Professors warned of grad enrollment cuts
BY ISOBEL MCCLURE AND JAEHA JANG STAFF REPORTERS
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is considering a plan to reduce graduate enrollment in the humanities and social sciences by 12 percent over the next three years as Yale navigates an increased tax on its endowment returns.
Stephen Murphy, the University’s vice president of finance and chief financial officer, presented a slideshow on the endowment tax and the proposed plan to directors of graduate studies across departments during a meeting on Aug. 25, according to professors who attended the meeting.
Football season to open Saturday
BY BRODY GILKISON STAFF REPORTER
For the seventh consecutive season, the Yale football team will open its season by hosting the Holy Cross Crusaders on Saturday.
Dating back to 2018, not including the canceled 2020 season, the Bulldogs and Crusaders have had a longstanding home-and-home agreement for a series of games in which they trade hosting privileges.
In the previous six matchups, Yale has gone 2–4, including a thrilling victory last year when running back Nate Denney ’25 scored a last minute touchdown to propel the Bulldogs to a 38–31 win. This season, the Crusaders have already played three games. However, they are 0–3 after losing against Northern Illinois, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.
The Holy Cross passing attack is led by Cal Swanson, who, in three games, has passed for 407 yards with a mediocre 53.4 percent completion rate. He has thrown for one touchdown with two interceptions. On the ground, Swanson also leads the team in yards with 111 yards and no scores. Running back Jayden Clerveaux is right behind Swanson in rush-
Jonathan Kramnick, the director of graduate studies for the English language and literature department, recalled the directors were informed about a constriction in cohort size for incoming classes starting in the 2026-27 academic year.
“We were told that there will be an across-the-board 12 percent reduction in the total number of students in the humanities and social sciences division of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences that will be implemented over a three-year term,” Kramnick said in a phone interview with the News. An emailed statement from Yale’s Office of Public Affairs and
Communications noted that the plan to reduce GSAS admissions was not finalized. The statement was attributed to Lynn Cooley, the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences who was present at the August meeting.
The statement did not confirm or deny the plan’s details, nor did it respond to questions about how reduced enrollment would be implemented and impact Yale.
“Conversations are taking place between GSAS leadership and the GSAS community to discuss ways we will adjust and adapt considering the tax on endowment income, ensuring that the school can continue to provide outstanding education to
Claire’s celebrates 50th anniversary
BY KELLY KONG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Claire’s Corner Copia marked its 50th anniversary on Wednesday with a special celebration at the vegetarian restaurant’s iconic Chapel Street location in the heart of downtown New Haven.
Claire Criscuolo and her late husband, Frank Criscuolo, opened Claire’s in 1975. The couple aimed to serve fresh, nutritious food to its customers and support the New Haven community through various philanthropic projects. Over the last 50 years, the restaurant has also grown into a city staple and beloved gathering place for students and residents.
“What began as a dream on this corner of Chapel Street has grown
into something so much bigger: a family, a community, a home for so many,” Criscuolo said at Wednesday’s event.
The celebration drew New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, Connecticut Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and a range of loyal friends, supporters and customers of Claire’s. In his speech, Elicker recognized Criscuolo for her healthy food, heartfelt care for customers and philanthropic work and presented Claire’s with a plaque honoring its contribution to New Haven. He commended Criscuolo for her foresight in creating “third places” — places outside work and home — before they became mainstream.
all graduate students who come to Yale,” the statement reads. Murphy did not answer questions from the News about the reported plan to reduce graduate class sizes.
The University is facing an 8 percent tax on its endowment returns following President Donald Trump’s July signing of a tax-and-spending bill that raised taxes on certain universities’ endowment gains. Under an earlier version of the bill, Yale’s endowment would have faced a 21 percent tax.
In late June, Yale announced to faculty and staff that it would be
Talks on YPD oversight progress
BY ADELE HAEG STAFF REPORTER
A New Haven police oversight body is moving toward a long-awaited agreement with Yale about civilian review of police misconduct complaints, after Yale chartered a new Public Safety Advisory Board without explicitly granting it that role. The New Haven Civilian Review Board is required by city ordinance to have a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with Yale, to fulfill its role of investigating civilian complaints against all New Haven police departments, including the Yale Police Department.
Political union tightens security after Kirk killing
BY ORION KIM STAFF REPORTER
The Yale Political Union heightened security for its Tuesday debate following the assassination of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk last week.
The Tuesday evening event featured prominent pro-life activist Lila Rose and former president of Catholics for Free Choice Frances Kissling. Rose gained prominence in 2011 for her involvement in undercover videos of abortion clinics, which intensified scrutiny of federal funds designated for Planned Parenthood.
Rose was escorted into 53 Wall St., the debate’s venue, by several security guards, and students were instructed to wait outside the building before entering through a security checkpoint. Attendees
were scanned with a hand-held metal detector, were told to empty their pockets and could not bring bags into the event.
In his opening remarks, YPU President Brennan Columbia-Walsh ’26 reflected on the slaying of Kirk.
“What happened last week is the antithesis of this organization’s sacred enterprise,” he said. Columbia-Walsh also said that after the shooting last week, he contacted the YPU’s security liaison to find out whether they “would have to reconsider the semester ahead.”
“We will not allow this to stop the free exchange of ideas, no matter the fact that new precautions and protections will be required,” Columbia-Walsh
The YCC delayed a $1.2 million
Baala Shakya / Photography Editor
Madelyn Kumar
Kong / Contributing Photographer
This Day in Yale History, 1969
September 19, 1969 / Yale Cheerleading Squad Opens to Female Undergraduates
By Lawrence Alexander
On this day in 1969, the News reported that on Monday, tryouts for the Yale cheerleading squad would open to female undergraduates, after an announcement from the athletics department earlier that year. The University’s Board of Athletic Control voted in 1965 to “Restrict the male cheerleading corps to registered candidates for Yale undergraduate degrees,” after a minor controversy where eight female students from Connecticut College were invited by and joined the squad during a Yale-Columbia game.
Clues
ACROSS
1. Natural concealer
5. Poultry
9. Ship’s pronoun
12. Space taken up
13. Figurative expression
15. Male deer
16. Builder of the ark
17. Yale student grp. that’s part of all the starred clues?
18. Zest
19. *Amazon frequenter?
22. Small bit
23. Age
24. Large money grabbers?
28. Enlighten (about)
32. “...man ___ mouse?”
33. *Window panes?
35. Unfreeze?
38. Utmost, abbr.
39. Went under, say
40. *2016 Wimbledon champion
43. Pod vegetable
44. Perseverant ones
45. Messes up
48. URL ending
49. “Yikes!”
50. *Amazon frequenter’s regret?
57. Shock
59. Birth-related
60. Señora’s clothing?
61. Notify, through text
62. Outline
63. Taxi alternative
64. To this point
65. Watched closely
66. Stitches together
DOWN
1. Señora’s hand?
2. Wedge alternative?
3. Fasten tightly
4. Polynesian paradise
5. Dalmation trained for emergencies
Behind the Headline
By Isobel McClure and Jaeha Jang
We emailed dozens of department chairs about the impacts of the announced 5 percent budget reduction in non-essential costs, and one happened to mention that doctoral enrollment would also likely be decreasing.
Immediately hooked, we then contacted 57 directors of graduate studies off the faculty directory.
After various phone calls and schedule-sent emails, we determined where sources corroborated each other’s accounts on an August meeting between the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences dean and professors about proposed cuts in doctoral student enrollment.
Read “Professors warned of grad enrollment cuts” on PAGE 1.
CROSSWORD
6. Emotional lyric poems 7. Desire 8. A little out there
9. Celebrity
10. He told Leia, “I know.” in Star Wars
11. One of a dozen 14. Light motorcycles
15. Letter-writing tool
20. Grandma 21. Sulks
24. Musical finales
25. Don’t exist
26. “You _____ mouthful!”
27. Derrogatory remarks
28. Founded in, abbr. 29. First Hebrew letter 30. Conical tent 31. “¿Cómo ____?”
Texter’s “I suppose”
36. MLB hurler’s award
Abrasive mineral
A must-do 42. Let out a melodic mountain cry
46. Jerry’s constantly unsuccessful adversary
47. Singing group
50. Type of baseball sacrifice
51. Unusual
52. Time spent somewhere
53. Speed competition
54. King’s gown
55. Expel things rapidly
56. Listening devices?
57. Purpose of listening devices?
58. Unlikely, yet possible outcome in American football
Puzzle by Jack Berrien ’29
Crossword
OPINION
STAFF COLUMNIST
RUHIL MOHAN
Scrolling together
Once upon a time, we had widely-accessible appointment television. Yet the notion of unrelated swaths of the country coming together at an immovable time to consume a widely appealing, non-athletic piece of content is almost unthinkable today. And what a loss. Our national conversation rings more hollow as a result.
Each night “Seinfeld” aired, tens of millions of Americans tuned in for the network-selected broadly-appealing entertainment of the evening. “Seinfeld” isn’t that funny. Not really. But it was a little funny to a lot of people, and more importantly, it was on TV. It served as an easy avenue into conversation: “Did you catch Seinfeld last night?”
“Seinfeld,” “Cheers,” “I Love Lucy,” “M*A*S*H” and dozens of shows like them had a monopolistic hold on American entertainment. You watched your episode on time and you did what you wanted to with it. The resulting national cultural diet provided the ingredients for discussion between disparate groups about the things humans care about and want to talk about with each other: love, friendships and other people. This wasn’t always the case in reality — but the potential was there. Whether or not these shows were “high culture” wasn’t the point.
The value of appointment TV was in building a low-barrier-toentry language for people to relate to each other. Today, there are many excellent streaming service standouts, but they are far less unifying. You can find them on HBO, Prime, Apple TV, Peacock, Netflix and approximately 15 other streaming services. But this represents the new function of TV as a highly individual affair defined by viewers’ watch histories and monthly fee tolerances. There is much less of a national community. A lot of reasonable people don’t want to navigate through layers of subscriptions to join a Twitter conversation about “Severance.”
At the same time, I see a new shared language emerging for the next generation of college students and young people, built around two centers of online gravity and shortform video content: Instagram and TikTok.
Both Instagram and TikTok push interest-driven content. In English, this means that my suitemates and I, who have similar interests, receive the same Lebron James highlights and “Suits” clips on our “For You Pages.” It means that when young people sit with their friends, they pepper the conversation with videos the room might enjoy. We stay in touch with our siblings by sending them TikToks about parents like ours and reference eclectic videos to build common ground in conversation with new people. As we scroll together, we flesh out a new shared language of content.
But the meat of this language, trending videos, is in a way less substantial than the mass media of yesterday. The hyper-evolving slate of content presented to us
means we have less attachment to the substance of our conversation.
In terms of mass media, we don’t have widely-accessible characters developed over years and cherished veteran media personalities whose narratives and personalities we use to consider interesting questions. Our shared language consists instead of brief clips of characters available only on streaming services and media personalities quickly pushed and disappeared by the algorithm. When the references by which we work through conversation are so transient, why should we be anything but noncommittal about our ideas? We know no matter what we say, the substance of our conversation will be old news algorithmically by tomorrow.
WE KNOW NO MATTER WHAT WE SAY, THE SUBSTANCE OF OUR CONVERSATION WILL BE OLD NEWS ALGORITHMICALLY BY TOMORROW.
The apps silo us by interest, leaving us with a smaller community with whom our language even functions. There is no assured national cultural diet. We don’t know if the stranger next to us heard about “Seinfeld” last night. There is an irony to this new language. Instagram stamps each Reel with the name and picture of any friend who has liked it. Scrolling through Reels is an exercise in seeing a brutally honest range of friends’ likes and opinions. Instagram has no option to opt out of publicizing likes to followers, and Reels can be intensely personalized. The overall result is that we are both more noncommittal with our takes and tied to them far more publicly. Today, the individual is king. I don’t know if a show like “Friends” could culturally dominate again. Broadly-appealing network TV is in many ways less interesting than algorithmically customized shortform videos and narrowly tailored streaming shows. And indeed, with a group of friends already bonded over similar interests, the apps are almost an enhancement to friendship. But as more and more of us scroll together, there is a cost. As a whole, we are less for the language we have lost.
RUHIL MOHAN is a sophomore in Morse College studying economics and political science. His column “Current Affairs” explores 21st century American culture and college life. He can be reached at rohil.mohan@yale.edu.
GUEST COLUMNIST
SHAYE KIRMAN
Exploring and exploiting in college, life
Consider this scenario: you go to a hot new restaurant and order a dish that you absolutely love. Bingo, your new favorite place! As luck would have it, the following week you are back to your dream supper club and … your move. Do you gamble and go for a new discovery, or do you order the proven choice, the same meal from the first time around? In other words, do you explore or do you exploit?
A similar type of dilemma arises for new students on Yale’s campus. As excited and nervous freshmen scour through Yale Connect, where hundreds of clubs beckon like a tasting menu, they face overwhelming choices: which clubs to apply to, how many applications to cast and what fields to explore. Freshmen, cast an early wide net! And, sophomores, it may just be okay to quit your clubs. There lies a fundamental connection between this model of thinking and the ethos behind the liberal arts curriculum. Here’s why. The restaurant and club application examples capture the essence of what, in decision theory, is known as the “explore-exploit tradeoff.” With applications that run the gamut from human psychology to machine learning, the concept refers to competing relationships to information. Exploration, in its most basic sense, is a search for new information; exploitation is making use of known information. The tradeoffs are intuitive. Exploration can lead to learning and new discoveries but includes uncertainty and can lead to wasted time or opportunities. Exploitation allows for predictable pleasures, though at the risk of untapped potential.
For us Yalies, this framework seemingly appears everywhere:
Should you try out a new club, or deepen your role in an existing one? Should you live with the same roommates next year, or choose a new group altogether? Most importantly, should you sample every dish at Commons, or just keep going back for the chicken? In searching for an answer, there is one hack that may be useful. As Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths tell us in their book “Algorithms to Live By,” “explore when you will have time to use the resulting knowledge, exploit when you’re ready to cash in. The interval makes the strategy.” In other words, when you’re near the beginning of your “time interval,” explore so that you can exploit that new information over time. As the clock winds down, the balance shifts. When it comes to the overcrowded extracurricular scene, the best advice may be to cast an early wide net, when the payoff for new information is greatest. Maybe you didn’t realize that you could be the next comedy superstar or a budding chef, but if you don’t try to embarrass yourself early, you’ll never know your full potential. But you quickly realize that you have to make choices to balance curiosity with commitment. If you want to go deep and find meaning in your extracurriculars, you can’t keep exploring forever. Building on cumulative knowledge or gaining leadership experience in the same club can pay off too. Thus, explorethen-exploit, while maintaining some moments of exploration throughout, could become the winning move.
One caveat is that stakes matter. Applying to a new club or trying a new food has little downside if it does not go as planned. Choosing new roommates, on the other hand,
GUEST COLUMNIST
is a big bet that can lock you in to serious long term consequences. The same is true when choosing friends or majors or whether to move off campus. If exploring had no cost, then the explore-exploit choice would not be the same dilemma it inevitably is.
The explore-exploit concept is at the heart of why I chose to come to a liberal arts college like Yale and why I am choosing to major in Ethics, Politics and Economics. In their nature, these settings facilitate the explore-then-exploit strategy. The liberal arts structure and EP&E major both inherently are interdisciplinary: Yale’s distributional requirements and wide offerings ensure a breadth of study; and EP&E spans disciplines as a three-in-one major. Yet, as you go on, the college and major also allow for “exploitation,” or deeper study, of the areas that most interest you: majors themselves are built for this, and within the EP&E major students choose an area of concentration by the end of their junior year.
At Yale, we are lucky to have options all around us. In the dining halls, on Coursetable, at the extracurricular bazaar and in the places we study, we are tempted to go wide or deep. Now that you know about it, you will see this choice everywhere. Consider the risks, stakes and your time horizons. Explore boldly, then exploit wisely. I tend to be a creature of habit with food, but even I sometimes venture beyond chicken at Commons.
SHAYE KIRMAN is a sophomore in Trumbull College studying Ethics, Politics and Economics. He can be reached at shaye.kirman@yale.edu.
HEKMAT MATTHEW ABOUKHATER
A Yale worth fighting for?
Yale’s Poynter Fellowship in Journalism claims to bring “distinguished journalists” and the “world’s leading truth-seekers” to campus in order to exchange ideas with students and provide a “cultivated look at pressing issues from all possible perspectives.”
Wednesday’s Poynter Fellowship event with Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh fell far short of that standard. What was billed as an opportunity to reflect on the road ahead for the Israeli-Palestinian question turned out to be an exercise in obfuscation and cliché peddling where students ended up with a narrower, more distorted, view of the issue than they had before. That failure doesn’t just misinform, it undermines the very mission of a program meant to model truth-seeking journalism.
Don’t get me wrong. I am a free speech maximalist. I’ll attend lectures by anyone from Itamar Ben-Gvir, whom a Yale-adjacent society hosted last year, to Haz Al Din, the chairman of the American Communist Party, should he ever get an invitation. My objection is not to Abu Toameh’s presence and platforming on campus. It is against the fellowship’s poor choice in elevating such a flat voice to speak on one of the most contested and consequential issues of our time.
For the first half-hour of the seminar, Abu Toameh repeated tired platitudes and hackneyed one-liners. He insisted the reason Palestinians remain stateless is because when Israel offered them 90 percent, they asked for 94; when offered 94, they demanded 98. What did these percentages even refer to? Were these figures from Camp David, Madrid, or Oslo? He never specified, preferring to simply ramble in vague abstractions.
According to Toameh, it was the Palestinians, not the Israeli assassin of Yitzhak Rabin, who destroyed the peace movement in Israel. Somehow the Palestinians featured as both the perpetual aggressor and self-imposed victims in his narrative.
When addressing Israel’s destruction of Gaza and the ongoing decimation of its people, Toameh cited the population’s 2006 election of Hamas, framing it as a potential excuse
for their current suffering. He also recounted the story of Palestinians looting abandoned greenhouses after Israel’s 2005 Gaza disengagement, as if that anecdote alone explained Palestinian politics and culture.
The question-and-answer portion was even more exhausting. When I asked him to address a recent Penn State poll showing that 82 percent of Jewish Israelis support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and that 56 percent favor the expulsion of Arab Israelis — citizens like himself — from Israel proper, he grew defensive and deflected.
When I followed up by asking whether his narrative, that of the state, still holds in the United States, where 60 percent of Americans now oppose further military aid to Israel, where for the first time a majority view Israel unfavorably. And, while support among young people has dropped below 30 percent, he ignored the question entirely and reemphasized the need to return the 22 remaining hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 who are still believed to be in Gaza.
When pressed by others on Israel’s recent strikes against Hamas hostage negotiators in Doha and whether those attacks endangered the possibilities of a safe return, he sidestepped the question once more and instead lamented, on a personal level, that such strikes might undermine normalization talks with Saudi Arabia.
The event concluded with Abu Toameh’s vague insistence that “we have to bring down the volume,” a vapid prescription for a conflict that demands clarity, evidence and courage. Consider what he did not mention. Not a word about the 700,000 settlers now living in the West Bank on land slated for a future Palestinian state. Instead, he celebrated Ariel Sharon’s “benevolence” in evacuating 9,000 settlers from Gaza’s 21 illegal settlements in 2005 — twice, for emphasis. Nor did he mention the peaceful 2018 Great March of Return, when Israeli forces killed 214 Palestinians and wounded thousands. Instead, he offered an etymological digression on the phrase “Al-Aqsa Flood,” the Hamas codename for the
Oct. 7 attacks, parsing its linguistic ties to the mosque on the temple mount. Most striking of all, Abu Toameh said nothing about the more than 200 journalists killed in Gaza since Oct. 7. The Reuters and AP journalists Hussam al-Masri, Mariam Abu Daqqa, and Moaz Abu Taha, killed alongside rescue teams at Nasser Hospital just last week, went unmentioned. For someone billed as a “distinguished” journalist under Yale’s Poynter banner, his silence on the slaughter of his colleagues was damning.
Yale could have done better, or simply done nothing. The Poynter Fellowship would have served its mission more honorably by disengaging altogether from the subject of Israel-Palestine than by hosting a state stenographer who dodged questions, and avoided the very truths journalists are supposed to pursue.
If the Fellowship wants to host real voices, it should bring someone courageous who has true convictions that they are ready to defend. They could come from either side of the divide. I would respect a fellow willing to defend the settlements openly and argue for the expulsion of Gaza’s civilians, just as I would respect journalists like Ali Abunimah, or Max Blumenthal who have risked their reputations to challenge the Israeli narrative. At least such figures would force Yale students to grapple with uncomfortable truths and maybe answer some of their questions in the process. Instead, the Poynter Fellowship chose Khaled Abu Toameh, and students were left with a lukewarm soup of clichés, propaganda and trite one-liners. If this is what Yale passes for “distinguished journalism,” on the issue of our time, then perhaps my fellow Jackson peers and I might skip the next Poynter event and simply tune in to Israel’s Channel 12 News from our apartments.
HEKMAT MATTHEW ABOUKHATER is a public policy student at the Jackson School of Global Affairs. He can be reached at hekmat.aboukhater@yale.edu.
“Let
food be your medicine and medicine be your food.”
HIPPOCRATES PHYSICIAN AND PHILOSOPHER
Dept. heads told of grad enrollment cuts
reducing non-salary expenses by 5 percent, delaying several construction projects, implementing an immediate 90-day hiring pause and lowering annual salary increases for faculty and staff members.
According to Kramnick, under the plan presented to the directors of graduate studies in August, the 12 percent decrease in enrollment, which would occur over three years, would be followed by an increase in enrollment levels. Eventually, enrollment levels would return “not to where we were, but to admitting more again.”
Both Kramnick and Mark Gerstein, the director of graduate studies for Computational Biology and Biomedical Informatics, said that Murphy’s presentation referred to the concept of intergenerational neutrality. The principle posits that “people now do not dip into the endowment more than they should, so that the endowment still has the same relative size in the future,” Gerstein said.
Unclear plans for sciences
Kramnick said that cohort reductions in the sciences, which are “less endowment-dependent,” were not outlined in the meeting.
David Vasseur, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology chair, said during a phone interview that the way in which his department would be affected was not yet clear.
“When it comes to science departments, we all have a very individualized model for how graduate student funding occurs,” Vasseur said. “How budget constraints are going to be met in every department is going to be something that the Graduate School will evaluate department by department across Science Hill.”
According to Gerstein, future funding for programs in the biomedical sciences is less predictable than funding for programs in the humanities and social sciences because science programs tend to rely less significantly on funds from the endowment.
While the Trump administration is attempting to slash federal funding for the sciences by pausing grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, Gerstein said the legal uncertainty of these efforts has left the future of scientific funding unclear.
Professors concerned, unsurprised
Eckart Frahm, the director of graduate studies for Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, wrote in an email to the News that a reduction in incoming PhD students will lead to “critical mass issues” in his field, including a shortage of teaching fellows for undergraduate courses.
He added that while he sees a reduction in enrollment as “a step
towards an intellectually more impoverished Yale,” the August meeting with Cooley and Murphy left him “actually quite optimistic about our future” because he felt his concerns were taken seriously by the administrators.
Laura Barraclough, chair of American Studies, wrote in an email to the News that she appreciated the autonomy the administration is allowing individual departments and programs for the 5 percent reduction in non-essential budget. She noted this reduction was less than $1,000 for her department.
Barraclough told the News that longer-term cuts to program size and infrastructure, including the graduate admissions and the 90-day hiring pause, were of “much greater concern” because they reduced investment in “people resources,” which would impact the department “for the next half-generation or longer.”
Gerstein said he predicts next year’s admissions target for his department to be “reduced substantially,” due to a combination of the graduate school’s budget constraints and the department’s enrollment of more students than expected last year. He said this reduction will be “hurtful” for his department.
While Kramnick said that the 12 percent reduction in enrollment will “require some adjustments,” he said the proposed reduction is not a surprise and “nowhere near as bad as it could have been,” especially in light of more drastic reductions in doctoral student enrollment occurring at other universities.
Kramnick specifically pointed to the University of Chicago’s pause in new doctoral student admissions for the upcoming academic year across all but one department and one program, which he described as “catastrophic for the morale and for the functioning of the graduate school.”
Gerstein said there was little contention from the directors of graduate studies at the August meeting, adding that “pretty much everyone was expecting this.”
“Obviously, no one’s happy about this. I mean, there’s absolutely no happiness at all about this,” he said. “It’s sad when the University is in such a bad position relative to the government and so forth. I don’t know how we got ourselves into this position, but that’s the way it is.”
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences offers degrees in more than 70 fields of study, according to the school’s website.
Contact ISOBEL MCCLURE at isobel.mcclure@yale.edu and JAEHA JANG at jaeha.jang@yale.edu.
Event marks half-century of beloved vegetarian restaurant
“It is a place for people to meet each other, to break down barriers, to understand one another better,” Elicker said. “This other place of connection really didn’t exist 50 years ago.”
The 50th anniversary not only marked an important milestone for Claire’s, but also drew attention to Criscuolo’s Be Kinder Than Necessary, or BKTN, campaign.
Partnering with Linda Mayes, the director of the Yale Child Study Center, Criscuolo launched the campaign last year to raise $100,000 for programs helping New Haven children practice empathy and kindness. Since last year, all net proceeds from the merchandise and cookbook sold at Claire’s have gone towards the campaign.
“It’s completely Claire’s idea,” Mayes said. “She really wants to help children. She wants to try and impact how children think about others.”
In her speech, Criscuolo also announced she will be estab
lishing a 501(c)(3) nonprofit on behalf of BKTN, allowing her to write grants and deposit donations toward the $100,000 fundraising campaign.
After she made that announcement, Criscuolo’s friend and customer, Lindy Lee Gold, pulled her aside to tell her that she plans to match the amount that the campaign has collected so far.
“I can’t even believe it,” Criscu-
olo told the News. “That means we have double the money now.”
Criscuolo said her interest in helping children came from her experience before founding Claire’s as a psychiatric nurse at the Connecticut Mental Health Center’s drug and alcohol program, where she witnessed many children and parents go through mental and physical health challenges.
“It was just tragic to see that children’s lives were so disrupted,” Criscuolo said.
Rose Hernandez, who has worked at Claire’s since 2006 and is now the restaurant’s general manager, emphasized Criscuolo’s care for her employees.
“On a daily basis, it’s just looking to make somebody’s day better, because you don’t know what they’re going through,” Hernandez said. “That’s her motto: You got to be nicer, kinder than necessary.”
Sandra Cashion ’92 has been a customer at Claire’s since her first year as a Yale undergraduate in 1988. Cashion and other members of Proof of Pudding, an a capella group, celebrated each member’s birthday with a Lithuanian coffee cake from Claire’s. Over the years, as Cashion returned to New Haven for alumni events, she grew into a loyal fan of the establishment, as well as Criscuolo’s friend.
The store is also commemorating its 50th anniversary with a new cookbook, “50 Vegetarian Recipes
from 50 Years at Claire’s Corner Copia.” In addition to recipes, the book includes stories and photos from the restaurant’s half-century in operation.
David DelVecchio, director of real estate asset management for Yale University Properties, said he was an avid Claire’s recipe follower.
“My wife was obsessed with Claire’s, so we started buying her cookbooks,” DelVecchio said. “We have the fifth one already. We’re already cooking things out of that.”
DelVecchio said that when he started working in New Haven more than 30 years ago, the restaurant scene looked very different, with fewer options. He described Claire’s as a “beacon for downtown New Haven.”
Claire’s is a tenant of Yale University properties. Its proximity to Yale’s campus has made it a go-to comfort spot for University community members, many of whom Criscuolo has gotten to know.
“I may not be a real Yalie, but nobody loves this university any more than I do,” Criscuolo said. “I love the camaraderie you have. I love the network. I love how you care about each other. I love how you care about the school. I love it.”
Claire’s Corner Copia sits at the western corner of Chapel and College streets.
Contact KELLY KONG at kelly.kong@yale.edu.
City police review board in negotiations with Yale Police
is a non-contractual agreement between two parties.
Established under a 2019 ordinance, the Civilian Review Board is a panel of citizens appointed by the mayor and the Board of Alders to examine complaints of misconduct by police officers in New Haven.
Those responsibilities do not exclude complaints against the Yale Police Department — the agreement is meant to be the basis for the review board’s oversight of Yale police, especially its handling of civilian complaints.
Right now, the memorandum of understanding is “stuck in legal,” according to the board’s administrator, Alyson Heimer. “We can’t do anything until the MOU is agreed upon, and it’s not. So we’re stuck,” Heimer said. Heimer said the board had expected an agreement last Thursday. Now, Heimer said, it might not be finalized until this Thursday, or later.
Yale has corresponded with the board and the New Haven Corporation Counsel — the city’s legal office — but no drafts of an agreement have been circulated yet, Head of Public Safety Duane Lovello wrote in an email to the News on Sunday. “No date has been set for finalization.”
Lovello added that Yale Public Safety had assured review board members that they would “take steps to initiate and maintain transparency with the board regarding activities of the Yale Police Department in a similar manner as New Haven Police Department shares reports with the CRB.”
Yale Public Safety recently posted a new charter establishing a new Yale Public Safety Advisory Board, around a year after a prior Yale Police Advisory Board — which did have complaint review powers — was quietly discontinued.
New Haven review board members say Yale officials did not notify them about the new board.
“We were not informed of the creation of the board and how it was created and we have not heard from him,” CRB Chair AnneMarie Rivera-Berrios said, referring to Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell ’95 DIV ’09.
Lovello wrote that Campbell told CRB members at an Aug. 4 board meeting — attended at City Hall by representatives from the New Haven and Yale police departments — that Yale “was preparing to launch a reimagined Public Safety Advisory Board.”
Lovello added: “At the time of the meeting, the new PSAB had not yet begun seeking nominations for appointment. We have
since initiated that and nominations are underway.”
The Public Safety Advisory Board charter does not include provisions regarding oversight of civilian complaints.
According to Lovello, the board under the new charter will “have an important advisory role” and review information pertaining to complaints” though he did not specify further.
“Consistent with longstanding practice,” Lovello added, “both police and security leadership are tasked with investigating complaints regarding their individual units.”
Rivera-Berrios wrote an email to Campbell after finding out that Yale had posted a new charter, she told the News.
“Congratulations on the new Yale Police Advisory Board. We look forward to working together to create an MOU,” she said her email read.
Heimer said on Friday that the CRB had heard from Lovello that he was ready to work on the MOU, and that the email exchange had included Campbell.
Heimer suggested that there was no mention of civilian complaints in the Yale advisory board charter because the New Haven review board’s MOU has not been finalized yet.
“The charter doesn’t include civilian oversight because there’s this murky gray area of what the memorandum of understanding between the city and the university is going to look like,” Heimer said.
CRB member Germano Kimbro said the board simply wanted Yale “to live up to the ordinance for the city.” YPD and the CRB need to agree in the MOU on a timeline and logistics for the investigation of civilian complaints, Heimer explained.
“All of those little details need to be worked out by the legal counsels on both sides, and that takes time,” Heimer said. Heimer, however, is hopeful. She said that since the August City Hall meeting — the first time the YPD, NHPD and CRB had met together in person since the review board was revamped in 2022 — the CRB has had an “open line of communication that we didn’t have before” with the Yale police. It was “night and day,” in terms of communication, she said. “I felt like we were building a relationship.”
But Kimbro expressed surprise at the lack of action on the MOU. In his experience, Kimbro said, Campbell has sought to “bridge the gap between the
police and the community” as Yale police chief.
“I think progress is being made, but as someone who has worked in the community for years, change just happens so slowly. The issue is not even the same as when the need arose,” Kimbro said.
He said of the August meeting: “I didn’t leave with any expectations.”
Heimer thinks public scrutiny is working. “YPD and Duane and Public Safety know that there’s eyes on them,” she said, referring to Lovello.
“Yale Public Safety looks forward to continued partnership with the New Haven Civilian Review Board and working with the PSAB to further enhance public safety,” Lovello wrote to the News.
For now, negotiations will continue.
“I’m very hopeful,” CRB member Sam Fawcett said of the MOU, and next steps for the board. “But it’s out of our hands.”
New Haven Civilian Review Board meetings are open to the public on the fourth Monday of every month, in person and on Zoom.
Contact ADELE HAEG at adele.haeg@yale.edu .
GRAD
Criscuolo in 1999. She opened her vegetarian restaurant in 1975. Bailey Hand
CLAIRE'S FROM PAGE 1
YPU introduces precautions at debate on abortion
said, referring to what the security liaison told him.
Last week, the night before Kirk was killed, the YPU voted against the resolution “violence is never the answer.”
YPU votes against ‘choice over life’ resolution
After Columbia-Walsh’s opening remarks, Kissling delivered her opening argument in front of the packed lecture hall.
Rather than standing at the podium, she stood at the front of the stage and began her speech by discussing the static and polarized state of abortion debates since she began her work in the 1970s.
Kissling defined two moral stances: those who view abortion as the killing of a human and those who defend unregulated choice.
“The outcome of these two polar opposites is almost never conversation. It never changes anybody’s mind,” she said.
Instead, Kissling emphasized the importance of the “independent women,” rejecting both extremes. She insisted that women deserve the freedom to make these decisions without being reduced to instruments of conservative population policy or moral ideology. “I tend to favor more the value of women’s lives, their health, their partners, their children, and that value becomes especially important if and when they become pregnant, particularly when they didn’t intend to,” Kissling said.
She also drew from her Catholic background, providing examples of how religious doctrines have evolved to argue that moral systems change as people learn to “think more critically.”
In her final remarks, Kissling acknowledged that giving birth is a “beautiful thing” but challenged men in the room to raise their hands if they would be willing to carry and birth a baby
themselves. Only two men in the room raised their hands, and one more on the condition that “God decided it so.”
After a period of questioning from the audience, Rose made her case for why abortion should be both morally condemned and legally criminalized under all circumstances.
She opened by referencing the body of a baby found in a closet in Lexington, Ky., last week, whose mother was arrested in connection with the death, using it to frame her central claim that abortion is the intentional killing of a living human being and should not be excused any more than other forms of murder.
Rose argued that from conception onward, the entity in the womb is a fully valuable human life. She also insisted that an embryo at six weeks is just as valuable as one at 26, and that science confirms life begins at conception.
In a claim that drew many hisses from the audience, she compared abortion to historical examples of
people being deemed “subhuman,” including Jews during the Holocaust, slavery, and Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.
“When you strip people of their humanity, you open the door to every kind of violence,” she declared.
Rose also asserted that the right to bodily autonomy should not justify abortion, arguing that autonomy cannot extend to the destruction of another person’s life.
“True women’s empowerment cannot come from the bloodshed of our killing,” Rose said.
Instead, she insisted on proper support and pregnancy resources for women facing unintended pregnancies.
Finally, Rose addressed Kissling’s point about men’s unwillingness to experience pregnancy and subsequent lack of right to determine if a child is born.
“Men have a responsibility, as women do, to the care of unborn children, and that should start with paying child support during pregnancy,” she said.
After the two speeches, the two guest speakers had the opportunity to ask each other questions in a forum unique to Tuesday’s debate. During the cross-examination, Kissling framed abortion as a matter of balancing values, while Rose maintained that abortion is always an intentional killing of an innocent life.
For the last portion of the debate, the audience heard from four students, two representing each side of the issue.
At the end of the debate, the YPU voted 60-31 against the resolution “choice over life,” after contentious stomping and hissing throughout the event from the audience on both sides of the issue.
Next week’s YPU debate at 53 Wall St. will feature former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum on the resolution “pray in schools.”
Contact ORION KIM at orion.kim@yale.edu.
Team 152 to face Holy Cross in first game
ing yards, with 108 of his own and two touchdowns. Last season, Clerveaux was named an All-Conference rusher with nearly 1,000 all-purpose yards and averaged about 4.5 yards per carry. This season, however, his yards per carry is down to 3.3, which is on par for the rest of the team’s inadequate offensive output.
Yale defensive back Abu Kamara ’27 is optimistic about the defense’s potential to succeed this season.
“This year, the defense looks really good. We have really good weapons on all three levels,” Kamara said. “I think that’s the fun piece, to see who we become as a unit and to put that on display for everyone.”
Looking at the Crusader offense on paper, the new Yale defense should feel optimistic, as a few new players prepare to take the field for the first time. Following the departure of several key defensive stars last season, the struggling Holy Cross offense may give the Bulldogs a chance to acquaint themselves on the defensive side of the ball.
The Crusaders’ defense has put up a slightly better effort this season than its offense. In three games, no teams have sur-
passed 20 points while playing against the Crusaders. However, Holy Cross has struggled to create pressure with the pass rush and has only generated two sacks throughout its first three games, which is a promising sign for Yale’s quarterback.
Despite the recent shakeup to its offense, Yale is looking to be the first to burst through that 20-point barrier. The Bulldogs should look to dominate early in the trenches, with several key linemen returning, such as Michael Bennett ’26, Jackson St. Aubyn ’27, and Quinton Lewis ’27. With only two sacks by the Crusaders so far this year, the Yale offensive line shouldn’t have too much of a problem both protecting new transfer quarterback Dante Reno ’28 and creating holes for star running back Josh Pitsenberger ’26.
“It’s really nice to know that our line comes in with a lot of experience,” Reno wrote to the News. “Taking care of business in the trenches allows our offense to consistently move the ball down the field and make big plays.”
The game will be streamed live on ESPN+ and WYBCx radio. Kickoff is at 12 p.m. at the Yale Bowl. Contact BRODY GILKISON at brody.gilkison@yale.edu .
Shakespeare doubters descend on New Haven
BY NELLIE KENNEY CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
In 1840s New Haven, a young woman named Delia Bacon thought she had discovered the truth about the author we all know as William Shakespeare. Shakespeare, Bacon claimed, had not really written his plays.
On Thursday afternoon, over 50 of Bacon’s disciples gathered at the Omni New Haven Hotel to hear presentations at a conference regarding the so-called “Shakespearean authorship question.”
The conference was organized by a society, the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, that promotes the widely discredited theory that Shakespeare was really Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. From a podium set between two projection screens, speakers explored the lives of Elizabethan aristocrats and suggested ciphers that could be used to discover hidden code in Shakespeare’s sonnets.
The organization’s theory — called the Oxfordian theory — is that de Vere, a prominent figure in Elizabethan England, published under a false identity, which he borrowed from a semi-literate William Shakespeare.
“There was no theater in the whole history of the family,” conference chair and York University professor emeritus of theatre Don Rubin said of Shakespeare’s family. “In fact, the family was illiterate, going back generations and forward. He never educated his daughters.”
Rubin, now a Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship lifetime member, told the News that he attended his first Fellowship conference in Houston “for a laugh,” only to be “knocked out by the seriousness of what they were saying.”
The Oxfordian theory, Rubin said, is “truth,” and the widely accepted academic consensus — the Stratfordian theory — is “myth.”
“You got all these people in Stratford, with the Stratford Birthplace Trust, who are living a myth,” he said, referring to an organization responsible for Shakespeare heritage sites in Stratford-upon-Avon. “And they prefer the myth to the truth.”
Brent Evans, the president of the Fellowship, called the Stratfordian theory an “embedded truth.”
He recalled telling a friend that he was questioning whether Shakespeare had written the plays. “Is nothing sacred? Are we questioning everything?” Evans recalled his friend asking. “Shakespeare has godlike status among the literati, and you don’t touch it,” Evans added.
The Oxfordians argue that the academic consensus on Shakespeare’s identity is the result of an unhealthy obsession with the mythology of Shakespeare.
Yale English professor Catherine Nicholson, who is teaching a Shakespeare lecture course this semester, does not find this argument credible.
“My objection to, say, the Oxfordian theory of authorship is not at all that it attacks a kind of figure, a narrative to which I’m attached,” Nicholson said. “My objection to it is that it is unproven and also designed in some ways to be unfalsifiable.”
Authorship doubts may in fact be the product of Shakespeare’s mythification, Nicholson said.
“The kind of perennial excitement that attaches to the possibility that in fact we’ve been misled — I think that excitement only makes sense if you have an attachment, a kind of powerful attachment,” she said.
Part of Nicholson’s interest in Shakespearean authorship theories comes from how they relate to “the question of the boundaries of institutional knowledge, the boundaries of scholarly discourse, the place of disputed or refuted theories,” she said.
These questions characterize the current historical moment, Nicholson argued. “Immunology, vaccines,
anything you can think of. Physics, string theory.”
“It’s interesting,” she said, “to think about the world of Shakespeare studies as having been sort of ahead of the curve in this respect, in that Shakespeare studies has long had this kind of marginal, discredited, but also extraordinarily persistent and compelling group of people.”
Thursday’s keynote paper, written by Evans, is titled “Was Delia Mad?” It chronicles Bacon’s life, her theories, her institutionalization and her ultimate death at the Hartford Institute for the Insane. Conference attendees gasped and murmured audibly when Evans described treatments, including straitjackets and frequent sedation, which he claimed were commonplace at the institute.
Evans concluded his presentation on a positive note.
“We are standing on her shoulders,” he said. “We can now see her life and legacy as a triumph.”
Not all conference attendees had prior knowledge of Bacon, but after Evans’ presentation, admiration for her seemed ubiquitous.
Annette Vise, a first-time conference attendee who said that she began to question Shakespeare’s authorship while in eighth grade, called Bacon “a woman ahead of her time.”
“We discover things that we had no clue about,” Lucinda Foulke, a retired editor of the Fellowship’s newsletter, said. “I didn’t know that Delia Bacon had really done this kind of research in the 1850s.”
Although not persuaded by Bacon’s “imagined conspiracy,” Nicholson told the News that she “would not want our alternatives to be ‘Delia Bacon was right about Shakespeare’ or ‘Delia Bacon was a madwoman.’
“I would like us to be able to take Delia Bacon seriously as a figure who is important and interesting, has had — has unquestionably had — an effect on the world of Shakespeare studies,” Nicholson said.
On Sunday, the final day of the conference, Evans is set to lead a group to Grove Street Cemetery to visit Bacon’s grave.
Contact NELLIE KENNEY at nellie.kenney@yale.edu .
So far this season, Holy Cross has lost all three games it’s played. Liza Kaufman / Photography Editor
William Shakespeare. Wikimedia Commons
Delia Bacon. Wikimedia Commons
“Food is our common ground, a universal experience.”
JAMES BEARD, CHEF
Candlelight vigil honors victims of political violence
BY SOPHIA STONE & BAALA SHAKYA STAFF REPORTERS
Students gathered on Cross Campus Friday evening for a candlelight vigil in honor of victims of political violence.
The vigil, which was announced in an email that circulated that morning, began just after 8 p.m., as roughly a dozen students stood in silence around a heart-shaped arrangement of candles. Over the next hour, the circle grew, and attendees stepped forward to place candles. By 9 p.m., about 50 students had participated in the vigil.
After conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed Wednesday while speaking at a university in Utah, a coalition of students unaffiliated with specific groups organized a vigil to honor “all those who have fallen victim to political violence in recent times,” an email invitation from William Barbee ’26 read.
“We actually ended up choosing not to have it officially sponsored by any organization at Yale, in the spirit of both bipartisanship and nonpartisanship,” Kylyn Smith ‘26, an organizer of the event, said. “We thought that by having the vigil not affiliated, we’d be able to open the door for a more thoughtful and cohesive time of prayer and reflection for our students of all political ideologies.”
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called Kirk’s killing a “political assassination,” and news alerts and graphic videos of the incident spread quickly across social media Wednesday. The motives of Kirk’s suspected killer, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson of Utah, are still obscure, though Robinson engraved his bullet casings with phrases from video game slang and the words “hey fascist! CATCH!”
The invitation for the vigil circulated Friday morning through political and religious networks, including Buckley Program fellows, Yale Political Union leaders, Yale College Republicans and Democrats. Barbee said the outreach was directed towards “politically minded or politically involved” students.
Barbee said he wanted to help lead the event after hearing from friends and peers who wanted a designated space to grieve. Smith said she began considering the vigil after the David Network, a conservative-leaning student organization, asked her whether Yale students were planning a remembrance.
Smith and Barbee worked with friends connected to political and religious groups across campus to put the event together. The David Network provided some of the candles, and others were borrowed from the Yale Chaplain’s Office. Still, Smith emphasized that organizers intentionally chose not to affili-
ate the vigil with any student group, which she described as crucial for drawing students from across the political spectrum.
Smith admitted she worried before the event that it could become contentious but said her fears faded once the vigil began.
“At the vigil, I was reminded of how truly respectful and open to civil discourse the students at Yale are,” she said. “We were not met with any contention. We were met with respect, even from bystanders who asked what the vigil was for.”
Barbee similarly stressed that the vigil was not a celebration of Kirk, pointing toward other instances of political violence that have occurred recently in the United States.
In June, an individual shot and killed Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, and also shot Minnesota State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife. President Donald Trump survived two failed assassination attempts in 2024, one in July at a Pennsylvania campaign rally and another in September in Florida.
“This is obviously an immediate reaction to what happened on Wednesday with Charlie Kirk, but the vigil itself is not at all related or tied to celebrating him or his life,” Barbee said. “It’s more so a moment for the Yale community to come
together at a time when in the last year, we’ve seen the president have attempted assassinations against him on two separate occasions and lawmakers in states like Minnesota be targeted and killed for bills that they supported.”
Students who attended said the silence of the evening was powerful.
Abhinay Lingareddy ’26 noted the importance of being able to pray and grieve together “no matter how evil you think someone is or how great you think someone is.”
“There is no greater expression of empathy or affirmation of our common humanity. During the vigil, not many words were said but multitudes were conveyed in the silence,” Lingareddy said.
Ethan Powell ’27 echoed the sentiment.
“Political violence, no matter what your viewpoint is, is never acceptable and should never be celebrated,” Powell said. “I just wanted to be with other people.” Barbee said the event served its purpose and that the vigil had been “pretty positively” received.
Under Trump’s orders, the flag on the New Haven green was flown at half-mast until Sunday evening in honor of Kirk.
Contact SOPHIA STONE at sophia.stone@yale.edu and BAALA SHAKYA at baala.shakya@yale.edu.
Students welcome first two Filipino language courses
BY JAEHA JANG & ABDEL ABDU STAFF REPORTER & CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Yale is offering its first Filipino language courses — “Elementary Filipino I” and “Intermediate Filipino I” — this fall.
The two courses arrive after years of student advocacy spearheaded by Tagalog@Yale, an initiative within Yale’s Filipino student group Kasama. Five enrolled students told the News that the courses have already deepened their sense of Filipino identity, and they expressed hope that additional classes will be offered in the future.
“It has been very fulfilling to finally take on detailed study of a
language I have grown up hearing my family speak but never got to fully learn,” Janina Gbenoba ’27, a student in the Level 1 course “Elementary Filipino I,” wrote in an email to the News.
The push for Filipino language courses included a petition that garnered over 380 signatures, an open letter to the University administration joined by the Yale College Council Senate and meetings with the Center for Language Studies and the Council on Southeast Asia Studies.
Other students echoed Gbenoba’s enthusiasm for learning the language, which has its roots in Tagalog — one of over 180 languages spoken in the Philippines and the fourth
most-spoken language at homes in the United States, according to Census Bureau data from 2017 to 2021.
The Filipino program is headed by the newly hired lector Louward Allen Zubiri, a linguist whose specialization includes the loss and revitalization of endangered languages across generations.
Celene Bennett ’26, one of 18 students in the L1 course, wrote in an email to the News that she feels proud to come to class every morning to learn her familial language, especially after working with Kasama to advocate for the language courses during her sophomore and junior years.
According to Bennett, while she has not previously taken a Monday-through-Friday class or an introductory language course, her Filipino class has been “a beautiful reminder of how meaningful a classroom can be.” After class, she often calls her grandparents, her aunt, her sister or her best friend from home.
“I try my hardest to take what I learn in the classroom and share it with the other Filipinos in my life,” Bennett wrote.
Ava Estacio-Touhey ’26, who is in the L1 course, agreed that taking the course helps her connect with her heritage.
As a former president of Kasama, she said she is also taking the language to support the advocacy that resulted in the offering of the courses.
Marissa Halagao ’27, one of five students in the Level 3 course “Intermediate Filipino I,” wrote in an email to the News that the “sheer immersion and encouragement that a structured language class provides” are helping her improve her skills and confidence in speaking Filipino.
Patricia Joseph ’26, who is in the L3 course, said that after not having a tight-knit Filipino community growing up, the course has allowed her to connect with the Filipino language and culture and grow closer to other Filipino students at Yale.
“The Filipino community at Yale is composed of a lot of diaspora but also native Filipinos, and it’s been fun trying to interact with people who are still Filipino but might be from the motherland and trying to reconnect with them by speaking in Tagalog,” she said.
Bennett added that Zubiri, the professor who teaches both courses, is a “brilliant and dedicated” presence in her class.
Zubiri, affectionately known to students as Kuya –– meaning elder brother –– Louward, said his background at the University of Hawaii, the largest Filipino-serving institution in the United States, and at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, where he started a Filipino program “from scratch,” will assist him in establishing Yale’s Filipino program.
“I’m very grateful for the opportunity to know that I have this position,” Zubiri said. “At the same time, I also want to acknowledge years of advocacy by the different student groups and the community here on the East Coast in trying to push for more opportunities to learn their heritage language and to have more representation in higher education.” According to Halagao, Zubiri’s background in linguistics allows him to give in-depth explanations of the language.
Students suggested that the two new language classes should mark only a first step for Filipino courses at Yale.
“Being in the class with other Kasama members has also made us think critically about why we had to advocate for the language class in the first place and broadens our desire for more Filipino studies in general, maybe beyond language,” Joseph said.
Halagao wrote that she hopes to see more representation of Filipino identity across the curriculum, including classes on Filipino culture, arts, literature, history, decolonization and other Filipino languages. English and Filipino are the official languages of the Philippines.
Contact JAEHA JANG at jaeha.jang@yale.edu and ABDEL ABDU at abdel.abdu@yale.edu.
Yale launches student fellowship aimed at open dialogue
BY JOLYNDA WANG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
On Yale has launched its new Cultivating Conversation Fellowship — a semester-long series of workshops aimed to help students engage with different perspectives across political lines, according to Kimberly Goff-Crews, vice president for university life.
The inaugural cohort of roughly 120 students gathered for the first time on Tuesday. The kickoff meeting consisted of speeches from Yale administrators, including Goff-Crews, and “dialogue sessions,” in which the groups of students discussed “conversation norms” to guide discourse for the rest of the program.
Annie Rappeport, Yale’s associate director of community dialogue, who led one of the dialogue sessions, said that the program hopes to foster dialogue between students in a moment of divisive politics.
“Conversation is one of the few tools we still have to address today’s polarization,” Rappeport said. “In an era where divisions can
feel intractable, dialogue offers the possibility of compromise, mutual understanding and the preservation of common ground.”
Cultivating free speech is a key issue for the University this year.
At a first-year opening assembly in August, both Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis and University President Maurie McInnis advised first years to engage with challenging viewpoints.
The beginning of the fellowship also coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Woodward Report, which established Yale’s free speech guidelines in 1975. The University has advertised the anniversary on its social media accounts.
Recently, Yale jumped up 97 spots in a prominent ranking of the state of free speech on college campuses.
The new fellowship is part of the broader Cultivating Conversation initiative first launched in August 2024 by Belonging at Yale, a five-year diversity initiative that later concluded in June 2025. As part of the initiative, Yale hosted various lectures and events throughout the 2024-2025 academic year designed to equip students with communication tools.
Grayson Hoy GRD ’28, a third-year graduate student in the fellowship, cited his participation in and enjoyment of last year’s programming as reasons for applying to the fellowship this year.
“As the world seems to feel more and more divisive, it’s definitely important to be able to see someone’s humanity,” Hoy said. “That’s the first step in being able to fully understand their perspectives.”
Other students said they hope the fellowship will give them a chance to engage with a diverse set of political opinions.
Maya Viswanathan ’28, another student fellow, said that the fellowship is providing her with a unique opportunity to have discussions with people who have different perspectives.
“That’s something that I’ve always been interested in,” she said. “But I didn’t always feel like what the best space to be able to do that would be.”
Arrow Zhang ’26 said she was looking forward to connecting with people from many different backgrounds.
“In the various instances where I was able to connect with people,
I felt so happy,” she said. “I would like to hone this sort of skill, but in a more official format where there is someone moderating or everyone is here for the purpose of having these sorts of conversations.”
During a dialogue session, students were asked to identify a feature of an unproductive or unkind conversation they previously endured.
Carla Melaco LAW ’27 answered that she’s found people often conform to the majority opinion, rather than present a controversial take.
“Sometimes in conversations, there’s this kind of groupthink aspect to it where everyone converges on the same point, and then, people don’t want to disagree,” she said. “I think that’s problematic.”
The Cultivating Conversation fellows will next meet for their first workshop on Sept. 23.
Contact JOLYNDA WANG at jolynda.wang@yale.edu.
BAALA SHAKYA /PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Nearly 50 gathered on Cross Campus following the assassination of Charlie Kirk and other high-profile attacks.
ELLIE PARK /SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER On Tuesday, the University welcomed its first Cultivating Conversation fellows.
BAALA SHAKYA /PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
After over a year of student advocacy, Yale started offering two courses for the Filipino language this fall.
On reelection campaign trail, Elicker holds steady
BY ELIJAH HUREWITZ-RAVITCH STAFF REPORTER
As Mayor Justin Elicker makes his pitch to New Haven voters for a fourth two-year term, he faces an affordable housing shortage, a second go-round with the Trump administration — and Republican challenger Steve Orosco, a businessman and former mixed martial arts fighter.
Elicker, a Democrat, also just hired his campaign manager, Remus Sottile, he told the News Sunday evening. Still, he said that he feels “very confident” about his chances in the November mayoral election.
“Along with my team, we’ve been doing the work,” Elicker said. “And ultimately, New Haven residents, New Haven voters, care about results and care about someone that’s going to be straight with them. And someone that’s going to do everything they possibly can to make the city a better place.”
Elicker said the key issues that he has prioritized over his nearly six years in office — housing, education and public safety — remain his focus.
The mayor said that 4,000 housing units have been constructed in New Haven in the five-and-a-half years of his tenure. And he touted progress in public safety — a new police contract that he said makes it easier to retain officers along with more cameras around the city — and improvements at the public schools like lower absentee numbers and higher scores in math and English literacy.
He characterized his pitch to voters as being rooted in his constituents’ concerns.
“If you knock on any door in the city,” Elicker said, “someone’s probably going to bring up these issues as what’s important to the community.”
Vincent Mauro Jr., the sixth-term chair of the New Haven Democratic Town Committee, said that Elicker’s priorities are the right ones.
“A lot of the things that get overlooked,” Mauro said, “is the competency level that he has brought to the job in things that people don’t think about a lot, but affect daily life — public works and parks, things like that. He’s done a very good job of competency and bringing in the right people and keeping the right people.”
But Leslie Radcliffe, a longtime civic leader and former chair of the
City Plan Commission, told the News that she was skeptical about Elicker’s ultimate focus.
“Housing, education and public safety are important, but they’re also buzzwords,” Radcliffe said. “How do you get to those issues? How do you address them?”
Radcliffe suspects that Elicker plans to “move up the political ladder,” she added, whether by running for a state representative role or for governor.
Elicker said he does not have a higher ambition in mind and that he was not sure how many more mayoral terms he hoped to serve.
“I love my job,” he said. “It’s really challenging, but I love it, and I’m planning on continuing to do the work.”
Mauro said that he had not noticed any shift in Elicker’s focus and emphasized that, in his view, the mayor brings professionalism to the job.
“All politicians, by nature, always look at potential opportunities to
bring their talents to a different office,” Mauro said. “But I think this mayor has really focused in on doing the job.”
While he continues to work on day-to-day issues, Elicker is unruffled by the upcoming mayoral race. Asked about his competitor, he criticized what he sees as Orosco’s lack of involvement in New Haven.
“I’ve been mayor for five years and was heavily involved in New Haven before that, and I think I’ve seen Steve Orosco once, maybe twice,” Elicker said. “It seems like Mr. Orosco is just focused on running for things. He ran for alder, he ran for state senator and now he’s running for mayor.”
Orosco wrote in a statement to the News that succeeding in electoral politics as a Republican in New Haven requires just that kind of persistence.
“For five years every single quality of life measure in this city has gone backwards,” he wrote.
“Crime, homelessness, fentanyl overdoses, education, city services and even basic infrastructure have
all worsened. Instead of putting the people first, you have chosen to bend the knee to Yale while residents continue to suffer,” Orosco added, addressing the mayor in his statement.
Antagonism with Washington Elicker was first sworn in in January 2020, with President Donald Trump in his first term in the Oval Office; as mayor, he has since navigated two presidential transitions.
New Haven’s relationship with the federal government has been thrown into chaos: New Haven filed two lawsuits against the Trump administration and joined an amicus brief in a suit against Trump in the spring.
Many of the city’s public projects in the past few years were enabled by former President Joe Biden’s investment in sweeping legislation that helped to stimulate postpandemic economic growth, Elicker said.
“That has significantly helped us with everything from building more
affordable housing to improving our investments in public parks to even things like paying for police cameras across the city,” Elicker said.
“Now we’re seeing a reverse of that trend with Donald Trump, who is actively targeting cities like ours and eviscerating federal support.”
The mayor explained that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has largely stopped communicating with New Haven’s police department.
“They historically would give us a heads up if they were doing some law enforcement action in our city, and that communication does not exist anymore, which potentially puts our officers at risk,” Elicker said.
This past summer, at least three New Haveners, including a public school student, were arrested by ICE. Connecticut’s municipal elections will take place on Nov. 4.
Contact ELIJAH HUREWITZRAVITCH at elijah.hurewitz-ravitch@yale.edu.
City public schools’ budget still incomplete four weeks into school year
BY SABRINA THALER STAFF REPORTER
New Haven Public Schools does not have a finalized line item budget, even as teachers and students begin their fourth week of classes.
Months after the city and state approved their budgets for the 202526 fiscal year, NHPS is working to mitigate a budget deficit of around $3.8 million. Although the district is in talks with the city’s Board of Alders to approve contingency funds to cover $3 million of that deficit, roughly $800,000 would remain unaccounted for, prolonging the approval of a balanced general fund, NHPS spokesperson Justin Harmon told the News.
Harmon expects the district will balance this year’s budget “without any dramatic steps,” but he said the financial future of the district remains uncertain.
“If the city doesn’t continue the level of support that it did this year
and if the state doesn’t do better in terms of its overall allocation for education, then we could find ourselves looking at a budget deficit again for the next fiscal year that we have to mitigate, and that would almost certainly mean layoffs,” Harmon said.
Last month, the Board of Alders Finance Committee advanced a proposal from Mayor Justin Elicker to use $3 million in state funding to plug some of the district’s budget gap.
The city budget passed in May included a $5 million increase in city funds for NHPS but fell short of the $23.2 million increase Superintendent Madeline Negrón requested.
At the Board of Education’s Finance and Operations Committee meeting Monday, the district’s Chief Financial Officer Amilcar Hernandez said that the district is still “exchanging information” with the Board of Alders to ensure that the extra $3 million is approved.
“The hope for these contingency funds were the only way that we were
able to avoid extremely painful layoffs for this year,” Board of Education Vice President Matt Wilcox said at the committee meeting. “If we are going to be in a situation where those contingency funds aren’t going to be available, I guess the question will be how we’re going to make this up mid-year.”
Higher expenditures across the state — which stem from rising salaries, higher employee healthcare costs and increased special education expenses, for instance — are partially responsible for these deficits, Lisa Hammersley, executive director of the nonprofit School and State Finance Project, said. For New Haven, one of those added expenditures was a 2023 salary increase for teachers, intended in part to improve teacher retention rates. The district will begin a new round of contract negotiations with the New Haven Federation of Teachers at the end of this month, which
Harmon said will likely focus on sustaining and boosting compensation once again.
The district has also struggled to ensure it receives sufficient funding from the state, which uses an Education Cost Sharing formula to distribute money to districts.
The state legislature established the ECS formula in the late 1980s and in 2013, set a per-student expenditure of $11,525, with adjustments for the population of low-income students in each school district. Without complete support from the state budget, the program has been historically underfunded.
Even with boosted state funding this year, the formula has not been adjusted for inflation, leaving it insufficient to close gaps, Harmon said.
Hammersley said that a source of support for “high-need” school districts like New Haven could come from a new grant program approved by the Connecticut General Assem-
bly in its most recent legislative session, which used the ECS model to fund school districts’ support for students with disabilities. If fully funded, that grant would add $190 million in education funding statewide — but only for special education programs.
Connecticut public schools also receive a significant portion of their funding from local property taxes.
“Because you’re heavily reliant upon property taxes, and a Board of Education is not a taxing body, they must essentially beg their local governance board for money each and every year,” Jeff Currey, the former chair of the Connecticut General Assembly’s Education Committee, said. “It’s often difficult to even get to a number that is going to provide a district with support to maintain.”
Currey said that “maintain” is often all lower-income districts can do as they attempt to meet students’ basic needs, and that budget limitations often leave school systems without the room to go “above and beyond.”
Budget mitigation can also come at the cost of resources for students and staff. In New Haven, mitigation efforts earlier this year included the closure of one school, the merging of two others and the elimination of 72 vacant staff positions.
Schools in New Haven are now asked to provide more than an education, Currey said. Schools are asked to deal with the impacts of poverty, acting as social workers, parents and teachers at the same time.
“If you’re not addressing those basic needs at the forefront, then you’re never going to have a budget that is going to be able to be funded the way it should be,” Currey said.
New Haven Public Schools’ fiscal year began on July 1.
Contact SABRINA THALER at sabrina.thaler@yale.edu.
ARTS
“We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.”
MAMET, PLAYWRIGHT AND AUTHOR
DAVID
CRITIC’S TAKE: Theater-makers set to stage defiance
BY CAMERON NYE STAFF REPORTER
Authoritarianism is on the minds of Yale’s theater-makers. At least, that’s what the upcoming season of shows would suggest.
Theater, at its core, has always been about power — who has it, who wants it and what happens when it’s taken away. That timeless preoccupation feels newly urgent, as the stories we tell on stage increasingly echo the unrest unfolding beyond it. In a world where democratic institutions teeter and protests dominate the headlines, it’s perhaps no surprise that this year’s campus theater offerings feel especially charged. Even before the full lineup is announced, student directors and actors seem to be gravitating toward stories of resistance.
unchecked capitalism and environmental decay with jocular potty humor. In a drought-stricken dystopia, private toilets are outlawed, and the monopolistic “Urine Good Company” charges citizens to relieve themselves. Public urination is criminalized, violators banished to the ominously titled “Urinetown,” a place shrouded in mystery and presumed death.
Take the Dramat’s upcoming fall mainstage, “Urinetown: The Musical,” a satirical comedy that lampoons
Beneath its absurd premise, “Urinetown” is a scathing commentary that holds up more than two decades after its Broadway debut. Corrupt senators greenlight price hikes, corporate greed runs unchecked and rebellion brews behind dilapidated urinals. Nowadays, the show feels less like a farce and more like foresight. Between resource scarcity and turning human needs into cash cows, audiences may look past the comedic exaggerations and see a world that looks eerily similar to their own.
Come spring, two senior theses will take audiences back to 1930s Germany, a period increasingly invoked in comparisons to our own. “Cabaret,” a thesis in choreography for Sadie Pohl ’26 and one in acting for Hannah Kurczeski ’26, transports viewers to the twilight of the Weimar Republic. While many of its characters are “sleeping” — blissfully ignorant to the rise of the Nazi party hap-
pening outside the walls of the seedy Kit Kat Club — the show asks us, earnestly and urgently, when will we finally “wake up.”
Shortly after, Sophie Dvorak’s ’26 senior thesis in music, “The Sound of Music,” might offer a seemingly sunnier, though no less politically charged, counterpoint. What begins as a family drama about discipline and love evolves into a story about interrogating complacency. As the von Trapp family escapes Nazi occupation, resistance takes the form of familial love, music and moral clarity.
These selections, while adored staples, feel particularly topical, as if chosen to reflect the world offstage. “Cabaret” and “The Sound of Music” stand among the most recognizable pieces of anti-fascist work in the musical theater canon, and their continued revival speaks to how aptly these stories still resonate. They will undoubtedly resonate with Yale audiences too.
Perhaps the most unexpected production that has been unveiled is Zeph Siebler’s ’26 rock opera “Overman” about the life of Friedrich Nietzsche. The 19th-century philosopher’s deeply influential writings on power, morality and the will to overcome have both propelled anti-establishment movements and been used to justify far-right ideolo-
gies. Though Nietzsche himself was critical of nationalism and authoritarianism, his ideas were later appropriated by the Nazi regime. How this production chooses to navigate that legacy remains to be seen.
What unites these productions is not a singular political message, but a collective impulse to confront power head-on. Whether through satire or song, these shows ask: How do we respond when our world becomes untenable? And who gets to lead the charge? In choosing these stories, student artists aren’t merely staging entertainment, but participating in a broader cultural conversation about the right to resist. Theater and politics go hand in hand. Not just in content, but in its very act of gathering, storytelling and disrupting the status quo. The existence of these shows is proof enough.
It’s too soon to say if this thematic through-line will continue once shows funded with Yale’s Creative and Performing Arts grants, or CPAs, are announced. But in a moment where global and campus politics alike are steeped in tension, the choice to tell stories of resistance seems deliberate — and is necessary.
Contact CAMERON NYE at cameron.nye@yale.edu.
Exhibit shows work of overlooked female architects
BY MAXINE CHEN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Architecture’s great love stories — and rivalries — are now on display at the “Paparazza Moderna” exhibit at the Yale School of Architecture.
The exhibit, which will be on display until Nov. 29, intertwines photography and architecture to highlight the work of overlooked female architects from the 1920s to the 1960s. Put together by Lake Verea, a duo of queer artists Francisca Rivero-Lake Cortina and Carla Verea Hernández, the exhibition pointed toward the intimate and emotional aspects of architecture.
“The exhibition focuses on buildings that a lot of us who study architecture are very familiar with,” Andrew Benner ARC ’03, the director of exhibitions at the architecture school, said. “Seeing it through their eyes and in the way that they show their projects gives us a new look that allows us to think about these things differently, not as static objects, but as things that are still alive.”
In the spring, the two artists travelled through 11 countries in 11 weeks and shot 55 rolls of film, according to a description displayed in the gallery. They started in Barcelona and ended in Saint-Tropez, taking many detours and unexpected surprises throughout their journey. If a house was unavailable, they’d try to figure out a way to gain access or have to reroute their research to another site.
Lake Verea’s method was as daring as it was playful. They photo-
graphed the homes paparazzi-style, often without giving prior notice, to capture them in their everyday state — sometimes cluttered or weathered but full of life.
“It’s a little bit of a joke,” Benner said. “But it lets them uncover things that a staged photoshoot would miss.”
The result was a show that reframes architecture as an interconnected web of human relationships and living, changing spaces, rather than as a discipline consisting of formal, rigid objects.
The exhibit invites viewers to see architecture as a multifaceted discipline that embodies conflict, intimacy and reinvention.
The series features the work of 14 female architects, including Eileen Gray, Charlotte Perriand, Aino Marsio-Aalto and Elissa Aalto. Many of the women worked alongside male partners, only to be overshadowed by them in architectural history, according to a displayed description.
“It is the least they could do!”
Kathleen Wimer, a former New Haven resident who now lives in California, was drawn into the gallery while passing by the advertising outside the building, said.
The prequel to the exhibition — Paparazza Moderna: Frenemies — ran from 2011 to 2018. Frenemies focused on single-family houses designed in the United States by iconic Modernist architects. The series told the story of architects who started out as friends, serving as
inspiration to one another, then falling into dispute and later reconciling. This exhibition originated at the Vitra Design Museum in Germany.
Benner was intrigued by the initial exhibition. The architectural themes in the photography drew his interest, he said, which led him to reach out to Lake Varea with an offer to collaborate with the architecture school on the Paparazza Moderna exhibition. In the exhibition, photographs are hung from the ceiling of the gallery in a layout that invites viewers to weave their way
through the fourteen chapters. Viewers will find themselves enclosed between large sheets covered with photographs, each focused on a different color scheme and architectural style.
The intimacy of the physical gallery space reflects the raw, emotional feel of the photographs themselves.
One might feel the coziness found within the snow-covered roofs of Charlotte Perriand’s Personal Chalet, or the curiosity invoked by the angular light coupled with bright blue tiles amidst the vast woods of the Aalto House.
“Architecture is a deeply personal, embodied practice,
something we experience all the time,” Julia Edwards ARC ’26 said. “But the way it’s done professionally is so disembodied and removed from personal relationships with building and I feel that the personal relationship is on display in the show.”
Benner hopes that visitors will appreciate the stories behind the buildings shown in the exhibit. “Paparraza Moderna: Lovers & Frenemies” will be on display until Nov. 29.
Contact MAXINE CHEN at maxine.chen@yale.edu
Drama school celebrates centennial at outdoor event
BY KIVA BANK STAFF REPORTER
Catherine Sheehy DRA ’92 DRA ’99, the chair of dramaturgy and dramatic criticism at the David Geffen School of Drama, was recently tasked with condensing the school’s 100-year history into a 20-minute speech. On Monday, speaking to students, faculty and staff of the Drama School gathered on Library Walk, she delivered.
The attendees were celebrating the centennial anniversary of the Drama School, which was founded by Edward S. Harkness, class of 1897, in 1924.
“Somehow, even amid radical changes and across a century, there is something immutable about the Drama School,” Sheehy said.
Sheehy, who is already working on a book about the history of the David Geffen School of Drama throughout the century, said that project influenced why she was invited to speak at the event.
Sheehy quipped that she has been working at the school for a third of the period during which it has existed, adding that even as
students, faculty and “the name of the joint” have changed, “there is something essential at the heart” of the school that “remains steady.” Dean James Bundy DRA ’95 kicked off the event with a speech of his own,
expressing similar sentiments about the heart of the Drama School.
“We make art to inspire joy, empathy and understanding, all of them sorely needed in the world,” Bundy said to the crowd, which was
seated underneath tents. “Our privilege extends beyond basking in the glow of past accomplishments here at Yale and in the field, to stretching ourselves and risking future failures so as to extend the legacy of the school and even reinvent it each day, week, month and year.”
In his speech, he referenced the renovations for the new dramatic arts buildings planned for construction on the corner of Crown and York streets, which is set to finish in summer 2029.
Emily Bakemeier, the vice provost for arts and faculty affairs, spoke after Bundy on behalf of the University. As a provost at Yale for over two decades, she acknowledged the role that the Drama School has played in shaping Yale’s legacy.
“We, gathered here, all know and dedicate our lives to acknowledge that the arts and drama teach people to empathize, understand opposing viewpoints and perspectives, reflect on different cultures and engage in difficult topics and conversations as humans,” Bakemeier said. “DGSD offers an education and experience that help all of us understand and have hope for
our common humanity. A university without these offerings can be great, but it cannot be world class.”
She added that the ability of arts educators to embody these principles is becoming increasingly important “each day.”
Bakemeier referred to the Drama School as “a jewel in the crown of the arts” at Yale, as she commemorated the century of excellence in both theatrical education and productions. She emphasized its role in producing engaged citizens and leaders who leave their mark on the world. After the speeches concluded, Associate Deans Florie Seery, Chantal Rodriguez, Nancy Yao SOM ’99 and Carla Jackson DRA ’99 joined Bundy to cut a cake that was distributed to attendees. Referencing the school’s 100th anniversary, Bundy remarked that “no birthday party is complete without a cake-cutting.”
The David Geffen School of Drama is located on 222 York St. Contact KIVA BANK at kiva.bank@yale.edu.
KIVA BANK / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The David Geffen School of Drama hosted a private event Monday to celebrate its 100th anniversary with its students, staff and faculty.
TIM TAI The News’ theater critic shares first thoughts on the upcoming theater season.
MAXINE CHEN / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
“Paparazza Moderna: Lovers & Frenemies” is on display at the Yale School of Architecture gallery until Nov. 29.
BY YAVIN FICKEL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Trees have long been regarded as life-giving, and new research now adds another layer to the adage.
According to a new study by Yale researchers published in Nature, trees host diverse and unique microbial communities, tallying up to a trillion bacteria in a single tree. These findings offer new insights for a variety of fields, including tree physiology, forest ecology and environmental microbiology.
“The wood of trees is the biggest pool of biomass in the world,” Jonathan Gewirtzman ENV ’26, a doctoral candidate at Yale School of the Environment who co-led the study, said in an interview. “This work was on describing the microbiome living inside of trees.”
Gewirtzman explained that while other plant microbiomes had been previously studied, no research had previously examined the microbiome of trees. Because of this, there was a lack of clarity on whether or not microbial life existed in trees.
To investigate, Gewirtz -
man and his team took samples from living trees in Yale Forests. Gewirtzman said his team spent considerable time figuring out how to grind the wood while keeping everything sterile and frozen. After processing, microbial DNA was extracted from the wood in a lab to conduct analysis.
Altogether, the researchers identified 40,000 different microbes across all wood samples.
While some microbes found by the team are known to be beneficial for trees by providing nitrogen from the atmosphere, others could have dangerous or otherwise unknown impacts. The impact of microbial life on their tree hosts remains a topic of interest for some members of the team.
“Understanding how different organisms have symbiotic or antagonistic relationships could mean a lot for understanding the lifetime of different species, why we have disturbances, or generally competitive dynamics in forests,” Marlyse Duguid, director of research for Yale Forests, said in an interview.
The study also found that different species of trees have distinct
microbial communities, which could have implications on conservation efforts, Cerise Stanley ENV ’27 said.
“There’s another biological component that needs to be considered when we think about how one species of trees can potentially impact other species,” Stanley said.
Beyond its environmental implications, the study’s findings are also relevant for fields that rely on environmental principles, such as economic modeling.
Etienne Berthet, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT and former director of the Global Commons Stewardship Index at Yale’s Center for Environmental Law & Policy, described the microbial communities in trees as shaped by a combination of soil and sources like atmospheric deposition.
“In the production of a single product, two areas cleared of seemingly identical trees could trigger very different impacts on biodiversity,” Berthet wrote in an email. “Currently, our global environmental economic models do not capture this at all — and it
TWAIN, AUTHOR
urgently needs deeper study.
In reflecting on their work, both Gewirtzman and Duguid emphasized the interdisciplinary nature of their research by explaining how each researcher approached the project with their own distinct skillsets and interests. This, Gewirtzman said, was a key component for the study’s success.
“This
The
BY MICHELLE SO STAFF REPORTER
In a concrete jungle like New York City, urban trees offer refuge: they’re living cooling systems and shade for parked cars. But the seasons are changing for trees in the Big Apple.
According to a new study published by Yale researchers in Environmental Research Letters, climate change is causing urban trees in New York City to turn green later in the year, potentially shifting pollen season and affecting seasonal allergies.
“Our findings show that climate change and the urban heat island effect are shifting the timing of tree leaf-out in parks,” Juwon Kong, the lead author of the paper, said.
Kong and her team utilized satellite images taken over a 19-year period to measure the start of the growing season, or the day of the year when the trees start “leafing out in spring.”
The drastic temperature transition from winter to spring is a key trigger for springtime leaf growth. Because winters are getting warmer due to climate change, the significant temperature hike is dampened, and, thus, trees experience delayed leaf growth.
According to Kong, medium-sized parks are especially vulnerable to climate change because they have both high edge-to-area ratios and smaller interiors. This means more of the park’s trees are exposed to surrounding heat from roads and buildings, but unlike larger parks, these medium-sized forests lack the cooling capacity of many trees.
Smaller “pocket parks” are already dominated by their surroundings, so their response to climate change in time is less distinct, while larger parks can better resist heat due to their cooling capacity.
In addition to climate change, trees are under a constant barrage of invasive insects, pathogens, plants and animals due to the increase and expansion of development, said Mark Ashton ENV ’85 ’90, senior associate dean of The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment.
“Taken together, trees and forests have never before been under such dire compounded and interacting impacts as today,” Ashton said.
In addition to affecting seasonal allergies, delayed seasons also means that trees will have less carbon intake, as a result of being less foliated. For trees, this reduces carbon uptake and growth. For people, it reduces early-spring cooling and shading benefits, and shifts pollen release, which can affect allergies.
“For ecosystems, delayed leafout can disrupt the timing of pollinators, migratory birds, and other species that depend on trees, altering ecological balances,” Kong said.
“These shifts could reshape biodiversity and ecosystem health within urban parks.”
Kong said that successful future initiatives should include “careful consideration of park size, species selection, tree planting and longterm conservation planning.” New Haven’s drinking water runs through 26,000 acres of natural forest.
Contact MICHELLE SO at michelle.so@yale.edu
SPORTS
Spike reflects shifting recruiting patterns across Ivy League
of documents, and provided my parents’ tax reports for financial aid. It was definitely a long process, but in the end it was all worth it.”
Connecticut sports attorney Richard Kent emphasized in a phone interview that while Yale will continue to prioritize recruiting high school athletes, transfer students are increasingly part of the conversation.
“There’s no way on Earth that Yale or other Ivy League schools are going to spend the preponderance, or even a large part, of their recruiting time on portal kids. But they’re going to be more welcoming of such kids and they’re going to be spending more time seeking those kids out,” he said.
This fall, Team 152 welcomed 23 new players in the Class of 2029 and rounded out their recruiting cycle with four transfers. With that number up from zero last year, it is clear head coach Tony Reno and his staff made it a new priority to bring in seasoned collegiate players.
Adjusting to Yale life
Transitioning to a new university, especially an Ivy League institution, also presents challenges. For Myerson, that meant joining a junior class where most students already have established friend groups.
“It’s my responsibility to be outgoing — to meet people in my classes
and around campus,” he said. Some transfers told the News they felt they were missing out on core elements of the Yale first-year experience — from living on Old Campus to first-year counselor, or FroCo, groups — that help build community and belonging among members of the class.
For Vydrova, transferring to an Ivy League school introduced the tension of balancing her adjustment to a new team while adapting to Yale’s academic rigor. At UTEP, life for student-athletes revolved around their sports, but when she stepped on campus in New Haven, she quickly realized life at Yale was much different.
“At Yale, there are many student-athletes, so it’s not something that sets you apart. Professors expect you to keep up with academics no matter what, and it’s your responsibility to be excellent in both sports and academics,” she wrote to the News. “I actually like it this way because it’s more challenging and pushes me to grow in both areas.”
Institutional and team support
While the transition can be an adjustment, Yale provides many resources for students navigating their new responsibilities.
In a statement to the News, Yale Athletics spokesperson Colleen Murphy emphasized the department’s commitment to supporting transfer athletes.
VOLLEYBALL
“We seek individuals who not only possess the talent and dedication to compete at a high level, but who also embody the academic standards, character, and values that define our institution,” Murphy wrote. “Transfer student-athletes utilize the same resources available to all transfer students at Yale, ensuring they are fully supported throughout the transition process.”
For athletes like Myerson and Sobecki, teammates have made the transition easier, providing both an instant support system and a sense of belonging.
“It was a blessing to step on campus and already have 28 best friends on the team,” Myerson said.
When Sobecki stepped onto the field for the first time at the hallowed Yale Bowl, in lock step with his new teammates and coaches, he instantly knew he had made the right decision to become a Bulldog, he said. The pedigree of Yale Athletics and the culture fostered by Coach Reno were immediately clear.
He told the News that donning the Blue and White for the first time was a moment he would never forget.
“I felt like I was a part of the team and family as soon as I showed up on campus for summer session, and my coaches and teammates made me feel at home right away,” Sobecki wrote to the News.
With a larger transfer class this
fall, Yale Athletics and its teams will continue to adapt to a changing college sports landscape where the transfer portal has become a central feature of some student-athletes’ careers.
: Bulldogs send Huskies back to the doghouse
BY RACHEL MAK STAFF REPORTER
The women’s volleyball team (2–3, 0–0 Ivy) triumphed over the University of Connecticut (7–1, 0–0 Big East) and Northeastern (4–4, 0–0 CAA) in an early-season homestand at the John J. Lee Amphitheater over the weekend.
On Friday, the Bulldogs won a tight back-and-forth game against UConn that went to five sets. After losing the first set 25-18, Yale bounced back and took the momentum in the second set with a 27-25 win. Although UConn refused to let up and took the third set, the Bulldogs edged them out in the fourth and ended the game with a fifth set score of 15-7.
The fifth set began with a 6-0 run, with freshman standout Ava Poinsett ’29 scoring four of the six points.
“We were able to get them out of system and score,” head coach Erin Appleman said. “A lot of energy went into that set.”
The Bulldogs refused to let UConn go on a run, winning the rally every time the Huskies got the serve and racking up kills from every position on the court.
“This weekend, we really focused on staying aggressive in all aspects of the game — serving, hitting, digging,” Betsy Goodenow ’27 wrote to the News. “I think that was the difference and what helped us to finish against UConn.” Before Friday, the Bulldogs had lost both of the five-set matches they played so far this year. On Saturday, Yale carried the energy from its first home win of the season and beat Northeastern three sets to none in a dominant performance. The Bulldogs held Northeastern to a .144 hitting percentage and had more team kills, aces and blocks. In the Northeastern match, Yale found success because they were able to “maintain our high energy of play,” Appleman said. The women’s volleyball team will head to San Diego on Thursday to square off against the University of San Diego (4–3, 0–0, WCC), UC San Diego (1–8, 0–0 Big West) and San Diego State (4–4, 0–0 Mountain West). The games are part of the Jack Talmadge Volleyball Classic. Contact RACHEL MAK at rachel.mak@yale.edu .
Men’s rugby opens 150th season with a win over UConn
BY INEZ CHUIDIAN STAFF REPORTER
The men’s rugby team took on the University of Connecticut in Mansfield for their season opener Saturday.
Both the Bulldogs, the rugby club’s first team, and the Bluedogs, their development team, took home wins in a promising start for the team.
The Bulldogs, captained by Falco Emery ’26 and Jack Stemerman ’26, opened the 80-minute game with a strong start. Aggressive offense from Bulldog forwards and backs challenged the Huskies.
By halftime, the Bulldogs were up 17-0. Circulating the ball through the backline and conceding just two tries in the second half, the full time whistle blew with a final score of 24-12. Tobi Bamisaye ’29 scored the final try with a successful conversion kick by Declan Ratchford ’28.
The Bluedogs came home with a decisive 26-5 win over UConn. Last weekend, the Bluedogs had similar success with a 24-22 victory in a scrimmage over Vassar.
“The Bluedogs earned their win by stepping up and playing how they practice,” Bluedogs player Peter Burns ’28 wrote to the News. “They practiced our gameplan, fundamentals, and just wanted to play.”
In the fall, collegiate rugby teams traditionally play games with 15 players on each side. In the spring, they typically play faster-paced games with seven players on each side.
“Our men concentrate on 15-a-side rugby throughout both the fall and spring,” Craig Wilson, the director of rugby at Yale, wrote. “This allows us to keep all 40+ players engaged, develop our younger athletes and prepare them for the next fall season.”
With five seniors rostered this fall, this year’s team is significantly younger than the last. In the spring, 16 players graduated.
“That youth doesn’t dampen our expectations,” Wilson said. “We’re aiming for a winning season and want to make a serious run at the Liberty Conference title.”
The Liberty Conference operates under National Collegiate Rugby, a governing body for collegiate rugby programs in the United States.
This year, 2025, is also the 150th anniversary of Yale rugby. In the lead-up to this milestone, alumni events have been held across the country, and players have been presented with a commemorative uniform to mark the occasion. The celebrations will culminate in a Hall of Fame gala to honor distinguished figures in Yale rugby’s history.
“Rugby has a storied legacy at Yale, and we’re immensely proud of that tradition, but we also see it as inspiration to create our own legacy for the
Tommy Gannon contributed reporting. Contact LIZA KAUFMAN at
YALE ATHLETICS
The men’s rugby team came home from the weekend with two wins, marking a strong start for their fall season.
YALE ATHLETICS
The women’s volleyball team beat UConn in five sets on Friday before crushing Northeastern on Saturday.
LIZA KAUFMAN / PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”
YCC Senate delays budget vote after Spring Fling dispute
BY ASHER BOISKIN STAFF REPORTER
The Yale College Council postponed a vote on its $1.2 million budget Sunday after a fight over Spring Fling, the annual endof-year concert that accounts for more than a third of student government spending.
This year’s budget proposal initially set aside $440,116 for Spring Fling, roughly $100,000 more than last year. Yet senators approved an amendment from Senator Joseph Elsayyid ’26, who represents Davenport, that cut the budget line down to $420,000. The amended figure matches the spending minimum that YCC leaders said was mandated by the Yale College Dean’s Office, which represents $75,000 more than what the YCC appropriated for Spring Fling in last year’s budget.
The amendment passed on a 14-9 vote, with one abstention and four senators not in attendance.
It redistributes the $20,000 difference to the First-Year Class Council, Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee, or UOFC, events director and YCC policy teams.
In a statement to the News after the meeting, Elsayyid wrote that “senators were told they could not know how much the Dean’s Office was requiring” to spend on Spring Fling prior to the meeting. He added that the $420,000 spending minimum is a “calculated estimate” created by the Dean’s Office “to have an event of the same quality as last year’s,” but that the event can still happen on a smaller budget.
An email sent to Elsayyid from an
administrator in the Dean’s Office and reviewed by the News says that $420,000 is “the amount needed to run the event with the same setup as in years past.” The email also states that “it is possible to suggest changes to the structure and pricing of the event.”
Elsayyid described his amendment during the meeting as a compromise meant to balance administrators’ spending minimum with senators’ priorities.
The chamber did not vote on the full budget on Sunday, leaving the amended version to return next week.
The budget before the chamber is the largest in recent memory. Its growth comes from a $50 hike in the undergraduate student activities fee, which increased from $125 to $175 this year. YCC Chief Financial Officer Aaron Chen ’27, who delivered a presentation on the proposal, estimated that more than 6,600 undergraduates pay the fee, generating more than $1 million for the YCC.
Additional YCC funding comes from the YCC’s endowment, which generated roughly $18,000 this year, along with $50,000 in rollovers from pandemic years. The Dean’s Office contributed $60,000 directly to the UOFC, the council’s club funding arm, while the University president’s office contributed $40,000 earmarked for Spring Fling.
In his presentation before the amendment was proposed, Chen explained how the $1.2 million would have been distributed. Nearly 40 percent — $470,992 — would go to the UOFC, which funds hundreds of student groups. Spring Fling would have taken $440,116, or 37 percent.
Senate initiatives were allocated $75,000, the events director $75,000
and each class council $25,000.
Policy teams, which once received $750 each, were budgeted $1,000 in a shared pool for larger projects.
The Spring Fling allocation dominated the debate.
Senators challenged both the size of the increase and the absence of any representative from the Spring Fling committee. YCC President Andrew Boanoh ’27 told the chamber that he had saaaigned a non-disclosure agreement and could not disclose specific Spring Fling expenditure details, but mentioned the concert’s “incredibly ridiculous and large operating costs.”
“I do think it’s insane that they’re being allocated this amount of money, but they don’t even send a representative to our meeting,” Senator Brendan Kaminski ’28, who represents Saybrook, said. “I think that’s a little crazy.”
Boanoh responded by saying that he had invited a Spring Fling representative but they “couldn’t be here” and that he “would speak on their behalf.”
Boanoh wrote to the News after the meeting that a Spring Fling representative “will be present at the next meeting.”
Yale Spring Fling talent chair Mateo Félix Castillo ’27 did not respond to the News’ emailed request for comment on Monday evening.
Some senators framed the event as out of proportion compared to other services the YCC could provide. They argued that directing resources to clubs or everyday needs would reach students more broadly, especially with so much new revenue from student fees at stake.
Chen defended the allocation, calling Spring Fling the most
impactful program in the budget. He argued that the event justifies its share of funding because it brings together the full undergraduate community.
“Every dollar has a tangible impact,” Chen said. “Spring Fling is our largest student event on campus, bar none.”
YCC chief of staff Surabhi Kumar ’26 echoed Chen’s sentiment.
“This is the entire student body that is benefiting from Spring Fling,” Kumar said. “It’s a historically important event for the council.” Policy teams became another flashpoint during the meeting. Their budgets were cut by $250, with the YCC’s finance team framing the change as a response to years of underspending and low-impact expenditures.
Chen told senators that the pooled structure would allow the chamber to allocate money
flexibly to strong projects without leaving funds unused.
Some senators pushed back, arguing that small purchases — fruit, snacks or event giveaways — draw students into advocacy efforts. They described such expenditures as tools for building legitimacy among undergraduates who might otherwise ignore policy campaigns.
“That’s what gets students to pull up,” Kaminski said. “That’s how you build a movement.”
The meeting stretched for morethan 90 minutes. It began 15 minutes late, after the chamber initially failed to reach quorum, and ended without a final budget vote. Sept. 15 was the last day students could petition to opt out of paying the student activities fee.
Contact ASHER BOISKIN at asher.boiskin@yale.edu.
‘Performative male’ contest violated campus policy, administrator says
BY OLIVIA CYRUS STAFF REPORTER
The organizers of Yale’s inaugural “performative male” contest received an email Thursday from a Yale administrator saying that the event violated campus policy.
Last Saturday, around 500 students crowded the Women’s Table
near Cross Campus for Yale’s iteration of the contest, which was inspired by a viral online trend. Organizers Chloe Shiffman ’26 and Mia Bauer ’27 picked up the idea for the event from a post on the campus forum Fizz. The contest announcement described a “performative man” as someone who postures sensitivity without engaging with the
ideas themselves. In an email addressed to Bauer and Shiffman, Melanie Boyd, the dean of students, alerted the duo of the event’s violation of campus rules.
“As a former member of the WGSS program, I have to applaud your initiative in organizing the Saturday “performative male” contest,” Boyd wrote, referring to her position in the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies program. “But as the dean of students, I also have to remind you about Yale’s policy on the use of outdoor space, which you violated.”
She encouraged them to “partner with a registered student org” for any future events and follow University registration and space reservation protocols.
Shiffman was none too pleased.
“It was Melanie Boyd letting us know that we had violated a made-up rule that students at Yale could only congregate if they were part of a group,” Shiffman said. “I’m very angry right now.”
Boyd did not respond to the News’ request for comment about Shiffman’s reaction.
To Shiffman, a college campus should be for “spontaneous” student use. She said dozens of professors and her peers reached out and applauded the unity the event generated. Shiffman said she believes the University’s “use of outdoor spaces” policy limits the ability of Yale students to unify through gatherings. She also said the administration’s response to the casual event felt different from their response to pro-Palestinian protests last year and in the spring of 2024, when administrators penalized protest participants for violating the same “use of outdoor spaces policy” Boyd referenced in her email to Shiffman.
“The Yale institution used this arbitrary, vague, and ultimately controlling policy as an excuse to arrest my classmates and peers during the peaceful Y4P protests,” Shiffman wrote in a statement to the News.
She said that she and Bauer were not punished by the University for the violation.
Performative male contest attendee Undra Pillows ’28 said he felt that the reported instances of the
administration’s use of the outdoor spaces policy were unjust, pointing toward the University’s prior dispersal of campus protests.
“If that’s the policy they’re going with, they should have shut down the performative male contest, just like they were arresting students protesting against what’s happening in Palestine,” Pillows said. “It just shows the lack of transparency when it comes to administration and the policies they’re using.”
Moving forward, Shiffman said she “will change nothing” in planning future similar events. She said she plans not to abide by a policy “invented to criminalize” her classmates.
Yale’s outdoor spaces policy requires community members interested in using campus outdoor spaces for events to receive advance permission from a residential college, school or unit overseeing the space. Yale, therefore, “reserves the discretion to disperse” an event organized by a non-registered group of students and to take “disciplinary action and/ or charges or fines may be imposed or assessed for violations.”
Student groups urge Yale to join farmworkers’ rights program
BY JERRY GAO STAFF REPORTER
A film screening and question-and-answer session on Friday drew students in support of Yale’s participation in the Fair Food Program — an initiative advocating for farmworkers’ rights and working conditions.
Launched in 2011, the Fair Food Program, or FFP, gained prominence after large companies such as Walmart and McDonald’s joined, agreeing to pay a one-cent-perpound premium to increase wages of tomato farmworkers.
The screening was cohosted by Yale’s chapter of the Student/Farmworker Alliance, or SFA, and the Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project, or YHHAP, student organizers advocating for Yale Hospitality to join the Fair Food Program. The film screening and Q&A was held in Luce Hall and drew 40 attendees from various universities.
“By joining the FFP, which is recognized as the gold-standard of human rights protection in agriculture, Yale will make a commitment to human rights, ensuring the produce we eat was not grown under conditions of forced labor, sexual harass-
ment, physical assault, or wage theft,” SFA member Andrew Storino
’27 wrote in an emailed statement.
The FFP is operated by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, or CIW, a farmworker rights organization. It aims to link participating produce buyers — often retailers and restaurant chains — with farmworkers.
Buyers would buy produce, originally only tomatoes, from participating farms that give workers certain protections and abide by a code of conduct. Buyers also agree to pay a premium of one cent per pound picked that goes to farmworker wages.
Lupe Gonzalo, a farmworker and CIW staff member, said in an interview — translated from Spanish by her CIW colleague Giselle Ramirez-Garcia — that while the program is relatively new, Yale’s institutional support would help grow FFP’s impact.
“It was just launched, really publicly launched with Yale starting up this campaign. It’s very new.
We haven’t had any universities join the program yet because it is still very new,” she said. “But we’re very excited to see that there are little campaigns popping up in several universities.”
Ramirez and Gonzalo said the idea came from activism at Princeton, where students are “working actively” on getting their university to “formally sign a legally binding agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.”
A Yale Hospitality spokesperson declined to immediately comment in a Tuesday email to the News.
Yale has announced a 5 percent budget cut in non-salary costs as well as a pause on hiring and capital construction projects after an endowment tax increase passed through Congress. Yale Hospitality has made numerous changes to student dining that many students believe are means to cut costs.
Most recently, Yale Hospitality cited “budget constraints” in an email to YHHAP explaining the reduction in meal plan donation events.
Storino told the News that he does not believe the financial tightening should be a significant hurdle for Yale.
“Yale may face challenges which are hard to solve, but upholding human rights on the farms which grow our fruits and vegetables is not one of them,” Storino wrote.
The kickoff event pushing for Yale’s participation in the program
screened “Food Chains,” a film that focused on the struggles of tomato pickers in Immokalee, Fla., who went on a hunger strike to urge Publix, a retail chain, to join the program.
“Food Chains” director Sanjay Rawal said in an interview that the title of the film came about naturally — “supermarket chains, food chains and then the idea that people have actually been put into physical shackles in modern America for the sake of a few harvests.”
Storino told the News that the organizers invited Yale Hospitality two days before the event, after being in touch with dining administrators since July. There was no response when Rawal asked during the event whether any Yale Hospitality representative was present.
Attendees interviewed by the News said they would support universities joining the program.
Juliette Palacios ’26 said she would like to see Yale Hospitality joining the FFP. Palacios’ brother, Liam Palacios, who studies at Stanford University, said that he “definitely” supports Stanford joining the program.
John Hoffer, a student and worker at Harvard, told the News that the
film was “inspiring, especially the comment that small groups of people can change things.”
Gonzalo said that while there will be an additional “penny-per-pound” premium, the additional costs would be minimal for Yale.
Amanda Shanor ’03 LAW ’09 GRD ’22, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and its law school, said she worked with the CIW as her first job after college.
Shanor said in an interview with the News that FFP’s buyer-based model was a key part of their success. “A lot of work had been done to try to get farm workers to engage with their direct agricultural employers. But they’re temporary workers, and that didn’t work. And what the CIW figured out was that they just did a power analysis of how this industry works.” Shanor said. “And they saw that further up the chain, that’s where people had leverage.”
Yale Hospitality operates 14 residential dining halls and 13 retail locations.
Contact JERRY GAO at jerry.gao.jg2988@yale.edu.
GARRETT CURTIS / PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
The YCC Senate postponed a final vote on its $1.2 million budget after cutting back on proposed budget’s Spring Fling funding, redistributing money elsewhere.
BAALA SHAKYA / PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Organizers of Yale’s inaugural “performative male” contest violated campus policy, an administrator said.
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
VIRGINIA WOOLF AUTHOR
Jamaican restaurant to fill vacant Fair Haven corner
BY LEO NYBERG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
For the first time in three years, the back corner of 124 Grand Ave. in Fair Haven will have an occupant.
The colorful and fiery logo of the new restaurant, Grill-Mon, decorates the exterior of a corner local leaders say was once plagued by drug activity and violence. In front of a Jamaican flag, countertops glisten, and drills, batteries and packages cover refrigerators and dishwashers.
Jamiel Bowen and his mother, Eulita Clarke, are preparing to open Grill-Mon in mid-October, after the success of their restaurant of the same name in Middletown.
“We want to share the love because food is love. If you can prepare a good, clean meal, it’s love and everybody needs love,” Clarke said.
Grill-Mon began as a successful food truck in Middletown, before the mother-son team opened their brick-and-mortar location. The move to Grand Avenue from Middletown follows a year and a half of operations in the Central Connecticut college town. The Middletown location has already closed.
“At our restaurant in Middletown, people love oxtail, jerk chicken. We season things to the bone to try to get the best flavors in the food,” Bowen said. “My mom, you know, she’s a great chef.”
Bowen, a full-time fund accountant, will manage business operations in New Haven, while Clarke, who was a chef in her native Jamaica, will run the kitchen.
Clarke began cooking when she was 6 years old in her grandmother’s kitchen.
“I have my grandmother’s secret, but I’m not going to talk about my grandmother’s secret,” she said.
When Clarke cooks, it is not about following recipes or instructions.
“When you have a talent or a gift, you don’t go wrong because you have the talent, you have the gift. So when you’re doing stuff, you’re working from your mind,” Clarke said. “That’s how we do it in Jamaica.” Bowen finds his work at the restaurant rewarding. For him, Grill-Mon is the fulfillment of a dream from his childhood in Jamaica, when he visited outdoor cookouts on the weekends.
“I’m a little bit older now, so I can fulfill this dream now and open up a place and make a good life journey,” he said.
Grill-Mon will serve traditional Jamaican food, such as oxtail, jerk chicken and patties.
For both mother and son, providing for the community is a key part of their plan.
“There’s a lot of Jamaican immigrants here. I think it would be a good draw for those communities,” Bowen said.
For Clarke, food is a calling.
“Me and my husband did own a grocery store, but suddenly cancer take him away and on his bed he said, ‘Lord if you hear me, I want to cook and feed my people,’” she said. The corner on 124 Grand Ave. already has three shops: Golden Wok, Pizza Plus and Smoker’s Market.
Grill-Mon is replacing Grand Cafe, a long-standing bar in the neighborhood that has been vacant for three years. In February 2022, the state liquor board denied Grand
Cafe’s application for renewal of its liquor license.
Ward 14 Alder Sarah Miller ’03 said Grand Cafe was a hub for drug activity.
“For many years, it was a bar where there was a lot of drug activity that spilled over into violence, including multiple murders in the parking lot and the sidewalk,” she said.
Community activist and Fair Haven resident David Weinreb said Grand Cafe was detrimental to the neighborhood and in disrepair.
Grand Cafe “was an active participant in the neglect of the space.” Weinreb said. Grill-Mon’s doors still have the old signs from the cafe reading, “You must be 21+ to enter,” and, “No mask no service.”
The former owner of Grand Cafe did not respond to the News’ request for comment.
Since the closing of Grand Cafe, the property has been vacant. In May, the Board of Zoning Appeals denied a request for a poetry cafe that wanted to serve alcohol after Miller testified against the license request. Later that month, Bowen made plans to acquire the property.
Miller said the corner has improved in the past year and that drug activity now typically involves marijuana instead of harder drugs. She claimed the state liquor board has decided there will never be another liquor permit in that location.
“A very small universe of businesses can consider that location,” she said.
Bowen confirmed he was told he would not be able to have a liquor license at the location, but expressed that he saw the struggling corner as an opportunity.
“I’ve heard different stories, but my goal is to have it be better, have it be cleaner, more welcoming, to work with the police, local leaders and to sort of have a better environment,” Bowen said.
Weinreb is ready to help.
“I’m very excited that Jamiel and Eulita are going to make their best effort to make the place their own. The way that Fair Haven works and the way that neighbors work is that we are excited to do whatever we can to help this business thrive,” Weinreb said.
After Bowen secured the property, Weinreb reached out to him and Clarke and offered to help the business in any way he could.
Miller is similarly excited by the opening of the new restaurant.
“A business is not just a business,” Miller said. “Restaurants build community, they bring culture, they bring events.”
Clarke shares this mission.
“It’s not about cooking to collect money. I’m going to serve people, money or money not,” Clarke said. “We’re going to serve the community.” As of 2023, Jamaica was the most common birthplace of foreign-born residents in Connecticut.
Contact LEO NYBERG at leo.nyberg@yale.edu .
‘Trad Wives’ win Trivia Night at East Rock bar
BY SARAH MUKKUZHI CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Dozens of people cheered over pints of beer, booed at disfavored politicians and listened to Yale and New Haven fun facts at the East Rock Brewing Company’s trivia night on Wednesday.
The “Trad Wives,” a team of Yale School of Medicine residents, won the night in an unexpected victory after coming from behind in the final round.
Kellen Round, one of the “Trad Wives” team members expressed his surprise.
“We had pretty low expectations going in,” Round said. “We’ve struggled around town at the different trivia nights in the past, and so when we came into this one, expectations were at the floor.”
Ross Hogan, a member of team “Pugs,” captured the fun, competitive nature of trivia night.
“We’re here for blood,” she said before “Trad Wives” were crowned victors.
Hogan’s team actually corrected the host on the question, “What small storefront in Westville is known for its quirky selection of clothing, art and knick-knacks from small, independent, artists?” Her team realized the store in question,
Strange Ways, is no longer in Westville, and, consequently, they did not select it as an answer.
All the “Pugs” have lived in Connecticut for quite some time and are familiar with the area, they said. Hogan was frustrated at falling behind when the host ended up giving all the teams a point for the mistake in the question.
“We were enraged. We were incensed,” she said. Hogan and the other “Pugs” are often at the East Rock Brewing Co. for Trivia Night, she said, and they relish the chance to compete with Yalies.
The questions at East Rock Brewing are not as difficult as those at other trivia places in the New Haven area, Hogan added.
Sally’s Apizza was opened by Frank Pepe’s nephew. Pat Healy, a teacher at Jonathan Law High School in Milford, hosted the trivia night. Healy has started bartending at East Rock and even returns on days he is not working just for the community cultivated at the bar.
“People are chill. They’re relaxed,” Healy said. “The crowd is
From facts about Yale’s secret societies to New Haven apizza, the trivia game offered participants many tidbits they may be able to use in the future to impress their friends and family: Nathan Hale was a New Haven native and revolutionary war spy who stated, “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” Walter Camp, considered the father of American football, is buried in Grove Street Cemetery. The New Haven Green was built by Puritans to accommodate enough people for the Second Coming of Christ, which they deemed to be exactly 144,000.
National ‘pro-homes’
BY JAKE ROBBINS & TAJRIAN KHAN STAFF REPORTER
REPORTER
& CONTRIBUTING
YIMBYtown, the self-proclaimed largest “pro-homes” conference in the country, brought hundreds of housing advocates, policymakers and organizers to New Haven Sunday.
A play on the phrase NIMBY, which refers to a “not in my backyard” attitude about housing development, the YIMBY movement aims to reform restrictive zoning laws to allow for multi-family and mixed-use residential development nationwide. The three-day YIMBYtown conference, based at the Omni New Haven Hotel from Sunday to Tuesday, includes housing-focused panels, workshops and tours of the city.
“We don’t have enough homes in this country, however you slice
it and dice it,” Nick Kantor, program director for Desegregate CT, which organized the YIMBYtown conference, said in a phone interview. “It just shows how impactful this event is for attendees. We were aiming for 600 people. We’re over 1,000 now.” Previously held in Boulder, Boston, Oakland, Portland and Austin, YIMBYtown has become a national hub for the pro-homes movement. This year’s programming is organized around themes of housing, transit and sustainability, and keynote speakers include Bill McKibben, an American environmentalist and author, Daryl Fairweather, chief economist of real estate company Redfin, and Gov. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota. This year’s YIMBYtown is hosted by Desegregate CT, a pro-
just a vibe. Like I said, it’s older, it’s younger and people are just friendly and nice to be around.”
On average, roughly 20 teams participate in the weekly trivia night with about two to five people per team, Healy told the News.
Healy had nothing but praise for East Rock as a venue.
“This is one of the best neighborhoods in New Haven,” he said. New Haven resident Gina Pica-
gli is a regular trivia night attendee at the East Rock Brewing Company. She competed on Wednesday with her team “Old New England.”
“I love this trivia compared to others, because the questions are really thoughtful,” she said. East Rock Brewery Company is located at 285 Nicoll St.
Contact SARAH MUKKUZHI at sarah.mukkuzhi@yale.edu.
conference arrives in New Haven
homes coalition founded in 2020 that advocates for land use reform across Connecticut. A program of local research nonprofit Regional Plan Association, or RPA, the group has grown to include more than 80 nonprofit and neighborhood partners, which call for policies to expand housing supply, increase equity and sustainability, and dismantle exclusionary zoning practices. One of Desegregate CT’s key tenets is that pro-homes reforms are about more than housing, according to Amit Kamma ’26, an advocacy fellow at Desegregate CT and member of the organizing team for YIMBYtown. The panels and activities at the conference are structured with that view in mind: that housing reform is necessary for achieving sustainability and economic justice, he added.
“Housing reform is something that almost always happens at the local or state level,” Kamma wrote to the News. “As individuals and organizations in distinct parts of the country work on these common issues, YIMBYtown becomes a critical place for them to come together and trade ideas.”
Desegregate CT decided to host YIMBYtown this year to either celebrate the passing of a landmark housing bill in Connecticut, or, after the June veto of that bill, to galvanize local pro-homes advocates.
Gov. Ned Lamont was not invited to speak at YIMBYtown after vetoing the bill. He cited lack of support from local officials and excessive requirements for construction projects. The keynote invitations are reserved for leaders who have
demonstrated housing policy success, Kantor said, but Lamont’s veto meant he did not earn the platform. Kantor stressed that Lamont is still welcome to attend panels or sessions as a participant.
“The Governor understands the RPA’s decision to not invite him to their conference YIMBYtown,” Robert Blanchard, Lamont’s director of communications, wrote to the News in an email. “He still appreciates their work and looks forward to future collaboration on a new bill to address our housing crisis.”
YIMBYtown was founded in 2020.
Contact JAKE ROBBINS at jake.robbins@yale.edu and TAJRIAN KHAN at tajrian.khan@yale.edu.
LEO NYBERG, CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Eulita Clarke and her son, Jamiel Bowen, are moving their restaurant Grill-Mon from Middletown to New Haven.
CAMPUS DISHES: THE FOOD TRUCKS OF YALE
Photos by Garrett Curtis Photography Editor
FOOTBALL: Team 152 looks to make school history
BY BRODY GILKISON STAFF REPORTER
When the football season kicks off for the Bulldogs on Saturday, it will be the first game they have played in over 300 days, since they last beat Harvard.
Typically, the two main goals of the Yale football team are clear: beat Harvard and win an Ivy League conference championship. This year, those two goals remain, but now there is an opportunity for this team to do something no Yale team has had the chance to accomplish in 80 years: compete for a spot in the postseason.
In 1945, the Ivy Group Agreement was established, prohibiting Ivy League teams from playing in postseason football games.
Fast forward to 2024: the Ivy League Council of Presidents voted last December to allow their teams to compete in the Football Championship Subdivision, or FCS, playoffs.
The decision gives schools such as Princeton and Yale — which have 15 and 18 national championships, respectively — a chance to pursue yet another national championship trophy.
Before the Bulldogs can reach the playoffs, they have 10 regular season games ahead of them, three non-conference and seven in-conference contests.
Team 152 starts off the year by hosting the Holy Cross Crusaders at the Yale Bowl this weekend. The following week, the Bulldogs will open up conference play with a second home game, against Cornell.
In week three, Yale will go on the road to play 10th-ranked Lehigh. Last season, although the Bulldogs defeated Lehigh in the regular season, the Mountain Hawks advanced all the way to the second round of the FCS playoffs, so this game will be a good test for both teams. In week four, the Elis
head north to Dartmouth to take on the preseason second-ranked Big Green.
After two weeks on the road, the Bulldogs return to New Haven to play three straight home games against Stonehill, Penn and Columbia. Following the homestand, Yale goes on another road trip to face Brown before matching up with the Princeton Tigers in the penultimate game of the regular season.
The biggest game of the year takes place at the Yale Bowl on Nov. 22, when the preseason thirdranked Bulldogs look to secure their fourth straight win over the preseason conference favorite, the Harvard Crimson, and earn a berth to the FCS playoffs.
The postseason possibilities are not the only change that the Yale football team is dealing with, as they are also looking to replenish their talent and fill the shoes of graduated All-Ivy League talent. With five of the 10 All-Ivy award winners and 12 starters from last year gone, quite a few players will be stepping up into new roles this season.
On the offensive side of the ball, Yale lost its leading passer in All-Ivy Honorable Mention Grant Jordan ’25, who threw for 22 touchdowns and three interceptions in nine games, as well as First Team All-Ivy receiver David Pantelis ’25, who hauled in over 900 yards and eight touchdowns last season.
Transfer quarterback Dante Reno ’28, with the help of a few key pieces, hopes to fill the holes on offense left by Jordan and Pantelis.
“I’m really excited for this season, I think we have a lot of guys here right now that have worked hard this offseason to put us in a good position offensively,”
Reno wrote to the News.
One key piece returning for Yale is All-Ivy running back and team captain Josh Pitsenberger ’26, who led the team last year
with nearly 800 rushing yards and seven touchdowns, including a spectacular 36-yard score to help upend the Crimson in last year’s Yale-Harvard showdown. Reno wrote that seniors such as Pitsenberger and wide receiver Mason Shipp ’26 would provide strong leadership.
“Pitts is a great player and even better leader. I can’t wait to play with him,” Reno wrote.
On the defensive side of the ball, the Bulldogs are lucky to have AP All-American defensive back Abu Kamara ’27 back. Last year, Kamara led the FCS in total tackles and was named a finalist for the National Defensive Player of the Year.
When asked about how he plans to build on his success,
Kamara told the News, “We’re just continuing to go through the process of being great and not deviating away from doing the small things correctly in order for it to lead to big successes.”
Another key piece of the defense that will have a new look this year is the linebackers. With the departure of Team 151 captain Dean Shaffer ’25 and heavyhitter Jake Biggs ’25, this year's linebackers will have a new look.
An up-and-coming key player to look out for is Phoenix Grant ’27. After seeing a lot of playing time near the end of last season, including some key tackles against Harvard last year, he will be a vital part of the new defensive group. Although the class of 2025
“left many holes,” Grant said, “the presence of so many older guys to look up to and bring other guys along definitely helped with the transition.
“I speak for a lot of guys in my class when I say that we feel very prepared and are excited for the opportunity to step up and fill those gaps because of the leadership and guidance last year's seniors provided us with, whether that be on the field playing, or in any aspect of the program,” Grant added.
Yale kicks off against Holy Cross at noon on Saturday.
Contact BRODY GILKISON at brody.gilkison@yale.edu .
For unusually big transfer athlete class, academics were a draw
BY LIZA KAUFMAN STAFF REPORTER
This fall, 12 transfer student-athletes joined Yale’s varsity teams, a significant increase from recent years, according to a transfer counselor. Although the reason behind the jump still remains unclear, many of the athletes had similar motivations for transferring to Yale.
The incoming group of transfers includes four playing football, one on men’s soccer, one on men’s lacrosse, two on women’s basketball, one on women’s swimming,
two on men’s swimming and one on volleyball. Diego Victoria ’27, who transferred to Yale last year and serves as a transfer counselor, said Yale had three transfer athletes last year. He said a friend who transferred in 2023 told him that there were just two that year.
Why they transferred to Yale For men’s tennis player Jason Shuler ’27, who transferred to Yale last year from Williams College, a Division III school, the move was about maximizing both his athletic and academic experience.
“I always wanted to go to Yale, even out of high school,” Shuler said. “Williams is an amazing school, but being Division III, there were a lot of off season rules and our season was much shorter. There were months where we couldn’t even be coached. At Yale you’re playing Princeton, Penn, Harvard. You’re playing top-10 teams in the country. You’re playing guys that might go pro.”
Joining the cohort of twelve transfer athletes who arrived in New Haven this fall is former Duke men’s soccer defender Andrew Myerson ’27. Although Myerson enjoyed
his two years at Duke, he felt that the student-athlete balance at Yale aligned more with his priorities.
“I felt that Yale offered a better overall fit for the student that I want to be,” Myerson said in a phone interview with the News.
“We have a more well rounded group of guys.”
He also cited the Yale team’s welcoming nature as a major factor in his decision.
“The team culture was huge for me,” Myerson said. “We have a really good team culture here with a lot of guys that form a brotherhood that I have enjoyed joining and becoming a part of.”
Similar to Myerson, women’s basketball player Luisa Vydrova ’27 transferred from the University of Texas at El Paso, or UTEP, as she hoped to push her limits both academically and athletically.
“I decided to transfer because I wanted both a strong athletic program and a place where academics would challenge me at the highest level,” Vydrova wrote to the News. “Yale stood out because it combines world-class education with a supportive athletic community. It felt like the right environment for me to grow as both a student and an athlete.”
For wide receiver Clayton Sobecki ’28, who joined Team 152 after spending one year at the U.S. Air Force Academy, the decision to play for Yale football felt natural. Sobecki was recruited by Yale in his high school days and re-recruited at the collegiate level.
Oftentimes, the relationships and trust built in early conversations can pay off down the line.
“Yale has a more tight knit/family feel and culture among coaches and players,” Sobecki wrote to the News, adding that his brother, Hayden Sobecki ’25, played baseball at Yale. “So I got to see firsthand the bond he had made with his teammates and his coaches and the success he had here.
“I had a great connection with Coach Knight and knew I wanted to be part of the program and culture here at Yale,” Sobecki continued, referring to wide receivers coach Marcus Knight.
Recruiting and admissions challenges
While their motivations to transfer varied, all athletes described the process as faster and more intense than high school recruiting. Typically in high school, the recruiting process takes over a year, but for transfer athletes the process can take only a matter of a few weeks.
For Vydrova, the admissions process of applying to a top-tier school such as Yale added yet another hoop to jump through.
“Because Yale is an Ivy League school, the admissions process was more challenging,” she wrote. “I had to retake the SAT, go through an interview where they asked about my credits, grades and why I wanted to transfer. On top of that, I wrote two essays, submitted a lot
WHERE HAVE ALL THE ROCK STARS GONE? WEEKEND
Britpop legends Oasis are currently on their highly-anticipated reunion tour. I spent my summer in Britain and saw first-hand how much Oasis-mania took over the country. Every time I took the train into London, I saw people wearing bucket hats and Adidas T-shirts branded with the band’s logo. On Aug. 31, I saw Oasis perform to a soldout crowd at MetLife Stadium. They played all their hits and a bunch of their non-album B-sides as well. Before my eyes, Oasis cemented themselves as legends of rock n’ roll. They are resting on their laurels and have embraced becoming elder statesmen of rock. Is this what it means to be a rockstar in 2025?
Oasis were tabloid darlings during the 1990s. A single consisting of the brothers getting into a verbal altercation for 14 minutes during an interview reached number 52 on the UK Singles Chart in 1995. We, the general public, uphold and commend bad behavior from our favorite celebrities. We read gossip magazines, tell our friends about who in show business is feuding with who and eat up the latest drama on our Instagram feeds. We, as a result, created the rockstar. Performing for tens of thousands of adoring fans night after night, a woman you’ve christened as your muse at your side, enough drugs and yes-men to fuel your inflated ego — who wouldn’t want that?
But what’s considered rockstar behavior in your 20s is self-destructive and irresponsible in your 40s and 50s. In the days leading up to the first gig of Oasis’ reunion tour, some joked that Liam and Noel would get into a fight onstage and end up cancelling the tour. To some, this was a major fear, especially knowing how much they had spent on tickets. Others held a secret desire to be able to say, “I was there when Liam threw his tambourine at Noel!”
Strikingly, the brothers — now in their 50s — are very sober this tour. Before the encore, Liam joked, “I have to go to bed because I’m a little princess these days.”
Perhaps there is an expiration date on a rock band, at least in terms of relevance. Will the same fans who saw them perform in their prime still listen to new material, or will they want to only hear the hits? It’s up to these veteran acts to decide if they want to fully lean into nostalgia or if they want to challenge their fans. In 2019, I saw The Who at Madison Square Garden. The set consisted of songs written nearly 50 years earlier, with the exception of two new songs featured on an upcoming LP. The crowd wasn’t into those new songs and would’ve rather heard “Pinball Wizard” or “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Oasis are doing a greatest hits tour. No curveballs, no changes in the setlist, no politics. Remember when mainstream musical artists were political? Some of the biggest albums released 50 years ago — Marvin Gaye’s “What’s
// BY CIELO GAZARD
Going On,” Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” — are deeply political works. The politics of these albums, from their historical contexts to the personal struggles of the artists who made them, cannot be separated from the music itself. However, we refuse to think critically about music. It’s all just background noise. “Shut up and play the hits!” we say. “I loved this band before they got political!” others proclaim. And we wonder why big names stay silent on conflicts and issues happening right now.
Where are the new rockstars? American rock band Cage the Elephant opened for Oasis at MetLife. I never listened to the band’s music before this concert, but they were electric. They looked like rockstars, but they’d been around for a number of years. Who does the average teenager who wants to play rock n’ roll have to look up to that isn’t over 50, 60, 70 or even 80 years old?
There are plenty of amazing current rock musicians out there. The prolific King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard recently swung by New Haven. The Windmill scene in the UK has produced some of the best bands of the decade. Do I see King Gizzard or Black Country, New Road selling out MetLife Stadium in the next few years? It depends on if these bands want to go in that direction. It may mean having to sacrifice experimentation for the sake of pleasing a crowd of thousands. Some people are there to have a good time and hear the one song they know. They don’t want to be challenged.
The rise of streaming has allowed for listeners to easily find new music. It has allowed me to discover artists from decades ago that I would have never heard any other way. However, streaming can keep you isolated on your little musical island. You don’t have to listen to the new Sabrina Carpenter album if you don’t want to. You can listen to the Beatles all day and never be inundated with anything related to Taylor Swift. However, you can’t say that rock is dead if you’re not actively seeking out music that is being made right now. We as rock fans have no right to complain about the lack of rock in the Top 40 if we aren’t supporting newer bands. Many great new artists don’t care about mainstream success. Some musicians don’t want to be rockstars. Live with it! Do we need rockstars? Hedonistic self-important egomaniacs continue to exist across all genres of music. But, as rock has evolved and changed throughout the decades, can the image of the rockstar change as well? A young budding music fan in 2025 may consider a bookish teetotaling songwriter their definition of a rockstar. But, dinosaurs still walk among us. The rockstars of yesteryear, those who didn’t burn out in a haze of substances, are still out there clinging onto the memories of the past. Reunion tours are as rock n’ roll as trashing a hotel room, and Oasis returning as a nostalgia act is part of the natural life cycle of most 20th century British rock acts. Oasis may be the last act that fully embraced the excesses of the rockstar life. The brothers have grown and changed since the ’90s. It’s time our image of the rockstar changes, too.
Contact CIELO GAZARD at cielo.gazard@yale.edu .
STYLE
The tote bag epidemic
// BY LEONARDO CHUNG
The
carryall’s resurgence walks the line between individuality and conformity
I am sitting in the Beinecke. At first, I notice the silence, then the rare books locked behind glass. Finally, my eyes drift to the students themselves. More specifically, what they’ve brought with them, their companions.
Tote bags. Everywhere.
Some resting on benches, some slumping against the walls. Others spilling open on the tables with their contents on full display. One bag rests as a placemat for a vanilla latte and a copy of the New Yorker. Another hangs square and shapely off the side of an office chair, with “Shakespeare & Company” stitched in blue. A third drapes over the staircase railing: a handout from the Yale University Art Gallery at the Extracurricular Bazaar.
The tote bag has become Yale’s most visible epidemic — its only competition being the Yague. They are the true Yale uniform, beating out both the Campus Customs-stitched Y sweater and the blazers that lay around Bass Library post-interviews. The bags swing off of shoulders from Ashley’s to Atticus. While a backpack suggests preparedness, and a purse suggests commitment, tote bags advertise something entirely different:
a kind of “effortless cool.” “I didn’t try, but notice how I didn’t try so perfectly,” the bags scream, clinging onto their carriers’ linen pants and knit sweaters. But that’s the irony of it: the “effortless cool” so confidently displayed by tote baggers is meticulously staged. Every tote is a coded message about the owner: a science internship they completed over the summer, an art museum they just visited, even their favorite book genre. Carrying a bookstore tote? Respectable. Sporting a designer tote bag? Either enviable or impractical, depending on the observer. A Yale freebie? Slightly embarrassing, unless it’s executed with enough detachment. And for those who carry plain, non-graphic totes? That might be proud minimalism … or a forgetful person’s emergency purchase. But epidemics beget competition, and only the fittest — or most fashionable — survive. Like fashion gurus, tote bag carriers are constantly evaluating whether they’re over-toted or under-toted. Suddenly, the humble carryall has become a hierarchy. Being spotted carrying the same bag to a seminar twice is now equivalent to repeating an outfit. My friend, an avid
PERSONAL ESSAY
tote bagger, says she’s always worried she’ll run into someone carrying the same bag but better dressed. Despite all their semantics and semiotics, tote bags are universal for a reason. The criterion for becoming a ubiquitous item is practicality. Unlike leather satchels and backpacks — which, for some reason, have become far too expensive these days, totes are cheap and long-lasting. They are sturdy enough for textbooks, easy to clean and less cumbersome than backpacks. And they still satisfy a young, aspiring college student’s most important style requirement: self-expression. So here in the Beinecke, surrounded by books older than the New Yorker itself — let alone the tote bags bearing its name — I am sure that totes are here to stay. And as long as we clutch these flimsy bags as though they are part of our identity, they will announce our arrival long before we have the chance to speak.
Contact LEONARDO CHUNG at leonardo.chung@yale.edu.
‘White-washed’ is a gray area
When I left the all-Asian community I grew up in, becoming
felt like an inevitability.
BY CATHERINE CHENG
//
The word “white-washed” gets thrown around a lot when describing Asian girls. Do you tan? Do you have highlights? Do you have — god forbid — a white boyfriend? You must hate your culture! Come up and get a prize and a Lunchable.
When I was little, I lived in Fort Lee, N.J., an Asian bubble. From my friends to my food, everything I came in contact with was Asian. If going to a 90 percent Asian school wasn’t culturally homogenous enough, I went to Chinese school every Sunday. Living there really had me thinking that Asians were the majority in America.
Then, at 9 years old, I moved to Tennessee and became the only Asian kid in my school. As a matter of fact, I was the first Asian person most of my classmates had seen. All of a sudden, I couldn’t just melt into the background anymore. My existence itself stood out. I was torn between trying to fit in and sticking to my roots, because before, sticking to my roots was fitting in.
I first heard the term “whitewashed” at age 13, helping my cousins with their English homework. “You’re like a banana! Yellow on the outside, white on the inside.” Okay then, I thought, I hope you guys slip on my peel and die. What does that even mean? I speak my language, I love my food and I love my culture. Does liking English more than math make me less Asian? What does being Asian mean, if not just my race? Yes, after living in the South for a couple of years, I had a balayage. My friends were non-Asian. I certainly love me some barbecue. But I never felt less Asian because of any of that. Somewhere along the way, being an Asian girl who isn’t a walking stereotype became synonymous with being a traitor.
“White-washed” is now a passive-aggressive slap in the face with a clear implication: you’re not Asian enough. The colloquial concept of white-washing is an outdated, close-minded point of view. What does it mean to be Asian? Do you have to have pale skin and dark hair? Ironically enough, those who throw around
has put an even greater emphasis on pale skin, and other eurocentric standards. After colonization, white features became symbols of modernity, civilization and beauty. Eurocentric features such as big eyes, sharp noses and double eyelids have been idolized for decades now, in addition to pale skin.
washed,” I knew that this was meant in a negative context. Yet for some strange reason, I didn’t feel angry or hurt by these comments. To me, it was merely another statement of an observation: I know I look white-washed and I know I have tan skin, just the same way that I know that the sky is blue. Maybe because
There’s no reason to feel guilty because you don’t fit into someone else’s definition of Asian-ness.
the word “white-washed” end up doing the most harm to the stereotype by reinforcing the idea that there is only one way to be Asian. If you’re now deciding who is or isn’t “Asian enough,” then congratulations! You are now the colonizer. Nice job, General MacArthur. If anything, mainland East Asian beauty standards are white-washed: the result of a history of colonizing. Pale skin has always been a beauty standard in East Asia because it implies that you are indoors and thus do not have to work, which indicates a higher social status. However, Western imperialism
Every couple of years, my family and I go to China to visit our relatives. As someone who loves being outdoors and sunbathing, I will inevitably have a decent tan. The bulk of this tanning happened in ninth grade when I joined the tennis team and spent the majority of my time outside on the courts. The first thing that my relatives commented on when I visited in 2021— after saying how much they missed me, of course — is that my skin had gotten so tan. “You looked like a country bumpkin!” and “I know this really good skin-whitening cream, let me give you some.”
Just like the term “white-
I understood both cultures and their beauty standards, or maybe because I just couldn’t care less. Visiting China that year made me realize that it doesn’t matter what shade my skin is, what color my hair is or what my favorite subject is. I personally don’t feel white-washed because I have such a strong sense of connection to my heritage, but I don’t feel hurt by being called whitewashed, either. I’ve grown up close to my culture, and that foundation has always helped me explore spaces where Western influences dominate without losing my identity. I’ll have pizza for lunch and tomato-egg-rice
white-washed
for dinner. I’ll wear a jade bangle along with my enewton. I don’t need to sell my Asian heritage to be “normal,” but I also don’t have to show up in a qipao to remain culturally grounded. Everyone is bound to absorb their environment and integrate. That doesn’t mean that they’re losing who they are. They’re only responding to their surroundings to better survive, connect and thrive. For many Asian girls growing up in America, adapting isn’t about rejection of their own identities; it’s simply a result of growing up in a certain place. Talking a certain way and liking certain things isn’t betraying your ancestors. Call it a survival mechanism to fit in and feel safe, or call it a natural acculturation. If you grow up in America, you’re bound to be at least a little bit different from those in the mainland, and that’s no one’s fault. There’s no reason to feel guilty because you don’t fit into someone else’s definition of Asian-ness.
Being here at Yale especially has shown me, and should show others, that Asian is not a monolith. Yes, there are mainland international students who, at a glance, look like they defy everything that I’ve talked about in this article. But even they have certain nuances and traits that don’t fit cleanly in these pseudo-imperialist boxes. Labeling people as “whitewashed” erases the complexity of growing up between cultures. Cultural identity isn’t static: it bends, grows and evolves. My identity doesn’t end in blackand-white — or yellow. So stop throwing around the word “white-washed” like a slur and go enjoy your Panda Express.
Contact CATHERINE CHENG at catherine.cheng@yale.edu.
WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: WEARING A VEST
ILLUSTRATION BY SASHA CABRAL
PERSONAL ESSAY
Old Campus: A Diatribe
// BY LUCAS CASTILLO-WEST
Picture little old me. I had just finished my hours of volunteering for Focus. Beat, I returned to my faithful home on Old Campus. I found my bed unmade — perfect, no need to feel guilty about messing it up. I had to jump a bit to get into my bed because, for some reason unbeknownst to me, they set that thing four feet above the ground. That jump took everything out of me, but I was in my final resting spot at last. Deep into the folds of my covers, a sudden warmth wrapped around me. My open windows let in a breeze, and I turned off my fan; no need because the weather has finally chilled. My eyelids fell, consciousness fading.
Bum bum bum.
What’s that? Bum bum bum. Is that bass? Bum bum bum. I checked my phone. “Did I leave my music on?” I thought. No. My screen was pleasantly empty. Bum bum bum. There it is again. My head turned. Bum bum bum. My eyes locked with my window. A shrill voice sliced through the silence of my dorm room. Of course, they were testing the speakers for the Bulldog Bash. I sat up, harboring the knowledge that my nap was ruined.
I absolutely hate Old Campus. I hate it during the day. I hate it at night — maybe especially at night. And I definitely hate it in the morning. As a proud Piersonite who was “gifted” the opportunity to live in Vanderbilt Hall this year instead of Lanman-Wright Hall, I hate to say that I’m not sure that I’m any better off. I’ve seen L-Dub; my room is not bigger than theirs. I feel lied to.
“Oh, you hit the lottery.” “You should feel blessed that you’re in Vandy.” Blessed my ass. My room is so small that I’m basically kissing my roommate when I wake up.
Even though I live on the fourth floor — don’t get me started — I can still hear everything. If someone is taking their trash out, I hear it. The conversations outside of Bingham, I hear it. The bathroom door opening and closing, I hear it. There are no secrets on Old Campus, because I hear them all. When was the last time I slept entirely through the night? Good ques -
tion! I don’t know!
The eternal dilemma is as follows: close my window and enjoy the slightly dulled noise or open my window and not die of heat exhaustion, because what they don’t tell you about Yale is that you will be in a dorm with no AC. A dorm that, of course, is on the highest floor of your entryway. And, if you paid attention in physics for even the slightest second, you’d know that heat rises — a fact I have become quite accustomed to.
When people visit my dorm, they note that the metal handle is quite hot. Oh, I’m aware. I walk into my room, looking for respite, and I am met with an unnatural heat. What gets me is that this is not a shared experience. I was truly given the short end of the stick. Even the people in Vandy on a lower floor are having a better time than I am. And don’t get me started on the Ben Franklin kids with their air-conditioned dorms.
I hate that everything is always going on here. I hate the tour groups I have to weave through to get to class. “Oh, goody! Another old statue!” is what I can only imagine they are saying. I hate being stopped to take people’s pictures. “Hey, will you take this photo real quick!” “Oh, wait, can you try this angle instead?” “Oh, the lighting is kind of bad, let’s move over here.”
I hate the constant events. I wake up already late for class. Oh dear! I run down the stairs, shoes half on, backpack unzipped, my shirt tucked awkwardly in my pants. I bust through the doors of my trusty Old Campus dorm. “It’s a straight shot! I just have to get across the courtyard,” I think. Tsk, tsk, tsk. I have too much faith in Old Campus. What I didn’t account for is that they are setting up tents for an event next week. And those tents, obviously, block the path to my class. By the time I make it down, I accept my fate. I take the long way around the tents, dragging my feet, having abandoned the hope of getting to my class on time. “But this can’t happen all the time!” you might be exclaiming. You’re right! But if not the courtyard, then it’s Elm Street with orange barriers stopping you from jay-walking, or a permanently
locked gate that taunts you with a deceiving veil of convenience. And most of all, I hate that damn porta-potty. I thought, after the Bulldog Bash, that the porta-potties would soon fall as the decorations had. And they did. One gone. Two gone. Three gone. Four gone. Oh! But not that one. That one is there to stay.
“It’s not that bad,” you’re probably saying. And I’d agree, if people didn’t use it. But no. People use it. Constantly, I’m watching people trail in and out of a porta-potty. This fact truly baffles me. Linsly-Chittenden Hall is right there! Free bathrooms! Hot to go! No need for
is eating chips on a bench, and you are in hot pursuit of them. You can’t blame them for being here. They have the same right to exist here as do you. But the anger begins to swell up inside. What do I do now? If I turn, it would be so noticeable. If I don’t, I’m screwed. Instead, you choose the worst out of all the options: you stop. Oh no. Oh no. They’re approaching you. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. This must be hell. And, scene! That was just a little example of the nightmare encounters you can have on Old Campus. If I were asked to describe that situation in a few
the smelly plastic box! You could have an air-conditioned, nice, normal bathroom. But I suppose it’s not convenient enough. I suppose we are just too lazy to take the extra few steps. Come on, people! Stand up. There is no need to use a porta-potty EVER.
“Wait!” you might be saying. “Old Campus has such an amazing community! You’re surrounded by all your fellow first years!” I fear that’s the problem. Every person I don’t want to see is lingering. Every person I don’t want to see lives 20 feet away from me. “Ah, I’m so hot, let me go on a walk,” I say innocently. I climb down 50-some-odd flights of stairs from my dorm and enter the cool air. It’s so nice out, wow! Absolutely nothing could ruin this night.
Oh, who’s sitting on the bench over there? They look kinda familiar. Oh. Oh, dear. And there they are: the person you hate, the person you despise above all else,
words, I’d say revolting, trifling, evil, despicable, never-want-to-experience-except-I-definitely-already-have. Now, don’t misconstrue my words. I love Yale. I am forever grateful to be here, but I am nevertheless human, and I can’t help but have a few pet peeves. So, I loathe Old Campus. And, I know this is premature hatred. I’ve lived here, what, a few weeks? But I do hate it, no matter how much I love Yale. And nothing will change my mind.
I suppose I’ll just have to daydream about next year, when I get my dingle and life is good — when I get to enjoy Yale and all its beauty. But until then, I’ll continue writing from hell-on-earth: my sweet, lovely Old Campus.
Contact LUCAS CASTILLO-WEST at lucas.castillo-west@yale.edu
PERSONAL ESSAY
Putting down roots
// BY ANGELINA KOVALCHUK
My suite is filled with celebrities. Not artists, musicians or influencers. By celebrities, I am referring to the collection of ivies, succulents and aloes arranged carefully around our common room coffee table. Over the course of the last four weeks, my suite has accumulated several different houseplants, each boasting a different leaf shape and shade preference. For our love of film, we have bestowed upon each a moniker inspired by our favorite Italian actors. Our plant children, Allison “Al” Pacino, Monica Bellucci, Robbie DeNiro, Danny DeVito and the newest addition Leonardo DiCaprio, all live and interact in their own little plant canon.
It is from the experience of adopting plants with my suite that I have come to assess the importance of doing things with these people who now live and share in my space. When I was applying to Yale, the suite was sold to me as at the heart of the “Yale experience.” This collection of people seems entirely arbitrarily picked, even though we were supposedly put together by our deans, and is now expected suddenly to live in the closest proximity. Before moving, I was accosted by a barrage of TikToks complaining about “random roommates” and how genuinely weird they are. Determined to beat the stereotype, I received my housing assignment with resolve. It seems obvious — of course you should spend time with people to get to know them, but I find that all too often we take for granted the whimsy and spontaneity that comes with nurturing new and fresh connections. The suite counters the fast-paced social environment of college; in a place that emphasizes meeting so many new people, where we must sift through faces and friends to find our perfect matches, there is value in being stuck with people. This place will be my definition of home for the next four years, and I’m not planning to leave without friends.
Every morning when we water our plants, I am brought back to amblings through my family’s gardens at home — from the tomato bushes in my Lola’s condo to the mango trees my mom cultivates in our backyard. Aloe barbadensis and bottlenecks that run along the perimeter of our old house climb the walls of my soul. As the latest in a lineage of people who love to garden, it feels all the more significant that I continue this tradition. In an effort to make Yale feel like home, my suite has been strengthened and tethered to the place I grew up.
Still, I am determined to give a new definition of home to Yale, which is vastly different from the humid mires of my Floridian upbringing. After all, coming to college is an act of “uprooting” — moving away that should culminate in an experience that feels familiar but is different in every way. Exploring study spots, gabbing into the early hours of the morning and planning things to do with my suitemates has helped me to root myself in an unfamiliar place 1,200 miles away from everything I knew two months ago. In such a short time, my suite has become a branch of my definition of home. Not everyone is as lucky as I have been with my suite. Among the many communities and spaces at Yale, it is crucial to investigate the spaces that call to us and see if they can offer that elusive familiarity. Communities that offer the same experience of belonging and “re-rooting.”
This is all to say that I gladly and openly express my love for both my suite and our adopted plant celebrities. We have pot-decorating plans scheduled for next weekend, and I have a feeling that Al would love a trim Godfather-esque suit. After that, who knows. There are so many things we have yet to do together.
Contact ANGELINA KOVALCHUK at angelina.kovalchuk@yale.edu.
HOROSCOPES
// BY KIVA BANK
It’s that time of year again. The crisp breeze signals the arrival of colorful fall leaves…and muchdreaded midterms. You’ve only been in classes for three weeks and already exams are just around the corner. Welcome to Yale, where midterm season is never ending! Instead of enjoying a pumpkin spiced latte and an episode of Gilmore Girls like autumn calls for, you are overwhelmed with office hours and writing sessions at the Poorvu center. On the bright side, studying is a welcome distraction from the unfortunate reality that you haven’t been tapped for anything. You now spend your days consumed with looking for answers to your psets when you should be looking for faith… in the stars. Well, look no further.
Here is what your horoscope says about your fate, delivered straight from the universe and Bass Library:
Aries
Your energy is unmatched, but burning out is not a personality trait. You don’t need to consume three different caffeine sources at once so you can out-study everyone else. Staying up until 4 a.m. doesn’t make you a hero. It makes you delirious. Please, for everyone’s sake, go to bed before you start lecturing strangers about your grindset.
Taurus You’ve been dutifully sitting in lecture and taking notes in preparation for your upcoming exams when suddenly your professor decides to go off on a tangent. And no, not the useful kind for finding instantaneous velocity. Your professor may be an expert on astrophysics, but he’s also a Belieber. You now know more about Justin Bieber’s discography than you do about planetary motion, but hey, that might show up on the test. Consider it extra credit.
Gemini
Learn to say no. Your GCal is overbooked, you barely have time to shower, and you’re not even a CS major. You’ve overcommitted to so many extracurriculars that you’ve seemingly forgotten the classes that you’re paying $90,000 to take. Running from HQ to WLH every 15 minutes does not count as cardio, and no, your professor will not accept “sorry, I had rehearsal” as an excuse for missing the midterm essay. Drop a club before a class drops you.
Cancer
For the new school year, you’ve decided to try the Flex meal plan. Unfortunately, you keep “forgetting to eat” in the middle of your marathon study sessions. You need to be reminded that Liquid IV is not a food group. Please consume an actual vegetable before you faint in Sterling and become a cautionary tale on Yale Fizz.
Leo Resist the urge to talk shit about ex best friends and former situationships. The enemy of your enemy is NOT your friend. Also, why do you have enemies? You are a 19-year-old “Art History” major who has a caffeine addiction and gets winded walking up the stairs in LC. You can’t defeat anybody, much less an archnemesis. The only demons you are fighting is your GPA, so stick to one battle at a time.
Virgo
You are convinced your professor is plotting against you. You’ve been locked in the seminar room every week playing a twisted game of mafia as you and your classmates guess who wrote the essays your professor is tearing apart on the projector. She removed names for anonymity, but that doesn’t stop suspicion of murder. Cause of death? The try hard who dragged your verb usage for sport.
Libra
You swore you wouldn’t procrastinate. Yet here you are. It started with skipping your lecture on Science Hill and now you’re “just taking a little nap” at 11 a.m. on the day of your exam. You need to set thirty two alarms, or else you’ll be explaining REM cycles to your professor instead of writing essays about it. Try an alternative next time: sleeping at night like a normal person. Your roommate will thank you.
Scorpio
Are the stacks in Sterling Library feeling a bit too stuffy for you? Or are you suddenly catching a cold? Maybe it’s time for you to take a quick vaccination trip to prepare for flu season. The rusty iron gates are a workout, and you need to make sure you’ve gotten your tetanus shot. You do NOT want to get Yealthed right before your midterm.
Sagittarius
You prefer the aesthetic of studying as opposed to actually learning. You look hard at work in Atticus even though the only thing you’re researching is Pinterest board inspiration for a pumpkin patch photoshoot. Unfortunately, being in a book store does not mean you’re an academic, and your TFs will certainly not be grading based on the vibes you curate for fall.
Capricorn
Your midterm crisis is going to turn into a midlife crisis. Political science will severely shorten your lifespan as the stress and guilt of succumbing to corporate lobbyists overtakes you. Luckily, it’s not too late to change your fate, and your major. Follow your dreams of playwriting and switch to English, even if you end up with no future job. At any rate, you’ll die happy and unpublished.
Aquarius
Divine intervention is blocking you from receiving your mother’s overbearing text messages. They’re a distraction in your hour of desperation. You don’t have time to answer her 10th FaceTime of the day. You can lock yourself in Bass where both the sun and cell signal won’t reach you, but unfortunately your mother will still find a way to embarrass you from 1500 miles away. Probably via a Facebook post you didn’t approve.
Pisces
Crying signifies you are in a “liminal space” — what that means, who knows? At least, that’s how you are justifying your middle of the night breakdowns in Sterling. Sometimes it’s okay to romanticize your tears, or whatever gets you through the next few months of midterms. Just don’t let the puddle ruin your laptop.
Contact KIVA BANK at kiva.bank@yale.edu.
ILLUSTRATION BY JULIAN RAYMOND
ILLUSTRATION BY ANNA QIAN
The internet’s new atelier
// BY KATE SOO HYUM KIM
“New York Fashion Week.” Try and sound it out — there’s a little catch that happens right between the end of “York” and the beginning of “Fashion.” It’s because of the quick jump we need to make from the backof-the-throat sound at “k” to the curl of the lips at “f.” That phonetic leap is what gives the phrase rhythm.
And, in a way, the fashion industry is in the middle of its own leap — a leap from the runway to the algorithm, from a designer’s traditional grueling path towards success to the possibility of overnight social media stardom. At this year’s New York Fashion Week, I interviewed models, designers and stylists about how social media is reshaping the New York Fashion Week scene and the fashion world.
I arrived at 77 Walker St. about an hour before Planet Fashion TV’s show was slated to start. Models strutted in and out of the Walker Hotel Tribeca, rollers still clipped in their hair, a cigarette loosely hanging from one hand, a black co!ee in the other. Feeling exposed under their smoky-eyeshadow gaze, I tried to find a less intimidating person of whom to ask some questions and made eye contact with a man holding a camera.
“Excuse me, sir, are you a photographer?”
“No, I just carry this camera for fun,” he deadpanned. I’ve inconvenienced someone, I thought — time to die. Andrew, whose name I would later learn, was just kidding. Seeing my despair at the thought of annoying him, he took pity and o!ered to introduce me to some designers — “if that’s something you’re interested in.”
Andrew led me through the venue, down an alley beside the Walker Hotel, and into a not-so-friendly-looking basement called the “pit.” There I met Adrianna Aloni, a 17-year-old designer showcasing her brand Josephine’s Closet for the seventh time at NYFW.
Clad in one of her own pieces, she looked every bit ready to walk in her own show but warmly accepted my request for an interview. When I asked what Fashion Week meant to her, she spoke with the kind of perspective that comes from years of growing up in the fashion world.
“I’ve been in the modeling and acting industry since I was three, and I’ve been designing since I was ten,” she said. That early start led to her first line debuting at NYFW when she was only 11. Since then, her work has focused on storytelling through inclusivity and comfort, a mission she describes simply: “I wanted to create a safe space for everyone to feel comfortable in their own skin and embrace their stories.”
Over the years, her collections have reached fashion capitals like New York, Milan, Paris and her hometown of Miami, yet her dedication to empowerment has remained constant.
“I’ve been doing this for 12 years now; my motive is just to make an impact on people.” With 58,000 followers on Instagram, Adrianna has watched social media reshape the industry. “It brings a lot of positive energy,” she noted, “but there is a downside to it.” She emphasized that the platform allows designers and models to be more creative and experimental than ever: “I wish social media didn’t have negativity, but we just have to look past it and do what we’re comfortable with. It’s all about being comfortable, because nobody else is living your life.”
After my interview with Adrianna, I ran into Marc Harvey, an artistic director and beauty entrepreneur, who has spent 20 years navigating fashion and beauty. After a quick chat with Andrew — who, as it turned out, had already spoken to Marc about me before I ran into him — I found a cozy spot with Marc in the middle of the Walker Hotel’s cafe and got to chatting.
Originally studying art and music, Marc found his home in the immersive nature of the fashion and beauty industries. “I loved everything art, so I had to hone into what I really liked, and I found I loved being an artistic director.” From glamming up models for runways to launching his own skincare and makeup brands, Marc has, as he says, “put in the work” to develop his artistic eye. “If you didn’t have the it-factor when you sat in my chair, you left with it!” On the rise of social media, Marc notes both its benefits and drawbacks. Platforms allow designers and artists to gain instant visibility and be more creative, but they’ve also “watered down” the industry, making it harder to distinguish true talent. “It’s made things more accessible,” he says, “but if you don’t do the work — under-
stand history, art history, the references — you’ll struggle to make an impact.” His advice for young creatives is clear: pursue your passions passionately, and put in your dues.
At my last stop of the day, which combined fashion collective Vitruvius’ NYFW presentation with designer Negris Labrum’s showcase, I also met Tim Victor, a Brooklyn-based stylist and model. I got tickets to two shows through MAISON at Yale, a student fashion group where I serve as a co–social chair; Vitruvius provided the tickets after sponsoring Maison’s spring show.
For Tim, Fashion Week is more than just glamour; it’s spiritual. “Style is about how you feel, and how you want other people to feel when you show up.” Fashion Week, he says, “is a time for us to really tap into ourselves and express what we’re processing through clothes.”
That self-awareness, he explained, is what makes someone’s style authentic. “A lot of us walk around pretending to be something we’re not. But what you think is wrong with you is actually what’s right about you, because that’s your power.”
When our conversation turned to social media, Victor was clear-eyed about its role: “It’s good, but at the same time, I have to take breaks. It starts to become performative, and when it gets to that place, it’s not authentic.”
But for him, the internet has also blown open the gates of fashion. “Before, there was always one way in. You had to know someone, or go through an agency, or already have the money. Now? All you need is your phone. Pay your bill, post every day, and if it’s real, if it’s authentic, people will feel that.
And when the lights began to dim and the chatter of the attendees thinned to a murmur, I knew that the show was about to begin. I thanked Tim, told him not to forget me when Law Roach called him up and returned to my seat for the show to begin.
An AI show.
Vitruvius’ NYFW show was themed AI x Fashion, with AI tools being used throughout the designing process. The theme, as I would later learn from Vitruvius’ founder Wayne Chiang, was meant to encourage designers to explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping the fashion industry, not just as a tool, but as a creative collaborator. Now, to be completely clear, Vitruvius’ aim was not for designers to rely on artificial intelligence when designing pieces, but to integrate technology meaningfully into the designers’ fashion.
It was certainly shocking, to say the least, to see designers openly use artificial intelligence in the designing process at a time when AI use is immensely controversial in creative fields. When I asked Wayne about this, he said, “For us, it’s just a step. Where a part of the process may have taken ten minutes, it now just takes three seconds. AI gets things wrong, and the designers work to fix them.”
I came back from New York at 1:00 a.m., my feet sore from the heeled boots I thought were a good idea and my mind still buzzing with the day’s excitement. “New York Fashion Week,” I whispered to myself in bed, before my roommate stirred and I worried I’d woken her.
Before that day, my closest interaction with any fashion week had been through The Devil Wears Prada. I first watched it when I was 15, sco ng at Andy Sachs’ toocool-for-fashion attitude and falling in love with her outfits. Since then, I’d longed to be part of the industry I had romanticized through 2000s movies and TV shows. But the fashion world I thought I knew — the one Miranda Priestly ruled with an iron fist, the one that made and crushed designers’ careers through a brutal climb — is changing.
Today, social media and AI are rewriting the rules and shaping trends. New York Fashion Week is not just about the shows; it’s a stage for experimentation and a mirror of technological and social progress. With AI still heavily criticized in the art world, it’s unclear where the creative minds that shape the industry will approach its use. Will it be embraced and openly used, like in Guess’ advertisement featuring an AI model in Vogue’s August 2025 print edition, or will it be shunned and disregarded by artists? One thing is clear: Designers, audiences, and technology are evolving together, and fashion itself has never moved faster.
Contact KATE KIM at kate.kim@yale.edu.
PERSONAL ESSAY
My
grandma was illiterate. I’m an English major.
BY HANA TILKSEW
//
Tafesu, my mother’s mother, never read a book.
Imperial Ethiopian custom in the mid-20th century dictated that young women were married off as teenagers, not educated. In some ways, I’ve been less privileged than Tafesu. She was the affluent daughter of landowners — wealth that I never saw because Ethiopia’s communist regime took it away. She was surrounded by family her whole life; an ocean lies between me and many of my relatives. But I’ve been given a gift she never had: the written word.
Since I was 5 or 6 years old, I’ve known I wanted to be a writer. For many years, my practical parents tried persuading me otherwise. But despite their best attempts to push me toward the hard sciences, I showed little inclination towards those subjects. I taught myself to write cursive at 7, my only aid a printout with letter templates that I traced onto paper repeatedly, enraptured with the swoops and swirls of my pen. By 11, I was breaking into the teen section of the local library, sauntering into the YA room and hoping no one would comment on my small stature. At 14, I attempted a novel; two years later, I was published in a magazine for the first time. In high school, I started a classic literature club and tripped over myself to take AP English Lit.
ferent states by the time I was 14. I learned early on in life that I could not rely on people or places to be constant. My favorite stories, however, never changed. Your comfort character does not forget you after you’ve been at a different school for a year. They are there to welcome you back as soon as you turn the page, no matter how long it has been. I learned almost everything about the world around me through stories — things my immigrant family, knowing little themselves of how to navigate life in this country, could not teach me.
Now, as an English major at Yale, I’m set apart from the rest of my family: parents in nursing and a fi-
But when I think of Tafesu, I wonder if she might’ve been 10 times the wordsmith I am if only she was given the chance.
Why the hunger for anything and everything literary? I was a guarded youth, hardened by living in six dif-
nance major twin brother. It would be easy for me to assume everything I’ve accomplished through my literacy occurred in a vacuum — that I’m a passionate reader and writer thanks to my own efforts.
But when I think of Tafesu, I won-
der if she might’ve been 10 times the wordsmith I am if only she was given the chance.
Hers was a dynamic life spent in the front seat of history. When she was born, Ethiopia was renowned worldwide as the only African country never colonized. When she died, the nation was limping on foreign aid and charity from the diaspora. She dined with war heroes in her youth and saw America as an old woman. If she’d been taught to write, perhaps she would have spun these stories into epic tales, printed and distributed for all the world to read. They may not have been stories I could read myself — I never learned fidel, the alphabet of the Amharic language — but I sometimes imagine sitting at her feet as she read her own writing aloud, transcribing her words in English so her ideas could be received globally.
When my mother’s older brother — Tafesu’s eldest son — left home in the early ’70s to attend university abroad, she pushed back against the idea that it was unbecoming for an Ethiopian to leave their native soil. As far as she was concerned, education was an opportunity no one should disregard.
Tafesu died when I was a small child, but I wonder what she would say if she could see me at Yale. As I sit in my early English poetry class this semester and stumble my way through archaic diction and iambic pentameter, Tafesu’s memory reminds me that each required reading and long-winded essay is a privilege.
Contact HANA TILKSEW at hana.tilksew@yale.edu.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF HANA TILKSEW