One year ago Thursday, University President Maurie McInnis adopted a report recommending that University leaders limit their public statements on significant issues.
The report by the Committee on Institutional Voice, a group of professors assembled by McInnis, recommended that University leaders refrain from commenting on “matters of public, social, or political significance” outside of “rare cases.” The policy applies to “leaders at all levels” — from central administrators to department chairs — and encourages them to focus on facilitating dialogue rather than expressing institutional positions.
McInnis’ adoption of the committee’s institutional voice policy was initially received with mixed opinions from students and faculty.
of national scrutiny. President Donald Trump has accused elite universities of fostering antisemitism and indoctrinating students with radical ideologies. He has frozen billions of dollars in federal research funding and pressured universities to alter campus policies.
Brown, Columbia and Penn have agreed to deals with the White House after Trump punitively withheld their federal funds, and Harvard, in particular, has faced the president’s ire, with Trump at points suspending billions in funding and threatening to stop issuing student visas to its international students. Since Trump took office, Yale and Dartmouth have been the only Ivy League universities spared from direct cuts to federal funding.
BY REETI MALHOTRA STAFF REPORTER
New Haven signed onto a nationwide lawsuit against the Trump administration for its decision not to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, amid the federal government shutdown, Mayor Justin Elicker announced in a press release on Thursday.
Starting Saturday, the federal government will stop paying for food stamps for dependent families, owing to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s refusal to maintain SNAP funding during the government shutdown — a decision the lawsuit alleges is unlawful.
BY HARI VISWANATHAN STAFF REPORTER
BY OLIVIA WOO AND SULLIVAN HO STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Yale’s
SNAP provides food benefits to low-income households earning incomes equal to or lower than 130 percent of the federal poverty line, which is currently
$2,221 a month for a family of three. In New Haven, approximately 30,750 residents receive SNAP benefits as of September 2025, according to the mayor’s spokesperson, Lenny Speiller. According to the USDA, nearly 42 million people per month relied on SNAP funding in 2024.
“Ending SNAP benefits and denying low-income children,
In a Thursday email to the News, Sterling professor of philosophy Michael Della Rocca, who co-chaired the Committee on Institutional Voice, wrote that he stands by the committee’s decision. According to Della Rocca, the Yale community “warmly” accepted the report, and “little controversy” followed its release.
In the year since McInnis accepted the institutional voice report, institutions of higher education have become subjects
BY SABRINA THALER AND YOUSSEF MAZOUZ STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Under the gaze of papier-mâche skulls, a sequined dragon head and the outstretched arms of “La Catrina” — a female skeleton with a floral headdress and gown — volunteers in a studio space in Fair Haven on Saturday assembled the colorful procession that will greet community members at Unidad Latina en Acción’s 15th annual Día de los Muertos parade. For over three weeks, volunteers and artists have prepared materials for this year’s celebration, scheduled for Saturday in the
city’s majority-Latino Fair Haven neighborhood. Día de los Muertos — a holiday inspired by Aztec rituals that honor the dead — is a joyous celebration of ancestors and their legacies. Though the holiday’s roots are in Mexico, communities across Latin America and the U.S. celebrate with a variety of tra-
ditions, foods and artistic customs. Each year, ULA, a local immigrant advocacy group, picks a timely theme for its Día de los Muertos celebration, honoring a group that has died in the preceding year. This year, the focus is on the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign and its impacts felt across the country. Twenty people have died while in Immigrations and Customs Enforcement custody this year, NPR reported Thursday — the largest number in a single year since 2005. ULA has been at the forefront of efforts to combat the uptick in fed -
Sabrina Thaler, Contributing Photographer
Ellie Park, Senior Photographer
New Haven gears up for quiet general election | Section C
DIA DE LOS MUERTOS
Ayman Naseer, Contributing Photographer
This Day in Yale History, 1996
October 31, 1996 / Halloween Haunts New Haven
On this day in 1996, the University campus was flooded with Halloween festivities, including the Pierson Inferno, Yale Symphony Orchestra’s annual Halloween concert, and a new event, the Commons Halloween Party. The party, hosted that evening, featured the Yale Ani-Gravity Society, professional musicians, music from WYBC, fortune tellers, fire juggling, alongside other acts and activities. Free food and hundreds of dollars in raffle prizes were also included at the event.
Corrections
• An article, including its headline, on Oct. 24 about the students that walked from Cross Campus to New York City said that 13 Yalies completed the entire walk from Yale to New York City. 12 Yalies, not 13, completed the entire walk, as well as one Stanford student. The article also said that 41 Yalies gathered at Cross Campus to begin the walk. 40 Yalies, not 41, as well as the Stanford student gathered at Cross Campus. The article also said that three female students completed the entire walk. Two female students, not three, did the entire walk.
• An article on Oct. 24 about the French department making its classes easier incorrectly omitted Isabel Li from the byline. The article was written by both Pablo Perez and Isabel Li, not just Pablo Perez.
• Due to an editing error, the text that appeared under the headline “Students heartened, wary about tenuous Gaza ceasefire deal” on Oct. 24 was not the correct text of the article. The correct article can be read at yaledailynews.com.
• An article on Sept. 26 about protesters with the Connecticut Visibility Brigade misstated Katherine Hinds’ place of residence. It is Hamden, not New Haven.
CROSSWORD
BY JACK BERRIEN ’29
ACROSS
1. Military blockade
6. Opera solo
10. Show one’s teeth, say 14. Prepared, as for war
15. Some pirates’ treasure?
16. Mature 17. Spooky season shout 20. Nav. rank 21. Drench
22. Full-contact fighting sport 23. “Hush, hush” document 25. Classic summer camp meals 29. Yale center for “innovative thinking” 31. Female sheep 33. “Interesting!” 34. Wishful thinker’s saying 39. Spooky season stunt
40. Spooky season shout 41. Dictator Amin
42. Bronx Bombers, in the standings 43. Difficulty option
44. Exit sign color
48. ___ Poetica
49. Cereal grain
50. Taxation org. 52. Listen!
55. Spooky season shout 61. To some extent 62. Switch-_____ 63. Peculiar 64. Tie up? 65. Gym count 66. Trim
DOWN 1. “¿Quién ____?” 2. That which sharpens itself, perhaps 3. Those with an alternative aesthetic 4. Nat. ___ 5. Old Tokyo? 6. Succulent plant 7. Hilarious person, say 8. Preface to a texter’s belief, in short 9. Manhattan Project objective 10. Sound of annoyance 11. Spanish river? 12. Wall St. debut 13. The One 18. “...man ___ mouse?” 19. German granny 23. Human rights group founded by De Bois, Wells, and others 24. Insignificant 25. Lustrous white 26. Stray calves 27. “Here’s _____!” 28. Lack, in brief 29. Angry speech 30. Hannibal’s opponent 31. Quick task
32. With lots of water, perhaps 35. Homer Simpson quip 36. ___ periculo: at my own risk
37. Less processed
38. Virginia willows
39. Low (on)
45. Dominate, as Nolan Ryan did seven times 46. Emphatic scream
47. Old anesthetic
48. Volcanic residue
50. Pancake palace?
51. Fraternity characters
52. Traffic sign word
53. Side of a dreidel?
54. You, to Hamlet
55. Predecessor to receive, perhaps 56. Egg producer
57. Med. group
58. Charlemagne’s domain, for short
59. With it
60. Ship’s pronoun
BY SEBASTIAN WOODS
GUEST COLUMNIST
CAMILO SALGAR
Sit in silence
I rarely see students walking on campus without headphones in their ears or phones in their hands. And it disturbs me to think that not even while walking to class do students allow themselves to listen to their surroundings. Why do Yale students avoid silence?
In a distraction-filled environment there are many ways to always be doing something — be it scrolling on your phone, texting someone or even listening to music. Yet, it is time we ask ourselves if we are listening to music to listen to the music, or to avoid listening to ourselves. If it’s the latter, it means that music is some sort of coping mechanism — what is it that Yale students are in constant need to cope with? There is something uncomfortable about silence. If, God forbid, I have a moment of nothingness, my hand automatically reaches for my phone. I recently realized that, every time I brush my teeth, I always play a Youtube video as background noise. The same is true for music and any other social media.
THERE IS SOMETHING
Public silence is unnerving. Wanting to be outside and enjoy the fall weather, I found myself sitting on a bench at Cross Campus observing my surroundings. It felt uncomfortable, as if someone walking by might think, “What is this guy doing? What is his problem? What is he looking at?” The voice I attach to the silent passersby makes me want to look at my phone, or walk as if I have somewhere to be. Brooks encourages us to stop that mechanism, and find peace in doing nothing.
THE CHRONIC AVERSION OF BOREDOM MAKES IT SO WE NEVER SPEAK TO OURSELVES.
John Lennon described his reaction to the societal pressure to always do something in his song “Watching the Wheels.” He describes how people, when they see him doing nothing, look at him “kinda strange,” and “say [he’s] lazy / Dreamin’ [his] life away.” Doing nothing is meaningless in our productive society; it is immediately related to laziness. In the same way, at Yale, the academic and extracurricular pressure makes me feel uncomfortable if someone notices that I have an empty slot in my Google Calendar.
Observe people at a dining hall — does anyone eat on their own without having some distraction? Did eating become too boring for us? This distraction-seeking phenomenon has become so common that a world in which you would enter Commons and find people looking around rather than at their phones seems distant.
We are always a split second from reaching for our phone; it is no surprise our lives are rarely silent anymore. The chronic aversion of boredom makes it so we never speak to ourselves. In a recent article published in the Harvard Business Review, professor and public academic Arthur C. Brooks points out that the “uncomfortable existential questions” that arise when we are bored “are incredibly important, incredibly good.” He argues that if we immediately silence these valuable questions, we will progressively lose touch with ourselves and the meaning of our lives.
The voice Lennon gives to the external world embodies the pressure one feels to avoid boredom. He replies, “There’s no hurry, I’m just sittin’ here doing time.” He escapes the pressure of constantly doing something and embraces the steady silence of doing nothing. Lennon even finds joy in it: “I’m just sittin’ here / Watchin’ the wheels go ’round and ’round / I really love to watch them roll.” The wheels can be anything — everyday life, other people, Cross Campus at noon — and while they are constantly moving, Lennon just sits and observes them. It seems that by sitting we can pause the societal clock and watch the wheels rather than always being the wheels — we can observe our society rather than always being in its grip.
In our world of anxiety everything is always in motion, but, as Lennon lets us know, just sitting is okay, and Brooks encourages us to do so to find ourselves through the silence. Students at Yale should ask themselves: Are we succumbing to the pressure to be busy, or are we advocating for our own silence?
When sitting at a dining hall, walking to class, brushing your teeth, take a moment to be silent, borrowing from Lennon, to watch “the wheels go ’round and ’round.”
CAMILO SALGAR is a first year in Davenport College. He can be reached at camilo.salgar@yale.
GUEST COLUMNIST
ARIQ RAHMAN
Young men need to save themselves
In a recent opinion piece published for the Yale Daily News titled “Save young men,” Joshua Danziger ’28 opens with an eye-catching line: “How are young men doing? Terribly.”
According to him, young men “are unemployed, depressed and sexually inactive.” They are “struggling in education, job placement and social flourishing,” and, not to mention, the “perpetrators of our country’s recent mass shootings and political attacks.”
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the truth is that us young men are also lazy, apathetic and of course, chopped. We are the perpetrators of violence and hurt throughout the country, and it’s nobody else’s fault but our own.
For most of our entire country’s history, society has catered itself to benefit men. Now, with our culture moving away from solely caring about us, some have turned to “violence, despair and withdrawal,” as Danziger aptly puts it. Men have gotten used to having it easy, and now that times are changing, some think that it’s society’s job to stop them from lashing out.
I’m not going to sit here and act like men have never struggled in history. Of course they have. Which is exactly my point. Do you think the soldiers in Normandy, fighting against facism, whined that “society” was making life too difficult for them? Absolutely not. They bucked up and did what they had to do, because real masculinity is about doing the hard thing.
I’m also not going to act like men do not face unique and novel issues in our modern day. It is true that women are dominating education, while boys are dominating high school detention. It is true that there is a crisis of poorly treated mental health among men. It
is just factually true that many men are lonely and struggle to find employment. But real masculinity means taking change into our own hands. I hate how some men throw a pity party and blame everyone else instead of actually doing something to improve their lives. You want to hear the truth? As a man, it is rarely that hard. If you are a young man in America, let alone a young man at Yale, you are in a damn good position. I understand how that may be hard to see when employment or girls continue to evade you, but it is true nonetheless. Acting as if the world owes you anything more just because you’re not given everything on a silver platter screams of entitlement. Entitlement is not masculine. No one disagrees that certain issues do need addressing. The problem arises when idiots with an agenda to push propagandize these issues instead of actually addressing them. It’s misguided for some to blame the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO on Luigi Mangione not picking up enough girls or some kind of “disenfranchisement.” This line of thinking forgets that Mangione was a fellow Ivy League student who is also notable for being extremely hot. Regardless, this rhetoric about his being a “lost boy” distracts from looking at the larger political issues that are the real causes of violence. If we really want to do something about problems that young men face, that “something” doesn’t have anything to do with not “teaching that masculinity itself is bad.” Nobody is doing that. It doesn’t have to do with being forced to die in a foreign country for no one’s benefit but wealthy stakeholders. In order to save American men, we need to address our poorly designed education system or a waning job market in male dominated
industries. We need to craft a generation of independent, emotionally and intellectually intelligent, and hopeful men.
Here are my alternative steps to stop this loser crisis. Curb the promotion of morons like Joe Rogan and the Nelk Boys and instead popularize positive role models for young men. Revive the national education system, including a robust federal Department of Education, to ensure that our schools encourage all children to think critically. That means teaching men to analyze issues rationally, so that they don’t end up writing misguided opinion pieces for the News. It is imperative that parents teach emotional maturity — to both sons and daughters. Remind men that they should strive to be strong, determined, but also kind, so that one day we may replace the hatred in our world with love and understanding.
To more directly address the catching lines that we began with, men need to try harder. Not even that much. Just a tiny bit. Start filling out job applications and locking in for our upcoming exams. So what if you flunk your first midterm or blow your first interview. Keep trying. Seek out help without shame when your mental health becomes overwhelming.
At Yale in particular, there is an abundance of resources waiting at your fingertips. No one here is ever alone. And maybe spend a few minutes fixing your hair in the morning. Yale unfortunately does not offer personal stylists, so you might just have to figure that out yourself. A skincare routine won’t hurt. It’s not that hard to avoid looking chopped.
The only ones capable of taking these steps to save young men, and the world, are young men. No one is going to save you; young men need to save themselves.
ARIQ RAHMAN is a first year in Pauli Murray College. He can be reached at ariq.rahman@yale.edu.
Ban laptops from seminars
From the daily Wordle and the New York Times’ crossword to cheesy texts and clothing purchases, I have observed almost everything possible on laptop screens during class at Yale. Seemingly overnight, the norm in my seminars has morphed into almost every student whipping out their laptops at the start of class.
While this problem is pervasive in lectures, too, I’m more disturbed by its impact on the seminar experience. In courses like “Machiavelli and Machiavellianism” and “The Ethics of Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche,” which are difficult enough in their own right, there are few compelling reasons why students need to have their laptop screens in front of them.
I chose Yale because it offered small seminars with some of the most renowned professors. Yale was my golden ticket to study with the best and brightest. I chose Yale because I assumed I would be surrounded by some of the most brilliant minds as my peers. Yet, in a high-level ethics seminar, most students have their laptops open; by watching their eyes dance across their screen, I can clearly tell they are not taking notes. My peers are brilliant, no doubt, but they are not contributing to the fullest extent.
I am exhausted from being overstimulated and distracted in class by my peers’ too-bright and too-massive laptop screens in seminar. Why do students at Yale crave such distracting stimulation from their screens? Is the concept of Kierkegaard’s ‘absurd’ not enough of
STAFF COLUMNIST ABBY NISSLEY IS THE CONCEPT OF KIERKEGAARD’S ‘ABSURD’ NOT ENOUGH OF AN INTELLECTUALLY STIMULATING RIDDLE, OR MUST WE SOLVE THE DAILY SUDOKU?
an intellectually stimulating riddle, or must we solve the daily sudoku?
Surprisingly, this obsession is not limited to the students least interested in the course’s content. Some of the best comments in my seminars come from the very students who join in the conversation in between online shopping, planning upcoming trips, and texting friends for dinner. Seminars are not the time to catch up on emails. Seminars are not the time to plan your weekend or dinner. Seminars are not the time to shop online. Why are laptops in seminars no longer universally frowned upon? If students come to class just to multitask on their computers, failing to contribute meaningfully to our small seminar for the entire two hours, why even attend the seminar? I am normally quite good at focusing and following a conversation, but recently in seminar, no matter where I sit, I cannot avoid the screens of my classmates. This overload of information
neurologically disrupts my attention. It gets worse when some students on their laptops try to covertly hide their text messages from me when I am sitting right next to them, and their offensively bright screen is currently blocking my view of the professor. Laptops have become an exclusive and irritating distractor. Seminars, even those that meet weekly, rarely last longer than two hours at Yale. Is it impossible for the brightest students in the world to disconnect from our overstimulating devices for this short and manageable length of time to learn from courses that cost thousands of dollars?
Often, students argue that they simply prefer to take notes online. Call me old-fashioned, but there are few reasons why typing notes is necessary for the majority of students. I learned in my first semester at Yale in Brian Scholl’s “Introduction to Cognitive Science” lecture that, from a psychologically grounded perspective, class material is better learned and retained when written by hand. A pen is cheap. Paper is cheaper. The rewards are clear: an engaged seminar and higher knowledge retention. I am asking for seminars with no laptops or phones. I want to sit at a circular table where we make eye contact and meaningfully engage with each other, the material and the professor. Am I asking for too much?
ABBY NISSLEY is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles College studying Global Affairs. She can be reached at abby.nissley@yale.edu.
“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.”
Yale’s endowment earns highest returns in four years
ment, the press release said.
The endowment’s total value stands at $44.1 billion as of June 30, 2025, making it the second-largest university endowment in the United States.
“Yale’s endowment is structured to support the university’s mission in perpetuity through prudent risk-taking and sustainable spending,” Matt Mendelsohn, Yale’s chief investment officer, said in the press release.
“Over the past decade, the university has spent $15.3 billion from its endowment, representing 60% of the endowment’s total value at the beginning of the period. This amount of operational support has been made possible by our strong investment results.”
The $4.5 billion in growth is the last set of endowment returns that will not be subject to an 8 percent tax on the endowment’s returns that will take effect beginning July 1, 2026. The tax increase from 1.4 percent to 8 percent was imposed by the Republican spending bill passed in July. Last month, the University said that its endowment strategy was “unlikely” to change in the face of the higher rate.
When compared with other Ivy League schools, Yale’s return lands around the middle of a closely-clustered pack. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, Princeton’s and Dartmouth’s investments returned 11 percent and 10.8 percent, respectively, while Harvard’s, Brown’s and Penn’s returned about 12 percent.
Last year, Yale’s endowment growth ranked second to last among the endowments of its Ivy League peers, topping Princeton’s returns of 3.9 percent while remaining behind Brown’s and Harvard’s at 11.3 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively.
The growth figure for the 2025 fiscal year was nearly 3
percentage points higher than the 8.25 percent required in order to account for inflation and cover budgetary expenses, according to the Office of Financial Planning and Analysis. The portion of the endowment that is allocated to the University’s operating budget covers more than one-third of Yale’s total expenses in any given year, according to a Yale Investments webpage. According to the University’s latest financial report, the 11.1 percent return will be incorporated into its operating budget starting July 2026. Over the 2024 fiscal year, the University reported a “net surplus in operating results,” which means the University spent less than outlined in the official budget. This surplus, in combi -
nation with the success of various budget-saving measures over the summer, allowed the University to end a summer hiring freeze and keep its operating budget unchanged for the rest of the 2025 fiscal year.
For fiscal year 2027, however, schools and departments will have to reduce their budget targets to offset the endowment tax hike, University administrators announced in September.
The Yale Investments Office was an early venture capitalist investor in Snapchat, Airbnb and LinkedIn, Fortune reported in 2016.
Contact OLIVIA WOO at olivia.woo@yale.edu and SULLIVAN HO at sullivan.ho@yale.edu.
City joins a fourth anti-Trump lawsuit
seniors and veterans’ access to food to feed themselves and their families is immoral and unconscionable,” Elicker said in the press release. “Children and families will go hungry because of the Trump Administration’s callous and cruel decision — and we will not stand for it.”
According to the lawsuit, New Haven has designated funding to mitigate the impacts of the SNAP disruption. Later on Thursday, a separate city press release announced that the United Way of Greater New Haven would be launching a regional campaign, the Neighbors United Emergency Response Fund, to encourage donations to local food pantries to support food insecure residents following SNAP funding cuts.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of twenty plaintiffs, including eight municipalities, nine charitable and faith-based organizations, and three business and union organizations.
The lawsuit argues that under previous administrations, contingency funds were utilized to sustain SNAP benefits during a government shutdown, and “asks the court to order USDA to resume November benefits, protect the program itself, and halt its pre -
mature termination of SNAP work requirement waivers in affected states,” according to the press release.
A USDA memo announcing the suspension of SNAP benefits blames senate Democrats for the disruption to the nutrition assistance program. Also on Thursday, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont announced that he signed onto a letter urging the Trump administration to release contingency funds for SNAP. According to Lamont’s press release, the letter was also signed by governors from 20 other states.
A Monday press release from Lamont announced $3 million in emergency state funding for Connecticut Foodshare, a nonprofit organization and member of the Feeding America food bank network, to compensate for the lapse in SNAP benefits. 360,000 Connecticut residents rely on SNAP, according to Lamont’s statement.
Connecticut Foodshare provides 44 million meals through 650 community-based partners to combat food insecurity annually, and was hit by previous budget cuts under the current administration in March.
“Connecticut families should not go hungry because of Washington’s dysfunction,” Governor Lamont said in the statement. “While this $3 million in emergency funding will not fill the entire gap left by the federal government, it represents our state’s commitment to supporting our neighbors during this crisis. We are stepping up because Connecticut takes care of its own, and we will continue working to support our residents until this federal shutdown is resolved.”
The Thursday lawsuit is the fourth that New Haven has signed onto against the current administration.
Contact REETI MALHOTRA at reeti.malhotra@yale.edu.
“As the past year has demonstrated, these guidelines strengthen Yale’s ability to uphold and defend academic freedom and the academic enterprise,” a University spokesperson, who did not give their name, wrote in an email about the institutional voice policy.
Mark Siegel, a professor at the School of Medicine, said he thinks the institutional voice policy’s “high threshold” for public statements was met when the federal government made funding cuts directly affecting the School of Medicine.
Following the National Institutes of Health’s February announcement that it would strip indirect research costs funding for universities, McInnis described the move as a “considerable threat” to research in her first public statement on a contentious topic after adopting the institutional voice report.
McInnis also released a public statement in May when House Republicans passed a budget reconciliation bill that would have raised the tax on Yale’s returns on endowment investments from 1.4 percent to 21 percent. In a statement addressed to the Yale community, McInnis wrote that the bill “presents a greater threat to Yale than any other bill in memory” and encouraged students to contact their senators and speak against the bill.
“I think the value of public statements is in part the opportunity to educate the public about the importance of universities and universities’ missions,” Siegel said. “When we think about the contributions that universities like Yale make to the public good, I think that needs to be defended on the public stage.”
Della Rocca wrote that the “flexibility” and “reliance on good judgment” that his committee’s report demands from
University leaders when determining where the threshold for public statement lies is “precisely the point.” Siegel added that, for issues that affect universities in general and not Yale specifically, he would like to see Yale be a part of a “united voice from university leaders across the country,” especially in the context of President Donald Trump’s “vindictive attacks” on individual institutions that express dissent.
Philosophy professor Robin Dembroff questioned whether Yale’s restraint on institutional voice reflects well on the University’s “character and values.” University leaders, she said, have “decided to construct a character” that refrains from issuing public-facing statements.
“I put the question to you— and to everyone else on campus— is this a character that, within an individual person, we would respect? And, if not, why would we feel differently about an institution’s character, and particularly one that purports, when convenient, to be ‘for humanity’?” Dembroff wrote, referring to Yale’s ongoing “For Humanity” fundraising campaign.
According to Dembroff, individuals and institutions articulate character through speech, and Yale’s leaders have been “entrusted” with communicating the University’s values. Yale’s policy for administrators to limit public statements most likely reflects an intention “to protect the University’s financial interest” instead, she added.
Richie George ’27, the speaker of the Yale Political Union, also criticized the University’s institutional voice policy.
“During any crisis of legitimacy, the university ought to position itself as an exemplar of what a good world could look like and how that world is immi -
nently possible—not shirking from duty,” George wrote.
Yale College Council President Andrew Boanoh ’27 wrote in a personal statement to the News that while he understands the reasoning behind the University’s institutional voice policy, “especially considering the current American political climate,” he views it as “inconsistent with the ideal vision of the elite educational institution.”
“I don’t know that we can preach thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in our classrooms, yet restrain ourselves from that very same synthetic project at an institutional level,” Boanoh wrote.
Yale College Republicans President Manu Anpalagan ’26 wrote in a text message to the News that Yale should stay “committed to its core mission of educating students and continuously seeking knowledge,” warning that departing from that mission to take ideological or political positions “would put that mission at risk.” History professor Jay Gitlin ’71 GRD ’74 GRD ’02 called the institutional voice policy “wise,” especially in the context of its practical implications. According to Gitlin, “it’s a good time to keep a somewhat low profile.”
“The federal government has been intervening, shall we say, with different universities to try to get them to do this or that or the other,” Gitlin said. “We’re good. We’re the all-American university. We invented football. Go bother Harvard. That’s my feeling.”
Gitlin dismissed the criticism that Yale’s restraint on institutional speech endangers core Yale values.
“What are Yale values? To me, the ultimate Yale value is, ‘Don’t think too much about yourself. Pass and be forgotten with the rest,’” Gitlin said. “You don’t need to take today’s headlines or yesterday’s headlines all that seri -
ously. Go to Sterling. Read a book.” ‘A hilarious contrast’
While University leaders have been restrained about speaking publicly on political matters, Yale has become increasingly active on Capitol Hill. During the third quarter of 2025, Yale outspent every other Ivy League institution on lobbying, spending $370,000 between July 1 and Sept. 30 on its efforts to engage with federal policymakers. Ethnicity, race and migration professor Michael Denning GRD ’84 described the parallel between the University’s restrained policy on public statements and its increasing expenses on behind-the-scenes lobbying as “a hilarious contrast.” American studies professor Daniel HoSang, who serves as president of the Yale chapter of the American Association of University Professors, or AAUP, said the University should take a stronger public stance in defense of higher education. While some faculty consider the prioritization of lobbying over issuing public stances “strategically right,” he said, others think the absence of institutional statements leaves the University and its mission “more vulnerable.”
“Many of us feel like it makes the University more vulnerable when you don’t make principled arguments publicly for what we believe in and what we stand for,” HoSang said in a September phone interview. “If you’re willing to say it privately, say it publicly.”
Yale backed Harvard’s lawsuit against the federal government over research funding freezes in an amicus brief on June 6.
Contact JAEHA JANG at jaeha.jang@yale.edu and ASHER BOISKIN at asher.boiskin@yale.edu.
Mayor Elicker announced that New Haven — with 19 other parties — is suing the U.S. government over SNAP's funding / Karen Lin
FROM THE FRONT
“There
Hospital system agrees to $18 million settlement
the data breach, the health system will establish a settlement fund to cover legal fees and
administrative costs for individuals who were affected by the breach. According to the settlement, which was filed on Sept. 10, impacted patients may seek
reimbursement of up to $5,000 for documented losses resulting from the breach or opt for a cash payment of approximately $100.
“We take our responsibility to
safeguard patient information extremely seriously,” YNHHS spokesperson Carmen Chau wrote in a statement. “YNHHS had thorough cybersecurity protocols in place in alignment with industry-wide best practices, and due to our team’s quick action to identify and contain this issue, we were able to maintain uninterrupted patient care and prevent access to patients’ clinical information.”
In addition to the $18 million settlement fund, the settlement includes “injunctive relief in the form of meaningful data security measures.” According to the settlement, about $6 million will be allocated to attorney fees, and select class representatives will receive $2,500 service awards.
During the March cybersecurity breach, the unauthorized party stole data including demographic information, social security numbers, patient type and medical record numbers. However, according to a YNHHS statement at the time, “YNHHS’ electronic medical record and treatment information were not involved or accessed, and no financial account or payment information was involved in this incident.”
On April 11, YNHHS released a more detailed explanation of the incident. Shortly after, on April 16, plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit against YNHHS, alleging that the health system failed to “safeguard their private information it collected
and maintained, including by failing to implement industry standards for data security to protect against, detect, and stop cyberattacks.” They also claimed that YNHHS waited too long to inform patients.
In court documents, YNHHS “denies all liability and all allegations of wrongdoing of any kind.”
The health system said it agreed to the settlement to “avoid the further expense, inconvenience and distraction of burdensome and protracted litigation,” according to court records.
The final approval hearing for the settlement is scheduled for March 3, 2026, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and a federal judge will determine whether the settlement should be approved. The deadline to file a claim for the settlement is Jan. 19, 2026.
Going forward, YNHHS has said it remains committed to strengthening data security measures.
“We are continuously updating and enhancing our systems to protect the data we maintain and to help prevent events such as this from occurring in the future,” YNHHS spokesperson Carmen Chau wrote.
Yale New Haven Hospital has over 12,000 employees and 4,500 university and community physicians, according to the hospital’s website.
Contact HARI VISWANATHAN at hari.viswanathan@yale.edu.
Día de los Muertos event to honor ICE detainees who died
eral immigration enforcement activity in the New Haven area.
“I think the key theme this year for our community is the persecution and attacks that we are suffering and will continue to suffer,” Lugo said in Spanish at the art studio.
The promotional poster for the celebration is an illustration that features La Catrina running from President Donald Trump, clothed in a black ICEuniform.
ULA has organized Día de los Muertos activities in New Haven since 2006, but 2010 marked the first year the group held its annual parade, Lugo said. Each year, the group invites artists to help coordinate the creative vision for the festival.
Pedro López Barrios, a Guatemalan artist, has worked with ULA since 2016 to contribute artwork to the parade. Each year, he travels from his native Guatemala to Fair Haven to aid in the creation of parade materials for the Día de los Muertos celebrations.
Barrios began working with ULA nine years ago after the group invited him to make festive kites called “barriletes gigantes,” which feature prominently in Guatemalan Día de los Muertos celebrations.
“Pedro came from the region where they produce flying kites.
So we invited him to be part of this project to produce a giant kite dedicated to Día de los Muertos,” Lugo said in Spanish. “We also realized he knew how to make puppets. We fell in love with him.”
Barrios described Guatemala’s traditions as “profound” and “intimate.” He also noted “papel picado,” the small pieces of paper that hang from the kites, which are said to make noise that scares away evil spirits.
Barrios noted that across religious traditions, death can carry a negative stigma.
“That’s the importance of this parade, because even if we don’t share these ideas about how to celebrate the dead, it unites the community,” he said in Spanish. “And not just the Latino community.”
According to Lugo, all of the artists, including Barrios, work with donated and recycled materials.
“There’s a girl who’s going to work with us this year. Her name is Monica, and she works with recycled materials,” Lugo said in Spanish. “Spoons, plates, paper cups. What she does is recycle them and make some very pretty dresses.”
Barrios’ own art consists mostly of papier-mâché, which is either used with a specific mask mold, or shaped by hand to create the props used in the parade.
According to Barrios, simpler masks, such as his vibrant red “diablo” mask, take a few days to complete. However, more complex structures, like La Catrina, take much more time, effort and coordination.
Dunia Domínguez, an ULA volunteer and Fair Haven resident of nearly 20 years, aids in designing the colorful flowers that adorn the festival decorations. She also helps distribute food items on the day of the celebration, including the traditional “pan de muerto” — a sweet bread.
Domínguez said that she hopes attendees unfamiliar with the festival “learn a little bit about Mexican culture and the traditions of Central America.”
The celebration will take place this Saturday, Nov. 1, at the Bregamos Community Theater located on 491 Blatchley Ave. The festival will begin at 4 p.m., and the parade will follow at 6 p.m., traversing through the streets of Fair Haven.
Contact SABRINA THALER at sabrina.thaler@yale.edu and YOUSSEF MAZOUZ at youssef.mazouz@yale.edu.
JOSEPH CONRAD
DIA DE LOS MUERTOS FROM PAGE 1
Photos by Sabrina Thaler, Contributing Photographer
After a March cybersecurity breach that allowed an unauthorized third party to access patients’ information, the Yale New Haven Health System has agreed to finance a settlement fund. / Ximena Solorzano, Head Photography Editor
HOSPITAL
“It’s
YCC passes proposal urging creation of Black studies certificate
BY ASHER BOISKIN STAFF REPORTER
Yale College students could soon have the option to pursue a Black studies certificate, following a unanimous vote on Sunday by the Yale College Council Senate in favor of a proposal to create such a certificate program.
The certificate would offer a more flexible alternative for students who wish to explore Black studies without completing the major, which currently requires 12 credits, including a year-long history sequence, a junior seminar, a senior colloquium and senior essay.
Saybrook Senator Brendan Kaminski ’28, who co-sponsored the proposal, said at the senate meeting that the certificate would enable more students “interested in learning about Black studies” to engage with the department. He noted that students with “other academic commitments” might find completing a full Black Studies major “unfeasible,” which the certificate
would address. The certificate, as proposed, calls for a five- to six-course certificate spanning history, literature, social science and electives in Black diasporic culture, arts or politics.
YCC Vice President Jalen Bradley ’27, who wrote the proposal, offered similar reasons for supporting the certificate. At the meeting, Bradley mentioned having a friend interested in majoring in both English and Black Studies who felt daunted by the requirements.
Bradley said that “it’s not really feasible to fulfill” the two majors simultaneously.
The certificate would follow the model of existing certificate programs, such as education studies, Islamic studies, ethnography, medieval studies and the recently approved Native American and indigenous studies certificate.
The proposal states that the existence of such other certificate programs offers “administrative models for implementing certificates that are interdisciplinary, span cultural
studies and offer recognition for work done outside of a single major.”
Yale College Assistant Dean Timeica E. Bethel-Macaire ’11, who directs the Afro-American Cultural Center, signed on to the proposal as a co-sponsor.
“Offering a certificate in Black Studies would afford Yalies the opportunity to think critically about systems of power and their impact on Black people in the U.S. and beyond, developing more ethical leaders for generations to come, while still allowing them to major in other areas of study,” Bethel-Macaire wrote in a statement to the News.
Bethel-Macaire noted that there is “already precedent” for a Black studies certificate and called creating one “a logical and responsible step.” The African American Studies Department was renamed to the Black Studies Department earlier this school year.
Contact ASHER BOISKIN at asher.boiskin@yale.edu.
Commons bringing back cookies after students’ complaints
BY ASHER BOISKIN AND JERRY GAO STAFF REPORTERS
Cookies will soon make their return to Commons.
After half a semester with clementines instead of cookies, Commons will begin rotating between cookies and clementines for dessert. The dining hall will serve cookies every Monday and Tuesday and clementines every Wednesday and Thursday starting Nov. 10, according to an email sent Tuesday by the Yale College Council dining policy team.
The change follows weeks of student feedback about the absence of Commons’ popular chocolate chip cookies, which have been replaced by clementines. The move was one of multiple YCC-inspired dining changes. The Elm will also start serving boba, and residential dining halls will have grapes — changes marking increased collaboration between students and Yale Hospitality.
“These more regular meetings and frequent communication have really helped us engineer some of the changes that students have been really enthusiastic about, from the KFC Chicken back in Commons to grapes back in dining halls,” YCC
dining policy director Thy Luong ’28 wrote in an email to the News.
Michael van Emmenes, the director of strategic initiatives at Yale Hospitality, confirmed the changes in a statement to the News. Brendan Kaminski ’28, the YCC’s deputy dining policy director, described the cookie rotation as the product of collaboration between students, the YCC and Yale Hospitality in an email to the News. Kaminski noted that “concern” over the lack of cookies originated from student feedback, growing into one of the dining policy team’s “priorities” for the year. Kaminski explained that the cookies and clementines rotation schedule came from a student suggestion that aimed to let students “experience both items when they go to Commons.”
Luong wrote that the team’s collaboration with Yale Hospitality has grown stronger this year through more frequent meetings and direct communication. Luong said that meetings occur every three weeks, with frequent emails and additional meetings to address “urgent” matters.
Luong wrote that in their most
recent meeting, the YCC dining policy team and Yale Hospitality discussed a potential water bottle giveaway, vegetarian and vegan dining feedback, student concerns about dining hall hours and the Nutrislice platform, which powers the online menus.
“The cookies were such an addition to my Bulldog Days experience,” Eleanor Belinfanti ’29 said when asked about the cookie updates. “It’s going to
make me extremely happy during my day and motivate me to do my work.”
The dining policy team also announced that grapes will return to breakfast in all 14 residential dining halls twice weekly, boba drinks will be offered at The Elm and Steep Café will begin researching new sandwich options.
During the 2024-2025 school year, approximately 19 pounds of yogurt were wasted each day, according to a Yale Hospitality and YCC frequently asked questions document. Grace Andino and Madison Aguilar contributed reporting.
Contact ASHER BOISKIN at asher.boiskin@yale.edu. AND JERRY GAO at jerry.gao.jg2988@yale.edu.
BY OLIVIA WOO STAFF REPORTER
Yale College Dean Pericles
Lewis has advocated for open discourse on campus since starting the job in 2022. Now, he is continuing to stress free expression — mirroring calls by some critics of higher education.
Over the past four years, Lewis has driven forward a variety of initiatives intended to foster free expression among students — including the Dean’s Dialogue series, the Center for Civic Thought, the Perspectives training program and the Cultivating Conversation fellowship.
The measures have come at a time in which American universities have come under immense public scrutiny, not least from President Donald Trump. In an interview with the News last week, Lewis emphasized the importance of taking “seriously criticisms of higher education that are out there in society and frankly here on campus too.”
“I do think the current political environment and how it’s affecting higher education is on a lot of people’s minds,” Lewis told the News. “Overall, we’re doing the right things, but obviously there’s certain areas of pressure politically, and we’re doing our
best to, you know, keep the campus on course.”
Lewis is now well into his fourth year serving as dean, a tenure that he has thus far characterized as focused on educational opportunity and free expression on campus, among other things.
“It’s a tough job, but he’s brilliant,” psychology professor Marvin Chun, Lewis’ predecessor as dean, said in an interview. “He’s a real, experienced and wise administrator who cares about students and cares about learning. And I think we’re very fortunate to have such an outstanding dean in that position.”
Upon becoming dean in 2022, Lewis perceived an acute need for administrative support of free speech and open dialogue, he said.
According to Lewis, free expression was limited during the COVID-19 pandemic both because student interactions were limited to screens, making them easy to record, and as a result of the “outside political world.”
Now that the pandemic has receded, campus culture has become more amenable to a free exchange of ideas, Lewis said. He credited organizations such as the Buckley Institute and the Yale Political Union for maintaining a commitment to the cause.
Last fall, Lewis spoke at a Buckley Institute annual conference, defending the University’s response to pro-Palestinian protesters in the spring of 2024, including the arrests of students participating in a protest encampment on Beinecke Plaza.
At the event, Lewis affirmed students’ right to protest, as long as they act “within reason” and abide by the time, place and manner restrictions established by the University. He noted the importance of distinguishing between free expression and threatening behavior when deciding whether to pursue disciplinary action.
In his opening address to firstyear students in the class of 2029, Lewis emphasized the role Yale plays in developing one’s character.
“I do think that the outside political world and its forces wax and wane in their impact on the university, but there’s also a question of the internal university culture,” Lewis said last
week. “How do you support a culture of free expression and free exchange of ideas?”
Amidst today’s “culture wars,” the dean said, students should be able to engage in candid conversations with friends and families back home about the value of a Yale education.
He noted that the financial aid plans available to students are not often common knowledge outside of Yale.
“I mean, there’s no doubt in the world that Yale is worth it,” Lewis said. “I think a bigger problem socially and economically in society as a whole, is that if you look outside of the top tier universities, about 60 percent of graduates of high school go on to college, but almost a third of those don’t finish.”
He asserted that Yale’s financial aid planning is such that students never take on debt, so undergraduate students will at least not be financially worse off for having attended college.
“Obviously, not everybody gets the job of their dreams when they graduate from Yale, but there’s very few Yalies among the long-term unemployed,” Lewis said. “So it’s not like it’s a golden ticket that assures your future is going to be, you know, fantastic, but you’re in pretty good shape when you graduate from here.”
The Yale College Dean’s Office occupies offices at 1 Hillhouse Ave., 1 Prospect St. and 55 Whitney Ave.
Contact OLIVIA WOO at olivia.woo@yale.edu.
KIMBERLY ANGELES /
ZOE BERG
rotating between clementines and cookies for dessert.
“Suddenly the day was gone, night came out from under each tree and spread.”
How English professors are trying to deter AI use
BY JAEHA JANG STAFF REPORTER
Without a departmental policy on the use of artificial intelligence, English professors are taking a range of approaches to confronting AI use.
There has been “no call” for a department-wide policy, Director of Undergraduate Studies Stefanie Markovits wrote in an email to the News, “most likely because we have a general belief in academic freedom in the classroom.” Professors are adapting in their own ways, but they agree on one thing: AI is detrimental to critical thinking and creative writing.
David Bromwich ’73 GRD ’77, a Sterling professor of English, wrote in an email to the News.
While Markovits prohibits AI use on essays, she wrote that she has colleagues who are more interested in the constructive use of AI for writing assignments, and she would “not want to deter that activity.”
Markovits added that one central guideline in the department is that professors be explicit on the AI policy for each class and assignment. Her understanding is that faculty are “not meant to put student work into AI detectors,” she added, citing the Poorvu Center’s AI and academic integrity guideline, which notes that there is
“To the extent that AI is used as a labor-saving assistant to construct sentences, arguments, and interpretations of literature, it is a shortcut that prevents a student from learning what it means to think one’s own thoughts and write with one’s own voice,”
“no tool or method to detect AI use with any certainty.”
‘They wouldn’t dare give me an AI play’
In the absence of a departmental policy, professors are dealing with AI on their own.
Rasheed Tazudeen, who teaches two sections of the department’s introductory writing seminars, said that the prevalence of AI has partly influenced him to adopt a “fairly regressive” no-tech policy this year.
This semester, he banned laptops in the classroom outside of specific activities that require them. He bought every student a notebook, and printed readings are required. This format, he said, allows students to be better connected to readings and to each other — and prevents them from accessing AI in class.
“I don’t want to be asking questions about a text or something and if a student has a laptop open might be getting ChatGPT responses,” Tazudeen said in an interview. “That’s what I was really trying to avoid as well because I can ask ChatGPT myself. I really want to know what the students think.” Theater professor Deborah Margolin, who teaches playwriting, said she would “recognize an AI scene in a second.” The human voice is so integral in the craft of playwriting that AI could not produce a convincing product, she said. She does not include a specific AI policy in her syllabus beyond her plagiarism policy.
“It hasn’t changed my practice at all, and I don’t believe it’s changed the practice of my students in regard to this particular field of study,” she said. “No one’s going to give me an AI play. They wouldn’t dare give me an AI play.”
When asked what she would do if a student turns in a seemingly AI-generated play, Margolin said she would leave a comment reading, “This is an extremely unoriginal piece of work, and I really expect better. You better give me something better next time. This is flat, dull, unoriginal and unacceptable.”
She said she would give the student a D or D- since they “at least printed out the paper and stapled it.”
According to Markovits, students learn to think about literature deeply through the “nitty-gritty process of writing about it.” Using AI “in any manner” not sanctioned by professors seriously impedes this process, she wrote.
“I understand it can seem attractive with a deadline looming, but it just defeats the point of the exercise of writing,” Markovits added.
Tazudeen agreed. Good writing and good art come from “a struggle with you and the blank paper or the blank canvas,” and he doesn’t want students to lose out on that process, he said.
Tazudeen said he has had students start an essay in class with handwritten notes, which helped him “get a sense of their style.”
Discussing essay ideas with students
also allows him to “get a sense of how the paper is emerging,” he said.
“I want your ideas and your thinking, your originality,” Tazudeen said. “I think that’s a large part of it, too, is just not letting the students go into a black box and then produce a paper at some point over the last four weeks or something and, from my perspective, not having any idea where the ideas come from.”
When Tazudeen receives a paper that seems AI-generated, he said, he talks to the student and, if the paper turns out to be AI-generated, asks them to redo the assignment or weigh the next assignment to replace the paper. This process is less of a punitive mechanism because he doesn’t want his classroom to feel like “a space they need to be worried about,” he said.
“It’s a way of, rather than being punitive, just getting them to work harder at being original,” he said.
Markovits thinks “most of our majors value the human craft of writing” and that the “vast majority” of her students’ work was composed without AI, she wrote. She does expect to see more exams and in-class writing exercises in English classes, she added.
Tazudeen said that he hasn’t noticed a broad change in the quality of writing submitted in his classes.
“The best students are always going to be the best students,” he said. “The students that tried hard and did the best work and did the most original, creative thinking in the ’90s are the same ones in the 2000s, the 2010s, 2020s.”
While Tazudeen noted that teaching English doesn’t feel too different than five years ago — he still prepares ideas for seminar discussions and gets students to write about texts — he said it will be a “challenge for all of us doing any kind of university instruction” to think about AI as students arrive to college with more experience with AI. English was the seventh-most popular major at Yale in the 2024-25 school year.
Contact JAEHA JANG at jaeha.jang@yale.edu.
History dept. to offer class on trust in higher education
BY LEO NYBERG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
The history department is offering a course on the public perception of universities in the spring semester.
The class, called “Trust Et Veritas: The Public Legitimacy of Universities,” will be taught at the same time as a committee of professors convened by University President Maurie McInnis prepares a report with recommendations about how to increase trust in universities.
Benjamin Bernard ’11, a postdoctoral associate who studies the history of trust in higher education, will teach the course. Bernard is “attached” to the Committee on Trust in Higher Education, a Yale webpage says, but he is not a member.
“We discussed the idea when Dr. Bernard was hired as a postdoctoral associate during the summer,” Beverly Gage ’94, a history professor and co-chair of the committee, wrote in an email to the News. “The course seemed like a great way to take advantage of his deep research and historical background on the issue and to invite undergraduate students to engage in their own explorations.”
In April, McInnis formed the Committee on Trust in Higher Education to examine declining trust in universities after identifying the trend as one of her main priorities. Last week, the committee began hosting listening sessions to solicit commentary from students and staff.
Gage said she was involved in the idea for the “Trust Et Veritas” class, but Bernard wrote the syllabus independently from the committee. According to a draft syllabus, the course will cover universi -
ties from the 13th century to the present day. Bernard said in an interview that the class will try to determine whether the current moment is a unique one in the history of higher education.
“I think history can help us contextualize what we are living through,” Bernard said. “Things that seem shocking in the short term may have many precedents.”
Bernard said the class will also read the committee’s report, which is slated to come out toward the end of the spring semester, the committee previously announced.
Bernard studies and has written extensively about trust in higher education in France. Bernard pointed to France as a place worth studying the history of trust in universities.
“These are complicated relationships. In early 18th-century France, Sciences Po was the center of power that was largely opposed to the monarch,” Bernard said.
According to Bernard, in 18th-century France, critics of higher education capitalized on higher literacy rates and lower prices for printing to reach a wider audience. Bernard drew parallels between the pamphlet culture of the Enlightenment and social media culture today.
Bernard also plans to conduct research to compare how universities respond to authoritarians versus democratic leadership. He said public trust in universities tends to be related to the type of government in power.
Though students in “Trust et Veritas” will consider the future of higher education, Bernard said he does not have any predictions about the future of universities.
“Sometimes when people ask me what history I study, I joke:
the past, the things that happened,” Bernard said. “I don’t do the things that didn’t happen and I don’t write about the future. I’m not one to predict.”
Bernard was hesitant to provide his opinions on where universities should go from here, instead preferring to let his students research and form opinions, he said. However, he added that change in
higher education comes from both internal and external pressure.
Daniel Magaziner, the history department’s director of undergraduate studies, emphasized the importance of taking the right lessons from the past and applying them to the present.
“My personal opinion is that, carefully wielded, history is a skeleton key that can unlock so many
things about the present,” Magaziner wrote in an email to the News.
“Trust et Veritas” is a history departmental seminar, meaning senior and junior history majors will have an advantage in gaining admission.
Contact LEO NYBERG at leo.nyberg@yale.edu.
JACINDA WEBBER / STAFF ILLUSTRATOR
In interviews with the News, four professors described the use of artificial intelligence as detrimental to critical thinking.
The course will examine historic and contemporary trust in universities as a committee of Yale professors examines declining trust in higher education.
“I ain’t afraid of no ghost.”
Malala Yousafzai talks new book, mental health at Shubert
BY ARIA LYNN-SKOV CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Malala Yousafzai spoke to more than a thousand people at the Shubert Theater Sunday evening about her new book, “Finding My Way,” which came out on Oct. 21.
Yousafzai, a 28-year-old Pakistani activist who won a Nobel Peace Prize for her children’s rights activism, discussed her new book with actor Arian Moayed, who portrays Stewy Hosseini in HBO’s Succession.
Moayed described “Finding My Way” as “a very honest book.” His discussion with Yousafzai centered on navigating friendships and relationships, taking care of mental health, and the Malala Fund’s work. The audience was a mix of Yale students and locals of all ages.
“In my new book, I share about my journey as a college student and how I was a very passionate student about bringing change in the world,” Yousafzai said in an interview. She added that, at the same time, she knew how important it was for her “to learn and grow as a person” and to “make friends.”
“It’s important that we balance the two,” Yousafzai said. “It’s important for us to ensure that we are making friends and finding the things that we love and enjoy and ask for help, whether that is academic support or mental health support, and at the same time, never give up on the causes that we want to work for.”
Amelia Warren ’27, who was in attendance, has known Yousafzai for over a decade.
“I went to her Nobel Peace Prize ceremony when I was super young,” said Warren, who explained that she has come to know Yousafzai through her mother’s position on
Alums
the Malala Fund board. Warren said she last saw Yousafzai speak in public at the 2014 Nobel Prize ceremony, but she has come to know Yousafzai more personally over the years.
“It was really great to see how she was the person I know just hanging out on stage,” Warren said about watching Yousafzai open up on her book tour. “She’s just the sweetest person.”
During the event, Moayed and Yousafzai discussed her husband, Asser Malik, and how her view on marriage has changed over the years.
When she met Malik, Yousafzai said she liked him but was uncertain about marriage.
“I was just so confused about marriage. Growing up, I had seen how so many girls lost their future because they were forced into marriages,” Yousafzai said.
In these moments, Yousafzai said she turned to the writings of prominent feminist thinkers like bell hooks and Virginia Woolf.
Eventually, it was spending a lot of time with Malik that helped her find the answers.
“The time with him was so beautiful and I knew he was the right person,” she said.
Moayed and Yousafzai discussed the vulnerability of “Finding My Way.” Moayed read an excerpt of the book where Yousafzai wrote, “I didn’t believe that anyone would want me. I felt too ugly to love.”
The book is “so vulnerable,” Moayed said. “But knowing you, it’s just so honest and true.”
Yousafzai told the audience about her difficulty making friends in high school, and how building close friendships was a priority for her while in college. She talked about how her time at Oxford allowed her to explore new things, such as by signing up for clubs and sports, and create meaningful friendships.
screen their new
BY NORAH MCPARTLAND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
The Yale Student Film Festival hosted a screening of “In Our Blood,” a new thriller feature film co-produced by Yale alumni Aaron Kogan ’00 and Steven Klein ’98 and directed by Pedro Kos ’01, on Monday night.
The idea for “In Our Blood” was conceived at Yale during Kogan’s undergraduate days, he said, and it returned to Yale just three days after its release to the United States on October 24.
“It’s very exciting that this movie is premiering just a few days before we’re bringing it to Yale and that the producers and director are coming,” YSFF co-director Reese
Still, balancing academics, a social life and a career as an activist was a challenge, Yousafzai said, and struggles in college pushed her to find both academic and mental health support.
Yousafzai discussed her experience starting therapy during college. She spoke about how she realized she could not solely help herself anymore.
“I didn’t really believe in therapy,” she said, explaining the stigma attached to seeking mental health treatment growing up in Pakistan. She was diagnosed with PTSD and anxiety, and has been in therapy since college, she said.
“The therapy sessions have
horror
Weiden ’27 said in an interview before the screening.
Following the screening, attendees had the opportunity to engage with the filmmakers during a question-and-answer period moderated by Daniela Woldenberg ’27, the YSFF special events coordinator. Kogan, Kos and Klein discussed the film’s origins, development process and central themes, reflecting on the full-circle moment of returning to Yale for the screening.
“Pedro and I met right there,” Kogan said in an interview after the screening, gesturing towards the doors of the auditorium at 53 Wall St., where the two worked together.
Kogan said he was inspired to
helped me,” she told the crowd. “I would not be in this place if I had not received the therapy.”
Christine Zwart, who attended the event with her family, appreciated hearing Yousafzai “speak so candidly about mental health.”
Zwart explained that the third grade curriculum at her kids’ school in Guilford teaches about education around the world, including about Yousafzai. During the event, audience members had the chance to ask Yousafzai for advice. An eighth grader asked a question about how to maintain self confidence in school, and a grandmother asked how to support her bicultural granddaughter with navigating a
changing world. Yousafzai spoke about feeling pressure to live up to what was expected of her, of being told she was “brave and courageous” for standing up to the Taliban. She said she internalized that by believing she could never cry or be afraid.
“True bravery is when you do what you believe in, even when you are scared, even when you are frightened,” Yousafzai said. Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 when she was 17 years old.
Contact ARIA LYNN-SKOV at aria.lynn-skov@yale.edu.
film, ‘In Our Blood,’ on campus
create a horror film that captured the authenticity of an actual documentary during a conversation in his Yale dorm about documenting a road trip with his friends. Nearly ten years later, he brought the idea to Klein and Kos, who played key roles in transforming the script into its final form. The “found footage” style film follows Emily Wyland and her cinematographer, Danny, as they travel to Las Cruces, New Mexico, to reconnect with Emily’s estranged mother. After Emily’s mother goes missing, the two must unravel clues about her whereabouts, gradually revealing the dark and insidious truth woven into the Las Cruces community.
“The best genre films for me are really a hypercharged look into our own world, which is really exciting,” Kos said. His previous documentary work earned him an Academy Award nomination and a Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Award for outstanding picture editing for a nonfiction program.
“I saw an opportunity to continue exploring the work that I do in my documentary work,” Kos added.
YSFF co-director Florence Barillas ’27 met Kogan at a Yale in Hollywood event in Los Angeles over the summer, and the two discussed the possibility of screening the film at Yale, she said. Barillas added that the horror film’s screening is “perfect timing for Halloween.”
The filmmakers agreed that
their experience at Yale had an influence on the film’s development. Kogan recalled Kos’s skilled approach during the creation process, saying, “that mindset and those habits were things that Pedro didn’t just learn here, but actually exhibited here and took a much morew evolved and sophisticated version of those into this film so many years later.”
“I hadn’t directed fiction in this way since college. But it was like riding a bike again after so many years,” Kos said.
“In Our Blood” was shown in Las Cruces on Oct. 17.
Contact NORAH MCPARTLAND at norah.mcpartland@yale.edu.
Elm Shakespeare celebrates 30 years at masquerade ball
BY ANGELINA KOVALCHUK CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
BRANFORD — The Elm Shakespeare Company celebrated its 30th anniversary Saturday evening with a masquerade ball open to the New Haven community.
The event, named the Moonlight Masquerade Ball, invited commu-
nity members, high school students and local artists to celebrate the Elm’s history and recognize the community’s contributions to the company. The Ball was held in the James Blackstone Memorial Library in Branford. “It’s always been about gathering people, about what happens when stories are shared and experi-
enced together,” Lovelind Richards, a spokesperson for the Elm, wrote in a statement shared with the News.
The Elm Shakespeare Company is a theater company based in New Haven that stages theater productions and runs educational outreach programs for the New Haven community.
For the ball, the public library
was fully transformed into a festive space, with live music, colored lighting and William Shakespeare-themed decorations.
Attendees were encouraged to arrive at the ball in costume, bringing “imagination and a sense of play,” Richards wrote. Masquerade masks were also offered at the door for any attendees who wished to dress up further. The ball served as a fundraiser intended to financially support the company’s work in New Haven. The event featured a live auction with items such as exclusive props from productions and a guitar signed by Taylor Swift.
A silent auction was also hosted, featuring signatures and signed items from artists and celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Elton John, Shelley Duvall and Ben Affleck.
George Wooden, the charity fundraiser and auctioneer for the event, applauded the attendees for their contributions.
“Every donation goes right to the company,” Wooden said.
Among the programs offered by the Elm is the Teen Troupe, a coalition of local high school students who gather weekly to learn about and engage with the performance aspects of Shakespearean theater.
Greer Armstrong, a high school sophomore and member of the
Teen Troupe, highlighted the camaraderie of the Elm’s programs.
“It’s lovely that Elm Shakespeare reaches out to youth,” Armstrong said. “You meet a lot of people and build a big sense of community.”
The Ball featured performances by the Troupe, including a choreographed dance with recitations from Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing.”
“I’m happy that this is an opportunity granted to kids who don’t have access to acting in their schools,” Alejandra Reyes, another member of the troupe, said.
The evening also held a toast to Jamie Burnett, the production designer for the Elm. Burnett has been designing and producing sets since the company’s founding in 1995.
Throughout the night, guests indulged in dancing, live music and karaoke. The Elm also hosted a raffle and a costume contest, which awarded various prizes to participants.
“The Ball is a reminder that the reason Elm thrives is because of the people who believe in it,” Richards wrote in their statement.
The Elm stages its productions in Edgerton Park, located at 75 Cliff St.
Contact ANGELINA KOVALCHUK at angelina.kovalchuk@yale.edu.
ARIA LYNN-SKOV / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The event, which was a part of Yousafzai’s “Finding My Way” book tour, took place Sunday evening and drew over a thousand attendees.
ANGELINA KOVALCHUK / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The New Haven community commemorated the history of the local theater company in mask and costume Saturday evening.
“And suddenly to my surprise, he did the mash. He did the monster mash.”
Production of Virginia Woolf’s ‘Orlando’ explores gender, movement
BY SARA AGRAWAL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
An undergraduate thesis production of “Orlando” — American playwright Sarah Ruhl’s theatrical adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel — will premier Nov. 6.
“Orlando,” the senior thesis of Thomas Kannam ’26 and Gia George-Burgher ’26, will be the first thesis production of the fall semester. The play chronicles the life of the titular character Orlando. The fictional biography was originally written in 1928 by Woolf and adapted for the stage by Ruhl in 2010.
“Orlando spans five centuries and it follows the titular character Orlando on their journey of self-discovery and trying to answer the question of ‘Who am I?’” director AJ Walker ’26 said.
According to Walker, Kannam and George-Burgher picked the show for their thesis because it explores gender performance and the embodiment of poetic language.
Orlando — played by Kannam — transforms from a man to a woman halfway through the play. To fully embody the changing identity of Orlando, Kannam relies on physicality. Everything from the way they gesture to the way they walk reflects the gender of Orlando, Walker said.
The director emphasized Kannam’s intimate approach to playing Orlando, drawing on
their own identity to portray the character and create a performance that feels truthful and authentic.
Angelica Peruzzi ’27, who is co-producing the show with Crawford Arnow ’27, said that costumes are incredibly important to Kannam’s embodiment of Orlando because they act as signifiers of the time period and incorporate details on the history of drag.
This production of “Orlando” contains original music by Lucas Oland ’27 and choreography by Sakura Grashow ’28, featuring dance breaks throughout the performance.
Kannam’s and George-Burgher’s interpretation of the play is also unique in its use of ensemble.
While Kannam plays a single character, George-Burgher plays several characters as the chorus leader — a role she created.
“Gia’s thesis is focused on the ‘Black-ground’ and the idea that a lot of times Black actors fall into the background in productions,” Peruzzi said.
As chorus leader, George-Burgher embodies different characters throughout the show, which — according to the director — requires a more fluid approach than playing a singular role.
Julia Weston ’28 is one of the six members of the chorus. Chorus members sometimes act as a unit or take on the role of minor characters
in certain scenes. Although the chorus functions as a collective, each member chooses an individual approach to their performance.
“We’re all defined by our relationship to Orlando and his story,” Weston said. Weston said her character is distinct in the sense that she is “very curious to learn about Orlando. I think there is an endearing excitement to her.”
According to Weston, there is a certain allure to being in an ensemble. The actors support each other as part of a collective and as individuals.
“This is definitely one of the most joyous, laughter-filled rehearsalrooms that I’ve been a part of,” Weston said. “That joy and that care definitely seeps into our work.” Weston described being unfamiliar with dancing before joining the cast of “Orlando.” Throughout the rehearsal process, she said she has been learning how she can integrate herself and her character into the movement. Walker said that “Orlando” is poignant today because it inspires “thinking about how the culture and the politics of the time affects our sense of self, as well as how we are influenced and changed by the people around us.” He noted that this show was a full-circle moment for him, since he has worked with Kannam and George-Burgher in the theater since his first year at Yale.
“Thomas and Gia have definitely shaped my personal artistic journey,” he said. “Orlando” will run from Nov. 6 to Nov. 8 at the blackbox theater in 53 Wall St.
Contact SARA AGRAWAL at sara.agrawal@yale.edu.
‘Succession’ star Brian Cox speaks to students at Dramat event
BY KIVA BANK STAFF REPORTER
The seats of the lecture hall in Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall were full Monday evening as students waited in anticipation for Emmy award-winning actor Brian Cox to step on stage — an entrance he is accustomed to as a stage actor whose career spans over six decades.
Hosted by the Yale Dramatic Association, the Dramatalk provided an opportunity for the Scottish actor to share personal insight into his success. Known for his role as Logan Roy in HBO’s hit series “Succession,” Cox answered questions from Dramatalk moderator Adam Buchsbaum ’27 and the audience with the seriousness often associated with his famous character — punctuated by the occasional expletive.
During the talk, he discussed his artistic craft with “elements of care and understanding” that demonstrated his capabilities as an actor, offering tidbits of knowledge to the audience.
“Your imagination has to be free in order to create the work that you want to create,” Cox told the crowd. “And if you don’t have that freedom of imagination, you’re screwed.”
Throughout the event, Cox described his development as an actor, noting that he has maintained the same passion for performance since age three. Cox has played many complex, mad characters during his career, including what he described during the talk as his favorite role — Titus Andronicus for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Cox also portrayed Hannibal Lecter in the movie “Manhunter,” whose 1986 release predated Anthony Hopkin’s Oscar-winning version of Lecter in “Silence of the Lambs.”
For these types of characters, Cox advised actors to “play the man for who the man is.”
The talk with Cox has been in the works for over a year, Buchsbaum said, since he first reached out to Cox last October. Buchsbaum said anticipation for the event was palpable, as prior to Monday he had been approached on the street multiple times by people excited about “Succession.”
According to Dramat president Elizabeth Stanish ’26 and Dramat secretary Owen Pinhasi ’28, the event was “sold out” by last Wednesday night, when 365 people registered within 24 hours of the advertisement email’s release.
Buchsbaum noted that the Dramatalks remain free as “educational” and “fun” events. Past Dramatalk guests often have a connection to Yale, such as alumni Robert Lopez ‘97 and Lewis Black
DRA ’77, as well as Ken Jeong, whose wife graduated from Yale College in 1994.
Cox, however, has no affiliation with the University. He told the News that he has been teaching since he was 24, learning that the transfer of knowledge is a valuable interchange between participants.
“I want to create that sense of community and that sense of trust that we have together,” Cox said. “So therefore we can go on a big journey, sometimes a small journey, but we can go on a journey together.
Cox led the audience through his early life in Dundee, Scotland, and recounted his first job at the local Dundee Repertory Theatre, where he learned stage management. Although he said he was “terrible” in that position, he explained that he was fortunate with opportunities that led him to get professionally started at a drama school in London.
Buchsbaum said he was excited to hear about Cox’s experience as an actor working in both film and theater in the United States and in the United Kingdom. Stanish echoed similar sentiments.
“Having guests come for our Dramatalks is really exciting for our community, to get to hear from people actively working in the industry and doing what a lot of us really love and hope to do someday,” she said. “It’s great that we get to open that up to the whole school and kind of give back to the Yale community with these topics.”
Stanish said she noticed that Cox’s passion for performing was evident throughout the talk and during the dinner prior to the event. Before the talk, the Dramat executive board hosted a private dinner with the star with members of the Dramat community who were selected by lottery.
“You can just tell he has devoted so much of his life to this art form and loves it in a way that’s really admirable,” Stanish said.
Hannah Kurczeski ’26, the special events coordinator for the Dramat, said she was moved by how “deeply selfless” of a person Cox seemed. She explained that Cox emphasized “serving the work” of acting through smaller roles by carefully developing the arc of each of his characters, regardless of how big the part was.
“It’s an important lesson, I think, for a lot of younger actors, especially, to learn that it’s not really the size of the part, but it’s what you do with it,” Kurczeski said.
Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall is located at 1 Prospect St. Contact KIVA BANK at kiva.bank@yale.edu.
KIVA BANK / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
On Monday night, the Dramat hosted a Dramatalk with Scottish actor Brian Cox, known for his role as Logan Roy in “Succession.”
YALE DAILY NEWS
The show, which will open on Nov. 6, will feature Thomas Kannam ’26 as Orlando and Gia George-Burgher ’26 as the chorus leader.
MEN’S HOCKEY: Bulldogs to kick off season this weekend
MEN'S HOCKEY FROM PAGE 14
job of just preaching teamwork and culture. It’s about the guys in the room, not the coaches in the office,” Berger said.
“Coach Howe has done a fantastic job working and communicating with the players this fall,” Hartmann wrote in a text.
“We are all pulling the ship forward as we sharpen our identity and focus going into this year.”
Since wrapping up last season, the Bulldogs have focused on refining their pace of play and playmaking. While their lines are not yet set in stone, Wagnon said the group has put special emphasis on its defensive game after conceding one of the highest goal totals in the nation last year.
“We’ll be a team that makes more plays and plays faster and is going to be tough to play against,” Wagnon explained. “We do have a lot of skill, but our skill alone isn’t going to win many games, so I think our identity is one of a relentless team that’s tough to play against.”
Hartmann added that the Bulldogs have worked to strengthen their special teams play.
“Our penalty kill took a step back last season,” he wrote.
“Special teams will always be a crucial part of hockey games, and we have taken strides so far this offseason to set ourselves up better in man-down situations.”
Offensively, the Bulldogs welcome back last season’s top three scorers: sophomore Ronan O’Donnell ’28, who led the pack with 11 goals, followed closely by captain David Chen ’26 at 10 and Donovan Frias ’28 with 7.
Forward Will Richter ’27 said he expects the Bulldogs’ offense to make a noticeable leap this season.
“I believe this team’s biggest jump this year will be in our offensive production,” Richter wrote in a text. “A lot of guys have taken a step this offseason, which is very cool to see.”
The roster also features seven first years, including four forwards: James Shannon ’29, Tom Molson ’29, Kurt Gurkan ’29 and Braden Keeble ’29. On the blue line, Howe has brought in three defensemen: Dylan Hunt ’29, Joose Pesonen ’29 and Hudson Miller ’29. Hartmann said the first-years on defense have quickly adapted to the collegiate level.
“Our first-year defensemen have been excellent this fall,” Hartmann wrote. “They bring a great mix of grit, defensive awareness, and offensive talent, and they have done a great job adjusting to our systems. It’s been a lot of fun playing with them and being an older voice to them as a senior.”
Junior Jeth Fogg ’27 is the eighth new addition to the team.
After spending his first year as a practice goalie for the team, Fogg played on Yale’s club hockey in his sophomore team before getting
called up over the summer to join the varsity squad.
“They knew me from freshman year, so Coach called me and said, ‘Hey, Fogger, we’re looking forward to the season and we were thinking that we could really use your help,’” Fogg recalled in an interview. “It was an absolute yes from the get-go.”
As the team enters the new season, Hartmann said speed will define its identity.
“Speed will be a staple of our team this season,” he wrote. “Against Dartmouth, we are hoping to play fast and work to out-position them.”
As the Bulldogs prepare for Sunday’s road trip to
Dartmouth, Wagnon said the locker room energy is defined by “confidence.”
“I think we’ve got confidence in the preparation we’ve put in this fall,” Wagnon said. “It’s something Keith used to say a lot last year: that this game’s not about them, it’s about us.”
The team is ready to drop the puck on the 2025-26 season at Dartmouth. The Big Green finished their 2024-25 campaign (18–13–2, 12–9–1 ECAC) with a long stretch in the ECAC tournament, reaching the semifinals before falling to Clarkson (24–12–3, 15–6–1 ECAC) 1-4.
Sunday’s game will present an early test, but the Bulldogs are
MEN’S SOCCER: Yale prepares to play Penn
Football team to face Columbia at home
FOOTBALL FROM PAGE 14
unit this season,” sophomore defensive lineman Mack Johnson ’28 said. “When everyone does their job, it lets our guys go make big plays and take control of ballgames.”
Build momentum Early on in the season, Yale’s offense had the tendency to stall out in the middle of drives, and it sometimes struggled to put points on the board. Without overlooking the Lions too much, the Bulldog offense could use the Columbia game as a tune-up before their last three games of the season — road games at Brown (3–3, 0–3 Ivy) and Princeton (3–3, 2–1 Ivy) before hosting The Game against 15th-ranked Harvard (6–0, 3–0 Ivy).
Quarterback Dante Reno ’28 could play a large role in determining how much success the Bulldogs will have in the final stretch of the season. In Yale’s last two games, Reno has thrown for a combined 480 yards and four touchdowns while completing 70 percent of his passes.
Though he got off to a slow start at the beginning of the season, Reno has settled in and built connections with his two star receivers, Jaxton Santiago ’28 and Nico Brown ’26. Brown, in five games this season, has hauled in six touchdowns and over 500 yards, while Santiago has gone for 346 yards and three scores.
“Building a connection with Dante, and just as an offense as a whole, has been awesome,” Santiago wrote to the News. “I feel like we’re all getting so much better every single day and it’s been a lot of fun to be a part of. I think we’re only going to continue improving from here so I’m really excited to see where that takes us.”
Against Columbia, the Bulldogs will have an opportunity to put up another impressive offensive showing and build confidence for the rest of the season.
Yale kicks off against the Lions at noon at the Yale Bowl on Saturday.
Contact BRODY GILKISON at brody.gilkison@yale.edu.
MEN'S SOCCER FROM PAGE 14
Brown and Columbia. With three points awarded for a win and one for a tie, teams are likely to adopt a more aggressive approach in these closing matches. In their recent games, the Elis suffered a one-goal loss to Dartmouth (3–6–3, 2–3–0 Ivy) — despite a strong offensive showing by the Elis, who had more shot attempts than the Big Green — and a 0-4 defeat to the Princeton Tigers, who are currently ranked the top team in the country.
Now, the Elis are looking to bounce back and finish strong in their final stretch of Ivy League play.
Penn enters the matchup fresh off a 2-0 win over Dartmouth, bringing its conference record to 2–1–2 and overall mark to 7–3–4.
First years Billy Altirs ’29 and Angelo Zhu ’29, as well as junior Joseph Farouz ’27, lead Yale in scoring with two goals each. Lee has started all 13 games in the net, recording 53 saves and a .697 save percentage.
On the Quakers’ side, Patrick Cayelli and Romeo Dahlen, who
unfazed. Richter added that the team’s confidence heading into opening weekend reflects their hard work throughout camp.
“There’s a lot of excitement going around the locker room right now,” he said. “We are going into this game focused on the systems and skills we have been working on throughout training camp and have the mindset that we will be a very difficult team to play against this year.”
The faceoff is set for 5 p.m. on Sunday at Dartmouth’s Thompson Arena.
Contact LIZA KAUFMAN at liza.kaufman@yale.edu.
have started in all 14 games for Penn, have been key to the team’s offense. They have eight and six total goals, respectively. The Quaker’s main goalkeeper, Phillip Falcon III, has denied 85.7 percent of shots and started in 9 of the team’s 12 matches.
Historically, the Quakers have proven to be a tough matchup for Yale, holding a 9–2–5 all-time advantage. Last year’s encounter at Reese Stadium ended in a 0-1 defeat for the Bulldogs, and the Elis’ last victory over the Quakers was in 2012, when they won 2-1 at home. Still, the Bulldogs say they are ready for the challenge.
“They’re a good team and we respect all, fear none. When we go out there and do what works for us and we’re working hard as a team, then the results will come. That’s our mentality heading into this one,” Lee said. Kickoff is scheduled for 4 p.m. on Saturday.
Contact DAVIS ZONG at davis.zong@yale.edu.
Bulldogs to play New York teams
WOMEN'S HOCKEY FROM PAGE 14
freshmen to the team this year, including four forwards, two defensemen and one goaltender.
“We graduated 11 players last season, which is always a challenge to replace,” Gilkyson wrote. “However, our returning players are stepping up into new roles, and our freshmen have been a fantastic addition to the squad.”
This weekend, the Bulldogs will be looking to pick up some conference wins on the road in upstate New York. Both Colgate and Cornell are currently ahead of Yale in the ECAC standings and have played more games so far this season.
Last season, Yale fell to Colgate in a 0-3 loss, and tied Cornell 1-1 before securing the extra point with a shootout victory over the Big Red.
“We’ve been working hard to find our rhythm and build consistency as a group,” Sylvia Bojarski ’26 said. “The team’s energy is really positive heading into the weekend.”
On special teams, the Bulldogs have shown early-season potency. They are currently tied with Ohio State at seventh in the NCAA power-play percentage standings, behind Cornell, which is sitting at first.
For the Bulldogs to come away with two wins, converting on the man advantage will be key in taking down two top squads.
“This weekend will be a big test for us as we’re playing Cornell and Colgate, both of whom are ranked in the top ten of the NCAA this season,” Gilkyson wrote. “There are definitely some nerves, but they’re good nerves. We know that, as a team, we’re just as good as anyone else in the ECAC.”
In the latest USA Hockey women’s college hockey poll, Cornell is ranked fourth and Colgate 10th, while Yale sits just below at 13th.
After the upcoming road games in New York, the women’s hockey team will bus to Manchester, New Hampshire, to take the ice against Saint Anselm
College (3–5, 3–1 NEWHA) on Nov. 4 before returning home to play Ivy League opponents Harvard (2–2, 0–2 ECAC) and Dartmouth (1–3, 1–1 ECAC) on November 14th and 15th. For now, the Elis are focused on the weekend games at hand.
“Both opponents this weekend are highly skilled and always tough to play against,” Gilkyson wrote. “But if we stick to our game and play confidently, I have no doubt we can compete with them and come home with a pair of wins.” Yale and Cornell will face off at 5 p.m. on Friday.
Contact AUDREY KIM at a.kim@yale.edu.
LIZA KAUFMAN, PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
YALE ATHLETICS
“This is Halloween, this is Halloween, pumpkins scream in the dead of night.”
Spring Fling receives additional funds after meeting YCC conditions
BY CORINNE COWAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
The Yale College Council Senate has released $20,000 of conditional funding to the Spring Fling Committee.
On Sept. 21, YCC senators approved an amendment which made $20,000 of funding for Spring Fling contingent on three conditions: a demonstrated need for funding, monthly progress updates and a release of the 2025 application data. Spring Fling was already allocated a $420,000 budget free of conditions.
Senators met with Spring Fling representatives on Oct. 12 and voted to release the funding right after that meeting.
Jalen Freeman ’27, the production chair of Spring Fling, wrote in an email that the goal of the meeting was to “provide insight and transparency regarding the Committee’s application and admissions process.”
“The YCC was given application data for this year’s Spring Fling recruitment cycle, actual application evaluations with all personal information redacted, and a blank application with comments and explanations regarding how the questions were designed,” Freeman wrote.
Two senators said they appreciated Spring Fling’s efforts to increase transparency. Cyrus Sadeghi ’27 called the meeting
“informative” in an email statement to the News. Sadeghi was one of four sponsors of the compromise bill to grant the conditional $20,000, along with YCC Speaker Alex William Chen ’28, Jalen Bradley ’27 and Alexander Medel ’27, who is also a staff writer for the News.
However, senators said they did not see details about the budget or Spring Fling’s operations, many of which are governed by nondisclosure agreements.
“We don’t have that power or have that privy to that information legally,” Joseph Elsayyid ’26, a Davenport senior, said in an interview.
Elsayyid said it was difficult to plan the YCC budget for Spring Fling.
“Even if you have the best of intentions on both the senate side and the Spring Fling side, it’s really hard to resolve due to constraints imposed by the Spring Fling Committee at the University level,” said Elsayyid.
Other senators and committee members expressed hope for a stronger relationship between Spring Fling and the YCC Senate.
“The Senate has developed one of the strongest working relationships with the Spring Fling committee in recent memory,” Chen said in a statement to the News.
Medel agreed, describing himself as “optimistic” about relations between the YCC Senate and Spring Fling.
Following the release of the conditional funds, Spring Fling leaders say they will continue to meet with YCC. Shapiro wrote in an email that the Spring Fling chairs have been “regularly communicating (often weekly) with members of the YCC Executive Board.”
The larger budget will go towards greater flexibility for decision making and the talent search process. Shapiro noted that “a large majority of the Spring Fling budget is allocated towards the production of the festival.”
“Spring Fling is incredibly grateful for the budget increase
following the YCC decision,” Shapiro said. The first Spring Fling performance was in 1995.
Contact CORINNE COWAN at corinne.cowan@yale.edu
At New Haven ‘bake off,’ students sample cannoli and cronuts
BY SUDARSHAN KRISHNAN
CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Hundreds of Yalies poured into Old Campus Saturday afternoon to indulge their sweet tooth at the inaugural Great New Haven Bake Off. Organized by the Yale College
Council, the event featured five desserts, each prepared by a New Haven bakery: cookie-stuffed brownies from Katalina’s Bakery, kouignamann from Atticus Bookstore Cafe, banana bread from Olmo, cream cannoli from Lucibello’s Italian Pastry Shop and cronuts from G Café. Sat-
urday’s event also featured student performances from singer-songwriter Zaida Rio Polanco ’26 and three a capella groups.
“How can I show Yale students the wonderful different food we have here available in New Haven?” Kingson Wills ’26, the Yale College Council’s student body events director, said. “I was like, okay, the Great British Bake Off — the Great New Haven Bake Off.”
From behind tables, a handful of YCC volunteers unpacked stacks of boxes and handed out desserts to the line of students streaming along the crisscrossed pathways. With a full plate in hand, paired with a cup of warm apple cider, some students sprawled out on picnic blankets and listened to the performers.
The event was also inspired by a hypothetical, Wills said: “I was just thinking about what each bakery would look like if I made them a dog.”
Wills got to sketching his ideas, producing a colorful cast of canine characters. His cartoons would become the graphic for the eventual bake off, where
“Atticus is like a nerdy one, Olmo the muscley one.”
Johnathan McGee ’28, a YCC deputy student body events director, explained that the YCC had been brainstorming ideas for a fall event and settled on Wills’s vision for supporting local businesses.
When selecting bakeries to participate in the event, YCC members considered pricing, the variety of treats that could be offered to students and the general diversity of the restaurants, McGee said.
Attendees at Saturday’s event voiced fondness for local New Haven cuisine.
“I’m looking forward to trying Lucibello’s,” Brian Moore ’26 said. “I’m in a class right now taught by a former mayor of New Haven. We went on a field trip two Lucibello’s, so it’s really great seeing them represented here as a community staple.”
Throughout the afternoon, as peckish attendees combed through the treats, students stepped up to sing before their peers. Polanco kicked off the
event with a colorful rendition of her single “Tell Me” in its first ever live performance. Subsequent performances included the Alley Cats, Redhot & Blue and Doox of Yale, three student a capella groups.
Daniel Weintraub ’28 and August Taylor ’28, members of Redhot & Blue, shared their excitement about the event, as well as their appreciation for the other singers.
“I feel like the turnout was nice, the food was really good,” Weintraub said. “We’ve got some really great groups.”
Amiah Hanson ’27, another attendee and a member of a capella group the New Blue of Yale, expressed excitement about her peers’ performances.
“Everyone got to see these wonderful a capella groups,” Wills said. “The food ran out. So I think that’s success in my book.”
Old Campus is located at 344 College St. Contact SUDARSHAN KRISHNAN at sudarshan.krishnan@yale.edu.
Restored Morse lipstick sculpture ‘vandalized’ with chalk graffiti
BY KIVA BANK, OLIVIA CYRUS AND JERRY GAO STAFF REPORTERS
Graffiti was found on the newly reinstalled Morse lipstick sculpture Monday morning.
The letters “ATB” were drawn with chalk on the sculpture, the door of the Morse Tower and on surrounding concrete. Two weeks ago, the sculpture, entitled “Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks,” was put back in the Morse courtyard after three months of restoration in response to environmental degradation.
“This morning we learned Claes Oldenburg’s Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks sculpture was vandalized,” Roland Coffey, the director of communications for the Yale University Art Gallery, wrote in an email to the News on Monday. “We are working closely with our colleagues at Morse College to address the situation.”
Coffey also said the Yale Police Department was made aware of the incident. Yale Police chief Anthony Campbell ’95 DIV ’09 did not immediately respond to the News’ requests for comment.
Mila McKay ’27, who lives in Morse Tower, said that before she left for class at approximately 9:15 a.m. Monday, she noticed a crowd of students and Morse Dean Blake Trimble surveying the markings.
Around 10 a.m., Head of College Catherine Panter-Brick and a YUAG photographer took pictures at the scene.
Panter-Brick declined to respond to the News’ request for comment. Trimble also declined to comment and referred the News to the YUAG.
The letters “ATB” are affiliated with the Baker’s Dozen, one of Yale’s a cappella groups. A link that says “ATB Zone” appears on the bottom of the group’s webpage and leads to a password protected page. The majority of the group’s Instagram posts are signed off with “BDs, ATB.”
John Raskopf ’27, a member of the Spizzwinks a capella group, said he thought it was “plausible” to connect the graffiti with the Baker’s Dozen — or a subset of the group’s members — because of their association with the “ATB” lettering. Potentially, Raskopf said, the group was framed by someone else since the lettering “is such a recognizable symbol.”
The musical director and business manager for the Baker’s Dozen, as well as three other members, did not immediately respond to the News’ requests for comment Monday evening.
Raskopf said that chalking symbols around campus is a tradition of the a cappella community that extends beyond the Baker’s Dozen. The Spizzwinks, for example, typically draw their signature question
mark in parentheses on the blackboards of classrooms they use.
Additional “ATB” lettering was found near the intersection of Canal and Lock Streets west of Pauli Murray College, as well as on the base of the statue of Willliam Lanson, which is located on the Farmington Canal. As of 7 p.m. Monday, the graffiti on Canal Street was still visible.
By 5:30 p.m. Monday, the graffiti on the lipstick sculpture was removed. Steven Gilsdorf, Yale’s
director of facilities operations, wrote that Yale Facilities aims to remove graffiti within 24 hours of receiving a report. He also said that the graffiti was against University regulations on chalking and postering.
“Facilities Operations is responsible for cleaning the interior and exterior of buildings and grounds in the university’s portfolio. In this case, a combination of maintenance and grounds crew removed the graffiti,” Gilsdorf wrote.
Contact KIVA BANK at kiva.bank@yale.edu, OLIVIA CYRUS at olivia.cyrus@yale.edu, and JERRY GAO at jerry.gao.jg2988@yale.edu
JOLYNDA WANG / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
YCC senators released the funds on the condition of increased transparency and communication.
The Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks sculpture by Claes Oldenburg was first made in 1969. Henry Liu contributed reporting.
SUDARSHAN KRISHNAN / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER Saturday’s event featured desserts from five local bakeries: Katalina’s Bakery, Atticus Bookstore Cafe, Olmo, Lucibello’s Italian Pastry Shop and G Café Bakery.
HENRY LIU / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The letters “ATB” were inscribed in chalk around Morse courtyard and on the recently restored Morse lipstick sculpture.
“At night the fog was thick and full of light, and sometimes voices.”
PLAIN KATE ERIN BOW
Teachers’ union, students rally for pay, healthcare benefits
BY SABRINA THALER AND EVELYN RONAN STAFF REPORTER AND CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Nearly 300 teachers, students and locals supporting the city’s teachers’ union gathered at a Beaver Hills school Monday afternoon to spell out their demands for the union’s ongoing contract negotiations with the school district.
Activists and union members made calls for increased pay, smaller class sizes and enhanced healthcare benefits for teachers just before the Board of Education met for their biweekly meeting at King/Robinson Interdistrict Magnet School. The New Haven Federation of Teachers’ current contract, which was approved ahead of the 20232024 school year, will expire in June of next year.
“We want schools that are fully staffed, teachers who stay in New Haven — who live in New Haven because our pay finally catches up to the surrounding towns and our health benefits are no longer managed by greedy insurance companies in Hartford,” NHFT president Leslie Blatteau ’97 GRD ’07 said to rally attendees. “We know this is possible, and that’s why we’re here to fight for it.”
Union leaders have called on the district to boost its budget transparency and prioritize higher pay as it approaches a new round of negotiations. The school district has been at work since the spring mitigating what began as a $23.2 million deficit. In April, New Haven Public Schools Superintendent Madeline Negrón unveiled a plan to cut over 70 vacant staff positions, close one school and merge two others.
The city’s 2025-26 fiscal year budget included a $5 million allotment to the school district. Last month, the Board of Alders authorized a transfer of $3 million in surplus state funding for “educational purposes,” which the district can access at the end of this fiscal year.
Justin Harmon, a spokesper -
son for NHPS, declined to comment about the rally and teachers’ demands, citing the school district’s policy against speaking to the press about ongoing contract negotiations.
Around 5:20 p.m. on Monday, Mayor Justin Elicker arrived to attend the Board of Education meeting and paused outside King/Robinson to watch the rally. He said in an interview that the city lacks the support it needs from the state to fulfill the teachers’ demands.
“We all can agree that teachers should have high quality health care that doesn’t cost them a lot,” Elicker said. “How do we pay for it? We struggle so hard with that because the city has dramatically increased our funding towards New Haven Public Schools, and the state’s funding has remained relatively flat.”
Taite Lipchak, a representative from the New Haven Immigrants Coalition, cited an immigrant protection that NHFT members are pushing to be included in the contract. The stipulation would prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement from entering New Haven public schools without a judicial warrant, an existing informal measure in the schools, he said.
“Our biggest goal is to push the board to fully codify this policy through NHFT,” Lipchak said.
“We need to prevent ICE in our schools, and we need to prepare our teachers to use protective measures against ICE.”
A group of students from High School in the Community in the city’s Wooster Square neighborhood attended the rally. Justin Welch, a 12th grade student, said in an interview that some teachers at the school are considering leaving NHPS to work in other districts where staff are paid more.
“We really recognize that what affects the teachers affects students,” Diana Robles, another 12th grade student at the school, said. “We just want to show that we really care. We
appreciate the work that they do every day, choosing to go to school every day and going through these difficult situations, like trying to negotiate a contract and kind of getting pushed back all the time, but still showing up.”
Steve Staysniak, a social studies and English teacher at Metropolitan Business Academy, spoke about the debilitating effects of the teacher shortage on schools.
“We had a teaching position at Metro we couldn’t fill for two years,” he said. “We just had kids sitting in a classroom with no one to teach them.”
Staysniak said that New Haven teacher pay must be up to snuff with surrounding districts
to retain talented teaching staff.
Vandy Esposito, a library media specialist at Nathan Hale School and a member of NHFT’s bargaining team, said that when it was time to produce a new health insurance plan that wouldn’t cut into teacher raises, the board came “totally unprepared.”
“It was the same economically unsound plan we had last year, but now with higher teacher contribution requirements,” she said.
At the rally, Blatteau praised the CT Partnership Plan, a healthcare program for public school teachers in many of New Haven’s neighboring school districts. Though the NHFT bargaining team has advocated for New Haven teachers to participate in the same program, Blat -
Charges dismissed against anti-Trump
BY ADELE HAEG STAFF REPORTER
A Connecticut state attorney formally agreed Monday morning to dismiss criminal charges against a Hamden resident related to highway overpass protests against President Donald Trump.
At a scheduled hearing, the court confirmed a motion by State Attorney David Strollo for the state to voluntarily decline to continue prosecuting Katherine Hinds, according to her attorney Chris Mattei. The two par -
ties formalized the agreement on Monday morning in front of a judge after successfully concluding a series of negotiations.
“We’re here because we’re protecting our rights that are written in the Constitution and we have a right to free speech. Without free speech, we’re nothing,” Hinds said to a crowd assembled outside the New Haven Superior Court after her hearing.
Hinds heads a local chapter of the Connecticut Visibility Brigade, a group that has been protesting against Trump administration policies on
highway overpasses since he was reelected.
“This is good news for First Amendment rights,” Dana Glazer, a leader of the national Visibility Brigade, said of Hinds’ case.
Hinds was arrested twice over the summer and charged with second-degree criminal trespassing, second-degree breach of peace and display of unauthorized signs over Interstate 95 while protesting with Brigade members.
Mattei said Hinds’ arrest warrants contained “omis -
teau said, the school district has not complied with their requests.
“Many of us are struggling to make ends meet, having to work multiple jobs, to do more with less each day to live a dignified life,” Hyclis Williams, the president of New Haven’s paraprofessionals’ union, told the crowd at the rally. “We want to send a clear message: Respect us and our students, our school and our community. We love what we do, but love alone does not pay the bills.”
The NHFT’s current contract with the Board of Education will expire on June 30, 2026.
Contact SABRINA THALER at sabrina.thaler@yale.edu and EVELYN RONAN at evelyn.ronan@yale.edu
overpass protester
sions and inaccuracies” that compromised the state’s case against her.
The dismissal of the case was a “recognition that the type of conduct she was arrested for is protected,” Mattei said.
He told the court there were two key takeaways from Hinds’ case: there should be no affixing of signs to highway overpasses, and that civilians require permits to display certain signage, though not the type Hinds was displaying.
Strollo told the court there were “misunderstandings on both sides” that led to the case on matters of law enforcement that have since been clarified.
The Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, or the DESPP, and the Connecticut State Police circulated a training bulletin in September that outlined new guidance for police on how to address overpass protests.
According to that bulletin, protests on bridges are allowed under certain circumstances.
Troopers are expected to “provide a clear and lawful basis for his or her actions” and not to “engage in lengthy debates around the multifaceted legal contours of the First Amendment,” the bulletin reads.
The DESPP did not immediately respond to the News’ request for comment. The Connecticut State Police does not “comment on judicial matters or decisions made by prosecutors or judges,” a spokesperson wrote in an email to the News.
“We knew we’d done nothing wrong,” Hinds said to protesters, her attorneys and a television camera after her hearing. “It was our right to stand up on public property and say what’s happening with our government is evil and heinous, and we won’t sit down for it.”
Following Hinds’ arrest in August, the American Civil Liberties Union — the ACLU — filed
a lawsuit on Sept. 16 on behalf of Erin Quinn and Robert Marra, two Connecticut protesters who said they had stopped attending demonstrations for fear of prosecution. Connecticut Public reported that the state commissioner filed a motion on Oct. 9 for that case to be dismissed. Hinds also filed a misconduct complaint against the officer who arrested her the second time, state trooper Joshua Jackson, accusing him of harassing protesters. The second time Hinds was arrested on Aug. 8, Jackson came to her home at 6 a.m. and took her into custody.
“That stays with you,” Hinds’ husband, Fritz Hansen, who attended the hearing, said of the arrest. “It’s a little traumatic.”
A group of about 30 protesters and Hinds’ friends and family gathered outside of the courthouse at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, dressed in inflatable costumes. They held banners reading “Do Not Obey in Advance” and “Free Speech for All.”
Protesters from Hamden, Milford and Tolland said they had received emails about Hinds’ hearings, and others said they had heard about the demonstration from friends and fellow activists, or via Facebook.
“Why would you be prosecuting this case where this person is clearly exercising their First Amendment rights?” protester Laura Gordon asked.
Hinds’ supporters were joined by her state representative.
“I’m really happy to stand with her today,” Laurie Sweet, the Democratic representative for Connecticut’s 91st district, which includes Hamden, said of Hinds.
The New Haven Superior Court is located at 121 Elm St. Reeti Malhotra contributed reporting.
Contact ADELE HAEG at adele.haeg@yale.edu
THROUGH THE LENS
BEINECKE MANUSCRIPTS
Photographs by Braden Mathis Contributing Photographer
“When we go out there and do what works for us and we’re working hard as a team, then the results will come. That’s our mentality heading into this one.”
CONRAD
LEE, MEN'S SOCCER
FOOTBALL: Bulldogs look to extend Lions’ losing streak to five
The football team will welcome the Columbia Lions to town on Saturday.
BY BRODY GILKISON STAFF REPORTER
Team 152 (4–2, 2–1 Ivy) will host the Columbia Lions (1–5, 0–4 Ivy) this weekend at the Yale Bowl in the last leg of the Bulldogs’ three-game homestand.
The Bulldogs are coming into the matchup looking to build upon their momentum after two straight wins, including a 40-point win over Stonehill and a 22-point victory over Penn. Meanwhile, Columbia enters the contest desperate to pick up a win after losing their fourth game in a row, the last loss being a 49–3 shellacking against Dartmouth.
Take advantage of a weak offense
On paper, the separation between the two teams’ playmakers is clear. Throughout its rocky season, Columbia’s
offense has struggled to find a go-to quarterback to rely upon.
Five different players have been used at the position so far this year. Chase Goodwin and Caleb Sanchez have split the majority of the reps so far, combining for 900 yards while only completing about half of their passes. On the ground, the Lions’ gameplan of running the ball by committee has yet to achieve much success. Currently, Columbia is averaging less than 100 rushing yards per game and has only three running touchdowns on the year. On the ground and in the air, the offense has struggled greatly.
“I’ve never walked off a field and felt the way I do right now,”
Columbia head coach Jon Poppe said in a news release following their loss to Dartmouth. “And that’s not to take anything away from Dartmouth, but
MEN’S SOCCER: Bulldogs heading to Philadelphia to face Quakers
BY DAVIS ZONG STAFF REPORTER
The Bulldogs (2–8–3, 1–3–1 Ivy) are set to head south to Philadelphia to face off against the University of Pennsylvania (7–3–4, 2–1–2 Ivy) at Rhodes Field on Saturday.
With only two games remaining in the Ivy League competition — and just the top half of teams advancing to the Ivy League Tournament — the Bulldogs face two must-win contests to keep their postseason hopes alive.
“On our end, we know that this is a must win game for us to make
the Ivy Tournament this year but at the same time it’s just another game,” goalkeeper Conrad Lee ’26 told the News.
While Princeton and Cornell have already clinched tournament berths, just four points separate the third- and eighth-place teams in the standings, leaving the final two spots up for grabs among the remaining six teams.
Penn’s eight conference points puts the Quakers in third place, behind Cornell with 12 and Princeton with 15. Yale’s four points have them tied for fifth with Harvard,
SEE MEN'S SOCCER PAGE 10
LIZA KAUFMAN, PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
we gave them 21 points early and just weren’t able to respond with enough consistent execution to even put ourselves in position to make it an entertaining football game.”
This week, the Lions will match up against a strong Yale defense, so Poppe, his offensive staff and their players will have to make big changes if they hope to find more success. By both creating turnovers and holding strong on critical downs, the Bulldogs have been stout on the defensive end of the ball all season. Playmakers such as Abu Kamara ’27, Ezekiel Larry ’27, and Inumidun Ayo-Durojaiye ’26 will look to wreak havoc all over the field and shut down a weak Columbia offense.
“Our defense has really come together to work as one cohesive
SEE FOOTBALL PAGE 10
WOMEN'S HOCKEY: Yale to face Cornell and Colgate in New York
BY AUDREY KIM CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
The Bulldogs (3–1, 1–1 ECAC) will play two road games over the weekend against the Cornell Big Red (5–0, 2–0 ECAC) and the Colgate Raiders (4–4, 1–1 ECAC) after opening their season with a strong start.
The women’s ice hockey team opened the season with two wins in a row at home against Robert Morris (5–5, 3–1 AHA), but they fell 1-3 to Quinnipiac (9–1, 1–1 ECAC) during their first conference game of the season on Oct. 24.
“It’s still very early in our season, as we’ve only played four
games so far, compared to some of the non-Ivy teams in our league who have already played ten,” Gracie Gilkyson ’26 wrote to the News.
“We’ve had a solid start, winning three out of four games, dropping a close one to Qpac.”
On Saturday, the Elis bounced back with a victory against Princeton (3–1, 1–1 ECAC).
Senior forward Carina DiAntonio ’26 scored four goals, including one in overtime, to beat the Tigers 4-3.
The Bulldogs faced an unusually high turnover after last season and have added seven SEE WOMEN'S HOCKEY PAGE 10
HOCKEY: Bulldogs slated to return to the ice on Sunday
BY LIZA KAUFMAN STAFF REPORTER
The Yale men’s hockey team will travel to Hanover, New Hampshire on Sunday to kick off its 2025-26 season at Dartmouth.
After a disappointing 202425 campaign (6–21–3, 5–14–3 ECAC), the Bulldogs are looking to open the season with a strong performance in their nonconference matchup against the Big Green. They’ll return home to Ingalls Rink to face off against one of their biggest ECAC rivals, Quinnipiac, for their home opener and the annual War on Whitney on Friday, Nov. 7.
Although the team has been scrimmaging internally for the past six weeks, forwards Zach Wagnon ’28 and Micah Berger
’28 said the stretch from last season’s final game in March to the season opener marks the longest time they’ve gone without playing a competitive game, leaving the team ready to hit the ground running.
“I think we’re itching to get going,” Berger said in an interview. “We’ve been competing with each other for six weeks now. That’s too long, so we’re ready to play someone else.” Wagnon echoed Berger’s sentiment.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve played a game. The longest time in my life I’ve gone without playing,” Wagnon said in an interview. “We’ve got a really good group of returning guys, and our freshmen are really good players too, so I’m just excited to
hopefully get some more wins this year and win a championship.”
The 2025-26 season is the team’s first campaign under interim head coach Joe Howe, following the retirement of longtime coach Keith Allain.
“It feels like we’ve built something really good this fall,” Wagnon said. “We’ve got a bit of a breath of fresh air and some new systems, but we’re still building off everything Keith accomplished.”
Berger described the team’s mindset as “a page turn” toward “a new wave, a new type of energy.” Howe has emphasized communication and teamwork as pillars of the team’s culture, players said.
“Coach Howe has done a great SEE MEN'S HOCKEY PAGE 10
LIZA KAUFMAN, PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
The men’s soccer team is facing two must-win games to qualify for the Ivy League Tournament.
HALLO
WKND
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2025
PERSONAL ESSAY
On the paranormal
Before I was born, my family lived in this old house. It was one of those spooky houses at the end of a block — falling apart, boarded up windows, dead trees lining its perimeter, the whole lot. The neighborhood kids rumored it was haunted, but my family wasn’t so convinced.
One day, my brother, who must’ve been four or five years old at the time, was sitting on the floor and playing with a ball. My mom didn’t think much of it. He giggled and giggled, and eventually began talking to someone. My mom, annoyed by the noise, looked up at my brother. He had rolled the ball across the room towards the garage door. In the next moment, without my brother moving, the ball slid across the room back towards him.
For the logical members of the audience, you might assume that an old house with a faulty foundation probably leaned a certain direction, and my brother just happened to be throwing the ball up a slant. My mom probably thought the same thing. But in the same instant that the ball shot across the room, a shrill laugh echoed throughout the house. My
brother’s mouth had been com pletely and utterly closed.
Fearful of the possibility of the paranormal and no doubt the decrepit nature of the house, my family decided to move far away. Since then, my mom and, by extension, the majority of my family began to believe in ghosts. This newfound belief, her personal belief in hechicería — Mexican witchcraft — and superstitions created a profound conviction in the otherworldly. This conviction became espe cially prolific after my grandfather died when I was in middle school. Every bird perched on our window sill, slight chill or fortuitous occur rence was the doing of my grand father’s ghost. And then when my grandmother died, my mother con tinued with the same narrative. Now, it was the two of them working in unison, reunited in the afterlife. After they died, my mom moved into their old house. As we began moving things out — sorting through old vases, tchotchkes and various reli gious paraphernalia — things kept breaking. It felt as though the house was telling us to stop taking things out of it. To my mom, this was a paranor mal reflection of my grandpar-
ents’ wishes from the afterlife. She believed that their ghosts kept destroying things to scold her for disrupting the sanctity of the house. A house she had grown up in, and they had cultivated. Despite this, she continued to move things out. We carried glassware, old clothes and rusty hardware to Goodwill, which allowed not only herself, but also her parents to move on from attachments to the worldly. As a kid, I thought of it as some form of grief-induced psychosis. I never liked to believe what my parents believed, so I rejected religion, paranormality and any worldview held by them. However, in hindsight, there is a certain beauty in believing in the paranormal. I know scientifically, it doesn’t make sense. A “soul” is not really real. Our brains are full of neurons firing signals to formulate a personality. But beyond science, I feel that there is a metaphysical necessity to the existence of a soul. A soul that will outlive your body. A soul that will exist across time and space for some unknown eternity.
It’s almost too sad to think
COLUMN: ON THE ROAD
that we form all these connections with people, build so many memories, live such full lives and one day that all just stops. You’ll cease to be forever. So maybe it’s a way of escaping fear, and easier to think that there is no finality to your life, that you are eternal in some form or way. Beyond the fear of finality, it’s comforting that loved ones might be looking out for you, past their time on earth. Even if you can no longer talk to them and reap the benefits of all of their endless wisdom, they’re still there. An omnipresent force helping to guide you through life. Even as a skeptic, as someone who is against believing in the non-scientific, this fact has become too attractive not to at least entertain. So now, when my mom talks about ghosts — about feeling her father guiding her through life, about how present my grandparents are in my life, how they contributed to my acceptance to Yale — I no longer scorn her in my mind, or scoff at the idea of ghosts, because beyond reason, it’s quite a sweet thought.
Contact LUCAS CASTILLO-WEST at lucas.castillo-west@yale.edu
In a bid to make myself more interesting, and also in an attempt to fix my TikTok-ruined attention span, over the past few years I have taken up an avid horror movie hobby.
Whether it was “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “American Psycho” or some indie horror that I won’t write about in order to keep my interests underground, I found myself fascinated by the genre. The gore, the subject or even the quality of the film didn’t matter — I was obsessed.
While I still attest that the most horrific thing I have ever watched is the so-called “red wave” of the 2024 election, the best horror movie I have ever seen is, by far, Meryl Streep DRA ’75 and Goldie Hawn’s “Death Becomes Her.” While it does feel like a betrayal of the original “Scream,” which has been in my Letterboxd top four since I first watched it nearly a decade ago, there is something in Streep and Hawn’s performance that makes it rise above the rest. It also helps that Streep is a fellow Yalie — in the School of Drama class of 1975.
Much of the movie follows the traditional narrative of an affluent man leaving his wife for a more attractive — read: younger — woman. When the ex-wife, played by Hawn, reappears on screen, with her wrinkles gone and her hair shiny, the movie diverges from that traditional narrative.
Instead of cashing in on traditional horror tropes, the movie sensationalizes the aging that is a natural part of being human. When the new wife realizes that she is no longer the more attractive — again, younger — of the two she begins her investigation into Hawn’s rejuvenation. She discovers and takes advantage of a magical process of rejuvenation practiced by a mysterious doctor.
Since the characters cannot age, their death is out of the question. But over the course of the movie, the women become more and more disfigured as they attempt to kill one another as a result of their ongoing rivalry. As decapitations become inevitable and torsos are blown out of place, the Frankensteining of body parts — aka plastic surgery — starts to make them beautiful once more. Indeed, this film certainly is a horror movie. But I would argue something is happening, too.
It is true that the movie was originally a love triangle, but it devolves into a story less about
the husband and more about the wives. The horror is not in losing the man, but instead in losing youth.
It is no secret that our modern world is especially concerned with staying young, or at least looking young. Lip filler, boob jobs, Korean skincare are all in their own ways a sort of magical process. By trying a new sunscreen that promises to protect against wrinkles, we too are playing into the fears that shape Streep and Hawn’s actions in the movie. The film is amazing not just because it is horrific, but because it challenges that fear we have within ourselves: the fear of aging. The monster is not someone hiding in a closet or jumping through an open window; it is time itself.
The film is one that has overcome the monster of time. With a Broadway run and a Sabrina Carpenter music video referencing it directly, the horror of the film is one that seems to remain prevalent. At the time of its release it was a resounding success, with box office numbers to prove it. But in my opinion — as a rather inexperienced movie reviewer, despite my committed relationship to Letterboxd — the true success of the movie comes from its ability to critique the societal problems that remain relevant 30 years on.
Many of my friends don’t quite grasp my love for the film. When I showed it to my best friend for the first time, I remember her saying that she didn’t see the point of the dramatics. At no point in the movie was it necessary for Hawn to have a gaping hole in her torso, my friend said. But as I said then — and as I do now — the sheer outrageousness of the film challenges the outrageousness we live with every day. Whether it is the literal taping and gluing of bodies within the movie, or the botox and filters of our day, “Death Becomes Her” speaks to the seemingly universal fear of aging that plagues our modern age.
So, whether it is the Broadway production or the film itself — I would strongly recommend watching it all the way through — “Death Becomes Her” is worth the watch. Maybe you don’t see the relevance of it. Maybe you’ve risen above the anti-aging tropes. But maybe, just maybe, our horrors are still the same.
Contact ADELE HAEG at adele.haeg@yale.edu
Becomes Her” Movie Review
Illustration by Lucas Castillo-West
Illustration by Jane Callanan
// LUCAS CASTILLO-WEST
PERSONAL ESSAY CULTURE
Be A Raiders Fan This Halloween
Embody the spirit of the Raiders fanatic and dress up this Friday.
I’ll be dressing up this Halloween. As I enter my 20s, fewer and fewer people around me celebrate the holiday. I’m not a partygoer or daring enough to go trick-or-treating at my age, but I still love the tradition of wearing something I wouldn’t have the boldness to wear any other day. It’s rare to find a group of adults willing to go out in public dressed up in ridiculous makeup and costumes. It’s even harder to find a community willing to do that outside the month of October. But fans of the Las Vegas Raiders do that every Sunday afternoon.
Raiders fans embody the spirit we’re missing in Halloween. Fans dress up in costumes — pirate outfits, skeleton suits and silver and black facepaint — and fill stadiums at both home and away games. In my lifetime, the Raiders only had a winning record twice — in 2016 and 2021. They’ve been historically bad for a historically long time. But even after years of terrible management and a rotating roster of bad quarterbacks, fans still don silver and black every week.
I personally couldn’t choose any other team. When I was born, I was christened into the church of John Madden and became a diehard fan of the previously Oakland and currently Las Vegas Raiders. I’ve spent my life waiting with baited breath for everything to fall into place and all the years of suffering to pay off in a Super Bowl victory, but such a moment never comes.
On a rainy and windy November afternoon in 2019, I saw the Raiders play against the Jets. As I walked into MetLife Stadium wearing a modest sweater and Raiders beanie, I saw a sea of silver and black pirates gearing up for the game.
I was unfortunately seated in a section full of Jets fans, but there were a few characters dressed up from head to toe in Raiders-inspired attire. A man two rows in front of me was wearing a Raiders uniform with skulls on the shoulder pads and a face full of silver makeup. His significant other was wearing a silver and black pirate outfit with a dress that looked handmade. Despite the poor weather and even poorer performance by the team, they didn’t sit down the entire game. The couple stood defiantly in a sea of green.
Timothy Dwight College’s Halloween costume contest takes place in the dining hall on Friday night, and I am participating. I am not sure who else will be in costume. Standing defiantly in a sea of what will probably be everyday outfits, I’ll look to see who still has the boldness and the spirit of the season in mind. While most of us won’t be dressing up as a swashbuckling Raiders fanatic, I hope the spirit of those fans who dress up every Sunday, rain or shine, will possess us.
Contact CIELO GAZARD at cielo.gazard@yale.edu.
PERSONAL ESSAY
Believing in Halloween
Haunting Harkness
An investigation into Yale’s supernatural scene
// REETI MALHOTRA
Connecticut ghost-hunters and bloggers alike would like you to believe that Yale — and the old New Haven grounds upon which it was founded over three hundred years ago — is haunted.
A “New Haven Ghost Walk” promises an insight into the secrets of our ever-so-familiar campus that remained concealed in the darkness. For $20 — the discounted rate for those with a student ID, of course — you might be one of the “select few” that has “the courage to expose these tales for what they really are.” For those who lack the spirit to investigate, however, here is a glimpse.
Freshmen in Vanderbilt Hall on Old Campus may find themselves bewildered by a door that remains forever sealed somewhere in their entryways. They dare not open it, for beyond its opaque surface is a vacant suite designated only for a descendant of the Vanderbilt family who has been admitted to Yale. Did somebody tell Anderson Cooper he was privy to this when he was at Yale? Or did Cornelius Vanderbilt himself request that he be placed in Durfee?
Halloween used to be scary. Now that it’s not, it’s up to us to reinvent it.
// FABEHA JAHRA
Halloween was always the one holiday that didn’t require a specific kind of belief. There was no Santa to stay waiting up for, no bunny with chocolate eggs to track on a pastel map. It didn’t hinge on a single figure or promise. Instead, Halloween asks us to believe in something more abstract — the night itself.
As a kid in New York City, that belief came easy. The world shifted slowly every October, when the air turned cold enough to sting your nose and the days shortened into thin slivers of sunlight. The aisles at CVS filled with plastic skeletons, orange hanging lights, rubber spiders and cheap polyester costumes that smelled like dust and electricity. The blocks that were usually loud and hurried slowed down, filled with costumed kids zigzagging between brownstones. Apartment lobbies opened their doors, bodega owners handed out candy from behind the counter and strangers actually smiled at each other on the street. The air smelled like wet leaves and sugar. I used to believe so completely in Halloween magic that the air was different,
that the world was suspended in black and orange, that behind every mask there might actually be something strange. Fear was fun then — harmless and shared. The dark wasn’t something to avoid; it was something to enter together.
I don’t trick-or-treat anymore. Halloween has become campus events, crowded parties and late nights that feel less like pretending and more like performing. Costumes are ironic now, planned in group chats, chosen for photos instead of imagination. Still, every year, something in me flickers once the temperature drops. I see a pumpkin glowing in a Silliman window or a cute dog in a costume, and I’ll feel that same old electricity again.
I think I still love Halloween, just differently. As a kid, I loved the magic of it, how the city transformed for a night and let me believe that anything could hide behind a mask. Now, I love the permission it gives to step out of who we are for a while, even when we may know better. I love the lightness it brings to a semester that otherwise feels heavy. I love that it still asks us to play along. Halloween doesn’t vanish when you grow up; it changes shape. It hides in small rituals, in candlelight and laughter, in the way the campus glows a little warmer during the weight of fall. And maybe that’s the best kind of belief — not blind, not childish, but chosen.
Contact FABEHA JAHRA at fabeha.jahra@yale.edu.
For the regular folk housed in Vanderbilt, however, they may still feel a chill down their spine. As the folklore goes, Cornelius Vanderbilt himself occasionally makes his presence known in the hall. Yet, he reserves his “wisdom” and criticism for his descendants. Hauntings are only for the common man, after all. Students in Berkeley may find themselves in a similarly blood-curdling situation. A phantom supposedly haunts the North Middle dorm — a location I could not verify, save for an 1870 Yale Literary Magazine piece that writes of its eerie nature. Reports of a “strange light” emanating from “uninhabitable, desolate” apartments in the college began in the 1860s. Though renovations and better lighting fixtures may have resolved these sightings since, the “nocturnal” spirit is still said to haunt the college and its inhabitants. Be warned.
The Skull and Bones tomb — an object of much popular culture speculation — also boasts its skeletons and aggrieved spirits. A Chiricahua Apache, Geronimo, is said to float through the tomb’s halls, forever disturbed by the alleged robbery of his remains by Bonesmen decades ago.
Yet perhaps the true haunting lies in the disconcerting details of Geronimo’s death: a story of the Apache resistance to white colonization.
Of course, the ghost stories of Yale and New Haven are incomplete without the folklore of Grove Street Cemetery and the bodies buried beneath its paved surfaces. During the day, one may spot students and locals walking beneath the ominous archway that reads, “The dead shall be raised.” By nightfall, they may witness secret society rituals amongst the epitaphs. A short walk away is the New Haven Green. Be - neath intersecting pathways and green earth are 5,000 bodies. After yellow fever epidemics in the late 1790s, the Green was no longer used as the chief burial ground for New Haven, owing to how over-crowded it had become. By the early 1800s, several tombstones and monuments had been moved to the new cemetery, Grove Street. However, all of the bodies were left in-place; the spirits of whom remain tethered to the Green for eternity.
Amongst hallowed halls as old as ours, one is bound to find stories of hauntings and chilling cold-spots and ghosts. With age comes history, and with history, a healthy level of folklore. As I hear the whispered rumors proliferated by generations past of Yalies, I cannot help but wonder what the stories whispered of our time will be. What are our ghost stories at Yale? I can think of a few for myself: my haunting first-year dorm, the ghastly frat basements I traversed as a wide-eyed freshman (because seriously, what are those?) and the stacks at midnight (not just because of how creepy they can be, but more so because of how much I’ve been led to cry there). Plausible or not, our ghost stories give Yale a certain texture. This is a place where stuff happens, from secret society rituals to Vanderbilt-wisdom-doling. Stuff so profound, it continues to be spoken about centuries later on ghost walks of our campus as students bustle by.
Contact REETI MALHOTRA at reeti.malhotra@yale.edu.
NELLIE KENNEY
// CIELO GAZARD
PERSONAL ESSAY
blowing out the jack-o-lantern
Reflections from the girl with a November 1st Birthday
// LILY SCHECKNER
Converse-clad feet dragged on the ground. A wig itched my head. Holding a goodie bag weighed down with Twix, I walked the path of my last Halloween. It was chilly, a few years before climate change turned my Maryland suburb into a 60-degree October oasis. I was somewhere between 11 and 12. My breath still fogged in the air. At my side were the girls I would spend every Oct. 31 with for the next five years. They, too, were experiencing their last Halloween. We held hands, skipping from house to house, completely unaware of the finality of the familiar scene.
From late preschool until seemingly eternal tweenagehood finally ended, Halloween meant a few things to me. It meant an unabashed celebration of my neurotic imagination, an opportunity to mold myself into every — and I do mean every — female character from “Harry Potter.” It meant wandering the streets without parents, pointing out the best decorations and ranking treat offerings based on taste, size and number we were allowed to snatch from metal mixing bowls. Assuming my parents let me ride my sugar high into the wee hours of the morning, it also meant another Nov. 1 birthday, slowly creeping towards an exciting epithet ending
with “teen.” With every late night horror movie screening and high-stakes candy exchange on a friend’s bedroom floor, I became a year older. And each year, we told the story of my mom: 9 months pregnant, on bed rest, but unable to restrain herself from getting up for every trick-or-treater until she went into labor.
While Halloween felt intensely exciting and grown-up for me in this face-painted, glitter-strewn decade, there was an inherent innocence to it. It was about group costumes before they required complex maneuvers of friend group politics. It was about gorging on candy before calories itched at the back of our minds. It was about candid pictures taken by parents instead of posed, kissy-face digital camera flicks.
Then, there was the last Halloween. Sometime after that, we realized that we were taller than the trick-or-treaters. Our voices were deeper. We no longer fit in. I gave my goodie bag to my little sister and went to find something new. Now, this holiday has a different meaning. No longer wear face paint and glitter, but eyeliner and corsets. No longer Halloween, but Halloweekend. Don’t get me wrong — I still look forward to it every year. But it’s undeniably altered by a
sort of hazy, sepia-colored filter. Friends change, leaving each other out of nights they used to join with held hands. Birthdays bring inevitable tears, moving relentlessly forward towards a terrifying adulthood. As each Oct. 31 blurs into Nov. 1, I’m looking back at funhouse mirror reflections of myself. Each costume, each face, each picture, multiplied by nineteen, matured me to who I am now. I can still see the monkey costume of my first Halloween as a baby, my mom’s water breaking as she handed candy to one trick-or-treater after another. There, for me, lies the true scariness of Halloween. The only thing I’ll be frightened of this weekend is my 19th birthday approaching like a freight train, signaling another year of inevitable change. Fortunately, that’s also where the magic of Halloween is preserved. With late nights and held hands. With new traditions and new friends. With new last Halloweens.
Contact LILY SCHECKNER at lily.scheckner@yale.edu.
Ah, yes, that time of year again: falling leaves, the smell of spice, crisp air and — who could forget — that annual plunge into Pinterest for “niche” Halloween costume ideas! Back home, the latter was practically tradition. This year, I have codified it in college with some suitemates: We lie on our friend’s fluffy rug, eat candy at 12 a.m. and scrounge around on the app for something new and, candidly, a little risqué. With four of us, we consider witches, Winx Club, knights and clowns. We consider our low budgets and look again. Suddenly, I hear a hopeful gasp.
My suitemate shows us a picture — Pinterest-perfect, of course — of a Middle Ages princess: a cone-shaped hat with a sparkly flowing veil, a flowy gown that’s amenable to shortening and the possibility of matching colors. A winning combo!
But in addition to a girl seeking a Halloween costume, I am a nerd, and this costume got me thinking. Why did women wear conical “hennins”? Why were they veiled? What were beauty standards like in the era of chivalry and the Crusades? I wanted to do a little research! Welcome to Yale, I guess. I’m not an expert by any means, but here is what I found interesting: The Middle Ages spanned a long period of human-scale time: about a thousand years, roughly 500 to 1500 CE. The fall of Rome plunged Europe into this time of uncertainty, nicknamed the Dark Ages — oooh, Halloween spooky! In Europe, power was decentralized, except for the Church. Remember the feudal system from middle school? Society was deeply hierarchical, and laws about attire were strict and in-
dicative of class. As you can probably surmise, women didn’t have many rights, and especially in the face of the Catholic Church, modesty and propriety were paramount. The woman was in charge of the household, children and sewing.
That being said, lower class women were active in the workforce to help the family — yet they still wore long dresses, which would drive me crazy if I was trying to farm. The only way for a low-class woman to climb the social ladder was to marry or become a nun.
Women’s rights would actually increase later with the rising importance of the Cult of Virgin Mary — which allowed society to think that women were not all devilish temptresses like Eve and could be innocently pure instead like Mary — and the Black Death, which killed so many people that women kind of had to be allowed to run their dead husband’s business. A win is a win.
But let’s talk of costumes! Especially in the later Middle Ages, clothing was a way to show wealth through opulent and expensive materials, which sadly will not be appearing in my costume, like metals, jewels, silks and furs.
The main dress, a kirtle or cotte, was worn over a linen chemise. The familiar gowns we see often in movies, with long sleeves that could sweep the floor are called houppelandes and could be worn over the main kirtle. Again, I will not be doing this for I fear I would be tripping over myself all night, but at least the sleeves were sometimes detachable for washing or replacing. The skirts were voluminous, and dresses were often high-waisted and belted for shape. A less-fash-
ionable form of the houppelande was a hoodless cloak called a “mantle,” which honestly I may be pulling out this weekend to avoid hypothermia.
Notably, women’s clothing didn’t have pockets back then, either, so I guess the fashion industry was already out to get us. Instead, women carried around pouches on a belt or string, like we carry purses, because even though a thousand years have passed, apparently adding pockets to women’s clothing is still too difficult.
But I digress. The aforementioned hennin could be pointed, double-pointed — which was called an escoffion — truncated or V-shaped. Topped with a veil called a cointoise for elegance and modesty, this structure covered the hair and emphasized the forehead — that’s right, receding hairlines were actually in! Women even plucked hair from the forehead for a higher hairline. Blonde hair was also desirable, and some women used a sheep’s bladder to achieve the color. Sadly, I couldn’t find this one on Depop. Although I may not approach complete historical accuracy with my friend’s mini dress and a ‘hennin’ from Etsy, it’s fun to see how far fashion has come. I’m glad, at least, that sheep piss will not be near my hair this weekend, and that I am more likely to catch the Yague than the Black Plague. Although, the rats on campus may have a different plan this Halloween...
Contact BEATRICE BARILLA at beatrice.barilla@yale.edu.
Illustration by Maia Wilson
PERSONAL ESSAY
The great costume congress
The most intriguing phenomenon this Halloweekend isn’t the ghosts and ghouls. It’s the group costume.
// ANGELINA KOVALCHUK
There’s something strikingly political about group costumes, coalitions of people agreeing to band together for the common purpose of dressing up on theme. We debate, plan and execute our costumes. Forget Congress — the real deliberations are happening on Halloweekend.
The negotiations are a trademark part of the process. Once the preliminary idea for the group costume has been drafted, the members are left to settle who should be what. What criteria do we apply to decide — physical traits? personality? a general vibe? Group chats become parliamentary floors amid the pursuit of consensus.
And consensus is eventually reached: My friend group is dressing up as the “Twilight”-verse this year, and while our conversations occasionally turned into rebuttals and defenses over who should be which character, we gradually came to unanimity. After many quarrels with my suitemate over who would take Edward and who would take Jacob, the glitter spray in my Amazon cart is definitive proof of who I ended up with. I conceded after an admittedly convincing argument from my suitemate that she matched Jacob’s dominant aura best.
Failure to coordinate may be disastrous, lest we endure ridiculously mismatched outfits. Our earnest yet vastly different visions may be the fundamental complication of group costumes. Our individual essences result in friction.
But are group costumes only whimsical manifestations of social contract theory — giving up our individuality to be part of the collective?
By agreeing to a group costume, we subject ourselves to a communal mythology that connects us with everyone else we dress up with. We want to let the world know we’re part of something, but that doesn’t have to compromise our sense of self.
I’ve always seen Halloween as a visual manifestation of dynamics — both personal and interpersonal. This is a chance to engage with the aspects of ourselves that mean most to us as individuals, our likes and dislikes, and put them out on display. It’s an opportunity to disrupt the images we perpetuate day after day and instead fully acknowledge that we are all acting, disguising and dressing up in a show of self-awareness. By putting on a performance through the disguises we assume, we are subtly acknowledging that we have a tendency to mentally structure the world in a similar way.
We conceptualize our surroundings in the same two-dimensional storylines that capture the characters we are emulating. But the social aspects of Halloween stress the value of “interpersonal” dynamics even more than these personal ones — they shape our relationships with our social circles and with the world around us. With a holiday that roots itself in the taboo and forbidden, that flirts with those incorporeal elements that lie on the fringes of accepted society, strengthening our sense of community becomes more justified. Being part of a group shields us from the macabre yet allows us to dance with it in ways we are comfortable with Group costumes strengthen the shared canon of our friendships. We cement our place in the group, reaffirming our own uniqueness within it. Yes, there is a theme, but we will inevitably personalize the vision in our own distinctive ways.
This creative diversity of Halloween costumes creates a sort of pluralism: Just like the multitude of characters and concepts we can emulate, there are a multitude of avenues for a group costume to be executed. It’s fun to see our personalities, and our choices, shine through. Is a trio’s outfit prompted by a spark of inspiration found in a TikTok, or because they miraculously have three different hair colors and thus are compelled by nature to be Mean Girls? Our costumes reflect popular culture — from founding fathers to Louvre robbers — as well as the niche subcultures closest to each friend group.
Whether we carefully coordinate or throw something together last-minute, we are so obviously disguised this weekend, and the way that we approach these disguises, even within a group, reveals something authentic about each of us. Despite the general incohesion of Halloweekend, each group becomes its own tightknit, cohesive unit in the grander system.
And considering Halloween as a time to unify, why should the holiday be exclusionary?
The more, the merrier — we are invited to involve friends who are not necessarily part of our circle, even if the costumes end up being somewhat spontaneous.
By costuming together this weekend and accepting the political deliberations with enthusiasm, we secure that sense of belonging — and a fantastic group photo for the feed.
Contact ANGELINA KOVALCHUK at angelina.kovalchuk@yale.edu.
mini frights
The All-Clear // Leonardo Chung I was seven, maybe eight, home sick and alone. The tornado siren started — long, metallic — even though drills were usually on the first Tuesday of the month, and today wasn’t. On drill days, a recorded voice said, “This is a test,” and the sound retreated into the background. But with no one there to reassure me, the wail pressed against the walls. I took a quilt into the bathroom, sat in the tub and let the cold porcelain leach the heat from my legs. The house once filled with familiar sounds rearranged itself into machinery: vent hum, fridge click and clock tick. The siren fell silent. I was relieved for a hum, a click and a tick before it wound back up again — mocking my momentary relief. I rehearsed the number, written on the fridge, that I should call in these situations — then remembered I’d lost my phone on the bus last week. The alarm stopped again. At this moment, the siren stopping only meant the dangerous part — when, if it were real, a storm might be forming. Silently, I waited for proof the day was still ordinary, like a car door, a squawking bird, or a screen door slapping shut. On the offbeat of the siren, I heard my neighbor pull into the driveway: a verdict. I drained the quiet like bathwater and went back to the couch.
Stalker in the Closet // Hannah Roller Truth is I have always been terrified of home invasions. I grew up in the middle of the woods. While there never was someone watching me from behind a tree, there was never any denying that someone could’ve been watching. It was October. The night was dark, the forest windy. I walked into my room and stopped. It smelled unmistakably like cologne. An undeniable manlike scent.
The logical conclusion was that I had a stalker. You would understand if you were there. The scent was too strong. I decided that I had to check my closet. There was nowhere else for him to hide. As protection, I took my hydroflask. I slowly opened the door and peered at one side and pulled my sweatshirts back to look at the other. No one was there. I got in bed, heart still pounding and decided I had to accept my fate. I woke up the next morning without being murdered in my sleep. I got up and started getting ready for school.
As I washed my hands I realized what the smell was: my mom’s new hand soap.
The Man in the Attic // Madisen Finch It’s 3 in the morning. The house has been asleep for hours. I am staring at my ceiling with a crack in the plaster, a result of the hundred year history that haunts the home we borrow from the ghosts. There are footsteps in the attic I have never been in. Logically, this is simply not true. But I can hear them. I can picture the man pacing, plotting my certain death. Maybe I’d made a joke that was a little too mean or left a gum wrapper on the playground or committed some unspecified crime. And
here was God coming to smite me. My elementary school principal was right — our actions do have consequences, and mine was my imminent death. I make my move swift, the blankets pushed down, light flashing from the flashlight stash I keep by my bed. The floor creaks as I rush to tell my sister about our impending deaths. She rolls over in her bed, groans. She shoves me away. The man is a failing grade, a missed assignment, a rejection. It’s coming to kill me from the attic. I’ll be in the same place tomorrow, with the same fear. The man in the attic has never left.
Swimming Away // Chanel Mohamed Two motionless orange figures lay atop a bed of blue aquarium pebbles. The water in the tank is the only thing still moving. This scene is a fish owner’s worst nightmare. I got my first two goldfish, Milo and Otis, on Valentine’s Day in 2021. I was ecstatic to finally have a pet. The next day I found them both dead. It was devastating, not just because of the carcasses of my pets. I was frightened because the prematurity of their death reminded me that we aren’t guaranteed constant companionship. Not from our pets, our friends or family. Something that felt like it would be there when I got home from school, when I glanced up from my homework or when I woke up in the morning was gone, unsuspectingly and suddenly. I was chilled. I wondered what had gone wrong. Nonetheless, I replaced them just as quickly as they came. Luckily I haven’t had to replace Milo and Otis 2.0. The scariest thing is not spending enough time with the people and things you love. Talk a little longer and walk a little slower. You never know when what we have today will be gone.
What Goes Bump in the Night // Peter Burns The trail disappeared into a black void in front of me as I took my first steps in my senior night experience. Spindly tree branches arched over it like they formed a gateway, and I was about to open the door. I saw nothing and felt nothing but my feet against the dirt and my own heartbeat. Your mind plays tricks on you in the dark: a flash in the corner of your eye, an unintelligible whisper in your ear that, when you look for its source, is missing. Every breeze feels like a spider crawling on the back of your neck. Alone as I was, my mind’s illusions kept me company. “Remember what the trail sounds like,” I thought to myself. The trail sounded hard, off-trail, like crunchy leaves. Lonely silence became space to focus, and my confidence grew with every step. A smile began to form on my lips until a blood-curdling scream, like someone was being tortured in the woods, pierced the still night. I froze, but somehow, I found it in my heart to look up. I will never forget what I saw: a tiny little owl on a branch, illuminated by the moon’s fleeting light.
Illustrations by Anna Qian and Claris Shin
COLUMN: ON THE ROAD
Silver and Spirits in Virginia City
// BY ALEXANDER MEDEL
“They found it on the property,” she said. I peered into the cabinet. In the dim light, I saw something round, dry and cracked — evidence of the many years it had spent beneath the earth. My eyes squinted further, revealing a pair of emptied eye sockets and a jaw missing most, but not all, of its teeth. As my reflection stared back at me in the glass, so too did a human skull. The tour guide whispered, “If you look closely, there’s a hole near the back of it. She was probably murdered.”
For one of the most haunted towns in America, Virginia City seemed when I arrived to be practically blessed. The hills basked in the unmasked glow of the Nevada sun. The air was as crisp as cowboys’ whiskey. The only apparitions to be seen were of storeowners opening their doors for the day. It seemed just like any other Western town I have visited in the past.
The first of many fascinating people I would meet that day was a kettle corn salesman. The gentleman, whose name I regret to forget, was what someone would imagine a cowboy would look
population greater than large cities of its day, such as San Diego or Dallas.
Mining was as dangerous as it was promising. Many braved the miasmatic darkness of the silver mines only to be unspared from the all-too-common tragedy of mining accidents. And since survival was not guaranteed, life was celebrated with gusto. Miners spent whatever bucks they managed to scrape together the only ways they knew how: fraternizing with faro checks, seducing gin bottles or settling into the night within the bedsheets of a bordello.
But for every boom, there is a bust. In a few years, the deposits were depleted. And as the mines emptied, so did the town. Homes were left to history. Dirt paths were uncratered by horse gallops. Saloon songs gave way to lonely whispers. Only spirits remained.
Every hotel has a legend, every saloon has a myth and every home has a ghost. I needed to see for myself whether Virginia City lived up to this reputation. The more I looked, the more I believed it did.
After the train ride, I spent some time
like. “Stop in the name of kettle corn,” he bellowed as I stepped out of my car. His genial voice was coarse as roughened leather but retained a cheerful bounce. His face sported a beard that mustered the complexity of ordered messiness. His accoutrements, a hat and pair of boots, have probably seen more desert sunsets than a sugar maple. Had I been John Ford, I would have cast him on the spot.
1859 was a serendipitous year in the western reaches of what was then the Utah Territory. A large deposit of silver — what would become known as the Comstock Lode — was discovered beneath the Virginia Mountains. Soon enough, fortunes climbed taller than the mountains that produced them.
Out of the bonanza that followed, a boomtown was born. As boulevards of mine tunnels stretched to cross a subterranean network of silver ore, the streets of Virginia City welcomed thousands beguiled by the luster of silver. By 1880, the town had a
walking along C Street, the town’s main thoroughfare. The street is home to some of the most haunted buildings in Nevada: the Silver Queen Hotel, the Old Washoe Club, the Delta Saloon. Much to my chagrin, I had no time to enter them. I gave them passing glances — failed attempts in catching something out of the ordinary.
The time was closer to noon than it was to midnight, and yet the day seemed to have spent all of its energy with nothing left to offer but an eerie air of resignation. My parents and I walked downhill toward a quieter part of town. The air grew cooler as we felt more lonely. After spending a solemn moment at Saint Mary’s in the Mountains, we walked down the street toward our final stop in town: Mackay Mansion.
The mansion was a humble, twostory brick structure. It was shawled in a weary white wraparound veranda. Atop its roof, at its center, stood a solitary chimney that grew tired the
more I looked at it. The mansion stood on a lonely street at the base of a hill. Although it was not a great distance from the bustle of town, silence pervaded the air. A whisper would have been irreverent.
From somber shadow emanated a voice, cheerful in tone and yet out of place. Our tour guide, Dawn, welcomed us from the porch. With an unhurried step, I entered.
An austere dimness suspended itself in the foyer. Sunlight seeped through the curtains sheepishly, as though it felt unwelcomed. Curios hid in shaded corners where no light dared enter. Dusted eyes in aged portraits cast unforgiving glances. We waited a while to see if anyone else would be coming. No one did.
Dawn began the tour with a history of the mansion. Built in 1859 by George Hearst, the home was later sold to the patriarch of the Mackay family, John
We ventured into the living room. A one-of-a-kind diamond dust mirror hung above the fireplace. Scattered about were chairs and cabinets whose only occupation was the gathering of dust. The electric wiring, installed directly by Edison and Bell, climbed through the walls unused and unhurried. After sharing more ghost stories, Dawn brought us to the staircase before sharing one last tale.
“Many people have caught a glimpse of Mr. Mackay climbing the stairs,” she said with a tone that made it seem like a common experience. Just then, a figure emerged from the stairs. I caught my gasp before it escaped my mouth. It was Dawn’s colleague coming in to fix the air conditioner. My heart raced that minute and tapped out a beat for the rest of the visit. Dawn set us loose for the rest of our
William Mackay. He was one of the Silver Kings, a group of men who would strike it rich from the Comstock Lode.
As she told her story, she pointed to photographs and artifacts scattered throughout the foyer, like a cabinet which housed, among other things, a woman’s skull. The air felt heavier. Every breath I took felt burdened by an invisible weight. Then the stories began.
The mansion is home to a plethora of phantoms: two young girls, a woman in the parlor and a “shadow man” rumored to be Mr. Mackay himself. She had just finished recounting the ghostly experiences of previous tours when a loud bang jolted my ears.
Our heads darted toward the window. A shutter slammed into the air-conditioning unit. Examining the damage, Dawn looked at us and said, “It was just a gust of wind.” She led us across the room to the mansion’s safe, ensconced cleverly behind a door. As the story goes, two robbers one night, hoping to steal the Mackay family’s store of wealth, broke into the home. Upon opening the door to the safe, they were shot at pointblank range by a guard who was sitting inside, waiting.
I walked into the safe. Tight and narrow, it was cold and uninviting. I stepped out as fast as I stepped in. Just then, Dawn looked at me and said, “They bled out where you were standing.” The floor creaked. I looked down to see my feet, without my telling them to, take a step back.
tour to explore the second floor and bottom floor by ourselves. We thanked her for a wonderful time and proceeded up the stairs.
The floor had a stillness that was more unsettling than it was soothing. We wandered down the corridor, our eyes glimpsing into rooms that seemed like windows into the past. The floorboard creaked beneath our steps, the air occupied only by our whispers. We saw no ghosts, but I constantly felt as though there was always something at the corner of my eye. Stepping outside, the day felt brighter and the air livelier. We left the grounds and were back on the street. I lingered for a moment, taking one last photograph. My mother leaned over my shoulder. “I feel like we’re being watched,” she whispered. I looked. Nothing.
An hour later, we were eating lunch at Carson City while my mother scrolled through our photographs. Swiping through dozens, her finger suddenly stopped. She zoomed in. “Does that look like a face to you?” she asked. I squinted. There was something. Perhaps it was a shadow. Perhaps it was a foggy window. Perhaps it was not. She swears the face looked thankful. I would like to think it was smiling out of gratitude for our company, for being respected and for feeling — just for a moment — alive again.
Contact ALEXANDER MEDEL at alexander.medel@yale.edu.
THE ELECTION
New Haveners will head to the polls Tuesday to vote in municipal elections. Early voting began last Monday and will end this Sunday. Three-term incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker is facing dark horse Republican challenger Steve Orosco. There is a contested election in seven of the city’s 30 wards. Will the city’s exclusively-Democratic elected leadership get a shake-up?
Elm City: City elections ruffle few feathers as most seats go uncontested, observers say
BY ELIJAH HUREWTIZ-RAVITCH STAFF REPORTER
Eyes around the country are trained on New York City’s three-way mayoral contest.
But in New Haven — where three-term incumbent mayor Justin Elicker is facing the Republican challenger Steve Orosco and only seven of the city’s 30 alder seats are contested — things are quieter.
“It’s pretty low-key,” Douglas Rae, a Yale political scientist and onetime city official, said.
It is the first municipal election in which New Haveners can cast their ballots early — as of Thursday afternoon, 928 already had, according to the city’s Registrar of Voters — and the last to pick for candidates who will serve two-year terms before a charter change kicks in. Three political observers interviewed by the News agreed that no major upsets seem likely.
“Elicker is a comfortable incumbent,” Rae said. “A mayor has got to really screw up to make it a worthwhile task to go after him and defeat him.”
The Elm City’s entrenched Democratic control tends to breed predictability and inevitability in its electoral politics, Rae added.
And it does little to inspire New Haveners to get out and vote, Patricia Rossi, president of the New Haven League of Women Voters, said.
“The big reason why the turnout is so low is because none of the races are considered partic -
ularly competitive,” Rossi said. Turnout in the municipal elections — which take place in odd-numbered years, not coinciding with presidential or midterm congressional elections — has tended to match the intensity of the mayoral race.
In 2019, when Elicker unseated incumbent mayor Toni Harp, nearly 30 percent of eligible New Haveners cast ballots in the general election. That figure dropped to 23 percent in 2021, when Elicker defeated Republican challenger John Carlson, and rose slightly in 2023 to 24.5 percent when Elicker beat Tom Goldenberg, who ran on both the Republican and Independent ballot lines.
The total number of active New Haven voters has increased by more than 17 percent since 2023, the most recent municipal election cycle. At 61,764 as of mid-October, that figure is the highest it has been in a decade.
Leslie Radcliffe, a longtime civic leader and former chair of the City Plan Commission who is currently helping the Republican and Independent candidate Miguel Pittman with his campaign to unseat Ward 3 Alder Angel Hubbard, speculated that incumbents across the city may be “taking things for granted.”
The seven contested alder races represent the same amount of competition as in 2023. Three incumbents are facing challengers, and there are open contests in four other wards spread across Wooster Square, Fair Haven, Fair Haven Heights and East Shore.
But these races have also been
quiet, Radcliffe said. She added that candidates are “not throwing rocks, they’re not being loud.”
In Radcliffe’s eyes, it is both this low energy level and a pervasive sense of apathy among New Haveners that drives voter turnout down.
“People don’t understand what's at stake in municipal elections,” Rossi said. “Who the mayor is, who your alder is, affects whether there’s going to be a park, whether there's going to be a bus that stops in front of your door, whether your streets are going to get cleaned — all sorts of things that affect you every single day.”
Rossi lamented New Haven’s low turnout and said that many residents underestimate their voting power.
“People say, ‘Oh, it’s just the way it is. All of my tax dollars are going down the drain, and it’s all for naught,’ when in fact, tax dollars are directed based on what our elected officials think are the right priorities,” she added. “And if you don’t vote, they don’t know what you think.”
To be sure, other Connecticut cities have seen lower turnout. In the 2023 municipal election, when just under a quarter of registered New Haveners turned out to vote, less than 20 percent of registered Bridgeport voters and 13.7 percent of registered Hartford voters did the same, according to data from the Connecticut Secretary of State. In suburban towns like New Canaan and Greenwich, meanwhile, turnout topped 50 percent.
Rossi, who is also the co-pres -
ident of Connecticut’s League of Women Voters, said that the discrepancy tends to recur in part because “it’s easier to vote in a lot of our suburbs and small towns than it is in our big cities,” where she said the polls are generally less accessible, especially for residents without cars.
Radcliffe said New Haven’s political culture was far more robust in the 1960s and 1970s, when she was growing up. She said that the decline began in the 1980s as the activist frisson of the previous decades dissipated.
Rae traces it back even farther.
“The last time there was any real doubt about which party was going to control the mayor's office was just after World War II,” he said.
New Haven’s last Republican mayor, William Celentano, left office in 1953. After that, Rae said, Democratic Mayor Richard C. Lee “thoroughly cleaned house and made it an Irish-slash-Italian patronage town with some meritocracy thrown in.”
And while New Haven’s demographics have shifted, Rae said that the one-party politics have not changed much. He is not confident that he will live to see the day the Elm City gets a two-party system.
Although the election may be quiet, major questions around housing, gentrification and local development lurk under the surface.
Rae said that debate over “zoning and other regulations for the downtown business dis -
trict to permit higher density and some taller buildings” — including those that contain labs — is “not discussed in any dramatic way, but is very much alive.”
Radcliffe, meanwhile, said that around the Elm City, “there is grave concern that those things that we love and appreciate and want to see in New Haven, in communities in New Haven, are at risk” because of gentrification and steadily-rising property taxes.
Rossi said the issues that “resonate” for New Haveners are taxes, public safety, housing and the management of the public schools — in that order.
And looming in the background of the election is President Donald Trump. After months spent drawing a sharp contrast between New Haven’s and Trump’s values — and after joining four lawsuits against the administration, the most recent one filed on Thursday — Elicker is framing his candidacy in terms of his commitment to “standing up” to the president, in the words of a campaign flyer.
“His presence weighs in heavily,” Radcliffe said of Trump. Of course, he is not on the ballot. In New Haven, Rae said, “it’s boring, actually. I mean, the electoral politics of the city are a big ho-hum.”
The last non-Democratic alder finished her last term in 2011.
Contact ELIJAH HUREWITZ-RAVITCH at elijah.hurewitz-ravitch@yale.edu .
Ayman Naseer / Contributing Photographer
PARTY POLITICS
RACES TO WATCH
For Mayor: Incumbent Justin Elicker vs Republican Steve Orosco
Ward 8 Alder: Democrat Amanda Martinelli vs Republican Andrea Zola
Ward 13 Alder: Democrat Mildred Melendez vs Green
Paul Garlinghouse vs Independent Luis Jimenez
Ward 16 Alder: Democrat Magda Natal vs Independent Rafael Fuentes
Ward 18 Alder: Democrat Leland Moore vs Anthony Acri, who is running on the Republican and Independent lines, vs Zelema Harris, a petitioning candidate
Ward 3 Alder: Half-term incumbent Angel Hubbard vs Miguel Pittman, who is running on the Republican and Independent lines
Ward 12 Alder: One-term incumbent Theresa Morant vs Robert Vitello, who is running on the Independent and Republican lines
Ward 30 Alder: Three-term incumbent Honda Smith vs Perry Flowers, a Republican
Mayoral Race: Orosco attacks Elicker at Yale Republican event
BY ANYA MAHAJAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
With dollar-sign socks on, fighter-turned-mayoral candidate Steve Orosco was “ready to rumble” with Manu Anpalagan ’26 and five other members of the Yale College Republicans at a public conversation Wednesday night about his bid for mayor against incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker.
In one of his last chances to appeal to voters at Yale before election day on Tuesday, the Republican nominee spoke about many of the issues facing the city, including crime, public education and affordability. He criticized Elicker, while emphasizing his working class roots. Early voting in the election began last week.
“I love disruption,” Orosco told the audience.
He vowed to push for “genuinely affordable housing” ––not just market rate units — and promised to “fund the police” to address crime in the city.
Orosco also highlighted the need for transparency within the Board of Education in New Haven, citing the low testing rates of New Haven public school students.
He emphasized the discrepancy between the literacy of public school students in the city and the prestigious reputation of Yale.
Orosco also personally attacked
Elicker, especially regarding the differences in their upbringing. Orosco grew up in a poor neighborhood of Newport, R.I., he said.
“Elicker is too scared to walk the streets by himself,” Orosco said. “If you’re going to be a leader of a place, you can’t be scared of your residents.” In a debate between the two candidates earlier this month, Elicker defended his record and criticized what he described as Orosco’s lack of engagement with the New Haven community.
“I’ve gone to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of meetings, and I have seen Mr. Orosco once in over a decade of heavy involvement in the city,” Elicker said at the debate. “We need someone that doesn’t just run for office all the time. We need someone that does, and that’s what I am.”
Orosco’s platform of disruption resonated with Diego Victoria ’27, a member of the Yale College Republicans. Growing up Republican in a blue city, he said he affirmed the importance of holding contrarian opinions.
“It’s always nice to have a dissenting voice,” he said. “New Haven is a city that needs a lot of change, and the only way to do that is to go away from the orthodoxy.”
At the close of his third term as mayor, Elicker’s support runs deep in New Haven. Many resi -
dents trust his ability to tackle the hard issues.
Wooster Square freelance journalist Frank Rizzo praised Elicker after voting early on Tuesday at City Hall.
“The statistics have gone down dramatically,” he said of crime in the city. “He also listens. My husband and I reached out to him for a number of matters, and he got right back to us personally.”
Other voters share approval of the incumbent mayor’s vision for the city. “New Haven is becoming very vibrant,” East Rock resident Andrea Connachi said after voting early on Tuesday. “You’re seeing all the energy, whether it’s the restaurants or building new structures so people have places to live.”
Anpalagan said he appreciated Orosco coming to Yale despite the small size of the Yale College Republicans, attributing Orosco’s visit to his respect and genuine belief in his own policy proposals.
“It’s not just about winning an election,” Anpalagan said. “For him, he actually believes in things he says, and he’s genuine. He’s true to himself and to the people that he speaks with.”
Victoria emphasized the importance of his coming to campus to inform Yale students
about local issues.
“A lot of Yale students, myself included, are not from the local area, let alone know the issues or things that are happening outside of campus,” Victoria said.
Anpalagan said that events like this foster ongoing dialogue, encourage students to speak their minds and help connect national political issues to local concerns that Yalies can engage with.
“Even at a place like Yale,
which is obviously not like a big southern state school where a Turning Point USA chapter or a College Republicans chapter would have like 200 people, it’s important to go everywhere and have these conversations,” he said. Yale College Republicans has been active since January 2024, according to Anpalagan.
Contact ANYA MAHAJAN at anya.mahajan@yale.edu .
Independent Party: Third party's five candidates include mavericks
BY LEO NYBERG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
The New Haven Independent Party wants to break Democrats’ full control of the New Haven Board of Alders. The party’s candidates for Tuesday’s municipal elections are nothing if not unconventional.
The Independent Party in August launched a town committee to help select candidates and has five candidates challenging Democrats for alder seats. While the candidates have positions across the political spectrum, three of the candidates strongly criticized Mayor Justin Elicker and the all-Democratic Board of Alders, saying the city has been mismanaged.
Although the party is distinct from the Republican Town Committee, but three of the five Independent candidates are also running as Republicans.
Rafael Fuentes Jr., the Independent candidate in Fair Haven’s Ward 16, said he does not care what people think of him or whether he wins his race. He said he is fed up with Elicker, whom he called a “scumbag” and other stronger terms in an interview with the News.
Incumbent Ward 16 Alder Jose Crespo, a Democrat who is stepping down, said Fuentes, who owns the repair shop Auto Authority, organizes drag races.
Fuentes said he used to partake in drag races when he was younger, but denied any involvement in organizing races now. Fuentes said he was arrested for alleged organization of drag races around 15 years ago, but the charges were dropped. He emphasized he does not touch street cars in his shop and has advocated for speed bumps in Fair Haven. The News could not confirm the arrest or whether charges were filed.
Robert Vitello is the Independent and Republican candidate for Ward 12. Vittelo told the News he is a former enforcer for the Colombo crime family and served two years in prison for kidnapping in 2000. He told the News that one of his main priorities is reducing crime in New Haven, and that his familiarity with gangs will help him achieve that goal.
He added that he is no longer involved in crime and has since coached a little league team to five consecutive championships.
Jason Bartlett, the founder and chair of the city’s Independent Party, said the party does not do background checks on its candidates and that he was unaware of the charges against both candidates. He added that he believes in second chances and fully supports them.
Bartlett said he felt confident about the chances of Independent
candidate Luis Jimenez in Fair Haven Heights’ Ward 13, Independent and Republican candidate Miguel Pittman in the Hill’s Ward 3 and Anthony Acri, the Republican and Independent candidate in Morris Cove’s Ward 18.
Vitello, Fuentes and Acri told the News they are not politicians and were initially reluctant to get into politics. All three said they were Democrats for most of their lives, but became convinced that a Democratic machine ran City Hall.
“The Democratic Party has its own people entrenched,” Acri said. “As an outsider like me it’s almost impossible to get in.”
Fuentes said he voted against Trump three times and is pro-immigrant. He said he doesn't subscribe to one party’s platform, which is why he did not run for the Democratic nomination. He said he has spoken to Bartlett but doesn’t “know his story.”
Fuentes and Vitello said they pride themselves on speaking candidly and without any filter. They were unabashed in their criticism of Elicker.
“Elicker’s scared cause he’s a fucking bitch. He doesn't walk these neighborhoods, he doesn't have the balls,” Fuentes said.
In an interview with the News, Elicker said he frequently walks in Fair Haven and his kids attend school in the neighborhood. He called Fuentes’ comments “silly.”
Fuentes criticized the city’s latest police union contract, saying Elicker “screwed” officers.
Elicker said the deal was almost unanimously supported by the police officers and it increased pay dramatically. He added that the city is attracting police officers to the force at a rate higher than any year since 2020.
Fuentes, Vitello and Acri all said they wanted to increase the number of police officers in New Haven.
Democrats have held unanimous control of the Board of Alders since 2011, which the Independent candidates said harms the city.
“They’re all yes guys or yes ladies,” Vitello said.
Fuentes said the alders are beholden to the mayor and Democratic party and risk losing their job if they vote against the party.
“When you’re in my role, it becomes clear you need to work hard to get each and every alder’s support, and to work collaboratively with them,” Elicker said. “There are no rubber stamps in this city.”
Fuentes even questioned whether Elicker and city officials were interested in solving New Haven’s problems. He thinks they are leaving problems unsolved to keep receiving federal and state funding.
“Fix the crime plus fix the drug overdoses plus fix the
homelessness equals no federal funding, no state funding,” Fuentes said.
Elicker said the city is working hard to address those issues, and said that logic doesn’t add up because resolving crime, homelessness and drug overdoses would not lead to a loss in funding.
Bartlett said having a non-Democrat alder would mean that a minority leader would have a say on all bills and could bring matters to the public eye that are being “quashed” in private Democratic caucus meetings now.
Acri — who is running in New Haven’s most Republican ward, according to data from the 2024 election — said that when he was knocking on doors as a state representative candidate in previous election cycles, people would slam the door in his face after hearing he was running as a Republican. Now, people are more willing to hear him out on the doorstep, he said.
Acri said he believes both major parties are too extreme, but said he needed to be on one of their tickets to be a serious candidate.
In the 2024 presidential election, 40.4 percent of residents in Ward 18, where Acri is running, voted for Donald Trump.
Contact LEO NYBERG at leo.nyberg@yale.edu .
On Wednesday night, Republican mayoral candidate Steve Orosco discussed his campaign priorities and vision for New Haven’s future in front of a small crowd of Yale College Republicans.
Henry Liu / Contributing Photographer
BOARD OF ALDERS
Ward 16 / Fair Haven: Teacher and auto shop owner vie for open seat
BY LEO NYBERG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
The candidates competing to represent Fair Haven’s Ward 16 on the Board of Alders share similar priorities and promises for the neighborhood — but their campaign styles are polar opposites.
Magda Natal earned the Democratic nomination after tenyear incumbent Alder José Crespo dropped out in August. Rafael Fuentes Jr., a Democrat for most of his life, is running on the Independent Party’s ballot line. Early voting for this year’s municipal elections is underway, and Election Day is Tuesday.
Crespo spoke at an August press conference for Natal’s cam-
paign. He told the News he generally supports Democrats but was not endorsing a candidate.
Both Fuentes and Natal said they want to clean up the streets, increase neighborhood engagement with politics and advocate for Fair Haven. Fuentes is a lifelong Fair-Havener who owns Auto Authority, a repair shop specializing in race cars. Natal teaches English as a second language to students at Wilbur Cross High School in East Rock.
Fuentes runs an unconventional campaign Fuentes said he is taking a relaxed approach to his campaign, relying on his knowledge of Fair Haven and the neighborhood's
familiarity with him, to carry him over the finish line.
For Fuentes, public safety in the ward is personal. The candidate said he has family members who have been killed in the city. “I’m what they call a Fair Haven baby,” Fuentes said. “I’ve lived my whole life in this neighborhood and I will die for this neighborhood.”
While Fuentes largely aligns with the Democratic Party on issues like immigration and opposition to the Trump administration, he is highly critical of New Haven Democrats and Mayor Justin Elicker. Fuentes displays signs supporting his campaign and Republican Steve Orosco’s bid for mayor on the fence of Auto Authority. He uses expletives
Independent
dropped
and derogatory language to refer to Elicker, Crespo and the Democratic and Republican Parties.
He said the Board of Alders needs significant change and a break from one-party Democratic dominance. Fuentes is running with the Independent Party but said he regrets not running on the Green Party ticket. Fuentes described his frustration with city services. After delays from the city, Fuentes said, he picked up syringes left by a bus stop himself and put them down a manhole cover. Fuentes said he once stepped on a needle, injuring himself. Although he supports Orosco for mayor, he disagrees with Orosco’s hardline stance on Yale. Fuentes said had back surgery at Yale New Haven Hospital, which he said saved his ability to walk.
Fuentes is fighting an uphill battle in a ward where Democrats have dominated electoral politics for the past ten years.
“I don’t care if I win,” Fuentes said. “I’ve been handed a lot of injustices by this city, and the only way I can do it is just give ’em the two middle fingers and fix the city and show their incompetence.”
Natal wants to increase neighborhood engagement and clean up the streets
Natal told the News she has been knocking on doors and campaigning throughout most of the summer and into the fall. She said her main priorities will be cleaning the streets, education and trimming trees.
Natal has support from the New Haven Federation of Teachers Local 933 and the Democratic Party.
Dave Weinreb, a teacher and Fair Haven activist, supported Natal’s primary challenge against Crespo and is continuing his support in the general election.
“As far as I’m concerned, there is absolutely one candidate in this
race,” Weinreb said. “Magda Natal is the person I’m expecting to win the role of alder and is the person who has absolutely worked for it.”
Both Natal and Weinreb were critical of Crespo’s aldermanic career, citing unresponsiveness and infrequent attendance at alder meetings.
“It’s a ward that hasn’t been well represented,” Natal said in a phone interview.
Weinreb said Crespo “radiated neglect.”
Crespo disputed these accounts and said many people in Fair Haven “do not entirely share this perspective.” He listed accomplishments in crime reduction, healthcare for immigrants and services for drug addicts.
As a teacher at Wilbur Cross, New Haven’s largest high school, Natal is an employee of the Board of Education. All city employees are barred from serving as alders, with an exception for teachers.
“I would have to recuse myself for things that come up for the Board of Education, but I don’t think that’s a hindrance in any way,” Natal said. “If anything, I think I could be a voice for education, being a teacher and knowing what our needs are.”
At Wilbur Cross, Natal focuses on students who are learning English as a second language and teaches them to communicate and write more fluently.
Fair Haven has a large Latino and immigrant population.
“It’s a fine thing, and actually a really exciting thing to have someone who understands what’s happening in schools also serving in a position of leadership,” Weinreb said.
Ward 16 includes stretches of Grand Avenue and Chapel Street in Fair Haven.
Contact LEO NYBERG at leo.nyberg@yale.edu .
Ward 13 / Fair Haven Heights: Three contend to succeed longtime alder
BY ELIJAH HUREWITZ-RAVITCH STAFF REPORT
Fair Haven Heights is getting a new representative on the Board of Alders this January.
Incumbent Alder Rosa Ferraro-Santana is stepping down after serving a cumulative 18 years on the legislative body. Vying to replace her as the alder for Ward 13 — which also includes part of the Annex — are Democratic candidate Mildred Melendez, Green candidate Paul Garlinghouse and Independent candidate Luis Jimenez. The contest is one of the two three-way races this cycle, along with Morris Cove’s Ward 18 race.
Ferraro-Santana told the News in a phone interview that she was not running for reelection because the demands of caring for a sick younger sister would have prevented her from “sufficiently” running a campaign.
“I have done the best that I could do over the period of time that I was in office,” she said, but warned that Ward 13 is “probably going to go downhill.” Ferraro-Santana said she is not endorsing any of the candidates, whom she said are all “doing it just for the title.”
There are 2,085 registered active voters in Ward 13, just over half of whom are Democrats, according to data from the city’s Registrar of Voters office.
Democrat runs on neighborhood connection, local growth Mildred Melendez does not like talking about herself.
“I’m a busy bee, a worker bee,” she said in a phone interview. “I’m not somebody who likes to be in the spotlight.”
The Democrat, who moved to New Haven from the Bronx at age 13 and has lived in Fair Haven Heights for the past decade, is currently a Ward 13 co-chair on New Haven’s Democratic Town Committee and the chair of the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals, as well as a paralegal for the state government.
She said that she is running for alder because “right now, where the country stands, it’s very important that our grassroots work grow and continue.” National politics are a large part of why she decided to run, although she is primarily motivated by her devotion to her neighborhood, she said.
Melendez said she wants to focus on revitalizing local businesses, holding landlords accountable and increasing the neighborhood’s connection to Fair Haven proper through revived bus routes.
The aldermanic hopeful is confident that her 10 years as a ward co-chair make her the right person for the job.
“I’ve walked up and down these streets for the last 10 years,” Melendez said, canvassing for Ferraro-Santana, meeting neighborhood residents and listening to their concerns.
Green runs as political outsider Paul Garlinghouse said he is a “fighter.” Running as a third-party candidate, he hopes to shake up the composition of the Board of Alders, which has been composed exclusively of Democrats since 2011.
“I’m willing to call out things that I think are wrong,” he said in a phone interview, and that “go against the interests of the party bosses.”
A handful of Greens have held seats on the Board of Alders in the past: John Halle from 2001 to 2003, Joyce Chen ’01, who began her tenure in 2002 but registered as a Democrat during her first term and Allan Brison from 2008 to 2009.
“I don’t dislike Democrats in general or particular Democrats, but anytime you have one party handing out everything and running everything, it’s a problem,” Garlinghouse said. “The Republicans will tell you, ‘Oh, we’ll be the opposition party,’ but they won’t be in New Haven. I don’t think they’re going to be in New Haven anytime in the near future.”
Garlinghouse, an attorney, said he has lived in Fair Haven Heights for around two decades.
This election marks Garlinghouse’s second bid for the Ward 13 seat: he challenged Ferraro-Santana in 2023 and received just over a quarter of the vote. He also ran unsuccessfully for state representative in 2018 and for registrar of voters in 2020 and 2024.
As Garlinghouse sees it, the greatest issues facing Ward 13 are crime — especially car theft — affordable housing and a suspended Grand Avenue bus route that connected Fair Haven Heights with the rest of New Haven.
He hopes to spur greater investment in Fair Haven Heights’ waterfront and ensure its green spaces are preserved.
Independent hopeful focuses on ward’s next generation
Luis Jimenez, a lifelong Fair Havener, is running for alder because of his own experience growing up in the Elm City.
“The first time I saw someone become a victim of gun violence
was when I was 12. I watched a group of men rob another gentleman at gunpoint, and when they were done robbing him, they shot him,” he said in a phone interview.
“That’s the domino that sent all of this into effect for me.”
Jimenez, a human resources specialist at a roofing contractor, is backed by New Haven’s fledgling Independent Party. He said he pledged to bring fresh energy to Ward 13. The 23-year-old said that his competitors “are generations older than me, which does not mean that they’re not smarter or wittier, but I think that a young mind like mine that has new ideas and has multiple things that I want to present to the city if I win — I personally think that the ward would be better.”
“I can bring a different perspective to the board and shed light on issues that others might have overlooked or may have not even known about,” Jimenez added.
The biggest issues facing Ward
13, he said, are gun violence and drug addiction. If elected, Jimenez said that he would prioritize “helping the members of the community who struggle with drug addiction,” including by informing them about available resources, getting teenaged Fair Haveners more involved in the community “to get them off off of the streets” and pushing for increased police presence in the neighborhood.
Both Melendez and Garlinghouse said that they had not seen much of Jimenez’s campaign. He did not attend a Ward 13 alder candidate forum last Saturday. He told the News that he was out of town because of a death in the family.
516 people voted in the Ward 13 alder race last cycle, not including those who wrote in candidates, according to data from the Registrar of Voters.
Contact ELIJAH HUREWITZ-RAVITCH at elijah.hurewitz-ravitch@yale.edu .
Democrat Magda Natal and
Rafael Fuentes Jr. (pictured) have both criticized the incumbent Democrat Jose Crespo, who
Veteran Alder Rosa Ferraro-Santana is stepping down, opening a three-way race in Ward 13 between Democrat Mildred Melendez (left), Green Paul Garlinghouse (right) and Independent Luis Jimenez.
BOARD OF ALDERS
Ward 1 / Downtown: Theodore ‘in the clear’ to represent downtown New Haven on Board of Alders
BY HENRY LIU STAFF REPORTER
Since Elias Theodore won the Sept. 9 primary for New Haven’s downtown alder seat, he has caught his breath — but he’s continued to stay busy.
In a phone interview with the News, Theodore described his work over the past month, which has included campaigning for other candidates while also meeting city officials so that he can hit the ground running on his first day as alder. Theodore, who is running uncontested in the general election for Ward 1 alder, highlighted his efforts to understand city structures and build relationships with his future colleagues on the Board of Alders.
“I’m in the clear, which is a great feeling,” Theodore said.
Theodore recalled his recent meetings with the city engineer and neighborhood specialists for the Livable City Initiative. Additionally, Theodore said he has been attending Dwight Hall advocacy committee meetings and Yale College Council executive board meetings. Ward 1 encompasses eight of Yale’s 14 residential colleges and all of Old Campus, as well as the New Haven Green.
“I’ve been trying to connect with more and more of the department heads and city employees
to really understand how the city works and how I can work with these people most effectively,” Theodore said, adding that he has been “trying to understand how I can, on day one, understand how these city structures work and how I can most effectively collaborate and work within them.”
After the stress of campaigning for the primary, Theodore said he feels relieved, and he has spent time campaigning for other candidates, such as Mayor Justin Elicker and Ward 18 Democratic candidate Leland Moore.
“It makes the most sense to spend my energy preparing for that day one and then canvassing and helping out the fellow Democrats in the city who don’t have an uncontested election,” Theodore said.
Though Theodore and his then-competitor Norah Laughter ’26 rallied student support for the primary election, students recently interviewed by the News did not seem particularly invested in the local general election, instead pointing to concerns about national developments.
Kaustuv Mohanty ’29, who lives on Old Campus, said his attention is taken up by national politics.
“I’ve been more interested in what the White House is up to than Ward 1,” Mohanty said.
Ward 8
Antonio Giraldez Greco ’29, who also lives on Old Campus, said that campaigning has been noticeably quieter around Yale since the primary.
“I don’t know how invested I was in this to begin with,” Greco said. “That being said, the flyers have come down, there have been
less social media posts and people are just talking about it less, really not at all.”
Andrey Sokolov ’27, who lives off campus, said his attention is taken up with the higher-profile New York City elections.
“The biggest issue on my mind are the elections happening in
HENRY LIU at henry.liu@yale.edu .
/ Wooster Square: Candidates hoping to replace incumbent focus on public safety, development
BY ELIJAH HUREWITZ-RAVITCH STAFF REPORTER
Change is coming to Wooster Square in January: Ellen Cupo, first elected to represent Ward 8 on New Haven’s Board of Alders in 2019, is not running for reelection.
Democrat Amanda Martinelli and Republican Andrea Zola are vying for her seat, which encompasses Wooster Square, Mill River, Ball Island and parts of Fair Haven and the Annex. Martinelli, who received Cupo’s endorsement, said she is running for alder to strengthen the community in the ward. Zola, meanwhile, said she is focused on public safety — particularly traffic control — as well as job creation and education.
Cupo, an administrative assistant in Yale’s women’s, gender and sexuality studies program and an organizer with UNITE HERE Local 34, said she is stepping down so that she can spend more time with her family, including her young son, who was born the same day she was first elected.
“This community work has to be more than just one person,” she said in a phone interview.
In Ward 8, registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans more than ten to one, according to data from the city’s Registrar of Voters.
Zola brings political lineage, focus on safety and jobs
Zola, a lifelong New Havener, is no stranger to local politics: her great-uncle, Biagio DiLieto, was mayor from 1980 to 1989.
“It’s really a legacy thing for me,” Zola said in a phone interview, referring to her “relatives on both sides who were politicians in New Haven and Hamden.”
Zola is currently a Ward 8 co-chair on New Haven’s Republican Town Committee. She previously served on the Wooster Square Monument Committee, where she helped select a replacement for the park’s Columbus Statue, and she currently owns and operates Little Dandelion Cafe in Wooster Square.
She has run for Ward 8 alder before. Zola challenged Cupo in 2023 and won just under 15 percent of the vote.
Last fall, meanwhile, Zola ran for a seat in the Connecticut House of Representatives, losing to incumbent Roland Lemar — a former Ward 9 alder — by 72 percentage points.
Recently, Zola said that she has observed a new energy in the New Haven air.
“During this time period, I’ve noticed more people saying that they are comfortable acknowledging that they’re conservative or Republican,” she said.
Zola picked up the endorsement of the Connecticut Young Republicans last month.
She supports the insurgent mayoral campaign of GOP underdog Steve Orosco, she said, and added that, “I’m also supporting any other politician who’s willing to step up to the plate during such an uncertain time.”
Zola said that “we are currently living in a BANI world,” referring to the term coined by futurist Jamais Cascio that stands for “brittle, anxious, nonlinear and incomprehensible.”
“We really have no idea what
could happen in the next 24 hours,” Zola said.
Zola said she is focused on “staying positive in any kind of leadership role or seat while we’re experiencing a BANI time, and staying focused on constituents and also staying positive for everyone, no matter what party they’re affiliated to.”
Zola said she is excited to see new businesses and housing in Ward 8 but cautioned that such development requires increased traffic control. Traffic, she said, is the biggest issue facing the ward, and one on which she would focus if elected.
Zola said job creation is also important to her as a small business owner, as well as education.
“Our school system really needs help,” she said.
The Republican candidate thinks she has a good shot at winning the seat.
“Really, anything can happen, anything goes,” Zola said.
Martinelli aims to strengthen Ward 8’s sense of community Martinelli, who was raised in Thomaston, Conn., has lived in
Wooster Square for a decade, she said. She previously worked for the Catholic Community Foundation and the Community Health Center Association of Connecticut for a combined decade and is currently writing a book.
She is running, she said in a phone interview, to “build a community sense back here in New Haven” and to expand the “closeknit community” of Wooster Square to all of Ward 8.
“In a world that we are really divided, I don’t want that to be here,” Martinelli added.
For the aldermanic hopeful, the biggest issues facing the ward are affordable housing and safety. Like Zola, she is concerned about high traffic.
If elected, Martinelli also wants to work with developers to balance growth with quality-of-life concerns, she said.
“I want it to be impactful, and I want it to be where people aren’t going to be priced out of their neighborhoods,” Martinelli said.
She also said she would also focus on funding New Haven’s public schools.
Cupo is enthusiastic about Martinelli’s campaign.
“I’m really excited that I have a neighbor who is stepping up, who is trying to meet this moment, understanding that there is so little we can do nationally, but we can do a lot at home,” Cupo said. Cupo said that if Martinelli is elected, she will be “ready to help her figure out how to be successful in the ward.”
“More than ever, we need to be a community that knows one another, that says hello in the street,” Cupo said. “I’ve had neighbors that have been kidnapped by ICE, and there’s just a lot of work to do. So it’s both community building in the neighborhood, but also making sure that we’re protecting people.”
482 people voted in the Ward 8 alder race in 2023, not including those who voted for write-in candidates, according to data from the Registrar of Voters.
Contact ELIJAH HUREWITZ-RAVITCH at elijah.hurewitz-ravitch@yale.edu .
After three terms on the Board of Alders, Ellen Cupo is not running for reelection and is hoping to pass the torch to Democrat Amanda Martinelli (right). Republican Andrea Zola (left) hopes to shape the ward’s next chapter herself.
my home city, which is New York City,” Sokolov said. Theodore graduated from New Haven’s Wilbur Cross High School. Contact
Ximena Solorzano / Head Photography Editor
Courtesy of Amanda Martinelli and Andrea Zola
THE ISSUES
Education: Public schools top of mind in mayoral election
BY EVELYN RONAN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
As Election Day approaches, New Haven’s public school system is under heavy strain.
Education has become a key issue in the election. Mayor Justin Elicker has defended his efforts to support New Haven Public Schools as his Republican opponent, Steve Orosco, has attacked his record. Many voters and teachers’ union members have expressed support for the mayor’s approach, but some have voiced concerns about ongoing funding issues.
In June, a budget projections report revealed that the department was gearing up for up to 129 layoffs if more funds don’t materialize quickly. Elm City Montessori School teacher Dave Weinreb described dilapidated buildings and extreme teacher shortages at the public schools.
“There are so many mold and facility issues in our buildings. They should be totally concerned that there are teachers that are not yet hired yet at this point of the year, that there are classrooms without enough substitute teachers,” he said.
For Weinreb, these issues reflect long-brewing questions about the Board of Education’s investment practices, institutional transparency and accountability.
But Weinreb, a member of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, expressed his shock at Orosco’s campaign.
“I plan to vote for Justin Elicker for sure. I cannot speak on behalf of NHFT broadly. I’m like, baffled and incensed that we have a MAGA Republican candidate that is being given any attention in our town. I appreciate a lot of the progressive and
democratic values that Justin stands for, and absolutely see him as the stronger candidate for New Haven public schools in the election happening next week,” Weinreb said.
Elicker, who is seeking a third term, has made NHPS reform a fixture in his campaign.
“I see it firsthand. My wife’s and my two daughters go to New Haven Public Schools, and we see the love and passion and time and energy that our teachers put into our kids. And we also see the challenge with resources,” he said.
Orosco has proposed shifting away from mayoral appointment and towards elections for Board of Education members. The board consists of the mayor, four members appointed by the mayor and approved by the Board of Alders, two elected members and two non-voting student representatives.
Elicker has largely dismissed Orosco’s platform.
“He doesn’t have positions on anything. So it seems like a clear choice to me. But I think more importantly, we just need people to get out and vote, because this election is important, but there’s also a lot of elections coming up that are hugely important to the success of our city,” Elicker said. Elicker has previously opposed calls for more elected Board of Education members.
Still, not all left-leaning voters are totally sold on Elicker’s reelection.
Some progressives argue that Elicker’s moderate politics fall short when stacked against the issues faced by NHPS.
Lance Boos, a substitute
teacher, joked that he would write in Leslie Blatteau, the union’s president, for mayor.
At a rally on Monday, Boos and fellow NHFT members called for a publicly elected Board of Education and a line-item budget that makes district spending more transparent to parents and taxpayers.
“I’d like to see there be more public input and voting for at least half the board candidates,” Boos said. “And I’d like to see transparency and accountability from the district. Why do we have so many assistant superintendents and all these positions downtown that never seem to be on the chopping block when there are budget cuts?”
Orosco, a businessman and political newcomer, has sought to tap into that same frustration, calling for the district to be independently audited and for spending to be redirected toward early childhood education, after-school tutoring and classroom staffing.
“Day one, we’ll tackle four things: early childhood education, reforming the board structure, auditing the budget, and providing after-school tutoring so kids can catch up,” Orosco said.
Blatteau, the NHFT president, told the News on Thursday she was busy with contract negotiations all day and could not provide comment.
The New Haven Federation of Teachers was founded in 1946. Sabrina Thaler contributed reporting.
Contact ANYA MAHAJAN at anya.mahajan@yale.edu .
Ward 18 / Morris Cove: Three East Shore candidates focus on Tweed
BY NELLIE KENNEY AND CHANTAL EULENSTEIN CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS
Three candidates — two Democrats and one candidate representing the Republican and Independent parties — are vying for the alder seat in East Shore’s Ward 18.
Incumbent Sal DeCola, who is in his seventh consecutive term, is not running for reelection.
“I think New Haven is a special place to live,” Democratic candidate Leland Moore, a Connecticut assistant attorney general who has lived in New Haven since 2016, said in an interview.
Cove’s infrastructure and limited police presence.
He said he would have a “pretty strong voice” as a Republican alder in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. A Republican has not served on the Board of Alders since 2011.
“So I’m looking forward to it.
I’m looking forward to working with the mayor and the other alders when I get in,” he said.
How can I vote early?
Moore, who won the Democratic primary election in September with the Democratic Town Committee’s endorsement, said he has based his campaign on advocacy and community outreach.
“I built my platform based on what I kept hearing over and over again,” he added. “People want an advocate, someone who picks up the phone.”
Republican candidate Anthony Acri, who has also been endorsed by the Independent Party, said that he has seen “lots of changes” in Morris Cove in the 20 years he has lived there.
Zelema Harris, a pension analyst and accountant, is running for alder as a petitioning candidate. Harris remained in the race after falling short in the primary election against Moore.
Early voting is available at New Haven City Hall until Sunday, Sept. 7. Early voters must register to vote before noon at least one business day before the day they vote.
“The changes have not been for the better,” he said.
Acri said Morris Cove and the city as a whole have untapped potential.
“New Haven should be the gem of the state of Connecticut. It’s got the airport. It’s got the train station. It’s got the harbor. It’s got Yale, the university, the museum. If New Haven should be the gem of the state of Connecticut, the Cove should be — it was — the gem of the city of New Haven,” Acri said.
Harris told the News in a phone interview that Ward 18, which encompasses the Morris Cove neighborhood across the New Haven Harbor from downtown, was “evolving.”
“It’s becoming more diverse. It’s not the same community that it used to be, but you also want to keep the foundation of the community that it was founded on,” she said.
Harris stressed the importance of building connections beyond the Cove.
“You don’t want an alder who doesn’t know New Haven. Because people don’t realize that your surrounding parts affect your part,” she said. Harris said she found it difficult to reach voters.
Carolyn Rostkowski, a Ward 18 resident who lives only a block from the airport, said.
DeCola, she said, has done little.
“DeCola hasn’t done anything. If anything, he’s enabled what’s happened down the street,” she said. DeCola did not reply to the News’ repeated requests for comment.
will start to move away because of disturbances from the airport.
“The Cove is a beautiful area, but if you think about it, people are gonna be forced out of their homes because of either high taxes or because the structures of their houses are shaking because of the vibration of the airplane,” she said.
“Streets need repair, sidewalks need repair. People are flying down the street to make their planes at the airport, so we have speed issues,” he said.
How can I vote on primary day?
Acri described Ward 18 as overlooked “like the stepchild” of New Haven, pointing to the
“I don’t think that it was really easy to get my name out. I don’t think that everybody wants to hear it because they’ve already made up their mind based on who they know,” she said. All three candidates agreed that Tweed New Haven Airport is a major issue for voters.
Residents complained about noise, traffic and travelers parking on residential streets.
“Look at the chaos,” Anthony Reckart, who lives only a few houses away from the airport, said.
Head to the New Haven Free Public Library at 133 Elm St. on Tuesday, Sept. 9.
“For me the biggest issue is the airport. The airport has dramatically changed life around here — I’ve lived here for 35 years,”
Airport-goers often park in front of Reckart’s home to rearrange luggage and figure out directions, despite the sign in front of his house saying that permits are required, he said.
Harris told the News that she worries that Morris Cove residents
Moore told the News that he plans to be an advocate for the community when it comes to “the quality of life issues that Tweed is causing.”
“I think the question is, what is Tweed’s plan to mitigate its impact on our community?”
Moore said.
Acri described the airport as “good for a lot of people,” but also noted that it has brought traffic and noise.
Acri said that it was the city’s responsibility to deal with issues caused by the airport. “The city needs to be more involved. It’s not the airport’s problem to provide traffic control or police. It’s the city,” he said.
Tweed New Haven Airport has plans to construct a new 84,000 square-foot East Terminal.
Contact NELLIE KENNEY at nellie. kenney@yale.edu and CHANTAL EULENSTEIN at chantal. eulenstein@yale.edu .
With city classrooms facing extreme staffing gaps and run-down buildings, educators, union members and candidates have split on how to best address the crises.
