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NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2013 · VOL. CXXXVI, NO. 60 · yaledailynews.com
INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING
CLOUDY RAINY
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CROSS CAMPUS
YALE CORNERS HIDDEN RES. COLLEGE SPACES
TAILGATE
LOCKDOWN
BARS
Students weigh in on first year of new tailgating policies
CRISIS PLANS PUT INTO ACTION OVER BREAK
New legislation looks to combat gun violence in Elm City bars
PAGE 10 THROUGH THE LENS
PAGE 3 NEWS
PAGE 3 NEWS
PAGE 5 CITY
YALE FALLS TO HARVARD FOR SEVENTH YEAR
The home stretch. The light
at the end of the tunnel called fall semester is now distantly visible. One can almost see a single green glow, minute and faraway, perhaps at the end of a dock...
BY MAREK RAMILO STAFF REPORTER
All clear, except for the filter. After the campus lockdown was lifted last Monday, the University Instagrammed a photo of Harkness Tower with the caption “All clear.” The Instagram received over 1,000 likes and somewhere, a Yale press office employee got his wings. Too soon. In response to a USA Today tweet about the lockdown on campus, an Obama administration official made the following joke on Facebook: “Waitlisted…” The reply was quickly deleted and the official has since claimed the statement to be an accident according to the Daily Caller. Ironically, the official was a member of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. ‘What do you do with a B.A. in English?’ was probably
one of the songs performed at a recent karaoke night for graduate students organized by the Yale Graduate Housing Office. Graduate Housing residents enjoyed the night out at Karaoke Heroes on Crown Street. Guess which library this time! In the vastly underrated
Style section of CNN, a photo feature ran this week on the world’s “most exquisite libraries.” The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library was recognized and its 50th anniversary this year was noted. “All light comes through the stones in the wall, and the honey-color trickle of sun rays makes it magical,” the piece said. Many former prep school students may have also be delighted to find that the Phillips Exeter Academy library was also recognized. Winter art is coming. White paper sculptures on display along Chapel Street store windows are part of a ‘winter wonderland’ display from the Paier College of Art.
HENRY EHRENBERG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
THE GAME Yale and Harvard met on the football field for the 130th time on Saturday, Nov. 23. Although Yale leads the all-time series 65–57–8, Harvard prevailed 34–7 in the Yale Bowl for the Crimson’s seventh straight victory over Yale on the gridiron.
Professor found dead BY MAREK RAMILO AND ISAAC STANLEYBECKER STAFF REPORTERS Over a week after Yale assistant professor Samuel See was found dead in a New Haven jail cell, few details have emerged — and many questions remain — surrounding the cause of his death. See was detained Nov. 23 following a domestic dispute at his home on St. John Street. He was found unresponsive in his cell on Nov. 24, but as of Sunday the death was listed as “pending further study,” according to the chief state medical examiner’s office. See, whose research focused on British and American modernist literature and sexuality, was on leave this semester from Yale’s English Department. Both the Connecticut Judicial Branch and the NHPD are investigating the circumstances surrounding See’s death, accord-
A Canadian Thanksgiving.
Students in the “Writing Tribal Histories” seminar traveled to Montreal, Canada over the break to study the city’s indigenous history. There’s something rotten in the state of Cambridge.
“The UC, Going Forward Into Irrelevance” read the headline of a Harvard Crimson editorial on their recent student body elections, which were won by a joke ticket. At least nobody won their YCC position as a joke...? THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY
1905 The membership list of the Banjo Club is officially released. A joint practice is set up for the Banjo and Mandolin clubs. Submit tips to Cross Campus
crosscampus@yaledailynews.com
ONLINE y MORE goydn.com/xcampus
Gun scare shakes campus
ing to press releases issued on Wednesday by Judicial Branch spokesperson Rhonda StearleyHebert and NHPD spokesman David Hartman. “[See] was alert and communicating with Judicial Marshals throughout his detainment,” Stearley-Hebert said in the Judicial Branch’s statement. “Marshals found him nonresponsive in his cell at approximately 6 a.m. on Nov. 24 [and] immediately provided CPR and other lifesaving efforts.” She added that an internal review is being conducted to make sure the Judicial Marshals’ policies and procedures were followed. Hartman said See was placed in police custody after being treated for a minor injury at Yale-New Haven Hospital following a confrontation with his husband, Sunder Ganglani, last Saturday afternoon. Although See and his husband SEE PROFESSOR PAGE 4
A tip regarding plans for a shooting on Yale’s campus Monday brought SWAT teams to the University and forced a five-hourplus lockdown, which ended only when New Haven and Yale Police Department officials said they could be confident that the threat had either passed or never existed. At 9:48 a.m. on Monday, the NHPD received a call from an anonymous man who said that his roommate had a gun and was headed to the University’s campus with plans to shoot people, according to NHPD spokesman David Hartman. Hartman said that authorities were not able to extract further information from the caller, who hung up just seconds after placing the call from a phone booth in the 300 block on Columbus Avenue. At 10:50 a.m., the Yale Alert System mandated a campus-wide lockdown via email, phone call and text message to students, faculty and staff. Updates continued throughout the day but no new informaSEE GUN SCARE PAGE 4
Yale students win Marshall, Rhodes SEVEN CURRENT AND FORMER YALE STUDENTS RECEIEVED THE TWO PRESTIGIOUS SCHOLARSHIPS TO STUDY IN ENGLAND BY RISHABH BHANDARI STAFF REPORTER After a grueling application process that began with informational sessions in February and ended with a series of intensive interviews, seven Yale students will be studying in England next year after winning either a Rhodes or Marshall scholarship. Last Sunday, three Yale students were named as members of the Rhodes Scholars Class of 2014. The winners — Isabel Beshar ’14, Vinay Nayak ’14 and Suzanna Fritzberg ’14 — all said they experienced disbelief and delight when they first heard they had received the Rhodes Scholarship, which provides full funding for students to study at the University of Oxford for two or three years. Four graduates — Alyssa Bilinksi ’13, Tantum “Teddy” Collins ’13, Natalia Emanuel ’13 and Derek Park ’13 — expressed similar sentiments upon winning the Marshall Scholarship, which covers the cost of graduate study and living at a British university
of the recipient’s choice for up to two years. “It’s been a big shock. I keep asking my family if I’ve been dreaming this,” Beshar said. “The past few days have been kind of crazy.” Katherine Dailinger, director for national fellowships at the Yale Center for International and Professional Experience, said that while dozens of students apply for one of Yale’s nominations for these elite scholarships, student interest in the award may have been even higher than usual this year because Yale won nine Rhodes Scholarships last year, breaking the University’s record. Dailinger added that Beshar, Nayak and Fritzberg are all “wonderful scholars [who showed] desire to fight the world’s fights as well as a demonstrated potential to do that.” Although no Yale students or alumni won Marshall Scholarships in 2012, the University had one winner in 2011 and three winSEE MARSHALL RHODES PAGE 6
1979 – 2013
Students, colleauges remember See BY MAREK RAMILO AND ISAAC STANLEYBECKER STAFF REPORTERS Samuel See, an assistant professor of English at Yale known by many as a compassionate teacher and gifted scholar, was found dead on Nov. 24 in a New Haven jail cell, according to spokespeople for the State Judicial Branch and the New Haven Police Department. He was 34. See, who came to Yale in July 2009, was on leave this semester from the English Department, where he focused on British and American modernist literature and sexuality studies. On Nov. 27, the NHPD and the Connecticut Judicial Branch — the state department that administers the detain-
ment facility at 1 Union Ave. where See died — issued press statements outlining the circumstances of the unexpected death, the causes of which are still under investigation. Colleagues at Yale and at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where See received his Ph.D., said the scholar’s passing was a loss not only to the academic field in which he excelled but to the many students he inspired as a teacher and advisor. “He was a committed teacher and an innovative scholar with a sparkling intelligence and an open, generous heart,” said Langdon Hammer ’80 GRD ’89, chair of Yale’s English Department. “He deeply touched all of us who worked with him here at Yale.”
John Rogers ’84 GRD ’89, the director of undergraduate studies for the department, said in a Thursday email to the News that See greatly shaped the intellectual lives of dozens of Yale students during his time at the University. See’s professors and colleagues at UCLA shared the sense of grief that swept the Yale English Department over the Thanksgiving holiday. Christopher Looby, an English professor at UCLA, said in a Friday email that See’s death came as tragic news to those who admired him as a charismatic teacher and imaginative scholar. UCLA English professor Michael North said he was bewildered by the news. SEE OBITUARY PAGE 4
YALE