the scenes.”

Previously, McInnis told the News that her response to federal policies targeting higher education would prioritize behindthe-scenes lobbying over issuing public statements. Before signing the AACU statement, McInnis released just one public statement opposing planned cuts to research funding from the National Institutes of Health.

Professor Daniel HoSang, president of Yale’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, noted the importance of public statements to a broader defense of higher education.

“I think that joint and collaborative statements like this one are critical,” HoSang wrote. “Our AAUP chapter has continually emphasized that we must defend all of higher education, as all of our institutions are dependent on one another.”

Professor Richard Aslin pointed to how a group statement is “more powerful” because di!erent colleges and universities are facing similar challenges to di!erent degrees.

“I fully understand the risks of making public statements that are critical of the Trump administration, but in my judgment it’s naive to think that by remaining silent the wrecking ball will somehow avoid Yale,” Aslin wrote. “By making collective statements Yale points out that we are all in this together and the negative consequences are so grave that we must speak up or lose our role in society where pursuit of

knowledge and freedom of inquiry are critical to economic prosperity and national security.”

According to Professor Marijeta Bozovic, deputy chair of the faculty senate, McInnis and other administrators have been meeting with faculty leaders. McInnis and Provost Scott Strobel are set to meet in May with faculty senators and AAUP members who sent last week’s letter to their o ces.

“My impression is that both faculty and administration are listening and learning,” Bozovic wrote to the News. “I truly hope that lasts.”

McInnis has attended over 100 meetings on campus since assuming o ce last summer.

Contact YOLANDA WANG at yolanda.wang@yale.edu.

Alumni call for Yale leaders to defend higher education

BY YOLANDA WANG AND ASHER BOISKIN STAFF REPORTERS

Over 6,200 alumni have signed two letters to Yale President Maurie McInnis and other administrators, calling on them to stand against federal policies that threaten the University’s educational mission.

The ﬁrst letter, titled “Open Letter from Yale Alumni,” calls on Yale to take leadership in rallying other colleges and universities to collectively defend higher education. The letter was delivered to McInnis, Provost Scott Strobel and the Board of Trustees on Monday, April 21. It had received 3,616 signatures as of Wednesday, April 23.

“A strategy of keeping one’s head down, hoping federal attention instead falls on other institutions, is doomed to fail,” the letter reads. “Eventually Yale will land in the crosshairs. And when it does, there may be no one left to defend it.”

The second letter was written by a new alumni group called Stand Up for Yale and calls for the University to resist threats to university self-governance, cuts to research funding and immigration action against dissenters on campus. The alumni’s

demands mirrored a letter signed by over 1,000 faculty last week.

As of Wednesday, April 23, the letter from Stand Up for Yale has received 3,419 signatures. Over 6,200 individual alumni had signed one or both of the letters.

“President McInnis looks forward to discussing this with alumni who put together the open letters and formally delivered it to her,” a University spokesperson wrote to the News. McInnis has told the News in January that she prefers to lobby behind the scenes for Yale’s interests over making public statements. Since then, she has decried Trump’s planned cuts to research funding from the National Institutes of Health and characterized some of Trump’s executive orders as an overstep of presidential power. On Tuesday, April 22, McInnis joined over 360 college and university leaders in signing a statement from the American Association of Colleges and Universities against political interference in higher education.

Jessica Marsden ’08 LAW ’14, who co-authored the letter from Stand Up for Yale, wrote to the News that Tuesday that she was motivated to write to administrators after seeing President Donald Trump

attempt to “chill powerful institutions that might be a counterweight” to his administration.

After the Trump administration canceled $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University, the school agreed to overhaul its protest policies and place its Middle Eastern studies department under the purview of a senior administrator.

Marsden pointed out that despite its administration’s capitulation, Columbia has experienced further cuts to research funding. She wrote that she wanted to urge Yale’s leaders to “choose a di!erent path, to defend its students, faculty, and deepest values.”

“There are people saying that they were frustrated that Yale hadn’t done something yet, but everyone is sort of aware that this is an incredibly difﬁcult time, and they want to show their support [for courageous actions in these difficult times],” Katherine Profeta ’91 DRA ’99 DRA ’09, a co-author of the Open Letter, told the News. Profeta and Marsden each expressed support for McInnis’ participation in the AACU statement and the Yale Investments O ce’s move to liquidate parts of the endowment by selling part of its

private equity portfolio. Both alumni told the News that their letters aim to encourage similar actions.

Other alumni have pointed to Harvard University’s recent challenges to the Trump administration as a model for what Yale should do.

On April 14, Harvard announced that it would not bow to demands by the Trump administration that included orders to stop Harvard’s diversity initiatives, audit professors for plagiarism and report international students accused of misconduct to the federal government. Harvard is the ﬁrst university to publicly defy the Trump administration’s crackdown on higher education.

“I strongly admire what Harvard has done,” Amos Friedland LAW ’08, a signatory of the Open Letter, told the News. “I’m pretty disappointed that Yale has not taken a more overt position and that the Law School, where I went to school, did not take a more signiﬁcant position.”

Friedland hopes that the University will respond to the alumni letters, especially in light of Harvard’s recent actions.

On Monday, April 21, Friedland made his first-ever donation to Harvard, an institution he never attended. Friedland

told the News that fellow alumni should reflect on what they value in a university, suggesting that this could mean “shifting donations” from Yale to institutions willing to act more courageously.

“I signed the letter because Yale is a rich and powerful institution, and therefore is in a position to push back against government overreach,” Gabriel Chin LAW ’95, a signatory of the Open Letter, wrote to the News.

Jonah Gelbach LAW ’13, who signed both letters, told the News he was “quite shocked” that McInnis and other Yale leaders had not yet taken action against Trump.

According to Marsden, alumni may continue to organize to defend higher education.

“So far conversations are all very preliminary, but there is a lot of enthusiasm among the alumni who signed the letter for further action,” Marsden wrote. In 2010, Yale had over 130,000 living alumni.

Contact YOLANDA WANG at yolanda.wang@yale.edu and ASHER BOISKIN at asher.boiskin@yale.edu.

Levin says Yale should spotlight positive contributions amid scrutiny

BY ISOBEL MCCLURE STAFF REPORTER

On Monday, April 28, former University President Richard Levin GRD ’74 addressed members of the Yale community at an event hosted at the Yale Center of British Art.

He asserted that it is an unprecedented time for higher education, advising universities to emphasize their positive contributions to the United States amid national scrutiny.

Levin’s talk was a part of the “Leading Universities: Tales from the Trenches II” speaker series, which features four former Yale administrators. Levin’s speech focused on his e!orts to navigate Yale’s relationship with unions and New Haven during his term. Responding to audience questions at the end of the event, Levin touched on the current climate surrounding higher education.

“Universities are more threatened today than at any time, and certainly in my memory, and even more threatened than they were by the McCarthy episode,” Levin said, referring to widespread American paranoia about communism in the 1950s spurred by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who frequently accused universities of harboring communist faculty and students.

He noted that the University needs to “examine” itself, considering the causes behind decreased public support. However, Levin emphasized that universities should highlight their contributions to the United States’ economy in the wake of increased scrutiny.

He pointed to the research conducted at the university level, referencing a recent column in The New York Times. The piece, written by David Singer ’84, contends that current presidential advisors, who are involved with the tech industry, benefited from federal investment in research.

“We need to send our message loud and clear. At the same time, we need to examine ourselves to make sure that we win the conﬁ-

dence of the public,” Levin said. He added that he hopes President Maurie McInnis’ “Committee on Trust in Higher Education”

will help the University develop its public image. The committee — composed of ten faculty members — was estab-

lished in mid-April with the goal of developing further understanding of the University’s public perception and bolstering trust in institutions of higher education.

Levin’s remarks come alongside McInnis’s message to the Yale community on the same day. She asserted her commitment to promoting “an independent higher education sector” and freedom of expression on campuses, a principle for which universities have been criticized for allegedly failing to uphold.

In response to an audience member’s question about the endowment and the discourse surrounding its use to o!set funding concerns, Levin said that he believes the University could ﬁnancially “endure” the next four years even amid uncertainty regarding federal funding.

“It’s been ﬁnancially good times for the University. We have a lot of reserves. We have access to credit. We’re way below our debt capacity,” he said, noting that the University’s current debt is only 11 percent of its total assets. “There’s room to borrow, and borrowing might be a good strategy.”

However, Levin acknowledged that he understands the need to avoid large salary increases, as well as signiﬁcant sta! expansion, while emphasizing the importance of “keep[ing] the science going.” Over 100 professors recently signed a letter addressed to McInnis and Provost Scott Strobel, calling for the University to freeze hiring. The document was released after Yale’s announcement that it intends to curb hiring and faculty raises.

Levin served as University president from 1993 to 2013.

Contact ISOBEL MCCLURE at isobel.mcclure@yale.edu.

CRISIS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

BY JANICE HUR STAFF REPORTER

Yale researchers are confronting a sharp decline in federal science funding, as grant terminations, stalled disbursements and proposed budget cuts disrupt labs and raise concerns about the future of university-based research.

Over the past several months, researchers across Yale have watched President Donald Trump’s administration erode federal science funding, long the lifeblood of university research. Trump’s proposed 2026 budget cuts call for slashing the National Institutes of Health — NIH — by $18 billion and the National Science Foundation — NSF — by nearly 50 percent.

But scientists say the real damage began months ago, when awarded grants started being frozen, delayed or silently revoked.

Yale has already seen a 33.8 percent drop in NIH funding since October compared to last school year, according to a new analysis conducted by the News and Dr. Jeremy Berg, former director of the NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Faculty members told the News that the consequences are already being felt by graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and entire research labs.

“These are truly scary times for scientific research and for universities,” Thomas Appelquist, a professor of physics, wrote in an email to the News.

A vanishing stream of support

According to a Yale-specific analysis compiled using the NIH RePORTER database, NIH funding to the University between Oct. 1, 2024 and May 1, 2025, fell by 33.8 percent compared to the same period a year earlier. In 2025, Yale received $148.4 million in NIH support, down sharply from $224.3 million in 2024.

However, the topline figure masks deeper structural damage. New and competitively renewed grants — essential for launching novel research and supporting early-career faculty — plummeted by nearly 69 percent between Jan. 20 and May 1, since Trump took office, relative to the same period a year before. Noncompetitive renewals, typically routine continuations of multiyear grants, fell by 42.3 percent during the Trump administration compared to the January-to-May period last year.

In an interview with the News, Berg, who has been conducting nationwide analyses of NIH funding patterns, emphasized that these reductions are abnormal.

“The success rate of noncompetitive renewals is usually around 99 percent,” Berg said. “This year, it’s been closer to 65 percent.” Universities, he explained, aren’t being told if awards are revoked

As Trump slashes science funding, Yale researchers brace for lasting damage Yale Rep loses federal grant for October play

BY KIVA BANKS AND OLIVIA CYRUS STAFF REPORTERS

The Yale Repertory Theatre was informed through an email on Friday that the National Endowment for the Arts had terminated a $30,000 grant for a planned production of Zora Neale Hurston’s “Spunk.”

Florie Seerie, the theater’s managing director, told the News the show will proceed. It is scheduled to open on Oct. 9 and run through Oct. 25, according to an audition notice posted in March. Representatives for the Yale Rep did not provide details about whether the grant loss will affect the performers or other production expenses.

Dean James Bundy DRA ’95, who is the Yale Rep’s artistic director, and other administrators at the David Geffen School of Drama sent an email to faculty and students on Monday addressing the termination of the grant. They reaffirmed a “fundamental obligation to support concerted national efforts to create art that inspires joy,

or delayed — they’re simply not receiving the funds.

Federal agencies such as the NIH and NSF have begun to “zero out” grants — removing budgets to $0 without formally terminating them — making tracking, appeals and institutional planning difficult, according to Noam Ross, a co-founder of GrantWatch.us and co-curator of an online public database tracking NIH and NSF grant terminations.

“They’re taking new strategies to stop programs that are, you know, not officially terminating a grant, but just officially updating its budget to zero,” Ross said.

“It’s harder to find and track.”

The maneuver may shield agencies from legal scrutiny, Ross said, but the effect on researchers is immediate. Projects grind to a halt, job offers are rescinded and labs are left scrambling to fill budget holes without knowing whether their funding has been delayed or revoked.

Adding to the confusion is a federal court’s injunction temporarily blocking proposed cuts to indirect cost rates. These overhead rates support infrastructure like lab equipment, safety compliance and electricity. The Trump administration sought to cap indirect funding at 15 percent of total direct costs, down from far higher negotiated rates.

Yale has negotiated a 67.5 percent indirect research funding rate, meaning that tens of millions of dollars of revenue are on the line.

Fallout — and feared “brain drain” — across fields

The disruption is reverberating across Yale’s research ecosystem, affecting fields far beyond the sciences. Yale spokesperson Karen Peart told the News that faculty members have already received stop-work orders for research into “disease prevention, mental health, climate and humanitarian aid.”

“The impact of federal actions spans the university,” Peart wrote in a statement, also citing cuts to grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities.

But the university-wide disruption is being felt most immediately in science departments.

In the physics department, junior faculty member Laura Newburgh said the impact is already visible among graduate students vying for federal fellowships. Newburgh told the News that there were half as many NSF graduate fellowships this year compared to past years.

“That directly impacts our students, some of whom wrote phenomenal proposals that would have been funded in any other year,” she said.

The ripple e ects are not limited to early training. Newburgh added that large-scale research

e orts like her own NSF-funded telescope project, which involves collaborators across multiple universities, are hanging in the balance as agencies delay or reconsider existing commitments.

Meanwhile, professor Jim Eckert in the earth and planetary sciences department, noted that while his lab has not yet faced direct consequences, the atmosphere of uncertainty looms large.

“Everything is fragile,” Eckert said. “If the next grant cycle falters, there’s no cushion.”

Sterling Professor of physics Steven Girvin echoed those concerns, warning that current budget proposals reﬂect a misunderstanding of how science is funded in the United States — and how essential it is to national innovation.

In an email to the News, Girvin pointed to the framework established during and after World War II by the federal official Vannevar Bush, who championed peer-reviewed, academic-led research funded by the federal government. That system, Girvin said, is now unraveling — and with it, the country’s innovation pipeline.

“With very few exceptions, there is essentially no basic research done in industry in the U.S. It all comes from universities,” Girvin wrote. “There’s a narrative that universities are dependent on federal research dollars. But the reality is, the nation is dependent on university research.”

His colleague John Wettlaufer, a professor of applied physics, told the News that he is worried about an exodus among early-career scientists to other countries.

“I’m hearing from colleagues that faculty applicant pools in the UK and Europe are 500% larger than they were five years ago. People are leaving,” Wettlaufer wrote to the News.

Dr. Eric Winer MED ’83, the director of the Yale Cancer Center and president of Smilow Cancer Hospital, voiced a parallel concern about “brain drain” in the biomedical field.

Targeting certain research areas

While the drop in Yale’s NIH funding raises alarms about the long-term sustainability of a broad range of research, some researchers said the Trump administration has targeted specific areas, too.

“There are certainly areas of research that are really being hit hard in a number of ways,” Ross said, pointing to a pattern of terminations disproportionately affecting transgender health, HIV prevention, vaccine hesitancy and research focused on underserved communities.

Some of the defunding appears to rely on keyword filtering.

“Many of the words on these defunding lists are just ordinary research terms — like the word ‘gender,’” Yale bioethicist Stephen

Latham told the News in April.

According to a recent research letter co-authored by Yale cardiologist Dr. Harlan Krumholz ’80, nearly 30 percent of terminated NIH grants came from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, or NIMHD.

NIH RePORTER data confirms that NIMHD supported 20 Yale-affiliated projects in 2024. Most of those fall under public health, health equity and minority care innovation.

If the proposed NIH restructuring proceeds, several institutes like NIMHD could be eliminated or merged into larger agencies with drastically narrowed missions.

Economic losses for contractors

According to analysis from the SCIMaP project, the economic losses in the South Central Connecticut Planning Region, which centers on New Haven, would total $217 million annually if the proposed NIH indirect cost cap is enacted.

This estimate is based on a funding multiplier used by economists and the NIH: for every $1 in NIH investment, $2.56 in economic activity is generated. That ﬁgure includes jobs, services, biotech spino s and clinical trials.

“The investment in scientific and biomedical infrastructure in this country is a big investment, and it generates a lot of activity,” Ross said. “It’s not just the grants that are being sent specifically to someone in that community. It’s about the spillover effects.”

In February 2025, Sandy Chang ’88, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine, warned that many jobs affected by indirect cost cuts are not traditional research positions but are essential. Yale labs hire contractors ranging from HVAC technicians to chemical suppliers and biosafety auditors.

“Many research-related jobs, including infrastructure support and safety compliance roles, are funded through indirect costs,” Chang said. “Any signiﬁcant reduction in those funds could disrupt multiple sectors, including local construction and maintenance work.”

How administrators and scientists are responding Amid the rising alarm about uncertain funding streams, Yale has begun taking a more forceful stance.

On May 8, the University joined 13 peer institutions in supporting a lawsuit challenging the NSF’s new standard reimbursement rate for indirect costs.

“Without support for these real costs, important federally funded research cannot and will not occur,” Vice Provost for Research Michael Crair wrote in a statement on May 9. “We plan our budget with the understanding that the federal government will appropriately reimburse research costs.”

On Feb. 10, President Maurie McInnis had sent a campus-wide message saying that the indirect cost cap “directly harms Yale’s core research mission.”

She emphasized that Yale’s investments in science have already surpassed federal contributions by a wide margin. In the 2024 fiscal year, the University spent $432 million on faculty and student research — more than double the indirect reimbursements it received from the NIH.

Many professors say administrators’ public responses to Trump’s science policies have been vital.

“There’s a general feeling of support from the university that we’re going to be able to get through this, and that we will have the support that we need,” Newburgh, the associate professor of physics, said.

Scientists themselves are mobilizing on multiple fronts. Some are organizing through professional associations like the American Physical Society and the American Astronomical Society, while others are taking to public platforms and Capitol Hill to champion the role of science in public health.

At Yale, faculty have joined protests, filed declarations in court cases and launched internal tracking efforts. Researchers have emphasized the need for systematic documentation and datadriven advocacy to resist what they see as a dismantling of the nation’s research infrastructure.

Krumholz, the cardiology professor, said that more transparency about lost funding is urgently needed.

“There needs to be more effort to try to understand exactly what’s been discontinued. Is there a rationale for it?” he said.

Winer, the Yale Cancer Center director, said his team is prioritizing early-career researchers, who often lack financial buffers or long-term contracts, and exploring possible bridge grants to help them withstand shortfalls in federal support.

In the face of volatile federal policy and widespread fear among researchers, Winer said his goal as director has been to keep his team both realistic and hopeful. It is most productive, in his view, for medical research institutions to focus on their missions to advance science, train future leaders and care for patients.

In a March 2025 budget update, Provost Scott Strobel, Vice President for Finance and Chief Financial Officer Stephen Murphy and Senior Vice President for Operations Jack Callahan directed all schools and departments to prepare contingency budgets that reflect possible scenarios for federal revenue loss.

Contact JANICE HUR at janice.hur@yale.edu .

empathy and understanding in the world.”

The NEA cut to “Spunk” followed a series of funding rollbacks at peer institutions nationwide, such as the cancellation of NEA grants at the Berkeley Repertory Theater. Bundy — who is stepping down from his post as dean and artistic director this summer — wrote in a statement to the News that the show’s original budget was in the “mid-six-figures,” substantially larger than the grant amount. Despite the setback, he wrote, the theater remains committed to producing “Spunk” and plans to look for alternative sources of funding.

In its budget request for the 2026 fiscal year released on May 2, the Trump administration announced its plans to defund and eliminate the National Endowment of the Arts and other programs to “enhance accountability, reduce waste, and reduce unnecessary governmental entities.” The NEA is currently the only arts funder operating in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.

Bundy wrote in a statement to the News that he was dismayed by the loss of the grant and the proposed elimination of the NEA, considering the institution’s long history of impact.

“It’s disappointing to see a process of thoughtful deliberation by professionals and subject experts undone, and to have all the work put in by hundreds of arts organizations that prepared thoughtful proposals devalued,” Bundy wrote.

Bundy said that these grants help the U.S. remain a world leader in “cultural exports.” Additionally, he said, such funding provides necessary outlets for students and children from varied backgrounds to gain access to the arts.

“We deeply regret the loss of a grant previously adjudicated in good faith by public servants at the NEA,” the Drama School administrators wrote in their email on Monday. “We will exercise our rights to resist the elimination of a federal agency that has done so much to uplift the spirits of the American people

and the free exchange of ideas around the globe.”

They added that they “stand in solidarity with hundreds of other defunded theaters whose joyful artistry is essential to civic life and civil discourse.”

Bundy wrote to the News that NEA cuts will have damaging e ects across the country at other theaters, which may have to “reduce other programming or lean more heavily on their donor communities.”

He added that the Trump administration’s move “brings greater stress to a sector still recovering from the pandemic. For some organizations, the amounts involved will be profoundly destabilizing.”

Significant NEA funding cuts have hit another theater in New Haven. Long Wharf Theatre was notiﬁed on Friday that four grants from the NEA were terminated.

In an email sent to the News, Eric Gershman, the theater’s interim managing director, said that the canceled grants totaled over $170,000.

“This funding was meant to support community-centered

work across New Haven, from classrooms to cafes,” Gershman wrote. “Its loss will have a real and immediate impact on the programming we’re able to offer and the people we can reach.”

According to Gershman, the NEA has enabled organizations to appeal the decision within a seven day window, and Long Wharf Theatre is preparing its appeal.

Bundy told the News that the Yale Rep is connecting with other theaters to organize “collective action,” but did not specify which theaters they have reached out to. He suggested initial steps to push for the NEA to continue.

“I am a big believer that whatever their views, citizens should write their representatives in Congress and participate in the democratic process,” Bundy wrote.

The Yale Repertory Theatre is located at 1120 Chapel St.

Contact KIVA BANK at kiva.bank@yale.edu and OLIVIA CYRUS at olivia.cyrus@yale.edu.

Weather delays disrupt Spring Fling performances

KAMINI PURUSHOTHAMAN

GEMARD GUERY STAFF REPORTERS

By On Saturday, April 26, at approximately 7:30 p.m., minutes after Cults concluded their set, Spring Fling attendees were told to disperse from Old Campus until weather conditions improved.

“Once I saw the lightning, I thought [Spring Fling] was over; I thought they were just going to keep postponing until it was eventually cancelled,” Aaliyah Short ’27 said.

The event resumed over an hour later, in time for headliner Ken Carson to perform, although electronic duo Snakehips — which was slated to perform between Cults and Carson — had to leave before the lightning ceased.

At 7:54 p.m., after the announcement on Old Campus, the Spring Fling committee sent out an email reiterating the message that attendees should disperse and seek shelter while outlining next steps.

In alignment with safety protocol, the committee announced that the show would be allowed to continue 30 minutes after the most recent lightning strike.

“The call to pause our show this year was made collectively

by public safety officials, the dean’s office, the Spring Fling Chairs, and the stage-build production company, all of whom were following real time weather updates closely,” Morris Raskin ’26 wrote to the News on behalf of the Spring Fling committee’s chairs — Raskin, Jenna Chow ’27, Kristen Meola ’26 and Willa Hawthorne ’26.

According to committee chairs, while there is a plan in place in the event of any inclement weather, sporadic weather events such as that of this past weekend are more challenging to deal with on the spot.

Spring Fling has been moved indoors in the past due to poor weather conditions, most recently in 2023. However, the Spring Fling committee needs at least a week before the show to plan a venue relocation, which requires early forecasts of extreme weather.

Following the dispersal that Saturday evening, students left the green on Old Campus to shelter in nearby dorm locations.

During the weather delay, Dawit Bonga ’28 told the News he was not “the biggest” Ken Carson fan, but thought the artist would give a fittingly “hype” Spring Fling performance. He would have been disappointed, he said, if the show were to be

cancelled because it was his first Spring Fling, which he thought was the “event of the year.”

At 8:58 p.m., the Yale Spring Fling Instagram account posted an update that Old Campus would reopen at 9:05 p.m. for Ken Carson. An email with the same announcement shortly followed.

“Everyone just mobilized after the email. I honestly was surprised that so many people came back,” Short said.

The committee chairs confirmed that the electronic duo Snakehips was unable to perform due to weather-related delays and the City of New Haven’s 10 p.m. curfew.

The band expressed remorse for their inability to perform on their Instagram story that Saturday evening, writing that they hope to “come back and party with [Yale] soon.”

Kamile Makselyte ‘27 said she was “really mad” when the committee announced that Ken Carson would come on after the weather delay without any mention of Snakehips.

Despite her disappointment, Makselyte joined the crowds of students who returned to Old Campus after the announcement that the show would be resuming.

Old Campus quickly refilled for Ken Carson, who performed

“Yale” among his other hit songs.

Although Carson performed to a raucous crowd, not everyone was impressed.

“Getting my pants and shoes incredibly muddy was not worth a 30 minute set in a mosh pit,” Makselyte said.

Despite the disruption to this year’s concert, the Spring Fling committee said it worked hard to ensure students could still get the best experience possible.

“Every year, Spring Fling comes with its curveballs,” Raskin wrote to the News on behalf of the committee, pointing to original headliner NLE Choppa’s cancellation about two weeks before he was set to perform.

The committee added that last-minute adaptations are what they “signed up” for and that the process always includes problem-solving. They noted the festival would not be possible if not for the team members and their resilience.

Spring Fling is traditionally held on the Saturday following the last day of classes.

Contact KAMINI PURUSHOTHAMAN at kamini.purushothaman@yale. edu and GEMARD GUERY at gemard.guery@yale.edu.

PHOTOS BY BAALA SHAKYA

Unlocking Shabtai, the Yale-adjacent Jewish intellectual society

BY ZOYA HAQ STAFF REPORTER

In January 1997, Senator Cory Booker LAW ’97, Noah Feldman LAW ’97, Ben Karp ’95, Michael Alexander GRD ’99 and Rabbi Shmully Hecht gathered in apartment 5Q of the Taft Apartments for the inaugural meeting of the Chai Society. Now known as Shabtai, the Chai Society’s intention upon its founding was to serve Yale’s community as an “open” leadership society for discourse and debate. While informed by Jewish values imparted by co-founder Hecht, the Society’s stated goal was to be a space welcoming to all religions and perspectives.

Today, despite being primarily composed of Yale students and faculty, Shabtai has no o cial a liation with Yale. Still, its proximity to Yale’s campus — the organization’s current home is the historic John C. Anderson Mansion on 442 Orange St. — and the nature of its student-focused outreach have forged strong ties between Shabtai and Yale’s community.

These ties have, in recent years, mired both Rabbi Shmully Hecht and Yale in controversy. Last month, Shabtai invited right-wing Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir to speak at the Anderson Mansion, sparking protests across Yale’s campus and outside the Shabtai mansion on Wednesday, April 23.

Today, Shabtai’s notable affiliates and alumni include Booker, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy LAW ’13 and political strategist Nicolas Muzin LAW ’05. Yale professors and administrators like professor Timothy Snyder, professor Jed Rubenfeld, Dean of Yale College Pericles Lewis and Sterling professor Robert Post have spoken at Shabtai events and participated in its weekly dinners.

In recent years, Shabtai has expanded to a global scale, operating chapters in Tel Aviv, New York, Boston, Washington and Chicago. However, its proximate relationship to Yale continues to deﬁne its organizational proceedings and external outreach, which poses the question: where is the line drawn between Shabtai as an independent organization and Yale as an institution?

Tracing Shabtai’s origins

In September 1996, Hecht moved to New Haven. Fresh out of rabbinical school in Australia, Hecht said he came to the Elm City with a “dream of doing Jewish outreach at Yale.” Raised within the framework of the ChabadLubavitch movement — a branch of Orthodox Judaism that champions outreach to all Jews, regardless of religious observance — Hecht said he arrived with a vision of creating a “leadership society” with a “strong Jewish anchor.”

“I grew up in the largest rabbinical family in the world, in a household where we were taught by the Rebbe that the most important thing a person could do was to educate Jews about their Judaism, about the Jewish people, Jewish culture and Jewish civilization,” Hecht told the News. “I came to New Haven because I had family here, but also because I wanted to spend my life on a college campus with intelligent people who changed the world.”

On his very first day in New Haven, Hecht met student Karp in the nave of Sterling Memorial Library. The two connected immediately, quickly realizing that they shared similar goals of creating a Jewish society on Yale’s campus.

Karp recruited close friend Alexander, whom Hecht jokingly referred to as “Mickey Bones,” to help ﬂesh out the idea. Neither Karp nor Alexander could be reached for comment.

The three began reaching out to other potential interested students, including law students Feldman and Booker, who both had just returned from studying abroad at Oxford. Notably, during their time in England, Feldman and Booker were involved with the L’Chaim Society, an organization that functioned very similarly to Hecht and Karp’s vision of a Jewish society at Yale. Feldman, now Felix Frankfurter professor of law at Harvard University, said he believed it was his and Booker’s connections to L’Chaim and his “close relationship” to Shmuley Boteach, a Chabad rabbi who led L’Chaim, that made them ideal partners to kickstart what would come to be the Chai Society at Yale.

By late fall 1996, the group regularly met at a local bar to brainstorm ideas for the development and progression of the newly coined Chai Society — named for the Hebrew word for “life.”

To Hecht, the founders’ initial

vision was to cultivate a space that operated outside of the “secret society” paradigm that defined Yale’s social scene at the time. Hecht was set on this goal, despite having no personal ties to the University.

“Contrary to the private clubs, the secret societies at Yale, which were members only, our ambition was to totally change the notion of a society into a space where the members’ responsibility and privilege was to bring the world together,” Hecht said.

In January 1997, the five co-founders met in New York to sign a rental lease for apartment 5Q in the Taft, which would become Shabtai’s first o cial headquarters in New Haven. That same month, the society hosted its first meeting, a Friday night Shabbat dinner. The five founders and several of their close friends were in attendance. By May, though, there was no longer enough room in the apartment to accommodate the number of people who wanted to attend Shabbat dinners and “have serious conversations for hours,” Hecht said.

Shabtai’s growth and evolution

With the end of that spring 1997 semester, however, came Feldman and Booker’s graduation from Yale.

In 1999, Alexander also graduated. As its initial founders went forth into the professional world, Hecht remained in New Haven to continue building the organization alongside his wife and co-director, Toby Hecht, who joined him in New Haven in 1997.

In those early years, under the Hechts’ sole leadership, came subtle shifts in the organization’s identity. First, to accommodate more attendees for society events, the Hechts bought a new headquarters building on Crown Street. Second, following pressure from alumni funders to incorporate a Yale-speciﬁc marker of “Eli” into its name, the Chai Society renamed itself to Eliezer in the early 2000s.

Alongside the traditional structure of Shabbat dinners, the Hechts also began to invite speakers to present their ideas to the community, a practice which continues to deﬁne the society today. The organization’s proceedings also became more markedly religious after the original founders’ departure. Weekly Torah and Talmud readings began to accompany Shabbat dinners and speaker events.

In 2010, then-law student Ramaswamy, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, began attending Eliezer events and forged a close relationship with Hecht. He has since cited Hecht as one of his “closest friends alive” and continues to herald the organization as an essential inﬂuence in his personal and professional development.

A spokesperson for Ramaswamy wrote to the News that Ramaswamy and his wife Apoorva Ramaswamy “fondly remember their great times at Shabtai attending the Shabbat dinners animated by spirited discussions that often went late into the night and cemented new friendships that have lasted for years.”

In 2014, Eliezer encountered a deﬁnitive turning point as an organization. Benny Shabtai, an Israeli businessman mired in controversy due to accusations of an alleged relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, donated $1.7 million to endow the group.

Hecht explained that Shabtai was a “longtime friend” of his who “understood the importance of having a Jewish presence in di!erent pockets of the world.” Hecht added that Shabtai was very intrigued by what he was building at Yale for the Jewish community.

Benny Shabtai a rmed this statement in an interview with the News, stating that he met Hecht when the rabbi was only 13 years old. Hecht “came to his o ce every Friday to put teﬁllin” on him, Shabtai said.

“I was really not as religious before him as I was after, and Shmully inspired me to be more deep in the religion and in the Jewish faith,” Shabtai said of Hecht. “That’s why when he reached the age of 22, he gave me the initial idea of what he wanted to do, I deﬁnitely supported it.” Shabtai ﬁnanced the Hechts sporadically throughout the initial stages of the Chai Society and Eliezer’s growth, but he decided to make his $1.7 million donation in 2014 to ensure that the organization could thrive in a larger space.

His donation e!ectuated the name change of Eliezer to the Shabtai family name “as a token of our appreciation of their gift,” Hecht said. The donation allowed the Hechts to buy a new property for the society — the Anderson Mansion on Orange Street, built in 1882 and listed in the National Registry of Historic Places.

The relationship between Benny Shabtai and the Shabtai society, though, grew tense with time. Indeed, in July of 2019, Benny Shabtai alleged in a federal lawsuit against Shabtai Inc. that the terms of his donation had been violated and that his funds had been “misapplied.”

Benny Shabtai stated in the complaint that the original terms of his donation mandated that Hecht complete the following tasks: purchase and renovate the Anderson Mansion, rename the LLC from Eliezer Inc. to Shabtai Inc., designate the Mansion as “Beit Shabtai,” vote Benny Shabtai in as a trustee of the organization and raise an additional $16.5 million to renovate the Orange Street property and endow Shabtai Inc. He alleged that Hecht had failed to uphold the agreement by improperly renovating the property and by failing to name Benny Shabtai as a trustee of the organization.

But just one month later, in August 2019, Benny Shabtai withdrew the lawsuit. According to a New Haven Register article, Hecht shared in a statement at the time that he and other directors of Shabtai Inc. were “extremely puzzled as to why Mr. Shabtai ﬁled suit against his eponymous institution to begin with,” but were glad to see the suit withdrawn.

When asked about the lawsuit, Benny Shabtai told the News that he ﬁled it because “the building had been completely empty for many years,” while he had bought it for the students to move there.

“I wanted to push it a little bit,” Shabtai said. “And everything worked out, everyone’s happy now.”

Hecht did not comment on the lawsuit to the News. However, when asked about Benny Shabtai’s continued involvement with Shabtai Inc., Hecht shared that his named affiliation with Shabtai would preserve his contributions to the organization indefinitely.

“The living legacy of the Shabtai family, from my perspective, will be the institution,” Hecht said. “I believe it’s a permanent name for the organization.”

Expanding beyond Yale

By the time of Shabtai’s renaming in 2014, the organization had created a cohesive community at Yale and forged a strong alumni network.

As more students began to graduate, taking their connections to Shabtai with them into the real world, alumni began to host Shabtai-affiliated events in various hub cities.

“We were always very centered on campus, but we started to do di!erent events if there were interested alumni in Israel, Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, or in New York,” Hecht said. “But it wasn’t a system — it was just more sporadic, and we were very, very busy on campus.”

Hecht soon realized there weren’t many spaces like Shabtai outside of New Haven.

It was at a 2018 Hanukkah alumni event in New York that Hecht began to reﬂect on how Shabtai could more e!ectively connect its graduates to each other and current members.

Ramaswamy, who was in attendance, offered to host the next Shabtai event, which he did the following summer in his apartment in New York.

“Right away, it was different,” Hecht said. “They had decided that they were going to do something more serious or intellectual and kind of create a real conversation with people invited, from di!erent times and affiliation with the institution who all came together. You could instantly see that this was something that was a platform to springboard future events of that kind in New York and elsewhere.”

Ramaswamy’s salon continued to host organized Shabtai events in New York, while other alumni began to establish concentrated Shabtai chapters in Chicago, Washington, Boston and Tel Aviv.

As a result, for the past six years, the organization has marketed itself not only as a Yale-adjacent group, but also as a “global leadership society.”

Shabtai today

Today, Shabtai continues to operate as both salon and society, hosting a wide range of speakers at the Anderson Mansion for weekly dinners open to invited members of the Yale community. Every year, eight Yale seniors are also chosen as o cial “members” of the organization, a position that ensures them guaranteed invitation to each of Shabtai’s events.

Typically, Hecht said, about half of these eight members are Jewish, while the other half are not.

Trevor MacKay ’25 is a senior at Yale and a current member of Shabtai.

A self-identiﬁed Christian, MacKay said that despite the fact that he is not Jewish, he has “been welcomed by a

Jewish institution with open arms,” which he said “speaks to the power of what Shabtai has to o!er.”

“Every Shabbat dinner is spiritually significant to me,” MacKay said. “I’m Christian, and I don’t go to church every Sunday, but I think of myself as a religious person, and I think that I’ve been able to share spiritual moments of reﬂection and quietness in the space of Shabtai.”

Simultaneously, for some Jewish students, Shabtai’s reimagining of a Jewish space has allowed them to connect more with their religious identity. Carolyne Newman ’22 continues to remember Shabtai as an essential component of her time at Yale and her connection with Judaism.

“The organizations that I felt really connected to at Yale prior to Shabtai were predominantly focused on robotics and computer science and the sorority I was in,” Newman said. “I always had a very strong connection to my Jewish identity, but it wasn’t really religious, and it wasn’t really spiritual. It was mostly cultural.”

Newman was introduced to Shabtai by two friends during her junior year at Yale. She said that her ﬁrst time attending, she was struck by the depth of conversation, the welcoming nature of the space and the visceral experience of bringing “the total honesty of yourself” to the Shabbat dinner table, she said.

“I identify so much more with my Jewish identity after being a member of Shabtai,” Newman said.

“Now I really care about being Jewish and wanting to spend time with Jewish people and learning about what it means to be Jewish because I’m so moved and inspired by the values of Judaism that I learned about through Shabtai.”

According to Toby Hecht, Shabtai operates within the “Jewish value system” in “a home of Jewish law,” but prides itself on its openness to all “who are curious and looking to ﬁnd their purpose.”

How does Shabtai fit in with other Jewish spaces at Yale?

Shabtai’s position as a Jewish-informed space has drawn comparisons between it and other Jewish student spaces on campus, like Chabad at Yale and the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life. When asked about the relationship between Shabtai and these spaces, Hecht emphasized that Shabtai is distinct in its “relative privacy,” because it “allows people to speak most openly without fear of judgment.”

Hecht, in fact, founded Chabad at Yale in 2002. He said that his thengoal with Chabad at Yale was to foster a similar community to the one he had created at Shabtai, yet in a more open manner.

“Shabtai was not going to have the room to entertain the number of students needed,” Hecht said. “Chabad was going to be a more open space, so we started it and then we gave it its autonomy to run the way other Chabad houses run on campuses.”

Rabbi Meir C. Posner, the current director of Chabad at Yale, clarified this relationship, stating that Hecht was “instrumental in establishing Chabad at Yale, but does not have any present involvement in the organization.”

“Chabad at Yale and Shabtai have no a liation with each other,” Posner wrote to the News. “Chabad centers, including Chabad at Yale, are recognized and sanctioned by Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch and operate under the auspices of Chabad regional headquarters; to my knowledge, Shabtai is not recognized as, and does not hold itself out as, a Chabad center.”

In regards to the society’s relationship with Slifka, Hecht re-emphasized the value of Shabtai’s relative privacy in comparison to the larger “cafeteria” of Slifka, he said.

“We want to be to Slifka what the Lizzie is to the English department,” Hecht said, referring to the Elizabethan Club, a private literary club at Yale that functions on an invitation-only basis.

For Hecht, the line between Slifka and Shabtai can be drawn along a public versus private paradigm. But campus Jewish life leaders like David Sorkin, professor of Jewish intellectual history in Yale’s history department, emphasize that such a distinction is built on a faulty premise.

“I think the thing to keep in mind is, Slifka is the o cial center for Jewish life at Yale, and it’s pluralist. It includes groups from the right to the left in terms of politics, in terms of religious observance, in terms of attitudes towards Jewish life in Israel, Jewish politics, et cetera,” Sorkin said. “It’s not as if there isn’t room for diversity among Jewish students on campus or non-Jew-

ish students who happen to take an interest in some issue related to Jewish life without Shabtai.”

Sorkin, an a liate of Slifka, has, in fact, declined multiple invitations to speak at Shabtai. He characterized Shabtai as a “one-man institution” and described Hecht’s involvement in Shabtai as “dictatorial.” He cited a particular instance in which a female colleague of his, an expert on American Jewish history, felt “mistreated and disrespected” at a speaker event at Shabtai.

“Shmully disagreed with her,” Sorkin said. “She’s an expert on American Jewish history and has strong views on Israel, and he shouted at her.”

Hecht wrote to the News that he had “no idea” of the incident Sorkin described.

Sorkin also emphasized the fact that Yale and Shabtai bear no ocial affiliation to one another as motivation for his distance from the organization.

“There’s no supervision by the University,” Sorkin said. “You see this with the Ben-Gvir invitation, that he [Hecht] is trading on the fact of being at Yale without really being a part of Yale.”

A struggle between institutions Sorkin’s reﬂections echo a larger reality. Hecht’s mission to create a Yale-affiliated society is so complete that Shabtai’s organizational acts are seen as associated with Yale as an institution. Simultaneously, Shabtai’s continued outreach thrives o! of marketing itself as a Yale-based society.

In operating a structure that feeds o! of continued participation from Yale students, alumni and faculty, Shabtai’s identity has fused itself with Yale.

Recent events, like the invitation of far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to speak at Shabtai in New Haven — as well as at Shabtai chapters in New York and Washington — have therefore drawn backlash against the University itself.

On Wednesday, protests outside of Shabtai’s Anderson Mansion included signs calling out Yale for inviting the Israeli minister to speak. A spokesperson for Shabtai, though, clariﬁed at the protests that the event had no a liation with Yale.

However, the event was primarily attended by Yale-a liated Shabtai members, including approximately 100 Yale students and 30 faculty members.

The Yale administration did not reply to requests for comment on this story.

Simultaneously, on a larger scale, events like Ben-Gvir’s talk speak to wider concerns regarding the gradual politicization of Shabtai. Since the event was announced, former members of Shabtai have spoken out against the society’s decision to invite Ben-Gvir to speak.

Two Shabtai members, including David Vincent Kimel, the coach of the Yale Debate Team, sent an email to a Shabtai listserv protesting the invitation. “Shabtai was founded as a space for fearless, pluralistic Jewish discourse,” the letter stated. “But this event jeopardizes Shabtai’s reputation and very future.”

“I’m deeply concerned that we’re increasingly treating extreme rhetoric as just another viewpoint, rather than recognizing it as a distortion of constructive discourse,” Kimel said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Co-founder of Shabtai Noah Feldman echoed these sentiments.

“Shabtai has undergone many transformations over the last 30 years, and especially, I would say over the last ten and even in the last two, it’s become more sophisticated in its politics and more overtly politicized,” Feldman said.

Shabtai members like Matt Beck LAW ‘25, though, contend that this “politicization” is, in fact, simply inviting “diversity of thought.”

“When politicians come to speak, they represent … a wide range of perspectives,” Beck said. “Students who attend … come from every corner of the campus and represent the full spectrum of political identities, all united by a shared commitment to free speech and rigorous, respectful dialogue.”

As Shabtai continues to cultivate its own independent identity and host speaker events for the Yale community, its relationship to Yale as an institution merits clariﬁcation. January 2026 will mark the 29th anniversary of Shabtai’s founding. Contact ZOYA HAQ at zoya.haq@yale.edu .

BASEBALL: Yale downs Dartmouth, secures Ivy regular season title

BY TOMMY GANNON STAFF REPORTER

The Yale men’s baseball team (30–12, 16–5 Ivy) capped o! their 2025 regular season in dominant fashion en route to capturing the program’s ﬁrst Ivy League regular season title since 2018.

With three blowout road wins against the Dartmouth Green (11–25, 8–13 Ivy), the Bulldogs earned a share of the title alongside Columbia and hit the 30-win mark on the season.

“It was truly special to watch the players — especially our seniors — perform so well in the Dartmouth Series to win the championship, knowing how much hard work they put in,” head coach Brian Hamm told the News. “We continue to improve and grow as a team, so it is exciting that we are playing good baseball at the end of the season.”

Entering into the first matchup last Saturday, May 10, the Elis needed a three-game sweep to have a chance of clinching a share of the title. However, for Hamm and his team, their approach to the high-stakes games was no di!erent than any other day at the ballpark.

“Coach Hamm consistently talks about having the same intensity and competitiveness in practice as we have in games, because then the games will be just another day,” senior catcher Max Imho! ’25 said. “This mentality prepares us for each game. Our confidence on the field is because of how much we prepare during practice.”

With that approach, the Bulldogs came out in full force in their first at bats in the Granite State. Leado! man and model of consistency Kaiden Dossa ’27 got on base in the top of the first, and Jake Williams ’25 belted a two-run opposite-field home run to break open the scoring. After that, Yale never looked back.

First-year phenom Jack Ohman ’28 notched his eight wins of the season, allowing only two runs over six innings. He currently leads the nation with a 1.09 earned run average. At the plate, Dossa went four for ﬁve, and every Bulldogs starter picked up a base hit. Not only did the 18-4 victory help the Bulldogs set a new season-high for runs scored in a single game, but it also gave them plenty of momentum for the double-header last Sunday, May 11.

“Game one definitely set the

tone, and it was really rewarding for our o!ense to see the rewards of our hard work throughout the weekend. Getting that ﬁrst win in a series is huge, but you have to take the series one game at a time and stay present.” said Dossa. On Sunday morning, the Bulldogs showed that the prior day’s thumping was no ﬂuke. With captain Colton Shaw ’25 on the mound, the Elis cruised to another victory. Shaw has pitched marvelously in his last four starts, pitching into the eighth inning in every one and tallying a 0.87 ERA during that stretch.

Senior Tommy Martin ’25 went two for three with a grand slam to lead the Bulldog o!ense on their way to a 19-0 stomping. For Yale, Shaw and Martin’s performances on Sunday epitomized how the seniors have truly led by example all season long.

“The senior class has meant everything to this team,” Dossa said. “They have set the standard for us and have led the team on and o! the ﬁeld this whole year. They have built an amazing culture that is so much fun to be a part of and have been the foundation for our success this season.”

With the title on the line on Sunday afternoon, Yale closed out the weekend just as they had started it. Once again, a high-ﬂying o!ense and unhittable pitching carried the day. Daniel Cohen ’26 came up big as he has done so many times this season. He allowed only one run and three hits over six innings, and his classmate Tate Evans ’26 sealed the win with three scoreless innings in relief.

Sophomore Garrett Larsen ’27 had four knocks and Dossa

scored twice to help the Bulldogs put up ten by game’s end. Dossa’s base hit-and-walk during Sunday afternoon’s contest extended his on-base streak to 37 games.

“I never knew about this streak until a few days ago and it was cool to see because I would have never guessed that through the season thus far,” he said. “For me, controlling what I can and sticking to our team approach made this possible and very rewarding. Not playing to keep the streak has been important this past week and will be going forward as well.”

As the Bulldogs rejoiced in their title hats and with their 2025 regular season title banner after the game, they began looking ahead to the Ivy League Tournament, which starts on Friday.

“Coach Hamm preaches how we need to focus on pitch by pitch, day by day, and not looking too far into the future,” Imho! said. “He loves the power of the process.” Yale will take on the No. 4 seed Harvard Crimson (12–26, 9–12 Ivy) at noon at George H.W. Bush ’48 Field. The Bulldogs enter the tournament as the top seed, while Columbia (24–17, 16–5 Ivy) and UPenn (21–18, 13–8 Ivy) are slotted in at two and three, respectively. The Ivy tournament is a double-elimination style tournament. In the regular season, the bulldogs went 2–1 in each of their series against Harvard, Columbia and Penn.

Contact TOMMY GANNON at tommy.gannon@yale.edu.

Yale hosts Ivy League track and field championships

BY CHLOE EDWARDS STAFF REPORTER

Last weekend, Yale hosted the 2025 Ivy League heptagonal outdoor track and field championships at Cuyler Athletic Complex and Dwyer Track.

The Bulldogs placed eighth on the men’s side with 23 points for the weekend — less than any other team — and the women’s team ﬁnished in ﬁfth with 45 points. Princeton’s men’s and women’s teams both ran away with the championships.

The events last Saturday included field events and preliminary races, which set the group of athletes that qualified for Sunday’s finals. In addition to the typical track and field races and field events, the championship featured the heptathlon and decathlon.

“Heps is such a special meet because we race for more than ourselves,” first year Zoe Martonfi ’28 told the News. “There is so much tradition and pride that fuels every race.” Nolan Recker ’26 came in sixth place on Saturday in the men’s hammer with a distance of 59.95 meters. Dominique Romain ’25 came in fifth place overall in women’s long jump and Charlotte Whitehurst ’26 came in fifth place in the women’s 10,000 meter.

In order to qualify for the ﬁnals during a preliminary race, an athlete had to place in the top 12 of their event. The top five in each heat automatically qualiﬁed, plus the next two best times overall.

Six members of the women’s team qualiﬁed for the ﬁnal races on Sunday, May 11: Carmel Fitzgibbon ’27 in the 1500-meter run, Lucija Grd ’27 in the 100-meter hurdles, Peyton Parker ’25 and Gloria Guerrier ’27 in the 400meter run and Victoria Guerrier ’27 and Iris Bergman ’25 in the 800-meter.

On the men’s team, Owen Karas ’26 and Brian Gamble ’27 qualiﬁed for the finals in the 1500-meter run, Kit Colson ’25 in the 100meter and 200-meter, and Max Bishop ’28 in the 800-meter.

Sunday also included the steeplechase, in which Martonfi finished sixth. The women’s team also finished second in the 4×400meter relay and fourth in the 4×100-meter relay.

“In my race, I felt the love and support from my team through every step, which propelled my legs even after a face plant into the water,” Martonﬁ said. “I am proud of what Yale brought today, and I am excited for what I know we will bring in the future.”

Makayla White ’26 ﬁnished the heptathlon in seventh place with 4,772 points, setting a new record for Yale. The heptathlon is a multievent competition consisting of 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, the 200-meter run, long jump, javelin throw and the 800-meter run. An athlete scores points based on their placement in each event, and the points are compiled to determine overall rankings in the event.

For the men, Winslow Atkeson ’25 came in fourth in the steeplechase, and Karas ﬁnished second in the 1500-meter race. Karas earned over half of the men’s team’s points, between the 1500-meter race and his fourth-place ﬁnish in the 5000-meter run later on Sunday.

The team also earned points for their sixth-place finish in the 4×100-meter relay and fifth-place finish in the 4×800-meter relay. The men’s track and field team has 11 seniors, and the women’s team has nine.

Contact CHLOE EDWARDS at chloe.edwards@yale.edu.

YALE ATHLETICS

Led by Head Coach Brian Hamm and captain Colton Shaw’ 25, the Bulldogs swept their ﬁnal regular season series to claim a share of the Iy League regular season title.

PARTING REFLECTIONS

Ward 1 alder reﬂects on Yale, New Haven and what’s next

BY ELIJAH HUREWITZ-RAVITCH STAFF REPORTER

For Ward 1 Alder Kiana Flores ’25.5, a born-and-bred New Havener, starting out at Yale was “pretty rough,” she told the News earlier this month.

“It didn’t really feel like I had a place where I found my people just yet. Trying to establish myself at Yale, I actually think I distanced myself a little bit from being involved in New Haven things,” Flores said.

Flores, a political science major, told the News that she was focused on academics for most of her ﬁrst year at Yale. The back corner of the Pierson College library’s “iconic rotunda” was her study spot of choice, she said.

But Flores never truly stepped away from New Haven. Although she may not have been as active as she had been during her years at Cooperative Arts & Humanities Magnet School — when the New Haven Climate Movement, whose youth branch she co-founded, was her “number one priority” — she remained engaged in New Haven politics.

In her first semester, Flores interned for Eli Sabin ’22 LAW ’26, the Ward 1 alder at the time, as he campaigned to represent Ward 7. Later that year, she ran for Ward 1 Democratic Town Committee co-chair. In that role, she helped the next Ward 1 Alder Alex Guzhnay gather local opinions on city policy, Flores said.

Flores attributes much of her recent work in local politics to “the funny ways that connections happen at Yale,” as she put it — from applying to work with Sabin after joining a Yale College Democrats GroupMe chat to taking former

Mayor John DeStefano’s political science seminar with Guzhnay.

Asked what her biggest accomplishment as alder has been thus far, Flores brought up her constituent relations work on Ward 1’s “tenants issue” in early 2024, the very beginning of her term.

Tenants of a building on Orange Street organized the Emerson Tenants Union in response to deferred maintenance concerns; Flores said she played a mediating role to help the group of constituents.

“It was both a challenge and the most worthwhile experience,” she said. “I got familiar with the Fair

Rent Commission, and started getting more information about housing rights, which was something that I ran on and that I was very interested in learning a lot more about.”

Now, Flores said, the biggest challenge facing New Haven is its status as a sanctuary city, as the Trump administration looks to target cities that do not bolster federal immigration enforcement.

“The really strange place that we’re in with the federal government on immigration has had a lot of people uneasy — especially myself, as someone who comes

from an immigrant family. There’s just a lot of uncertainty,” she said.

Flores, who serves on the Board of Alders’ City Services and Environmental Policy Committee, is also concerned about New Haven’s reliance on federal grants, some of which are now in jeopardy.

So far, according to Mayor Justin Elicker, seven such grants — which fund climate and health initiatives, among others — have been impacted by President Donald Trump’s executive actions. Elicker told the News this month that the Trump administration had frozen or suspended a total of $27 million in federal aid to New Haven.

But Flores also said she is excited to see the results of federal investments that the city has received in the past few years. Several federal grants went to infrastructure projects that will include her downtown ward, like the pedestrianization of a section of High Street, safety upgrades to Chapel Street and the creation of a new Bus Rapid Transit system.

In the past year, Flores had to balance her Board of Alders duties with her job as a ﬁrst-year counselor, or FroCo. She dismissed the idea that the two time-intensive roles might hinder one another, saying they were “very complementary to each other.”

She added, “My frosh will stop me in the middle of the road and be like, ‘Oh, the honorable Alder Flores.’”

A ﬁght for the seat Flores will leave vacant lies on the horizon.

For the ﬁrst time since 2015, Ward 1’s Democratic primary is contested. To date, two candidates are vying for the nomination: Jake Siesel ’27, from Charlotte, North Carolina, and Rhea McTiernan Huge ’27 — a New Havener and a cur-

rent Ward 1 Democratic co-chair.

On Monday, May 12, Flores told the News that she endorsed McTiernan Huge’s campaign.

“Being able to say, ‘I actually know about the city because I was born and raised here,’ adds a little bit more weight to the position,” Flores said.

Andrea Chow ’25, a close friend of Flores, agrees.

“Yale and New Haven are indescribably lucky to have Kiana,” Chow wrote to the News. “Seeing how her closeness to New Haven deﬁned her role as alder gives me the sense that Ward 1 should always be represented by a New Havener.”

Siesel, meanwhile, told the News in April that his position as a relative newcomer to New Haven will push him to “engage individuals from across the city” and “develop a platform that works for all.”

Flores will participate in commencement ceremonies this weekend but will not o cially graduate until December — coinciding with the end of her two-year term as alder. After graduating, Flores said she plans to get a local job in the legal or social services sphere, pursue a graduate degree in social work and eventually go to law school.

“I would love to stay in New Haven, if possible,” Flores said. “People tell me, ‘Oh, New Haven’s not fun, and there’s nothing to do,’ and I think the complete opposite — every day I feel like I have a new experience in this city.”

Ward 1 has 4,641 residents, according to data from the 2020 Census.

Contact ELIJAH HUREWITZ-RAVITCH at elijah.hurewitz-ravitch@yale.edu.

Breaking up with Strictly Platonic

BY GRETA GARRISON CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

From its start in a first-year common room to two performances at Spring Fling, Strictly Platonic has become a campus staple. For four years, the group has been swaying students across campus with captivating performances and heartwarming poprock originals.

The band started when lead singer Audrey Hempel ’25 and keyboardist Keith Bruce ’25 met during a first year math class. One thing led to another, and the pair was joined by guitarists James Licato ’25 and William Min ’25, bassist Declan Finn ‘26 and drummer Hugo Lehrach ’26. Since then, the group of six has performed in a New York City dance club, signed with Yale’s student-run record label, 17o1 Records, and released their own studio album, “Superpositions.”

“Wrapping up is very very bittersweet,” Hempel said. “It was something that I’ve literally been involved with since freshman fall, so it’s really been kind of indivisible from my experience at Yale.”

Now, as four of the members of the band prepare to graduate, the end of Strictly Platonic at Yale has arrived.

However, Hempel said she plans to pursue a musical career and will move to Los Angeles to continue writing music and performing.

“The band completely changed that trajectory,” Hempel said in regards to her career plans. “I don’t think I would have ever had the confidence or realized how deeply passionate I was about [songwriting] without having started the band.”

Min said he plans to continue writing with Hempel online, whilst relocating to Uppsala, Sweden, to pursue a master’s degree in machine learning.

Looking back on everything Strictly Platonic has accomplished, he mentioned that it was “really special” to see how much the music has changed while still remaining true to their sound.

“Over a break we all got together and did a tier list of our songs,” Min told the News. “I’d forgotten about some of them, and seeing the variety of moods and flavors was a lot of fun.”

Licato will also be going to graduate school at Stanford University, where he will study chemical engineering.

As someone with limited prior musical experience, he said the group showed him how simple songwriting could be. “Now I know that you can write music with really just a bass line.” With this understanding and more confidence in his musical abilities, Licato plans to continue writing music as well.

Bruce said he felt sentimental about the group’s disbandment.

“Like Audrey, I’ve been a part of the band since freshman fall ... It’s gonna leave a big hole in my life,” he told the News.

Reminiscing on the creation of “Superpositions,” which took hours of work in the studio, Bruce also noted the band’s regret at not finishing their second album.

“We had everything lined up,” he said, “but seniors had too much on their plate with theses and whatnot.” Bruce plans to return to his home state of Alaska, where he

will pursue ﬁshery science. Lehrach and Finn — both rising seniors — aren’t leaving Yale just yet. The two will continue playing together in another band, called Don’t Sell Me the Dog.

Lechrach said the two are “super excited” about the new band, but acknowledged that it will never be “quite the same” as Strictly Platonic, which he called his “family.”

Hempel extended her thanks to the students who have supported Strictly Platonic throughout its time.

“To the people who came to all of our shows, our friends, and who knew all the lyrics and were singing it in the front row, especially at our last show, everyone who was crying while we were crying on stage — thank you to everyone,” she said.

Strictly Platonic is releasing its last single, “Eurydice,” the week before Commencement.

Contact GRETA GARRISON at greta.garrison@yale.edu.

COURTESY OF KIANA FLORES

As she prepares to ﬁnish her undergraduate degree and her Board of Alders term in the fall, Ward 1

Alder Kiana Flores ’25.5 described lessons from life as a student politician.

BY AIDEN ZHOU DATA EDITOR

The class of 2025, by the numbers

T his past week, the News’ data desk conducted a survey to learn about the class of 2025’s experiences at Yale and what their futures may hold. The News sent the questionnaire to roughly 2,000 graduating Yalies and received 239 individual responses. Each question was optional, so response sizes vary and are speciﬁed on an individual basis.

Delve into the data below to learn about seniors’ most popular majors, love lives, career plans and more.

STUDENT LIFE

Nine of 234 respondents applied to transfer residential colleges. Six of nine were approved, and of those six, three transferred to Branford.

65%

Respondents

51%

Respondents who lived with their first-year roommate for multiple years.

The top three majors, by popularity, were history at 11 percent, economics at 6 percent, and English at 4 percent.

46%

Respondents graduating with their intended major from their ﬁrst year.

52 unique majors were given as responses to this question. To visualize data on the majors with which seniors are graduating, the News grouped majors into four categories: Sciences & Engineering, Humanities & Arts, Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Studies. This is in line with the University’s listed Areas of Study.

Respondents who

FINDING LOVE

Since starting college, respondents have had, on average, 1.4 signiﬁcant others and 3.8 sexual partners.

47 percent of respondents are single, 45 percent are taken, and 18 percent are uncertain.

Respondents who lived with their first-year roommate for all four years. 20% AFTER YALE

Respondents who have held a student job during the school year or over break.

76 percent of respondents agree, or strongly agree, with the statement “I love Yale.”

61 percent of respondents participated in one to seven days of Feb Club. 22 percent did not participate. 14 percent were particularly dedicated, attending every event of the month.

Hinge, used by 51 percent of respondents, was the favorite dating app of Yale seniors. Tinder was a close second at 44 percent. Bumble at 13 percent and Grindr at 7 percent were third and fourth, respectively. Many respondents used more than one app. Notably, 34 percent used both Hinge and Tinder, while 15 percent used a third app on top of those two.

66 percent of respondents are entering the workforce, while 24 percent will pursue further education. 15 percent plan to travel, 3 percent to volunteer, and 2 percent to serve in the military. 7 percent of respondents are undecided. As the survey enabled selection of multiple options, these percentages add up to over 100.

Of those who have a job lined up, consulting, finance, technology and research are the most prevalent post-grad sectors.

$45,000 to $60,000 is the median of reported salary ranges.

26%

Respondents headed to New York after graduation.

Illustration by Ericka Henriquez

Four Years

Mia Rose Kohn, Illustrations Editor

PHOTOS

Photos by Alexis Lam / Baala Shakya / Christina Lee

Rachel Mak / Samad Hakani / YuLin Zhen

THROUGH THE YEARS

Flurry of construction ﬁnished during seniors’ tenure

BY JERRY GAO AND HENRY LIU STAFF REPORTERS

Since the class of 2025 came to Yale, buildings on campus have developed significantly. The University has completed multiple construction projects and expansions, costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Many of these projects began with donations prior to 2020 and were gradually completed despite COVID-19, though several projects were delayed.

Here is how Yale’s campus landscape has changed in the past few years.

Humanities Quadrangle

The Humanities Quadrangle, formerly called the Hall of Graduate Studies, reopened on Feb. 15, 2021, after more than two and a half years of renovations. Planning for the renovation began following a March 2015 donation of $25 million towards transforming the Hall of Graduate Studies into a center for the humanities. A further $50 million donation was made by an anonymous donor, and the budget for renovations was ultimately $162 million.

The project included several substantial changes. Renovations increased the size of the original building by about 13,000 square feet, all underground. The Humanities Quadrangle, or HQ, now includes 311 o ces, 28 classrooms and 24 shared meeting spaces.

The tower, which used to house graduate student dormitories, was converted into graduate student study space. The tower was named Swensen Tower, in honor of David Swensen, Yale’s

from Stephen Schwarzman ’69, which was announced in 2016 as the second largest single gift in Yale’s history. The construction included a renovated Commons, a Good Life Center location,

“The Humanities Quadrangle will be transformative,” Tamar Gendler, at the time the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said when renovations were completed in 2021. “It will foster new connections across departments and programs, it will enable faculty and students to share knowledge and it will cultivate new ideas and approaches.”

chief investment officer for over 30 years.

Schwarzman Center

The Schwarzman Center opened its doors on Sept. 1, 2021 — the beginning of most of the class of 2025’s ﬁrst year — following extensive renovations of Commons and Woolsey Hall. The project was funded primarily by a $150 million gift

student lounges and performance spaces.

“The activation of lunch in Commons, seating in the Underground, and grab-and-go service at the Bow Wow marks a busy start to the process of bringing the center’s spaces online,” YSC Executive Director Garth Ross said in a 2021 interview with the News.

Kline Tower

Kline Tower was rededicated on Sept. 22, 2023, after a renovation that significantly updated the building, which was originally constructed in 1966 as Kline Biology Tower.

The renovation, which involved a comprehensive interior reconfiguration, added new ground-level spaces — including Poorvu North, a satellite location for the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning — and two additional floors, making it the tallest Yale-owned building. Although construction was delayed by COVID-19 and initial reviews by faculty were mixed, the renovation solved flooding issues and brought in natural light.

“They’ve done magic,” astronomy professor Priyamvada Natarajan told the News in 2023. “It’s just beautiful.”

The 16-story building now houses the mathematics, statistics & data science and astronomy departments.

Peabody Museum of Natural History

The March 2024 reopening of the Peabody Museum of Natural History concluded the museum’s ﬁrst comprehensive renovation in over 90 years. Among the changes was a complete restructuring of the giant Brontosaurus

Yale Center for British Art reopening

After two years of renovations, the Yale Center for British Art reopened to the public in March 2025 with more sustainable infrastructure and a reimagined presentation of its permanent collection.

“I’m hoping this is a new beginning,” Martina Droth, who was appointed as the museum’s director in January, said. “I feel the time has come for us to reintroduce audiences to our amazing holdings.”

skeleton, which had been housed in the Peabody since 1931. What was previously a courtyard was covered with skylights to form the central gallery.

“We are excited to reopen our doors and welcome students and visitors of all ages into new and transformed galleries that better reﬂect the breadth of our collection, advances in scientiﬁc research and the rapidly changing world we live in,” the Christopher Renton, the museum’s associate director of communications and marketing, wrote in an email to the News after the reopening.

The update, after an $160 million gift in 2018 from Edward P. Bass ’68, included new classroom spaces throughout the museum and free admission “in perpetuity,” according to the University.

Yale President Maurie McInnis, who received her masters’ and doctoral degrees from Yale’s art history department, told the News that entering the renovated YCBA felt like “visiting with old friends,” adding that she spent “countless hours with the museum’s extraordinary collection” during her time as a graduate student and curated her first exhibition there.

Yale’s fiscal year 2025 capital budget is $761 million, including $425 million for major projects that cost $4 million or more.

Contact JERRY GAO at jerry.gao.jg2988@yale.edu and HENRY LIU at henry.liu.hal52@yale.edu.

BAALA SHAKYA / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Humanities Quadrangle, formerly called the Hall of Graduate Studies, reopened on Feb. 15, 2021, after more than two and a half years of renovations.

KAMINI PURUSHOTHAMAN / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The Yale Center for British Art reopened to the public in March 2025

ELLIE PARK / SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

The March 2024 reopening of the Peabody Museum of Natural History concluded the museum’s ﬁrst comprehensive renovation in over 90 years.

TIM TAI

The Schwarzman Center opened its doors on Sept. 1, 2021 following extensive renovations of Commons and Woolsey Hall.

ALYSSA CHANG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Kline Tower was rededicated on Sept. 22, 2023, after a renovation that signiﬁcantly updated the building, which was originally constructed in 1966.

THROUGH THE YEARS

Tiny homes still standing at Rosette Village

BY SABRINA THALER STAFF REPORTER

For the past three years, a backyard in the city’s Hill neighborhood has become a home to dozens of homeless people.

“It’s the basic model of a refugee camp,” Mark Colville, who runs the Rosette Neighborhood Village Collective, said. “If there was a disaster in New Haven and hundreds of families had to leave their homes, where would they go? They’d go to a refugee camp where you have a central facility surrounded by satellite units of housing. That’s what we’ve been doing here.”

To Colville and many of the residents at Rosette Neighborhood Village, homelessness — and the city’s response to it — has become a disaster of its own.

As the community evolved from tents to tiny homes, it has sparked a lengthy debate over how to handle the city’s housing crisis, and whether makeshift outdoor housing can help solve it.

The community is located behind the Amistad Catholic Worker House at 203 Rosette St. in the Hill. Colville, a longtime housing activist, began the project in early 2022 in an effort to support New Haven’s increasing homeless population.

In April 2023, when the city bulldozed a tent city alongside Ella T. Grasso Boulevard, many residents from that encampment moved to Rosette. To make room for the new neighbors, the Village expanded into a neighboring community garden — a venture which the city eventually shut down.

In 2024 alone, the New Haven area’s verified homeless population doubled. Rosette Village’s proponents hoped to send a message about the need for improved affordable housing in New Haven and the lack of alternatives to homeless shelters for the city’s homeless population.

“A shelter is very much like being in a jail,” village resident Suki Godek said in a Connecticut Public documentary about the project. “You’re giving up your rights to privacy, your rights to your possessions, to your ability to come and go as you please.”

The documentary — entitled “Where Then Shall We Go?” — showcased how village residents formed a community in the Amistad backyard. Weekly schedules

dictated who was responsible for chores throughout the week.

Residents met with Colville to set community norms, like a nightly quiet hour.

Tiny home villages have cropped up elsewhere in the United States, in cities such as Madison, Wisconsin, and Portland, Oregon. Community First! Village near Austin, Texas, one of the largest, spans 51 acres and houses 370 people, according to its website. Like the Rosette Neighborhood Village, Community First! is a Christian-run organization in which tiny home residents share communal facilities. But since the county where the Texas village is located doesn’t have its own zoning code, its developers faced fewer of the legal challenges that have come to plague Rosette.

At first, the Amistad settlement consisted mostly of tents, with extension cords connecting each one to electricity from the house. By 2023, it was evolving.

Donations from local community members paid for Amistad to install six small shelters built by a company named Pallet. The new homes, installed at Rosette Street that October, included beds, smoke detectors, power outlets and individual heating and electricity units.

But after sending multiple orders to stop the construction of the tiny homes, the city refused to connect the new electricity units to the grid, citing noncompliance with zoning regulations. For weeks in December 2023 and January 2024, activists struggled to communicate with the city and state about what requirements the homes would need to meet to receive approval.

Finally, the city turned on the heat in mid-January under the condition that the homes would have 180 days to come into compliance with the code.

When the 180-day exemption expired in July, the city determined that the village remained in violation of the zoning code, and power was shut o! once more.

This mid-summer shutoff became a lightning rod for advocacy on the part of the Unhoused Activists Community Team, or U-ACT, an advocacy group led by Colville. In January 2025, U-ACT staged a demonstration at City Hall to highlight the city’s treatment of the homeless, both in the tiny homes and at an encampment

on the New Haven Green, which the mayor cleared in October. Colville told the News that about half of the New Haven Board of Alders and roughly a dozen state legislators — including Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, who represents part of New Haven — have visited the tiny homes. Despite those lawmakers’ largely positive responses, he said, Mayor Justin Elicker has approached the tiny homes more like a dutiful policeman than an inﬂuential policymaker.

Meanwhile, Elicker contends that the village’s code violations — including violations of wind and weight load requirements — present safety risks for residents and a liability for the city.

“When the city knows about a housing violation or billing code violation, and we don’t do anything about it, we open ourselves up to a lawsuit,” Elicker said in a recent interview with the News.

“And if someone gets seriously hurt, that could be millions of dollars that taxpayers pay.”

Elicker emphasized the city’s commitment to addressing the homelessness crisis, citing the city’s eight homeless shelters, including a converted Days Inn

hotel. He said that neighboring municipalities have been resistant to changing restrictive zoning policies that contribute to New Haven’s housing shortage. For now, the tiny homes remain intact, but still without heating. In January, Amistad and the Rosette Village Neighborhood Collective formed the Good Neighbors Fund to pay for the village’s “exorbitant” operational costs, Colville said.

State legislators proposed a bill earlier this year that would allow religious organizations like Amistad to establish “temporary shelter units” for people experiencing homelessness. Colville is encouraging the community to advocate for the legislation.

“We’re determined that the coming winter is not going to be like last winter,” Colville said. “By any means necessary, within the bounds of nonviolence.”

In 2024, homelessness in Connecticut increased by 13 percent, according to a press release from the mayor’s office.

Contact SABRINA THALER at sabrina.thaler@yale.edu .

CHRISTINA LEE / SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

As the backyard community for the homeless in the Hill enters its third year, a tense dispute with the city over zoning laws drags on.

PHOTOS BY CHRISTINA LEE / SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

THROUGH THE YEARS

Livable City Initiative gets a remodel

BY SABRINA THALER STAFF REPORTER

In February 2023, an investi -

gation by the News found that most complaints filed the previous year with New Haven’s housing code enforcement agency, the Livable City Initiative, had not been resolved.

The agency, LCI, is responsible for addressing blight to residential properties, enforcing the housing code and monitoring building licensing. However, a number of operational faults, such as delayed inspections, meant that some New Haven tenants faced broken smoke detectors, haphazard piles of screws, loose electrical wiring and other dangerous conditions in their homes with no redress from their landlords or the city.

After several years of mounting criticism from tenants and housing activists, the city responded last year with a makeover of LCI, including new leadership, expanded staff, boosted funding and higher ﬁnes on noncompliant landlords. The overhaul has become a point of pride for Mayor Justin Elicker’s administration, which has long faced pressure to strengthen its housing policy.

LCI has operated in New Haven since 1996. For most of its existence, the agency had dual responsibilities: housing enforcement — determining whether properties complied with code regulations, anti-blight standards and licensing requirements — and housing development, which entailed establishing affordable options and providing ﬁnancial assistance to homebuyers and tenants.

In his proposal for the city’s 2024-25 ﬁscal year budget, Elicker took the ﬁrst major step in transforming LCI when he shrunk its jurisdiction to housing enforcement alone. By the end of 2024, he formed a new department in the Economic Development Administration to take over the city’s housing development work.

“I think [it’s] very important for LCI to focus on the core mission, what it was originally created for, which is ensuring our existing housing stock is of high standards,” Elicker told the News in 2024.

A “record of neglect”

After housing code violations in three properties sent him to criminal housing court in Octo -

ber 2021, Shmuel Aizenberg, the head of local real estate company Ocean Management, blamed LCI’s outdated certified mail communications for his failure to resolve the violations, which included strewn trash, damaged siding and rotting floorboards.

Yet LCI staff explained that they often struggled to reach a human property owner when addressing tenant complaints about code violations. Instead, the names of corporations tended to be listed on residential license applications, which proved problematic in emergencies or time-sensitive situations.

In February 2022, under then-director Arlevia Samuel, LCI successfully pursued a city ordinance amendment that would require property owners to list a human being on their applications for residential licenses. LCI sta still communicated with property owners through mail in regular cases.

During Samuel’s tenure as director, from October 2020 to August 2023, she oversaw additions to LCI’s staff and over $800,000 in federal aid disbursed to renters during the pandemic.

But community members continued to sound the alarm about their unresolved complaints.

In April 2023, a tenant filed against LCI in housing court after waiting nearly eight months for a reinspection of her Hill apartment. The hearing found that the apartment had failed three inspections — due to problems ranging from a rodent infestation to broken cabinets — but that LCI hadn’t returned. The court-ordered inspection that followed found that those problems persisted.

Later in April, activists from the Room For All Coalition, a local housing advocacy group, testiﬁed before the Board of Alders Finance Committee to demand that LCI expand its 12-person team of inspectors and create a digital system for tenants to track the progress of their complaints. In a New Haven Independent op-ed published the same week, activists called for increased funds for the agency and accused the city of tolerating slumlords.

“Unlike individuals in the criminal-legal system, landlords are treated the same whether it’s their ﬁrst or 50th o ense,” activists Amanda Watts, Jessica Stamp

and Luke Melonakos-Harrison wrote in the op-ed. “Ocean Management has over 50 convictions in court for housing code violations. This record of neglect represents harm against the health and wellbeing of hundreds of New Haven renters, especially considering that many violations go unreported for fear of retaliation.”

The agency and mayor continued to respond with gradual action. For instance, Elicker advocated for a state bill that would increase ﬁnes for code violations to $2,000, increasing from a $250 cap.

In August 2023, an investigation in the New Haven Independent found that over 3,000 multifamily rental properties had expired licenses, which meant that landlords did not pass inspections certifying those properties to be safe. The article also noted that LCI wasn’t using ﬁnes to punish licensing noncompliance.

The path to reform

After years of unresolved cases and swelling criticism, LCI’s transformation began in earnest in spring of 2024. Besides focusing LCI on housing enforcement, Elicker’s budget proposal for the following ﬁscal year provided for eight new sta members, including ﬁve housing inspectors.

In April 2024, Elicker appointed Liam Brennan LAW ’07, a former mayoral candidate and active critic of LCI, to serve as a consultant for the agency. At the time, Brennan said he would focus on using legal devices to strengthen enforcement efforts. In August, Elicker appointed Brennan as the new executive director of LCI, with Samuel moving to the Economic Development Administration.

As Brennan took the reins, policy began to change rapidly. In September, the alders’ Legislation Committee advanced an ordinance amendment that would help the city hire hearing o cers — local volunteers responsible for issuing citations and ﬁnes — rather than waiting for approval from the state Board of Appeals.

Brennan also updated the housing code to extend the $100-perday fine from code violations to both blight and licensing cases, which he said has encouraged landlords to attend hearings or address complaints before their scheduled hearing.

In December, a hearing o cer issued $130,000 in ﬁnes to Ocean Management for blight on six of their properties. Previously, Brennan told the News, LCI needed five reinspections and approval from the state Board of Appeals to enforce anti-blight cases.

“That is not a recipe for making government work,” Brennan said. “And I want to see government work.”

According to Brennan, a survey of 40 cases from his research as a consultant revealed that it took an average of 16 days to send a landlord a notice of violation following a failed inspection. Today, he said, that number is down to 3.3 days.

Still, Brennan said, there is room for the agency to grow. He told the News that large gaps can remain between when a landlord receives a notice of an anti-blight violation and when they receive a citation. LCI also has a queue of reinspections it has yet to complete.

One way to ensure accountability is a publicly available dashboard for tracking the status of inspections and complaints — an innovation Elicker promised when he appointed Brennan back in August.

According to Brennan, his team is working to add a search bar function that can aggregate data about a property’s code compliance, licensing and anti-blight records all at once. The current draft of the system presents these data separately. Brennan told the News that this new function is in beta testing, and will be ready for internal review by late May.

Elicker’s 2025-26 fiscal year budget includes a $1.3 million increase in funding for LCI.

“I think the LCI team has been feeling pretty proud of the progress that they’re making, chipping away at blight and housing code issues that the city’s struggled with for decades,” Elicker told the News. “There’s a lot of good work being done, and we’re better able to track that work now to ensure that we hold ourselves accountable, and also to share with the public our progress.”

The Livable City Initiative’s director serves a four-year term.

Contact SABRINA THALER at sabrina.thaler@yale.edu .

Airport expansion close at hand, with environmental permits pending

BY ERIC SONG STAFF REPORTER

Tweed New Haven Airport

submitted an environmental permit application to a Connecticut environmental agency on April 30, marking another step towards the completion of the airport’s expansion project.

Local environmental activists and many of the airport’s neighbors in East Shore continue to vocally oppose the plan. Avelo Airlines, Tweed’s biggest carrier, has also come under ﬁre in recent weeks for a contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to conduct deportation ﬂights

from Arizona. The ﬂights began on Monday.

The expansion would entail lengthening the runway from 5,600 to 6,575 feet, as well as a new East Terminal, with new parking facilities and roads for passengers. The project was announced in May 2021, about six months before Avelo began operating at the airport.

Since the announcement, passenger tra c through the airport has grown by almost twenty times.

In a statement on April 30, Tweed declared the submission of the permit applications — to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection — “a major step forward in Tweed-

New Haven Airport (HVN)’s nearly century-long e ort to unlock new opportunities for Southern Connecticut through expanded air service and improved transportation infrastructure.” The press release also emphasized the airport’s commitment to the environment and ﬂood management.

The proposed plan includes promises to preserve and restore wetlands surrounding the airport facility and to monitor the nearby ecosystem. Additionally, the airport claims that the shorter airplane taxi distances resulting from the expansion will reduce air pollution.

In recent years, environmentalists have questioned the impacts of the airport expansion, including evidence in a report on potential PFAS contamination, which does not quickly integrate into the environment. They would like to see an Environmental Impact Statement produced by the federal government.

Andrew King, a spokesperson for Avports, the company that manages Tweed, said the changes coming to the airport will help make the airport more environmentally friendly.

“Our goal has been to build a carbon-neutral terminal with carbon-neutral ground operations,” King said.

This would require a microgrid for electricity and the electrification of fuel-based ground operations. Tweed is also the ﬁrst airport in the country that is moving towards hydrogen-powered ground vehicles, King added.

But the plan is not without controversy.

Carolyn Rostkowski, an East Shore resident who lives in close proximity to the airport along Fort Hale Road, said she is concerned about how the extension of the runway and construction of new facilities on wetlands would impact the environment.

“Everything goes right into the Long Island Sound, which in my lifetime has cleaned up significantly,” Rostkowski said.

In November, the environmentalist organization Save the Sound appealed the Federal Aviation Administration’s ﬁnding that the expansion would have “no significant impact” on the environment.

“The FAA has failed to meaningfully analyze and mitigate signiﬁcant impacts of the proposed expansion, despite the fact that the airport is located in a ﬂoodplain, in a residential neighborhood, and in a state-designated environmental justice area,” Jessica Roberts, an attorney with Save the Sound, said in a statement at the time.

Gloria Bellacicco, an East Shore resident, agrees with Roberts’ assessment. Bellacicco said that bird migration pathways come near the airport.

Tweed has had a more rigorous environmental approval process than other comparable airports, King insisted, due to the level of public interest in the expansion. The FAA, he added, has a “very strong track record” with its approval process.

King said the Environmental Impact Statement that activists want would not be more rigorous than the already completed FAA Environmental Assessment, which he said was the “gold stan-

dard for understanding and projecting the environmental impact of the airport.”

Rostkowski said she remains concerned about the increased air traffic that the expansion of the airport could bring. She described the noise of aircraft at peak hours as nonstop and complained about fumes and dirt that have resulted from the increased vehicle and airport tra c.

“My curtains are black,” Rostkowski said.

King said the project will decrease noise and air pollution, because the terminal will be “moved into the middle of what is essentially a ﬁeld,” farther from nearby homes.

“HVN is growing very quickly. To do nothing is completely irresponsible. The only responsible thing to do is to move the project forward as quickly as possible,” King wrote the the News.

Rostkowski fears that federal cuts from the Trump administration might lead to less stringent regulation of the project if federal agencies might not “do the due diligence before just charging ahead,” she said.

Approval of the environmental permits by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection is one of the final hurdles before groundbreaking.

The Tweed New Haven Airport Authority has scheduled six additional public meetings to discuss the project. Contact ERIC SONG at e.song@yale.edu .

COURTESY OF LIAM BRENNAN

In April 2024, the mayor appointed Liam Brennan LAW ’07 to serve as a consultant for New Haven’s housing code enforcement agency.

ZOE BERG

Tweed New Haven Airport presented an environmental mitigation plan to the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection last month.

THROUGH THE YEARS

Students move o campus as local housing shortage worsens

LILY BELLE POLING STAFF REPORTER

Yale College currently has 524 empty beds. Yet more than a quarter of undergraduates live off campus — in a city with the fourth most competitive housing market in the country.

The metropolitan area has a rental vacancy rate of 3.1 percent, the third lowest in the country, indicating a cutthroat market. Rents have grown 48.19 percent since the pandemic, and the number of people experiencing homelessness in the region more than doubled in the last year, an increase that is directly linked to more expensive rental prices.

Over 500 on-campus beds are currently unoccupied, according to Ferentz Lafargue, the associate dean of residential college life, and the New Haven housing market is fierce. Nonetheless, more and more Yale College students are choosing to move off campus — twice as many this academic year than in 2019-20. According to Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd, a historic 59 percent of the class of 2026 currently live in off-campus housing.

Many students move off campus to live with friends from different residential colleges or to guarantee themselves single bedrooms. Others cite concerns about the availability of on-campus housing or the possibility of being forced out of their residential college.

However, the gradual outpouring of students into adjacent neighborhoods is pushing locals farther away from campus and is one of many factors contributing to increased demand for housing in an ever-hot market, New Haven landlords and residents told the News. With a focus on ensuring residential colleges are a cornerstone of undergraduate life, Yale College administrators are pushing to bring students back to campus.

An exodus in the wake of COVID-19

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, a steady rate of about 16 percent of undergraduates lived in off-campus housing each year. But during the 202021 academic year, an unprecedented 62 percent of students lived off campus due to Yale’s strict pandemic policies.

This year, about 26 percent of the student body, or 1,757 students, live off campus — a number almost double the 982 students who lived off-campus in the last pre-pandemic year.

Three Yale administrators attributed this recent exodus to off-campus housing directly to the pandemic.

Because so many students either were required or chose to live off campus during the 2020-21 academic year, a greater number of students were able to pass down their apartments to other students, according to Lafargue. Students often recommend their apart -

ments to younger friends, who in turn take over the lease. This made the transition off campus more straightforward than it was before, Lafargue believes.

During the 2020-21 school year, classes were conducted remotely through a “residential/remote model.” The model meant that first-years got to live on campus during the fall semester and switched with sophomores for the spring semester. The University also adopted strict social distancing policies, including grab-and-go dining hall meals and restrictions on social gatherings of more than 10 people.

Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis suggested that at least some of the students who moved off campus did so because they were dissatisfied with masking restrictions and dining hall policies. Additionally, the class of 2025 became unusually large after the “COVID bump” — a swelling of the student population because of the large percentage of students that took gap years or deferred enrollment — which increased demand for on-campus housing in the following years, causing more students to move off-campus when residential colleges threatened to reach capacity.

Lewis largely attributed preferences for off-campus housing to sweeping shifts in undergraduate social habits. In the 1980s, he said, undergraduates could have “keg parties in the [residential] colleges,” and the social scene revolved around the residential colleges. Now, due to legal concerns, the party scene has shifted primarily off campus, with students following, Lewis said.

New Haven is “a nicer place to live, a safer place to live than it was a few decades ago,” he added, making off-campus housing more desirable. Meanwhile, financial aid has expanded, so more students are likely to be able to afford to live off campus, Lewis said. Students can request a refund of the share of their financial aid that goes toward housing costs to use for off-campus rent.

According to the Yale College Council’s 2024 fall survey, the most common reasons to move off campus come down to better amenities, the opportunity to live with friends from different residential colleges, concerns about the on-campus housing lottery and the cost of Yale room and board. Lewis cited similar findings from undergraduate surveys, adding that students also like to control what they eat and have their own kitchens.

“It was more likely than not that I would have gotten a single, but I just wasn’t willing to take the risk of three consecutive years living in a cramped double,” Jake Siesel ’27 told the News. “So having the opportunity to secure [a single] months in advance and not be beholden to the lottery system was definitely worth the pain of the

[off-campus housing] process.”

Now, administrators are aiming to reverse the push towards off-campus living.

Lafargue wrote that the College is “actively looking for ways to retain more students on campus,” which includes its efforts to add additional dormitories, Arnold and McClellan halls, to the undergraduate housing inventory and “to create as much parity across the [residential] colleges as possible.”

In November, Boyd announced changes to undergraduate housing policy that include eventually giving juniors priority over seniors in on-campus room selection. The point, she wrote in an email sent to rising seniors, is to make it “less likely that [juniors] will feel pressure” to move off campus once they have better odds in the housing lottery. Once students move off campus their junior year, it is very unlikely that they will return as seniors, she added, according to “historical patterns.”

In an email sent to students before spring break, Lewis shared that “enhancing our residential communities” is a part of Yale College’s strategic plan to create “a community of learning.” Lewis has convened a task force within the Council of the Heads of College “to give focused attention” to undergraduate housing.

“I felt like I wanted to live in a place that really felt like a community or with people that I really feel at home with, and I was not getting that through the college system necessarily,” Adam Bear ’27 said when explaining why he’ll be moving off campus next year. He also keeps kosher and finds it “kind of annoying” that there aren’t always many options for him in his college’s dining hall.

Lewis said administrators are trying to speed up the annexing process, or when students are given on-campus housing outside of their residential college, so that students know earlier if they’re

being annexed. He’d rather students ﬁnd out about annex status and then choose to move o campus than preemptively find o -campus housing to avoid the possibility of annexation.

If Siesel were certain he would get an on-campus single, that would have “changed [his] calculus slightly.” Yet, by the time the housing lottery draw happens, there aren’t many housing options left in New Haven, compelling students to make housing choices early, he said, suggesting moving the lottery to earlier in the academic year.

“In an ideal world, if the system were to be different, I’d still be living on campus, but just the nature of how it works makes it much more difficult,” he said.

Regardless, Boyd assured students in the November email that “Yale College has long had enough space to house all eligible students who want to live on campus.”

Students move out, forming an off-campus “bubble”

Undergraduate students who opt to live off campus tend to move into apartments or houses near central campus, with houses providing an option for larger groups of students to live together.

According to Carol Horsford, the founder of Farnam Realty Group, which manages thousands of units in the New Haven area, the houses and apartments closest to central campus receive the highest demand from students — and are also the most expensive.

Undergraduate students tend to sign leases much earlier than graduate students, Horsford said, with the earliest groups expressing interest almost a year before the lease would begin.

31 High St., which was historically occupied by the all-gender social group Edon Club, is usually the first of her properties to be snagged, with students expressing interest as early as September or October of the year before they move in.

When looking for off-cam -

pus housing, Siesel, who will be living in 31 High St. next year, prioritized proximity to Yale’s Cross Campus and a space large enough to live with a large group of friends.

In Horsford’s experience, aside from location, undergraduates’ main priorities are in-unit laundry and air conditioning — amenities that are not available in on-campus housing. Most 21st-century students, she said, are accustomed to living with these features, and are willing to pay higher rents to maintain their living standards.

If Yale wants to encourage students to stay on campus, installing central air conditioning could be a good place to start, Horsford suggested. According to Horsford, a room in one of the houses she manages averages about $1,500 per month, but prices can range anywhere from $875 to $2,000 per bedroom, depending on factors such as location and size of the individual room. On-campus housing for Yale undergraduates not receiving financial aid costs $11,300 for the 2024-25 academic year. Divided over 10 months — August to May, a standard academic year — this comes down to $1,130 per month. Off-campus students paying $1,500 per month in rent pay $18,000 per year for a 12-month lease, $6,700 more than students paying for housing on campus. Many students, however, look to sublet their rooms over the summer to offset additional costs.

Farnam also owns The Elm apartment complex at 104 Howe St., which is described as “premier luxury off campus living” and is popular with Yale students. A studio at The Elm starts at $1,800 per month, while two-bedrooms start at $3,250.

Siesel, who does not receive financial aid from Yale, said the additional cost of living off-campus is worth the assurance of getting to live with friends and having a single.

“I do think that your money goes a little further off campus. You can get a little nicer place,” Cyrus Kenkare ’26, who is moving off campus next year, said.

Although many off-campus options are more expensive than on-campus housing, some students are able to find places that cost about the same as, or even less than, Yale room fees.

For Bear, ensuring that his apartment would not cost more than an on-campus dorm room was a priority, and he was even able to find options that were “much less,” he said. Like Siesel, he also prioritized proximity to central campus. According to Lewis, a study from the Yale College Dean’s Office found that wealthier students are more likely to live off-campus, although plenty of students on financial aid use their room and board refund to pay off-campus rent.

In 2024, Horsford created Bull Dog Housing, which lists the properties in her company’s portfolio that are typically rented by undergraduate students. Most properties occupy the downtown, Dwight, Dixwell and East Rock neighborhoods. Apartment complexes such as

THROUGH THE YEARS

Student exodus stresses New Haven housing market

Crown Towers, Cambridge Oxford Apartments, The Elmhurst and The Taft are also popular with undergraduates and are located in those same neighborhoods, although the buildings vary in price and luxe.

From Horsford’s perspective, undergraduates are constrained to a “bubble” within a 15-minute walk of central campus.

Graduate students are more likely to venture farther out, especially because many of the graduate and professional schools are farther away from the main campus. East Rock, Prospect Hill and Wooster Square host a number of these students, who can easily travel to and from campus using the Yale Shuttle.

Last summer, Yale demolished Helen Hadley Hall, a dormitory with 177 single rooms for graduate students. After this, the Yale Graduate Housing Office partnered with University Properties — which manages Yale’s commercial properties, including retail stores, office spaces and residential units — to provide alternative accommodations for graduate and professional students.

Chelsea Company manages 12 apartment buildings, including The Elmhurst, and rents to dozens of Yale students — undergraduate, graduate and professional — each year, according to the director of property management, Neil Currie. Year after year, Chelsea’s buildings have a 100 percent occupancy rate.

The buildings closest to campus are “almost 100 percent undergrads,” according to Currie, while others house more than 90 percent graduate students.

Off-campus students heat up local housing market

The gradual outpouring of students into local neighborhoods both fuels competition in the already-hot New Haven housing market and broader demographic shifts in the areas closest to campus.

Currie, the property manager of Chelsea Company, said that he has seen several New Haven natives choose to live a couple of blocks farther from campus as students have trickled into adjacent neighborhoods like Dwight.

“The average income of a Yale student’s parents is greater than the average income of a New Haven resident, so when looking at what a parent can afford to give their child for living off campus, the deeper pockets can drive the costs higher,” Currie said. “Yale students have a certain budget, and that budget is beyond the range of someone who’s just working in a shop or a restaurant in New Haven. That’s going to push

those people further out.”

The average annual income in New Haven is $34,482, the U.S. Census Bureau reports. According to a survey of Yale College’s class of 2028 conducted by the News, approximately 76 percent of students come from households making at least $45,000 per year, with 43 percent of students reporting annual household incomes above $150,000. However, students’ purchasing power is not the only thing driving prices up, Currie suggested.

According to Currie, if Yale were to reduce its on-campus housing costs, students, who often do not want to pay more to live off-campus, would be more likely to stay on campus. This decline in demand for off-campus housing could cause prices to fall, at least close to campus, Currie suggested, as the market responds to that shift in demand.

David Schleicher, a professor of property and urban law at Yale Law School, explained that New Haven’s housing market suffers from a simple supply and demand problem.

“The sense that there is a lack of housing or [that] housing has become either too expensive or hard to find in New Haven — it’s a product of an increase in people wanting it and housing takes a little while to be built,” he said.

“So when there’s an increase in demand, you see a spike in prices, or ultimately some kind of limitation on the ability of the market to provide housing.”

As demand for housing increases, as it has among Yale undergraduates for the past five years, prices will continue to rise until the market responds with more units, Schleicher said. While the city has a goal to create 10,000 new units in New Haven in the next 10 years, it has also become more restrictive about building new housing, Schleicher said, through more stringent zoning legislation. One ordinance, for example, mandates a minimum quota of affordable units in every new building. According to Schleicher, those types of regulations will ultimately reduce the number of new units that get built.

Currie added that he thinks mandating affordable units will drive up the cost of non-affordable units, so that developers can compensate for the losses incurred by affordable units.

“If the city had policies that encouraged new construction with fewer hurdles to jump through, that would allow for more housing to be available at the lower end of the price spectrum,” Currie said.

To Lewis, the number of Yale undergraduates seeking off-campus housing is a “relatively small” portion of the total

Yale impact on the local real estate market. However, he said that undergraduates are likely to seek apartments or houses with multiple bedrooms that would usually cater to families or even multiple families. In this way, Lewis said, undergraduates may have a notable impact on the housing market in close proximity to Yale, but he doubted that the impact is felt across the entire city.

Kevin McCarthy, an East Rock resident and former state housing policy analyst, agreed that while the citywide impact of undergraduates living off-campus may be trivial, their presence on the market for large apartments or houses is relevant.

“I suspect it’s fairly common for a group of undergrads to rent a large apartment or a house, and that market is particularly tight,” he said. “If you’re an ordinary family with four kids, finding a three-bedroom or four-bedroom in town is really challenging.”

He added that landlords may be incentivized to acquire housing near Yale or make properties more appealing to students because students tend to be reliable rent payers. More notable, McCarthy suspects, are the thousands of graduate students who have historically lived off-campus and are often in the position to pay above-market rents. The closing of Helen Hadley Hall last summer, without the creation of any new student housing, has “a negative impact” on the local housing market, he said, “because the students who were moved from Hadley Hall to University Properties essentially pushed out other grad students

who would be living in University Properties.” McCarthy said he voiced his concerns to the Graduate Housing Office, although he added that the people he spoke to did not “seem to care that they’re exacerbating a housing shortage.”

The office did not respond to the News’ request for comment. Ultimately, it would be in the best interest of both the University and New Haven, McCarthy said, for Yale to reduce the number of students living off campus.

What can Yale do?

Eli Sabin ’22 LAW ’26, a New Haven native and alder for parts of Downtown and East Rock, echoed McCarthy’s call for Yale to provide more housing for students, as well as do work to improve the quality of existing units.

College administrators have been trying to do just that, Lewis said, through recent initiatives such as ensuring that all dormitory common rooms have permanent furniture.

However, the matter is more complicated than Yale just building more dormitories, Sabin acknowledged. If Yale were to build more student housing, those properties would likely become tax-exempt.

Nearly 57 percent of real estate in New Haven — valued at more than $10 billion is tax-exempt already; the University and its hospital system own 43.4 percent of that property for a combined total of more than $4.3 billion tax-exempt realty.

In contrast, if a new building is built by the private market and occupied by local residents and students alike, then they will all be paying taxes to the city, which

would enable New Haven to provide more services to residents.

According to New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, part of the creation of Yale’s Center for Inclusive Growth is to help New Haven better coordinate with the University as the school’s population grows. While much of the center’s work has focused on creating and supporting small businesses, he said that members of the organization have expressed interest in ensuring that housing becomes an important component of the center’s goals.

“It’s important that Yale understands that its financial contribution to the city is hugely important to the city’s success,” Elicker told the News. “I think there certainly could be a good role that Yale could play to help support the development of housing.”

As it stands now, the College is looking to keep more students on campus, through new policies like giving juniors priority over seniors in the housing lottery. It remains to be seen if these moves will help that goal come to fruition.

“The empty beds speak to Yale’s inability to effectively distribute people to bedrooms and suites across campus, and in an ideal world, there should be no empty beds on campus,” Siesel said. “Yale should take concrete steps to ensure that every single bed on campus is filled.”

Students in their first four semesters of enrollment are required to live on campus unless they are married or are at least 21 years old.

Contact LILY BELLE POLING at lily.poling@yale.edu.

Class of 2025 enlarged by students who took COVID gap years

MICHELLE SO & KIVA BANK STAFF REPORTERS

The COVID-19 pandemic unsettled the expectation of completing Yale in four years, as it became more common to take a semester, a year or more o Over 300 students in the class of

2025 were originally admitted to the class of 2024 in the 2019-20 school year, just before the pandemic hit. The first-year class that began in 2020 had only 1,267 students, while the first-year class that began in 2021 had 1,789, according to data from the admissions o ce. Luke Tillitski ’25, who was ini-

tially admitted to the class of 2023 and took the ﬁrst of his two gap years in the 2020-21 academic year, said he has generally observed that “people who took a COVID gap do not regret it.” He added, “There are some people who didn’t take a COVID gap who do regret it.”

Professor Jorge Torres, who was the dean of Pierson College from 2020 to 2022, wrote in an email to the News that the impact of COVID gap years became most apparent when the unusually large class of ﬁrst years arrived in the fall of 2021.

“The deans, heads, sta , and especially those students, such as FroCos, who work directly with ﬁrst-years, had to collaborate especially closely to make sure all students were well supported,” Torres wrote.

Current graduating students took gap years for various reasons, some unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Julia Grobman ’25, a softball player, was admitted to the class of 2023 but took two separate gap years — one to preserve her athletic eligibility during the pandemic and another in 2023. For her second gap, she transferred to the University of Pittsburgh for both “personal and athletic reasons” and completed one academic year there, she said. She decided to reinstate at Yale in 2023, knowing she would have to repeat her junior year.

Grobman, a cognitive science

major, struggled to keep lab jobs amid pandemic uncertainty and her frequent moves. The extra time as an undergraduate did, however, give her more time to ﬁgure out her passions.

“Especially when my life felt like it was moving quite fast at that time, both the pandemic and my gap year allowed me to slow down and investigate my academic likes and dislikes,” Grobman said.

Tillitski spent his ﬁrst year at Yale until students stayed home after spring break due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tillitski completed the rest of the academic year on Zoom, and his experience with the di culty of virtual school prompted him to take a gap year.

“I loved my ﬁrst year at Yale, and I wanted to try to preserve that kind of experience,” he said. “I didn’t think I was gonna be able to have that experience in a COVID setting.” Tillitski took another gap year, to tour with the Whi enpoofs a capella group, from 2023-24. He believes the decision to take a gap year depends on the person and emphasized the need to maintain ﬁnancial stability during a gap year.

“Taking a gap year can be disruptive and di cult to support,” Tillitski said.

In his gap year during COVID, he worked virtually for the North Carolina Department of Health and

Human Services and coached debate for the Taipei American School in Taiwan. He lived with friends who were also taking gap years in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then in Philadelphia. Given the limitations of lockdowns, they wanted to live in places with access to outdoor activities like hiking, Tillitski said.

Tillitski does not regret his decision to gap, although he said he feels that he missed out on graduating alongside his classmates. However, he said that the downside was mitigated by Yale’s accommodations.

“Yale did a really good job of giving COVID gaps grace,” Tillitski said. “I was sort of considered a ’23 and a ’24 at the same time. I got to go to all the ’23 events when I was just a ’24 so it didn’t feel like I was that separated from them.”

In each residential college, about 20 students who gapped are graduating this year, estimated Paul McKinley DRA ’96, Yale College’s senior associate dean of strategic initiatives and communications.

He noted that the greater number of students has caused only minor changes to commencement planning.

Contact MICHELLE SO at michelle.so@yale.edu and KIVA BANK at kiva.bank@yale.edu.

THROUGH THE YEARS

MENA advocates reﬂect on successful push for a cultural space

BY FABEHA JAHRA STAFF REPORTER

In October 2024, after years of advocacy, Yale opened the doors to the Middle Eastern and North African Cultural Community suite, a space students had long fought to create.

The year before, then-University President Peter Salovey promised a “more plentiful and fully dedicated space” for Middle Eastern and North African students in an email which outlined a series of actions that Yale would take to address antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus amid the Israel-Hamas war. The announcement came after years of student advocacy for a dedicated space for Middle Eastern and North African students.

But for many involved in that e ort, the work is far from over: students hope that the dedicated suite on campus will develop into a fully-resourced, permanent MENA cultural center to match other cultural centers on campus.

“This movement was never about waiting for permission,”

Shady Qubaty ’20, a co-founder of the MENA Students Association,

wrote in an email to the News. “It was about demanding recognition, about saying unapologetically: we are here, we belong, and we will not be sidelined into the margins of other people’s categories.”

Qubaty, who returned to campus in November for an event called Advancing the Yale MENA Legacy, reﬂected on how the journey from “a borrowed room to a recognized space” came through “relentless, principled, collective pressure.” His advice to current students is clear: “Do not give up in the face of anything. Push until it’s real.”

In a LinkedIn post reflecting on the event, Youssef Ibrahim ’25 wrote about his work as president of the MENA Students Association, vice president of the Arab Students Association and a policy director in the Yale College Council. He wrote that the push for a dedicated MENA space required “lobbying the administration to amplify the voices of a community that represents 7-9 [percent] of Yale’s campus.”

He also outlined three core goals that continue to drive the movement: building a resilient institu-

tional memory, celebrating meaningful wins and preparing for the next target — “a fully-fledged MENA Cultural Center.”

Inside the suite itself — which includes a kitchen and pantry — the focus has turned to programming.

Lena Ginawi, the assistant director of the MENA cultural community, emphasized that the space is still in its earliest stages.

“Given how new this space is, I would frame the conversation less around how it has ‘evolved’ and more around how it is beginning to take shape after years of advocacy,” she wrote in an email to the News.

While Ginawi declined to comment on future expansion plans, she said the current suite’s existence is both a physical a rmation and a beginning for Middle Eastern and North African students — a sign that greater belonging can come through organizing, storytelling and sustained visibility.

The Middle Eastern and North African Cultural Community is located on the first floor of 305 Crown St.

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

Yale confronts AI with new classes, varied policies and an ethics focus

BY JAKE ROBBINS AND ISOBEL MCCLURE STAFF REPORTERS

When the class of 2025 first arrived in New Haven in the fall of 2021, ChatGPT did not exist, artiﬁcial intelligence was still largely theoretical and Yale had yet to address AI in university policy.

Four years later, Yale responded to the rapidly developing technology with a $150 million commitment to build infrastructure, recruit talent and reimagine an Ivy League education in the age of intelligent machines.

Administrators announced the investment in August 2024 as part of a push to position Yale as a national leader in AI. The initiative includes expanding the school’s computational infrastructure, hiring faculty across disciplines and accelerating interdisciplinary research with AI. It marks Yale’s most signiﬁcant foray into a technological frontier where institutions like MIT and Stanford are considered leaders.

“I see it as a competition between higher education and industry. Our question is, what role do universities play in this new AI world?” Provost Scott Strobel told the News in March. “It’s not to make money. It is to think about what this means in terms of ethical consequences, ethical impacts and what AI makes possible in research, advancement and discovery.”

A few years ago, access to computing power — especially graph-

ics processing units, or GPUs — was limited, often reserved for select departments. Since then, Yale has worked to expand access to high-performance computing across all departments.

Yale is recruiting not only engineers and computer scientists, but also legal scholars, ethicists and public health experts. The approach stems from a central recommendation of the University’s 2024 Task Force on Artiﬁcial Intelligence: that Yale build the capacity not only to develop artiﬁcial intelligence, but also to question and guide it in line with safe practices.

“The provost had a committee of faculty and administrators that reviewed and discussed all kinds of questions related to AI, like how Yale should approach these questions and what faculty and administrators and students needed,” Laurie Paul, a professor of philosophy and cognitive science and a member of the task force, told the News last August.

Faculty and students alike have argued that AI development must be paired with rigorous ethical reﬂection. One of the earliest and most consistent advocates for that integration has been the Yale AI Policy Initiative, a student group founded to evaluate the technology’s legal, political and social impacts.

In the past four years at Yale, AI evolved from a niche topic to a prominent academic theme. Few graduating seniors likely came to Yale to study AI, but now few can ignore the subject entirely — whether in computer science lectures, political science seminars or creative writing workshops.

Meanwhile, as the Pourvu Center for Teaching and Learning guides AI’s integration into some classrooms, concerns over academic integrity violations have persisted.

“We realized that this technology could have a transformative e ect on education and that we needed to pay close attention and educate ourselves in order to support faculty,” Jennifer Frederick, the executive director of the Poorvu Center, wrote to the News in November. She noted that broad faculty interest in AI began to surface in 2022 — the year ChatGPT became available. The Pourvu Center’s website provides guidance on AI usage for students, including a section on the ethical concerns of AI use. The center has a separate page for faculty, listing benefits and limitations of AI, as well as available AI tools. In the past semester, the center opened applications for instructors to receive so-called AI Course Revision Pilot Grants to integrate AI into their teaching.

“The majority of my friends use ChatGPT and Claude on a daily basis, often to assist with their assignments in a range of subjects. I have also been shocked by the low level of concern about being flagged for AI use,” Sophia David, a co-president of the Yale AI Policy Initiative, wrote to the News, referring to two AI tools. “My personal opinion is that AI is not going anywhere, and it is unrealistic to expect students not to learn the ins and outs of these tools.”

The conversation about AI has shifted beyond understanding it to scoping out its best uses. New and reimagined courses emerged across departments: “Cultural AI: Machine Vision;” “Art and Design in 2023;” “Creative Artiﬁcial Intelligence for Visual Computing;” “AI Aesthetics;” “AI Policy: A Comparative View;” “AI, Medicine and Society” and “Neuro-AI.”

Besides courses, various departments across the university have worked to create programs to inform students about AI’s role in education and their responsibilities with the technology. For example, the Schmidt Program on Artiﬁcial Intelligence, Emerging Technologies and National Power launched at the Jackson School of Global A airs in 2021. The program is supported by a $15.3 million donation from former Google Chief Executive O cer Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy Schmidt.

As curricula and classrooms evolved, challenges emerged. Nowhere was that more evident than in the computer science department, where the rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT sparked urgent questions about academic integrity.

In March, dozens of students in an upper-level computer science class were ﬂagged for the potential use of AI. Instead of enforcing a uniform rule, the department deferred to individual instructors to set their own AI policies — a choice that created a patchwork of expectations and left many students confused about what was permitted. Some faculty allowed limited use of AI tools, while others banned them entirely.

Students in the implicated course were given ten days to admit to using AI on a problem set or face referral to the Executive Committee for possible disciplinary action. ChatGPT is a product of OpenAI, which is headquartered in San Francisco.

Contact JAKE ROBBINS at jake.robbins@yale.edu and ISOBEL MCCLURE at isobel.mcclure@yale.edu .

Certiﬁcate programs expand as students propose more

BY ORION KIM AND JAEHA JANG STAFF REPORTERS

During the class of 2025’s time at Yale, the certificate program underwent significant expansion — including six new advanced language certiﬁcates, six new interdisciplinary certiﬁcates and three new skills-based certificates since the 2021-22 academic year. According to the Yale College Programs of Study website, certificates o er “opportunities for students to deepen a skill or to bring disparate elements into focus.”

Most recently, the Native American Cultural Center announced on May 1 that a new certiﬁcate in Native American and Indigenous Studies will be o ered beginning in the fall. In November 2024, the Jackson School of Global A airs announced the return of human rights studies in a certiﬁcate program.

Meanwhile, Yale College Council members have called for new certiﬁcates in American Sign Language and economics, and one recognizing participation in the Directed Studies program for ﬁrst years.

The approval of a new certiﬁcate requires both student and faculty input. Typically, after the Yale College Council Senate passes a proposal on the addition of a certiﬁcate, faculty members submit a formal proposal to the Yale College Committee on Majors. After reviewing materials and exchanging feedback, the committee forwards the proposal to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which votes on the certificate’s approval.

According to Tarren Andrews, a professor of ethnicity, race and migration who supported the Native American and Indigenous Studies certificate, the proposal for it passed unanimously in an FAS vote. Andrews wrote to the News that the approval of the certiﬁcate “marks an important milestone for institutionalizing Native Studies at Yale.”

Native and Indigenous students celebrated the certiﬁcate as well.

“The creation of a certificate provides a distinct space for Native faculty and students to shape how the field is practiced at the university beyond the container of an existing major program,” Joshua Ching ’26, who identiﬁes as Kanaka Maoli, or Native Hawaiian, wrote to the News earlier this month.

Many of the newly instituted programs, such as the Islamic Studies and Translation Studies certificates, let students explore a variety of disciplines and applications in many ﬁelds, including global history, political work and social justice.

Since the 2021-22 school year, the number of certiﬁcates o ered

The human rights certificate experienced a more turbulent transformation in the past year.

Following a lack of funding and low administrative capacity at the Orville H. Schell Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School, which originally hosted the “multidisciplinary academic program” in human rights studies, the program stopped accepting applications in fall 2023.

However, in November 2024, the Jackson School of Global A airs announced that it would jointly host the human rights studies program, now offered as a certificate, with Yale College.

Instead of the original intensive model, in which a cohort of 15 sophomores were accepted each spring, the certificate now offers both an uncapped option and an intensive option. The introductory course for the revamped certiﬁcate, Global A airs 3102, will be o ered for the ﬁrst time in fall 2025.

Some certiﬁcate proposals, however, have yet to bear fruit.

In November 2023, the YCC senate approved a proposal for an advanced language certificate in ASL. However, it has not received enough support from faculty to become a certiﬁcate.

ASL professor Julia Silvestri told the News that many people in the deaf and ASL communities would love to see an ASL certiﬁcate become a reality, adding that it would “certainly boost interest in the subject.”

The YCC also considered ideas for certiﬁcates in Directed Studies and economics, but neither proposal was approved by the YCC senate.

Yale College signiﬁcantly expanded its certiﬁcate programs after 84 percent of respondents in a 2018 YCC poll agreed that “if minors were o ered at Yale, I would want to have a minor.”

Contact ORION KIM at orion.kim@yale.edu and JAEHA JANG at jaeha.jang@yale.edu .

ZOE BERG

Yale’s investments in AI mark steps toward a future where human values meet machine learning.

XIMENA SOLORZANO / HEAD PHOTOGRAPHERY EDITOR

at Yale College increased from 24 to 39.

Graduates saw virus policies wane and waver

BY KALINA BROOKFIELD STAFF REPORTER

Despite arriving at Yale after the pandemic’s peak had passed, the class of 2025 entered a campus transformed by efforts to reduce contagion. At first met with masking requirements, gathering restrictions and vaccination mandates, the class witnessed Yale’s transition back to normal.

Because of the record-high 335 admitted students who took gap years due to COVID, the class of 2025 was the college’s largest incoming class since World War II, according to the Office of Undergraduate Admissions.

It was about 240 students larger than a typical incoming class.

When members of the class of 2025 entered their ﬁrst year in August 2021 — for the ﬁrst semester since the pandemic began in

which Yale College housed all four classes on campus — all undergraduates were required to be fully vaccinated. By October 2021, 99.5 percent of them were.

Despite the high vaccination rates, the public health requirements imposed by the University remained stringent as the new class matriculated, in part due to the emergence of new COVID-19 variants. Students got tested for COVID-19 weekly. If results came back positive, they were required to move out of their dorms and into isolation housing at either McClellan Hall or Arnold Hall.

Students violating such policies were referred to a COVID-19 disciplinary committee.

“After multiple violations, a relatively small number of students had their access to campus rescinded,” Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd wrote to the News in December 2020.

With a spike in the Delta variant of COVID-19 in August 2021, the University required even fully vaccinated people to resume wearing masks indoors on campus unless in a private office or cubicle.

That December, the University experienced a substantial increase in positive test results, exacerbated by the Omicron variant. In response, the University converted all remaining finals for the semester online and encouraged students to leave campus early. The University also delayed the start of the spring 2022 semester by a week and compensated for the lost instruction time by shortening spring break.

Some students were frustrated that those decisions disrupted travel plans and seemed not to consider travel costs, especially for low-income students.

Policies meant to reduce COVID-19 risks deeply affected campus life, and student groups had different levels of success in returning to in-person events.

Yale’s sorority rush turned virtual and remained that way until 2023. Meanwhile, club sports returned to in-person practices, sparking excitement as well as frustration at disparities between the club teams and their varsity counterparts.

“The fact that the Yale administration is willing to accept calculated risk with varsity teams but not with club sports is just disappointing,” Mahlon Sorensen ’22, the president of men’s club rugby at the time, told the News in September 2021.

Meanwhile, a cappella, theater, dance and comedy groups performed despite difficulties with rehearsal and audience restrictions.

The Spizzwinks a cappella group wrote a letter, to which eight other a cappella groups signed on, arguing that the University’s restrictions on a cappella were inconsistent with other public health policies.

As the 2022 spring semester came to an end, students were only required to wear masks in classrooms, public transportation and Yale Health facilities. By the fall of 2022, mask mandates were lifted in classrooms. Gradually, classes returned to their pre-pandemic atmospheres. By 2023, most Yale facilities had returned to normal operations.

The University no longer collects reports of positive COVID19 cases, though students suspecting infection are still recommended to isolate.

Contact KALINA BROOKFIELD at kalina.brookfield@yale.edu .

Mental health resources expand after student group lawsuit

BY ADA PERLMAN STAFF REPORTER

Content warning: This article contains references to suicide. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a certified listener, call 988. Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To speak with a trained listener, text HELLO to 741741. It is free, available 24/7 and confidential.

On-call counselors from Yale Mental Health and Counseling are available at any time: call (203) 432-0290.

Students who are interested in taking a medical leave of absence should reach out to their residential college dean.

When the class of 2025 arrived in New Haven, many on campus were still reckoning with the death of Rachael Shaw-Rosenblum ’24, who died by suicide in the spring of 2021.

Over the last few years, the University has changed its mental health policies after a lawsuit by Elis for Rachael — a group founded in memory of Shaw-Rosenblum — alleged that Yale’s withdrawal policies violated federal statute. In

2021, Yale College established Yale College Community Care, commonly referred to as YC3, to provide accessible mental health support for students.

“I have seen an upward trend of mental health advocacy groups around campus and a lot more conversations, articles, investigations and pushes for change so that’s really good,” Chloe Hong ’25.5, who began her ﬁrst year in 2018 and will be graduating with the class of 2025 after multiple medical leaves, wrote to the News.

Hong noted improvements for students with mental health concerns, including a change in 2024 that allows Dean’s Extensions to be explicitly granted for mental health reasons.

When Hong first took leave from the University in the fall of 2020, she described that students used to be “cut off” from Yale’s medical resources. Hong explained that this system “didn’t make sense,” especially for students lacking alternative support structures.

After Elis for Rachael sued the University — claiming that its withdrawal policies violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, the Fair Housing Act and the Patient Protection and A ordable Care Act —

Yale began to overhaul its campus policies regarding mental health. Elis for Rachael Inc. v. Yale University was settled in 2023. The settlement included a clarified reinstatement process with individualized lengths of absence, continued campus inclusion during time away, part-time study, access to Yale’s healthcare coverage and a scheduled system for tuition, room and board refunds.

In 2021, Yale College had expanded its mental health resources, most notably through the establishment of YC3 — a program in the residential colleges that offers students drop-in support with licensed social workers.

Students who used YC3 resources said that they are ideal for those who may need shortterm support without having to wait to see a therapist at Yale Mental Health and Counseling.

Orah Massihesraelian ’25.5 echoed stated that YC3 was the “best thing that’s been done” because of its straightforwardness and accessibility. She recalled joining YCC during her junior year to advocate for more mental health policy changes, which included meeting with Chief of Yale Mental Health and Counseling Paul Ho man.

“It was only when I joined YCC in junior year that I realized how much more power there was to make change,” Massihesraelian said.

In 2024, Hoffman stated that YMHC has the largest sta of any school of equivalent size and one of the largest sta s of any college mental health center in the country. They have also partnered with Yale’s graduate and professional schools to create counseling programs in seven schools beside Yale College and opened two additional locations at 205 Whitney Ave. and 60 Temple St.

Despite these changes, mental health accommodations were a top issue for many students when selecting a new University president according to a survey from the Presidential Search Student Advisory Council. Students named concerns

such as wait times at Yale Mental Health and Counseling and the quality and consistency of care provided. Outside of changes related to academic accommodations, organizations such as Elis for Rachael and the Yale Student Mental Health Association continue to raise awareness about the resources available to students who are struggling with their mental health. YSMHA recently hosted their annual “Mind Over Matter” event to engage with wellness resources across Yale and New Haven.

Yale Mental Health and Counseling’s primary office is located at 55 Lock St.

Contact ADA PERLMAN at ada.perlman@yale.edu .

ZOE BERG

The largest senior class’s experience at Yale was signiﬁcantly a ected by the fallout from COVID-19,

THROUGH THE YEARS

Graduating in the Trump era, again: seniors reﬂect

OLIVIA CYRIS STAFF REPORTER

When Donald Trump became president of the United States the first time, William Coleman ’25 was twelve years old.

Now a graduating senior from Yale College eyeing a job in Washington in a House representative’s office, Coleman is reflecting on what it meant to become politically aware in the first term and what it means to be leaving Yale during the second.

“In a way, I feel like my generation and Trump have a bond,” Coleman wrote to the News. “As he learned about how the federal government works, so did we. Every novel aspect of government for us is understood in part by what effect Trump would have on it and what effect it would have on Trump.”

Trump’s presidential victories in both 2016 and 2024

gave rise to varied responses by Yale students — from surprise and disappointment in 2016 to “quiet acceptance” last fall.

Coleman is one of many Yalies whose political careers have been impacted by two terms of Trump.

Others still noted that Trump’s ascendance mirrored conservative entrenchment on campus.

Trump and campus climate

Swayed from libertarianism by the conservative discourse on campus, former president of the Buckley Institute and chairman of the Tory Party Trevor MacKay ’25 said that he will leave Yale “extremely conservative.”

“Yale and New Haven helped illuminate what I now perceive to be the excesses of liberalism, which placed me more in line with what some have termed the ‘New Right’ than I was before I came to campus,” MacKay said. “I think my politics were encouraged by

the Trump presidency, and being at Yale has only strengthened my resolve as a conservative.”

During her time at Yale, Stephanie Hu ’25 was active on Yale’s political scene, coming into college “pretty liberal.”

However, Hu said that she has struggled to cling to the label over the last four years.

A former floor leader of the Right for the Yale Political Union, Hu said Trump’s influence over the last decade has been so sustained and potent that she can’t recall what preTrump-era political conversation looked like.

Hu described the YPU as a “refreshing space” that lacked the self-censorship she observed in other spaces across campus.

“When I came to Yale, I found myself questioning this overt attention to rhetoric and politically comforting language,” Hu said. “I think the turning point

really came during the two election cycles I have seen on campus, when I found myself questioning whether I was not being fed the same meaningless talking points that the left has attacked Trump for.”

MacKay said that being conservative at Yale, to him, means resisting the status quo.

“I came to Yale with the determination to never shy away from my political beliefs, so when others at Yale rejected me for my politics, these places welcomed me with open arms,”

MacKay said. “The era of Trump did make leadership of these institutions more difficult than I anticipated, but this merely strengthened my resolve during the course of my leadership. After all, if you stand for something, you are bound to make somebody upset somewhere.”

Leaving Yale, MacKay hopes to remain well-spoken and engaged about his ideologies through intelligent discourse. However, he remains fervent in never being open to political compromise.

Yalies look to future careers

Coleman, who plans to work on Capitol Hill, said he understands why many of his peers are disinterested in the prospect of doing so in the midst of so much political chaos. He is optimistic, though, that in the coming months and once the dust settles, good, impactful policies will begin to emerge from the meetings of lawmakers.

“I’m a Democrat trying to work in a hostile Congress where my party has no control,” Coleman said. “I figure if I enjoy Washington under these conditions, I’ll enjoy it under any conditions.”

Katherine Chou ’25 will also work in Washington at the Congressional Budget O ce, analyzing how proposed legislation would affect the federal budget and its broader macroeconomic impact.

Chou’s interest in policy was born in high school, where she was intrigued by bioethics and the regulation of science and technology.

“At that time, many debates on basic research funding and early AI strategy were still handled in a bipartisan way,” Chou said. “But watching Donald Trump’s presidency during those formative years showed me how that equilibrium can shift. Tariff decisions framed as national security tools, the day-one revocation of President Biden’s 2023 AI executive order and a noticeably softer line on Big Tech antitrust from the White House all show how adviser networks and partisan incentives can redirect policy almost overnight.”

She believes that Trump’s second term in office is defined largely by “Dark Enlightenment” ideas entering high levels of government and the ominous influences of donors and Silicon Valley figures such as Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.

Chou plans to watch over the next four years to see how Trump’s reign will affect the structure and legitimacy of the U.S. government.

“I’ve always been drawn to policy work because I’ve believed that government policy lays the foundation for the infrastructure of our future,” Chou wrote. “This doesn’t have to be true. And I think this administration, more than most in recent history, could challenge these fundamental assumptions about the government’s role.”

Hu anticipates the next four years to be “volatile, as it has proven to be already.” Additionally, she is worried about the lack of a bipartisan approach to addressing issues pertaining to the American public. Yet, Hu described increased political participation from young Americans as a “ray of hope.” Trump is the second president to serve two nonconsecutive terms.

Contact OLIVIA CYRUS at olivia.cyrus@yale.edu.

Changes to testing, a rmative action policies reshape undergraduate admissions

OLIVIA WOO & GRETA GARRISON STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

With unique COVID-19 pandemic admissions policies and the overturning of affirmative action, the last four years of Yale College applicants have traversed unprecedented test-optional policies and the end of race-conscious admissions.

As the senior class departs from Yale, younger students are still navigating the effects of a changing undergraduate admissions process. Still, they are aware that admissions officers must juggle changing external conditions with the prevailing challenge of too few seats to accommodate deserving students.

Beginning in 2020, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions exempted applicants from the requirement of submitting standardized test scores due to the possibility that students may be unable to test because of the pandemic. Yale, along with its peer institutions, adopted a test-optional admissions policy that June, which initially only affected the 2020-21 admissions cycle, during which most of the class of 2025 applied.

Test-optional admissions continued through the 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24 admissions cycles, which allowed the admissions office to “generate new data and analyses” about the usefulness of test scores in evaluating Yale applicants, according to its website. The office concluded that collecting test scores allows for the identification of “students whose performance stands out in their high school context” in a way that could otherwise go undetected. With this analysis in mind,

the admissions office shifted to a “test-flexible” policy, which was announced in February 2024 for students applying during the 2024-25 admissions cycles. For the foreseeable future, applicants must submit some form of standardized test scores, whether those be AP, IB, SAT or ACT scores.

The Admissions Office emphasizes that applicants’ test scores will always be considered in conversation with the rest of the information contained within a student’s admis -

sions file. In an interview with Yale News last February, Quinlan said that scores will never be “fed into a weighting rubric or algorithm” and will always be evaluated by a set of human eyes. The office has doubled down on its holistic approach to admissions in the wake of the June 2023 Supreme Court decision that ruled race-conscious affirmative action policies at elite institutions like Yale to be unconstitutional. This decision has received mixed reactions from the general public and at

universities across the country.

The roots of a rmative action policies lie in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, when President Lyndon Johnson prioritized equal opportunities for all in employment and education. Over the past half-century, race-based admissions policies have faced a slew of legal actions that culminated in the June 2023 decision.

Black and Latine enrollment at Yale College remained steady in the first post-affirmative action class of admitted students. For the class of 2029,

which is the first to be admitted after both affirmative action and test-optional policies have been removed, changes in enrollment numbers have not yet been released. The Office of Undergraduate Admissions is located at 38 Hillhouse Ave.

Contact OLIVIA WOO at olivia.woo@yale.edu and GRETA GARRISON at greta.garrison@yale.edu.

ILLUSTRATION BY JACINDA WEBBER

Members of the class of 2025 recount how Trump’s presidencies shaped their worldviews and what it means to enter adulthood under his shadow once more.

Mia Rose Kohn, Illustrations Editor

SPORTS

FOOTBALL: Retention

remains strong, despite increased transfer and NIL opportunities

BY TOMMY GANNON SPORTS EDITOR

On Jan. 10 of this year, Ezekiel Larry ’26+1 was back in the transfer portal. While sitting in the Houston Airport after an official visit with a team in the Sun Belt Conference, Larry realized that there was only one program he truly wanted to play his final two years of college football for.

Although he first enrolled at Yale in 2022, this past January marked Larry’s second stint in the NCAA transfer portal. The former Bulldog star transferred to San Diego State after a stellar sophomore season at Yale. He arrived in Southern California in May, and by December he was already looking to take his talents elsewhere. Ultimately, the seven months he spent away from Yale made him realize exactly what he had given up when he left New Haven.

“At Yale, we value and cherish the brotherhood and the culture and the connections,” Larry said. “Coach Reno always talks about making genuine connections that are going to last a lifetime. Leaving, I didn’t realize how important those would be to me.”

Larry is one of hundreds of college football players who have utilized the freedom of movement granted by an NCAA regulation change in 2021.

Four years ago, the NCAA Division I Council’s new legislation allowed all Division I student-athletes the one-time opportunity to transfer and play right away, enhancing players’ freedom of movement. Previously, NCAA rules required student-athletes who transferred to a new Division 1 school to sit out for a season before competing.

Considering that Ivy League schools do not offer athletic scholarships or name, image and likeness collectives — donorfunded groups that channel money to athletes for promotional opportunities — many expected Ivy football programs to lose players in droves.

Name, image and likeness collectives — or NIL — help athletes monetize themselves, and often have close relationships with the universities since they raise funds from donations, boosters, alumni and local businesses. For many college football coaches with such relationships, promises of NIL payments and deals have been used as recruiting tools to convince top players to join their programs through the transfer portal.

Despite the allure of these deals, players have not left en masse from Yale and other Ivy League schools. Larry’s departure from Yale football was an outlier, and he returned to the team after just one season away.

Yale play-by-play and ESPN+ announcer Justin Gallanty has

seen the continuity of the Bulldog football program first-hand, having called almost every single one of their home games since 2021.

“Guys come to Yale or any other Ivy League school for a reason: they want to play football at a really high level and they want an Ivy League degree,” Gallanty told the News.

“It’s not like other places where you’re going there probably hoping that you can elevate your status to the point that you can play in a Power Four league. Nobody comes to Yale with the intention to transfer.”

In the last four years, only three Yale football players have left before graduating. Breylan Thompson, formerly a member of Yale’s class of 2028, joined Stanford this spring and Aidan Warner, once in Yale’s class of 2027, returned home to the Sunshine State when he transferred to the University of Florida last winter after not playing in his ﬁrstyear season.

Similarly, Harvard and Dartmouth saw no players depart before their graduation after last season, according to On3 Media, a company that tracks transfer portal activity across Division 1 football

Comparing these statistics with non-Ivy League schools such as Duke — which had seven non-seniors in the transfer portal in 2025 and five first years alone looking to transfer in 2024 — distinguishes Yale and the Ivies from other college football programs around the country.

In 2025, Thompson was the lone Eli to depart from New Haven. Meanwhile, the 2025 National Champion Ohio State Buckeyes saw nine players leave this year before graduating.

‘A 40 year decision, not a four year decision’ Team members told the News that football head coach Tony Reno and the historic legacy of the team that he leads also contribute to the overwhelming number of players who choose to play all four years in the blue and white.

“It’s an honor to be a part of this program. Coach Reno is the most transformational leader and coach that I’ve had an opportunity to ever be around,” senior wide receiver Mason Shipp ’25.5 told the News. “Playing in the historic Bowl and at a historic university has been an honor and no one takes it for granted.”

In his 12 seasons at the helm, Reno has built a program that has become an in-conference powerhouse. He has guided the Bulldogs to Ivy League Championships in four of the last seven seasons, and three of the last six Ivy League Player of the Year winners have repped the “Y” on their helmets.

While Reno is committed to the team’s winning record, he and his staff are also focused on their players’ development off of the field.

“A lot of coach Reno’s ideology is about developing you as a person more so than as a football player,” Larry said. “He has built such a disciplined culture that revolves around brotherhood.”

Larry’s time at SDSU highlighted the disparities between the way Reno and his counterparts lead their respective programs. During his first year at Yale, when Larry was feeling homesick, he would go into Reno’s office and cry with him, he told the News. At SDSU, however, his relationship with his head coach was sparing. According to Larry, he never even obtained SDSU’s head coach’s phone number. SDSU’s head coach did not reply to the News’ request for comment.

Besides the opportunity to play for Reno and contribute to the 152-year legacy of Yale’s football program, many players also choose to stay at Yale because of the opportunities that an Ivy League degree affords them.

“When you come to Yale you make a forty year decision, not a four year decision,” Gallanty, the ESPN+ announcer, said. “The value of a Yale degree is going to outweigh whatever you can get in NIL money at this point in your life.”

Sophomore sensation Abu Kamara ’27, for example, chose to forego the transfer portal this past spring and remain an Eli. After a second-year campaign that qualified him for the First Team All-Ivy, an honorable mention in the Associated Press’ College Football All-American list and the Buck Buchanan Award’s finalist list for National Defensive Player of the Year in Division I FCS, Kamara had the opportunity to take his talents to a more competitive program.

He told the News that teams in the ACC and Big Ten expressed interest in recruiting him and offered “somewhere upwards of six figures” in NIL money to play for them, though he did not specify exactly which schools. Nonetheless, Kamara determined that he could not put a price tag on a Yale diploma and the prestige of being a future alumnus of the University.

“My decision to stay was more to help my life after football,” Kamara said. “The Yale degree is a great life insurance policy. It can set you and your family up for life. I wanted to change the trajectory of my family and there would be no better place than staying here and doing that.”

The 2025 football season will begin at the Yale Bowl against the Holy Cross Crusaders on Sep. 20 Will Forbes contributed reporting.

Contact TOMMY GANNON at tommy.gannon@yale.edu .

CHRISTINA LEE / SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

TIM TAI

In his 12 seasons at the helm, head coach Tony Reno has built a program that has become an in-conference powerhouse.

CHRISTINA LEE SENIOR PHOTOGRAPER

YALE DAILY NEWS

SPORTS

MEN’S SQUASH

This year’s seniors on the men’s squash team — Maxwell Orr ’25, Max Forster ’25, Nikhil Ismail ’25, Taylor Clayton ’25 and Merritt Wurts ’25.5, who has finished his NCAA eligibility — is the program’s largest graduating class. In their first collegiate matches, against the University of Virginia, Orr aced his opponent, 3-0, and Wurts won his match 3-1. Against Western University, Ismail and Clayton defeated their opponents, leading to a 9-0 team sweep. Forester secured his first victory against Brown.

Their sophomore season, Forster, Wurts and Clayton were key to an opening victory over UVA. With Ismail and Wurts coming in clutch, Yale overcame an earlier loss to Penn at the 2023 College Squash Association Team Championships, taking down the Quakers 5-4. At the CSA Doubles Championships, the duo of Wurts and Clayton triumphed over St. Lawrence, 3-0; Middlebury, 3-1 and Brown, 3-0. The impressive run ended with a loss to the Naval Academy in the doubles semiﬁnals.

In the 2023-24 campaign, the class of 2025 persevered, winning their first four matches. They entered their final season determined. They defeated Trinity, 7-2, in the regular season, and overpowered Princeton in the CSA semifinals. The team then faced the defending champion Penn Quakers in the finals.

“While we fell short of a championship, we can conﬁdently look back on the year without regrets,” captain Orr wrote to the News. “It was clear to me that the sentiment of the team, and especially the seniors, was that we were more disappointed that our time competing together was over than the fact that we had lost.” The Bulldogs’ second-place ﬁnish marked their best result in nearly a decade — since their 2016 title.

—Liza Kaufman, Sta Reporter

MEN’S LACROSSE

Over the past four years, the Yale men’s lacrosse team made four Ivy League Tournament appearances and reached the NCAA Tournament twice, with key contributions from its 19-member class of 2025.

The Bulldogs’ 2022 season culminated in runs to the Ivy finals and the NCAA second round. Leo Johnson ’25 started all 17 games, ranking second on the team in goals and assists. His 29 assists set a Yale record for a first year. Chris Lyons ’25 scored 36 goals and Johnny Keib ’25 recorded eight goals and five assists.

Though the 2023 season had its challenges, Yale defeated Cornell in the Ivy Tournament and reached the NCAA Tournament. The 2024 Bulldogs posted an improved 11–4 record but fell to Princeton in the Ivy semiﬁnals. This spring’s season began with four losses, but the Bulldogs rebounded with a 1510 win over Denver.

A key win over Brown sparked a four-game streak, including a victory over Dartmouth. Captain Max Krevsky ’25 reﬂected on the senior day win that helped clinch a ticket to the Ivy Tournament. “Even after we jumped out early to a 4-0 lead with all the momentum, we did our best to stay neutral and approach each possession level-headed,” Krevsky wrote to the News.

The eight members of the Yale men’s soccer class of 2025 started their collegiate careers with a bang and reached heights that no prior Bulldog class had seen before.

In October 2021, a young Yale squad earned a 1-1 tie against the No. 3 ranked University of New Hampshire Wildcats, putting the college soccer world on notice. That year, TJ Presthus ’25, a ﬁrstyear Yale defender, already earned an All-Ivy honorable mention. The following season, Yale once again came to play, securing a 2-1 road victory over No. 10 ranked University of West Virginia.

The next fall, in 2023, the team hit double digit wins and won the first-ever Ivy League Tournament Championship. The Bulldogs then defeated Bryant University in the opening game of their first NCAA Tournament.

Presthus was named Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year in 2023, and Chris Edwards ’25 earned All-Ivy status both that year and in 2024. “These seniors were inspirational both on and o the field,” midfielder Andrew Seidman ’26 said. “On the field, they were a key component for one of the most successful periods in Yale men’s soccer history, and o the field they were role models for all of us to follow.”

After the 2024 campaign, the senior class was honored with multiple awards. Jamie Orson ’25 took home the Jack Marshall Award for the member of the team who demonstrated the qualities of team spirit, loyalty and dedication. Quanah Brayboy ’25 and Edwards won the Walter Leeman Trophy for “sportsmanship and team play.” Presthus was recognized as the team’s most valuable player.

—Tommy Gannon, Sports Editor

On Sep. 17, 2021, Walker Oberg ’25, Luke Neal ’25, Aidan Reilly ’25 and Renaud Lefevre ’25 suited up to take on the Boston College Eagles at the Dartmouth Invitational. Oberg and Lefevre won in straight sets, while Reilly and Neal won in three.

After that dominating performance, there was no looking back for the four members of the Yale men’s tennis class of 2025. In October 2021, all four helped the Bulldogs take home two 6-0 victories by sweeping both days at the Harvard Invitational. And their home defeat in March 2023 against a previously unbeaten squad from the New Jersey Institute of Technology served as a launching pad for the team for their success that spring.

Then, in 2024, the class of 2025 helped the team get o to a blistering start, one that saw the Bulldogs victorious in their ﬁrst four matches, and that concluded with Theo Dean ’24 and Reilly earning All-Ivy accolades. Reilly was named captain soon after, and he has led the Elis to new heights in his senior year. In March, the Bulldogs beat Cornell for the ﬁrst time since 2013. The group of seniors has helped foster a team environment where teammates play for one another. “It’s been incredible to come into a team with such a close bond, and have the opportunity to work hard every day towards pushing the team’s results forward,” Neal wrote to the News. “I wouldn’t have wanted to play anywhere else.” The class of 2025 has helped the Bulldogs reach double digit wins in each of the last four seasons.

—Tommy Gannon, Sports Editor

Although Yale fell to the national No. 1 Cornell in the Ivy semiﬁnals, several Bulldogs had impressive performances in this season. Johnson ﬁnished eighth in career points, with 172. Lyons ended sixth in career goals in the program’s history, with 128, while goalkeeper Jared Paquette ’25 ranked third in career saves, with 688. Krevsky was drafted 14th overall by the New York Atlas, a Premier Lacrosse League professional team in Albany.

BASEBALL

Members of the Yale baseball class of 2025 have been through it all. They underwent a head coaching change after the retirement of legendary John Stuper following their ﬁrst-year season, and they toiled through two losing seasons in 2023 and 2024.

The men’s fencing class of 2025 may be small, but they have contributed to the success of the program over the last four years in several ways. Michael Mun ’25 and Sartaj Rajpal ’25 have been a part of multiple teams contending for national titles.

As Mun and Sartaj progressed through their time as undergraduates, so did the team overall. From 2022 to 2024, the team more than doubled its win total.

The team was ranked No. 10 in December 2021, went undefeated in eight matches at the Vassar Open Invitational in November 2023 and dominated Vassar and Sacred Heart in their lone home event this past season. Mun competed in multiple NCAA Northeast Regionals, while Sartaj found success in the piste at several regular season events during his time representing the Elis.

“It’s a real loss having Michael Mun and Sartaj Rajpal graduate,” Rising senior and 2025-26 captain Tony Whelan ’26 said. “They have become great friends of mine and were role models for a lot of the guys on the team.”

This past season, the Bulldogs went 18–7 and finished in 11th place at the NCAA National Championships.

—Tommy Gannon, Sports Editor

“To be able to see this program grow from what it was four years ago to what it is now has been really special,” Shaw told the News. “It’s been an honor being a part of the culture shift and being able to play a small part in restoring Yale baseball back to where it belongs.”

—Tommy Gannon, Sports Editor

Yet, time and again, this ten-member class has shown its resiliency. Led this year by senior captain Colton Shaw ’25, the team has improved its win total in each of the past three seasons, hitting 30 wins in the 2025 campaign. The Bulldogs secured a share of the 2025 Ivy League Title for the ﬁrst time since 2018.

From their ﬁrst time teeing o competitively at the Yale Golf Course in September 2021, the three members of the Yale men’s golf Class of 2025 found considerable success. Robert You ’25, Ben Carpenter ’25 and Blake Brantley ’25 each contributed to helping the team win the 45th annual Macdonald Cup on the world-renowned New Haven course in 2021.

“I’m so thankful for Robert and Ben,” Brantley told the News. “I feel especially lucky to have come into this program with them and push each other every day in practice to achieve the success that we have had.”

They started o their Yale careers hot but seldom slowed down over their four years. Later that ﬁrstyear season, the trio helped the Bulldogs clinch the 2022 Ivy League Championship for Yale’s ﬁrst time since 2018, and Carpenter’s three-day total of 218 marked the best score of the entire tournament.

After head coach Colin Sheehan ’97 retired, Keith Tyburski from Colgate University took the reins. In September 2023, the Elis claimed the Macdonald Cup once again. Then they deﬁed the odds to mount a come-from-behind victory over Princeton to hoist the 2024 Ivy banner.

“Coming back and beating Princeton last year at Ivies was a surreal moment and the highlight of my time at Yale,” Carpenter said. “The deciding factor came on the 18th hole, with multiple guys on the team making clutch putts. Tapping in the winning putt on 18 and celebrating with my teammates is a moment I’ll never forget.”

—Tommy Gannon, Sports Editor

WOMEN’S CROSS COUNTRY

In the last four years, the women’s cross country team has both struggled and rebounded.

In 2021, when most of this year’s graduating seniors were ﬁrst years, the Bulldogs ﬁnished third in the Ivy League Cross Country Championships, across a six-kilometer course. In both 2022 and 2023, the team placed sixth, but this year it returned to the third-place spot — led by juniors Claire Archer ’26, who was named an All-Region runner for her performance at the NCAA’s Northeast meet, and Linde Fonville ’26, who was selected to captain the team for fall 2025.

In a remarkable team performance earlier in the 2024 season, the women’s cross country squad won its first Eastern College Athletic Conference Championship banner since 2003. After some attrition, the class of 2025 includes only two active runners on the team’s online roster, captain Kylie Goldfarb ’25 and Iris Bergman ’25. Bergman was Yale’s fifth finisher at the 2024 NCAA regional meet.

—Ethan Wolin, Sta Reporter YALE

MEN’S TENNIS

—Liza Kaufman, Sports Editor YALE ATHLETICS

YALE ATHLETICS

VOLLEYBALL

The Yale women’s volleyball team won their third straight Ivy League title this season. They cruised past their conference opponents during the regular season, only falling to Princeton in four sets and Cornell in ﬁve — both teams that they later crushed in the Ivy League tournament.

In the past four years, the squad has accumulated an impressive 48–8 Ivy League record and three NCAA tournament appearances under Head Coach Erin Appleman, who was named the Ivy League Coach of the Year in 2022 and 2023.

This season, the Bulldogs fell to North Carolina in the ﬁrst round of the NCAA tournament. Although they won the ﬁrst set 25-18 with contributions from all hitters and a great service run from senior Cara Shultz ’25, known for her unique serve, they dropped the next three sets to the talented Tar Heels.

The ﬁve players in the class of 2025 — Shultz, Fatima Samb ’25, Bella Chan ’25, Mila Yarich ’25 and Carly Diehl ’25 — have earned American Volleyball Coaches Association All-Region, All-Ivy and All–Eastern College Athletic Conference accolades between them.

— Rachel Mak, Sta Reporter

When the puck dropped on the 2021-22 season, it had been nearly 600 days since the Yale men’s hockey team had taken the ice for an o cial contest.

Since then, six current seniors — Will Dineen ’25, Briggs Gammill ’25, Luke Pearson ’25, Dylan Herzog ’25, Kieran O’Hearn ’25 and Connor Sullivan ’25 — have endured COVID-19 cancellations, conference struggles and injury-plagued seasons. But they also orchestrated stunning upsets, helped create a welcoming team culture and, as head coach Keith Allain ’80 put it, “epitomized what it means to represent Yale hockey in the right way.”

After over a year away from competition, in late 2021, the Bulldogs hit the ice with a young, inexperienced lineup. In the home opener that season, only nine Yale skaters had played a prior collegiate game. The team’s ﬁrst win that year — a 4-2 defeat of Vermont — showcased their scoring depth, as four different skaters found the back of the net.

A string of early blowout losses in the 2022-23 campaign left the Bulldogs reeling. But in 2023-24, they began to show signs of renewal. After a 1-4 start to the season, the Bulldogs bounced back in a 5-2 win over Merrimack and went on a four-game undefeated run, including a 3-1 win over Brown.

This year, the Bulldogs opened their season against No. 1 Denver and fell in two competitive games, but rebounded spectacularly in December, toppling powerhouse Boston University 7-5 in a packed Ingalls Rink.

—Baala Shakya, Sta Reporter

WOMEN’S SWIMMING AND DIVING

From the ﬁrst whistle of the season to the ﬁnal dive, Yale women’s swim and dive dominated in the pool. After a nearly undefeated season, the Bulldogs took home third place at the Ivy Championships — as they have in each of the past four years — and shattered several team records along the way.

Mabel Ko ’28 set a new pool and school record in the 200-yard backstroke with her home win in the Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet. The 200-yard medley quartet of captain Quinn Murphy ’25, Jessey Li ’26, Alex Massey ’25 and Sara Plunkett ’27 set a new school record with their time of 1:37.19 at the Ivy League Championships in February.

The last four years have been a strong run for the Bulldogs, with several top performances by swimmers in the class of 2025. At the 2023 Ivy Championships, Massey and Junseo Kim ’25 ﬁnished in second and seventh place, respectively, in the 200-yard butterﬂy, while Murphy placed sixth in the 200-yard backstroke. As a team, Yale maintained a perfect record in regular season meets during the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons and won all but one meet in the subsequent two seasons.

—

Davis Zong, Sta Reporter

WOMEN’S CREW

The Yale women’s crew team completed a near-perfect regular season this spring, sweeping almost every race across six major matchups. The Bulldogs opened their campaign during spring break with commanding performances over Ohio State, Michigan and Rutgers, winning 14 of 15 races. They went on to sweep all six events against Cornell and Syracuse at Fish Creek, retain the Cayuga Cup, and defend the Class of ’85 Cup against Dartmouth on their home course. They then took down the Princeton Tigers at Lake Carnegie, where Yale avenged last year’s loss with a clean six-race sweep to reclaim the Eisenberg Cup. The regular season concluded with ﬁve wins over Harvard-Radcli e on the Charles River and

two victories against Boston University.

Over the past four seasons, Yale has been a model of consistency. The team has swept nearly every regular-season meet and advanced multiple crews to the NCAA Grand Finals. The Bulldogs also earned podium ﬁnishes at the Ivy League championships in each of the past three years, winning the title in 2022 and placing second in both 2023 and 2024. At the NCAA championships, Yale placed ﬁfth in both 2022 and 2023, and eighth in 2024.

The 2025 Ivy League championships are being held on May 17 and 18 in Pennsauken, New Jersey.

—Davis Zong, Sta Reporter

FOOTBALL

With the cancellation of the 2020 football season, 665 days passed between Yale’s 50-43 overtime defeat against the Harvard Crimson and the ﬁrst game of their fall 2021 campaign.

The inexperienced Team 148 ﬁnished 5–5 for the season, ending with a heartbreaking loss to Harvard.

In 2022, Team 149 bounced back and ﬁnished the season 8–2, including a win over Harvard that would begin a three-year rivalry winning streak.

“As freshmen, we came in and had great senior leaders who taught us the standard of Yale football,” Andrew Weisz ’25 told the News. “From them, we learned how Yale football should be run. Our ﬁrst year, we didn’t get the outcome we wanted, but the following year, thanks to the amazing leadership and great captain, we took it to the next level.”

Team 150 got o to a rough start when they fell 49–24 in their home opener against Holy Cross and dropped to Cornell for the ﬁrst time in seven years. However, Yale soon righted the ship and won six of their last seven games, heading into

The Game with a chance to claim a share of their second straight Ivy championship.

In one of the most exciting bouts of the year, the Bulldogs orchestrated a comeback that included multiple fourth-quarter touchdowns and a huge defensive stop in the ﬁnal seconds, culminating with Yalies storming the ﬁeld to celebrate the second straight win over Harvard.

Despite an early-season injury to new starting quarterback Grant Jordan ’25, the Bulldogs secured their first victory over Holy Cross in five years. The following week, the Bulldogs once again lost to a formidable Cornell squad and later fell in an overtime heartbreaker against Dartmouth. The Bulldogs lost their chance to win the Ivy League when they failed to secure a victory over Columbia.

However, Team 151’s offense came alive for the last three weeks of the season. With statement wins against Brown and Princeton, the senior class ended their tenure by racking up a third-straight win against Harvard.

—Brody Gilkison, Sta Reporter

WOMEN’S HOCKEY

After four years of grit and growth, the Yale women’s hockey team is closing the book on four record-breaking seasons.

In 2021, the Bulldogs opened their season with back-to-back shutouts, and seven di erent players found the net in the opening game, while goaltender Pia Dukaric ’25 earned her first of many clean sheets. By the end of February, the team had secured a second-place ECAC finish, shattered the program record for wins in a single season with 26, and earned Yale’s first-ever bid to the NCAA Women’s Ice Hockey Tournament. With a quarterfinal win over Colgate, the Bulldogs advanced to the 2022 Frozen Four — another program first.

The 2022-23 season started in a similar fashion with a record-breaking 13game win streak. Though the team fell to Northeastern in the NCAA quarterfinals, Yale’s top-five national ranking and back-to-back dominant seasons proved that New Haven was home to a women’s hockey powerhouse.

The 2023-24 season brought new challenges and a younger roster. After an opening win over Princeton and a hard-fought loss to Quinnipiac, the Bulldogs bounced back to take victories over Harvard, RPI, Union and Brown. The team ﬁnished the regular season

As the class of 2025 prepares to graduate, the Yale lightweight crew team can look back on four seasons of camaraderie and comebacks.

In the fall of 2021, the Bulldogs returned to racing after a three-year pandemic hiatus. At the Head of the Charles, Yale’s ﬁrst varsity eight surged from a seventh-place starting position to claim gold. In their ﬁrst race in the spring of 2022, the Bulldogs upset No. 1 Navy at Mercer County Park.

The Bulldogs didn’t let up, and Yale’s 2021-22 campaign ended with a sweep of postseason honors: Coach Andy Card was named Coach of the Year in the Ivy League and the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges, or EARC, and the varsity eight earned EARC Crew of the Year.

The 2022-23 season built on that legacy. In the fall, Yale defended the Eads Johnson Cup and Van Amringe Cup. But in April, Yale lost the Dodge Cup to Columbia by just 0.1 seconds, and the Goldthwait Cup slipped away to Princeton.

The 2023-24 season saw new leadership in captain Itai Almogy ’24. The Bulldogs overcame a near-length deﬁcit to capture the inaugural Bulldog Cup over Georgetown in front of a raucous home crowd. In that spring’s storied HYP regatta, Yale shocked both Harvard and Princeton.

strong before coming up short against a formidable St. Lawrence squad in two playo games.

Yale entered 2024 poised to make another postseason push. In the team’s ﬁnal weekend at Ingalls Rink, they secured a 3–1 win over Dartmouth, followed by a dominating Senior Day performance over Harvard.

“As a senior class full of incredibly talented players, they have played a crucial role in turning the program around, helping the team reach the Frozen Four in their freshman year,” Naomi Boucher ’26 told the News. “Over the past three years since I’ve played at Yale, they have been great mentors and leaders to me, and their impact on this program is immeasurable.”

—Baala Shakya, Sta Reporter

For 2024-25, the

torch passed to graduating senior captain Dylan Oberst ’25. Under his captaincy, the team defended the Van Amringe Cup, reclaimed the Johnson Cup and added victories in the Bulldog Cup and Joy Cup.

— Baala Shakya, Sta Reporter

CHRISTINA LEE, SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

YALE ATHLETICS

GYMNASTICS

In a 2021 preseason poll, Yale’s gymnastics team was slated to be the second best team in the Gymnastics East Conference. The Bulldogs opened their season with individual ﬁrst place victories over West Chester, Long Island and Brown — by Lindsay Chia ’22 on beam and by Sherry Wang ’24 SPH ’25 on bars.

They capped o the season by placing ﬁrst in the Ivy League championship and fourth at the GEC championship, with Chia taking home the all-around gold medal. At the end of a remarkable season, Head Coach Andrew Leis was named Women’s Coach of the Year by USA Gymnastics and Raegan Walker ’23 was crowned vault champion at the USA Collegiate Championships.

Building o the previous year’s momentum, the Bulldogs placed third at the 2023 Ivy championship and took second in the GEC championship. Walker and Sarah Wilson ’24 won multiple GEC Gymnast of the Week honors, and Riley Meeks ’23 placed second in the USA Gymnastics Collegiate National Individual Finals on the balance beam.

In 2024, the Bulldogs secured the second-highest team score in program history at the Tonry Invitational meet, where Gigi Sabatini ’26 won ﬁrst place all-around. That season, the Bulldogs took home second place again at the GEC championship, and Wilson and Ella Tashjian ’27 won individual championships in bars and ﬂoor, respectively.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

When the current senior class entered Yale as ﬁrst years, they were joining a Yale women’s basketball team that was coming o its most successful season in program history. Before the pandemic hit and the Bulldog’s hopes at reaching the NCAA Tournament were ended, Yale had gone 19–8.

To round out a record-breaking four years, the Bulldogs posted a season-high score at the 2025 Ivy championship and ﬁnished in third place behind Penn and Brown. The team earned second place at the GEC championship for the third straight year.

—Lily Belle Poling, Sta Reporter

Going into the 2021-22 season, then ﬁrst-year Mackenzie Egger ’25, Avery Lee ’25 and Grace Thybulle ’25 all hoped to contribute to the rebuilding e orts. The three of them all made solid contributions to the team as ﬁrst years, and Yale went 16–11 that year but failed to make the tournament.

In the 2022-23 season, Yale brought in Dalila Eshe as head coach after the departure of Allison Guth. The three sophomores all saw increased roles on the team as their minutes per game went up, but the team ﬁnished just under the .500 mark, going 13–14.

In the 2023-24 season, the Bulldogs regressed once more. Although they showed signs of life near the end of the season with a big overtime win against Penn, Yale ﬁnished for the season at 8–19.

This past season, senior Mackenzie Egger ’25 stepped up to lead the team in both points and rebounds, nearly averaging a double-double. This earned Egger an All-Ivy Honorable Mention. However, the team did not fare as well, going 4–23 to end the season.

—Brody Gilkison, Sta Reporter

WOMEN’S LACROSSE

From the moment they arrived at Yale, members of the class of 2025 have made an impact on the women’s lacrosse program. They leave it as two-time Ivy League champions.

In their ﬁrst season, in 2022, the team went on a six-game winning streak in the Ivy League, beating every Ivy team besides Princeton. Jenna Collignon ’25 ended the season as the team’s top scorer as only a ﬁrst year. In 2023, the team ended the season 11–6, with many of this year’s graduating seniors seeing big-time playing minutes.

They shined even more in 2024 as juniors, ending the season accounting for ﬁve of the top seven scorers: Jenna Collignon ’25, Fallon Vaughn ’25, Sky Carrasquillo ’25, Taylor Everson ’25 and Taylor Lane ’25. Last year, the team also made a run in the NCAA Tournament for only the second time in program history, making it to the quarterﬁnals.

Led by senior captain Sophie Straka ’25, 2025 has been just as impressive, with the team once again winning the Ivy Championship and reaching the NCAA quarterﬁnals. Additionally, Collignon made history as the program’s all-time leading scorer by surpassing the previous record of 209 goals.

“The senior class has been the true heart of our team — selﬂess leaders who have devoted so much to carry this program to the place we all dreamed it could be,” Katie Clare ’27 wrote to the News.

—Sienna Tejpaul, Sports Editor

WOMEN’S TENNIS

MEN’S CROSS COUNTRY

At the 2021 New England Championships, the men’s cross country team’s three fastest finishers — Varun Oberai ’25, Calvin Katz ’25 and Winslow Atkeson ’25 — were all first years. Although the team finished seventh overall that year at the Ivy League Championships, Leo Brewer ’25 and Elon Abergel ’25 also made their mark by placing in Yale’s top six.

The next season, in 2022, the Bulldogs had a modest performance during the regular season and ﬁnished ﬁfth overall at the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships and ninth at the NCAA Northeast Regional Meet.

The Bulldogs began their 2023 season on a high note, taking second place overall at the Codfish Bowl meet, with Daegan Cutter ’27 winning the 8-kilometer race. The very next weekend Yale brought home the team title at the annual Paul Short Run for the second time in school history. The Bulldogs then rounded out a strong season with a fourth-place team finish at the Ivy Championships and a sixth-place finish at the regional championship. In his senior season, Sean Kay ’24 represented Yale at the NCAA National Championship, finishing 177th.

WOMEN’S SOCCER

The Elis opened their 2024 campaign with a win over Harvard in a dual meet, where standout junior Owen Karas ’26 earned the gold medal. For the second year in a row, Yale took second at the Codfish Bowl meet. The Bulldogs capped o the year with fifth-place finishes at the Ivy Championship meet and NCAA Northeast Regionals.

—Lily Belle Poling, Sta Reporter

This class of seniors on the women’s soccer team has made waves since they first stepped on the pitch for Yale in 2021. Over four years, their skill and depth has garnered recognition time and again. Alanna Butcher ’25 ended her first-year season as the team’s second leading scorer with 16 goals. Ellie Rappole ’25 was not far behind, with 13 goals that season. Although 2021 was a shaky season for the Bulldogs, who finished with a 3–14 record overall, players in the class of 2025 and their teammates were determined to turn that around. By the end of the 2022 season, four members of the class of 2025 were tied for leading scorer at 15 goals each — Laila Booker

WOMEN’S GOLF

Alexis Kim ’25 and Sophie Simon ’25 first competed on the golf course as Bulldogs in September 2021 at the Boston College Invitational, which Yale won. The pair of then-first years spearheaded that victory — Kim and Simon placed second and tenth as individuals — and have contributed to Yale women’s golf ever since.

In 2021-22, Yale tied for second at the Yale Invitational, won the Ford Invitational in Georgia and ﬁnished fourth at the Ivy League Championships. Ami Gianchandani ’23, then captain of the squad, was named Ivy League Player of the Year and qualiﬁed for the US Open.

The Elis kept the momentum going throughout the next season. They won by 12 strokes at the Princeton Invitational — led by Gianchandani, Mia Sessa ’26 and Kim — placed second at the Navy Invitational and ﬁnished fourth at the Ivy Championships. Kim received All-Ivy honors, and both her and Simon were named Scholar All-Americans.

The 2023-24 season was particularly outstanding, as Yale won the Yale Invitational and the Columbia Classic. In May 2024, Kim was selected to serve as captain for her senior season. She led the squad to strong results at events including the Lady Blue Hen Invitational — where she hit a hole-inone — and the Augusta Invitational. Yale ended the year by tying for ﬁfth at the Ivy Championships. Kim and Sessa were selected for All-Ivy honors.

—Aiden Zhou, Sta Reporter

When the women’s tennis team won this year’s Eastern College Athletic Conference Championship, senior Mirabelle Brettkelly ’25 described it as “a moment that’s been four years in the making.”

During the 2021-22 season, then-first years Brettkelly and Jamie Kim ’25 started o strong. Brettkelly finished with a 19–8 record in singles and won the Queen’s Flight at the Columbia Invitational, her first collegiate tournament. Kim, meanwhile, won the team’s Special Contribution award and helped secure the team’s victory over a nationally ranked Florida International team. In the 2022-23 season, the Bulldogs finished in the middle of the Ivy League conference standings, excelling at home with a 7–2 record at the Cullman-Hey-

’25, Rebeka Róth ’25, Tanner Cahalan ’25 and Nana Yang ’25. In 2023, the team finished sixth in the Ivy League but went on a three-game winning streak against Seattle, Seton Hall and the University of Connecticut. In their final season, Rappole and Booker earned Third Team All-East Region honors. Rappole received a First Team All-Ivy nod as well, while Booker earned Second Team All-Ivy. During her final season, Rappole was also named Ivy League Co-o ensive Player of the Week. “She’s a top player and a handful for teams,” head coach Sarah Martinez wrote.

—Sienna Tejpaul, Sports Editor

WOMEN’S FENCING

Led by captain Erica Hooshi ’25 and guided by seniors Stephanie Cao ’25, Helen Tan ’25 and Cassie Wu ’25, the Yale women’s fencing team ﬁnished the 2024-25 season with its best record since 2021-22. The 2021-22 season began with the Garret Penn State Open. Hooshi quickly made her mark, placing eighth in foil. The Bulldogs kept up the pace, sweeping the Brandeis Invitational, 6–0, and nearly toppling No. 1 ranked Notre Dame at the Philadelphia Invitational. Tan and Cao placed highly at the Northeast Regionals, with Tan receiving NCAA Championships, led by Emme Zhou ’23, and ended the season with a record of 18–5. Yale came in hot during the 2022-23 season, posting an early record of 14–2. But despite individual success — Tan placed sixth in foil — the squad faltered and placed last at the Ivy League Round-Robins. However, the year ended on a strong note, as Yale secured tenth at the NCAA Championships.

In February 2024, Cao and Kristina Petrova ’27+1 led Yale to an outstanding weekend at the Ivy tournament. Tan, Petrova and three others also qualiﬁed for the NCAA Championships as Yale raised its record to 19–9.

This past year, Yale racked up a 23–8–1 record with perfect records at the Brandeis and Yale Invitationals. At the Northeast Regionals, Hooshi placed 17th and Tan placed 20th. At the NCAA Championships, the Bulldogs placed 11th as a team.

—Aiden Zhou, Sta Reporter

man Tennis Center but going 1–7 on the road. Although Brettkelly sat out her sophomore season due to injury, she came back swinging in the 2023-24 season, and the Bulldogs improved their record, securing big wins over Harvard and Princeton at the ECAC Tournament. Kim, team captain for her junior and senior years, led the team to an underdog ECAC Championship win this February, their first time claiming the tournament title in 13 years.

In late April, the Bulldogs once again fell to Penn in their 2025 season finale, concluding their season with an overall record of 12–10, and 3–4 in Ivy action.

—Ariela Lopez, Sta Reporter

YALE ATHLETICS

MEN’S SWIMMING AND DIVING

Alex Brehm ’25, Alex Deng ’25, Jed Jones ’25, Benjamin Meulemans ’25 and Ray Wipfli ’25 first dove into the pool to compete for Yale on Nov. 13, 2021. Since then, they’ve helped Yale men’s swimming and diving climb from a sixth-place Ivy finish to three bronze finishes.

After a COVID-19 absence, the 2021-22 season had its challenges, but the class of 2025 responded with resilience. Jones earned his ﬁrst collegiate win in the 500-yard freestyle against Southern Connecticut State, while Deng claimed the 100-yard breaststroke against Cornell. At their ﬁrst Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet, Brehm placed third in the 200-yard breaststroke.

The following season, Meulemans and Deng helped power key relays, and Wipﬂi and Jones earned individual wins against Southern Connecticut. Deng took second in the 200-yard breaststroke at HYP, and Meulemans helped secure silver in the 400-yard freestyle relay at the 2023 Ivies. At the 2024 Ivies, Meulemans and his relay quartet earned silver in the 200-yard freestyle.

Ahead of the 2024-25 season, captain Deng looked forward to beating Columbia. Not only did the team crush Columbia, but in their senior season, the class of 2025 led Yale to its best record in four years: 7–1, 6–1 Ivy. In the seniors’ final meet against Southern Connecticut, Brehm won the 50-yard breaststroke, Deng the 150-yard breaststroke and Wipfli the 1-meter dive. At the 2025 Ivy Championships, Jones placed eighth in the A final of the 400-yard individual medley.

—Liza Kaufman, Sta Reporter

hot starts in their collegiate careers. Nina Mital ’25 and Meghna Sreedhar ’25 won their first college matches against No. 9 University of Virginia in November 2021, and Lindsay Westerfield ’25 secured her first NCAA victory later that month. In January 2022, Christy Lau ’25 won a matchup against Drexel, her first victory.

MEN’S TRACK AND FIELD

Although they have placed at or near the bottom of the Ivy League in each of the past four outdoor

Over the course of the next four years, the team struggled at times but also had impressive showings. In the fall of 2022, the team once again defeated a highly ranked University of Virginia squad, with Lau and Sreedhar helping to power the team’s success. The team’s win against No. 3 Penn in February 2024 marked a new highpoint for the program.

This year, Lau earned Second Team AllIvy honors while Mital garnered Academic All-Ivy recognition. Mital also won the 2025 Delaney Kiphuth Student-Athlete Distinction Award for the female student athlete with the highest cumulative grade point average over four years at Yale.

—Tommy Gannon, Sports Editor

seasons, the Yale men’s track and ﬁeld team has still seen some stellar performances.

In the spring of 2024, Chris Ward ’25 threw a 16-pound metal ball 59 feet and 7.75 inches, rais ing himself to the No. 2 ranking in program history for the shot put. At the Raleigh Relays that season, Leo Brewer ’25 ran what was then the Bulldogs’ second fastest 5000-meter time in program history, 13:55.22.

In the fall of 2021, the Yale Heavyweight Crew team came roaring back to life after an almost two-year pandemic-induced hiatus. The Bulldogs cruised to a 23 second victory over the University of Washington at the Head of the Housatonic race. In Yale’s top boat sat four first years. The team took home third place at the Head of the Charles Regatta before sweeping Brown the following spring when Alexander McClean ’25 rowed bow. That season, Yale won its sixth consecutive Ivy League Championship and secured the James Ten Eyck Memorial Trophy at the national championship. The second and third varsity national championships were firsts in program-history, and Yale’s first varsity boat finished second only to the University of California. That June, Yale’s varsity eight was recognized as the EARC Crew of the Year, with McClean and classmate Marcus Emmett ’25 earning accolades.

This season, Owan Karas ’26 has emerged as a dominant distance runner for the Bulldogs, setting a new 1500-meter record of 3:37.52. At the 2025 Ivy League Outdoor Track and Field Championships, hosted at Yale this month, Karas earned over half of the men’s team’s 23 points by placing second in the 1500-meter and fourth in the 5000-meter races.

—Ethan Wolin, Sta Reporter

The following fall, the Bulldogs came in at third place at the Head of the Charles and won another Ivy League Championship. The team finished third at nationals that May. In 2023, Mike Gennaro was named as the new head coach following the retirement of Steve Gladstone, the most successful collegiate crew coach in history. In their 2023-24 season, the Bulldogs had a string of disappointing finishes and saw their Ivy Championship streak snapped.

Before the start of their fall races in 2024, Harry Geffen ’25 was named as the team’s captain after earning IRCA All-American honors the previous spring. In October, the Elis finished sixth amongst collegiate programs at the Head of the Charles and then opened their spring season by taking home victories in four of five raes against Dartmouth. Yale completed its regular season by taking two of five races in a home regatta against Princeton and Cornell.

—Tommy Gannon, Sports Editor

FIELD HOCKEY

The ﬁeld hockey team opened their 2021 season with smashing wins over Merrimack, Colgate, Brown and Drexel. Although the team fell short to a few top-20 nationally ranked squads that season, the Bulldogs held their own against most Ivy foes.

In 2022, under new head coach Melissa Gonzalez and her sta , the Bulldogs jumped out to a 4–0 record, their best start since 2010. Although a loss to UAlbany ended that hot streak, the Bulldogs still picked up some thrilling wins throughout the season over Penn and Brown.

The next year, the Bulldogs opened the season with a string of losses, including a loss to Penn in their Ivy opener and defeats by Harvard, UMass and Cornell. However, Yale bounced back by trouncing Brown, Dartmouth and Columbia before coming up just one win short of securing a bid to the Ivy League Championships.

This year, Yale opened its season with a decisive 6 -1 victory over Lehigh and its ﬁrst 3–0 start since 2018. Although the Bulldogs fell to the University of Connecticut, they picked up wins over Penn and Quinnipiac. Despite a late-season run that included victories over Cornell and Dartmouth, losses to Columbia and Princeton kept the Bulldogs out of the Ivy League Tournament for a second straight year.

—Lily Belle Polling, Sta Reporter

SAILING

When one reﬂects on the 2025 senior class of the coed sailing team, one word comes to mind: dominance.

The class has contributed to multiple national titles, beginning with Jack Egan’s ’25 standout performance to help the Bulldogs clinch the Team Race National Championship in May 2022. On the heels of Egan’s stellar showing, the Bulldogs captured their second-straight Intercollegiate Sailing Association — ICSA — Match Race National Championship in November that year.

The eleven graduating sailors have reached the pinnacle of success as individuals as well. Carmen Cowles ’25 competed in the U.S. Sailing Olympic Trials in the winter of 2024, and four members of the class were recognized as ICSA All-Americans last May.

The class of 2025 is leaving a lasting mark on the classes below them. “This senior class is a unit of extremely talented sailors on the water but also a close knit group of eleven students,” sophomore Elle Sykes ’27 wrote to the News. “I personally have been fortunate enough to sail with many of them and I attribute much of my personal growth to their mentorship.”

—Tommy Gannon, Sports Editor

WOMEN’S TRACK AND FIELD

In 2023 and 2024, the women’s track and field team finished in last place at successive Ivy League Championship meets — two indoor, two outdoor. However, this past academic year, standout performances powered the Bulldogs to fifth-place finishes at both the indoor and outdoor Ivy League meets, known as “Heps.” Although much of the resurgence has been driven by younger athletes, senior Peyton Parker ’25 was part of a 4x400-meter relay team that set a school record of 3:40.36 at the Penn Relays in April. At the same meet, captain Dominique Romain ’25 placed second in the long jump, making her the Ivy League athlete who placed highest at the meet, according to Yale Athletics.

The team’s fifth-place finish at the outdoor Ivy Championships this spring — Yale’s best outdoor Ivy League result in the past four years — came on home turf at Dwyer Track. In the 800-meter race, Victoria Guerrier ’27 placed second, with a time of 2:04.82, and Iris Bergman ’25 followed close behind for a thirdplace finish in 2:05.70.

—Ethan Wolin, Sta Reporter

SOFTBALL

YALE ATHLETICS

In 2022, the softball team had a tough string of losses to Ivy foes, falling to Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton and Brown. However, they managed to trounce Cornell and Penn, ending the season on a high note.

In 2023, the Elis lost in their Ivy opener to Princeton, then went on to pick up wins against Columbia and Cornell. They took down Penn in April but dropped a doubleheader against Harvard near the end of the regular season. Despite a loss to Brown, a series sweep over Dartmouth clinched the Bulldogs’ spot in the Ivy League Tournament, where they lost their opening match to Harvard and an elimination game to Princeton.

Yale came into the 2024 season ranked third in an Ivy pre-season poll and opened Ivy play with a sweep over Harvard. With wins over Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Penn and Columbia, the Elis were poised to make a post-season run. However the Bulldogs fell to Harvard in the ﬁrst game of the Ivy Tournament and were topped by Dartmouth in their elimination game.

This year, again ranked third in the Ivy preseason poll, the Bulldogs dominated the Penn Quakers in their Ivy opening series. After picking up a win over Cornell, Yale dropped to Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, Dartmouth and Brown and did not qualify for the Ivy League Tournament.

—Lilly Belle Polling, Sta Reporter

YALE ATHLETICS

Each one of the four seniors graduating from the Yale women’s squash team got o to

YALE ATHLETICS

MEN'S BASKETBALL : Seniors leave Yale as winningest class in team history

BY BRODY GILKISON STAFF REPORTER

In the 25 years since James Jones took over as head coach of Yale men’s basketball, his squads have consistently performed well in both regular and postseason play. No class, however, has distinguished itself quite like that of 2025.

The senior class is departing from Yale with three March Madness appearances and a record-breaking 85 wins over the past four years.

When asked what contributed to their success, Bez Mbeng ’25 pointed to the team’s camaraderie.

“We don’t leave as the winningest class if we don’t have a great relationship with each other,” he told the News. “Time in the gym together and time off the floor together hanging out, taking classes and just figuring out Yale together.”

When they arrived as first years, Mbeng, John Poulakidas ’25, Jack Molloy ’25 and Teo Rice ’25 joined a team that had not taken the floor in over a year and a half. In the 2019-20 season, the Bulldogs went 23–7 before their season was cut short, ending their postseason dreams.

In the seniors’ first year on the team, Jones sought to replicate the success from the team’s last played season, while simultaneously replacing key players that had since graduated. Mbeng saw the floor for about twenty minutes per game and led the team in assists as a first year, a statistic he would carry forward throughout his four years as point guard. Although the other three then-first years did not get as many minutes as Mbeng, they all made it off the bench at points throughout the season.

While the 2021-22 Yale basketball team did not match the record-setting win total of the previous team, the Bulldogs were still the best in the Ivy League and advanced to the Big Dance. There, they faced a tough Purdue team and lost 78-56. While the Bulldogs did lose, the four ﬁrst years gained valuable experience that prepared them for future tournament appearances.

In the 2022-23 season, the four Bulldogs’ roles on the team increased significantly. Mbeng continued to lead the team in assists and also took the lead in steals on his way to winning his first Ivy League defensive player of the year award. Poulakidas, who played significantly more in his sophomore year, became the No. 2 scorer on the team — successfully shooting over 40 percent from downtown.

Once again, the Bulldogs entered Ivy Madness hoping to punch their ticket to the NCAA Tournament, but fell short against a Princeton team that eventually went on to the Sweet 16. Yale received a berth to the National Invitation Tournament but lost in the first round to Vanderbilt.

With two years of postseason experience under their belts, the rising juniors and the rest of the Yale basketball team had high hopes for the 202324 season. They entered the season with a difficult nonconference schedule ahead of them, including trips to No. 11 Gonzaga and No. 2 Kansas.

After coming up victorious in most non-conference games, Yale led for a solid portion of both the Gonzaga and Kansas games before narrowly losing both on the road. Despite the challenging schedule, the Bulldogs made an impressive run in Ivy League play, which included thrilling wins over Cornell and Princeton.

With the pair of second-team all-Ivy players — Mbeng and Poulakidas — complementing an experienced senior class, the Bulldogs entered Ivy Madness that year looking to make it back to the NCAA tournament.

In the first round, Yale took care of business with Cornell and turned around quickly to take on Brown the following day.

In a tightly contested game, the Bulldogs found themselves down six with half a minute left on the clock. However, thanks to a late deep three by Poulakidas, Yale cut Brown’s lead to one and set up the legendary Matt Knowling ’24 buzzer-beating layup, punching their ticket to March Madness.

When asked about his favorite basketball memory while at Yale, Poulakidas said, “Definitely Knowling’s gamewinner against Brown. Winning that game was so special and just encapsulated a crazy year.”

After the thrilling Ivy Madness win, the NCAA Tournament committee matched the 13th-seeded Bulldogs with the fourthseeded 2024 SEC Champion Auburn Tigers. In a historic game for the Elis, Poulakidas lit up the Tigers with 28 points, leading Yale to a stunning upset victory over Auburn.

In the second round, however, the Bulldogs’ March run was cut short by the San Diego State Aztecs — a team that was the national runner-up in 2023.

After a stunning 2023-24 season, the pressure to perform was even higher in the seniors’ fourth and final year donning the blue and white. Senior Teo Rice ’25 was tasked with leading the team after being voted captain.

“Mentorship-wise, all the seniors were great leaders and taught the younger guys so much about basketball and even life in general,” Trevor Mullin ’27 told the News. “Teo was the best possible captain we could have had for the year. He was the guy who always kept our heads on straight, and he truly knew how to lead us as a unit.”

Although the Bulldogs dropped six non-conference games in the beginning of their season, they got back on track with record-breaking play in the Ivy League. After a hot start

to conference play, including statement wins over Princeton and Cornell, the Bulldogs found themselves undefeated at the halfway point of conference play. The Bulldogs secured a thirteengame winning streak — the longest in the country — before a heartbreaking loss to Harvard in their ﬁnal regular season game.

In postseason play, Yale managed to subdue both Princeton and Cornell for the third time this year en route to another Ivy Madness title. The senior class punched their third ticket in four years to March Madness, the most by any class in school history. There, the Bulldogs again matched up with a fourth-seeded SEC squad, but were not as lucky as the year before and fell 71–80 to the Texas A&M Aggies.

Regardless, Poulakidas was selected for the all-Ivy first team and was the most valuable player in the Ivy League tournament. Bez Mbeng picked up his third consecutive defensive player of the year recognition and was named the Ivy League Player of the Year.

The Yale men’s basketball team has never won the NCAA tournament.

Contact BRODY GILKISON at brody.gilkison@yale.edu.

TIM TAI

With 85 wins and three March Madness runs in four years, the graduating seniors are the most accomplished class in program history.

BEN RAAB, CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

CHRISTINA LEE, SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

BEN RAAB, CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

SOPHIA WANG, CONTRIBUTING

Mia Rose Kohn, Illustrations Editor

PERSONAL ESSAY

In Praise of Brunches

Yale’s culture, I’ve found, is at its best in the brunches. Not the lunches, those are too often squeezed in between classes, and not the dinners, those are too gcal’d to produce a relaxed atmosphere. Now, there are many places for discussion – nearly as there are students – but the weekend brunches are the most tolerant. It does not care how long you were up last night. It does not care what you did. It does not care what you wear. I made brunches a weekly ritual at Yale, and I attended them with conviction. In the Jonathan Edwards Great Hall, I easily spent over three hours from opening to close. It went from a trickle in the beginning to the peak around noon before the crowd thinned out to a few holdouts. When I sat in the left corner, always the left corner, I eased into the day. My friends knew I would be in the dining hall when they woke up, and I knew they would arrive when they were ready. It needed no negotiation. The conversation flowed freely; it was neither held down by the judgment of an audience nor bound by time. Of the countless words we exchanged over the four years, it was mostly nonsense, but it was meaningful nonsense. The high-brow topics were put away until after the meal. A certain friend of mine always insisted on waiting until brunch when he had new gossip or a funny story to tell us. Even at the times I already knew what he was going to say, I still enjoyed his retelling because he prioritized entertainment over accuracy. Another of my brunch companions would loudly react as he heard these stories. It would be an escalating feedback loop. I am sure that Mohammed, who operates the swipes, has been subjected to hearing information he has no desire of knowing. These brunches were an outlet from the demands of student life here. We went to Yale College Council meetings, gave tours at the art gallery, managed student publications, and balanced that against our class work–or at least we tried to. Were these obligations largely self-imposed? Of course. If Yalies had no class or clubs to overbook them they would invent new ways of stressing themselves out.

We did take this outlet too far at times. It is easy to justify procrastinating when you have co-conspirators.The three hour brunch should end with doing something “productive” after. However, we punted on work through a post-brunch tea, a break from a break. By that point it would be two or three o’clock, and it would be hard to focus with dinner so close. Few spaces had that combination of frequency and low-stakes attitude. Whatever clubs or groups that I spent time in were recurring, but we had a set agenda to do. And if something was casual it would be poorly-attended, because people would focus on more pressing demands.

I, and my friends, stumbled into this routine. We never defined it, and we certainly were not the first to partake in meandering conversations at the dining hall, but we put our own spin to it. If you come to Yale, find your ‘brunch’-- whatever that is. I trust that you will – eventually – figure out classes, activities, and other interests. Our campus has great backgrounds for any feeling you will experience. Truly, while I have had awful, awful days here it was at least in pretty buildings. We chronically press ourselves for time here and that is often necessary. However, if you leave here without the memories that happen over the course of unscheduled and unscripted time, you leave here at a loss.

Contact EZANA TEDLA at ezana.tedla@yale.edu.

PERSONAL ESSAY

The Sweetness of Lemons

Learning and Loving From Discomfort and Change

When I was younger, one of my favorite treats was to put granulated sugar and sliced up lemons in a Ziploc bag and shake until they were coated like candy. I always liked something sour that could be made sweet, something that could be shaken up and put under pressure, but come out on the other side something fantastic and new – revealing something you never would have guessed could be so wonderful. As I reflect on my four years at Yale, that happened to me in so many fantastic ways.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my firstyear self these past few weeks leading up to commencement. At the time, I had a grand plan set out for my life and thought that once I had gotten into Yale, I had essentially secured my future. I thought I would be working on Capitol Hill or on my way to law school after spending four years dedicating my time to studying American politics. I also believed after my first year I would have easily made a ton of friends and my life would look a lot like a Yale version of Elle Woods.

I quickly realized that I was wrong. My first year I felt isolated as I was plagued by a series of mystery illnesses. I spent the year largely in and out of the hospital. I met with my Dean about extensions and my medical situation more than I met with anyone else that year. I struggled academically for the first time ever as my illness mixed with the rigor of an Ivy League school. Feeling discouraged from a less than wonderful first year, I applied to study abroad in Italy to get my language requirements out of the way. This experience — as silly as it sounds — changed my life at Yale.

During my study abroad, I met a girl who pushed me to join her sorority to make more girlfriends at school. I couldn’t make the first meetings either — I was ill at the time — but her word alone got me a bid. This finally allowed me to make friends, and despite being sick a lot of the time, I didn’t have to worry about who I would go to parties with, grab meals with, or just talk about life with. I had found a place for me. Growing up in Georgia, around big state schools, I had never imagined myself as a sorority girl — it has a very different interpretation in the South — but I loved it.

At the end of the road, I am grateful for everything — the good and the bad, the sick and the healthy, the known and the unknown.

My sophomore year, I met my closest companion, a friend of my suitemates’ who I initially thought was my total opposite in so many ways. At the time we met, I was very free spirited, and she was a reserved, academically focused, Polish-Catholic girl from Brooklyn. Despite our differences, we had a lot in common. I found her being my shoulder to cry on and I hers. I learned about networking from her and her dazzling ability to talk to people and make them interested in what she has to say. I never imagined I’d have a friend with whom I could go home for Thanksgiving, spend New Year’s Eve on a FiDi rooftop, and take a drive up to Boston for galas and football games.

My life had changed academ ically as well. I found myself drawn to studying Italian populism, social crises in Europe, and austerity policies. I took a lot of classes about the EU, Europe, and Ukraine, but I was still convinced that my career was going to be working in Congress or as a federal lawyer in Washington. When I finally got an internship in Congress, I hated it.

I had to think for months

about what I got out of that experience and what I learned from it. It had changed what I wanted to do completely just as I came into my senior year. I also suffered from a crisis of confidence that my grades or extracurriculars fell short of my “dreams of law school.” On top of that, knowing now I didn’t like a congressional career, I had no idea what I would tell interviewers about what I wanted to do. So, like any other Yale student would, I panicked. I applied to all of these ridiculous consulting and finance positions that I had no experience in because I felt like it was what I had to do as a Yale graduate. In these moments of personal crisis, I was also writing my thesis about Italian politics, austerity and euroscepticism. I had been encouraged on more than one occasion by my thesis advisor and some other professors to apply to graduate school, but I sat on it until the end of senior fall because I was unsure about the job market despite my passion for the topic. I eventually decided to apply for political science and political economy masters programs with the hope to get a PhD after. For the first time in a long time, I had true passion about something I was doing. I started to think I made the wrong choice about my major, but in writing my thesis and my research proposals, I realized that my passion was the study of politics in academia. I wasn’t sure how anything would pan out as I had never shaken the feeling that I wasn’t good enough to be at Yale in the first place. However, I got into every graduate program I applied to. Now, after graduation, I will move to Montreal to continue studying the European political economy, a topic that hadn’t been on my radar junior year. If anyone had told freshman year me, the future Washington lawyer, I would have laughed and called them crazy. Much of my experience at Yale can be summed up by the idea that the year prior, I would have called myself crazy. If you look at things from a pessimistic perspective, my constant sickness and my bad internship experience prevented me from having the life I dreamed about at 17. At the end of the road, I am grateful for everything — the good and the bad, the sick and the healthy, the known and the unknown. If I had not had the hard times, I would not have had the good ones. I would not have my best friend Ula, my sisterhood in Kappa Kappa Gamma, my graduate school acceptance to McGill or my passion for the European Political Economy. Out of everything Yale has taught me, the best lesson I learned was that sometimes you have to go out of your way to add a little sugar to the lemons life hands you and wait for the bag to stop shaking to experience the sweetness of it all. These four years at Yale have been, and will be remembered as, among the sweetest that life has to offer.

Contact BRI ANDERSON at bri.anderson@yale. edu.

// BY EZANA TEDLA

BY BRI ANDERSON

ILLUSTRATION BY JULIAN RAMOND

PHOTOS BY DAVID ZHENG, LUCAS HOLTER, AND YULIN ZHEN

Commencement Horoscopes

// BY KIVA BANK

It’s that time of year again…

As Commencement looms closer, uncertainty blooms. You’ve been distracted by the endless parade of senior events, leaving little time to ponder the future, but questions lurk in the back of your mind.

What does life after Yale look like? Will you be able to find a job in this economy even though you never joined YUCG? Is it still socially acceptable to eat ramen four nights a week? How will you purchase said ramen if there is no GHeav equivalent in your new home of the midwestern suburbs?

As always, the future remains unpredictable. Many of your questions will go unanswered — but the stars might bring some clarity. Although, let’s be real, the constellations don’t need to tell you to put the ramen down. It’s time to learn how to cook.

Here’s what the stars say about your post-grad destiny:

Aries

While everyone has focused on making lasting memories, you’ve been prioritizing making lasting connections on LinkedIn. Stalking classmates’ job titles, updating your “open to work” banner, casually networking with that Econ TA… It’s exhausting. Step back and touch the grass on Cross Campus while you still can.

Taurus

The party is over for most, but not for you. You’ve been on a non-stop bender since submitting your thesis, and honestly? Respect. But eventually, the buzz will fade and you will realize you’re not at Woads anymore. Start thinking about a different kind of party — a housewarming. Sign the lease before it’s too late.

Gemini Your current wardrobe screams frat formal, and that corset top is not going to cut it in the corporate world. You’re working at a tech start-up, not Urban Outfitters. You need to retire your college outfits and invest in some quality pieces. Think ethically sourced designer items, like finding a Dior bag on Depop or permanently borrowing tailored Gucci trousers from your grandfather’s closet. You’ll need them more than he does any way for your new look - 401(k) girlboss with an edge.

Cancer

You’re not dreading commencement itself — you’re dreading your family reunion. You don’t want to explain to your great aunt Katherine that your degree in American Stud ies does have value, and why you can’t answer “What’s next?” Pro tip: just say “consulting” and walk away.

Leo

Virgo

You feel that your years at Yale have been well spent. You treated college like a corporate ladder, and now it’s time to actually climb one. However, you can’t plan for everything, like the fact that your college sweetheart is unexpectedly moving away. You may have once been #couplegoals but it looks like the long-distance relationship will not survive the zip code change.

You’re bouncing between job hunting, summer plans, existential spirals and rewatching “Fleabag” for the seventh time. Pick a lane — or at least narrow it down to three tabs open at once. “Multipassionate” is cute until your résumé looks like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel.

Libra

You’re deep in your feels, and graduation just made it worse. You don’t need to obsess over every goodbye. You’re hugging people you barely liked this year, and not everyone from your FroCo group needs a tearful sendoff. It’s okay to be sentimental — just remember, your friends will visit. Maybe. Once. In like 2027.

Scorpio

Moving to a new city is exciting… until you realize your ex-situationship also signed a lease five blocks away. Coincidence? Or punishment from the universe? Either way, it’s time to reestablish boundaries. Just because you’re both drinking overpriced espresso in Brooklyn doesn’t mean you’re destined to rekindle.

Sagittarius

You’re ready to book a one-way flight the second you throw your cap in the air. But if you think you can escape your problems by backpacking through Europe… you’re absolutely right. At least for three weeks. Then they show up in your hostel bunk with a name tag that says “Student Loan Interest.”

Capricorn

You’ve upheld a time-honored quintessential Yale tradition: selling your soul to the corporate devil and securing a job at McKinsey. Congratulations! While the rest of your classmates are still workshopping cover letters, you’re busy stress-planning your ﬁveyear exit strategy. Don’t forget to actually enjoy this moment before you are consumed by Excel and midnight Slack pings.

Aquarius

You’re leaving Yale behind, and honestly? It’s probably for the best. The Myrtle Beach incident, the wardrobe mishap at Erotica, the accidental text that can never be spoken of again — some legacies are best left abandoned in the shadows of the Scroll & Key tomb. It may be time for you to disappear and reinvent yourself abroad.

Pisces

You came to Yale with dreams of obtaining an elite education and an emotionally available finance bro to monogram towels with. Now you’re leaving with a piece of paper worth $360K, an office job unrelated to your English degree, and several failed situationships. But don’t fret. You can always rely on alumni meetups to find yourself a Yusband and financial stability.

Contact KIVA BANK at kiva.bank@yale.edu

ILLUSTRATION BY MIA ROSE KOHN

PERSONAL ESSAY

The Most Human Class at Yale

My time at Yale concludes with Daily Themes.

// BY GRACE ALBRIGHT

The end of my college education announced itself not with a bang, but with the slow unraveling of routine. My upcoming graduation from Yale carries its own peculiar sting. It’s not the end of college I catch myself mourning. Instead, I’m unsettled by the fading of a once-permanent rhythm and gradual disappearance of deadlines I dreaded but secretly depended on.

For the past four years, I’ve taken writing for granted. Writing began as a high school passion but hardened into a mundane fact of my philosophy degree. Yale prizes ideas, but these ideas rely on writing for substance and staying power. Likewise, in a world that runs on noise, writing is what teaches us how to listen. But here’s the catch: no curriculum, not even Yale’s, can teach you to master writing. Writing, by design, resists mastery. But even if the University falls short of teaching us to write, certain mentors can get us somewhere. While at Yale, I was fortunate to find people who taught me writing can be an ethic –– one of curiosity, shared vulnerability and

Writing is a reciprocal act.

To guide someone else’s language, you have to remain porous to it. You have to let it change you.

the courage to become more deeply human.

This realization crept in unceremoniously. It was my last college Monday, and I was halfway through a meeting with my “Daily Themes” tutor.

First taught in 1907, “Daily Themes” is one of Yale College’s most legendary English courses. Each weekday, students submit 300 words of creative prose to an assigned tutor.

The simplicity is part of the magic. The assignment is not to produce stellar work, but to commit to the ritual of daily writing. That said, the course is typically overrun with seniors feeling the last-minute pressure to participate in a Yale tradition or, like me, desperate for one last chance at creative self-expression. A ﬁnal chance, maybe, to learn how to write for ourselves.

Of course, academia would not be academia without accountability. “Daily Themes” emphasizes the internal kind: accountability to ourselves.

We’re meant to leave the course as better writers, made accountable to ourselves by virtue of our daily writing ritual.

But grade-wise, we’re also accountable to our assigned tutor. The “Daily Themes” tutors range from PhD students to established journalists and local writers. They wear many hats: critic, editor and often therapist to sentimental seniors.

My assigned tutor was Lary Bloom, a local writer and New Haven

resident. Though in his early eighties, Lary is a walking reminder that age and edge are not mutually exclusive. He contributes regularly to the New Haven Independent, where he writes with a blend of civic curiosity, cultural bite and just enough mischief to keep his readers on their toes. The bent tip of his index finger has become somewhat of a personal punchline. “I could write the first sonata for eleven fingers,” he likes to say, grinning as he demonstrates how the fingertip can span two piano keys.

I looked forward to my weekly meeting with the brilliant and unfailingly witty Lary. He sat amongst the other tutors in the left-side section of Linsly-Chittenden 101 during professor Kim Shirkhani’s weekly lecture. When I rejoined him an hour after class time for our meeting, he would be seated in the same spot. I’d taken six courses in

that Old Campus lecture hall, and not one had prepared me for the strange intimacy of discussing my personal metaphors. Those rows seemed meant for anonymity, not eye contact. It was disorienting for my lecture hall to suddenly become a confessional.

Still, Lary never felt like a tutor in the traditional sense. He was a fellow writer, if not a peer. At the start of the semester, Lary informed me that writing was what kept him

This is a lesson

I’ve learned not only through “Daily Themes,” but also through my time at Yale’s Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. At the Writing Center, I sit in Lary’s seat. Students come in with all forms of drafts-in-progress, from English papers to film reviews and fellowship applications. As a writing partner, I have little time to read their work and provide feedback. It’s quick, instinctive, almost a kind of literary triage. But it’s also a conversation. I’m meant to trace the logic of their sentences and to ask questions. I mark the moments where a thought stutters or soars. In those sessions, I’m not just offering feedback on writing; I’m learning how they think. And that thinking challenges my own. Reading makes me a better writer. Like Lary, I’ve learned writing is a reciprocal act. To guide someone else’s language, you have to remain porous to it. You have to let it change you.

Lary never hovered above my work with a red pen — he sat with it. Whenever something in my writing fell short, he didn’t reach for a rule or a correction. He reached for a story. A moment when his own sentence structure collapsed under the weight of an idea. A Broadway play that reframed the way he saw the human condition. His feedback never arrived at a verdict; it arrived as a memory, a shared vulnerability.

I’m grateful to Lary and to “Daily Themes” for re-teaching me the art of creative writing. After seven semesters steeped in the rigor of analytic philosophy, my prose was overworked. Every sentence tried to prove something, and every paragraph braced itself for rebuttal. I had forgotten how to write freely.

Lary caught my academic fatigue immediately. My very first theme, some strange attempt at anthropomorphizing an oak tree, was more symbolic than sincere. He read it, then offered some advice: “Humanize it.” I wasn’t writing for a professor, he told me. I was writing for a person, for people.

It was such a simple suggestion, but it rearranged everything for me. Writing, I realized, was not just a

Writing, I realized, was not just a display of intellect. It asked for something warmer than clarity. It asked for presence.

young. At first, I suspected this attitude grew from wrestling with the cryptic Gen-Z vernacular of “Daily Themes” students. My theory gained traction after one prompt asked students to discuss a slang word of our choosing.

Lary and his fellow tutors were floored by the careful Gen-Z distinction between “I cooked” — meaning “I did this well” — and “I ate” — “I definitely did this well.” Their reactions were part amusement, part anthropological awe.

For a moment, it seemed our language had outpaced them, and the generational gap had widened into a canyon. But seconds later, Lary turned to professor Shirkhani and told her she had “eaten” withthat day’s lecture. Only then did I realize that he wasn’t just reading our writing; he was learning our language. It was fluency by immersion.

But to Lary, staying young is not merely about keeping up with slang. Instead, it’s about learning from the younger generations. Good writing doesn’t sit there looking clever. It ripples outward. The act of writing itself is reciprocal, regenerative and always in motion. It sharpens the writer and nudges the reader. It disseminates major ideas but also promotes a quiet exchange between writer and reader.

This exchange is not always explicitly academic, as in the professor-student dynamic. Sometimes it’s in the margin of a sentence, where a reader pauses to consider their own worldview.

This leads me to one of the softer truths of the course: no one writes in a vacuum. All writers must first be readers. Reading fuels writing, especially once you’ve burned through your best “Daily Themes” ideas two weeks into the semester.

display of intellect. It asked for something warmer than clarity. It asked for presence, and for the same vulnerability that Lary offered me.

This epiphany is what makes leaving Yale — leaving academia — all the more devastating for me. Just as I’m beginning to find my voice, just as my writing has started to feel less like a performance and more like a practice, it’s all slipping away.After nearly 16 years of structured learning — drafting, submitting, revising and perfecting — I’m suddenly without a reader waiting on the other end. I’ve turned in my thesis and my final papers. I’ve written my last Daily Theme. There’s no longer any reason to write 300 words a day, and no built-in audience to receive them.

Lary softened that blow. At our final meeting, as I tried to wrap words around the strange ache of ending college, he reminded me that we live in a world decided by argument. Regardless of our future career paths, we never outgrow writing. As Lary assured me, it’ll follow us. Not the five-paragraph essay, not the polished seminar paper, but something closer in spirit to a Daily Theme: the kind of writing that reaches another human being and says this matters.

That, perhaps more than anything, is what Yale has given me. Not just the skill of writing, but the responsibility of it. That the craft of writing is nothing without the writer’s conviction. That language can bridge generations. And that writing is not about perfection, but about presence. It’s about choosing to lean in, to listen across generations or subject areas, and to be changed. I graduate from my dream school in less than a week. Let this not be the last thing I write.

Contact GRACE ALBRIGHT at grace.albright@yale.edu.

CULTURE

The Seventeen Hundred Hats of Yale College

// BY ZACHARY CLIFTON

On the third Sunday in May, Old Campus will be filled with purgatorial undergraduates, straddling the line between Yale and the rest of the world. Their families will gather beneath the canopy of blossoming oak, elm, and maple trees.

There will be the shrieks of parents wielding, indiscriminately, iPhones and telephoto lenses, the fluting of “Bright College Years” — and, most importantly, an endless parade of hats that would make even the women of the Royal Ascot blush.

But this isn’t Commencement — not yet. This is “Class Day,” Yale’s unofficially official excuse for every senior to crown themselves with laurels, chicken buckets, traffic cones, plush hippos, a Harkness Tower or two and at least three actual loaves of bread.

For decades, fresh-faced graduates have been gifted “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!,” Dr. Seuss’s anodyne balm for the quarter-life crisis — “Kid, you’ll move mountains!” it coos, somewhere between a self-help pep talk and the world’s longest Hallmark card.

Yet at a time when academic freedom is under siege — from congressional hearings targeting university leaders to resignations over campus speech — Yale offers a counterpoint. The book of the hour is not a tale of wideeyed wanderers in yellow pajamas but the far more subversive “500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.”

Why? Because, dear graduates, life is not one long escalator into the clouds. It is, more often, a farce in which you try your best to do the right thing — take off your hat to the king — only to find another, and another, and another hat sprouting in its place. If “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” is the gospel of self-actualization, “500 Hats” is the chronicle of what actually happens when you try to play by the rules. And for Yale seniors, about to plunge into a world of employment contracts, rent checks, and group insurance policies, it rings truer than any mountain-moving rhyme.

But what, after all, is Yale’s Class Day if not an entire campus-wide reenactment of Bartholomew’s dilemma?

Forget the somber solemnity of Commencement, which takes place the following day, when degrees are conferred and graduates are formally admitted to the “rights and responsibilities” of their new titles.

Class Day is Yale’s pre-graduation riot. It’s held on the Sunday before Commencement, nestled between the morning’s Baccalaureate ceremony and the Monday-morning march of pomp. Since the 19th century, that afternoon has been reserved for student awards, self-deprecating skits, and — most delightfully — the donning of creative headgear. Oh, the places you’ll go? Maybe. But first: oh, the hats you will wear.

The tradition began in the groovy 1970s, when seniors rebelled against academic order and put just about anything on their heads except a mortarboard. It was catharsis, a collective letting-off of steam, a way to memorialize “the good old days” before those days became a LinkedIn post about starting at McKinsey.

These hats, much like the ones bedeviling Bartholomew, are not mere accessories. They are acts of autobiography.

You’ll spot Yale’s future hedge fund managers stalking the grass in lobster claws; the nonprofit crusaders in vintage Derby hats still wearing last night’s glitter. Some hats are in-jokes only the wearer could explain, constructed from four years of inside jokes and grudges; others, as subtle as a freight train at 6 a.m.—foam Statue of Liberties, banana costumes, a lovingly detailed model of Sterling Library that took three all-nighters and at least one student’s sanity. On Class Day, hats become spirit, satire, confession, and coping mechanisms all at once. Each is a protest sign: this is who I was at Yale; this is who I might be in the world; this is who I hope to become, if the job market stops hat-blocking me.

No one is exempt, not even the most aloof faculty. Deans and professors emerge like extras from a Wes Anderson fever dream — a jester hat from Greece one year, a summer straw bought in 1945 to celebrate the end of war another. Not just whimsy — living memory.

And let’s be honest: “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” is a classic, beloved by grandmothers and Target aisles everywhere. But its relentless optimism, however well-intentioned, often feels like magical thinking. Sure, you’ll “move mountains”—but which ones, and at what cost? In a year defined by crises from climate to campus protest, Seuss’s airy, rhyming confidence can sound a bit like telling someone stuck in Bass Library at 2 a.m. to just believe in themselves. Sometimes, you need more than hope. Sometimes, you need a hat.

So enter Bartholomew Cubbins: a medieval peasant, unremarkable except for one thing—every time he

This isn’t mere silliness — it’s ritual. It’s how you shed the pressure of achievement and embrace the pageantry of being exactly who you are.

removes his hat, another appears. No matter how many times he bows to the king—through archers, magicians, and even the executioner—the hats keep coming, getting more elaborate every time.

By the 500th, it’s so magnificent that even the king is forced to bow. This is the real graduation lesson: you

can do everything right, follow every rule, and still find yourself drowning in unexpected hats. The world, like the Kingdom of Didd, demands gestures of submission, of fitting in, but often rewards only the accidental, the absurd, the original. Yale’s Class Day, with its silly, self-referential hat parade, understands this in its bones.

Consider the Yale journey: you arrive with a single, serviceable hat — the “smart one,” the “debater,” the “kid who built a nonprofit in their garage.” By midterms, you’ve acquired three more hats: “coffee addict,” “unpaid research assistant,” “third wheel in a suite of four.” By sophomore year’s end, you’re juggling “a cappella leader,” “FOMO sufferer,” “cryptic registrar email recipient,” and “midday napper.” By senior spring, the hats are nesting: “professional cover-letter writer,” “first-gen trailblazer,” “unpaid internship survivor,” “friend who remembers allergies,” “person who asked a Nobel Laureate a dumb question,” “person who will never live down asking a Nobel Laureate a dumb question.” On Class Day, you wear them all at once, and — miraculously — the world applauds.

Even the Class Day speakers get in on the act. Hillary Clinton once brandished a Russian fur hat and, in a moment of perfectly Seussian absurdity, quipped, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” (Her other hat, presumably: “Global Democratic Stateswoman Who Still Thinks About 2016.”) This year, Jacinda Ardern will bring her own hats — Prime Minister, Pandemic Hero, Empathy Maven, and, surely, the “Yale Honorary Kiwi Hat,” awarded to dignitaries who can explain New Zealand’s political system in under two minutes.

But the true stars are always the students. There are hats that look like bees, hats with cameras, hats in tribute to residential colleges, hats that light up, hats that play music, hats that simply announce, “I survived.” The more outlandish, the better. It’s Yale’s final group project, one last piece of performance art before scattering to the world. This isn’t mere silliness — it’s ritual. It’s how you shed the pressure of achievement and embrace the pageantry of being exactly who you are (and all the selves you tried on, and the ones you’ll grow into next).

So, to the graduates: accept your hats, every one of them. Wear them with the wild confidence born of four years of success, failure, reinvention, and 2 a.m. pizza. Wear them in job interviews, on first dates, when the world is impossibly cruel, and especially when it’s impossibly dull. Life will hand you new hats whether you want them or not — let your time at Yale teach you to wear them lightly, tip them to the kings, and keep searching for the one that feels most like you. The rest is just headgear.

And for those parents still clutching “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”: may I humbly recommend a new gift for your next graduate? It’s the story of a boy, 500 hats, and the delightfully unpredictable future that lies ahead. First comes Class Day, then comes Commencement — and somewhere in between, the real world begins. Welcome to it, Class of 2025. May your hats never stop surprising you.

Contact ZACHARY CLIFTON at zachary.clifton@yale.edu.

ILLUSTRATION BY ERICKA HENRIQUEZ

“All that you have is your soul.”

Jun Luke Foster ’14 LAW ’25 on music, justice and the long road back to Yale

// BY BAALA SHAKYA

It was the wig that threw me off.

At the Yale Law Revue show — an annual satirical performance by the Law School’s graduating class — a pianist in a platinum-blond wig was banging out a Paramore anthem with the conviction of a punk-rock prophet. His fingers danced across the keys like someone who had done this a thousand times before. The band was tight, the audience of soon-to-be-lawyers went crazy and the energy was joyous and theatrical and a little bit lawless.

I didn’t recognize him. Not until later.

The man at the piano was Jun Luke Foster ’14 LAW ’25, who graduated from Yale College in 2014. This month, in a different gown and a very different world, he graduates again — this time from Yale Law School.

Between those two diplomas lies a life lived on two very different stages: eight years of professional musical study and performance and now, a legal education grounded in service and principle. For Foster, the blond wig and the Paramore cover weren’t just a gimmick. They were a collision of two selves: the artist and the advocate.

And in this year’s moment of commencement and uncertainty, his story feels like a quiet offering to the Yale College class of 2025: you don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to hold onto your soul.

Back in 2014, Foster majored in ethics, politics and economics, focusing on wealth and income inequality, but he was also a pianist and had been since childhood. That year, he walked away from campus and into conservatories and concert halls, studying at Juilliard and the Peabody Institute, performing, composing and earning a doctorate in music.

“I wanted to do a chapter in music full-time,” he said. “But I was pretty certain that at some point I would return to something closer to issues of inequality and justice.”

Even as the music deepened, the pull of public service never faded. By 2022, the pivot had come.

“There were just problems that music alone couldn’t address. And I think the first Trump presidency solidified the sense that there was so much work to be done outside of music — that I couldn’t spend the rest of my life only playing piano.”

In some ways, the return to Yale was inevitable. But it wasn’t nostalgic. The world had changed, and so had he.

“When I graduated, Barack Obama was president. And Donald Trump’s main political activity was spreading false rumors about Obama’s birth,” he reflected. “Now we’re in such a different time...we’re

graduating at a time when the rule of law and democracy are under attack. And that’s very sobering.”

While Foster had spent years in academia and at Yale College, law school was a different beast. The magic of being back in New Haven lasted about a week. Then the readings began. “Pretty quickly,” he said, “you feel like you’re in a different world.”

“ We’re equipped by a place like this to be of service, but that only works if we make good on the promise and follow through.”

Still, Foster found purpose in the clinics — applying legal training to real cases and clients through Yale Law’s Medical Legal Partnership Project and the Rule of Law Clinic. He worked in support of litigation challenging the Trump administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport individuals without due process. He helped teach undergraduate students in constitutional law, and he never lost the rhythm of his other life.

Just two days before Law Revue, he performed a recital alongside violinist Fumika Mizuno LAW ’26, playing pieces by Bach, Brahms and Schubert. It was an emotional moment and a return to the concert stage that had once been his home.

“Within one week,” he said, “to share some of the classical music that I had spent eight years developing, and then two days later to be in a punk rock band in front of my entire law school class … that was striking.” It wasn’t just about keeping his hands on the keys. It was about holding on to something deeper — the part of him that found spiritual sustenance in art, even while working to fix a broken system.

When asked what advice he would give undergraduates about staying true to themselves, Foster didn’t hesitate.

“In the words of Tracy Chapman,” he said, “all that you have is your soul. And if you lose your principles and values, you lose who you are.”

Foster noted how the years after graduation are a good time to try different things — to explore the world and figure out the heart of oneself.

“Keep a growth mindset. Give yourself grace. Let yourself fail and move on. And don’t chase other people’s visions of success — you’ll end up empty. Even if you keep your career, why would you want one without your soul?”

He speaks from experience. He’s living proof that detours aren’t failures: they’re movements, modulations, bridges between what you thought you’d be and what you’re

becoming. Having lived inside two radically different worlds — music and law — he understands how shallow accolades can also feel when divorced from purpose.

“So many of the gold stars that we stress about in one world mean very little to people outside it,” he said. “Musicians don’t care about the little symbols of prestige that carry so much currency at a place like Yale Law. And vice versa.”

Foster doesn’t know exactly where he’s headed next — other than two clerkships with federal judges. After that, maybe work in litigation. Maybe some form of public service. Maybe both.

But he knows what matters. “We’re equipped by a place like this to be of service,” he said. “But that only works if we make good on the promise and follow through.”

That message, equal parts invitation and warning, feels especially urgent for the class of 2025. Many will go into government, journalism, tech, nonprofits, finance and law. The choices they make will shape institutions — or remake them. I left the Law Revue that night, not knowing I’d just seen Jun Luke Foster at the piano. But somehow, in hindsight, it fits perfectly. The rock band. The recital. The law clinics. The classrooms. The courts.

The performance never really stopped. It just changed stages. And if there’s one thing he hopes the graduating class takes with them, it’s this: you don’t have to rush to pick one thing forever. You just have to hold on to your values, to your passions, to your soul. Because everything else — law school, music, even Yale — is only meaningful if it’s in service of that.

Contact BAALA SHAKYA at baala.shakya@yale.edu.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF JUN LUKE FOSTER

Commencement Special Issue

COMMENCEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

WEATHER

PARKING AND TRANSPORTATION

OPINION

All this beautiful noise

STAFF COLUMNIST

In defense of

something

Wearing the uniform at Yale

Reviving Yale and America Seniors, have faith in the journey ahead

Tulips of past, present, and future

GUEST COLUMNIST

Of time

OPINION Will the Son of Man find faith at Yale?

TODAY’S NEWS

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to deliver 2025 Class Day address

YALE NEWS

Commencement musical points graduates back to childhood

Drag and debt take center stage in Yale Rep’s electrifying season ﬁnale

CRISIS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Yale avoids targeted federal funding cuts

McInnis silent on Harvard’s response to federal pressure

CRISIS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

McInnis signs statement against ‘government intrusion’

Alumni call for Yale leaders to defend higher education

Levin says Yale should spotlight positive contributions amid scrutiny

CRISIS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

As Trump slashes science funding, Yale researchers brace for lasting damage Yale Rep loses federal grant for October play

Weather delays disrupt Spring Fling performances

Unlocking Shabtai, the Yale-adjacent Jewish intellectual society

BASEBALL: Yale downs Dartmouth, secures Ivy regular season title

Yale hosts Ivy League track and field championships

PARTING REFLECTIONS

Ward 1 alder reﬂects on Yale, New Haven and what’s next

Breaking up with Strictly Platonic

The class of 2025, by the numbers

Four Years

PHOTOS

THROUGH THE YEARS

Flurry of construction ﬁnished during seniors’ tenure

Humanities Quadrangle

THROUGH THE YEARS

Tiny homes still standing at Rosette Village

THROUGH THE YEARS

Livable City Initiative gets a remodel

Airport expansion close at hand, with environmental permits pending

THROUGH THE YEARS

Students move o campus as local housing shortage worsens

THROUGH THE YEARS

Student exodus stresses New Haven housing market

Class of 2025 enlarged by students who took COVID gap years

THROUGH THE YEARS

MENA advocates reﬂect on successful push for a cultural space

Yale confronts AI with new classes, varied policies and an ethics focus

Certiﬁcate programs expand as students propose more

Graduates saw virus policies wane and waver

Mental health resources expand after student group lawsuit

THROUGH THE YEARS

Graduating in the Trump era, again: seniors reﬂect

Changes to testing, a rmative action policies reshape undergraduate admissions

SPORTS

FOOTBALL: Retention

SPORTS

MEN’S SQUASH

MEN’S LACROSSE

BASEBALL

WOMEN’S CROSS COUNTRY

VOLLEYBALL

WOMEN’S SWIMMING AND DIVING

WOMEN’S CREW

FOOTBALL

WOMEN’S HOCKEY

GYMNASTICS

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

WOMEN’S LACROSSE

WOMEN’S TENNIS

MEN’S CROSS COUNTRY

WOMEN’S SOCCER